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Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998, by Rodney W. Jones, Mark G. McDonough, Toby Dalton, and Gregory Koblentz
Iraq’s near-term potential to develop nuclear weapons has been curtailed by the implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 687, adopted in April 1991 following Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. Resolution 687 established procedures for the destruction of Iraq’s unconventional weapons and ballistic missile capabilities and for a subsequent monitoring program to prevent their reconstruction. Operation Desert Storm and the inspection and dismantling efforts of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), assisted by the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq (UNSCOM), are believed to have left no fissile materials and no nuclear-weapons-related production facilities in Iraq.
The U.S. intelligence community believes, however, that Iraq "has not abandoned its nuclear program and is taking steps designed to thwart the inspection process . . . [and] would seize any opportunity to buy nuclear weapons materials or a complete weapon," if these should become available (through, for example, leakage from the former Soviet Union). The U.S. Department of Defense warned that if the U.N. sanctions were lifted and IAEA inspections were eased or terminated, Iraq "could probably rebuild its nuclear weapons program and manufacture a device in about five to seven years." This timeline would be shortened if Iraq obtained fissile materials through illicit sources.
To preserve its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) capabilities, Iraq has resorted to a strategy of frustrating and hindering the U.N. inspection process. Iraq has forgone approximately $120 billion in oil revenues over the past six years—an indication of the price it has been prepared to pay in order to keep as much of its weapons infrastructure as possible. Iraq’s recalcitrance has been particularly apparent, lately, in the areas of ballistic missiles and biological weapons (BW). By early 1996, UNSCOM had come to the conclusion that Iraq had resumed its foreign acquisition efforts to support development of long-range missiles. In late 1997, UNSCOM believed that Iraq may have been hiding a residual missile force of 18 to 25 indigenously produced Al Husayn missiles, which could be armed with biological or chemical warheads.
At the time of the defection of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel (Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law and the official in charge of Iraq’s WMD programs) Iraq disclosed to UNSCOM in August 1995 that following the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait, it had embarked on a "crash program"—in parallel with its longer-term effort—to develop nuclear weapons and to develop a nuclear device by extracting weapons-grade material from safeguarded research-reactor fuel. Iraq also confirmed that, as UNSCOM had long suspected, it had developed an extensive array of biological weapons. This BW capability included 25 600-km-range Al Husayn missiles equipped with BW warheads. UNSCOM remained concerned in 1997 that Iraq may have retained stocks of BW and related manufacturing capabilities. Iraq also revealed more details about its extensive chemical weapon (CW) program, including the fact that it had deployed 50 Al Husayn missiles equipped with potent CW warheads as part of its active forces. In 1996, Iraqi officials indicated to UNSCOM that they considered their missile-based BW and CW weapons to be "strategic" capabilities, for potential use against cities in nearby countries. Although Iraq did not succeed in acquiring nuclear arms prior to the Gulf War, its other WMD posed an extremely grave threat to the populations of neighboring states, including Israel.
Background
Nuclear Weapons Program
After Iraq’s defeat in the 1991 Gulf War, the IAEA discovered that Iraq had violated its NPT obligations by secretly pursuing a multi-billion-dollar nuclear weapons program, code-named "Petrochemical 3," with thousands of workers in numerous facilities. In the course of its sixth inspection, the IAEA located thousands of pages of documents that revealed the extent of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, forcing the Iraqi authorities to finally acknowledge its existence. The IAEA investigation revealed details of Baghdad’s efforts to design an implosion-type nuclear explosive device and to test its non-nuclear components, including Iraq’s plans to produce large quantities of lithium-6, a material used usually for the production of "boosted" atomic bombs and hydrogen bombs. In addition, the inspectors found that Iraq was pursuing a parallel program to develop a missile-delivery system for its nuclear arms. IAEA officials estimated that Iraq might have been able to, had the war not intervened, manufacture its first atomic weapons, using indigenously produced weapons-grade uranium, as early as the fall of 1993.
Uranium-Enrichment Program
Iraq’s efforts to produce weapons-grade uranium used virtually every viable uranium-enrichment process, including electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS), the use of gas centrifuges, chemical enrichment, gaseous diffusion, and laser isotope separation. IAEA inspectors discovered that Iraq’s EMIS infrastructure for enriching uranium was being built on an industrial scale. The program had been initiated in 1982, when the Iraqi authorities decided to abandon Iraq’s reactor program after Israel’s 1981 bombing of the Osiraq research reactor. The inspectors concluded, however, that by the time the 1991 Gulf War began, Iraq had succeeded in building and operating only a small number of EMIS units, near the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center and at a partially completed industrial-scale facility in Al Tarmiyah. The Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission (IAEC) had planned to install a total of 90 separators at the Al Tarmiyah plant and to build a replica facility at Ash Sharqat. At the time of the Coalition bombings, 8 separators were operational and 17 were in the process of installation at Tarmiyah. The Ash Sharqat facility was about 85 percent completed, with no separators installed. The Coalition attacks, along with the Iraqis’ subsequent dismantlement and deception activities, extensively damaged both installations.
