’s nuclear program is one of the most polarizing issues in one of the world’s most volatile regions. While American and European officials believe Tehran is planning to build nuclear weapons, Iran’s leadership says that its goal in developing a nuclear program is to generate electricity without dipping into the oil supply it prefers to sell abroad, and to provide fuel for medical reactors.
But a United Nations report released in November 2011 challenged that claim. The
that they said makes a “credible” case that “Iran has carried out activities relevant to the development of a nuclear device” and that the project may still be under way. The report said the I.A.E.A. had amassed “over a thousand pages” of documents, presumably leaked out of Iran, showing “research, development and testing activities” on a range of technologies that would only be useful in designing a nuclear weapon.
The report offered no estimate of how long it would take for Iran to be able to produce a nuclear weapon. But it laid out the case that Iran had moved far beyond the blackboard to create computer models of nuclear explosions in 2008 and 2009, and conducted experiments on nuclear triggers. The report said that starting in 2000, the Iranians constructed a vessel to conduct those tests, which was not shown to inspectors who visited the site five years later.
, the harshest judgment that U.N. weapons inspectors had ever issued in their decade-long struggle to pierce the secrecy surrounding the Iranian program, rekindled a debate among the Western allies and Israel about whether increased diplomatic pressure, sanctions, sabotage or military action could stop Iran’s program.
On Nov. 22, the United States and other major Western powers
announcing coordinated sanctions aimed at its central bank and commercial banks. The measures tightened the vise on Iran but fell short of a blanket cutoff. In addition, the United States also imposed sanctions on companies involved in Iran’s nuclear industry, as well as on its petrochemical and
industries, adding to existing measures that seek to weaken the Iranian government by depriving it of its ability to refine gasoline or invest in its petroleum industry.
In retaliation, Tehran issued a blunt warning in late December that it would block the
Strait of Hormuz, the world’s most important
oil transit point, if Western powers attempted to impose an embargo on Iranian petroleum exports. If Iran were to follow through with its blockade threat,
the impact would be immediate: Energy analysts say the price of oil would start to soar and could rise 50 percent or more within days.
Both the Defense Department and the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which is based in Bahrain, made statements that suggested
American warships would stop the Iranians if necessary.
On Dec. 31, President Obama signed new sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s oil exports. On Jan. 3, 2012, Iran’s military sharpened its tone by saying that an American aircraft carrier that had left the Persian Gulf just days before through the strait should not return. Iran did not say what action it would take if the carrier were to re-enter the Persian Gulf. The United States dismissed Iran’s threats to close the strait, saying that the deployment of U.S. military assets in the Persian Gulf region would continue.
On Jan. 12, 2012, pressure on Iran mounted, with the
United States saying it was determined to isolate the country’s central bank, and three of Iran’s largest oil customers — Japan, South Korea and China — getting assurances that Saudi Arabia and other Persian Gulf producers would help make up any gap in supplies if they curtailed oil purchases from Iran. The same day, The New York Times reported that the Obama administration
was relying on a secret channel of communication to warn Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei, that closing the Strait of Hormuz was a “red line” that would provoke an American response, according to U.S. government officials.
Seeking to lower the tone of increasingly nervous discourse as powers maneuvered to intensify sanctions against Iran, Defense Minister
Ehud Barak of
Israel said on Jan. 18 that any
decision on attacking Iran because of its nuclear program was “very far off.” At the same time, Foreign Minister Sergey V. Lavrov of
Russia renewed his country’s aversion to sanctions and military threats against Tehran.
On Jan. 23, the 27 nations of the European Union
increased pressure on Iran over its nuclear program by agreeing to ban oil imports. Under the deal, E.U. members agreed not to sign new oil contracts with Iran and to end existing ones by July 1, according to a statement from European foreign ministers. The embargo will cover imports of crude oil, petroleum products and petrochemical products. It will also cover the export of key equipment and technology for the sector. The assets of the Iranian central bank within the E.U. will be frozen with limited exemptions to permit the continuation of legitimate trade.
Is Iran Ready for Negotiations?
