Nuclear Age Peace Foundation

Tag: Iran

  • Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity: New Thinking and Effective Campaigns are Needed

    Ending the Nuclear Weapons Threat to Humanity: New Thinking and Effective Campaigns are Needed

    We need new thinking and effective campaigns if we are to succeed in quelling the growing nuclear dangers in the world. The existing nuclear weapons states are failing to fulfill their obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to engage in good faith negotiations for nuclear disarmament. North Korea has withdrawn from the NPT, and claims to have become a member of the nuclear weapons club. Iran is enriching uranium for what it claims are peaceful purposes. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, recently reminded the world that there are forty countries capable of converting their “peaceful” nuclear programs to weapons programs.

    There are still well over 20,000 nuclear weapons in the world, perhaps closer to 30,000, mostly in the arsenals of the US and Russia. These two countries also continue to maintain over 2,000 nuclear weapons each on hair-trigger alert, creating the ongoing and increasing possibility of an accidental nuclear launch. Other nuclear weapons states include the UK, France, China, Israel, India, Pakistan and likely North Korea .

    Throughout the world, terrorism is on the rise with groups such as Al Qaeda openly expressing a desire to obtain nuclear weapons. Should such a group succeed in this quest, they could not be deterred from using these weapons, since deterrence implies being able to locate the attacking party in order to retaliate. Thus, existing arsenals of thousands of nuclear weapons cannot deter a small group of terrorists from attacking the cities of the militarily most powerful states.

    The US attacked Iraq because of Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction, and has made threats of preemptive action to North Korea and Iran based on their nuclear arsenals. For geopolitical reasons, the US has turned a blind eye to Israel ‘s nuclear weapons and those of other allied nations, while attacking Iraq, a country that it falsely accused of having such weapons. The US has basically adopted a “do as I say, not as I do” strategy of nuclear arms control. Such a strategy, based on clear double standards, is extremely dangerous and destined to fail.

    The world is walking a dangerous tightrope, while facing harsh prospects of potential nuclear disaster. The only way to prevent a nuclear 9/11 is to dramatically reduce the nuclear weapons, technologies and materials in the world and to bring the remaining ones under international control. This will require US leadership as the world’s most powerful country. Without US leadership, the world will continue its flirtation with nuclear disaster, increasing the likelihood that the US itself could become the victim of its own double standards.

    Unfortunately, the US, under the Bush administration, has not only failed to show leadership to prevent nuclear terrorism and nuclear double standards, but has actively sought to improve its nuclear arsenal. It has failed to ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and is moving toward lowering the time needed to resume nuclear testing. It has been allocating funds to research “bunker busting” nuclear weapons and “mini-nukes.” And it has forged ahead with deployment of untested missile defense systems that have caused Russia and China to make offensive improvements in their nuclear arsenals in order to maintain their deterrent capabilities.

    If we are to avert future nuclear catastrophes it is necessary to change the course of current nuclear policy. In order to do this, we need a new way of thinking about nuclear weapons that reflects the view that they undermine rather than enhance our security. This is the conclusion reached by General George Lee Butler, the former head of the US Strategic Command. General Butler was once in charge of all US strategic weapons. He stated, “Sadly, the Cold War lives on in the minds of men who cannot let go the fears, the beliefs, the enmities of the Nuclear Age. They cling to deterrence, clutch its tattered promise to their breast, shake it wistfully at bygone adversaries and balefully at new or imagined ones. They are gripped still by its awful willingness not simply to tempt the apocalypse but to prepare the way.”

    Nearly fifty years ago, Albert Einstein, the greatest scientist of the 20th century, argued, “The splitting of the atom has changed everything save our modes of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.” Shortly before Einstein’s death, he joined Bertrand Russell in issuing a short manifesto signed by themselves and nine other prominent scientists, including Joseph Rotblat , the one scientist who left the Manhattan Project when he realized that the Germans would not succeed in developing a nuclear weapon. The document, known simply as the Russell-Einstein Manifesto, set forth the case that nuclear weapons make the abolition of war necessary. “Here, then, is the problem that we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war.”

    The Russell-Einstein Manifesto was Einstein’s final warning and plea to humanity. The manifesto urged that humanity has a choice: “There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge, and wisdom. Shall we, instead, choose death, because we cannot forget our quarrels?” The document went on to urge: “Remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do so, the way lies open to a new Paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.”

    To succeed in ending the nuclear weapons threat to humanity, ordinary people must engage in the issue and it must become a top priority issue. At present, most people are not engaged in this issue, or may even incorrectly believe that nuclear weapons provide prestige and enhance rather than undermine their security. What is needed is a massive, well-funded campaign of public education and advocacy in order to arouse ordinary people and officials everywhere to action.