Estimates vary as to when Iraq could have achieved full production at Al Tarmiya if the construction activities there had not been interrupted by the war. In the early stages of the inspection process, the IAEA team projected that, had construction not been halted, full production was 18 to 36 months away. A more recent analysis of the Iraqi EMIS program—with the advantage of more information—concluded that the earliest the first goal quantity of HEU (15 kg) could have been achieved was mid-1994, with a more realistic date being somewhere around mid-1995. By either estimate, Iraq had come much closer to a nuclear weapons breakthrough than Western authorities were aware before the Gulf War.
Iraq’s EMIS program went undetected because it did not rely on state-of-the-art, imported equipment whose acquisition might have given the effort away. The Iraqis developed a number of prototype EMIS devices by: (1) using unclassified data that had entered the public domain simply because the enrichment process of the Manhattan Project era had become obsolete by Western standards; and (2) incorporating "modern microprocessor, fiber optic and computer-assisted manufacturing controls into the system to achieve gains in reliability, precision, and availability." Iran also built impressive indigenous production facilities to fabricate the magnets, vacuum chambers, ion sources, and collector components of the EMIS separators. Indeed, the EMIS program might have remained hidden from the IAEA inspection teams but for the fact that it was revealed by an Iraqi nuclear engineer who had defected to U.S. forces after the war.
Iraq’s gas centrifuge program for uranium enrichment was started later than the EMIS program, but given its scope, the Iraqis must have attached high importance to it. The program relied heavily on foreign contractors who were willing to circumvent export controls and to sell classified design information of early Western-type centrifuges and high-tensile "maraging" steel used for the manufacture of centrifuges. Three German experts, Bruno Stemmler, Walter Busse, and Karl-Heinz Schaab, provided crucial technical assistance to the Iraqi centrifuge program. All three had worked on centrifuge programs at MAN Technologie AG, a German firm that was a partner in Urenco, the European commercial enrichment consortium. In separate channels, these individuals advised Iraq on centrifuge design, sold machine tools and maraging steel, and supplied high-speed centrifuge components.
Early in the inspection process Iraqi scientists insisted that development and testing work on centrifuges was carried out only at the Al Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. However, during the 15th IAEA inspection, they admitted that they had also done computer simulation research on centrifuges at Rashdiya, north of Baghdad. The program intensified in mid-1987 and, within a year, work centered on two prototype centrifuges, one using a carbon fiber rotor tube, the other using a maraging steel cylinder. The Iraqis proved unsuccessful in their efforts to shape maraging steel into rotor tubes, or cylinders, on flow-forming machines, but they succeeded in building and testing two carbon fiber rotor machines obtained illegally from abroad.
Based on high levels of foreign procurement, the Iraqis began construction of an industrial-scale plant to manufacture and test centrifuges. Under the code-name Al Furat Project, the plant was designed to make all the components for the centrifuges, and was slated for completion by mid-1991. By IAEA estimates, it could have achieved a production capacity of more than 2,000 centrifuges per year. The project called for the construction of a 100-machine cascade of centrifuges at Al Furat by the end of 1992 and commencement of cascade operations by mid-1993. In addition, a 500-machine cascade was to be built and operated by early 1996, but at an unknown location.
Iraqi scientists apparently did not progress very far with their work on chemical enrichment—a third, laborious uranium-enrichment route. Similarly, while they admitted they had carried out a detailed feasibility study on gaseous diffusion, they maintained that they abandoned work in this area in mid-1987 because they lacked the necessary industrial infrastructure. Iraqi officials initially denied the existence of any activities in the field of laser isotope separation (LIS). In the course of an IAEA investigation during the agency’s 26th inspection in August-September 1994, however, the Iraqi side admitted that a research LIS program did in fact exist but stated that it had made little progress since it never achieved separation of uranium either in the metallic or the molecular form.
Plutonium Separation
Iraqi scientists also organized secret attempts to produce and separate small quantities of plutonium in IAEA-safeguarded facilities at Tuwaitha. One of four campaigns undertaken involved extracting plutonium from one fuel element removed from the Russian-supplied IRT-5000 reactor. In three other campaigns, the Iraqis fabricated fuel elements from undeclared uranium dioxide (UO2) in their Experimental Reactor Fuel Fabrication Laboratory, irradiated this fuel secretly in the IRT-5000 reactor, and then chemically processed the fuel in Al Tuwaitha Building No. 9, a Radiochemical Laboratory that had not been accessible to IAEA safeguard inspectors prior to the 1991 war. As a result of the four campaigns, the Iraqis produced approximately six grams of plutonium and acquired a rudimentary mastery of the plutonium separation process. Without any changes to the configuration of the Radiochemical Laboratory, the Iraqis would have been unable to separate more than 60 grams of plutonium per year, quantities insufficient to produce the five to eight kilograms needed for a first nuclear device.
Weaponization
The program to design Iraq’s first nuclear weapon device and to fabricate its components was centered at the Al Atheer complex, which served as the prime development and testing site; the Al Qa Qaa site and the Al Hateen High Explosive site also played important supporting roles in the program. IAEA inspectors concluded that the Iraqis were focusing their efforts on developing an implosion-type of weapon. The basic design is to surround a subcritical mass or core of fissile material—in this case, highly enriched uranium—with conventional high-explosive charges. These charges are uniformly detonated to compress the nuclear material into a supercritical configuration. The weaponization program was in its early stages at the time of the Gulf War. Iraqi scientists were still struggling to master the high-explosive charges that have to be precisely fabricated in order to produce homogeneous shock waves against the core after ignition.