The previous round of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program broke down over a year ago in Turkey after Iran presented conditions considered unacceptable to the West.
But in January 2012, amid the tough economic sanctions adopted by the United States and Europe, Iran signaled readiness to resume talks with the United States, China, Russia, France, Germany and Britain, but its terms for resuming the talks were not clear.
On Jan. 18, the Iranian foreign minister,
Ali Akbar Salehi, said that the country was ready to resume talks. During a visit to Turkey, he said negotiations were under way about the site and date, and that the talks “will most probably be held in Istanbul.”
On Jan. 26, the Iranian president,
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, publicly declared his readiness for nuclear talks. According to the Associated Press, Mr. Ahmadinejad told students in the southern city of Kerman that he is ready for negotiations, but he said that the new sanctions would not force Iran to give in to demands by the Western powers to end its nuclear enrichment program.
Some Western diplomats have viewed Iran’s latest public offers of negotiations as an effort to buy time, allowing the country to enrich more uranium as talks get under way. Mr. Ahmadinejad’s statements did not appear to coincide with any official diplomatic response, European officials said.
Deepening Fury Over a Nuclear Scientist’s Death
On Jan. 11, as tensions increased over Iran’s nuclear program and belligerence toward the West mounted, Iran
reported that an Iranian nuclear scientist died in what was termed a “terrorist bomb blast” in northern Tehran when an unidentified motorcyclist attached a magnetic explosive device to the scientist’s car. It was the fourth such attack reported in two years and, as after the previous incidents, Iranian officials indicated that they believed the United States and Israel were responsible.
The next day, Iran expressed
deepening fury at Israel and the United States over the scientist’s death, and signaled that its
Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps might carry out revenge assassinations.
News of the killing dominated Iran’s state-run news media, which were filled with vitriolic denunciations both of Israel, seen in Iran as the main suspect in his death, and the United States, where top officials have gone out of their way to issue strongly worded denials of responsibility.
Israeli officials, who regard Iran as their country’s main enemy, have not categorically denied any role in the killing, which came against a backdrop of growing pressure on Iran over its disputed
nuclear program.
A Second Uranium Enrichment Site
Also in January 2012, Iran’s top nuclear official announced defiantly that the country
was on the verge of starting production at its second major uranium enrichment site. The new facility is buried deep underground on a well-defended military site and is considered far more resistant to airstrikes than the existing enrichment site at Natanz, limiting what Israeli officials, in particular, consider an important deterrent to Iran’s nuclear aims
The opening of the plant does not significantly affect estimates of how long it could take Iran to produce a nuclear weapon, if that is its true intention. The new facility has been inspected regularly, and unless the Iranians barred inspectors or managed to deceive them, any effort to produce uranium at bomb-grade levels would most likely be detected. American officials have estimated that they would have six months to a year to react, if needed, before the enrichment was completed.
But if it came to that, satellite photographs showed that the new plant is surrounded by anti-aircraft guns, and the mountainous setting was designed to make a bombing campaign nearly impossible.
The C.I.A., according to current and former officials, has repeatedly tried to derail Iran’s uranium enrichment program by covert means, including introducing sabotaged parts into Iran’s supply chain.
In addition, the agency is believed to have encouraged some Iranian nuclear scientists to defect, an effort that came to light in 2010 when a scientist, Shahram Amiri, who had come to the United States, claimed to have been kidnapped by the C.I.A. and returned to Iran. (Press reports say he has since been arrested and tried for treason.) A former deputy defense minister, Ali-Reza Asgari, disappeared while visiting Turkey in 2006 and is widely believed to have defected, possibly to the United States.
Iran’s Reaction to the U.N. Report
Angered by the release of the U.N. report in November 2011,
Iran’s leaders sought to cast it as an American fabrication. President
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran led the verbal assault on the report, saying it had been orchestrated by Iran’s enemies, principally the United States, which he said had dictated the report’s findings.
The supreme leader of Iran, Ayatollah
Ali Khamenei,
added his voice to the country’s bellicose backlash, warning any potential military attackers that they would face a “strong slap and iron fist.”
