Nuclear - Articles

There is an intense debate over Iran’s quest for nuclear weapons and its Uranium enrichment programme which has been discussed in international security conclaves, since the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) publicly raised concerns about Iran’s nuclear program in June this year.  The IAEA, UN’s nuclear watchdog, has observed that Iran had failed to report ‘certain nuclear material’ and activities as required by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), to which Iran is a signatory.

The IAEA has already issued a ‘non-negotiable’ deadline of 31 October for Iran to provide complete transparency and full disclosure to substantiate its claim that it is not seeking to produce nuclear weapons under the cover of its civilian nuclear program. While the most important issue would be ‘to verify the nature and extent of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, according to IAEA Director General Mohamed El Bardei, it is imperative to probe the ‘assistance factor’ in the process of Iran’s quest for nuclear bombs.

Intelligence services in the United States, Israel and Germany have revealed the existence of a clandestine Iranian nuclear program to manufacture weapons but American concerns over Iran's nuclear program intensified in mid-2002, when its intelligence learned of the existence of two secret nuclear facilities�Nantanz uranium enrichment facility, where IAEA has found traces of weapons grade uranium recently and Arak heavy water production plant. A constituent of the so-called “axis of evil�, the US Department of Defense cited Iran as “one of the countries most active in seeking to acquire NBC (nuclear, biological and chemical) and missile-related technologies�. It has also speculated that though Iran has the rudimentary nuclear technology and infrastructure to build a bomb, its success in achieving a nuclear capability will largely depend on the supply policies of Russia and China and its illicit acquisition of adequate quantities of fissile material like highly enriched uranium (HEU), from friendly countries.

There are several possible enrichment methods, but the two that are largely used, are gaseous diffusion and gas centrifuge. In the later method, uranium hexafluoride gas is fed into a high-speed centrifuge, which is a more expensive method but the degree of enrichment per cycle in a centrifuge is greater than that obtained in a gaseous diffusion chamber. While Iran had claimed previously that this technology had been developed from open information and computer simulations, IAEA experts have concluded that the technology was too sophisticated to be developed by these methods. In early 2003, the IAEA was twice refused access to a small complex of buildings at the Kalaye Electric Company in Tehran. The agency had suspected that the Iranians were using this site to research and develop nuclear weapons. The IAEA inspectors were allowed entry only after its hurried sanitization. Nevertheless, traces of weapons-grade enriched uranium were discovered.

This is the second site in Iran where traces of weapons-grade enriched uranium were found. After much coaxing, Iran indicated last August, that it had bought the centrifuges and that the original supplier(s) must have contaminated the equipment. This is where the question arises: who is the original supplier of the centrifuges? Though Iran has not yet identified the source, evidence collected by the IAEA implicates Pakistani companies as being the suppliers of critical technology and parts. The contaminated equipment in question was from a type of centrifuge acquired (allegedly stolen) by Pakistani scientists in the 1970s and used in its domestic nuclear program.

Islamabad denied any links to Iran's nuclear program, but drew attention to freelance scientists from the erstwhile Soviet Union. India too could not escape the Pakistani tirade. It alleged that India is currently helping Iran to process nuclear fuel, design warheads and improve missile accuracy, with some eleven scientists working at the Zelzal missile plant in Esfahan, which is suspected to house a small reactor and a zirconium production facility for cladding reactor fuel. Reports in the early 1990s, citing German intelligence sources, indicated that Pakistan had supplied design information on Urenco G-1 and G-2 centrifuges to Iran.. There is documentary evidence also of Iran’s collaboration since mid-1970s with several other countries including the United States, China, Russia, Germany, France, and South Africa, to develop its civil nuclear energy program.

However, Iran has now started handing over lists of parts imported for its nuclear programme, to the visiting IAEA inspectors which is a key demand of the IAEA. Iran has to satisfy the inspectors; otherwise the issue might be referred to the UN Security Council, which may consider sanctions. Iran has cited the role of ‘middlemen’ in these transactions while concealing the name of the country. Hence, the clandestine nuclear nexus could remain unclear and aggravate future nuclear proliferation.