I’ve updated the post on “misconceptions about Iran’s nuclear program”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2064/iran-misconceptions-plus-one. Go see.
Iran Misconceptions, Updated
Leave a reply
Monthly Archives: July 2009
Fireworks Rundown
So you were wondering what it was the North Koreans fired off on July 4 this year. Yeah, me too. Here’s what the South Korean press has been reporting.
According to “Joongang Ilbo”:http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2907043, it was all in a day’s work:
bq. South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed Saturday that North Korea launched two missiles between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m., with a third following at 10:45 a.m. and a fourth at noon. The North then launched one each at 2:50 p.m., 4:10 p.m. and 5:40 p.m.
That makes seven.
Citing _Chosun Ilbo,_ the Associated Press “breaks out the types”:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090706/ap_on_re_as/as_nkorea_missile_70 as follows:
bq.. On Monday, South Korea’s mass-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported the launches were believed to have included three Scud-ER missiles with a range of up to 620 miles (1,000 kilometers).
The paper said the Scud-ER has a longer range and better accuracy compared with previous Scud series so is “particularly a threat to Japan.”
[snip]
The Chosun Ilbo, citing a government source it did not name, said the other four missiles were two Scud-C missiles with a range of 310 miles (500 kilometers) and two medium-range Rodong missiles that can travel up to 810 miles (1,300 kilometers).
Five of the seven missiles flew about 260 miles (420 kilometers) from an eastern coastal launch site [Kittaeryong] and landed in one area, meaning their accuracy has improved, the paper said.
p. Now, for comparison, let’s roll back the clock to July 5, 2006. According to the July 2006 issue of _IISS Strategic Comments_, on that occasion, they launched the following items (as “assessed” by someone) from the Kittaeryong base (with one exception):
- 0333: Scud-D
- 0404: No-dong
- 0501: Taepo-dong 2 (from Musudan-ri)
- 0712: Scud-C
- 0731: No-dong
- 0732: Scud-ER / No-dong
- 1720: No-dong
(What’s a Scud-D, you ask, if it’s not a Scud-ER or a Nodong? I’m not sure. The naming conventions are very messy.)
So once again, seven launches, and setting aside the TD-2, the types were similar. But in 2009, the DPRK missile crews were allowed to sleep in for awhile. No pre-dawn launches.
One final note. The “Korea Times”:http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2009/07/113_47917.html has an estimate of how many theater missiles North Korea has:
bq. The North is believed to have about 1,000 ballistic missiles alone — including nearly 700 Scud missiles of various types and 320 Rodong missiles.
It sounds like the DPRK has plenty of provocations in its quiver.
Iran Misconceptions — Plus One
David Albright and Jackie Shire of ISIS fame have published a paper on “seven misconceptions about Iran’s nuclear program”:http://www.isisnucleariran.org/static/297/. It’s worth a read.
While we’re on the topic — just for the heck of it — I’d like to add an eighth misconception. Notwithstanding legitimate concerns about “breakout”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1890/more-breakoutology, it is mistaken to assume that there is a linear relationship between how many centrifuges are spinning at Natanz and when Iran “gets the Bomb.” It’s a bit more complicated than that. Breaking out of the NPT — whether by treaty action or by sneaking out — would be an extremely risky proposition, no matter how many centrifuges Iran builds.
Under the logic of a worst-case scenario, where sheer enrichment capability leads to swift weaponization, heedless of consequences, breakout would have happened already.
That’s why “attention-getting phrases”:http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124701167148308659.html#mod=todays_us_page_one like “the window is closing” or “the clock is ticking” can be a little misleading. Breakout is a high-stakes leadership decision, not a technological threshold.
*Update*. Herb Keinon in the _Jerusalem Post_ — or rather, his anonymous sources — “make exactly this point”:http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1246443770383&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull:
bq.. “I would be careful about all the declarations on this matter,” said one senior government official who deals with the issue, adding that a decision by Teheran to go full throttle toward the building of a bomb was dependent on numerous different decisions the government would have to make, and which it had simply not yet made.
In the meantime, the official said, the Iranians have decided to continue to enrich as much low grade uranium as they can, and to also continue development in the field of ballistic missiles at a level that would not make their situation with the international community much worse than it already is.
p. Exactly right!