Violations of NPT Safeguards
On July 18 and August 9, 1991, the IAEA formally declared Iraq to be non-compliant with its safeguards agreement with the agency (INFCIRC/172) for undeclared possession of fissile materials and operations on those fissile materials. Iraq had also engaged in nuclear weapons research and development activities in violation of Article II of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) prohibiting the "manufacture" of such weapons. While the research activities did not constitute a violation specifically of Iraq’s IAEA safeguards agreement, the comprehensive inspections mandated by Security Council Resolution 687 that uncovered the nuclear weapons activities enabled the United States to determine in its 1995 annual report on compliance with arms control treaties that Iraq’s nuclear activities were indeed in violation of its obligations under NPT Article II.
Dismantlement of Weapons Program
The 1991 Gulf War and its aftermath set back Iraq’s nuclear weapons program many years. Many of the installations involved in the effort were destroyed or damaged by U.S. bombing raids during the conflict, although, in some cases, key equipment had been previously removed from them. Other facilities, many of which had been unknown to the United States and its Coalition partners, were leveled by Iraq itself after the war in an effort to deceive the IAEA inspectors about the nature of the installations. French- and Soviet-origin weapons-usable uranium that Iraq had obtained for running research reactors supplied by these countries was placed in IAEA custody and was eventually removed from Iraq.
During the seventh IAEA inspection, in October 1991, the inspectors started to destroy enrichment-related equipment, as well as equipment for the separation of plutonium, which they had discovered in earlier inspections. In April 1992, during the eleventh inspection, inspectors destroyed buildings and equipment at the Al Atheer/Al Hateen site, Iraq’s key complex for designing, fabricating, assembling, and cold-testing nuclear weapons. On September 19, 1994, after an additional 15 inspections, IAEA Director General Hans Blix stated that his agency had completed the destruction, removal, or rendering harmless of all known nuclear weapons-usable material, facilities, and equipment in Iraq that might have the potential to contribute to the development of nuclear weapons.
Long-Term IAEA Monitoring Plan
On November 26, 1993, Iraq formally agreed to accept long-term IAEA monitoring of its industries as assurance that it was not reviving programs to manufacture weapons of mass destruction. The IAEA had already instituted, in September 1992, a periodic survey at selected locations of the principal bodies of water and waterways in Iraq, to help detect any sizable nuclear activity. This was later supplemented by the use of helicopters and vehicles equipped with radiation sensors. The plan also prescribed the ongoing monitoring of selected "dual-use" facilities and equipment that could be utilized in reconstructing the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, and involved the continued use of short-notice inspections. In August 1994, the IAEA established a continuous presence in Iraq that would enable it to conduct no-notice inspections at all suspected sites. On September 29, 1994, Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, then head of UNSCOM, reported to the Security Council that the "commission’s ongoing monitoring and verification system [in Iraq] is provisionally operational," and that a period of testing of the system had begun.
While Ekeus had earlier indicated that a six-month period of testing would have been sufficient for determining the effectiveness of the system, his report did not set a time limit. The United States campaigned at the United Nations to delay, for an unspecified period, the lifting of U.N. economic sanctions against Iraq imposed at the end of the 1991 Gulf War because of the indications that Iraq was still concealing portions of its WMD programs.
At meetings in Baghdad between Ekeus and Iraqi officials on October 4 and 5, Iraq demanded, in language amounting to an ultimatum, that the commission should: (1) declare that all actions required by Iraq under the Security Council were complete; (2) delete the word "provisionally" from the UNSCOM report so that the verification system would be considered complete; and (3) declare immediately the start of a six-month period for testing the system. Iraqi officials warned that, without these three steps, Iraq would resort to a new policy toward UNSCOM and, possibly, against Kuwait.
Ekeus rejected this ultimatum for three reasons. First, Iraq had not completed the actions required and, indeed, was concealing large quantities of prohibited weapons capabilities. Second, the monitoring system was nothing else but provisional insofar as only missile and nuclear monitoring had begun (i.e., the system of biological and chemical monitoring was far from implementation). Third, because of the incompleteness of the overall system for monitoring prohibited WMD and missile capabilities, no assurance of time limit could be given (i.e., only when the whole system with its four components was in place, would a six-month time limit be appropriate).
For the Iraqis, the lack of a specific testing period for the monitoring system implied an indefinite extension of the sanctions. The impending release of the Ekeus report coincided with the eruption of a week-long crisis triggered by the massing of Iraqi troops on the Kuwait border and the redeployment of U.S. forces to the region.
