Iran's Nuclear Lies

Christopher Dickey, Newsweek:

Beyond the antiaircraft-gun emplacements and the early-warning radar systems, and shortly before you get to the high concrete walls topped with concertina wire that surround Iran's Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, there's a large sign announcing that the facility welcomes guests. Like so much about the Iranian nuclear program, the signals are incongruous, contradictory and more than a little sinister.

If Iran is to be believed, then the world has nothing to fear from its nuclear program. The United States, Europe, Israel, Saudi Arabia and other oil producers nearby can rest easy, because the ayatollahs have no plans to threaten the region with atomic weapons or put nukes in the hands of terrorists. If Iran is to be believed, its only goal, repeated countless times, ratified in treaties and open to inspections, is to develop a completely independent ability to make nuclear fuel and use it to generate electricity.

But neither the United States nor Europe nor the United Nations is ready simply to believe Iran, at least not easily, and not without verification. Its record of concealment and deceit about its nuclear program goes back at least 20 years. Its extensive uranium-enrichment program was uncovered in detail only two years ago; its promise of "full disclosure" and "transparency" since then has been something considerably less. The election of a new hard-line Iranian president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, last month raises still more questions about how far Tehran can be trusted about its nuclear programs, if at all.

Iran's concealments have been as vast as a secret underground facility at Natanz that was being readied for 50,000 centrifuges to enrich uranium when it was exposed in 2002. They have seemed as small as some undeclared milligrams of plutonium from a research laboratory. In a cat-and-mouse game reminiscent of the lead-up to the Iraq invasion in 2003, the Iranians have claimed to be cooperating while throwing up what often seem to be petty obstacles in front of inspectors. Iranians have bulldozed suspect sites. They have declined to allow investigators access to some military areas. They say they just can't find key documents that would show where and how they acquired key designs when they started their enrichment program in the 1980s. (Typically, under heavy international pressure this year, they finally produced one page from 1987 for inspectors to look at, but wouldn't turn it over.) READ MORE

In Iran's case today, unlike that of Iraq in 2003, there is no doubt that its nuclear program is large and growing. The Bushehr reactor will be fueled by Russia, and the spent fuel, from which plutonium could be extracted, will be returned there. But Iran now also plans to build a heavy-water re-actor at the town of Arak, and a facility to produce heavy water there is already underway. Nor has it given up the project at Natanz for enrichment facilities. It has just put it on hold, as it negotiates for European and American concessions.

The breakthrough revelation about Iran's nuclear-enrichment program came in August 2002 from the front organization for an Iranian exile group on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations, the Mujahedin-e Khalq (MEK). At a press conference in Washington, it exposed the existence of the Natanz uranium-enrichment facility. The group insisted that the tip came from its own sources, but inspectors suspect that the MEK was given the intelligence by an interested government. International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei is among those skeptical about the MEK. "I'm sure this [group] is not the original source of the information," he told NEWSWEEK. But never mind. "This is the first time we got specific information we could act on."

The investigations moved slowly but persistently after that, and in a clear direction. ElBaradei and his teams started a series of visits to Iran in February 2003. The inspectors took "environmental samples" to be analyzed by the IAEA's lab at Seibersdorf outside Vienna. They were looking for telltale traces of highly enriched uranium, plutonium or other isotopes. At first the Iranians didn't seem to realize just how powerful an investigative tool this had become: sort of the atomic equivalent of DNA testing at a crime scene. When inspectors asked to visit the Kalaye Electrical Co. in Tehran, for instance, the Iranians at first put them off, apparently thinking they could clean up the place. They let the IAEA (called "the Agency" for short) visit parts of the facilities in March 2003, but not take samples. Finally, in August 2003, the inspectors were allowed to return to Kalaye, just to find part of it extensively retiled, repainted and refloored. Only then were they allowed to take samples. Yet even after all that, the swipes showed traces of highly enriched uranium.

With this information in hand, but not yet public, Agency inspectors found themselves listening to top Iranian officials claiming their country designed and made all its own centrifuge equipment, and that it never had been tested with radioactive substances. "Simply lying in front of everyone," said a diplomat who watched the show, and asked that his name be withheld because of the sensitivity of his position.

In October 2003, with France, Germany and Britain holding out the incentive of improved trade and relations, Tehran said it would make a "full disclosure" of its nuclear-enrichment programs. But the more it revealed, the more stunningly apparent it was how much it had concealed. Efforts to develop a uranium-enrichment program went back to 1985, and began in earnest in 1987, when plans for centrifuges were bought from European middlemen with connections to the network of A. Q. Khan in Pakistan.

