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[Update. I’ve come to the conclusion that the first third of this post is in error, alas. I continue to differ with the view of the New York Times that the resolution is “largely symbolic” — so far, it looks pretty consequential for a symbol — and I don’t know what the Times means by “evidence” in this context, but the resolution is not part of a noncompliance process. It appears that the legal basis for future sanctions emanating from the Security Council will be the previous finding of noncompliance.]

If you follow nonproliferation closely enough, you might have been puzzled by Saturday morning’s news reports about GOV/2009/82, the new resolution of the IAEA Board of Governors referring the matter of Iran to the Security Council for the second time in almost four years.

On one hand, writing in the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler and Joby Warrick reported that the resolution found Iran to be in “breach of its obligation” and “will be referred to the U.N. Security Council, which has the authority to enact sanctions.”

On the other hand, writing in the New York Times, Helene Cooper and William J. Broad wrote that the resolution was “largely symbolic” and “falls short of the diplomatic step of finding Iran in formal ‘noncompliance’ or violation of its nonproliferation commitments, which would provide strong evidence to bolster the drive for a new round of sanctions.”

It will come as no surprise to nonpro wonks that the Times is in error. GOV/2006/14, which referred Iran’s case to the Security Council in 2006, invoked essentially the same language and procedures as yesterday’s resolution. Neither used the word “noncompliance,” preferring “breach of obligation.” More to the point, though, both instructed the IAEA Director-General to report the resolution to the SC.

[Update. It’s not quite so clear-cut; see the comment from Mark Fitzpatrick below.]

Regular ACW readers know that GOV/2006/14 has already led to five SC resolutions, including three rounds of sanctions. As the Bard instructed us:

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.

(No need to dwell on what he wrote about lawyers.)

Safeguards Enforcement for Dummies

Enforcement of IAEA safeguards is a two-step process. First, the IAEA Board of Governors by a two-thirds vote must refer a case of noncompliance to the UN Security Council. Second, the SC acts as it sees fit. (It’s actually four steps, if one counts the reports of safeguards inspectors and the IAEA Director-General.) This process is defined in Article XII, Paragraph C of the Statute of the IAEA, which reads, in part:

The Board [of Governors] shall call upon the recipient State or States to remedy forthwith any non-compliance which it finds to have occurred. The Board shall report the non-compliance to all members and to the Security Council and General Assembly of the United Nations.

Purely on its own authority, the BoG can also suspend assistance, recall equipment and materials, or suspend the membership of a stubborn non-complier. But the SC, per Article 24 of the UN Charter, has “primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security” conferred upon it by the Member States.

As John Carlson, the director-general of Australia’s Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office, pointed out in the May 2009 Arms Control Today, the BoG had referred five cases of noncompliance to the Security Council at the time of writing: Iraq in 1991, Romania in 1992, North Korea in 1993, Libya in 2004, and Iran in 2006. Now there have been six referrals.

SC action is not automatic; no sanctions were imposed against Romania or Libya, whose governments were seen as actively cooperating with the IAEA. But in the other cases, it was more or less a foregone conclusion, and that’s certainly the case this time around. What it takes to get a two-thirds vote in the Board of Governors is not altogether different from what it takes to get a successful vote in the Security Council. That goes double if the sponsors of the BoG resolution include all five permanent members of the SC. The real question is what exactly the SC resolution will involve.

Preview of Coming Attractions

In practice, then, Friday’s resolution does two things. First, it fulfills a procedural requirement, as described above. Second, it makes a statement of intention. The permanent members of the Security Council are signaling that they’re going to act in that format. It’s a good question just how strong or credible that signal is, but that’s what it is — a signal. That’s how officials described it to the Post: as a “clear message” to Iran.

Glancing over the current composition of the SC, I’d guess that once a text is agreed to, Libya will vote against, Turkey will abstain (as it did in the BoG, according to Mark Heinrich of Reuters), and the rest will vote for. (The P5 and Japan voted for in the BoG.) How tough a resolution it will be is another matter; as in 2006, hints are coming from the Iranian side that NPT withdrawal could be on the table.