Developments
The disclosures made by Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel (former Iraqi Minister of Industry and Military Industrialization) after his defection to Jordan on August 8, 1995, prompted the Iraqi government to invite UNSCOM Chairman Ekeus and an IAEA delegation to Baghdad, so that it could make new information available about past nonconventional-weapons activities that allegedly had been withheld by General Kamel. These discussions and subsequent inspections revealed that following the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990 Iraq had embarked on a "crash program" to develop a nuclear device by extracting weapons-grade material from safeguarded research reactor fuel. The Iraqis now admitted that they had also pursued an extensive biological warfare program and had produced and weaponized a large number of biological agents, including ten tons of anthrax, botulinum toxin, and an agent called aflatoxin. Moreover, they acknowledged that Iraq’s chemical weapons program had continued until December 1990 (not September 1988 as previously claimed), producing sufficient quantities of precursor materials for almost 500 tons of the nerve agent VX. In addition, Iraqi officials disclosed that Iraqi engineers had made advances in the development and production of ballistic missiles exceeding those that Iraq had reported earlier to UNSCOM inspectors.
The scope and magnitude of Iraq’s WMD capabilities just prior to the 1991 Gulf War was one element of these disclosures. The other was the role that these capabilities played in the strategic calculus of Saddam Hussein. In the nuclear realm, Saddam ordered an accelerated effort to fabricate a single nuclear device as soon as possible. This would have provided Saddam with the ultimate symbol of military power and, possibly, a deterrent against the Coalition forces as the confrontation over Kuwait evolved. In parallel, Saddam readied an alternative "strategic" capability. Iraqi forces filled about 25 missile warheads and 150 to 200 bombs with biological agents and dispersed them in forward storage positions for rapid employment. Similar arrangements were made for 50 missile warheads that were filled with chemical agents. Reportedly, Saddam Hussein fully intended to use chemical weapons and gave local commanders authority to use them at their discretion, perhaps as a last resort if the Iraqi border was breached or in the event Baghdad was attacked with weapons of mass destruction.
Iraq’s interest in preserving as many of its WMD-related capabilities as possible in spite of U.N. resolutions was reflected in its strategy of frustrating and hindering the U.N. inspection process in March 1996, and again in June and July 1996, when the Iraqis delayed U.N. inspectors’ access to legitimate inspection sites. This was particularly apparent in inspections focusing on the ballistic missile program but also, to some extent, on the chemical and biological weapons programs. In this context, on April 11, UNSCOM reported to the Security Council that "the Commission has serious concerns that a full accounting and disposal of Iraq’s holdings of prohibited items has not been made." During 1997 Iraq blocked or hindered a number of UNSCOM inspections relating to its chemical and biological programs, culminating in a standoff with the United Nations in late October 1997 (see Prospects section of this chapter). During this period, Iraq was much more cooperative in answering IAEA inquiries about the "crash program," and also in providing new details about the uranium-enrichment component of the longer-term program.
"Crash Nuclear Weapon Program"
Launched in September 1990, this crash project called for (1) the diversion of approximately 36 kg of IAEA-safeguarded unirradiated and slightly irradiated highly enriched uranium (HEU) from the Soviet-supplied IRT-5000 research reactor and the French-supplied Tammuz II research reactor (13.7 kg of unirradiated Soviet-supplied 80-percent uranium; 11.9 kg of lightly irradiated French-supplied 93-percent fuel; 400 grams of unirradiated French-supplied 93-percent material; and about 11 kg of irradiated Soviet-supplied 80-percent material); (2) the chemical processing of both unirradiated and irradiated fuel to extract the HEU; (3) the re-enrichment of the 80-percent-enriched material of Soviet-origin in a 50-machine gas centrifuge cascade specifically constructed for that purpose; and (4) the conversion of the HEU chemical compounds to metal. The program also provided for such measures as the accelerated design and fabrication of the implosion package, the selection and construction of a test site, and development of a delivery vehicle. The deadline for producing a weapon under the "crash program" apparently was April 1991.
If uninterrupted, the "crash program" might have enabled the Iraqis to extract about 25 kg of HEU from the unirradiated and lightly irradiated fuel by the end of April 1991 (with an average enrichment of 86 percent). However, recovery of the HEU from fuel with higher irradiation levels would have proven more difficult, probably delaying availability of that material until the end of October 1991. Under the assumption that Iraqi scientists would have been able to construct the 50-machine gas centrifuge cascade by early spring 1991 to re-enrich the 80-percent-enriched material and resolve questions relating to the fabrication, testing, and delivery of the device, they might have succeeded in commissioning a deliverable weapon by the end of 1992.
In any case, the "crash program" was short-lived. By January 1991, Iraq had managed only to commission a small-scale reprocessing facility at Al Tuwaitha (the LAMA hot cells) for recovery of the HEU—the first stage of the program. The facility was ready to start operating but all activities ceased there after the Coalition bombing of January 17. (It was dismantled shortly after the beginning of the Gulf War, but not all of its equipment has been accounted for.)
Centrifuge Program
The new revelations of August 1995 confirmed IAEA suspicions that the Rashdiya Engineering Design Center (EDC) had been the central site of Iraq’s centrifuge research and development efforts. Iraqi officials also revealed that in addition to the Al Furat site, which already had been disclosed during the 1991 inspections as the manufacturing site for centrifuges (as well as the site for a planned prototype 100-centrifuge cascade), Iraq was planning to build a 1,000-machine cascade at Taji. By the middle of 1990, the EDC scientists had managed to build five prototype centrifuges incorporating carbon fiber rotors (presumably fabricated abroad) and magnetic bearings. A cascade of 1,000 such machines could have yielded up to 10 to 15 kg of HEU per year, potentially enough for a single nuclear weapon.
