Here’s a 1983 history of the Atomic Energy Commission.
A sample:
The first test of new weapons was conducted at Enewetak Atoll in April and May 1948. Operation Sandstone explored weapon designs and tested a new fission weapon to replace the clumsy tailor-made models used during World War II. By 1948 the Commission had both gun- type and implosion-type non-nuclear and nuclear components in stockpile and was well on the way toward producing an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
This is a lightly-edited version of a piece I wrote for the Nelson Report in September 2018.
A few points worth highlighting, I think:
—It is obvious that US attempts to coerce foreign companies from doing business with Iran via the extraterritorial application of US sanctions may be hampered by the unilateral nature of these sanctions. In my view, though, it’s important to remember that the EU is working at cross-purposes with the United States, rather then merely refraining from participating in sanctioning Iran. That is a new dynamic.
—Since the UNSC adopted UNSCR 2231, there is no legal requirement for foreign governments to sanction Iran.
— Here’s an important factor which might deter Iran from leaving the JCPOA: if Tehan stops performing its JCPOA commitments, there is a real risk that one of the P4+1 governments could invoke UNSCR 2231’s provisions which would require the re-imposition of UN sanctions. Governments would have a legal obligation to implement those sanctions.
—Having said that, it’s entirely possible that Iran and the P4+1 can reach some sort of de facto compromise agreement in which Iran will be able to conduct some nuclear activities which are currently prohibited by the JCPOA. Without going into detail, I think both UNSCR 2231 and the JCPOA allow for such an outcome.
On May 8, [2018] President Donald J. Trump announced that the United States would no longer fulfill its commitments undertaken pursuant to the July 2015 Joint Cooperative Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement between Iran and China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, (collectively known as the P5+1) that limits Iran’s nuclear program and requires extensive international monitoring of that program. In doing so, the Trump administration has initiated a social science project with a deeply uncertain outcome.
The volume of U.S.-Iranian trade has long been too limited for U.S. sanctions on Iran to have significant impacts on that country. Consequently, the United States in recent years imposed sanctions on foreign entities for doing business with Iran, but suspended application of these sanctions pursuant to the JCPOA. The Trump administration re-imposed the first tranche of sanctions in early August and is due to reimpose the second in early November. The JCPOA also includes relief from nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union (EU) and the UN Security Council, although the EU and the United States continued to impose sanctions on Iran for other reasons, such as the country’s poor human rights record. The JCPOA-mandated relief was meant to help improve Iran’s economy after years of struggling under international sanctions. This relief is also an important incentive for Iran to comply with the agreement.
Iran, as well as the remaining non-Iranian JCPOA parties (the P4+1), have proceeded with implementing their JCPOA obligations and have stated their wish for the agreement to continue. The P4+1 support the agreement’s nuclear constraints because, although Iran had given up its nuclear weapons program in late 2003, Tehran subsequently continued to expand its uranium enrichment program, which can produce explosive material for nuclear weapons, as well as nuclear reactor fuel. The prospect of an Iranian nuclear weapon or a military attack on Tehran’s nuclear facilities had concerned many governments.
The advent of the JCPOA followed years of diplomacy which were themselves preceded by multilateral sanctions, the most prominent of which were imposed by a number of UN Security Council resolutions adopted between 2006 and 2010. During this time, the United States also imposed sanctions on foreign entities for doing business with Iran. These sanctions, combined with sabotage and export restrictions on nuclear-related technology, certainly harmed Iran’s economy and probably slowed its nuclear program. Many experts also credit the sanctions with inducing Iran to negotiate the JCPOA.
The United States will now need to rely on its own sanctions to dissuade foreign companies and financial institutions from doing significant business with Iran. Trump administration officials, insisting that the United States does not have a policy of regime change in Iran, argue that U.S. sanctions re-imposition will induce Tehran to conclude an agreement with the United States which would include both stricter nuclear constraints and also prohibitions on Iranian activities such as ballistic missile proliferation and support for terrorism. But this approach will need to succeed in circumstances vastly different from those which obtained prior to conclusion of the JCPOA.
The diplomatic context has undergone the most significant changes. The pre-JCPOA Security Council resolutions did not require Iran to end its enrichment program, but to undertake a series of confidence-building measures and enter into negotiations with the P5+1 about a proposal contained in the resolutions (this diplomacy concerning this proposal was a precursor for the JCPOA negotiations). However, the council repealed the previous sanctions in a July 2015 resolution which endorsed the JCPOA but also included a mechanism for the sanctions’ reinstatement, should Iran violate the JCPOA; EU sanctions contain a similar mechanism.
In contrast to the previous U.S. approach, the Trump administration is attempting to coerce foreign companies to end and refrain from doing business in Iran in order to compel Tehran’s acceptance of a vaguely-articulated proposal stipulating Iranian commitments well beyond those mandated in the JCPOA. But unlike the pre-JCPOA period, there are no UN-mandated requirements for governments to impose sanctions on Iran. In fact, the P4+1 governments are actively countering the re-imposed U.S. sanctions efforts and devising new incentives for Tehran to remain party to the JCPOA. It is even conceivable that these governments could negotiate a de facto compromise agreement with Iran.