The comments escalated
Iran’s portrayal of itself as the victim of a campaign to foment “Iranophobia” mounted by corrupt foreign states. But the remarks also appeared to reflect growing concern in the Iranian hierarchy that Israel and possibly the United States might use the report as a justification to bomb sites in Iran suspected of harboring facilities for the development of
nuclear weapons.
In a continuing display of displeasure at being rebuked by the U.N., Iran
boycotted a meeting at the Vienna headquarters of the I.A.E.A. on Nov. 21. Iran was one of 97 countries invited to the meeting, which was held to discuss nuclear issues relating to the Middle East.
The apparent boycott seemed to widen the already yawning gap between Iran and outside powers, including the United States, seeking to defuse the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program.
A month before the U.N. report was released, Mr. Obama
pressed U.N. inspectors to release classified intelligence information showing that
Iran was designing and experimenting with
nuclear weapons technology. The president’s push was part of a larger American effort to further isolate and increase pressure on Iran after accusing it of a plot to assassinate Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States.
The Obama Response
After years of conflict between Iran and President George W. Bush, President Barack Obama spent his first years in office trying to engage Iran diplomatically, only to see Tehran back away from a tentative agreement to ship some uranium out of the country for enrichment.
On Sept. 9, 2009, American intelligence agencies concluded that
Iran had created enough nuclear fuel to make a rapid, if risky, sprint for a nuclear weapon. But new intelligence reports delivered to the White House said that the country has deliberately stopped short of the critical last steps to make a bomb.
In late September 2009, Mr. Obama, along with Prime Minister
Gordon Brown of Britain and President
Nicolas Sarkozy of France, revealed the existence of a secret underground plant near Qom. American officials said they had been tracking the project for years, but that the president decided to make public the American findings after Iran discovered that the secrecy surrounding the project had been breached.
Talks were then held between Iran and the five permanent members of the
United Nations Security Council — the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France — as well as Germany, and led by the
European Union‘s foreign policy chief,
Javier Solana. At the talks, Iran agreed in principle to export most of its enriched uranium for processing, a step that would have bought more time for negotiations by reducing the amount of potential bomb-making material in Iran’s hands for up to a year.
The news raised a tumult in Iran, with conservative politicians arguing that the West could not be trusted to return the uranium. Shortly after the accord was announced, Iran began raising objections and backtracking. On Oct. 29, Iran told the U.N.’s chief nuclear inspector that it was rejecting the deal.
A 2010 Report Raises Questions
In February 2010, the United Nations’ nuclear inspectors declared for the first time that they had extensive evidence of
“past or current undisclosed activities” by Iran’s military to develop a nuclear warhead, an unusually strongly worded conclusion likely to accelerate Iran’s confrontation with the United States and other Western countries.
The report, the first under the new director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Yukiya Amano, also concluded that the nation’s weapons-related activity apparently continued “beyond 2004.”
Following the agency’s announcement, Russia said that it was “very alarmed” by Iran’s unwillingness to cooperate with the I.A.E.A. And in late March, a Russian official disclosed that Russian and Chinese envoys had pressed Iran’s government to accept a United Nations plan on uranium enrichment during meetings in Tehran earlier in the month but that Iran had refused, leaving “less and less room for diplomatic maneuvering.”
Questions of Iran’s sincerity were again raised by its announcement on May 17 of
an agreement negotiated by Turkey and Brazil that could offer a short-term solution to its ongoing nuclear standoff with the West, or prove to be a tactic aimed at derailing efforts to bring new sanctions against Tehran.
The deal called for Iran to ship 2,640 pounds of low enriched uranium to Turkey, where it would be stored. In exchange, after one year, Iran would have the right to receive about 265 pounds of material enriched to 20 percent from Russia and France.
The next day, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton announced that a deal had been struck with other major powers, including Russia and China, to impose new sanctions on Iran, a sharp repudiation of the agreement between Iran and Turkey.
A New Round of Sanctions
In June 2010, after months of lobbying by the Obama administration and Europe, the U.N. Security council voted to impose a new round of sanctions on Iran, the fourth such move. But the measures did little to overcome widespread doubts that they — or even the additional steps pledged by American and European officials — would accomplish the Council’s longstanding goal: halting Iran’s production of nuclear fuel.