    I will mention two encouraging campaigns that are in their early stages. The first is the Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign to Ban Nuclear Weapons. 1 This campaign seeks to activate mayors around the world to engage their populations to pressure their national leaders to begin in 2005 negotiations on eliminating nuclear weapons, to complete these negotiations by 2010, and to eliminate all nuclear weapons by the year 2020. This campaign, led by the mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki , holds promise, but at this point in time it remains dramatically under-funded. Nonetheless, it is moving forward with the expectation that more than 100 mayors and deputy mayors will state their case for nuclear disarmament at the 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference at the United Nations. The Mayors for Peace Emergency Campaign is receiving support from Abolition 2000, which has created Abolition Now! to help further the Mayors Campaign. 2

    A second campaign now underway is called Turn the Tide. 3 It was created by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation to focus on changing US nuclear policies. It is a campaign that reaches out to US citizens via the internet and urges them to communicate with their elected representatives to support actions set forth in their 13-point Campaign Statement:

    1. Stop all efforts to create dangerous new nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
    2. Maintain the current moratorium on nuclear testing and ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.
    3. Cancel plans to build new nuclear weapons production plants, and close and clean up the toxic contamination at existing plants.
    4. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No Use of nuclear weapons against any nation or group that does not have nuclear weapons.
    5. Establish and enforce a legally binding US commitment to No First Use of nuclear weapons against other nations possessing nuclear weapons.
    6. Cancel funding for and plans to deploy offensive missile “defense” systems which could ignite a dangerous arms race and offer no security against terrorist weapons of mass destruction.
    7. In order to significantly decrease the threat of accidental launch, together with Russia , take nuclear weapons off high-alert status and do away with the strategy of launch-on-warning.
    8. Together with Russia , implement permanent and verifiable dismantlement of nuclear weapons taken off deployed status through the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT).
    9. Demonstrate to other countries US commitment to reducing its reliance on nuclear weapons by removing all US nuclear weapons from foreign soil.
    10. To prevent future proliferation or theft, create and maintain a global inventory of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons materials and place these weapons and materials under strict international safeguards.
    11. Initiate international negotiations to fulfill existing treaty obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for the phased and verifiable elimination of nuclear weapons.
    12. Initiate a moratorium on new nuclear power reactors and gradually phase out existing ones, as these are a primarily means for the proliferation of nuclear materials, technology and weapons; simultaneously establish an International Sustainable Energy Agency to support the development of clean, safe renewable energy.
    13. Redirect funding from nuclear weapons programs to dismantling nuclear weapons, safeguarding nuclear materials, cleaning up the toxic legacy of the Nuclear Age and meeting more pressing social needs such as education, health care and social services.

    There is no magic formula for accomplishing these goals or, for that matter, for changing the world in any direction. Change often occurs one person at a time. The problem with the nuclear weapons threat is that there may not be time for such a progression of involvement. People must immediately change their thinking and they must engage in this issue as if their very lives depended upon it because they do. Many people think that this will probably not happen until another major city has been destroyed by a nuclear weapon. It would be a terrible failure of imagination if the destruction of a city is required to move us to take significant action to end the nuclear weapons threat to humanity.

    We know that the danger is lurking in the dark recesses of our collective consciences. Why else would we give our tacit assent to nuclear weapons programs, even in our most prestigious universities where the next generation of leaders is being educated? We must bring the hidden fears and dangers of the Nuclear Age into the light and act with resolve to change the course of history, which sadly now seems to be racing toward inevitable future nuclear catastrophes, unless there is a real awakening.

    David Krieger is a founder and president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org). He is a leader in the global effort to abolish nuclear weapons.

    1 See http://www.mayorsforpeace.org
    2 See http://www.abolitionnow.org
    3 See https://wagingpeace.davidmolinaojeda.com

  • Israel’s Nukes Serve to Justify Iran’s: Deterring the Deterrents

    The more nuclear arms are lying around, the more the chances of them being used. So to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons is a laudable objective. But for the United States, Britain and France to insist on it is hypocritical.

    These Western powers have argued convincingly for decades that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace – and themselves maintain nuclear armories long after the cold war has ended. So why shouldn’t Iran , which is in one of the world’s most dangerous neighborhoods, have a deterrent too?