Tehran will need to consider a range of factors as it deliberates whether, on balance, the country will benefit by remaining in the JCPOA. These factors include: the extent to which Iran’s economy benefits; whether the agreement retains support of the relevant Iranian political constituencies; and whether Tehran believes that it can trust the United States to adhere to any future agreement. This latter factor is particularly important; Iranian officials have constantly complained in the past that the US could not be trusted to keep its word and have historically feared that caving into U.S.-led pressure will signal weakness and invite Washington to pocket concessions and try to extract additional ones.
Iran has an additional incentive to comply with the JCPOA, particularly given the country’s current economic turmoil – the potential re-imposition of EU and UN sanctions. But even that threat has its limits; Iran will not stay in the JCPOA at any cost. Moreover, the Iranian government may be able to impede sanctions’ effectiveness. Tehran previously managed to avoid economic collapse even when facing the toughest international sanctions; this experience may yet help Tehran cope with future sanctions-induced deprivation. According to Iranian officials, the government has begun to take measures designed for this purpose. One must also consider that, even after several years of UN sanctions on Iran, the country did not comply with the Security Council resolutions. Whatever role one thinks sanctions played in compelling Iran to negotiate the JCPOA, an intensive U.S.-led diplomatic effort was necessary to conclude the agreement.
Ultimately, the success of the U.S. strategy will be a function of the degree of economic pain with which Iran is willing and able to withstand, as well as Tehran’s own estimation of its ability to resist sanctions’ effects. Perhaps a combination of U.S. sanctions, threats of military action, and sabotage will induce a quick Iranian capitulation. But such an outcome would be without precedent. Moreover, the current differences between the United States and the P5+4 regarding Iran policy, as well as the diminished positive and negative incentives for Iran to cooperate could, even if Iran does not choose to develop a nuclear weapon, result in an Iran free of the JCPOA restraints and facing a weaker sanctions regime. In that case, the world will face a return to the previous nervousness surrounding Iran’s pre-JCPOA nuclear program. There is an ongoing debate among experts regarding the utility of U.S. unilateral sanctions. This U.S.-sponsored social science project may soon reveal who is right.
In 2007, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, the Founding Project-Director of the PAEC Uranium Enrichment Project, commented on the origins of Pakistan’s enrichment program:
In October 1974, he called me to his office and asked me to prepare a detailed report on various technologies for uranium enrichment. He was so anxious to get this project started that he wanted the report the next day. In this report I discussed laser, diffusion, jet nozzle and centrifuge methods for uranium enrichment. Finally we went for centrifuge technology for uranium enrichment. We were familiar with centrifuge technology since 1967 when a small study group was formed by Dr. Naeem Ahmad Khan at Atomic Energy Centre, Lahore, which included Hafeez Qureshi, myself and Dr. Samar Mubarakmand.”
”By the end of 1975, all essential machinery and equipment for the enrichment project had been procured had arrived in Pakistan. We had also begun indigenous R & D on the project.”
I always find it interesting to check what experts thought about proliferation in the past. In 1995, a CFR Task Force issued a report titled Nuclear Proliferation: Confronting the New Challenges. The list of members makes for interesting reading, as do the recommendations.
Back in 2002, Studies in Intelligence published a piece titled “Soviet Deception in the Cuban Missile Crisis: Learning from the Past.” The article, written by James Hansen, has a great description of Soviet denial and deception efforts surrounding Moscow’s placement of nuclear weapons in Cuba.
Here’s an example:
The General Staff’s code name for the operation—ANADYR—was designed to mislead Soviets as well as foreigners about the destination of the equipment. Anadyr is the name of a river flowing into the Bering Sea, the capital of the Chukotsky Autonomous District, and a bomber base in that desolate region. Operation ANADYR was designed to suggest to lower-level Soviet commanders—and Western spies—that the action was a strategic exercise in the far north of the USSR. Promoting the illusion, the troops that were called up for the Cuban expedition were told only that they were going to a cold region. Those needing more precise instructions, such as missile engineers, were informed that they would be taking ICBMs to a site on Novaya Zemlya, a large island in the Arctic where nuclear weapons had long been tested.
To strengthen the concealment, many units were outfitted with skis, felt boots, fleece-lined parkas, and other winter equipment. Moreover, perhaps to further backstop the cover plan, Moscow tapped four ground forces regiments from the Leningrad Military District in the north for dispatch to Cuba. The deception was so thorough that it fooled even senior Soviet officers sent to Cuba. One general there asked Gribkov why winter equipment and clothing had been provided. The general admonished him to “think like an adult,” and explained, “It’s called ANADYR for a reason. We could have given away the game if we had put any tropical clothing in your kits.”
In this 2006 interview with Francis Slakey and Jennifer Ouellette, Sidney Drell and Richard Garwin, Slakey asked “When nuclear weapons were first developed, under what circumstances would a president authorize the use of those weapons?”
