ArmsControlWonk.com

As many of you undoubtedly noticed, Scott Kemp and I contributed captions to the slide show that accompanies Bill Broad’s article in the New York Times, entitled A Tantalizing Look at Iran’s Nuclear Program.

It was tremendous fun working with both of Scott and Bill Broad. I am hoping to post a master list of captions when I have a little more time.

The most gratifying element of the story, however, is the incredible emphasis given to the blog and, in particular, your comments. Here is a sampling:

“This is intel to die for,” Andreas Persbo, an analyst in London at the Verification Research, Training and Information Center, a private group that promotes arms control, said in a comment on the blog site Arms Control Wonk.

[snip]

Arms Control Wonk, which Dr. Lewis of the New America Foundation runs, led a discussion of the photo. Most comments focused on parts. But Geoffrey E. Forden, an arms expert at M.I.T., noted that the table also held an Iranian flag.

“Indigenous manufacturing of sophisticated components is something to be very proud of,” he wrote. “And showing them with an Iranian flag is a very good way of graphically proclaiming it.”

It isn’t often that a discussion on a blog is considered part of the all the news fit to print. I am really humbled to have such great readers.

Thanks.

***

Now that I’ve got your feeling all warm and squishy, a little question. I observe that one of the tour guides for the April 2008 Ahmadinejad visit appears to be the same tall, bald guy who led Khatami around Natanz a couple of years back. Compare and contrast:

Now, maybe baldy is just the regular old Natanz tour guide. But he’s shown both Presidents around and I would expect some representative of the senior leadership at the Fuel Enrichment Plant to play tour guide for a big deal like the President of Iran coming to visit.

Also, I obverse that, unlike the other Natanz employees, he doesn’t have a badge — though he is wearing a pin with a logo that might be similar to the one visible on the badges.

Possible candidates could include the individuals identified in sanctions reports as being responsible for the FEP. (Given how those lists were compiled, however, I am little cautious.)

• Dawood Agha-Jani, Head of the PFEP, Natanz
• Ehsan Monajemi, Construction Project Manager, Natanz

• Seyed Jaber Safdari, Manager of the Natanz Enrichment Facilities

My suspicion is that it is Monajemi. He is quoted in the news stories about Khatami’s tour, which leads me to believe he was present.

And the bald guy showing Ahmadinejad around takes over the tour during the visit to the cascade halls that are still under construction — which would be an appropriate time for the construction manager to take over the tour.

But that is just a guess.

Comment [29]

I just got back from the States on Friday, and now I’m off to Brussels for a trip to NATO HQ with some students.

Elaine Grossman at Global Security Newswire reported on my talk at the New America Foundation — You can view it here let me warn Hass and FSB that they aren’t going to like it very much.

A[n excruciatingly] British expert is calling on the international community to more effectively discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons by punishing any and all breaches of agreed safeguards, without first trying to determine intent.

Instead of focusing on those infractions by non-nuclear weapons states that are indisputable — such as engaging in a covert uranium enrichment program and denying access to inspectors — global leaders tend to get mired in futile debates over a violator’s motives, says James Acton of King’s College in London.

An interesting issue that came up along these lines: if you don’t take intent into account, how do you assess the severity of violations? I believe, for example, that running a clandestine centrifuge facility is more serious than diverting a couple of spent fuel pellets for bench-scale reprocessing experiments. It is hard, however, to build up a framework to take these issues into account consistently.

Food for thought…

Comment [45]

I was looking at all the pretty components laid out on the table around the IR-2 carbon fiber rotor with a ball bearing on top and thought “It would be great to identify all the parts.”

So, I sent a note to Scott Kemp, at Princeton’s Program on Science and Global Security, that said, roughly “Look at all the pretty components laid out on the table around the IR-2 carbon fiber rotor with a ball bearing. It would be great to identify all the parts.”

He obliged. (Don’t blame him for the crude outline drawing, that’s mine.)