    And where is the source of the threat that makes Iran, a country that has never started a war in 200 years, feel so nervous that it must now take the nuclear road? If Saddam Hussein’s Iraq , with its nuclear ambitions, used to be one reason, the other is certainly Israel, the country that hard-liners in the United States are encouraging to mount a pre-emptive strike against Iran’s nuclear industry before it produces bombs.

    The United States refuses to acknowledge formally that Israel has nuclear weapons, even though top officials will tell you privately that it has 200 of them. Until this issue is openly acknowledged, America, Britain and France are probably wasting their time trying to persuade Iran to forgo nuclear weapons.

    The supposition is that Israel lives in an even more dangerous neighborhood than Iran. It is said to be a beleaguered nation under constant threat of being eliminated by the combined muscle of its Arab opponents.

    There is no evidence, however, that Arab states have invested the financial and human resources necessary to fight the kind of war that would be catastrophic for Israel. And there is no evidence that Israel’s nuclear weapons have deterred the Arabs from more limited wars or prevented Palestinian intifadas and suicide bombers.

    Nor have Israel ‘s nuclear weapons influenced Arab attitudes toward making peace. In the 1973 Arab war against Israel and in the 1991 Gulf war, they clearly failed in their supposed deterrent effect. The Arabs knew, as the North Vietnamese knew during the Vietnam War, that their opponent would not dare to use its nuclear weapons.

    Israelis say that they need nuclear weapons in case one day an opportunistic Egypt and Syria, sensing that Israel ‘s guard is down, revert to their old stance of total hostility and attack Israel. But, as Zeev Maoz has argued in the journal International Security, these countries keep to their treaty obligations.

    Egypt did not violate its peace treaty with Israel when Israel attacked Syria and Lebanon in 1982. Syria did not violate the May 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel even when its forces were under Israeli attack. Nor did Egypt, Jordan and Syria violate their treaty commitments when the second Palestinian intifada broke out in September 2000.

    Since its 1979 peace treaty with Israel, Egypt has reduced its defense spending from 22 percent of its gross national product in 1974 to a mere 2.75 percent in 2002. Syria ‘s has fallen from 26 percent to 6.7 percent. The combined defense expenditures of Egypt , Syria , Jordan and Lebanon amount to only 58 percent of Israel ‘s. It is the Arabs who should be worried by Israel ‘s might, rather than the other way round.

    Israel ‘s nuclear weapons are politically unusable and militarily irrelevant, given the real threats it faces. But they have been very effective in allowing India, Pakistan, Libya, South Africa, Brazil, Argentina, North Korea and now Iran to think that they, too, had good reason to build a nuclear deterrent.

    Four of these nations have dismantled their nuclear arms factories, which shows that nuclear policies are not cast in stone. The way to deal with Iran is to prove to its leadership that nuclear weapons will add nothing to its security, just as they add nothing to Israel ‘s.

    This may require a grand bargain, which would mean the United States offering a mutual nonaggression pact, ending its embargo over access to the International Monetary Fund and allowing American investment in Iran . It would also mean America coming clean about Israel ‘s nuclear armory and pressuring Israel to forgo its nuclear deterrent.

    If Western powers want to grasp the nettle of nuclear proliferation, they need to take hold of the whole plant, not just one leaf.

    Jonathan Power is a commentator on foreign affairs.

    Originally published by the International Herald Tribune.

  • Why Shouldn’t Iran Seek Nuclear Weapons?

    It now seems difficult to dispute that the Iranian government is developing nuclear weapons, lying about it, and intent on continuing both come hell or high water. Why? Because the temptation for Iran to develop a nuclear arsenal of its own — driven by the contradictions of George Bush’s foreign and nuclear policies — is simply too seductive to resist.

    On Friday, June 18th, the IAEA strongly rebuked Tehran , saying: ” Iran ‘s cooperation has not been as full, timely, and proactive as it should have been.” The next day Iran ‘s top nuclear official, Hassan Rowhani, objected bitterly to the IAEA’s statement, reiterated his insistence that Tehran ‘s nuclear program is intended to generate electricity rather than warheads, and said that Tehran now would resume some of the nuclear activities it had previously suspended.

    In addition, the chair of the Iranian parliament’s National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, Ala’eddin Borujerdi, said the same day that the Majlis might now reject the Additional Protocol to the NPT, which allows unannounced and unfettered inspections of Iranian nuclear facilities. Under both international and Iranian law, the Additional Protocol cannot take effect without Majlis approval.

    Then, on Monday, June 21st, in a development difficult to believe wholly unrelated, Iran seized 3 British naval vessels and 8 British sailors — after Britain , along with France and Germany , had spearheaded the IAEA censure.