Garwin:
Nuclear weapons were a scarcity. We finished the war with maybe one nuclear weapon in August of 1945 and had relatively few. And, in fact, the people at Los Alamos had very different views, it turns out of the future. Hans Bethe, shortly before he died, commented that “Nobody at Los Alamos believed that there would be thousands or tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.” And yet, I gave a talk in November 2005, parallel to a November 1945 talk by Robert Oppenheimer, who in his speech to the American, to the National Academy and the American Philosophical Society said that, in 1945, “If there were to be a war between two nuclear-armed countries they would be used by the tens of thousands; by the thousands or the tens of thousands.” So, between these two people who were intimately involved in the creation of nuclear weapons, and Hans Bethe throughout his life afterwards, to have such different views is quite striking. But, nuclear weapons belonged to the civilian side, to the Atomic Energy Commission, for a long time before control was transferred in the field to the military, in part as a result or aided by the permissive action links that were then introduced. It’s the president though, in principle, who can release nuclear weapons. However, he can delegate that responsibility and authority to anybody he wants.
Drell:
I would add to that that the additional period right after the war, the great effort was to try and control the spread of nuclear technology and nuclear weapons, and they were certainly under presidential control. But the first envisaged use was to confront the large Soviet army in Europe as NATO was being built. And they were a substitute for large manpower if the Soviets had moved west. But, when thermonuclear weapons increased the destructive potential of these weapons by factors of a thousand beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki people soon realized that these are weapons of suicide and it was, I think, President Eisenhower who first said, in 1956, that, you know, “Because of their destructiveness war was no longer just exhaustion of the enemy and surrender but it had become destruction of the enemy and suicide.” Those were very close to his exact words. And so the whole policy at that point was to prevent their use. And so, that’s how the deterrent idea, based on mutual assured destruction, grew up, because there was no defense against them and there was absolutely the highest priority to see that they weren’t used, and so the idea of deterrence. Namely, having a capacity to respond to the worst possible attack upon you and destroy the attacker, therefore to convince him he would be committing suicide if he attacked you was the basis for our arsenal.
Garwin:
Yeah. Exactly right. And when Eisenhower came in, though, he regarded nuclear weapons as a “bigger bang for the buck.” And, that was just at the beginning of the era of tactical nuclear weapons, which paradoxically were encouraged by some of our physicist colleagues as a way of reducing the emphasis on bigger and more numerous strategic weapons whose only purpose would be to destroy society. But, in fact no good deed goes unpunished and pretty soon with the proliferation on our side and the Soviet side of tactical nuclear weapons, and the response of the reformation, reformation of the army structure to be less vulnerable to nuclear weaponry, the nuclear weapons used in combat would kill three tanks, five tanks, or whatever. That same nuclear weapon, used against a city could kill hundreds of thousands of people. And so, what we were doing was to proliferate in our two arsenals vast numbers of strategic weapons, only calling them tactical weapons, and those would be very bad if ever used in warfare. There would be no guarantee that if we used our tactical nuclear superiority and stopped Warsaw Pact armies on their march to the West that the Soviets wouldn’t escalate and use nuclear weapons to compel surrender by using them on cities, in fact. And, not only no guarantee; it was to my mind, absolutely certain that they would do that. And so, then there were all kinds of theories of escalation. But, to go back to deterrence, in 1945, especially ‘49 when the Soviets tested their first nuclear weapon, there was panic among the populace and an attempt by a far-sighted people even before that to obtain active defense against the aircraft that would deliver nuclear weapons. And pretty soon it became apparent that we could no effective defense. So, Bernard Brodie and others, strategists, said “Never mind. We can be protected even without defense if we maintain a survivable, commandable nuclear force so that the Soviet nuclear weapons would essentially be turned back upon themselves, that is with high assurance a use of nuclear weapons against the United States by the Soviet Union would result in the destruction of the Soviet Union. So, it was that tenuous, difficult balance, which was not a numerical balance at all, that was responsible for security for so many decades. Now it’s more difficult. If nuclear weapons are obtained by people without home bases or without values it’s hard to deter them when their only purpose may simply be to kill on the other side.
I’ve previously mentioned that a number of PAEC folks made informative statements at the 2007 Memorial Reference for Munir Ahmad Khan. In this case, Former Senator Farhatullah Babar discusses Khan’s expression of concern with respect to proliferation and command and control issues:
In communications with the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and also in newspaper articles Munir Khan pleaded, “nuclear weapons are not a plaything to be bandied publicly. They have to be treated with respect and responsibility. While they can destroy the enemy, their use can also invite self destruction” Babar said that Munir Khan wrote two letters to the Prime Minister in which he pointed towards the potentially damaging consequences for Pakistan in view of irresponsible actions and rhetoric by certain individuals.
Farhatullah Babar said it was a strange coincidence that on his death anniversary today the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London had announced that a new dossier “Nuclear Black Markets: Pakistan” will be launched next week dramatizing the warnings that Munir Khan had been sounding. “We did not heed his warning then and have ended up in making Pakistan a suspect at the centre of international proliferation,” he said.
