Happy Saturday.

Obama administration officials occasionally talk about the quality of US intelligence on Iran’s nuclear program. For example, there was “this”:http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-sees-intelligence-surge-as-boost-to-confidence/2012/04/07/gIQAlCha2S_story.html _WP_ piece from the weekend. And National Security Adviser Tom Donilon “told”:http://iipdigital.usembassy.gov/st/english/texttrans/2011/11/20111122144640su0.8725789.html#axzz1rmyDrryb a Brookings audience in November that the United States

bq. will work aggressively to detect any new nuclear-related efforts by Iran. We will expose them and force Iran to place them under international inspections, just as we did when *we exposed the Qom enrichment facility,* thus denying Iran the option of using the facility to secretly produce enriched uranium.

Anyway, the 2009 outing of the Fordow facility and the apparently-significant probability that future such facilities will be discovered indicates to me that Iran is being faced with a tough decision. Clearly, Iran has preferred to pursue sketchy nuclear activities in secret, but now that avenue may well be closed to them, at least past a certain point.

I suppose the above facts could make make the breakout option a bit more attractive, but not much; Iran would still be painting a target on itself, were it to go that route.

Could be why Iran, if the US intel community is to be believed, hasn’t restarted its weapons program.

This is a complex subject that I don’t know enough about. But it’s still probably a good time to mention some statements from the international community regarding attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.

One of the more salient is paragraph 75 of the 2010 NPT RevCon final document:

bq. The Conference considers that attacks or threats of attack on *nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes* jeopardize nuclear safety, have dangerous political, economic and environmental implications and raise serious concerns regarding the application of international law on the use of force in such cases, which could warrant appropriate action in accordance with the provisions of the Charter of the United Nations. The Conference notes that a majority of States parties have suggested a legally binding instrument be considered in this regard.

Notably, the 2000 RevCon “final document”:http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/2000-NPT/pdf/FD-Part1and2.pdf said much the same thing.

It’s also worth mentioning IAEA “GC (XXXIV)/RES/533”:http://www.iaea.org/About/Policy/GC/GC34/GC34Resolutions/English/gc34res-533_en.pdf, which the IAEA General Conference adopted in 1990. The resolution stated that

bq. an armed attack or a threat of armed attack on a *safeguarded nuclear facility, in operation or under construction*, would create a situation in which the United Nations Security Council would have to act immediately in accordance with the provisions of the United Nations Charter;

I find the distinction between a “safeguarded nuclear facility” in the IAEA resolution and “nuclear facilities devoted to peaceful purposes” in the RevCon documents to be an interesting one. I need to learn more about the history there…

Sort of.

You may recall that Rose Gottemoeller caused a bit of a stir at the 2009 NPT PrepComm when she “included”:http://www.un.org/disarmament/WMD/Nuclear/NPT2010Prepcom/PrepCom2009/statements/2009/05May2009/05May2009AMSpeaker-4-USA.pdf Israel on the list of countries which the United States would like to sign the NPT.

Well, I thought of that speech when I read the 1997 version of the Congressionally-mandated “_Report to Congress:
Update on Progress Toward Regional Nonproliferation in South Asia_”:http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/970615-dos-nonpro.htm and ran across this:

bq. The U.S. continues to urge India and Pakistan to refrain from conducting a nuclear test, and we continue to monitor the situation in both countries carefully. We have argued that a test would not enhance the security of either country, and would set back *global disarmament efforts, particularly now that all five nuclear weapons states and Israel have signed the CTBT.*

Now, that statement does not _say_ that Israel has nuclear weapons, but there aren’t many other reasons I can think of for including Israel in that list.

Reuters had a “good story”:http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/usa-iran-smuggling-idUSL2E8ERODR20120328 the other day about Iranian efforts to acquire materials for its enrichment and missile programs.

It also contained a section called “bureaucratic overlap” which mentions the recent creation of the “E2C2”:http://www.ice.gov/export-enforcement-coordination-center/ and illustrates an aspect of the day-to-day life of export control investigations:

bq. Arms smuggling cases are primarily conducted undercover and agencies often find themselves bumping into each other. In one recent case, an official said, the new export center discovered that *one group of undercover agents was trying to buy arms from another group of U.S. agents*.