*Update 2*. I should also mention “this recently published interview”:http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1099064.html in _Ha’aretz_ with Uzi Arad, a senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister (and very possibly the anonymous person quoted above). The passage starts with a question by the interviewer, Ari Shavit:
bq.. [Shavit] Your main front as national security adviser will be the danger of a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Middle East. But as far as we know, Iran has already crossed the point of nuclear no-return and has enough fissionable material to assemble a first nuclear bomb.
[Arad] The point of nuclear no-return was defined as the point at which Iran has the ability to complete the cycle of nuclear fuel production on its own; the point at which it has all the elements to produce fissionable material without depending on outsiders. Iran is now there. I don’t know if it has mastered all the technologies, but it is more or less there. However, *the term “no-return” is misleading. Even if Iran has fissionable material for one bomb, it is still at a low grade of enrichment. And if it wants to conduct a test, it will not have even one bomb. It follows that Iran is not yet nuclear and not yet operational. Serious obstacles still lie in the way. The international community still has enough time to make it stop of its own volition.*
Still, looking back, we see a dramatic failure here. A red line was defined and Iran crossed it.
p. Emphasis added. I tried to make “a similar point”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1871/iran-when-should-we-panic back in February:
bq. First, 1 SQ would be one heck of a thing to exit the NPT over. If the Iranians tested their first and only nuclear device to demonstrate that they had it, they would promptly stop having it. So 2 SQ would be the realistic threshold of concern, and even that seems a bit low. The North Korean precedent is instructive: they didn’t proclaim themselves to be nuclear-armed, or prove that point, until they had enough plutonium on hand for maybe half a dozen devices.
Incidentally, the passage from the interview shown above contains the first explicit definition I’ve yet seen of “point of no return,” a phrase much favored by Israeli talking heads when discussing the Iranian nuclear program.
Joint Statement on Missile Defense Issues
Since “Jeff”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2379/follow-on-to-start and “Pavel”:http://russianforces.org/blog/2009/07/good_progress_at_the_moscow_su.shtml already have done such a nice job explicating the “Joint Understanding for the START Follow-On Treaty,” I’d thought I’d chime in with a couple of thoughts about its poor cousin, the “Joint Statement by Dmitry A. Medvedev, President of the Russian Federation, and Barack Obama, President of the United States of America, on Missile Defense Issues.”
The first thing to notice about the “Joint Statement”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Joint-Statement-by-Dmitry-A-Medvedev-President-of-the-Russian-Federation-and-Barack-Obama-President-of-the-United-States-of-America-on-Missile-Defense-Issues/ is that it’s not part of the Joint Understanding. In fact, it doesn’t represent any kind of real understanding, in the sense of an arrangement, agreement, pact, or even a common perspective. As President Obama explained in an “interview with Novaya Gazeta”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transcript-of-President-Obamas-Interview-with-Novaya-Gazeta/, defenses aren’t part of the workplan:
bq. In our meeting in London on April 1st, President Medvedev and I issued a joint statement on instructions for our negotiators for this new treaty. These instructions very explicitly did not mention missile defense as a topic of discussion for these negotiations.
p. Indeed, the “April 1 text”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Joint-Statement-by-Dmitriy-A-Medvedev-and-Barack-Obama/ says that the “subject of the new agreement will be the reduction and limitation of strategic offensive arms.” There’s no mention of defenses. President Medvedev seems to have preferred otherwise, but had to settle, both in April and now again in July. As Pavel has “pointed out”:http://russianforces.org/blog/2009/07/will_missile_defense_derail_st.shtml, there’s no good reason to let disputes over the “third site” undermine the renewal of START.
The second thing to notice about the Joint Statement is that it doesn’t deal with missile defense issues. After the title, it doesn’t mention them at all. Here’s how the substantive paragraph starts:
bq. We have instructed our experts to work together to analyze the ballistic missile challenges of the 21st century and to prepare appropriate recommendations, giving priority to the use of political and diplomatic methods.
p. In the “press conference Q&A”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Press-Conference-by-President-Obama-and-President-Medvedev-of-Russia/, Obama referred to this as “a joint threat assessment of the ballistic missile challenges of the 21st century, including those posed by Iran and North Korea.” When that assessment comes due — assuming there’s a public version — it will be interesting to compare it with the “EWI Iran missile threat report”:http://www.ewi.info/groundbreaking-us-russia-joint-threat-assessment-iran-0.