A. Vacuum casing, with cooling coils wrapped around exterior.
B. Electrical connection for Motor.
C. Lower end cap of rotor and armature plate.
D. Upper end-cap, with hole for feed pipes.
E. Weir baffle.
F. Carbon-fiber rotor, 62 cm long.
G. Magnetic bearing components.
H. Motor winding and stator.
I. Cooling loop for motor.
J. Base.
K. Base with motor.
L. Spiral groove pivot bearing.

Scott has an article coming out in Science and Global Security that will detail the history of the U.S. centrifuge program, including never-before-released technical details and a simple formula for policymakers to estimate the performance of a centrifuge.

It is part of a special issue on centrifuges that will also include papers by Alex Glaser — assessing breakout scenarios using P1-type centrifuges in n 164-machine cascades — and Houston Wood.

Comment [18]

In March, the Washington Post printed two stories by Joby Warrick about Olli Heinonen’s briefing to the IAEA Board of Governors on weaponization work in Iran, based on the notes of diplomat who attended.

I asked “what else is in those notes?” Well, David Albright and ISIS have published the full text of the notes — or at least what I presume is the same set of notes that Warrick and others were given.

Comment [6]

Nothing says “wonkporn” like a centrifuge rotor, especially one made of carbon fiber.

Here is how Iraqi nuclear weaponeer Mahdi Obeidi described his “first time” seeing a URENCO TC-11 segment made of carbon fiber.

Then he showed us a centrifuge rotor, which surprised me because it was a highly classified object. Roughly the same dimensions as our maraging steel rotors, its smooth, dark gray surface reflected no light. Schaab held it gently in his fingers, caressing it as though he had pulled it out of the earth and sculpted it into form with his own hands rather than winding it on a machine.

Yeah, you might want to towel off that rotor before touching it.

So, imagine my surprise when I learned the Office of Iran’s President released almost fifty photographs of Ahmadinejad hanging out among centrifuges, including a couple of shots of him cradling a carbon fiber rotor casing for the IR-2 (above).

David Albright has described the IR-2 as one-half the length of the P1, or about 50 centimeters. MSNBC reports that Ahmadinead is 5 feet 4 inches, or 163 centimeters. tall. The segment does looks to be about one-third his height.

The picture also contains a hand holding what looks, to me at least, like it might, might be a carbon fiber bellows — although I don’t have any reference images to compare. Albright claims that Iran decided to dispense with the bellows, so maybe it is something else or just a piece of junk. Comments are welcome — the photographs are a little hard to make out.

Also, there is another shot with the casing and a rotor with, I think, a bearing on top of it.

Anyway, the pictures are available on on the Iranian President’s website.

In case you want direct links, the images are:

http://www.president.ir/piri/media/mid/28832.jpg
through
http://www.president.ir/piri/media/mid/28881.jpg

Two of photographs are missing. Have fun.

Comment [28]

We’re just four days away from National Nuclear Technology Day in Iran when no doubt President Ahmadinejad will have another big announcement to make. In preparation, Iran seems to have been installing some more P-2s IR-2s (ooops, sorry). George Jahn and Mark Heinrich have both got stories on this, but their efforts have produced some contradictory findings.

Jahn has spoken to three diplomats.

Diplomat 1 said that Iran has completed two cascades of 176 advanced centrifuges—presumably IR-2s in the FEP (the big underground facility as opposed to much smaller above-ground PFEP). He also said that a third cascade is under construction.

As for diplomat 2:

Asked for confirmation that Iran had assembled IR-2s at its underground site, a senior diplomat briefed on Iran’s enrichment program said “not true” but refused to say whether he was denying that the model was an IR-2 or that the machines were underground.

Diplomat 3 “confirmed that Iran had started linking up advanced centrifuges in a configuration used for enrichment. But he said all remained above ground and none of the machines were running.”

Heinrich has also spoken to diplomats (plural) who say that Iran has installed more than 300 centrifuges in two cascades, and quotes one diplomat who says:

One of the two cascades is using the advanced model, the other the older one. There are more machines in the advanced cascade than the set of 164 typically used for the (older model)…

Iran may not have had enough of the advanced one ready yet to put into two cascades. But they wanted to show the world they could go beyond the threshold of 3,000 now enriching at Natanz (despite international pressure) to stop.