By that time the Iraqis had also decided that carbon fiber technology was the preferred option for manufacturing centrifuges, as compared with making them from maraging steel. They attempted to procure a filament-winding machine and enough carbon fiber and epoxy resin to produce 1,000 rotor cylinders, but the U.N. embargo imposed after Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait apparently blocked that effort. In September 1996, it was revealed that the IAEA had seized a filament-winding machine in Jordan sometime in the previous year. Karl-Heinz Schaab, who was convicted in 1993 by a German court for supplying Iraq in 1990 with more than 20 carbon fiber centrifuge rotor tubes, had reportedly built the machine and had organized its export to Iraq via Switzerland, Singapore, and Jordan.
In addition, the earlier IAEA findings had indicated that Iraq had based its centrifuge program on 1960s-era technology developed by the British-German-Dutch uranium-enrichment consortium, Urenco. Following the August 1995 revelations, evidence emerged that the Iraqi program was also seeking to develop an advanced 3-meter supercritical centrifuge, and was apparently receiving technical assistance to that end from Karl-Heinz Schaab. In addition to selling Iraq design blueprints of the advanced "TC-11" centrifuge, Schaab apparently provided Iraqi scientists with three samples of bellows and other components and also assisted with the assembly of Iraq’s single-cylinder subcritical test machine. In this context, during the 29th IAEA inspection, Iraqi officials admitted that the cascade hall at the EDC was being constructed to accommodate supercritical centrifuges.
Notwithstanding this assistance, the IAEA came to the conclusion that, by the time the 1991 Gulf War broke out, no practical progress had been made toward the completion of the 50-machine cascade that would have been used to re-enrich HEU in the "crash program." EDC scientists asserted that they were awaiting production of a number of components at the Al Nida (Al Rabiya) Establishment before assembling the centrifuges. However, the IAEA estimated that, at best, the EDC would have been able to build only about 20 machines, assuming the availability of a sufficient number of foreign-origin parts. For the EDC to have any realistic chance for completing the cascade it would have required "arrangements to procure all the necessary components and expert assistance, through their extensive clandestine foreign supply network."
Weaponization
Prior to August 1995, a missing link in the IAEA’s knowledge of Iraq’s longer-term program to develop nuclear arms concerned weaponization activities for the period June 1990 to June 1991. As part of their new disclosures, the Iraqis provided the IAEA with a detailed document indicating that work on designing and fabricating a nuclear weapon continued at Al Atheer and Al Tuwaitha until the commencement of the Coalition bombing campaign, and that, following the cessation of hostilities, activities centered on efforts to salvage equipment. They acknowledged, for the first time, that activities at those two sites were for the sole purpose of manufacturing nuclear weapons and not just for defining the requirements of producing them.
Among the advances not revealed earlier was the fact that the Iraqi weaponization group at the beginning of 1991 was close to deciding on a final design for an implosion device based on a version that had been under consideration since early summer 1990. Another revelation was that further progress had been made in the high-explosives testing program, with work being conducted on generating spherical implosions.
IAEA Re-assessment
Based on the new revelations, the IAEA concluded that the original plan of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, as set out in 1988, was to "produce a small arsenal of weapons" with the first one readied in 1991. While the weaponization team made significant progress in designing a viable device, the original deadline could not have been met because progress in the production of HEU—utilizing the EMIS and gas centrifuge processes—had lagged far behind. The fact that domestically produced HEU would not have been available for some time led Iraq to modify the objective of the original plan and to undertake the "crash program" to develop a nuclear device by extracting weapons-grade material from safeguarded research reactor fuel.
In its October 1996 assessment, the IAEA stated that the "industrial infrastructure which Iraq had set up to produce and weaponize special nuclear material has been destroyed." However, the agency was aware "that the know-how and expertise acquired by Iraqi scientists and engineers could provide an adequate base for reconstituting a nuclear-weapons-oriented program." The IAEA environmental monitoring regime in Iraq is more intrusive than that under Part I of the IAEA’s "93+2" enhanced safeguards program (see Appendix D on IAEA Safeguards in this volume), enabling the Agency to detect clandestine small-scale activities related to uranium enrichment, "such as cold testing of centrifuges using gaseous feedstocks." However, the monitoring regime apparently does not have the capability to trace certain activities in the field of uranium metallurgy, such as casting uranium metal into a configuration for use in a nuclear device.
This raises the question of whether Iraq has made enough progress in the weaponization process (design of a device and development of the non-nuclear components) to clandestinely produce a weapon if it were to acquire nuclear materials through illicit sources. According to Konrad Porzner, head of Germany’s BND secret service, Iraq has been seeking to purchase nuclear materials in the black market through third parties.
The IAEA believes that Iraq has a workable design but has never conducted a "full-up" test of an implosion device with a dummy core. Although it may make sense to assume, as a worst-case planning scenario, that Iraq would need only the fissile material to build a device, in reality Iraq has not mastered all of the non-nuclear parts of the bomb. It had not conducted the necessary implosion tests prior to the Gulf War and there is "no evidence" that it has conducted them since. For this, a special facility with appropriate diagnostic equipment would be needed, and procurement would likely be detected.