The new resolution, hailed by President Obama as delivering “the toughest sanctions ever faced by the Iranian government,” took months to negotiate and major concessions by American officials, but still failed to carry the symbolic weight of a unanimous decision. Twelve of the 15 nations on the council voted for the measure, while Turkey and Brazil voted against it and Lebanon abstained.
After the Obama administration imposed additional sanctions on more than a dozen Iranian companies and individuals with links to the country’s nuclear and missile programs, the European Union followed suit with what it called “inevitable” new measures against Tehran.
The main thrust of the sanctions is against military purchases, trade and financial transactions carried out by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, which controls the nuclear program and has taken a more central role in running the country and the economy.
The United States had sought broader measures against Iran’s banks, insurance industry and other trade, but China and Russia were adamant that the sanctions not affect Iran’s day-to-day economy.
In late November,
a trove of diplomatic documents obtained by Wikileaks showed deep concern among Iran’s neighbors over its nuclear program and revealed that American officials believed Tehran had obtained advanced missiles from North Korea that could let it strike at Western European capitals and Moscow. It also provided a detailed look at how President Obama had assembled support for tough sanctions that had eluded President George W. Bush.
In January 2011, Secretary of State
Hillary Rodham Clinton said that international sanctions had slowed Iran’s nuclear program, and the restrictions seem to have disrupted sectors of the economy, particularly banking and export-related industries.
The Mysterious Stuxnet Worm
Also in January 2011, the retired leader of Israel’s intelligence agency said Iran could not develop a bomb before 2015, an assessment most American officials agreed with. The biggest single factor seems to have been a computer virus — the so-called
Stuxnet worm — that is believed to have destroyed one-fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges.
Stuxnet turned up in industrial programs around the world in mid-2009. But experts dissecting it soon determined that it had been
precisely calibrated in a way that would send nuclear centrifuges wildly out of control, adding to suspicions that it was meant to sabotage
Iran’s nuclear program.
It appears to have wiped out roughly a fifth of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and helped delay, though not destroy, Tehran’s ability to make its first nuclear arms.
After its spread, intelligence officials began to talk of setbacks in Iran’s program that could delay the day it is able to produce a nuclear weapon (a goal Iran denies having).
Many mysteries remain, chief among them was who constructed Stuxnet, which appears to have several authors on several continents. But the digital trail is littered with intriguing bits of evidence, many of which suggest that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.
In August 2011, intelligence officials said Iran was
moving its most sensitive nuclear fuel production to a heavily defended underground military facility outside the holy city of Qum, where it was less vulnerable to attack from the air and, the Iranians hoped, to cyberattacks like the Stuxnet worm.
The Bush Response
The United Nations Security Council voted in December 2006 to impose sanctions on Iran for failing to heed calls for a suspension. In Washington, administration hawks, led by Vice President
Dick Cheney, were reported to favor consideration of more aggressive measures, including possible air strikes, while Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice pushed for more diplomacy.
President George W. Bush sided with Ms. Rice, but declared that the United States would not negotiate directly with Iran until it suspended the nuclear research program. Months of inconclusive talks about talks followed.
The situation was muddied in December 2007 when American intelligence agencies issued a new National Intelligence Estimate that concluded that the weapons portion of the Iranian nuclear program remained on hold. That document said that Iran would probably be able to produce a nuclear weapon between 2010 and 2015, while cautioning that there was no evidence that the Iranian government had decided to do so, contradicting the assessment made in 2005. The estimates given by American military officials in April 2010 are roughly in line with the 2007 estimate. But in June, in the run up to a Security Council vote on sanctions, American officials made clear to their diplomatic counterparts that they now think that Iran has revived elements of its program to design nuclear weapons that the 2007 assessment concluded had gone dormant.
The Role of Israel
In 2008, President Bush deflected a secret request by Israel for specialized bunker-busting bombs it wanted for an attack on Iran’s main nuclear complex and told the Israelis that he had authorized new covert action intended to sabotage Iran’s suspected effort to develop nuclear weapons, according to senior American and foreign officials.
