I recently “blogged”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2253/khameni-on-nuclear-fatwa-2010-edition about a Fars News “article”:http://english.farsnews.com/printable.php?nn=9106060212 regarding the Iranian SL’s 2010 fatwa on nuclear weapons.

According to that article, Khamenei stated that

bq. Iran is not after an atomic bomb, and it is even opposed to possession of chemical weapons. Even when Iraq used chemical weapons against Iran, *we did not try to manufacture chemical weapons.* Such things are not in line with the principles of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Of course, many people have long thought that Iran at least _had_ a CW program. According to the “2005 DOS compliance report,”:http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/51977.htm

bq. In May 1998 [I think it was actually November], during the Conference of the States Parties, *Tehran, for the first time, acknowledged the existence of a past chemical weapons program.* Iran admitted developing a chemical warfare program during the latter stages of the Iran-Iraq war, as a deterrent against Iraq’s use of chemical agents.

I haven’t been able to find a copy of that 1998 acknowledgement, but I can’t say I’ve looked wicked hard either. FWIW, the “most recent 721 report”:http://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Reports%20and%20Pubs/2011_report_to_congress_wmd.pdf indicates that Iran has CW capabilities and the most recent “compliance report”:http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/197222.htm states that

bq. Based on available information, the United States cannot certify whether Iran has met its CWPF declaration obligations, destroyed its specialized CW equipment, transferred CW or retained an undeclared CW stockpile.

Now, an Iranian CW program wouldn’t invalidate a fatwa against _nuclear_ weapons, of course. But I’m more interested in why Iran would become a state-party to the CWC _at all_, if it really wanted to deter Iraq. After all, Iran could’ve done what Syria did and just refused to sign the thing. Plus, Iran had first-hand experience regarding the utility of CWs.

Well, I have some thoughts on this, but they can wait. More interesting, to me at least, is an “article”:http://www.zarif.net/Articles/wmd.pdf published in the Winter 1999-2000 edition of the _Iranian Journal of International Affairs_. Written by Mohammad Javad Zarif and Mohammad Reza Aborzi (spelling in original), the piece is titled “Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iran’s Security Paradigm:the Case of Chemical Weapons.” Both authors were officials in Iran’s foreign ministry until a few years ago…the former was Iran’s Ambassador to the UN in NYC and the latter was Iran’s Ambassador to the UN in Geneva. I’m not sure what either are doing now.

The article, the discovery of which motivated me to write this post in the first place, is about Iran’s experience with the CWC. However, it also provides some details regarding Iran’s CW program. According to the authors, Iran decided to develop a “limited deterring capability” after Iraq attacked the country with CWs and the international community failed to respond. However, “Iranian religious leadership found it very difficult to condone the use of these weapons, even as reprisal.” This reluctance, coupled with the inferiority of Iran’s CW program to its Iraqi counterpart, as well as the high cost of developing the weapons, motivated Tehran to end the program.

The article doesn’t give dates for these decisions, but, according to the “2005 compliance report,”:http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/51977.htm “Tehran claimed [in 1998] that after the 1988 cease-fire, it ‘terminated’ its CW program.”

Readers might also find interesting the authors’ description of Iran’s security environment at the end of the 1990s, as well as the country’s domestic decision-making process regarding matters of national security.

*Update:*

Via Twitter, “ACRS”:https://twitter.com/ACRSME pointed out “this 2003 statement”:http://www.iranwatch.org/international/OPCW/opcw-iran-usreply-042803.pdf to the OPCW in which Iran admitted to having developed CWs.

So you know about the “November 2011 IAEA DG report”:http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2011/gov2011-65.pdf which contains the most extensive account to date of the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program. However, a “May 2008 IAEA DG report”:http://www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2008/gov2008-15.pdf described some PMD-related questions which are not addressed in the November report.

These include:

bq.. information about a high level meeting in 1984 on reviving Iran’s pre-revolution nuclear programme

the scope of a visit by AEOI officials to a nuclear installation in Pakistan in 1987

information on 1993 meetings between Iranian officials and members of the Khan network

information about work done in 2000 which apparently related to reprocessing.

p. I don’t know why these issues weren’t included in the November report, but there it is.

Every now and again, it’s worth taking the time to follow a link.