On September 7, 1996, Iraq submitted to the IAEA what Baghdad considered to be the final version of the "Full, Final, and Complete Declaration" called for in Security Council Resolution 707 (1991). The IAEA evaluated the report over the next several months, focusing on those areas where Iraq’s WMD missile activities may have been understated. By mid-1997, the IAEA reportedly believed that it had, as a physical matter, shut down the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Iraqi ambitions and accumulated nuclear technical expertise remains, however, and with it the capability to restart the program covertly.
Post-Sanctions Monitoring
In light of Iraq’s continuing strategy of deception and concealment regarding past and current WMD-related programs and activities—especially biological and chemical weapons, and ballistic missiles—U.N. sanctions were not eased during the period 1995-96. Nevertheless, on July 18, 1996, Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali approved a plan to allow Iraq to sell up to $2 billion in oil for relief supplies over a six-month period. This exemption to U.N. sanctions was to be renewable. Implementation of the "oil for food" deal was postponed by the United Nations until December 1996, however, because of the August 1996 incursion of the Iraqi army into northern Iraq in support of a Kurdish faction.
Earlier, on March 27, 1996, the U.N. Security Council unanimously adopted Resolution 1051 (1996) establishing the export/import monitoring system for Iraq. This system, which was developed by UNSCOM (in conjunction with the IAEA and the U.N. Sanctions Committee) provides for notifications, both by Iraq and supplier countries, of planned supplies of dual-use items to Iraq that could have applications in U.N.–proscribed WMD and missile programs. Under the system, these items will be subject to inspection upon their arrival in Iraq and will be monitored at the end-user site. This mechanism, adopted as one component of ongoing monitoring and verification in Iraq, was expected to assume added importance once overall U.N. sanctions were lifted because of the need to check the increased flow of imported items into Iraq. The benefit, in the near term, would be that the mechanism might assist supplier states in identifying and closing cracks in their current regulations for carrying out sanctions against Iraq.
Continuing problems with the U.N. inspection regime arose in February 1998 when Iraq began further limiting inspectors and declaring off-limits many facilities, including several large presidential palaces thought to be hiding prohibited equipment. After a large U.S. military build-up in the region, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan brokered a deal with Iraq to allow the inspections to continue, but with some changes in format to include the presence of international diplomats as observers at some inspections. Since the agreement, UNSCOM inspections have continued without any known disruptions, but UNSCOM Chairman Richard Butler still reports that not all the information he has requested of the Iraqis has been delivered, suggesting that the inspection regime will continue to be enforced for some time.
Ballistic and Cruise Missile Program
Prior to the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had extensive short-range ballistic missile capabilities, including a stockpile of Soviet-supplied, single-stage liquid-fueled Scud-Bs (300-km range and 1,000-kg payload) and three indigenously produced variants of the Scud-B, the Al Husayn, the Al Husayn Short, and the Al-Hijarah, all three with an approximate range of 600-650 km. Iraq was developing a domestic manufacturing capability for these modified Scuds, which included a sophisticated missile technology base to reverse-engineer these systems. According to then UNSCOM Chairman Ekeus, Iraq had the capability to produce Scud-type engines, airframes, and warheads. Iraq had also undertaken a joint venture with Argentina and Egypt to develop a two-stage solid-fueled missile with an intended range of 750 to 1,000 km, the Badr 2000. (The Argentine version was called Condor.)
Under the cease-fire agreement and the terms of Security Council Resolution 687, Iraq was obliged to eliminate ballistic missiles with ranges exceeding 150 km, but allowed to keep missiles with ranges up to 150 km. In early July 1991, UNSCOM destroyed Iraq’s known 48 ballistic missiles that had a range capability greater than 150 km, and dismantled a large part of the related infrastructure. However in March 1992, Iraq admitted that it had withheld 85 missiles from UNSCOM’s controlled destruction. Iraq had destroyed these missiles in mid-July and October 1991 (after the official destruction of the 48) in a secret operation. While the UNSCOM inspectors confirmed in April 1992 that most of Iraq’s remaining Scud-based missile force had been eliminated, the clandestine character of Iraq’s destruction of the 85 missiles showed that Iraq was desperately trying to preserve missiles and missile components.
As part of its long-term monitoring and verification plan, UNSCOM started regular inspections of facilities involved in research and production of missiles with a range of less than 150 km. There are, however, no U.N. restrictions on Iraq’s development of cruise missiles.
Iraq was able to preserve a residual ballistic-missile-production-technology base for four reasons. First, UNSCOM allowed Iraq to keep certain missile-production-related, dual-use items for use in its civilian industry. Second, a number of liquid-propellant missile production technologies utilized in permitted missile programs—particularly in the Ababil-100 surface-to-surface missile (with an estimated maximum range of 150 km)—are "compatible with Scud production." Third, range/payload tradeoffs allow missiles with lighter warheads to travel to greater ranges, as Iraq demonstrated in its doubling of the range of the Soviet-supplied Scud missile type. Fourth, Iraq’s SA-2 air defense missiles have been adapted as surface-to-surface missiles with ranges in excess of 150 km.