What do we learn from this? There’s broad agreement that Iran has added at least two cascades, and that at least some of new machines are IR-2s. Interestingly, it also seems that IR-2 cascades house more machines than P-1 cascades. It’s not clear, however, whether the machines are in the PFEP or FEP and whether they are all IR-2s.

The PFEP was designed to accommodate six cascades of 164-machines. The Agency’s most recent report on Iran suggests that space for 2 cascades is occupied. One space is filled by a cascade of 164 P-1 machines and the other space is taken up by a single IR-2 machine and a 10-machine IR-2 cascade (where some small P-1 cascades used to be). Although the four spaces that remain were designed to accommodate 164 centrifuges, it presumably wouldn’t be too hard to fit 176 in—if you’re prepared to replumb.

Equally, there is space in the FEP and GOV/2008/4 also said that “installation work, including equipment and sub-hearer pipes, is continuing for other cascade areas [i.e. away from the 18 cascades that have already been installed]”. Moreover, installing the new cascades in the FEP might make it easier for Ahmadinejad to claim that Iran was pushing ahead with “industrial-scale” enrichment.

But even if they’re in the PFEP that’s not going to stop him, of course. Ahmadinejad is pretty much certain to make some grandiose claim about Iran’s enrichment efforts in the next few days. With National Nuclear Technology Day just ahead, and a new Security Council Resolution just behind, he’ll be in a defiant mood and keen to convince the Security Council to U-turn because Iran’s not for turning (to paraphrase Mrs T). But, whatever he says, treat it with a cellar of salt. After all, we still have no idea how good the IR-2s actually are yet.

Comment [34]

So say anonymous diplomatic sources to AP reporter George Jahn. Bearing in mind the usual caveats about anonymous sources, this is noteworthy on at least two levels.

First, it is an encouraging sign of China’s (too) slow but promising embrace of the responsibilities that come with being a global power. Remember, Beijing did not participate in NPT negotiations and once denounced the nonproliferation regime on the grounds that it was merely “a conspiracy concocted by the U.S.S.R. and the U.S. to maintain their nuclear monopoly.” This sentiment animated Chinese policy from the 1970s into the early 1990s, when, according to Bates Gill (whose book Rising Star I highly recommend), it actively proliferated to Iran and other countries to “undermine superpower influence while enhancing China’s strategic, political, and economic interests.” Today, however, China is a party to the NPT willing to pass along intel on Iran’s nuclear program!

Second, it further supports my argument from an earlier post that leading powers are not, as some pundits feared, exploiting the controversial U.S. NIE on Iran to avoid responsibility for upholding international nonproliferation norms. Precisely the opposite:

By effectively taking U.S. military action off the table for now, the NIE makes it easier, not harder, for countries like Russia to send Iran a stronger signal about its enrichment program. After all, Russia (and China, for that matter) do not want Iran to develop the capability to deploy nuclear weapons; until the Iran NIE, however, this concern was counterbalanced by a worry that the United States might launch another war in the Middle East.

Now if only CIA Director Hayden would stop second-guessing the judgments of the intelligence professionals…

Update: As many of you know, China has denied this story. The plot thickens…

Comment [30]

I really love WMD Insights.

I’ve been meaning to link to a recent article by Markus Binder tracking how the IC has toned down its assessment of Iran’s CW capabilities:

In the Sec. 721 report covering the first half of 2003, released in November 2003, we see the beginnings of a process of declining certainty associated with descriptions of Iranian CW activity and capabilities. The report states that Iran “likely has already stockpiled blister, blood, choking, and probably nerve agents” retreating slightly from the previous bald assertion that Iran “has” a CW stockpile. [17] A further reduction is seen in the Sec. 721 report for the second half of 2003, released in November 2004. This report confines itself to stating that “Iran may have already stockpiled blister, blood, choking, and possibly nerve agents.” [18]

Finally, in the most recent Sec. 721 report, publicly released in May 2006, but covering activities in 2004, all reference to stockpiles and delivery systems was removed. All that remained was the statement that Iran “continued to seek production technology, training, and expertise from foreign entities that could further Tehran’s efforts to achieve an indigenous capability to produce nerve agents.” [19] Although Sec. 721 reports are supposed to be released annually, the DNI has not publicly released an update since May 2006, and it is therefore not possible to determine whether or not DNI has maintained or modified its 2004 position. The changes in the CIA’s public reports alone are insufficient to reach a conclusion about the wider U.S. intelligence community’s contemporary assessment of Iran’s CW program or its capabilities. Fortunately, although there have been no further releases from the CIA, we do have access to the assessments of at least two other U.S. government agencies for the period 2004 to 2007.

