|
|
Follow the Middle East Forum
|
|
|
|
Related Articles
Nuclear
Creepout: Iran's Third Path to the Bomb
|
|
|
Share:  
|
  Be the first of
your friends to like this.
Originally published under the title, "Creepin': Here's
How Iran Will Really Build the Bomb."
In assessing whether the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed by
the P5+1 world powers and Iran last week is an adequate safeguard against
the latter's pursuit of a nuclear weapon, Obama administration officials
and arms control wonks typically discuss two heavily stylized breakout
scenarios.
In an overt breakout, Iran brushes aside nuclear inspectors and begins
openly racing to enrich weapons grade uranium (WGU) using its two
declared enrichment plants at Natanz and Fordow. The JCPOA ostensibly
blocks this path by limiting the number of centrifuges Iran can operate
to 5,060 and capping the amount of low-enriched uranium (LEU) it can keep
on hand to use as feedstock at 300 kilograms. This supposedly lengthens
its breakout time—how quickly it can produce sufficient fissile
material for one atomic bomb should it make a rush to build one—from two
or three months at present to at least a year, giving the international
community more time to mobilize a response to the breakout.
In a covert breakout, or sneakout, Iran builds parallel
infrastructure in secret to produce the fissile material for a bomb. The
JCPOA ostensibly blocks this path with an inspections regime designed to
detect the diversion of fissile material, the construction of illicit
centrifuges, off-the-books uranium mining, and so forth.
The terms of the JCPOA make
small-scale cheating virtually unpunishable.
|
Though much ink has been spilled about whether these two
"paths" to the bomb have been blocked, both presuppose a
decision by Iran to sacrifice its reconciliation with the world in the
next ten to fifteen years for the immediate gratification of building a
weapon (the purpose of a covert breakout is less to avoid detection
before crossing the finish line than to make the process less vulnerable
to decisive disruption).
Such an abrupt change of heart by the Iranian regime is certainly
possible, but more worrisome is the prospect that Iran's nuclear policy
after the agreement goes into effect will be much the same as it was
before—comply with the letter and spirit of its obligations only to the
degree necessary to ward off unacceptably costly consequences. This will
likely take the form of what I call nuclear creepout—activities,
both open and covert, legal and illicit, designed to negate JCPOA
restrictions without triggering costly multilateral reprisals.
The text of the JCPOA appears
designed to give the Iranians wide latitude to interpret their own
obligations.
|
It is important to bear in mind that the JCPOA bars signatories from
re-imposing any sanctions or their equivalents on Iran, except by way of
a United Nations Security Council resolution restoring sanctions.
"That means there will be no punishments for anything less than a
capital crime," explains Robert Satloff. The language demanded by
Iranian negotiators, and accepted by the Obama administration, makes
small-scale cheating virtually unpunishable.
Moreover, the specific terms of the JCPOA appear to have been designed
to give the Iranians wide latitude to interpret their own obligations.
Two, in particular, should raise eyebrows.
The LEU Cap
About 1,000 kilograms of LEU is supposedly needed to produce, through
further enrichment, enough weapons grade uranium for a nuclear explosive
device (let's assume for sake of argument that that the Obama
administration's erroneous math is correct). This is what inspectors
call a "significant quantity" (SQ). The JCPOA's requirement
that Iran "keep its uranium stockpile under 300 kilograms" would
force it to enrich a substantial quantity of natural uranium all the way
up to weapons grade, thereby lengthening the process of producing a SQ by
several months.
|
Iran
is allowed to operate 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges under the terms of the
JCPOA.
|
But what exactly happens to LEU produced by Iranian centrifuges in
excess of the 300-kilogram limit? The JCPOA appendix says it "will be down blended to natural
uranium level or be sold on the international market and delivered to the
international buyer." Maintenance of the 300 kilogram limit relies
upon Iran continually and punctually reprocessing or transferring
material it already possesses.
What happens if Iran's handling of all this is less than perfect?
Suppose 100 kilograms or so of LEU in the process of being down-blended
or delivered to an "international buyer" of Iran's choosing
routinely remains recoverable at any one time because of apparent
inefficiencies and bottlenecks. Would the international community be
willing to cancel the JCPOA over this infraction? Almost certainly not.
What if this number swelled periodically to 150 or 200 kilograms every
so often because of some special complication or another, like a breakout
of plant machinery or truck drivers' strike? Probably not. Since an overt
breakout attempt would likely commence at one of these peaks in LEU
availability (and when smaller amounts of medium enriched uranium have
yet to be converted or transferred), we can knock a month or so off its
breakout time.
The Centrifuges Cap
The Obama administration's one-year breakout time calculation assumes
that Iran uses only the 5,060 IR-1 centrifuges it is allowed to have
spinning under the JCPOA—and that it does not bring more into operation
for a whole year after kicking out inspectors and beginning a sprint for
a nuke. This could have been achieved by dismantling the large majority
of its roughly 15,000 excess centrifuges falling outside this quota, but
Iran insisted from the beginning that it would never destroy any
of them and its adversaries eventually caved.
Although U.S negotiators reportedly proposed a variety of disablement mechanisms
designed to slow down the process of reconnecting them, all were rejected
by the Iranians and the final agreement makes no mention of any. The
JCPOA requires only that excess centrifuges and associated equipment at
Natanz be disconnected and put into IAEA-monitored storage on-site.
At the Fordow facility, buried deep underground, Iran is allowed to keep
"no more than 1044 IR-1 centrifuge machines at one wing"
installed, but not enriching uranium.
There is considerable disagreement among informed analysts about how
long it would take the Iranians to get an appreciable number of these
excess machines up and running, with estimates ranging from a few to
several months. Whatever that length of time is, the Iranians can surely
shorten it by training personnel to rapidly reactivate centrifuge
cascades, modernizing equipment, acquiring new technology, and other
methods not explicitly barred by the JCPOA.
The real danger is that the
mullahs will put off a breakout attempt while creeping out of their
vaguely worded obligations.
|
Indeed, the JCPOA appears to have been drafted by diplomats who failed to imagine that the Iranians might seek to
bolster their latent nuclear weapons capacity under the new rules of the
game with as much guile and gusto as they did under the old. Considering
that the Obama administration's one-year projected breakout time for Iran
is deeply flawed to begin with, Iranian exploitation of
these loopholes could bring it perilously close to the finish line even
while remaining officially in compliance with the JCPOA. If the
international community has less time to respond to a breakout attempt,
an attempt presumably becomes more likely.
But the real danger is that the mullahs will put off a breakout
attempt in the next decade or so, while creeping out of their vaguely
worded obligations. With so many opportunities to escape the strictures
of the JCPOA, the mullahs would be fools not to offer the minimal degree
of compliance necessary to keep it in force (while continually stretching
the boundaries of how minimal that degree can be). Openly exploiting the
JCPOA's loopholes while enjoying its rewards will do more to intimidate
Iran's regional rivals than a reckless dash for the end zone or a
high-risk covert attempt, while paving the way for eventual grudging
international acquiescence to the Islamic Republic's construction of a
bomb.
Gary C. Gambill is a research
fellow at the Middle East Forum.
|
|
|
|
|
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment