IRAQ - Will USA Attack Iran?

To begin enriching raw uranium into fissile material, as Iran now may have done, is to take a fateful step down the path of nuclear capability. That is because it is perhaps the most difficult aspect of developing a nuclear power - or weapons - programme. The Bush administration has made it clear on more than one occasion that it will not tolerate a nuclear Iran. Whether or not there would be a US-led attack on Iran remains to be seen.

Centrifuge enrichment is a sort of "technological ballet", requiring thousands of thin tubes to spin at outrageous speeds, each feeding a thin stream of uranium gas along to a neighbouring tube, until the gas reaches the end of the cascade line. And once a nation has mastered the art of enriching uranium for a power plant, it does not take much more effort to increase the concentration of fissile elements to the level required for bombs. Thus, Iran may already have collected almost everything it requires, if it wants to become a member of the nuclear weapons club.

"I don't see that they need anything more except knowledge and experience, and they'll get that by running the [enrichment] cascade", says David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security in Washington. Does this mean a US-led attack would be imminent if all hope is lost?

Javad Vaeidi, a senior Iranian nuclear negotiator and deputy secretary of the Supreme National Council (SNSC), on Feb. 14 told reporters in Tehran that work had resumed at Iran's main enrichment plant at Natanz. The work is preliminary, and the amount of enriched uranium it might produce would be small, as Iran's existing enrichment cascade is only an experimental one. To produce usable amounts of enrichment material, Iran must still construct a larger facility, said Vaedi, noting: "We need time to have 60,000 centrifuges".

Last week Iran also said it had postponed indefinitely talks with Russia on a plan to enrich uranium on Russian territory, to allay fears that it would build an atomic weapon. In a joint statement, Russia and France immediately called on Tehran to reconsider, and to halt enrichment work. Then Tehran said it was still considering the Moscow proposal and would meet with the Russians later this month.

The US has also criticised Iran for its recent enrichment activities. "They're continuing to choose defiance and confrontation over co-operation and diplomacy", said White House press secretary Scott McClellan on Feb. 13. On Feb. 4, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported Iran to the UN Security Council, calling on it to stop all enrichment-related activities. Iran has retaliated by ending some of its co-operation with IAEA inspectors.

Iran has long maintained that its nuclear activities are solely for the purpose of nuclear power, and that enrichment for civilian purposes is not outlawed by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), of which Iran is a signatory.

Enrichment of uranium is necessary because, as it comes out of the ground, uranium is just a lump of natural material. But it is a natural material with potential. It is all a matter of isotopes, which are forms of the same element that have different numbers of neutrons in their nuclei. Ninety-nine percent of uranium is the unexciting U-238 isotope. But the other 1% is the isotope U-235, which is slightly lighter, has three fewer neutrons, and can be split to release astounding amounts of energy. The point of enrichment is to increase the percentage of U-235 - to the 5% level for fuel for nuclear power plants, and to the 90% level for nuclear weapons.

The first step is to take uranium ore and mill it. Then this crumbled material is heated to produce a gas, uranium hexafluoride. In the centrifuge process - invented in the 1960s - this gas is then fed into a cylinder spinning at high speed. The heavier U-238 isotopes are spun to the outside, while the lighter U-235 stays closer to the vertical axis, where it can be drawn off. This slightly enriched gas is then fed into another centrifuge, where it is enriched more. It is then drawn off, and fed into another, and so on down a line of thousands of spinning tubes. Once it has reached the desired concentration, after much effort and use of electricity, the gas cools and solidifies, and the material is milled into a usable form.

Starting this process is much more difficult than simply continuing it. Thus production of a bomb core, which is 90% enriched, requires only about 25% more effort than producing 5% enriched fuel rods for civilian power reactors, estimates Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security. It will take Iran some time to get its enrichment technology under control, says Albright, given that the experimental centrifuge cascade at Natanz has long lain idle.

Moisture has penetrated the system, corroding pipes. Vacuum in the system must be secure for the cascade to work perfectly. If Iran proceeds to a production cascade of thousands of centrifuges, it is now unlikely to build it at Natanz, says Albright. For security purposes, the Iranians would hide it in a new facility, perhaps among the many light industries clustered around Tehran.

Charles D. Ferguson, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in The Boston Globe of Feb. 14 that the US may attack Iran. He said: "...On Dec. 15, 1998, chief UN weapons inspector, Richard Butler, reported to the Security Council that Iraq had not provided 'full cooperation' to the inspectors. The next day, President Bill Clinton ordered US forces to strike targets in Iraq. Over a four-day period, Operation Desert Fox struck about 100 Iraqi facilities. The goal was to degrade and diminish Saddam Hussein's ability to use...[WMD] as well as his conventional military. Militarily, Desert Fox appeared to be a smashing success. It hit 85% of its targets and 74% of all strikes were highly effective, according to Pentagon analysts. Strategically, the military campaign was a blunder and sowed the seeds of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. The 1998 attack splintered the coalition which President George H. W. Bush painstakingly assembled in 1990 during the lead-up to the 1991 Gulf War. Neither Clinton, nor his successor...George W. Bush, was able to reunite this large group of nations dedicated to stopping Saddam from getting...[WMD]. Another unintended consequence was that the US lost practically all credible intelligence about Iraqi WMD-related activities. UN inspectors were shut out of Iraq until late 2002, when Bush formed a much weaker coalition".

"But by then, worst-case thinking had seized hold of the imagination of intelligence analysts and policy makers who were trying to look inside the black box of Iraq's purported WMD programs. Continued intransigence by Saddam was taken as further proof that he had WMD. So Bush launched Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003, and almost three years later, the US remains bogged down in Iraq. When US government officials talk of keeping the military option 'on the table' with Iran, they seem to have not learned valuable lessons from the showdown with Iraq.

"An all-out military attack against Iran is out of the question because American forces are stretched too thin in Iraq and Afghanistan. A limited US surgical strike against Iranian nuclear facilities would bring down international censure on the US. While the Bush administration may be prepared to weather that storm, the far more dangerous consequence is that military action could stimulate a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"Tehran may not have crossed the nuclear Rubicon with a political decision to make nuclear weapons. But a US attack would undoubtedly convince Iran's leaders to take that momentous step and would prevent...[IAEA] inspectors from having access to Iran's nuclear program. Fortunately, based on what the inspectors have discovered to date, there appears to be time to resolve the nuclear dilemma diplomatically.

"Iran's recent decision to restart research on uranium enrichment was designed to send a political message and to allow its scientists to solve serious technical problems. Despite the worst-case thinking of a few analysts that Iran is probably months away from making a nuclear bomb, virtually all reliable estimates place Iran five to 10 years away.

"Bush recently put his finger on the crux of the problem by saying, "I don't believe non-transparent regimes...should be allowed to gain the technologies necessary to make a [nuclear] weapon". Clearly, Iran should be more open about what it intends to do with its nuclear program. Similarly, the...[US] should be more transparent about its intentions concerning Iran. The president should pledge that the...[US] would not attack a non-nuclear Iran. He should then make clear that the US is prepared to engage in talks with Iran about its security concerns provided that Tehran suspends its sensitive nuclear activities".

On Jan. 11, in the presence of IAEA inspectors, Iran removed the seals at the Natanz Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant 250 km south of Tehran. Tehran insisted it took this step in order to conduct nuclear fuel research and not to produce large quantities of enriched uranium. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei  acknowledged that Iran intended to produce enriched uranium on a "small scale". Yet in an interview with Newsweek, jhe said: "If [the Iranians] have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponization program along the way, they are really not very far - a few months - from a weapon".

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei challenged the West by declaring that Tehran would not give up its nuclear programme "which has been achieved by the talented youth of the country". Washington has long voiced the view that oil and gas-rich Iran does not need to develop atomic power and that Tehran only wants a nuclear reactor, which the Russians will complete by end-2006, in order to develop nuclear weapons.

According to a Washington Post staff writer, Dafna Linzer, "A major US intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon". If this is correct, the time required for the Iranian government to create a nuclear weapon is practically twice the previous estimate of five years, which was based on the firsthand knowledge of US government sources. But even if this new estimate buttresses uncertainties as to whether Iran's theocrats have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, it goes without saying that the US would prefer that Iran not acquire any nuclear reactors.

Many argue in Washington that if Iran develops an atomic weapon it will certainly use it as a means to expand and consolidate its sphere of influence in the Middle East. Others believe a bomb would enable Iran to pursue a much more aggressive policy against Israel.

Some Western states fear that elements inside the Iranian theocracy would secretly provide fissile material to Islamist terrorists around the world. The main counter-argument put forward by Iran is that under the NPT it can develop a nuclear fuel cycle with inspection. As for creating an atomic weapon - should Iran choose to do so - a number of rationales are being discussed by think tanks in Tehran.

The first argument is that Iran's neighbourhood is bristling with nuclear weapons. Three nuclear powers, Pakistan, Israel and Russia, are on Iran's doorstep, and two others, India and China, are not far away. Iran is surrounded by a US military presence in Afghanistan, Turkey, Iraq and Central Asia, and American warships armed with long-range missiles navigate the Persian Gulf.

The leadership in Iran is less likely to accept a full compromise with the West. President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, a little-known former Revolutionary Guard officer appointed mayor of Tehran after conservatives swept the 2003 Tehran municipal council election, has longstanding ties to Iran's traditional conservative elite. Supported by the Guards and the Iranian security forces, Ahmadi-Nejad is said to be motivated to solidify the position of the security faction within Iran's ruling elite.

Besides all these arguments, the development of nuclear technologies has become a matter of nationalistic pride in Iran. Ahmadi-Nejad has had a hand in cultivating this trend by mobilising public sentiment against Israel and the West. Some Iranians believe that US pressure on Iran to give up its nuclear programme is a conspiracy by the Western powers to prevent Iran from acquiring advanced research capabilities and keep it backward and dependent on the West.

Against this no political faction in Iran can afford to argue for giving up on the country's nuclear programme. Yet the nuclear issue is not a problem which concerns Iranians on an everyday basis. A survey carried out by a reform-inclined newspaper in December 2005 showed that more than 65% of Iranians had lost their initial interest in the issue.

Apart from the importance of the nuclear question as a political factor for regime consolidation and popularity, Tehran thinks the West's options are limited. Sanctions, for example, would not be easy. Given the present high price of oil, any ban on Iran's 2.5m b/d oil exports would only raise prices further. And what if sanctions do not work?

A pre-emptive strike against Iran's uranium enrichment facilities by the US, Israel or a US-led coalition, similar to the Israeli attack in the early 1980s against Iraq's Osirak nuclear project, would be a dangerous decision with unpredictable consequences.

Both the US and Israel have the required technical and operational capability for such a strike, but it would be beset with problems the likes of which Israel did not face in attacking Iraq. A US-led military intervention in Iran similar to its invasion of Iraq is unlikely to happen, because it could prove even messier than the intervention in Iraq. It could undermine Shi'ite support for US security forces in Iraq in their efforts to pacify the country. The EU would not support it.

An attack on Iran is weighed in relation to the April 2005 withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon, which has opened up new options for the deployment of Israeli forces to other fronts.

Participation by Turkey in a US-led air war is a factor, following an agreement reached between the Turks and Israelis. While military action against Iran is likely to trigger a broader war throughout the Middle East, however, an air war similar to that of the war against Serbia for Kosovo in 1999 remains a possibility.