Then there’s this:
bq. At the same time they plan to conduct a joint review of the entire spectrum of means at our disposal that allow us to cooperate on monitoring the development of missile programs around the world. Our experts are intensifying dialogue on establishing the Joint Data Exchange Center, which is to become the basis for a multilateral missile-launch notification regime.
p. Some of you may recall JDEC, an undertaking of the Clinton-Yeltsin era that never quite materialized. (“Fact sheet”:http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/New/Europe-0005/factsheets/fs–joint-warning-center.html and “Memorandum”:http://clinton5.nara.gov/WH/New/Europe-0005/factsheets/memo–joint-warning-center.html.) Intended to “strengthen strategic stability by further reducing the danger that ballistic missiles might be launched on the basis of false warning of attack,” it has languished. Reviving JDEC is a welcome development, and the multilateralization idea is interesting, but neither has much to do with missile defense. [Correction: Indirectly but significantly, “JDEC does relate to missile defense”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1989/russia-north-korea-worse-than-you-thought.]
The Joint Statement is not the end of the story. Obama also mentioned to “Novaya Gazeta”:http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Transcript-of-President-Obamas-Interview-with-Novaya-Gazeta/ that the U.S. side will be conducting a review of its missile defense programs, and would like Russia to participate in whatever defenses are built in Europe. While this idea originated with Russian President Vladimir Putin, it remains to be seen whether it will satisfy the Russian side. The details will count.
“X-posted to ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2380/joint-statement-on-missile-defense-issues. See the “comments at ACW”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2380/joint-statement-on-missile-defense-issues#comment.
Spot the Difference
This item is brought to you by the Dept. of Non-Correction Corrections.
1) David Sanger and Nazila Fathi, “Iran Test-Fires Missile With 1,200-Mile Range “:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/21/world/middleeast/21iran.html, _New York Times,_ May 21, 2009:
bq.. Though she avoided details, Mrs. Clinton was giving voice to a growing concern among administration officials, who have now had time to review the intelligence, that Iran seems to have made significant progress in at least two of the three technologies necessary to field an effective nuclear weapon.
The first is enriching uranium to weapons grade, now under way at the large nuclear complex at Natanz.
p. 2) David Sanger, “Despite Crisis, Policy on Iran Is Engagement”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/world/middleeast/06policy.html, _New York Times,_ July 6, 2009:
bq. Israeli officials have been deeply uncomfortable with Mr. Obama’s engagement offer, arguing that Iran is still adding centrifuges to its plant at Natanz, where it can enrich uranium. The last report of the International Atomic Energy Agency indicated roughly 7,000 centrifuges are now enriching uranium into fuel, but without further enrichment it is suitable only for nuclear power.
Way back in ’04, Daniel Okrent, who was at the time public editor of the _New York Times,_ did readers the signal service of defining and explaining “the rowback”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/03/14/weekinreview/the-public-editor-setting-the-record-straight-but-who-can-find-the-record.html. What he wrote then applies just as well today:
bq. The editors who decided to handle the clarification this way may not know the term, but this was a classic example of the rowback. The one definition I could find for this ancient technique, from journalism educator Melvin Mencher, describes a rowback as “a story that attempts to correct a previous story without indicating that the prior story had been in error or without taking responsibility for the error.” A less charitable definition might read, “a way that a newspaper can cover its butt without admitting it was ever exposed.”
For previous commentary on the May 21 story, see “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2018/art-of-the-blown-headline and “here”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2027/the-disappointing-new-york-times.
About That Enrichment Program
“!/images/104.jpg!”:http://www.kedo.org/il_Reactor1.asp
_[This post has been updated to add the mention of the LWR in the April 14 statement, which I somehow overlooked.]_
In the last two months, the North Korean Foreign Ministry has had some things to say about light-water reactors and uranium enrichment.
On “April 14”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200904/news14/20090414-23ee.html, the Foreign Ministry stated that “there is no need any more to have the six-party talks,” and added in that connection that the DPRK
bq. will positively examine the construction of its light water reactor power plant in order to round off the structure of the Juche-based nuclear power industry.
p. On “April 29”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200904/news29/20090429-14ee.html, it was further announced that, in response to the Security Council Presidential Statement of April 13,
bq. the DPRK will make a decision to build a light water reactor power plant and start the technological development for ensuring self-production of nuclear fuel as its first process without delay.