    Consider the outside world as viewed from Tehran . George Bush delivers his 2002 State of the Union address, and of all the countries in the world he singles out three as constituting an “axis of evil.” He announces his intent to instigate unilateral preemptive war against any nation that his Administration subjectively determines to be a potential threat. Defying almost universal world opinion, he actually commences such a war against one of those three — decapitating its regime, killing the supreme leader’s sons, and driving that leader himself into a pathetic hole in the ground. And he surrounds Iran on all four sides with bristling American military power — Iraq to the west, Afghanistan to the east, sprawling new American bases in the former Soviet republics of Central Asia to the north, and the unchallengeable U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf to the south.

    Iran , of course, cannot hope to take on the United States in any kind of direct military confrontation. But it can aspire to deter what must seem to them to be a quite real threat, someday, of American military aggression. How? By developing the capability to inflict unacceptable catastrophic damage on American interests or military forces abroad, on the American fleet in the Persian Gulf , or even on the American homeland itself. And by holding out even the mere possibility that it would respond to any American assault by employing that capability immediately, before it became too late, following the traditional military maxim of “use em or lose em.”

    There is, of course, only one thing that can provide Iran with that kind of deterrent capability. Hint: it’s not nuclear electricity.

    It is probably the case that for Tehran the perceived danger of a U.S. invasion is lower today than it might have been in 2002 or 2003. It is difficult to envision any U.S. president in the foreseeable future launching another unilateral preemptive first strike in the wake of the fiasco in Iraq . Imagine the political firestorm — even after a Bush reelection — if the Administration began contemplating another preemptive war, this time on Iran .

    But Tehran has no reason to believe that that shift in geostrategic dynamics has become permanent. It has resulted, after all, from external circumstances rather than from an internal American change of heart (or regime). On the contrary, it probably provides the mullahs with all the more reason to press ahead, in order to obtain the Great Deterrent before the Great Satan has a chance to regroup and refocus.

    Looming over Iran ‘s immediate perception of American threat is the nuclear double standard that so many other nations so resent. George Bush insists that selected other countries have no right to possess nuclear weapons, while at the same time making abundantly clear that we intend to retain thousands in perpetuity. To the rest of the world this is sanctimonious and self-righteous, suggesting that in our view we can be “trusted” with these weapons while others cannot. Such a position is factually questionable. It is morally indefensible. And it is utterly politically unsustainable.

    On Monday, June 21st, IAEA chief Mohamed El-Baradei delivered a blistering speech blaming this posture for much of his difficulty stemming nuclear proliferation in Iran and elsewhere. The time has come, he said, to “abandon the unworkable notion that it is morally reprehensible for some countries to pursue nuclear weapons but morally acceptable for others to rely on them.”

    This is especially true when the original Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) is understood in its original context. The NPT was not just a framework to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. It was, instead, a grand bargain — where the great many “nuclear have-nots” agreed to forego nuclear weapons while the few “nuclear haves” agreed eventually to get rid of theirs. Moreover, the United States recommitted itself to this covenant at the 30-year NPT Review Conference in spring 2000, where the NPT’s nuclear signatories pledged “an unequivocal undertaking . to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”

    But the Bush Administration, rather than moving toward total elimination, is instead pursuing perpetual possession. Its Strangelovian nuclear war fighting posture contains plans for bunker busting “mini-nukes” — an oxymoron if there ever was one. (Just this June 15th the U.S. Senate — in a move probably not unnoticed in Tehran — endorsed new funding to study the development of such weapons.) It broadens the scope of military scenarios in which the U.S. might actually initiate a nuclear first-strike. It envisions new generations of strategic nuclear missiles in 2020, 2030, and 2040! Yet it says not one word about any “unequivocal undertaking” toward abolition.

    It is not just Tehran that, in all likelihood, is violating the NPT by pursuing a nuclear weapon capability. It is also Washington that is violating the NPT — by insisting on retaining our own nuclear weapon capability apparently for time everlasting.

    Earlier this month the Bush Administration announced plans to reduce our active nuclear inventory to no more than 2200 by 2012 (though thousands more would still be maintained “in reserve”). This would place us in compliance with the Moscow Treaty of 2002. But it would do almost nothing to reduce the actual dangers posed by nuclear weapons today. How does simple bean counting reduce the risk of nuclear terror, or a fatal nuclear miscalculation in a hot political crisis, or accidental atomic apocalypse? (Nuclear weapons, after all, are the prototypical example of the adage: “it only takes just one.”) Why don’t the Moscow Treaty or the latest plan say anywhere that these reductions are part of a larger vision, to be followed by further steps toward zero? How does an intention to reduce our nuclear inventory to 2200 by 2012 make Iran feel safer today (or, for that matter, in 2012)?