We now have two more 721 reports from 2005 and 2006. Although both demonstrate the declining trend identified by Binder, the 2006 report contains the judgment that Iran “maintains a small, covert CW stockpile.”

Now, the old estimate was that Iran had “several thousand tons” of CW weapons. So, I started to wonder, what makes a chemical weapons stockpile large? After all, as Secretary Powell observed, “Even the low end of 100 tons of agent would enable Saddam Hussein to cause mass casualties across more than 100 square miles of territory, an area nearly 5 times the size of Manhattan.”

Oh, sorry for bringing that up. I feel all weird and awkward now.

As it turns out, “large” is a pretty elastic term that has been used to describe Libya (23 metric tons), pre-1991 Iraq (690 metric tons) and Russia (40,000 metric tons).

What’s the over/under on the size of the Iranian CW stockpile? 1 ton? 10? 1/10th?

Comment [9]

A potentially interesting development in the whole Iran thing…

The next issue of Jane’s International Defence Review (available from here for subscribers) contains an article by Mark Harrington in which he says:

Documents shown exclusively to Jane’s indicate that Iran is continuing its pursuit of the advanced technologies necessary to develop a nuclear weapon, regardless of Tehran’s claims that its nuclear programme is purely peaceful. Jane’s was shown the information by a source connected to a Western intelligence service, and the documents were verified by a number of reliable independent sources in Vienna.

These documents purport to show that:

…an organisation within the Iranian MoD has actively pursued the development of a nuclear weapon system based on relatively advanced multipoint initiation (MPI) nuclear implosion detonation technology for some years, in parallel with developments within the Atomic Energy Authority of Iran.

The article further states that since 2000 Iran has tested these detonators and found them “good enough” for a nuclear weapon (it also discusses the organization of Iran’s nuclear programme but that’s for a different post).

If it bothers to respond to the article, Iran will doubtless claim that these are “fabricated and baseless accusations” (we even can guess the exact words by now). And, indeed, we do need to treat unnamed sources critically. But, not withstanding this important caveat, how big a deal is this?

Well, the development of multipoint detonation systems isn’t by itself proof that Iran is developing nuclear weapons (let’s skip over the question of whether it really is sensible for the international community to demand proof as opposed to good evidence of wrong doing). As this patent from the US government shows, there are legitimate (largely military) reasons for developing explosive devices which involve multiple initiators.

My guess—and I am not certain—is that a multipoint detonation system can be unambiguously associated with nuclear weapons if its “jitter time” (that is, the time spread of the detonations) is particularly small. My knowledge of the pre-1991 Iraqi programme gives us some idea how simultaneous the detonations in a nuclear weapon need to be—Iraq aimed for a jitter time of less than 1 microsecond and ended up measuring it in nanoseconds. However, I don’t know for certain whether there is a legitimate application that requires the same degree of simultaneity. Sounds like an interesting problem to tackle properly when I get some time.

In other Jane’s news: MIT’s Geoffery Forden has a fascinating article in the April addition of Jane’s Intelligence Review where he reveals the location of Iran’s missile launch site. It’s available from here but, again, it’s subscribers only I’m afraid.

Comment [10]

A week or so ago, the Washington Post printed a story by Joby Warrick and Colum Lynch about Olli Heinonen’s briefing to the IAEA Board of Governors on weaponization work in Iran. Warrick and Lynch, apparently, had the notes of diplomat who attended.

I asked “what else is in those notes?” Apparently, quite a lot about the “administrative interconnections” that keep me up at night. (Or is that the jet lag? Or Rusek picking up rounds at the Raven?)

