In December, the U.S. intelligence community released parts of a new National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of the current Iranian nuclear program. It had generally been assumed that the Iranians were working intensely to enrich enough uranium to produce nuclear weapons, and that this effort was linked to a substantial program to build (or import) ballistic missiles. The program was considered particularly threatening because on occasion Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad stated that in a just world Israel (the only nuclear power in his region) and the United States should be erased. It seemed likely that the Israelis would take him seriously, and therefore that a nuclear war would be fought with Iran sometime in the next few years. One of its consequences might be the irradiation of much of the world's current oil supply.
Past understanding of the Iranian program was based on what the Iranians were doing, particularly acquiring thousands of centrifuges needed to enrich uranium. Estimates appeared of how long it would take these centrifuges to produce enough fissionable U-235 to make a bomb. Just how much the Iranians might need would also depend on how sophisticated their bomb design was. The important point was that, once a country has enough sufficiently enriched uranium, it is a very short step to a bomb.
Apparently the new intelligence estimate is based on a unique human source: a senior officer in the Revolutionary Guard organization responsible for the Iranian nuclear program defected carrying papers. Interviews and a reading of what he carried show that the Iranian military nuclear program was stopped in 2003, leaving only a civilian effort. Clearly the Iranians can shift back to building a bomb, but the estimate argues that any such shift would take considerable time. Critics have charged that the estimate is the product of politicization. The intelligence community was embarrassed when its claim that Iraq was building a bomb was disproved after the 2003 invasion. Now it would prefer not to provide the current administration with a reason to attack another country.
The rub is that most of the reports of strenuous Iranian efforts to buy and set up centrifuges came after 2003. They included claims that special deep bomb-proof centrifuge facilities were being built. What is happening here? It is possible that the Iranians first began making their claims after they had decided to abandon their program, much as Sadaam Hussein acted as though he had an active bomb program. It may have seemed to be a good deterrent, or at least a good way of puffing themselves.
Other Iranian boasts of military-industrial prowess seem hollow. For example, Iran's domestically-developed missiles have specifications that seem to match those of Chinese missiles to several decimal points. The "newly developed" Iranian fighter looks remarkably like a Chinese F-5 fitted with a new tail. If the entire Iranian nuclear program is a sham, then the regime may not want to admit as much, for fear of losing face and local influence.
Capabilities vs. Intentions
However, it is also quite possible that this is a classic case of capabilities vs. intentions, the great problem in intelligence. If in fact the Iranians do have tens of thousands of centrifuges whirring away, then they have the capability of amassing the fuel that makes an atomic bomb explode. Making a simple bomb is easy to do, the problem is getting the fuel. The Iranians may have been party to the A. Q. Khan nuclear network, which supposedly sold Pakistani nuclear secrets in the 1990s. Reportedly the Pakistanis got their own bomb design from China, the Chinese view being that spreading nuclear bomb technology would clip the wings of the superpowers. If all of this is true, then it is impossible to talk about a massive bomb program, because the massive part is getting the fuel, either enriched uranium or plutonium. Once the fuel exists, the rest is, unfortunately, relatively simple.
Intelligence gained by human contacts and by reading stolen papers is generally about intentions: the Iranians do or do not want a bomb. Conventional wisdom is to concentrate on capability, not intention. In this case, it may pay to concentrate on the physical facts rather than on what even the most highly-placed defector can say. Hence President George W. Bush's refusal to be convinced; he wanted the Iranians to allow outsiders to know their capabilities, not just their currently-stated intentions. That President Ahmadinejad described the NIE as a great triumph for Iran is hardly encouraging since it may well mean that he had successfully deflected plans to destroy his nuclear program before it produced enough for a bomb. On the other hand, what if the Iranians are concealing a dead program? Who would want to go to war again, only to find nothing there?
None of this is really new. Many years ago a colleague told the story of the NIE on China at the time of the "Great Leap Forward." Mao Zedong had ordered villages to produce industrial resources like pig iron at a horrific cost in food production. Only much later did the size of the resulting famine become clear—tens of millions of people died, perhaps more than one in ten of the Chinese population. None of this was imagined at the time of the NIE. The CIA had secured internal Chinese documents listing what had been achieved. Its representative on the NIE committee pointed out that they matched with Chinese plans. Amazingly, a backward country like China was pulling itself into the industrial world. The "Great Leap" was working.
That was a statement of intentions.
My colleague did not read Chinese, but he did read the language of railroads. He knew what they could carry, and he showed that they could not possibly carry the tonnage the Great Leap required. Not only was it not working as advertised, it could never have worked. He was dealing in capabilities. Because his information was merely physical, and probably was not even classified, the CIA representative wanted to reject it; he offered to allow my colleague a dissenting footnote. Others on the panel were a bit more impressed. My colleague's view carried the day.
We now have a lot less respect for Communist-era internal documents, because we know how often officials lied either to stay alive or at the least to ensure that they received bonuses. Countries like Iran are probably not too different. As for the Great Leap, the villages probably did produce a lot of what was asked of them, but it went nowhere and had no real impact, except to cause mass starvation.
Nervous Neighbors
The Iranians may or may not be preparing to build a bomb, but two large countries nearby already have nuclear arsenals. Over the past decade, India and Pakistan seem to have reached a wary sort of accommodation not too different from that between the Soviet Union and the United States during the Cold War. Each government understands that nuclear weapons are not like other weapons.
Does the assassination of Benazir Bhutto change the situation? For years the typical Indian explanation of Pakistani politics has been that Islamic fanatics are gaining power. In the Indian view, the decisive step was taken years ago, when President Zia ul-Haq (himself assassinated) decided to broaden his political base by giving the same weight to degrees from religious schools (Madrassahs) as to degrees from conventional schools. As a result, many in the Pakistani military and, more importantly, its security services think in fundamentalist terms.
This shift in the military makes it difficult, for example, for President Pervez Mussharaf to attack fundamentalist organizations like the Taliban, or to send troops into the tribal areas in which Osama bin Laden is said to be hiding. Even so, the fundamentalists seem to hate him enough to have tried several times to kill him. Since the idea of accepting a female leader is entirely unacceptable to such groups, they tried several times to kill Mrs. Bhutto. They are certainly likely candidates for the recent crime, and an audio tape has surfaced in which an al Qaeda operative praises the killers.
In the Indian view, fundamentalists in Pakistan are a deadly threat. They have sent terrorists into India and they have fought in Kashmir. They hate India as a secular state, and they have particular hatred for Hindus, who they regard as less-than-human idolators. At present the Pakistani government limits the power of fundamentalist movements in its territory, but one might imagine that Pakistan is so unstable that inevitably its military—including its nuclear arsenal—will fall into fundamentalist hands.
That perception is why the current situation is so dangerous. An Indian government that saw the Bhutto assassination as a warning that the fundamentalists were winning, might feel that pre-emption was the only way to avoid a later nuclear attack. It might argue internally that fundamentalists have so little regard for human life that they cannot be deterred. We can only hope that such ideas are not being taken very seriously in New Delhi.