    Sadly for both the principles of the Democratic Party and the prospects for nuclear non-proliferation, Senator John Kerry has also conspicuously failed to question the nuclear status quo. He did release a plan to safeguard nuclear materials and reduce the risk of nuclear terror on June 1st, calling it his “number one security goal.” But while his plan said a great deal about nuclear weapons and nuclear materials in the hands of “shadowy figures,” it said very little about those in the hands of ourselves.

    Kerry did condemn Bush’s mini-nuke initiative. But it is one thing to oppose the development of new types of nuclear weapons, another to put the thousands we already possess on the table. Candidate Kerry may have grand plans to reduce the threat of nuclear terror. But he apparently has no plans to confront what can only be called America ‘s nuclear hypocrisy.

    The paradox of such an American nuclear posture is that the one country most insistent about retaining its nuclear weapons is the one country that needs them the least. The paramount geostrategic reality of the early 21st Century is America ‘s unchallengeable conventional military superiority over any conceivable combination of adversaries. Iran needs nuclear weapons to be able to inflict unacceptable catastrophic damage on a potential aggressor — and thereby hopefully deter any potential aggression. But Washington , unlike anyone else, can inflict unacceptable catastrophic damage on any country in the world with our conventional capabilities alone. If any country can deter any attack and repel any enemy without resorting to an atomic arsenal, it is us.

    Our nuclear weapons, in fact, are worse than useless for the real threats to Americans at the dawn of the 21st Century. Our armies and air forces didn’t protect us on 9/11. Our 13 aircraft carrier battle groups (no other country has even one) didn’t protect us on 9/11. And the thing that protected us the least on 9/11 was our bloated nuclear stockpile, our arsenal of the apocalypse. What could a single nuclear warhead have done to stop Mohammed Atta, or to have apprehended him, or even to have deterred him? How can all our nuclear bombers and missiles and submarines put together prevent some odious creature from smuggling a single nuclear warhead into an American city, and committing the greatest act of mass murder in all of human history?

    Nuclear weapons pollute the psyche with the arrogance of insuperable power. They create delusions of domination. With their calculations of mass casualties, they dehumanize our adversaries … and consequently ourselves. And in the age of American hyperpower, they provide American decisionmakers with very few additional policy options or political/military benefits. Yet their costs and risks approach the infinite.

    As Jonathan Schell has persuasively argued, the great irony of the Bush era is that both the Iraq war specifically and the preemption doctrine generally were supposed to be directed at curtailing the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Instead, in all likelihood, they have exacerbated — in both frequency and intensity — the quest by others to acquire them. Isaac Newton’s laws of action and reaction do not apply solely to billiard balls. George Bush’s greatest historical legacy may be the phenomenon of self-fulfilling prophecy.

    It is difficult not to conclude that the foreign policies and nuclear weapons policies of the Bush Administration, far from reducing the WMD danger, are instead leading us on a downward spiral toward immediate nuclear proliferation and eventual nuclear disaster. The only long-term choice is between a world of many dozen nuclear weapon states — where the detonation of a nuclear warhead in some great city of the world will become only a matter of time — or a world of zero nuclear weapon states. The United States can state unambiguously that we intend to walk down an irreversible path toward the light of a nuclear weapon free world. Or we can expect Iran and many others to join us on the road to a darker destination.

    Tad Daley served as National Issues Director for the presidential campaign of Congressman Dennis Kucinich.

  • Nuclear Weapons in Iran: Plowshare or Sword?

    A recurring fear haunts the West’s increasingly tense confrontation with Iran: Is its work on civilian nuclear power actually a ruse for making a deadly atomic arsenal, as has been the case with other countries?

    Next month, the United Nations plans to take up that question at a board meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency, in Vienna . The diplomatic backdrop includes possible sanctions and even the threat of war.

    “If Iran goes nuclear, you worry that Hezbollah goes nuclear,” said Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, a private group in Washington , referring to the Iran-backed terrorist group.

    The Iranian crisis, and related ones simmering in North Korea and also around Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the Pakistani expert who recently confessed to running nuclear black markets, are giving new urgency to limiting proliferation, a central danger of the atomic era. Recently, international inspectors discovered that North Korea may have clandestinely supplied uranium to Libya , demonstrating how an aspiring state can secretly reach for nuclear arms.