“IR Diplomacy”:http://www.irdiplomacy.ir/en has a page listing the headlines of Tehran’s morning newspapers. I happened to check it today and found this headline from _Jomhouriye Eslami_:

bq. -Director of US Arms Control Association: Iran has no plan to produce atomic bomb

More housekeeping. “Here it is.”:http://www.state.gov/t/avc/rls/rpt/c54051.htm

You’ve likely seen Laura Rozen and Barbara Slavin’s “July interview”:http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2012/al-monitor/iranian-ambassador-mohammad-khaz.html with Iranian Ambassador Mohammad Khazaee, but I’ve been meaning to highlight a comment he made about Iran’s decision-making process with respect to negotiations concerning its nuclear program:

bq. Decisions on the nuclear issue are made by [Iran’s Supreme] Council of National Security, [chief nuclear negotiator Saeed] Jalili and the president [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

This is interesting, especially when paired with Hassan Rowhani’s “account”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2221/rowhani-interview-2012-edition of the AEOI’s role.

This isn’t an issue I’ve really worked on, but I found “this June 1995 report”:http://pogoarchives.org/m/nss/doe-cong-rpt-heu-naval-fuel-19950600.pdf a little while ago on POGO’s site and thought it might be of interest. Prepared by the Director of Naval Nuclear Propulsion and titled _Report on Use of Low Enriched Uranium in Naval Nuclear Propulsion_, the report seems to have been cited in a few places (I first found a reference in “this”:http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/81mahip.pdf Spring 2001 NPR piece), but it’s not the easiest thing to track down via Google.

Anyway, the report states that “Naval [reactor] cores use fuel enriched to a minimum of 93%” U-235. That’s the highest official USFG figure I ran across during a quick search; “IPFM”:http://fissilematerials.org/library/gfmr10.pdf describes fuel containing 97.4% U-235 as “the standard for U.S. submarine fuel.”

As I “said,”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2246/iaea-gov-2012-48 I need to put up some housekeeping posts. You have likely seen “this”:http://www.iiss.org/publications/strategic-comments/past-issues/volume-18-2012/july/iran-sanctions-halt-long-range-ballistic-missile-development/ from IISS’s Michael Elleman. Entitled “Iran Sanctions Halt Long-Range Ballistic-Missile Development,” the piece concludes that

bq. …if future applications of sanctions prevent Iran from establishing a reliable source of propellant ingredients regulated by the Missile Technology Control Regime, the Islamic Republic will not be able to create missiles capable of threatening western Europe, much less the United States, before the end of this decade.

However, you may not have seen Elleman’s “presentation”:http://youtu.be/FHSYYETNGH4 from this past July, which is a great tutorial on missiles in general and Iran’s missiles in particular.

You can view it here:

I’ve written about this subject “before,”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2230/yet-more-on-the-iranian-nuclear-fatwa but Fars News, for whatever reason, published this past August “an article”:http://english.farsnews.com/newstext.php?nn=9106060212 titled “Iranian Supreme Leader’s Fatwa on Nuclear Weapons” which contained an April 2010 speech by Iran’s Supreme Leader Khamenei.

In addition to stating that

bq. We believe that using nuclear weapons is haraam and prohibited and that it is everybody’s duty to make efforts to protect humanity against this great disaster

the report contains one of the most detailed accounts from Iran about nuclear power and nuclear weapons.

I was looking for something else and ran across “this document”:http://www.iranwatch.org/international/OPCW/opcw-iran-compliancearticle7-070199.htm from Iran Watch. It’s a 1999 paper about the CWC presented by Iran’s current ambassador to the IAEA, Ali Akbar Soltanieh. At the time, he was the country’s Secretary of the National Authority for the Chemical Weapons Convention.

One of the paper’s most interesting parts is an attachment describing the role of Iran’s constitution regarding “the ratification and implementation of international treaties.” I don’t know whether and to what extent these provisions are still valid, though I’d be interested to hear from anyone who does.

Anyway, the first part of the attachment spells out some articles of the constitution relevant to the Majlis, the main one being Article 77, which states that “All international conventions, protocols, treaties and pacts shall receive approval by Majlis.”

The document also explains that

bq. The ministry which has the most concern as regards to adherence to the convention in question, has to take the issue to the cabinet. The Commission in charge of the bills will consider the text (identical text in both English and Farsi). The Commission makes an inquiry from the Legal Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for its views and preferably its approval (if the MFA is not the proponent of the approval of the text ).

Of course, the Guardian Council is required to review any legislation “to ensure that it conforms to the principles of Islam and the Constitution.” The attachment also describes the Judiciary’s role. The most germane constitutional article appears to be 160, which states that “the Minister of Justice shall be responsible for all matters concerning the relations of the judiciary with the Executive and the Legislative Branches.”

Well. A handy “org chart”:https://recruitment.iaea.org/documents/orgchart.pdf from and of the IAEA.