One final thought. For comparison to the Iran resolutions, see the very gentle GOV/2004/18, which referred Libya’s noncompliance to the SC “for information purposes only.” It used the word “noncompliance” and even mentioned Article XII, Paragraph C by name. The irony is, GOV/2004/18 was largely symbolic. GOV/2009/82, for better and for worse, is not.

Update. In another echo of 2006, Iranian officials are announcing the suspension of voluntary cooperation with the IAEA.

Update. Mark Fitzpatrick writes:

[T]he NYT article wasn’t wrong in reporting the absence of a Board finding of noncompliance, as was the case in the 24 Sept. 2005 resolution (GOV/2005/77). The first operative clause of that resolution said: “Finds that Iran’s many failures and breaches of its obligations to comply with its NPT Safeguards Agreement, as detailed in GOV/2003/75, constitute non compliance in the context of Article XII.C of the Agency’s Statute.” The Feb 2006 resolution didn’t include this language because the only purpose was to forward to the UNSC a noncompliance finding that had already been made. This time I believe the Board should have made a similar explicit finding of noncompliance, using that term. I expect that the drafters omitted it in order to get a larger number of yes votes, and to try to preserve some (very) small prospect of a deal on the TRR fuel.

— Mark Fitzpatrick · Nov 29, 04:45 AM ·

Thanks to Mark for this important clarification. Whether it makes a great material difference is another question, since Iran is already in the dock of the Security Council. Perhaps, though, we should add this distinction to our qualms about how strong a signal this resolution really is.

Update. Another gesture of defiance.

Comment [13]

Lost in the hubbub over North Korea’s claim to have completed reprocessing of its remaining spent fuel rods is one small point: this isn’t news. It’s a reminder only.

Here’s what the KCNA news service has just stated:

In this period, the DPRK restarted the reprocessing facilities and successfully completed the reprocessing of 8,000 spent fuel rods by the end of August as part of the measure taken to restore the nuclear facilities in Nyongbyon to their original state which had been disabled under the agreement reached by the six parties.

[snip]

Noticeable successes have been made in turning the extracted plutonium weapon-grade for the purpose of bolstering up the nuclear deterrent in the DPRK.

Notice that part about the “end of August”? Well, back in early September, North Korea’s UN ambassador delivered a statement that included the following:

Reprocessing of spent fuel rods is at its final phase and extracted plutonium is being weaponized.

Forgive my tone of impatience. But this wasn’t so very long ago, was it?

Before anyone asks, I have no idea whether North Korea’s claims in these matters are accurate.

Comment [3]

It’s a red-letter day: David Ignatius of the Washington Post has been reading Mark Hibbs in Nucleonics Week. He [i.e., Ignatius] concludes that molybdenum impurities could prevent Iran from enriching its LEU far beyond present levels.

No further enrichment, no breakout scenario, right? Well, yes and no.

(The Mo question has been discussed at some length here, starting with a post by James Acton — see Geneva: The TRR and Enrichment Abroad, October 1, 2009.)

The problems at Iran’s Uranium Conversion Facility have been known for quite some time. Paul Kerr in Arms Control Today got a source to hint at this all the way back in 2004, as Jeff pointed out awhile ago (Got Gas? Iran Stinks at Making UF6, August 13, 2005; Iran’s UF6 Is ‘Crap’, September 28, 2005).

These problems probably have nothing to do with sabotage of equipment, as Ignatius seems to have concluded. Instead, it has to do with the withdrawal of the Chinese from the project (under U.S. pressure) ca. 1996. The Iranians had to figure out how to complete the facility themselves, and wound up substituting a key technology (see: Chinese Mixer-Settlers at UCF, October 20, 2005).