Anywho, Warrick writes today about Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was first outed as Iran’s would-be AQ Khan by Warrick’s colleague Dafna Linzer in 2006 and sanctioned in 2007. (Although the sanctions list ain’t exactly science)

Warrick writes:

Iranian nuclear engineer Mohsen Fakhrizadeh lectures weekly on physics at Tehran’s Imam Hossein University. Yet for more than a decade, according to documents attracting interest among Western governments, he also ran secret programs aimed at acquiring sensitive nuclear technology for his government.

Experts at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) have repeatedly invited Fakhrizadeh to tea and a chat about Iran’s nuclear work. But for two years, the government in Tehran has barred any contact with the scientist, who U.S. officials say recently moved to a new lab in a heavily guarded compound also off-limits to U.N. inspectors.

The exact nature of his research — past and present — remains a mystery, as does the work of other key Iranian scientists whose names appear in documents detailing what U.N. officials say is a years-long, clandestine effort to expand the country’s nuclear capability. The documents, which were provided to the IAEA, the U.N. nuclear agency, in recent months by two countries other than the United States, partly match information in a stolen Iranian laptop turned over by Washington.

IAEA officials say these documents identify Fakhrizadeh and other civilian scientists as central figures in a secret nuclear research program that operated as recently as 2003. So far, however, Iran is refusing to shed light on their work or allow U.N. officials to question them. After being presented with copies of some of the new documents, Tehran denied that some of the scientists exist.

[snip]

Fakhrizadeh is prominent in several of the documents, according to two officials who have seen them. A personnel chart listed him as the senior authority overseeing all the research projects. Another paper, purportedly signed by Fakhrizadeh, establishes spending guidelines for the research programs, while a third sets rules for communication among scientists, suggesting, for example, that researchers avoid putting their names on correspondence that might eventually become public, according to a Europe-based diplomat who viewed the documents.

Fakhrizadeh, 47, who became a Revolutionary Guard Corps member after the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in 1979, is a former leader of the Physics Research Center, which U.N. officials say was heavily involved in drawing up plans and acquiring parts for Iran’s first uranium enrichment plant. He was among eight Iranians placed under international travel and financial restrictions under the terms of a U.N. resolution adopted last year because of his alleged ties to “nuclear or ballistic missile” research, U.N. records show.

This is a really good story. Warrick is particularly careful with the caveats.

This blog has spent a lot of time batting around the NIE’s definition of “weaponization” which seemed to hint that the clandestine program was defined by the administrative links:

… by “nuclear weapons program” we mean Iran’s nuclear weapon design and weaponization work and covert uranium conversion-related and uranium enrichment-related work; we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment.

Replace “we do not mean Iran’s declared civil work related to uranium conversion and enrichment” with “and all the other sketchy stuff Fakhrizadeh was up to.”

Housekeeping

Before I left for Singapore, a couple of other stories appeared on Heinonen’s talk:

• “That is what allowed Mr. Heinonen to make at least part of his presentation last Monday. He knew the most compelling aspect was the video of the work for designing a nuclear warhead to fit atop the Shahab 3, Iran’s most advanced missile. European capitals are within its range, which helps explain the new enthusiasm by France and Germany to lead the charge against Iran.”

Bill Broad and David Sanger, “Meeting on Arms Data Reignites Iran Debate,” New York Times, March 3, 2008. link

• “U.N. investigators want Iran to explain an organizational chart linking projects to process uranium, test explosives and modify a missile cone for a nuclear payload, diplomats briefed on the matter say.

“They said a top U.N. nuclear watchdog official last week gave a detailed presentation of intelligence alleging illicit atomic “weaponization studies” by Iran and naming the man who ran them for the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics.

“In a written summary given to Reuters of the presentation, they said Iran had refused to let inspectors interview Mohsen Fakrizadeh or visit sites where the experiments took place.”

Mark Heinrich and Louis Charbonneau, “IAEA unveils allegations of Iranian arms work,” Reuters, March 2, 2008.

Comment [2]