On “June 13”:http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2009/200906/news13/20090613-10ee.html, in response to UNSCR 1874, it was further announced that
bq.. The process of uranium enrichment will be commenced.
Pursuant to the decision to build its own light-water reactor, enough success has been made in developing uranium enrichment technology to provide nuclear fuel to allow the experimental procedure.
p=. *Well, That Was Quick*
Actually, what’s surprising is that it took so long to hear these declarations. Readers of this blog are probably already familiar with the history of “North Korea’s uranium enrichment-related acquisition activities”:http://thebulletin.org/web-edition/features/assessing-north-koreas-uranium-enrichment-capabilities and the dispute surrounding them, which served as the proximate cause of the “end of the Agreed Framework”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/file_download/23. In the face of American accusations that North Korea had started a HEU-based program for weapons-making, it would have been quite easy for the North Koreans to have said, “Sure, we’re interested in uranium enrichment. We want to make our own fuel for the two LWRs you’ve “agreed to build us”:http://www.kedo.org/pdfs/SupplyAgreement.pdf. Don’t get so excited.”
This is, after all, essentially what the Iranians have done when confronted with the evidence of their own enrichment activities.
Not that anyone would have believed the North Koreans then, or believes them now. Indeed, much of the news media simply read past the LWR cover story and reported (erroneously) that North Korea had openly threatened to “start enriching uranium to make more nuclear weapons”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2038/mis-reporting-north-korea. This is an understandable mistake, as the LWR and enrichment statements were presented as gestures of defiance, offered alongside threats of an unambiguously military nuclear character.
p=. *R-E-S-P-E-C-T*
So now that the plutonium cat is out of the bag, and North Korea demands recognition as a nuclear power, why suddenly introduce the LWR fuel pretense, at long last? Why not say instead, “We’re going to make HEU for hydrogen bomb secondaries”?
As “Peter Hayes and colleagues”:http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0578LWR.html view it, and as “Jeff Goldstein argues”:http://thebulletin.metapress.com/content/2685mu7x212h5m0q/?p=659ea961a504440cb4bc4c11baa65f4f&pi=6 in the latest issue of the _Bulletin,_ the LWR supply demand — which dates back to the Agreed Framework — is a pride thing and an assurance of respect. If the U.S. and its allies insist that North Korea give up its existing plutonium production reactor, the reasoning goes, they must compensate it with a top-of-the-line power reactor — even if it can’t plausibly make use of it thanks to the decrepitude of the DPRK power grid. During the wrangling over the “Joint Declaration” of September 2005, the North Koreans “simply insisted on LWRs before disarmament”:http://www.nautilus.org/fora/security/0578LWR.html:
bq. The U.S. should not even dream of the issue of the DPRK’s dismantlement of its nuclear deterrent before providing LWRs, a physical guarantee for confidence-building.
So it follows that the upsurge in LWR rhetoric is an assertion of self-reliance. “We’re done waiting for you. We’ll build it for ourselves!”
LWR-speak is also a hint that North Korea probably has a long way to go before it can make HEU in respectable quantities, and perhaps no foreseeable prospects at all. They’re not over-promising. In fact, they’re not promising anything externally verifiable at all, insofar as they’re almost certainly never going to be able to complete a LWR by themselves. No LWR = no obvious lack of LWR fuel.
There are other possible explanations for LWR-speak. I’ll return to this topic again later.
Tolkien’s Dwarves With a Slide Projector
Let’s continue with our “examination of North Korean engineering”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2060/nk-engineering-rough-and-ready.
The pictures you see below strongly suggest that North Korean engineers are not primitives by any means. Moreover, when they’ve done something enough, they seem to get pretty good at it. “These and a few other shots”:http://www.irrawaddy.org/article.php?art_id=16186 recently appeared at the website of a Burmese dissident journal, and purport to show North Korean experts training Burmese military engineers and overseeing the construction of tunnel complexes around Naypyidaw, the new capital of Myanmar (Burma). To my eyes, at least, they convey a high level of comfort with modern technologies, and perhaps even a can-do spirit:
!/images/106.jpg!
_”A North Korean expert gives a power point presentation at the Naypyidaw meeting.”_
!/images/108.jpg!