Iran claims its right to develop its nuclear program under treaty obligations, and —offers explanations related to peaceful projects. It needs to manage its own nuclear-fuel cycle, it says, because it cannot possibly depend on others, who might be vulnerable to U.S. pressure, to provide fuel to run civilian power plants. The Iranians' experience during their war with Iraq in the 1980s, and with increasingly restrictive U.S. sanctions in the 1990s, has taught them how vulnerable they can be. Plans to make Iran nuclear-energy independent are supported throughout society, and across the political spectrum. So officials like Asadollah Saboury, vice president for nuclear power plants at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, are frustrated by restraints, including the suspension of uranium enrichment, put on them by the international community. "We are wasting our time now," he says.

Last week the United States put more pressure on, announcing it would freeze the assets of any company doing business with the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, among other firms believed involved with nuclear proliferation. In the past, some U.S. officials have hinted at the possibility of military action. But the United States is already overextended in the complicated mire of the Middle East. Iran, with its diplomatic, intelligence, religious and terrorist contacts throughout the region, "has a lot of assets," says a senior international envoy who would not be quoted by name because he is in the middle of the sensitive negotiating process. "Look at what they can do in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Lebanon. They can turn the whole Middle East into a ball of fire, and they know that."

Potential military targets in Iran are hardened and dispersed, and many may be unknown. If attacked, Iran would almost certainly "break out" of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty that it claims to honor. And from that point on, Israeli officials believe, it would take Iran from six months to a year to produce the makings of an atom bomb.

The Europeans, led by France, Germany and Britain, and now supported by the United States, have tried to push for a diplomatic solution. But Iran is using its incipient nuclear power to bargain for a whole new, and enhanced, relationship with the West—even as it insists on keeping control over production of nuclear fuel that could give it the power to build the bomb. The big threat that can be leveled against Iran on the diplomatic front is to take it before the Security Council. But what the Council might actually do, especially if China opposes strong measures, is an open question. Economic sanctions, in any case, are likely to have little impact at a time when record oil prices are bringing the Iranian regime tens of billions of dollars in windfall revenues every quarter.

Who or what can hold the line to prevent Iran's becoming a nuclear-weapon state—or a "virtual" one, with all the necessary technology and materials but no proven bomb? That job will be left mainly to ElBaradei's IAEA. Often criticized and sometimes under—mined by the current U.S. administration, it is supposed to watch over compliance by the signatories to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. In effect, it's supposed to be a watchdog that watches its masters.

Because of limitations in the treaty itself, the Agency's ability to sleuth out serious violations by uncooperative states is virtually nil. It has had no jurisdiction over Israel, Pakistan or India, which are not signatories. It lost jurisdiction over North Korea when Pyongyang pulled out of the treaty. And while it was able to inspect and verify Iraq's declared nuclear activities in the 1980s, it completely missed Saddam Hussein's secret efforts to build a bomb at that time. "We were looking where the light was shining," says a European diplomat involved with the investigations, "but we didn't have the right to look in the shadows where they were building a parallel program."

Today the Agency is more inquisitive, but its mandate to investigate is still limited. The United States, prodded in part by concerns for Israel's security, keeps pushing for more aggressive action. And the Israelis—after developing their own nuclear weapons in secret—feel sure they know what the Iranians are up to. An official in Jerusalem directly concerned with the issue, who did not want to be named because he holds a sensitive position in government, says, "Israel is convinced that Iran has three separate sources for developing nukes: a civilian program, a military program that draws off the civilian one and another military program that's completely separate." But as the official explains, "The basic problem is that there's no smoking gun."

Iran insists that it's been cooperative. In 2003, it even turned over the names of several individuals and companies involved in covert sales of uranium-enrichment designs and components as part of the A. Q. Khan network. But when Libya decided to fold its nuclear program a few weeks later, the trove of details it supplied about the same network raised questions about just how much the Iranians might still be hiding. Why had they not mentioned plans for more-sophisticated centrifuges? If Libya was given blueprints for the bomb, why hadn't Iran gotten the same thing? As usual, the Iranians supplied explanations: they left those centrifuge plans on a shelf; they just never received the blueprints for the warhead. But the definitive answers—ones that can be believed—are still pending.

With Babak Dehghanpisheh at Bushehr, Dan Ephron in Tel Aviv and Michael Hirsh in Washington