Monthly Archives: September 2006

Rumsfeld Reports on IAEA

A few weeks back, Rumsfeld “gave an interview”:http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/s_466856.html where he discussed proliferation and international institutions.

He said:

Q: What you said just a minute ago about, you know, this isn’t something that one country can solve, it sounded awfully close to kind of stepping back from what we’ve been saying all along, which is everything’s on the table.

RUMSFELD: Oh, I’m not stepping back from anything like that or anything the president said. No, I was just characterizing proliferation –as something that no one nation can deal with. I mean, it just takes a lot of countries to prevent the proliferation of these dangerous technologies to other people.

And it takes 21st century rules. I mean, we were working to stop a bunch of missiles going into a Middle Eastern country. And if you’ll recall, the ship was stopped, they found the missiles, and they ended up having to let the ship go, and the missiles go because there was no law or rule that would permit them from being — to be stopped. And we had a maritime interdiction system that was available at that time to do that.

But the world has not adjusted to the 21st century, and we’re still functioning with institutions that were fashioned at the juncture of the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War, that have stood us in good stead a long time. But this new century is going to require institutions to be either significantly adjusted or new ones to be fashioned, new arrangements to be fashioned. And we think of cyber warfare, the damage that could be done to countries. The rules — the guidelines and the procedures and the legitimacy of certain types of behavior in that area haven’t been thought through well.

Right. I can’t think of anything that the IAEA has accomplished since the end of the Cold War except verifying that Iraq had no nuclear weapons program, sussing out the details of Iran’s nuclear program, helping to investigate the Khan network, and helping to uncover North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

Obviously, we need to tweak existing export controls and do something to deal with the spread of enrichment and reprocessing facilities.

RE: the So San incident, I would add the following, which I wrote about “here”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2003_01-02/yemen_janfeb03.asp

bq. Fleischer said that the United States had the authority to stop the ship because it was unflagged but that Washington decided to release the ship because it lacked â€œclear authority to seize the shipment.” Fleischer also suggested that Yemenâ€™s status as an ally in anti-terrorism efforts was an important factor in the decision, saying that Yemen â€œdoes not provide a threat to the United States.”

I’ll go back to expressing my inner anguish through the majesty of song…

SSCI Iraq reports

UNMOVIC On Hussein’s WMD Motives

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UNMOVIC released “a report”:http://www.un.org/Depts/unmovic/new/documents/compendium_summary/s-2006-420-English.pdf a while back describing the commission’s lessons-learned from its work in Iraq.

The whole thing is pretty interesting…I would just highlight its explanation for Iraq’s slack cooperation with the inspectors:

It would appear that the following factors contributed to Iraqâ€™s decision not to reveal such information to the United Nations:

(a) Preservation of valuable resources by minimizing the extent of
destruction, removal and rendering harmless of items, materials and facilities involved in proscribed programmes (particularly while it remained under comprehensive United Nations sanctions);

(b) Preservation of the ability to conduct clandestine work on some
proscribed missile projects and, possibly, intent to resume other proscribed programmes after the departure of the United Nations inspectors from Iraq;

(c) National security concerns led Iraq to prevent inspection teams from entering sensitive areas of governmental infrastructure, such as institutions of political leadership, military command and control facilities, special security apparatus and intelligence;

(d) Protection of the identity of senior members of the former regime who were involved in the decision-making process, supervision, control and implementation of proscribed weapons programmes;

(e) Safeguarding information relating to rationale and military doctrines for the deployment of proscribed weapons, including possible targets and chain of command, as well as political sensitivity concerning any evidence of the past use of chemical weapons by Iraq;

(f) Protection of information on the procurement network and foreign contacts in support of proscribed weapons programmes in order to shield providers of technology, items and materials, and also on what was specifically acquired by Iraq for these programmes;

(g) Concerns that other States could attempt to collect intelligence
information on Iraq within the framework of United Nations inspections.

58. It is not clear which of these factors dominated Iraqâ€™s concealment policies. However, all of these, separately or in combination, predetermined the extent of Iraqâ€™s declarations prior to 1995.

In other news, I am amazed to learn that the SSCI “lacks sweet Iraq reporting skills”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/06/AR2006090601920.html.

Iran: Department of Chain-Jerking

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From the interview Jeffrey quotes in “his recent post,”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1175/get-enriched-or-die-tryin-2,there are a couple of items worth highlighting.

1. Saidi mentions that Iran might construct HW-moderated _power_ reactors – a claim I don’t recall having seen before.

He says:

Therefore, unlike in research light water reactors, which need over 20 per cent enriched fuel, we basically do not require enriched fuel for heavy water reactors. In other words we could use uranium oxide as fuel for these reactors – *be they power or research reactors.*

Pointing to the technical know-how for such reactors, the member of Iranian negotiating team said: Such reactors could be indigenous, which would be more cost-effective and justified. On the other hand, *the research heavy water reactor could pave the way for us to build power heavy water reactors* in the future.

Saidi also offered what I think is an additional explanation for why it’s building its HW research reactor – the one it has now is too old.

Iran has said the HWRR is going to be used for producing medical isotopes. The US has countered that Iran’s not even using its Tehran research reactor to full capacity. (Amb. Greg Schulte reiterated this claim “29 August.”:http://www.usun-vienna.rpo.at/

But Saidi countered with this:

Noting the old age of Tehran’s research reactor, he said: Due to its old age, Tehran’s five-megawatt research reactor should, in principle, be set aside in the next five years.

Saidi also observed that HWRs are superior to LWRs because the former don’t need enriched uranium. That particular feature is, of course, one reason why we don’t want Iran to have HWRs.

2. Saidi must have thought he was on a roll, because he also indicated that Iran plans to pursue more-advanced centrifuges:

bq. Noting that Iran does not restrict itself to first, second or third generation machinery, he said: We will *conduct research in all kinds of centrifuge machinery* that could offer better and higher quality and which are more compatible with our indigenous expertise.

Nice.

*HWPP Supplementary*

You likely saw “Jeffrey’s”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/1172/heavy-water-plant-not-nuclear-reator and “Cheryl’s”:http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2006/08/a_heavy_water_p.html very good takes on Iran’s heavy water -reactor- production plant.

“MNA quoted”:http://www.mehrnews.com/en/NewsDetail.aspx?NewsID=371762 AEOI head Gholamreza Aghazadeh 26 August giving some details about the HWPP:

bq. â€œThe production capacity of this plant is currently 16 tons of deuterium with 99.8 percent purity,” explained the AEOI director. â€œThe full capacity of this power plant is 80 tons of deuterium water per year.”