I knew that the IAEA had received information from Pakistan regarding the AQ Khan network, but Olli Heinonen recently gave an “interview”:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,790042,00.html to Der Spiegel in which he said that Khan had communicated with him:

bq.. SPIEGEL: Have you ever met Khan? Were you at least able to question him after his arrest in Islamabad in 2004?

Heinonen: I followed his trail for years, and met several of his confidantes. But I never got to speak to him. *Nevertheless, he answered some of my questions in writing through secret channels.*

p. Heinonen’s response to AQK’s “denial”:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,770746,00.html of a nuclear black market’s existence is also amusing:

bq.. SPIEGEL: From his house arrest he now insists he had nothing to do with passing on nuclear secrets or having made lucrative private deals. Do you believe him?

Heinonen: *It brings tears to my eyes.* Of course Khan was the worst black marketeer and made millions from it. Even so, it’s quite possible that others — for instance Pakistani generals or leading secret-service officials — profited even more than Khan did. It’s more than likely that his country’s political authorities were often aware of his dealings.

I am informed that _Rolling Stone_ is having a caption contest.

“Just look.”:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/caption-contest-win-a-signed-copy-of-griftopia-20111008

Well. Peter Crail has a “piece”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_10/IAEA_to_Detail_Iran_Alleged_Warhead_Work in ACT which states that Iran, despite earlier claims from Iranian officials, has begun installing IR-1 centrifuges at Fordow, rather than more advanced models.

Writes Peter:

bq.. Last June, Iran announced that it would soon begin using the plant to produce uranium enriched to 20 percent uranium-235 to produce fuel for research reactors and that it would triple such production through the use of more-advanced centrifuge designs it has been developing. The Sept. 2 IAEA “report”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_2Sept2011.pdf said that as of Aug. 20, Iran had installed one of two centrifuge cascades designated for the production of 20 percent-enriched uranium.

*snip*

Although the report did not specify the type of machine being installed, *diplomatic sources confirmed that the centrifuges are IR-1 machines, a crash-prone design Iran currently uses at its commercial-scale Natanz enrichment plant.* The improved designs Iran has been developing, called the IR-2m and IR-4, are believed to enrich uranium three times faster than the IR-1.

p. ISIS analysts David Albright, Paul Brannan, Andrea Stricker, and Christina Walrond “confirmed”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_Report_ISIS_analysis_2Sept2011.pdf the IR-1 installation with their own sources:

bq.. The IAEA reports that Iran has installed one cascade of centrifuges at the Fordow site to be designated for production of 19.75 percent enriched uranium. *ISIS has learned that these machines are new IR-1 centrifuges, not existing ones transferred from Natanz.*

Earlier this summer, the Vice President of Iran and head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, implied that Iran would soon deploy advanced centrifuges at Fordow, stating that these machines would be installed in 164-machine cascades.

There’s an icon over to the left, if you wanna follow.

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Unsurprisingly, Stimson has published another “report”:http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research-pdfs/Crises_Complete.pdf about South Asia. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but the report, co-edited by Michael Krepon and Nate Cohn and titled “Crises in South Asia: Trends and Potential Consequences,” has a bunch of good material about the role of nuclear weapons in the region.

As one who’s always looking for primary source material about India and Pakistan, I was struck by the footnote to a paragraph which cites the well-known _New Yorker_ “piece”:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/03/29/1993_03_29_056_TNY_CARDS_000363214 about the 1990 India-Pakistan crisis:

bq. The US intelligence community appears to have been more alarmed by the potential for nuclear weapons’ use. Richard J. Kerr, the deputy director of the C.I.A. during this crisis, was quoted by Seymour Hersh as saying, “It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I’ve been in the US government. It may be as close as we’ve come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis.”

We have heard this before, but check out the footnote:

bq. The author [M Krepon], attended an event with Kerr after Hersh’s article appeared and asked whether he was quoted properly. Kerr answered affirmatively. When asked whether he really believed that that 1990 crisis was second only to the Cuban missile crisis in terms of nuclear danger, Kerr allowed as how *he might have exaggerated this point.*

Doesn’t quite put paid to the metaphor, but a useful addition to the record.

I recently learned that Amb Ali Asghar Soltanieh was involved in Iran’s implementation of the CWC.

As it happens, his “cv”:www.g77.org/vienna/CV%20Ambassador%20Soltanieh.pdf confirms that he was “Secretary of the National Authority of the Chemical Weapons Convention” from 1997-99. Incidentally, he was also “Chief Negotiator, Additional Protocol to Biological Weapons Convention” from 1999-2002 – something else I didn’t know.