By early 1995, UNSCOM believed that it had a fairly complete overview of facilities, equipment, and materials used in Iraq’s past missile program. However, because Iraq repeatedly withheld and falsified information, UNSCOM had unresolved issues, partly on past research and development activities, and partly on numerical accounting of missiles, warheads and supporting/auxiliary equipment. UNSCOM also found itself in disagreement with the United States over whether all of Iraq’s illegal missiles had been accounted for. The U.S. intelligence community believed that Iraq may have successfully hidden up to a hundred such missiles.
Iraq disclosed new information on its past missile activities during Ambassador Ekeus’s Baghdad visit in August 1995, after the defection of Lt. Gen. Hussein Kamel. Iraqi officials now admitted that Iraq, prior to the 1991 Gulf War, had carried out research and development work on advanced rocket engines and that it had manufactured rocket engines "made of indigenously produced or imported parts and without the cannibalization of the imported Soviet-made Scud engines." Iraq was more specific in a new "full, final and complete disclosure" on November 16, when it revealed that Iraq itself had produced about 80 major subsystems of Scud-type engines. Iraq explained that out of the total, 53 had been rejected as unfit, 17 had been disposed of during testing, and 10 had been unilaterally destroyed.
The 28th and 29th IAEA inspections revealed that, until the Gulf War, Iraq had focused on ballistic missiles as the only really viable delivery system for its nuclear weapons. Iraq was apparently pursuing three options. The first option was tailored to the longer-term plan, initiated in 1988, of producing the first of a number of nuclear weapons in 1991. The delivery vehicle would have been based on a modification of the Al Abid satellite launcher, and would have had the capability to deliver a one-ton warhead to a distance of almost 1,200 km. However, since work on the engines for this system did not begin until April 1989, it would not have been ready until 1993. The second option, a fall-back position, would have been to put the nuclear warhead on an unmodified Al Husayn missile, which would have limited the range to 300 km. The third option, initiated in August/September 1990 under the "crash" program, was to produce "a derivative of the Al Husayn/Al Abbas short-range missile designed to deliver a warhead of one ton to 650 km and to accommodate a nuclear package (80 centimeters in diameter)." The estimated timeframe for completing the third option was six months.
In December 1995, UNSCOM reported that some elements in Iraq’s final missile declaration were still unaccounted for, including ten missile engine systems that Iraq claimed it had destroyed. UNSCOM also was not satisfied that it had accounted for the number of indigenously produced warheads and of "such major components for operational missiles as guidance and control systems, liquid propellant fuels and ground support equipment." A third gap was incomplete Iraqi declarations on the relationship of the missile program to past activities in the chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons areas.
UNSCOM was also concerned that Iraq had resumed foreign procurement of banned missile technologies and components. Iraq defended these procurement activities as intended for the legal Ababil-100 missile program. However, Iraq was ordering the import of equipment and materials without making the required notifications to UNSCOM and the imports would violate the U.N. sanctions in place. Evidence also emerged that after the 1991 Gulf War, Iraq had set up a covert network of purchasing agents and dummy companies to stockpile key missile components for future use and conceal them from UNSCOM inspectors.
In November 1995, Jordanian authorities intercepted 115 missile guidance system components (including gyroscopes), which had been shipped from sources in Russia to Iraq. On December 21, Ambassador Ekeus revealed that divers had retrieved from the Tigris Canal in Baghdad missile guidance gyroscopes like those intercepted in Jordan—apparently another, earlier shipment to Iraq from Russian sources. UNSCOM missile experts inferred that Iraq was trying to develop an advanced variant of the Al Husayn with a range of up to 3,000 km. A MRBM with that range fired from Iraq could easily reach a number of European capitals.
Iraqi missile program controversies persisted through 1996; UNSCOM reported in October that "in the missile area, Iraq still has not fully accounted for all proscribed weapons, items, and capabilities." UNSCOM Chairman Ekeus told the U.S. Senate in March 1996 that Iraq seemed to be hiding at least 6, and maybe as many as 16, indigenously produced Al Husayn missiles. A month later, a Pentagon report rekindled the dispute with UNSCOM over the accounting of Iraq’s missiles, stating: "The United States believes Iraq has hidden a small number of mobile launchers and several dozen Scud-type missiles produced before Operation Desert Storm (emphasis added)." In December 1996, UNSCOM officials indicated that they believed that 18 to 25 missiles, along with support equipment, were still being hidden—enough, in the words of Ambassador Ekeus, "to constitute a complete missile force."
In October 1997, UNSCOM finally reported that it had made significant progress in the missile area, being now able to account for 817 of the 819 missiles Iraq had imported from the Soviet Union before the end of 1988. UNSCOM had analyzed the remnants of those missiles that Iraq unilaterally destroyed in July and October 1991 and was able to verify that 83 engines out of the 85 declared missiles were, in fact, destroyed." But, UNSCOM had not yet completed its accounting of proscribed missile warheads, of particular concern because the warhead accounting could be connected with chemical/biological weapons activities.