_”Heavy construction equipment is brought in to clear a mountainside site.”_
!/images/107.jpg!
_”Surfaced roads are laid to the site.”_
(That looks like an American-made Caterpillar brand roller, doesn’t it?)
What we see here are merely the early stages. To see further progress at this or a similar site, have a look at this other Burmese dissent website, where still photos of tunneling activity have been “made into a video”:http://english.dvb.no/nkorea-news.php. From the looks of things, any paranoid regime or James Bond villain in need of a subterranean lair could do worse than to make a phone call to Pyongyang.
NK Engineering: Rough and Ready
!/images/105.jpg!
As the wonk world “learned last week”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2362/yuras-brew, the DPRK is the proud owner of the Ushers Brewery, formerly of Trowbridge, Wiltshire, England.
Mr. Peter Ward, the previous owner of said brewery, “recalled for the BBC”:http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/8115677.stm how the North Koreans went about taking receipt of their new purchase:
bq.. “They worked extremely hard and long hours. The didn’t go out and spent most of their time in their lightweight boiler suits,” Mr Ward remembers.
“Engineering-wise, you would be turning back the clock 50 years. From a mechanical point of view they were happy to take a blow torch to it rather than dismantle a piece of plant.
“They were going to rip it up without drawings, but we helped them taking it down and marked it all up for shipping to North Korea.”
p. The middleman who arranged the deal also shed some light on how long it took them to master this new technology:
bq.. Within 18 months of shipping the plant home, the North Koreans had the brewery up and running.
Uwe Oehms, the German agent who was asked by the North Koreans to find a brewery, remembers the deal as “one of the most interesting” of his life.
Though the North Koreans had limited experience of modern technology, he bought them a series of books on the latest brewing techniques.
“Despite their lack of English I was surprised that they were learning how to do this quite well,” he recalls. “The quality of the beer was quite good in the beginning but when they couldn’t buy good foreign ingredients the quality decreased.
p. So judging by this vignette, at least, North Korean engineers — and “zymurgists”:http://www.beertown.org/homebrewing/zymurgy_magazine/index.html — lack state-of-the-art training (and that’s putting it nicely), but they’re hard workers and quick studies. With some basically solid equipment and minimal instruction, they can produce surprisingly good results. But they’re quite limited in resources and must rely on whatever foreign components and materials they can get their hands on, with potential downsides for quality control.
These observations may shed some added light, albeit obliquely, on “questions Geoff Forden has recently raised about missile production”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2370/missile-development-programs-an-alternative-view. I’ll have more to say about this subject before too long.
Update: This was really two posts, so I’ve “broken out the rest separately”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2061/tolkiens-dwarves-with-a-slide-projector.
Yukia Amano
There he is, your “next IAEA DG”:http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/News/2009/dgselected.html: Yukia Amano, Japan’s ambassador to the IAEA. Unfortunately, it seems he was elected “without the benefit”:http://www.world-nuclear-news.org/NP_Amano_in_the_frame_for_IAEA_leadership_0207093.html of a strong consensus.
Good luck, Amb. Amano.
Nuclear Politics
From “Roger Cohen”:http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/02/opinion/02iht-edcohen.html?pagewanted=print in the IHT:
bq.. [Mohsen Mahmoudi, a 34-year-old conservative cleric] told me that when he went to study in Qom, he had no idea what Iran’s nuclear program was. But there were regular classes on it. Scientists were brought in to enlighten the clerics. They were sensitized. The aim was that “We go back to towns and villages and talk in the mosques about the people’s nuclear rights.”
“It’s because Ahmadinjad stood for this that he became a hero to many,” Mahmoudi said. “He equated it with the “nationalization of our oil industry”:http://www.iranchamber.com/history/oil_nationalization/oil_nationalization.php and made it the core symbol of our independence and pride.”
p. He did a pretty good job of it, too. In 2002, vanishingly few Iranians would have been aware of the uranium enrichment program — a closely held secret, despite the suspicions of Western officials. By 2007 or so, it was the beating heart of the nation. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made it the “centerpiece of his re-election campaign”:http://www.armscontrolwonk.com/2255/fmp-comes-alive. So it’s only the more remarkable that “it didn’t work”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2050/an-irrelevant-point-about-irans-election.
“Musical bonus”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6al6Z6hF48E.