Between a fatwa and war: how Iran makes sense of its nuclear capability
Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to abandon its nuclear programme, Iran has “vowed” to protect its nuclear stockpile. At the same time, former
Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump to abandon its nuclear programme, Iran has “vowed” to protect its nuclear stockpile. At the same time, former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei disapproved of the use of nuclear weapons on religious grounds. How does Iran reconcile the two positions? The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons — NPT for short — discourages countries from developing nuclear weapons, but does not prevent them from developing the ability to make these weapons. This is ostensibly because some of the same technologies and processes are necessary in a civilian nuclear programme, like to generate nuclear power and to make nuclear isotopes for medical use. But the NPT does not turn a blind eye altogether: it expects the civilian programme to include some safeguards that resist the ability to develop from becoming the possession of a nuclear weapon. Examples of such safeguards include closely monitoring the use of technologies like uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing. Trump and Iran find a fragile peace as nuclear questions still loom This said, even these safeguards are focused on diversion, which is only of the two pieces of the gap between ability and possession, the other being capability. That is, a country can have the capability to develop a nuclear weapon, but the NPT’s safeguards have been designed to deter the diversion of that capability to military uses. Countries interested in helping tame the spread of nuclear weapons have enforced this fuzzy barrier using export controls and diplomacy, including sanctions. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) contributes as an independent watchdog that performs intrusive inspections. Pitfalls of not knowing This is one way the world has kept itself from downsliding into nuclear catastrophe. It is a fragile setup because the regulatory regime decision focusing on weaponisation rather than capability has created important downsides. Perhaps foremost among them is the threshold state: a country that learns about and builds everything required to make a nuclear weapon but stops just short of building one.
This country may also strategise its breakout — the rapid sequence of events from enriching weapons-grade fissile material to deploying a nuclear warhead. This way, the country does not draw sanctions, but the moment its policy changes, it can ‘breakout’ quickly. North Korea was once an example of a threshold state — and now so is Iran. Not knowing whether a country will actually build nuclear weapons, especially since it has the ability to do so, is also bad for the non-proliferation regime for a few reasons. When a country breaks out, the regime will be forced to respond very close to weaponisation, which may warrant drastic measures, which does not bode well to limit escalation. Second, a non-nuclear-capable country has to guess whether another country — perhaps a neighbour — intends to build nuclear weapons. Figuring it out requires judgment, diplomacy, and acting in good faith, all of which are powerful but hard to enforce using external pressure. It also muddies international waters. For example, South Korea does not view Japan with suspicion but it may not extend the same courtesy to, say, Argentina. Another consequence is the nuclear cascade: if Country A is a threshold state, and is not on good terms with its neighbours, the neighbouring countries may find it necessary to arm themselves with nuclear weapons in case Country A decides to break out. This is why the world has clusters of nuclear-capable states: South Asia, West Asia, North America, and Eastern Europe. Threshold state Iran joined the NPT in 1970 but has recently expressed doubts about its participation. It is also a threshold state with a breakout time widely understood to be in the order of a few weeks. It is also thought to possess around 500 kg of uranium enriched to 60%. According to The New York Times, in fact, Iran possesses 11 tonnes of uranium overall enriched anywhere from 2% to 60%.
The BriefWire