President Obama and the leaders of Britain and France on Friday accused Iran of building an underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel and hiding the operation from international weapons inspectors for years.
The leaders gave Iran gave two months to comply with international demands or face increased sanctions. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said the international community “has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.” Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, denied that the plant was a secret.
What kinds of sanctions would work in this situation? What strategies might be deployed against Iran now?
Make Sanctions Even Harsher
Gary Milhollin is the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control and Valerie Lincy is a senior research associate at project. They edit the project’s Iranwatch.org Web site.
Today’s revelation that Iran has been building — in secret — a uranium enrichment plant should dispel any doubts about the true nature of Iran’s nuclear program. Why would Iran hide such a site — capable of fueling weapons as well as reactors — if it is merely civilian in nature?
If the United States and its partners fail to win an immediate and total freeze of uranium enrichment when they sit down with Iran on October 1, then a policy of economic and diplomatic isolation is in order.
Attacking Iran’s nuclear sites would start another war, and the chance of destroying all of Iran’s nuclear sites is slim.
There are only three options at this point. The best is strong sanctions applied by a coalition of like-minded countries, led by the United States. The other two are living with a nuclear-capable or nuclear-armed Iran, or bombing those nuclear and military sites in Iran that we know about.
Given Iran’s belligerence toward the United States and Israel, its support of terrorism, and its bloody repression of domestic opposition, allowing Iran to get the bomb is simply too dangerous. Attacking Iran’s nuclear sites would start another war in the Middle East that is hard to see the end of, and the chance that a bombing campaign would destroy all of Iran’s nuclear sites is slim. This leaves sanctions, which, to have any chance of causing Iran to give up its nuclear work, will have to be put into place quickly.
The first, and easiest, would be to end public subsidies of economic development in Iran through loan guarantees. All developed countries (Japan, the E.U., etc.) should stop using taxpayer money to guarantee investments in Iran. Many governments have cut back on such guarantees — they should now end them.
Define and Isolate
George Perkovich is director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Iranian leaders insist they do not want nuclear weapons. That is good. The United States and others should not assert otherwise. Rather, the focus should be on defining what are peaceful nuclear activities, which are all that Iran says it wants to pursue, and what are military nuclear activities.
Iran acknowledges it has no right to do the latter so we should cooperate with Iran in peaceful nuclear activities. For example, we could offer to help it build a small new reactor to produce medical isotopes without using highly enriched uranium, once Iran has answered all the International Atomic Energy Agency’s questions and restored international confidence.
Perhaps the U.S. could offer to help Iran build a small new reactor to produce medical isotopes without using highly enriched uranium.
At the same time we should define with Russia, China and other Security Council members a list of nuclear-related activities that have no non-military purposes. These activities would, in effect, define weaponization and mark the firewall between peaceful nuclear energy and nuclear weapons. If Iran, despite its pledges, undertook one of these specified weaponization-related activities, Russia, China and other Security Council members would be committed to the strongest possible sanctions.
Defining the line between peaceful and military nuclear programs would apply to all countries. However, some activities — like uranium enrichment — can be done for peaceful or military purposes. To give confidence that they are peaceful, states that want to undertake those activities would have to adopt reporting and transparency requirements at least as robust as the I.A.E.A. additional protocol.
Not Many Options
Anthony H. Cordesman is Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Stategic and International Studies and the author, most recently, of “Iraq’s Insurgency and the Road to Civil Conflict.”
We need to pursue every diplomatic option we can, and keep exploring different mixes of sanctions and incentives to see if there is a way to change Iran’s behavior. We also need to understand, however, that this is an ideological and authoritarian regime that has “gamed” the West ever since it came to power.
International pressure may be able to keep Iran from open testing of nuclear weapons and deployment.
Iran developed covert purchasing networks during the Iran-Iraq War, and it has systematically built up it missile and nuclear capabilities since it first came under chemical and missile attack from Iraq. We know from work by the International Atomic Energy Agency, and from Iranian disclosures, that Iran has done far more than simply improve its uranium enrichment capability. It has acquired all of the triggering devices, specialized explosive and lens technology, neutron initiator components, and uranium machining capability needed for fission weapons.
It acquired significant amounts of Chinese and North Korean nuclear weapons design data, possibly through the A.Q. Khan network. It has developed the capability to build medium range missiles with high payloads that can carry nuclear warheads. It has also spread this activity into dozens of facilities and well over a hundred major buildings.
