The Problem with Nuclear Mind Reading

Abstract

Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size Notes For a discussion of the procedure for finding a state in non-compliance and the cases of Iran, Egypt, Libya and South Korea see the article by Pierre Goldschmidt in this issue. IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Arab Republic of Egypt’, GOV/2005/9, 14 February 2005, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/static/npp/Egypt_Feb_2005.pdf. The IAEA's reports on Iran are available at http://www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Focus/IaeaIran/index.shtml. For an assessment of the Iranian case see Mark Fitzpatrick, The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Avoiding Worst- Case Outcomes, Adelphi Paper 398 (London: Routledge for the IISS, 2008). IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Republic of Korea’, GOV/2004/84, 11 November 2004. IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Syrian Arab Republic’, GOV/2008/60, 19 November 2008; David Albright and Paul Brannan, ‘The Al Kibar Reactor: Extraordinary Camouflage, Troubling Implications’, ISIS Report, 12 May 2008, http://www.isis-online.org/publications/syria/SyriaReactorReport_12May2008.pdf. The video by the US Intelligence Community that contained the first publicly released evidence of the reactor programme can be found at http://www.veoh.com/videos/v7050611ztAGtFDJ. For instance, in casting the only vote against the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 1696 (2006) – the first legally binding call for Iran to halt its enrichment programme – Qatar's ambassador pointed to uncertainty about Iranian intentions, saying, ‘we would have seen no harm in waiting a few days so as to exhaust all possible ways and means in order to determine Iran's real intentions’. The importance of Iran's intentions was not disputed. Indeed, the British ambassador stated that ‘we have given Iran many opportunities to show that it has no intention to develop nuclear weapons. Regrettably, Iran has not taken the steps required by the IAEA Board and the Security Council that would help build confidence.’ United Nations Security Council, 5500th Meeting, S/PV.5500, 31 July 2006, pp. 3–4, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/scact2006.htm. For the complete text of the treaty, see ‘Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’, INFCIRC/140, 22 April 1970. Jozef Goldblat, Arms Control: A New Guide to Negotiations and Agreements (London: Sage Publications, 2002), p. 102. Quoted in full in Mohamed I. Shaker, The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: Origin and Implementation 1959–1979, Volume 1 (New York: Oceana Publications, 1980), p. 251 (emphasis added). IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2008/4, 22 February 2008. United Nations Security Council, 5848th Meeting, S/PV.5848, 3 March 2008, pp. 7–8, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/scact2008.htm. For instance, Joseph Cirincione (a non-proliferation expert) and Ray Takeyh (a Middle East expert) wrote that the IAEA ‘is also satisfied that experiments with polonium-210 (that can be used as a trigger for an explosive nuclear chain reaction) were not part of a larger weapons project’. See Ray Takeyh and Joseph Cirincione, ‘ElBaradei is Quietly Managing to Disarm Iran’, Financial Times, 27 February 2008, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/06a1fa90-e4d7-11dc-a495-0000779fd2ac.html; for another example, which quotes an Iranian official promulgating the same interpretation, see Associated Press, ‘Nuclear Watchdog Says Iran Rejects Evidence Linking it to Nuclear Weapons’, International Herald Tribune, 22 February 2008, http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2008/02/22/europe/EU-GEN-Nuclear-Iran.php. IAEA, GOV/2008/4, para. 21. Ibid., para. 24 (emphasis added). IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2007/48, 30 August 2007, para. 9. IAEA, GOV/2008/4, para. 11. IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006) and 1747 (2007) in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2007/58, 15 November 2007, paras 8–23. This interpretation of the IAEA's findings has been confirmed by a senior IAEA official. Private communication, Vienna, 2008. It would, however, probably be wrong to claim that the IAEA has never commented on Iranian intentions. For instance, given the Foster Criteria, the director general's notable but never-to-be-repeated 2003 comment that ‘there