Will This Man Get The Bomb?

[A.Rahman]

Will This Man Get The Bomb?
As the world weighs how to contain Iran and its fiery President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, TIME assesses the potential threat of a nuclear Iran


Apr. 3, 2006

Let's start with a simple proposition: no one wants Iran to have the Bomb. The country doesn't actually possess nukes yet, but much of the world suspects that it is hell-bent on building them under the cover of its nuclear-energy program--and the loose-cannon bluster of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad only reinforces that conviction. That's why diplomats and nuclear watchdogs in the U.S., Europe and other parts of the world have spent so much time trying to stop Iran's nuclear program in its tracks.

So far, however, the joint diplomatic offensive hasn't produced much in the way of results. The Bush Administration's National Security Strategy, issued this month, names Iran the most challenging "single country" to U.S. interests, leaving open the possibility of pre-emptive strikes against Iran's nuclear program. The U.S. and Europe have persuaded Russia and China to join them in reporting Iran's failure to cooperate with international demands to the U.N. Security Council, but both countries oppose punitive action such as economic sanctions. The U.S. spent last week pushing the five permanent members of the Security Council to sign on to a British-drafted statement urging Iran to open its books and lab doors to intrusive international inspections. But the plan met resistance from Russia, which wants to avoid Security Council involvement altogether. "It's a fundamental problem," says a senior U.S. official. U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov but made little headway. She plans to visit Berlin, Paris and Britain this week in an effort to hammer out a statement that can win unanimous backing in the Security Council. Meanwhile, Tehran has sped up research work on the uranium enrichment that lies at the heart of the dispute. Diplomats who have been briefed on Iran's program by international inspectors say the country has developed the ability to enrich uranium, the first step on the pathway to the Bomb. "They're progressing much faster than we thought they would," says a knowledgeable U.S. official. "They seem to know what they're doing."

There lies the deadlock. The U.S. and Iran have shown a faint willingness to lower the temperature, by agreeing to hold talks over Iranian interference in Iraq. But it's unclear whether Tehran hopes to use the talks over Iraq as a way to open the subject of nukes--or to distract the West's attention from it. Ali Larijani, Iran's top nuclear negotiator, told TIME that the regime may be open to compromise on the nuclear issue. "If there is a proposal that the rights of Iran can be secured to some extent for the present time and the other rights through negotiations, we are open to that." Yet the Bush Administration doesn't expect the Iraq discussions will lead to a breakthrough on the nuclear front. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley dismisses Iran's overture as "simply a device by the Iranians to divert pressure that they are feeling in New York."

The willingness of the U.S. and Europe to make a deal has always been compromised by Iran's unpredictability. At this point, there are few outside Tehran who consider its behavior anything but destabilizing, if not sinister. The West is operating on the assumption that the Iranians are trying to develop the technology and expertise required for building a bomb as rapidly as possible--and that given the regime's support for terrorism, its stated desire to destroy Israel and the prospect of a new arms race in the Middle East, the world can't afford to let them succeed. Yet there is still nothing close to unanimity on what that means in practice. History has already shown how difficult it is to curb the nuclear ambitions of a state that is determined to get the Bomb. Witness the examples of India, Pakistan and North Korea, all of which have openly defied international strictures against acquiring nuclear weapons. With so much bluster on all sides, here is a breakdown of the issues at the heart of Iran's showdown with the West--and what is at stake for the world in the outcome.

What Does Iran Want?

THAT DEPENDS ON WHOM YOU ASK. WHAT IS clear is that Iran has pursued a nuclear program for decades, ever since the U.S. first fed the Shah's appetite for reactors. Experts generally believe that Tehran has coveted the Bomb as well. Under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, signed by Iran in 1968, the country is legally entitled to build reactors and make enriched uranium fuel as a source of energy, as long as it abides by treaty rules and allows the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to monitor what it is doing. Iran has consistently denied that it intends to scale up fuel-grade enriched uranium into the purer weapons-grade component of a bomb. Iranians say they have the same rights as other countries to technology and are just looking out for their long-term energy future.
The trouble is, almost no one believes that's all Iran is after. Iran had concealed clandestine efforts to make enriched uranium from IAEA inspectors for two decades, until its secret lab at Natanz was exposed by an exile opposition group in 2002. Iran eventually owned up to the deception, telling the IAEA that since the West had denied Iran reactors for decades, it had to go underground to become self-sufficient in fuel. The revelations led the IAEA to put seals on Iran's test centrifuges while Britain, France and Germany tried to negotiate guarantees that Iran's nuclear program could never be shifted to weapons production--an effort that the U.S. backed after initial hesitation. But those talks collapsed in January when Iran refused to abandon its insistence that it retain the rights to proceed with enrichment. The Iranians broke the seals on their most sensitive equipment and vowed to press ahead. According to diplomats and U.S. officials, experts from the IAEA have reported that Iran is on the verge of assembling and operating a 164-centrifuge cascade, machinery that has peaceful applications but can also eventually be used to make fuel for a bomb.