    The development of such arsenals is often hard to hide, because it takes place in large industrial complexes where nuclear power and nuclear weapons are joined at the hip – using technologies that are often identical, or nearly so. Today, with what seems like relative ease, scientists can divert an ostensibly peaceful program to make not only electricity but also highly pure uranium or plutonium, both excellent bomb fuels.

    Experts now talk frankly about a subject that was once taboo: “virtual” weapon states – Japan, Germany, Belgium, Canada, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Taiwan and a dozen other countries that have mastered the basics of nuclear power and could, if they wanted, quickly cross the line to make nuclear arms, probably in a matter or months. Experts call it breakout.

    The question now, driven largely by the perception that the world is entering a dangerous new phase of nuclear proliferation, is whether the two endeavors can be separated. And as difficult as that may seem, new initiatives are rising to meet the challenge.

    Last year, North Korea stunned the world by withdrawing from the Nonproliferation Treaty. It was the first time a nation had dropped out of the 1968 pact, setting a grim precedent and prompting warnings of the accord’s demise.

    If another virtual power crosses the line, experts fear, it could start a chain reaction in which others feel they have no alternative but to do likewise.

    Yet a country like Iran can retain its virtual-weapons status – and the threat of breakout – even if the International Atomic Energy Agency gives it a clean bill of health. That kind of quandary is driving the wider debate on ways to safeguard nuclear power, especially given that the world may rely on it increasingly as worries grow about global warming and oil shortages.

    “We can’t give absolute guarantees,” said Graham Andrew, a senior scientist at the agency. “But there will be technological developments to make the fuel cycle more proliferation-resistant.”

    Other experts agree. “The future looks better than the past in terms of this whole problem,” said Rose Gottemoeller, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “At the moment, it’s a very, very fast-moving arena that a lot of people are into and thinking about.”

    The central compact of the nuclear age – what critics call a deal with the devil – is that countries can get help from other nations in developing nuclear power if they pledge to renounce nuclear arms. That principle was codified in the 1968 treaty and has produced a vast apparatus of the International Atomic Energy Agency that not only helps nations go peacefully nuclear but also monitors them for cheating.

    But surveillance has proved far from perfect, and states have proved far from trustworthy.

    “If you look at every nation that’s recently gone nuclear,” said Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute, “they’ve done it through the civilian nuclear fuel cycle: Iraq , North Korea , India , Pakistan , South Africa . And now we’re worried about Iran .”

    The moral, he added, is that atoms for peace can be “a shortcut to atoms for war.”

    Moreover, the raw material is growing. The world now has 440 commercial nuclear reactors and 31 more under construction.

    Experts say Iran provides a good example of the breakout danger. With the right tweaks, its sprawling complex now under construction could make arms of devastating force. Recently, mistrust over that prospect soared when inspectors found that Iran had hidden some of its most sensitive nuclear work as long as 18 years.

    In the central desert near Yazd , the country now mines uranium in shafts up to a fifth of a mile deep.

    At Isfahan , an ancient city that boasts a top research center, it is building a factory for converting the ore into uranium hexafluoride. When heated, the crystals turn into a gas ideal for processing to recover uranium’s rare U-235 isotope, which, in bombs and reactors, easily splits in two to produce bursts of atomic energy.

    Nearby at Natanz, Iran aims to feed the gas into 50,000 centrifuges – tall, thin machines that spin extraordinarily fast to separate the relatively light U-235 isotope from its heavier cousin, U-238. It recently came to light that Iran had gained much help in making its centrifuges from Dr. Khan and his secretive network.

    Iran says it wants to enrich the uranium to about 5 percent U-235, the level needed for nuclear reactors.

    But enrichment is one place that good power programs can easily go bad, nonproliferation experts say. By simply lengthening the spin cycle, a nation can enrich the uranium up to 90 percent U-235, the high purity usually preferred for bombs.

    Moreover, a dirty little secret of the atomic world is that the hardest step is enriching uranium for reactors, not bombs. David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, an arms control group in Washington , said the step from reactor to weapon fuel took roughly 25 percent more effort.

    The whirling centrifuges at Natanz could make fuel for up to 20 nuclear weapons every year, according to the Carnegie Endowment. Others put the figure at 25 bombs a year.

    The Iranians are building a large power reactor at Bushehr on the Persian Gulf meant to be fueled with low-enriched uranium from Natanz. Here too, experts say, a good program can go bad.

    Normally, uranium fuel stays in a reactor for three or four years and, as an inadvertent byproduct of atomic fission, becomes slowly riddled with plutonium 239, the other good material for making atom bombs. But the spent fuel also accumulates plutonium 240, which is so radioactive that it can be very difficult to turn into weapons.