is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities … were related to a nuclear weapons programme’ would seem to be a comment on how he perceived Iran's intentions. IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2003/75, 10 November 2003, para. 52. (See also note 36.) Similarly, in regard to Iran's centrifuge programme, the IAEA did state that it was ‘not in a position, based on the information currently available to it, to draw conclusions about the original underlying nature of parts of the programme’, which suggests that it might be in such a position in future. IAEA, GOV/2007/58, para. 7. Jonathan Tirone and Matthias Wabl, ‘UN Won't Refer South Korea Nuclear Activity to Security Council’, Bloomberg, 26 November 2004, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000103&sid=a..54F3Aqem4&refer=us. IAEA, GOV/2004/84, para. 41. IAEA, ‘The Structure and Content of Agreements Between the Agency and States Required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons’, INFCIRC/153 (Corrected), June 1972, para. 28. Mohamed ElBaradei, ‘Nuclear Nonproliferation and Arms Control: Are We Making Progress?’, Remarks at the 2005 Carnegie International Nonproliferation Conference, Washington DC, 7 November 2005, www.iaea.org/NewsCenter/Statements/2005/ebsp2005n017.html; for a detailed discussion of the IAEA's right to inspect suspected weaponisation activities see James Acton with Carter Newman, IAEA Verification of Military Research and Development, Verification Matters 5 (London: Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), 2006), pp. 11–18, http://www.vertic.org/publications/VM5%20(2).pdf. Russia, in particular, has stressed the need for ‘proof’ or ‘certainty’. See, for instance, ‘Block on Iran Sanctions: Russia Demands Proof of Hidden Program’, International Herald Tribune, 22 April 2006, http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/21/news/russia.php; ‘Ahmadinejad Declares Victory in Nuclear Dispute’, Times Online, 5 December 2007, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article3004070.ece. For a discussion of the effect that an insistence on proof has on enforcing non-proliferation agreements see George Perkovich and James M. Acton, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, Adelphi Paper 396 (Abingdon: Routledge for the IISS, 2008), p. 75. Then IAEA Deputy Director General for Safeguards, Pierre Goldschmidt, wrote about Libya that if it ‘had not admitted that it had a nuclear weapons programme, the Agency would not have been in a position to prove that the uranium conversion and enrichment activities undertaken covertly by Libya over more than 20 years were for such a programme’. Pierre Goldschmidt, ‘Reinforcing Nuclear Safeguards and the Role of the IAEA’, High Level Seminar of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Brussels, 17 March 2005, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=22328. James Acton with Carter Newman, IAEA Verification of Military Research and Development, pp. 26–33. Using either the special inspection provision of the Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement or Article 5.c complementary access (if an Additional Protocol is in force). UN Security Council Resolution 707 (1991), para. 3(b); UN Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002), para. 5. IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2005/87, 18 November 2005, para. 6. IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007) and 1803 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2008/38, 15 September 2008, para. 17(d). IAEA, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and relevant provisions of Security Council resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2008/59, 19 November 2008, paras. 15–17. Article XII.A.6 of the IAEA's statute does envision inspectors having the right to access ‘any person who by reason of his occupation deals with materials, equipment, or facilities which are required by this Statute to be safeguarded’. However, the legal principle of lex specialis derogat legi generali (a more specific law supersedes a more general one) means that this right is not enforceable as it is not contained in the subsequent and much more detailed Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. IAEA, GOV/2008/59, para. 16; Pierre Goldschmidt, ‘IAEA Safeguards: Dealing Preventively with Non- Compliance’, 12 July 2008, pp. 8–9, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/files/Goldschmidt_Dealing_Preventively_7-12-08.pdf. Goldschmidt, ‘IAEA