For a long time, the Iranians did not introduce their own UF6 into their centrifuges, and relied on a supply from China to test their machines. But as of early 2007, it appeared that the Iranians had resolved these problems, because they started carting UF6 from the UCF to the enrichment facility at Natanz.

The IAEA presumably knows how much molybdenum is in Iran’s UF6, but hasn’t addressed this in the Director-General’s reports; it isn’t germane. But if the Iranians can’t get the stuff as clean as they might like, the issue might have come up in the talks that have unfolded over the last few months in Vienna.

As discussed previously, the Iranians can still enrich to any level they want, but if a certain level of impurities remains in the product, that makes the process more laborious. The product would have to be hauled back to the UCF for further purification after partial enrichment, then returned for further enrichment, and so on. That really does put a kink in rapid breakout scenarios.

On the other hand, compared to the technical hurdles that the Iranians have already overcome, perfecting purification at the UCF doesn’t seem like a great challenge, and we should expect the AEOI to solve that one sooner or later, if they haven’t already.

One other point is worth considering, too. If the Iranians were to build a parallel fuel cycle, they’d probably be smart enough to collocate the parallel UCF with the parallel enrichment facility, which would make it a lot easier to do backing-and-forthing if necessary. Certainly, it will be interesting to learn what turns up at Qom during the inspections later this month, although we’re unlikely to learn before the next Board of Governors meeting, scheduled for late November.

Update: Mark Hibbs comments:

For the record—lest your readers get the false impression of my role in this debate—it should be underscored that I DID NOT conclude in my Oct. 8 article (now I’m quoting your paraphrase of David Ignatius’ piece): “moly impurities could prevent Iran from enriching LEU far beyond present levels.”

1.) We were told by a senior safeguards official in 2008 (a point which I referenced in the Oct. 8 article) that Iran had apparently solved its basic problem at UCF in removing impurities.

2.) We were also told (not only us but Paul-Anton Krueger at the Sueddeutsche Zeitung) that the arrangement which Lavrov had described as a “formula” for the P-5+1 supplying TRR fuel to Iran called on France and Areva removing impurities from Iran’s EUP. I asked Areva over a week ago to confirm or deny that and they haven’t seen fit to respond.

I think it would be fair to say that most of us following this were a little surprised to hear that the impurities issue had figured in deliberations between P-5+1 and Iran on how to handle Iran’s Natanz-enriched uranium to end up with TRR fuel.

I’ll see what I can do on Monday morning to get my Oct. 8 article posted in its entirety and let ACW readers judge for themselves what the situation is. Right now, we don’t have any official explanation for the interest of P-5+1 and/or Iran in having the French purify Iran’s EUP, for the reasons you, I, Paul, Jeffrey, James and others have gone into since 2005.

— mark hibbs · Oct 17, 10:35 AM ·

Comment [7]

There was some heartburn in the comments about the heat-to-light ratio in Jeff’s post on the Washington Post and the Joint Threat Assessment on Iran. So let’s see if we can’t address the same topic from a slightly different angle.

Getting dismissive reactions from senior government officials is nothing new for outside experts who have examined big-ticket missile defense systems. After all, GMD isn’t just some narrowly technical matter. It’s also a political program, not fully subject to the normal rules of defense acquisition. It’s understandably close to the hearts of those who have made careers around it and sincerely believe in the vision of national security policy that it represents.

But one would hope that the EastWest Institute’s U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment, which was very critical of the Euro-GMD (or “third site”) proposal, could get a more respectful hearing in an independent newspaper. To my knowledge, the news side of the Post hasn’t reported on it, so a It certainly deserved better from the editorial page than only a bristling, blistering op-ed by two former officials is the only coverage that the paper has provided so far. The JTA report is not beyond criticism, but it’s a serious contribution, so this is unfortunate.

If the Post has not given readers a balanced or informative presentation, neither have many others. In general, there hasn’t been much coverage anywhere of questions raised about the third site’s viability, or much about the Ballistic Missile Defense Review being conducted by the Administration, which seems like the subtext and the target of the op-ed. And that’s really a shame.