Iraq also had an active interest in cruise missiles, importing Chinese Silkworm cruise missiles before the Gulf War. Although Silkworms are normally ground- or ship-launched, Iraq explored launching them from aircraft. Iraq has tested remotely piloted vehicles (RPVs) for chemical and biological weapon delivery and has adapted Polish cropdusters as RPVs that could easily be used for CW or BW delivery.
Prospects
Iraq’s Saddam Hussein regime has long pursued WMD as a means of achieving Iraqi political and military preeminence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. The regime has already used chemical weapons not only against Iran but against its own people. It has used ballistic missiles for tactical, strategic, and psychological purposes. If and when U.N. sanctions are lifted, Iraq certainly will attempt to reconstitute its WMD programs and ballistic missile capabilities (indeed, it has already started to do so).
An October 1996 assessment indicated that Saddam Hussein had already restored the effectiveness of Iraq’s army, with "a qualitative superiority" over Iran’s armed forces and all others in the Persian Gulf region. Iraq strengthened its stature in the region on August 31, 1996, when 30,000 to 40,000 Iraqi troops and 350 tanks were dispatched into northern Iraq to prop up an ally, the Kurdistan Democratic Party. The fact that UNSCOM believes it has yet to unearth all of Iraq’s prohibited ballistic missiles and all of its CW and BW stocks and manufacturing base makes this resurgent Iraqi threat all the more serious.
Saddam Hussein’s advances in Northern Iraq also revealed cracks in the Coalition. France and Russia, among others, refused to support the U.S. call for a strong response to the Iraqi aggression. Disunity within the Coalition was evident again in November 1997 in a U.N. standoff with Iraq over its demand that American inspectors be expelled from UNSCOM inspection teams. Iraq accused the United States of manipulating American inspectors in order to prolong U.N. sanctions in Iraq. In the early phases of the crisis, Russia, France, and a number of moderate Arab states, including Egypt, argued against threatened U.S. military action to force a solution. Russia then brokered a preliminary agreement with Iraq that would allow the return of the U.S. inspectors and the resumption of UNSCOM inspections. However, this accord was based on the understanding that Russia would push for an easing of U.N. sanctions against Iraq, a quid pro quo unacceptable to the United States as long as the accounting and elimination of Iraq’s WMD programs remained incomplete. The crisis persisted into late February 1998, with Iraq threatening to block UNSCOM inspections of "sovereign" presidential sites suspected of hiding elements of Iraq’s proscribed biological and chemical weapons programs,until U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan negotiated a deal that allowed the inspections to continue.
Russia’s and others’ more lenient attitude in this crisis vis-à-vis Iraq, including a greater readiness to declare Iraq’s WMD programs dismantled and relax the comprehensive sanctions regime, suggests that, in a post-sanctions environment, it may be more difficult for the United States to organize a united front in the U.N. Security Council against Iraq to respond to new challenges. This problem was particularly evident among the United States’ European and Middle East allies, who publicly refused to support any U.S. military action against Iraq during the February 1998 inspections crisis. With waning support of Security Council powers such as Russia and France, as well as Iraq’s neighbors, the continuity of the IAEA and UNSCOM inspection regimes will come into question. This, in turn, is likely to complicate U.S. and international actions to stem Iraq’s efforts to reconstitute its programs for weapons of mass destruction.
Additional References
1990: Leonard S. Spector with Jacqueline R. Smith, Nuclear Ambitions (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990).
1992: Gary Milhollin, "Building Saddam Hussein’s Bomb," New York Times Magazine, March 8, 1992, pp. 30-36; IAEA, "IAEA Inspections and Iraq’s Nuclear Capabilities," IAEA/PI/A35E, April 1992; Jay C. Davis and David A. Kay, "Iraq’s Secret Nuclear Weapons Program," Physics Today, July 1992, p. 21; Paul Lewis, "U.N. Experts Now Say Baghdad Was Far From Making an A-Bomb Before Gulf War," New York Times, May 20, 1992.
1993: Maurizio Zifferero, "The IAEA: Neutralizing Iraq’s Nuclear Weapons Potential," Arms Control Today, April 1993, p. 7.
1996: Robert Kelley, "The Iraqi and South African Nuclear Weapon Programs," Security Dialogue (Vol. 27 (1): 27-38), 1996.
1997: "Ambassador Rolf Ekeus; Leaving Behind the UNSCOM Legacy in Iraq," Arms Control Today, June/July 1997, p.3; Judy Aita, "U.N. Dissatisfied With Two Iraqi Weapons Inspections," USIS Washington File, September 17, 1997; Robert H. Reid, "UN-Iraq," Associated Press, October 2, 1997; Anthony Goodman, "U.S. to Have ‘Strong Response’ to Iraq Arms Report," Reuters, October 10, 1997; Evelyn Leopold, "France, Russia Oppose US, Britain on Iraq Sanctions," Reuters, October 17, 1997; John M. Goshko, "U.S. May Delay Pressing New Iraq Sanctions," Washington Post, October 21, 1997; John Lancaster, "Iraq to Oust American Inspectors," Washington Post, October 31, 1997.
Tracking Nuclear Proliferation: A Guide in Maps and Charts, 1998
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