Not sure why I find this interesting, but there it is.

I’m uninspired and it’s a weekend, so here’s a video.

Sharper than the edge of Occam’s Razor.

I heard Thomas Schelling discuss nuclear terrorism at a New America Foundation event last October, but haven’t been able to find a transcript of the event. So I was happy to discover “this piece”:http://cpost.uchicago.edu/blog/2011/09/06/thomas-c-schelling-whatever-happened-to-nuclear-terrorism/ by Dr. Schelling on that subject.

As he explains:

bq.. In 1982 I published an “article”:http://www.jstor.org/pss/2538678 that began, “Sometime in the 1980’s an organization that is not a national government may acquire a few nuclear weapons. If not in the 1980’s, then in the 1990’s.”

I hedged about the 80’s but sounded pretty firm about the 90’s. It’s now the 2010’s, twenty-nine years later, and there has been no nuclear terrorism nor any acquisition of such weapons by any terrorist organization that we know of; and I think we’d know by now. I don’t know of anyone—and I knew many colleagues knowledgeable on the subject—who thought my expectations outlandish. Something needs to be explained!

p. His explanation is an interesting one; a PhD student to whom I described it replied, “So he’s saying it’s a market failure.”

That, for me, is the most striking part of the argument. Schelling writes:

bq. Imagine that you have succeeded in stealing a Picasso insured for many millions of dollars, and you know that there are people willing to pay several millions for it: *how do you find your customer?* You cannot put a want ad in the New York Times.

Read the whole thing…I especially like this paragraph:

bq. a “supplier” and a “customer” representing the terrorist organization may meet in a public place, each with a few unrecognizable body guards, to consummate the deal. At that point *I fantasize that the seller and the buyer recognize each other, one is from the CIA and the other from the Israeli Mossad. Each is engaged in a “sting” operation, and they shake hands and go back to work.*

Regarding “this post”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2131/label-nuclear-weapon-state from yesterday, a reader notes that “threshold state” is the best term for a state like Iran. I tend to agree…I wasn’t thinking too much about a proper term, so I’m glad for the advice.

Additionally, Stephen Schwartz weighed in with a “comment”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2131/label-nuclear-weapon-state in which he cited “this piece”:http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/npr_17-1_hymans.pdf from the NPR. That article reminded me that former IAEA DG ElBaradei used the term “virtual nuclear-weapon state” – the same term that “ISIS used”:http://cns.miis.edu/npr/pdfs/npr_17-1_hymans.pdf – way back when.

I would note that a term like “de facto nuclear-weapon state” is, in my view, best suited for a state like India, which has nuclear weapons but isn’t a recognized nuclear-weapon state by the NPT.

Greg Jones’ recent “description of”:http://www.tnr.com/article/environment-and-energy/94715/jones-nuclear-iran-ahmadinejad Iran as a “de facto nuclear weapon state” inspired me to think about the problem with using that term casually. David Albright and Andrea Stricker’s “description”:http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/all/David%20Albright of Iran as a “virtual nuclear weapons state” might be a bit better, but I think it suffers from the same problem: it’s not a term of art and, therefore, has limited analytic value.

Article IX of the NPT:

bq. For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January 1967.

I know that the authors to which I linked understand the above. And I’m not quite sure what the correct term for a country like Iran should be. But finding something more precise may be in order. Iran obviously doesn’t meet the Article IX definition; a nuclear-armed Iran still wouldn’t meet it. Since it’s hard to equate a state with nuclear weapons to one without such weapons, I really can’t think of a good reason to use the term other than to gain attention.

Incidentally, the international community has gone to some effort to maintain the distinction between the legitimate nuclear weapons states and other states with nuclear weapons.

For example, “UNSCR 1172”:http://daccess-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/N98/158/60/PDF/N9815860.pdf?OpenElement stated that, despite their 1998 nuclear tests, neither India nor Pakistan could “have the status of a nuclear-weapon State.”
And the 2005 RevCon “final document”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2000_06/docjun similarly stated that those tests did “not in any way confer a nuclear-weapon State status or any special status whatsoever.”

“The 2010 NPT RevCon final document”:http://www.acronym.org.uk/npt/npt2010%20-%20Final%20Declaration%20Draft%203.pdf said the same thing about North Korea and its nuclear tests.

Clarity is good. I guess that’s my point.

*Update “here:*”:http://www.totalwonkerr.net/2132/label-nuclear-weapon-state-part-ii