    But if the reactor’s fuel is changed frequently – every few months – that cuts the P-240 to preferable levels for building an arsenal. (And since less plutonium than uranium is needed for a blast of equal size, it is the preferred material for making compact warheads that are relatively easy to fit on missiles.)

    John R. Bolton, the State Department’s under secretary for arms control, recently told Congress that after several years of operation, Bushehr could make enough plutonium for more than 80 nuclear weapons.

    Iran strongly denies such ambitions.

    “That we are on the verge of a nuclear breakthrough is true,” Hashemi Rafsanjani , Iran ‘s former president, said recently, according to the Islamic Republic News Agency. “But we are not seeking nuclear weapons.”

    If Iran wanted to recover plutonium from Bushehr, or a different reactor under construction at Arak , it would have to extract the metal from spent fuel, a hard job because of the waste’s high radioactivity. Such reprocessing plants have legitimate commercial uses for turning nuclear detritus into new fuel, as France , Britain , Japan and Russia do.

    Iran , too, has announced that it wants to master the complete nuclear fuel cycle, apparently including reprocessing. Last year, President Mohammad Khatami said the country wanted to recycle power-plant fuel. “We are determined,” he said in a televised speech, “to use nuclear technology for civilian purposes.”

    Around the globe, experts are struggling to find ways to guarantee such good intentions: not just in Iran , but everywhere.

    Mohamed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, is calling for “multinational controls” on the production of any material that can be used for nuclear arms. If accepted, that would mean no single country could enrich uranium or reprocess plutonium on its own, but only in groups where members would verify each other’s honesty.

    Early this month, Iran signaled that it might be interested in teaming with Russia and Europe to enrich uranium, giving arms controllers some hope of a peaceful resolution to the current crisis.

    Matthew Bunn, a nuclear expert at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, has called for sweetening the deal by guaranteeing members of a consortium lifetime fuel supplies and spent-fuel removal if they forgo enrichment and reprocessing plants.

    “What you need is an incentive,” he said. One challenge, he added, would be convincing states that consortiums “won’t change their minds,” given that nuclear policy makers have often done so in the past.

    President Bush has taken a harder line, proposing in a February speech to limit drastically the number of nations allowed to produce nuclear fuel. Only states that already have enrichment and reprocessing plants, he said, should do such work, and they in turn would service countries that aspire to nuclear power.

    While many experts praise Mr. Bush’s attention to the nonproliferation issue, some have faulted his specifics. “It’s all sticks and no carrots,” said Mr. Bunn, adding that the Bush plan would only feed global resentment toward the nuclear club. “I think you can couch this to be more carrotlike.”

    Down the road, a different approach involves developing new classes of reactors that would better resist nuclear proliferation, especially by making the recovery of plutonium 239 much harder. Many studies, including one last year at M.I.T., have championed better fuel cycles and security.

    “There is potentially a pathway – diplomatic, technical – to see a significant global deployment” of safer technologies and strategies, said Ernest J. Moniz, a former Energy Department official who helped lead the M.I.T. study. “But it can’t happen without U.S. leadership and the U.S. partnering with other countries, and that will require a re-examination of our policies.”

    Mr. Leventhal of the Nuclear Control Institute said too many of the proposals were too timid. Most fundamentally, he said, nations have to turn away from the commercial use of plutonium, which grows more abundant every day.

    “Only denial and greed” can explain the world’s continuing to want plutonium for peaceful uses, he said, and added, “It may take the unthinkable happening before the political process can screw up the courage to put an end to this ridiculously dangerous industry.”

  • Nonproliferation Treaty Meeting Collapses Without Decisions

    A meeting of parties to the  Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty  (NPT) collapsed Friday night after the delegates failed to resolve differences on numerous political and procedural issues, notably how to refer to their own consensus decisions of 2000.

    This was the final preparatory meeting before next year’s review conference and delegates hoped that the meeting would produce recommendations for the conference, as preparatory meetings have in the past.  Hours after the meeting was supposed to have ended, the meeting was simply adjourned with a final report containing minimum details.  Breaking its own rules of procedure, the meeting did not even resume in open session to formally close it proceedings.  Most of the meetings in the last week were held behind closed doors.

    The political debate at the heart of all the procedural wrangling was the relative weight that should be given to disarmament and nonproliferation, specifically if the treaty’s priority should be disarmament by the nuclear powers or addressing proliferation threats by countries such as North Korea and Iran.