To this day, Iranian officials assert that their uranium-enrichment activities are purely for energy or research purposes rather than military ones. "There's no place for nuclear weapons in our national security doctrine," Larijani told TIME. He points out that Supreme Leader Ayatullah Ali Khamenei has issued a fatwa forbidding the use of nuclear weapons. But such claims were undermined again in January when the IAEA reported an administrative link between a uranium-conversion program known as Green Salt and efforts to weaponize missiles that, for the first time, appeared to show an attempt to harness the nuclear program for military purposes.

 

[A.Rahman]

Is Iran Close To Getting the Bomb?

NOT NECESSARILY. UNDERPINNING THE current air of crisis is uncertainty about how soon Iran could manage bomb production. Western intelligence on the intentions and capabilities of nuclear aspirants is notoriously unreliable. Thus far, the IAEA says, Iran has the knowledge but not the capacity to make weapons. Some experts say that if Iran's enrichment facilities became fully operational, they could churn out enough material to construct two bombs a year. John Negroponte, Director of National Intelligence, said recently that "Iran, if it continues on its current path, will likely have the capability to produce a nuclear weapon within the next decade." What is already worrisome is that once Iran has the fissile material to make a bomb, it would have ready ways to threaten to use it. In 2004 Iran unveiled the Shahab-3 missile, with a range long enough to reach Israel and southern Europe. At the military parade in which it was first shown, one of the missiles carried the scrawl WIPE ISRAEL OFF THE MAP!
For years Iran alternately hid its activities and negotiated with the West over their scope. Over the past three years, both sides have focused on rebuilding confidence rather than provoking confrontation, but those overtures have lately all but vanished amid Iran's increasingly provocative behavior.

Why Is Iran Picking a Fight?

MANY IRANIANS POINT TO THE POLITICAL ambitions of Ahmadinejad. The hard-line President who just squeezed past more experienced candidates to take office has seized on the nuclear issue to cement his claim to power, according to some top government advisers. He can bypass the ruling clerics by appealing to the street, framing the right to nuclear energy as a populist cause and the centerpiece of his campaign to restore revolutionary ideals--and solidify his base in the military and revolutionary apparatus. That requires a return to the 1980s atmosphere of siege, rallying Iranians by whipping up animosity toward a common enemy, the West. To a generation forged in the heat of revolution and war, diplomacy is akin to slow surrender. "He's using the nuclear issue," says a Tehran political science professor, "to send a message to the Iranian people that he's tough, capable of standing up for Iran and fundamentally different from his soft predecessors."
Ahmadinejad's confrontational approach is reportedly causing consternation within Iran's clerical establishment, especially at the Supreme National Security Council, in which ultimately the decisions on the nuclear issue are made. In a recent TIME interview in Tehran, Larijani extended an olive branch of sorts to the Bush Administration, saying Iran could agree to direct talks with Washington on nuclear and other issues. "You have differences of views with us. Having differences of view does not mean animosity," he said. "We have no problems negotiating ... provided that Mr. Bush does not harangue us." The U.S. has ruled out direct nuclear talks.

Despite such conciliatory rhetoric from some Iranian officials, it is likely that many of the mullahs still dream of a robust nuclear program--if Iran had the capacity to make a bomb, it would get the respect it deserves. That conforms with Iran's self-image as a nation whose glorious past and potential greatness are undermined by implacable enemies such as the U.S. According to experts inside and outside the country, the regime sees bargaining over its nuclear rights as a way to recast the strategic balance in the region in Iran's favor, to gain stature and recognition of the Islamic Republic as a powerful geopolitical player. A history of invasions has left Iran wary of its neighbors, especially now that it is encircled by countries that possess atom bombs--Russia, Pakistan and India as well as Israel. Now that U.S. troops occupy two next-door states, Iran's leaders see the nuclear card as a way to buy security guarantees for the country and survival for the regime. It wants Washington to stop pushing "regime change" and accept the existence of an Iranian Islamic Republic. But even as Iranian officials deny that they plan to build a bomb, they point out that once North Korea tested a nuclear device, Western threats against Pyongyang ceased.