Safeguards: Dealing Preventively with Non- Compliance’, pp. 8–9. UN Security Council Resolution 1441 (2002), para. 5. Such a provision did not appear in Resolutions 687 (1991) or 707 (1991) that provided the initial mandate for IAEA investigations in Iraq. Annette Berriman, Russell Leslie and John Carlson, ‘Assessing Motivation as a Means of Determining the Risk of Proliferation’, paper presented to the 45th Annual Meeting of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management, Orlando, FL, 18–22 July 2004, http://www.asno.dfat.gov.au/publications/inmm2004_motivation.pdf. A good example of this is the director general's claim from 2003 that there was ‘no evidence’ of a nuclearweapons programme in Iran (see note 18). The fact that in the following sentence he added ‘given Iran's past pattern of concealment, it will take some time before the Agency is able to conclude that Iran's nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes’ would strongly suggest that there was indeed evidence (if not proof). IAEA, GOV/2003/75, para. 52. Moreover, according to recent press reports, the director general attempted to make the IAEA's February 2008 report more positive than his technical staff believed was warranted. ‘UN Nuclear Watchdog Could Delay Iran Nuclear Report’, Global Security Newswire, 12 February 2008, http://www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2008_2_12.html. I am very grateful to Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation for pointing this out to me. See also Bruno Tertrais, ‘Has Iran Decided to Build the Bomb? Lessons from the French Experience’, Proliferation Analysis, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 30 January 2007, http://www.carnegieendowment.org/publications/index.cfm?fa=view&id=18993. Paul M. Cole, Atomic Bombast: Nuclear Weapon Decisionmaking in Sweden 1945–1972, Occasional Paper 26 (Washington DC: The Henry L. Stimson Center, 1996), pp. 19–26, http://www.stimson.org/wmd/pdf/cole.pdf. Ibid, p. 21. Eric Arnett, ‘Norms and Nuclear Proliferation: Sweden's Lessons for Assessing Iran’, Nonproliferation Review, vol. 5, no. 2, Winter 1998, p. 35. Pursuant to Article XII.C of the Statute of the IAEA, the Board of Governors also has a few modest enforcement powers such as the suspension of technical cooperation, which it recently exercised with respect to Iran and was called upon to use in the case of Syria in November 2008, although it declined to do so. See Mark Heinrich, ‘IAEA Chief, West Clash over Nuclear Aid for Syria’, Reuters, 24 November 2008, http://www.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idUSTRE4AN5BB20081124?rpc=401&;. This essay does not criticise such practices. Its focus is on the work of the multinational-bodies strand. See note 23. United Nations Security Council, 5848th Meeting, S/PV.5848, 3 March 2008, p. 21, available at http://www.un.org/Depts/dhl/resguide/scact2008.htm. This objection was raised several times during discussions about the ideas raised in this essay prior to publication. This framework is not authoritative or definitive, but is a first attempt to demonstrate that it is possible to distinguish between instances of non-compliance without focusing on intent. Very little information about this event is in the public domain. See, for instance, David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: IAEA, 1997), p. 321, fn. 152, http://www-pub.iaea.org/MTCD/publications/PDF/Pub1032_web.pdf. Goldschmidt, ‘IAEA Safeguards: Dealing Preventively with Non- Compliance’. The IAEA's findings are published in IAEA, GOV/2004/84. Dafna Linzer and Anthony Faiola, ‘US Won't Report South Korea to UN for Nuclear Tests’, Washington Post, 25 November 2004, p. A19. Indeed, as part of this diplomatic offensive, then Korean Foreign Minister (now UN Secretary-General) Ban Ki Moon wrote an op-ed outlining his country's defence in the Washington Post. Ban Ki Moon, ‘South Korea's Nuclear Safeguards’, Washington Post, 8 October 2004, p. A35, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A16508-2004Oct7.html. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJames M. ActonJames M. Acton is an associate in the Nonproliferation Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. Previously, he was a lecturer in the Centre for Science and Security Studies, part of the Department of War Studies at King's College London, where this work was partially undertaken. He is co-author of the recent Adelphi Paper Abolishing Nuclear Weapons.