Update. I stand highly corrected! (Thanks, Travis.) There was straight news coverage after all. My apologies to the news side of the house. I will refrain from lame excuses about the unreliable search engine at wpost.com, since I should have seen this in the first place. Comments on the op-ed stand.

Comment [9]

I’ve been taking a blog break, but this one has my dander up.

The Washington Times created a tempest in a teapot with a very silly front-page “exclusive” today. It’s exclusive, all right. The article distorts a quote from Rose Gottemoeller to the effect of, the U.S. would like to see everyone in the NPT:

“Universal adherence to the NPT itself, including by India, Israel, Pakistan and North Korea … remains a fundamental objective of the United States,” Gottemoeller told the meeting, which hopes to agree on an agenda and plan to overhaul the treaty at a review conference next year.

This is not exactly earth-shattering news. It’s the logical entailment of seeking a world without nuclear weapons. “World” would seem to indicate “everyone.” Now, it’s a safe bet that of the four states mentioned by Gottemoeller, North Korea is a lot higher on the list of America’s concerns than Israel. It’s also a safe bet that none of the four states will be joining the NPT anytime soon — rejoining it, in North Korea’s case.

Yet somehow, the Times would have us read these unobjectionable remarks as foreshadowing a demand upon Israel in particular to “come clean” about nuclear weapons, i.e., abandon its stance of “nuclear opacity,” which is designed to avoid unduly provoking the neighbors. Or perhaps they hint at coercing Israel into a Middle East Nuclear-Weapons Free Zone, which is something quite different — and something nobody outside of Riyadh imagines possible. The article makes much hay of the Nixon-Meir understanding of 1969, which Jeff discussed here awhile ago.

Let’s just calm down, already. This is an exercise in free association, not reporting.

Bottom Line

Everyone gets worked up about Israel’s nuclear status because, let’s face it, nuclear weapons are a status thing as much as — or even more than — a security thing. But no one should expect rapid changes. I can’t do better than to quote George Perkovich’s comments at the recent Carnegie Conference:

I also think it’s not constructive to kind of like call out and talk about Israel as having nuclear weapons and that, you know, people ought to come clean and so on. Seems to me the issue is ultimately of disarmament is you take unsafeguarded fissile materials and you try to make it all safeguarded. Whatever form it was in, you try to get it to a form where it’s monitored, it’s accounted for, and it’s clearly not weapons. Israel has unsafeguarded fissile materials. That’s known. We ought to be having a discussion about how you would verify, you know, and monitor all of these stockpiles over time. And it seems to me that can be constructive.

But the most important thing is it seems kind of – and I wouldn’t be defensive about it, but that’s why I’m not in the government – is you invite a regional discussion about this issue. How would we create a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East? And you invite all of the states in the region, and you have the little placards there for Iran, for Saudi Arabia, so on and so forth – and Israel. And I guarantee you, Israel will show up and other seats will be empty. And at that point you say, well, gee, there isn’t that much to talk about. We can’t solve any problems if the states that are needed to solve this problem won’t even come into a room with each other, let alone recognize their existence or have relations with them, let alone have peace treaties. And it seems to me that gets to the nub of the issue, which is you’re not going to get a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in a region where people don’t recognize each other’s right to exist. But I could be wrong.

That, it seems to me, is where the matter stands.

Update: If anybody is still agitated over this, the Jerusalem Post has a chill pill.

Update 2: It’s unfortunate that this sideshow has distracted from the real news, which is the success of the NPT PrepCom. That’s what the story should have been about in the first place.

Further updates: Last week, the Opinionator feature at nytimes.com gave this post of the honor of some attention. Later, Amir Oren of Ha’aretz wrote about this tsunami in a test tube, a tempest in a heavy-water teapot. Now, Avner Cohen and George Perkovich have weighed in with their own take on the story.

Further, further update: Somehow, I missed Laura Rozen’s take on this story.

Comment [11]