One reason Iran is acting up may be that its leaders see this as a moment when the game of brinkmanship is tilted in its favor. The country is in a nationalist mood; for the man in the street, more concerned with economic issues, the appeal is simple: If other countries can have nuclear power and atom bombs, why can't we? High oil prices and an overstretched U.S. military combine to lessen the West's capacity to react. So too, Iran's leaders think, does Iran's influence with the Shi'ite majority in Iraq and the newly elected Hamas leaders in the Palestinian territories. Getting loud and ugly about Israel earns Iran credibility and support in the Muslim world. And the regime may have decided that thumbing its nose at the nonproliferation treaty and at IAEA inspections is worth the international disapprobation, gambling that its extensive commercial ties with Russia and China will insulate it from punitive Security Council measures.

What Iran seems to be playing for, above all, is time. The longer it can string out the diplomatic process, the further it can proceed down the road toward completing the fuel cycle. It is possible that Iran may even agree to suspend uranium enrichment at some point in the near future, knowing that it has already created new facts on the ground. If the regime were then to change its mind again, says Mark Fitzpatrick, a longtime veteran of the U.S. State Department who is now at London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, "it would resume from a new starting point, with uranium conversion up and running and the enrichment process under way."

What Are the U.S.'s Options?

MISTRUST OF IRAN'S INTENTIONS HAS soured the Bush Administration and the Europeans on any deal that would allow Tehran to retain enrichment capacities. U.S. attitudes have hardened in response to Ahmadinejad, and Washington seems to have little interest in any grand bargain that would offer the theocratic regime security guarantees. Thus diplomacy for the moment is centered on the U.N. But even if Iran fails to accept demands that it submit to involuntary inspections, the challenge of reaching consensus on sanctions with real teeth could take months, if it can be achieved at all. The search is already on for selective embargoes that might stand a chance of passage. "It's not going to be oil for food," says a Bush Administration official. "I don't have a clue as to what they are, but fine minds are working on trying to sort out what could get support." Still, Washington's allies know that it's tough to design economic restrictions that will hurt the regime without hurting the Iranian people and realize how effectively Iran's leaders could use blunderbuss penalties to unify the nation behind them.

The bleak outlook for diplomacy fuels speculation that the U.S. and Israel might use military force to destroy Iran's nuclear facilities. While the military option is "never off the table," officials in both capitals say contingency plans for an air strike "are not under active consideration as an option now." Most experts say only that the U.S. has the air power and long-range fueling capability to carry out the multiple attacks that would be required to inflict serious damage on Iran's nuclear facilities--but they acknowledge that the U.S. military already has its hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan. Although some in the Middle East fear that Israel might attempt to repeat its 1981 solo raid on Iraq's incipient nuclear bomb, a senior Israeli intelligence officer says, "We won't act alone. Why should we? It's a global problem."

The costs of a military strike would well outweigh the benefits. That would be no simple raid but a major military operation taking several weeks, akin to the opening onslaught on Iraq in 2003. Not just the nuclear sites but Iran's air defenses and retaliatory machinery as well would have to be destroyed. The collateral damage in Iranian casualties from the attacks or radioactive fallout could be severe, as could the political backlash against moderates and opponents of the existing regime. And then, how much would Iran's nuclear ambitions be set back? "You can't bomb know-how," says IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei. A U.S. analyst guesses "at best, two to four years." And, he adds, "while we went to war, Iran would not sit idle. It would strike back at a time and place of its own choosing"--including sponsoring attacks on U.S. and British troops in Iraq and perhaps even terrorist strikes inside the U.S. and Europe.

Is there a way out? The most encouraging fact about the standoff is that neither side has much to gain from precipitating a military confrontation. At the same time, it is unlikely that the major differences over Iran's nuclear intentions can be resolved in a way that is wholly satisfying to both Iran and the West. The most realistic hope for Washington and its allies may lie in using diplomatic measures to delay Tehran's nuclear development long enough to allow for the emergence of a more moderate Iranian leadership that could be persuaded to abandon its nuclear dreams. But if those efforts fail, this U.S. President, or the next one, may confront a sobering choice: live with the reality of a nuclear Iran, or take the risk of attacking it. All of which leads to another, simple proposition: get ready for the world to become a more dangerous place.


—With reporting by Scott MacLeod, Elaine Shannon/Washington, Helen Gibson/London, Azadeh Moaveni/Tehran, Aaron J. Klein, Andrew Purvis/Berlin, Reported by Matthew Cooper, Simon Robinson/ Jerusalem:

Taken from:Time Magzine, without permission.