    The chairman of the meeting, Ambassador Sudjadnan Parnohadiningrat of Indonesia, issued his own summary of the meeting on Thursday night, which was an attempt to reflect all the divergent positions expressed during the two-week meeting.  As such, there are ideas in it to please and annoy everyone.  There was never a chance that all the states would accept the summary as a consensus document, but it had been expected that the paper would be annexed to the final report under the chairman’s own authority and sent to the review conference.

    But Sudjadnan’s paper was strongly criticized in an all-day closed meeting Friday by most of the nuclear weapon states, led by the United States, that insisted the paper could only be referred to in the list of documents and not annexed to the report.

    A key sticking point was whether to acknowledge the final document of the  2000 review conference.  This seemingly procedural question was a lightning rod for the political divisions among the delegates since the 2000 decision includes what has become known as “the 13 steps” – specific actions the nuclear powers agreed to as part of their disarmament commitments under the NPT.  The 13 steps include “an unequivocal undertaking by the nuclear weapon states to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals.”  That undertaking includes signing and ratifying the  Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, reduction in tactical nuclear weapons and halting the production of weapons-grade nuclear materials.  The United States now opposes many of these steps, most notably its rejection of the test ban treaty.

    Because of this stalemate, the meeting could not even agree to seemingly routine items such as an agenda for the 2005 conference.

    Ambassador Sergio Duarte of Brazil will be the president of the review conference, which will be held in New York May 2-27, 2005.

    Originally published by the UN Wire.

  • Seize This Moment for a Nuclear-Free World

    The welcome news that US intelligence agencies have disavowed earlier reports that Iran was hell-bent on making nuclear weapons has given the world a breather. Rational people can now fortify the case against the Bush Administration’s plans to unilaterally and pre-emptively attack Iran’s civilian nuclear facilities. It would be sheer folly to start yet another unauthorized war. Nevertheless, technology used to produce “peaceful” nuclear energy, an “inalienable right” guaranteed by the Non-Proliferation Treaty to its members, also gives countries the technology they need to manufacture nuclear bombs, as we’ve seen with North Korea, Pakistan, India, Israel, as well as other nations who started down that path but gave it up like South Africa, Argentina, and Libya

    During this blessed respite from war against a potential nuclear state, let’s not squander our opportunity for greater security. All nations should be brought to the table to negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons. Let us follow the lead of Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, Sam Nunn, and William Perry, former cold warriors, who called this year for such a commitment, understanding that the longer we delay, the more dangerous it will be as other countries emulate our nuclear prowess. The US must honor its own agreement under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), put a halt to the development of new nuclear weapons, and take up Putin’s offer of several years ago to cut our mutual nuclear arsenals of about 10,000 weapons to 1,000. Once the US and Russia get down to reasonable numbers approaching the arsenals of the other nuclear weapons states – China, UK, France and Israel, who have stockpiles in the hundreds, and India, Pakistan, and North Korea who have less than one hundred bombs in their arsenals – then we can take up China’s offer to negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons and call all the nuclear weapons states to the table.
    Civil society has already produced a Model Nuclear Weapons Convention introduced into the UN General Assembly by Costa Rica as a discussion document. It lays out all the steps for dismantlement, verification, guarding, and monitoring the disassembled arsenals to insure that we will all be secure from break-out. We must also take up Russia and China’s proposal, offered every year for the past four years in the UN, to ban all weapons in space. That is a pre-condition for Russia and China’s agreement to abolish nuclear weapons as they do not want to be dominated from space by the US. And we’ll also have to include a Missile Ban Treaty and forego provocative US actions of planting missiles in Poland and the Czech Republic, rattling our sabers at Russia, or in the Asian-Pacific region, starting an arms race with China..

    Finally, we must supersede the NPT’s guarantee to so-called “peaceful” nuclear technology, upon which Iran is now lawfully relying, by establishing an International Sustainable Energy Agency as we phase out nuclear power. To think we can control the nuclear fuel cycle, saying Brazil and Japan can enrich nuclear fuel, but not Iran, would create a new system of nuclear apartheid, doomed to fail. Ending the nuclear age would take off the table any plans to go to war against countries with nuclear facilities with which we disagree. It’s totally naive to think that anything less than the total elimination of nuclear weapons, and their evil twins – nuclear reactors – would actually work. Let us not condemn our planet to a state of perpetual war – with unimaginable catastrophes. Giving peace a chance by negotiating an end to the nuclear age is the only practical way out of our terrifying dilemma. Let us seize the opportunity of this brief pause on the path to war and move with hope into a nuclear-free 21st Century.

    Alice Slater is the New York Director of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation (www.wagingpeace.org).