I’m sure there’s a good joke here somewhere…

Regarding “this post,”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2188/pakistans-hatf-ii-test a couple of readers pointed me to Pakistan’s April 2011 “announcement”:http://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&id=1721 of its short-range NASR ballistic missile.

As I noted, the “announcement”:http://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&date=2012/3/5 of the Hatf II test stated that the missile “provides an *operational level capability* to Pakistan’s Strategic Forces, *additional to* the strategic and tactical level capability, which Pakistan already possesses.” One reader observed that the NASR, with its 60 km range, is what Pakistan regards as its tactical nuclear weapon. The Hatf II is what Islamabad calls its operational nuclear weapon. Makes sense to me.

“*Update here*”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2189/pakistans-hatf-ii-test-update

According to a March 5 Pakistani “press release,”:http://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&date=2012/3/5 Pakistan conducted a successful test of a “Short Range Surface to Surface Ballistic Missile Hatf II (Abdali),” which, according to Pakistan, has a range of 180 kilometers and “carries nuclear as well as conventional warheads with high accuracy.”

This wasn’t Pakistan’s first test of the missile, but it’s perhaps useful to compare this press release with “one announcing a March 2011 Hatf-II test.”:http://www.ispr.gov.pk/front/main.asp?o=t-press_release&date=2011/3/11

According to the March 5 announcement, the Hatf II

bq. “provides an operational level capability to Pakistan’s Strategic Forces, additional to the *strategic and tactical level capability*, which Pakistan already possesses.”

That’s different from last year’s announcement, which asserted that

bq. the Abdalli weapons system now provides Pakistan with an operational level capability, additional to the strategic level capability, which Pakistan already possess because of its medium range and long range Ballistic missile systems.

Now, this language certainly seems to describe sub-strategic nuclear weapons. Robert Norris and Hans Kristensen “noted”:http://bos.sagepub.com/content/67/4/91.full last year that Pakistan’s test announcement provided “another indication that Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine is developing a new nonstrategic role for short-range missiles.”

Maybe I’m being pedantic, but I find it interesting that the March 2011 announcement didn’t use the word “tactical.” Perhaps Islamabad is trying to send a more direct signal to the world. Dunno.

As a side note, Norris and Kristensen described the Hatf II as a

bq. “mysterious program because its designation…suggests that its origins date back to before the 2004 introduction of the Ghaznavi (Hatf-3), indicating that its development was somehow delayed”

FWIW, the Hatf-2 is not named in the “2009 NASIC report.”:http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/NASIC2009.pdf

Here’s an Associated Press of Pakistan video of this month’s test:

And here’s one of the March 2011 test:

Why “this old post”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/1515/wine-and-nuclear-testing about wine and nuclear testing seems to be one of my most popular, I couldn’t say. But such seems to be the case.

I don’t know a whole lot about The Stranglers, but YouTube informs me that Yellowcake UF6, a video for which is below, was “the B side to The Stranglers’ 1979 single release, Nuclear Device.” Enjoy.

Given what I wrote “here,”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2183/iran-and-iaea-document it seemed right to post what IAEA D-G Amano “had to say”:http://www.iaea.org/press/?p=2705#more-2705 about the IAEA Iran investigation.

According to Amano,

bq.. the February talks initially took place in a constructive spirit. Differences between Iran and the Agency appeared to have narrowed.

However, on the last day of the February talks, Iran reverted to the old approach and sought to re-impose restrictions on our work. *These included obliging the Agency to present a definitive list of questions and denying us the right to revisit issues, or to deal with certain issues in parallel, to name just a few.*

This goes to the core of how we conduct our business. Iran’s position made it impossible to reach agreement.

p. This, to me, is the really interesting part:

bq. I informed the Board of Governors that *statements made by Iran about the discussions with the Agency contain information which is not factually correct.* This is regrettable.

Not sure what he’s referring to…