The White House denied Israel’s request to fly over Iraq to reach Iran’s major nuclear complex at Natanz, American officials said, and the Israelis backed off their plans, at least temporarily. But the tense exchanges also prompted the White House to step up intelligence-sharing with Israel and brief Israeli officials on new American efforts to subtly sabotage Iran’s nuclear infrastructure.
Iran’s announcement in February 2010 that it would begin enriching its stockpile of uranium drew a furious response from Israel, which has said it would regard an Iranian nuclear weapon as an existential threat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told European diplomats that the sanctions needed to progress quickly.
In November 2011,
Israel tested what experts said was a long-range ballistic missile, firing it out to sea from an Air Force base just south of Tel Aviv. The test came after nearly a week of reports and speculation in the Israeli news media about whether the country’s prime minister and defense minister had decided to attack Iran’s nuclear complexes.
A Nuclear ‘Trigger’
Starting in early 2008, the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency repeatedly accused Iran of dragging its feet in addressing “possible military dimensions” of its nuclear program. Tehran has declared that all of the evidence gathered by the agency — mostly from the intelligence agencies of member countries, and some from its own inspectors — are fabrications.
An I.A.E.A. report issued in February 2011 listed seven outstanding questions about work Iran apparently conducted on warhead design. The documents in the hands of the agency raise questions about work on how to turn uranium into bomb fuel, how to cast conventional explosives in a shape that can trigger a nuclear blast, how to make detonators, generate neutrons to spur a chain reaction, measure detonation waves and make nose-cones for missiles.
The May report gave new details for all seven of the categories of allegations. The disclosure about the atomic trigger centered on a rare material — uranium deuteride, a form of the element made with deuterium, or heavy hydrogen. Nuclear experts say China and Pakistan appear to have used the material as a kind of atomic sparkplug.
The report said it had asked Iran about evidence of “experiments involving the explosive compression of uranium deuteride to produce a short burst of neutrons” — the speeding particles that split atoms in two in a surge of
nuclear energy. In a bomb, an initial burst of neutrons is needed to help initiate a rapid chain reaction.
Harold M. Agnew, a former director of the Los Alamos weapons laboratory, said the compression of uranium deuteride suggested work on an atomic trigger.
The agency’s disclosure about Iran’s alleged use of uranium deuteride also suggests another possible connection between Tehran’s program and Abdul Qadeer Khan, the rogue Pakistani engineer who sold nuclear information.
A famous photograph of Dr. Khan, whom Pakistan has released from house arrest in Islamabad, shows him in front of the schematic diagram of an atom bomb on a blackboard. A pointer to the bomb’s center is labeled uranium deuteride.
The May report also gave fresh charges on the design of missile warheads. Documentary evidence, it said, suggested that Iran had conducted “studies involving the removal of the conventional high explosive payload from the warhead of the Shahab-3 missile and replace it with a spherical nuclear payload.”
The Shahab-3 is one of Iran’s deadliest weapons, standing 56 feet tall. In parades, Iran has draped them with banners reading, “Wipe Israel off the map.”
Iran’s Nuclear History
Iran’s first nuclear program began in the 1960s under the shah. It made little progress, and was abandoned after the 1979 revolution, which brought to power the hard-line Islamic regime. In the mid-1990s, a new effort began, raising suspicions in Washington and elsewhere. Iran insisted that it was living up to its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but in 2002, an exile group obtained documents revealing a clandestine program. Faced with the likelihood of international sanctions, the government of
Mohammad Khatami agreed in 2003 to suspend work on uranium enrichment and allow a stepped-up level of inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency while continuing negotiations with Britain, France and Germany.
In August 2005, Mr. Khatami, a relative moderate, was succeeded as president by Mr. Ahmadinejad, a hard-line conservative. The following January, Iran announced that it would resume enrichment work, leading the three European nations to break off their long-running talks. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has the right to enrich uranium, but the atomic energy association called for the program to be halted until questions about the earlier, secret program were resolved.
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