Israel Matzav: What if Iran built a nuclear weapon and no one found out?

Monday, March 12, 2012

What if Iran built a nuclear weapon and no one found out?

The Obama administration assumes that it will know if Iran produces a nuclear weapon. But, as reported previously, Iran may have already tested a nuclear weapon in North Korea in 2010, and even if that is not true, it is not certain that anyone will know in advance that Iran has a nuclear weapon.

Jeffrey Lewis, a nuclear expert at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said he was reasonably confident Iran would get caught if it launched a covert enrichment effort. "But reasonably confident is not the same thing as certain," he added.

A former senior U.S. intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said Iran probably would move the clandestine project to multiple sites to lower the risk of discovery. "I think it would be very difficult" to learn if Iran began building a bomb, he said. "Not impossible, but difficult."

Obama, in a recent interview with the Atlantic magazine, said the U.S. assessment is that Iran "does not have a nuclear weapon and is not yet in a position to obtain a nuclear weapon without us having a pretty long lead time in which we will know that they are making that attempt."

Administration officials cite two reasons for his confidence.

"First, IAEA inspectors are on the ground safeguarding Iran's enriched material and would detect any effort to divert it," said a senior U.S. official, who asked for anonymity while discussing intelligence. "Secondly, we have detected covert facilities in the past … and are confident we would do so again before Iran is in a position to use such facilities to produce enriched uranium."

Mark Fitzpatrick, a nonproliferation expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, has a similar view. If the Iranians "tempt fate by a decision to produce weapons," they would probably use covert facilities, he said. "But would they be able to do it out of eyesight of prying intelligence agencies? Probably not."

Olli Heinonen, a former deputy director general of the IAEA, said Iran may lack the precision engineering capabilities needed to build a working bomb. In theory, however, Iran could secretly construct a bomb or warhead, a process likely to take several years, and then produce weapons-grade fuel in a month or so.

"You can build everything else, but you just leave the nuclear material out and do that at the end," said Heinonen, now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University.

Others warn that spy satellites, surveillance drones and other sources may not be sufficient to spot a secret bomb program given Iran's sprawling geography — one fifth the size of the continental U.S. — and large industrial base.

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On the other hand, U.S. intelligence agencies were unaware that Syria was secretly constructing a nuclear reactor until shortly before Israeli warplanes destroyed the partially built facility in 2007, Rep. Rogers said.