Addressing Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions

May 13th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Below are excerpts from testimony of Dr. Jim Walsh, Research Associate , Massachusetts Institute of Technology, at the hearing of the U.S. Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.

Assessment of Iran’s Nuclear Program

First, construction of centrifuges continues. The IAEA recently estimated that Iran has somewhat over 3,000 centrifuges, and the government has announced plans to build 6,000 more.

Second, Iran has yet to demonstrate that it can run a system of centrifuge cascades at full capacity for an extended period of time. More specifically, it is unclear if Iran can operate fragile centrifuges fed with Iranian-produced nuclear fuel without a major or even catastrophic breakdown.

Third, there is an ongoing mix of achievement, technical problems, and bravado. It is Iran’s interest to claim success in the field of enrichment, to create facts on the ground, to make enrichment a fait accompli. Grand announcements have not always been followed by grand accomplishments. Rumors of technical problems persist for a program that has had many ups and downs over the course of twenty years. Nevertheless, Iran has made progress. It has produced low enriched uranium on a very small scale. It has constructed thousands of centrifuges, and most recently it has inboduced a new centrifuge design, the IR-2, which is intended to get around some of the difficulties it had encountered with the Pakistani centrifuge design it procured from A. Q. Kahn.

As we look to the future, one should probably expect more of the same: big announcements, greater progress in construction than in operation, technical achievement combined with ongoing technical hurdles. As it stands, Iran does not have an enrichment program that can be a reliable supplier of highly enriched uranium for a weapons program, but assuming present conditions, they should come increasingly close to that threshold over a period of years.

What are Alternatives for the Near and Long-term?

Sanctions

Sanctions Have Not and Will Not Induce Iran to End Its Centrifuge Program.

Containment

The same is true for a policy of containment, balancing and reassurance. A containment policy seeks to isolate Iran, while balancing and reassurance includes steps to counter the Islamic Republic by strengthening the capabilities of US allies in the Gulf and in the region more generally. It might also involve making clear America’s commitment to protect our friends should Iran seek to cause trouble. In practical terms, containment means continuing to do what the US has been doing since 1979. Balancing and reassurance could involve increasing arms sales, stationing US troops, positioning US military assets, and verbal or written assurances from the US government describing how the US would react to potential Iranian provocations.

Use of military force

Unlike the policy alternatives discussed above, the use of military force would address the problem of Iran’s enrichment program. The problem, of course, is that it would do so with limited effectiveness and at an unacceptable cost. A full discussion of the military option is not possible here, but it has been the subject of extensive and detailed discussion, and at least a couple of points are worth noting.

To begin with, the military option is redly a set of options across a continuum that runs from “limited” air strikes against known nuclear facilities up to and including attacks on leadership and strategic targets and the use of ground troops, followed by the removal of the Iran’s revolutionary government. Moving from option to option along this continuum involves a tradeoff. More modest uses of force leave the Iranian regime with a full array of retaliatory capabilities that they could use in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. On the other hand, a larger scale use of force intended in part to attrit the Islamic Republic’s ability to retaliate, necessarily involves larger costs of other kinds: economic costs, a short-term but substantial spike in the price of oil, American casualties, an uproar in the Muslim world that would likely contribute to an increase in extremism and renewed opportunities for al Qaeda and its off-shoots - to name a few. These costs would come-at a time when the US is already fighting two land wars (Iraq and Afghanistan) and is engaged in a broad-based struggle against terrorism.

The magnitude of the economic and political costs would be staggering, would be born by the United States done (there will be no “coalition of the willing,” in name or substance), and would come at a time when the US is already on a trajectory to spend between $2 and $3 trillion dollars on the war on Iraq (including long-term costs such as service on debt, veteran’s benefits, medical costs for brain and other long term injuries, replacements costs for material, etc.)

Any attack on Iran, regardless of how small, would require additional and longer US troop deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, if only as a cautionary move to protect the troops already deployed there. With parts of the US military already in danger of being stretched to the breaking point, the additional burdens of an attack on Iran could carry it over the edge. Finally, whatever progress has been achieved in Iraq and Afghanistan in the last year or so would most certainly be at risk. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine how the US could ever be successful in Iraq or Afghanistan following an attack on Iran, assuming Iran would respond with the express purpose of hitting US troops and undermining the American position.

While most analysts focus on the political and economic costs of the use of force, it is also worth considering the issue of effectiveness. A military attack on Iran would likely set its nuclear program back, but for how long and towards what effect? It appears that Iranian leadership has yet to make a command decision to build a nuclear weapon and public opinion data suggest that most Iranians do not want their country to acquire a nuclear weapon - though support for nuclear weapons acquisition has grown over time as the stand-off has deepened. Both elite and public attitudes would likely change following a US attack on Iran. Both the government and the public would endorse nuclear weapons acquisition. Nuclear history suggests that the emergence of a pro-nuclear political consensus might well prove more important and more costly than any delay caused by the attack itself. In short, an attack may actually hasten the very outcome it seeks to prevent: an Iran armed with nuclear weapons.

Here is the full version of document.

Related articles: