Iran's nuclear map - much more than you knew about
There's a great map of Iran's nuclear facilities that's been posted here.
It's by Olli Heinonen, a senior fellow with the Belfer Center at Harvard
University's Kennedy School and a former deputy director-general for
safeguards at the IAEA, and by Simon Henderson is the Baker fellow and director of the Gulf and Energy
Policy Program at The Washington Institute, specializing in energy
matters and the conservative Arab states of the Persian Gulf.
If you click the link, you can even download a pdf version (which I did). I had no idea that there were this many facilities and I suspect that most of you didn't know either (I thought there were four or five facilities). Most of these facilities will remain intact if President Obama's agreement with Iran goes through and is implemented.
They didn’t sign a bad framework deal in
Lausanne, Switzerland, last week. They just agreed on one in principle,
and left it unsigned, allowing for multiple conflicting interpretations.
It was immediately plain that the US-led
negotiators had mislaid their moral compass, and indeed any clear sight
of their own self-interest, when they agreed to conduct the negotiations
as scheduled even as Iran’s ruthless, arrogant leader Ali Khamenei was
intoning his “Death to America” mantra, and one of his military chiefs
was declaring that Israel’s destruction is “nonnegotiable.”
What is becoming increasingly plain is the
extent to which the Obama team and their colleagues were played for
fools by the Iranians in the talks themselves.
Iran was dragged to the negotiating table by
the accumulated impact of a painstakingly constructed sanctions regime.
It was allowed to leave the table with much of its nuclear weapons
program intact, and with the promise of those sanctions being removed.
Unsurprisingly, Iran was not required to
acknowledge its nuclear weaponization efforts to date.
Unsurprisingly,
it was not required to halt its missile development program.
Unsurprisingly, sanctions removal was not conditioned on its abandonment
of terrorism, a halt to its financing and arming of Hezbollah, Hamas
and other Islamic extremist groups, or an end to its relentless
incitement against Israel. Nobody who had followed the Obama
administration’s abject handling of the negotiations prior to Lausanne
had expected anything in these areas.
But the deal is far worse than even our
relentlessly lowered expectations had given us reason to anticipate. The
Arak heavy water plant is not to be dismantled. Why not? Because this
was the best deal we could get. The Fordo enrichment facility, built
secretly into a mountain, is not to be shuttered. Why not? Because this
was the best deal we could get. Thousands of centrifuges are to be
allowed to keep on spinning. Thousands more will remain intact. For
heaven’s sake, why? Because this was the best deal we could get.
All this according to the — so far — undisputed elements of the unsigned agreement.
Less than a week after those sickening scenes
of back-slapping in Lausanne, however, more and more of the central
elements of the framework are being disputed.
And to bring this back to Israel, am I the only one who can envision such a vague, unsigned agreement with the 'Palestinians' if this administration gets its way?
The
only joint document issued publicly was a statement from Mohammad Javad
Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, and Federica Mogherini, the European
Union foreign-policy chief, that was all of seven paragraphs.
The statement listed about a dozen “parameters” that are to guide the
next three months of talks, including the commitment that Iran’s Natanz
installation will be the only location at which uranium is enriched
during the life of the agreement.
But the United States and Iran have also made public more detailed
accounts of their agreements made in Lausanne, and those accounts
illustrate their expectations for what the final accord should say.
A review shows there is considerable overlap between the two
accounts, but also some noteworthy differences — which have raised the
question of whether the two sides are on the same page, especially on
the question of how quickly sanctions are to be removed.
The U.S. and Iranian statements do not clarify some critical issues,
such as precisely what sort of research Iran will be allowed to
undertake on advanced centrifuges during the first 10 years of the
accord.
“This is just a work in progress, and those differences in fact
sheets indicate the challenges ahead,” said Olli Heinonen, former deputy
director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Obama administration officials insist there is no dispute on what was
agreed behind closed doors. But to avoid time-consuming deliberations
on what would be said publicly, the two sides decided that each would
issue its own statement.
Sounds like yet another version of 'once we vote on the agreement, you can read the agreement.' But this one has potentially much more deadly consequences....
No sooner were the negotiations over Thursday than Zarif sent a tweet
that dismissed the five-page set of U.S. parameters as “spin.”
On
Iranian state television Saturday, Zarif kept up that refrain, saying
Iran had formally complained to Secretary of State John Kerry that the
measures listed in the U.S. statement were “in contradiction” to what
had been accepted in Lausanne.
Zarif, however, did not challenge any nuclear provisions in the U.S.
document. Instead, he complained that the paper had been drawn up under
Israeli and congressional pressure, and he restated Iran’s insistence on
fast sanctions relief, including the need to “terminate,” not just
suspend, European Union sanctions.
It gets worse....
A review of the dueling U.S. and Iranian statements show they differ
in some important respects. The U.S. statement says Iran has agreed to
shrink its stockpile of uranium to 300 kilograms, a commitment the
Iranian statement does not mention.
The Iranian statement emphasizes that nuclear cooperation between
Iran and the six world powers that negotiated the agreement will grow,
including in the construction of nuclear-power plants, research reactors
and the use of isotopes for medical research. That potential
cooperation is not mentioned in the U.S. statement.
The
U.S. statement says Iran will be barred from using its advanced
centrifuges to produce uranium for at least 10 years. Before those 10
years are up, Iran will be able to conduct some “limited” research on
the centrifuges. The Iranian version omits the word “limited.”
The starkest differences between the U.S. and Iranians accounts
concern the pace at which punishing economic sanctions against Iran are
to be removed. The Iranian text says that when the agreement is
implemented, the sanctions will “immediately” be canceled.
U.S. officials have described sanctions relief as more of a
step-by-step process tied to Iranian efforts to carry out the accord.
With three months of hard bargaining
ahead, some experts worry that the lack of an agreed-upon, detailed
public framework can only complicate the negotiations — and may invite
the Iranians to try to relitigate the terms of the Lausanne deal.
“I think it is a troubling development,” said Ray Takeyh, a senior
fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, who has been critical of the
Obama administration’s handling of the talks. “They will exploit all
ambiguities with creative interpretations.”
And in any event, even assuming an agreement is reached and Iran actually keeps to it, ten years is not a long time.
The fact that the US has admitted that some of what it is saying is 'spin' (see the tweet above, which comes from a part of the article that I skipped) is probably most worrying of all. No one - other than those who were there - knows exactly what was agreed.
Report: Israeli-made Hermes drone shot down over Baghdad
For the third time in a week, there is a report that an Israeli-made drone has been shot down. This time, the report comes out of Lebanon, the drone is a Hermes and the claim is that it was shot down over Baghdad.
According to a report on the Lebanese Al Mayadeen TV channel, considered a mouthpiece for the Hezbollah terror group, an Israeli drone exploded in mid-air
over Baghdad. The report claims that the drone was another Hermes-class
craft, the same type of drone that Iran claims fell over its airspace
earlier this week.
The report said that Iraqi army officials had gathered up what was
left of the drone, but were not commenting on the incident at this time.
A reporter on the ground in Baghdad said that staff from the US Embassy in Baghdad rushed to the scene of the crash in order to assess the situation.
On Monday, Iran claimed to have downed an Israeli drone as well. “A
spy drone of the Zionist regime (Israel) was brought down by a
missile... This stealth drone was trying to approach the Natanz nuclear
zone," the corps said in a statement on its official website
sepahnews.com. “This act demonstrates a new adventurism by
the Zionist regime... The Revolutionary Guard and the other armed forces
reserve the right to respond to this act," the statement added.
Iranian officials said that the drone was an Israeli-made "Hermes"
drone with a maximum flight range of 1,600 km (994 miles) and a 800-km
(500 mile) combat radius. The UAV's wings have a 5.5 meter (about 18
feet) wingspan, he added, and two high-quality cameras were mounted on
each end to capture precise images. The Al Mayadeen report said that the drone that fell over Baghdad was of the same type.
The drone that was shot down over Natanz is widely believed to belong to Azerbaijan. Hamas also claimed to have shot down an Israeli drone last week, but has yet to provide any evidence. The government and the IDF have had no comment about any of the drones supposedly shot down.
What if the drone Iran shot down over Natanz wasn't Israeli?
Azeri drone in Armenian military parade.
It looks exactly like the alleged "Israeli" drone "downed" in Iran. pic.twitter.com/urpTBssWw5
— Nehemia Gershuni (@Nehemia_G) August 25, 2014
Iranian television shows video of alleged Israeli spy drone
You will recall that on Sunday, Iran claimed to have downed an Israeli spy drone - apparently a Hermes - near its Natanz nuclear facility. Israel has declined to comment on the story.
But Iran put the alleged drone on television on Monday morning.
Let's go to the videotape.
Notice - no markings. Nothing that might identify it as an Israeli drone. Let's just say I doubt this story.
And even if they did down it, so what? Does anyone doubt that Israel is spying on Iran?
The installation of the new centrifuges,
including 1,000 upgraded models with enhanced uranium enrichment capabilities,
is proof , Netanyahu said during a tour of a cluster of new IDF bases to be
built at the Hanegev Junction south of Beersheba, that Iran has not changed
course.
“The Iranian president is trying to present a new face to the
West, but progress on the nuclear program continues,” he said.
Netanyahu
was blunter later in the afternoon before a meeting with a delegation led by US
Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R–Wisconsin).
“I know that some [people] place
their hopes on Iran’s new president. He knows how to exploit this and yesterday
he called for more talks,” Netanyahu said.
“Of course he wants more talks. He
wants to talk and talk and talk. And while everybody is busy talking to him,
he'll be busy enriching uranium. The centrifuges will keep on spinning.
This isn’t a secret. The new Iranian president boasts that that is his
strategy. He says, ‘I talk and I smile and I enrich uranium.’”
In
addition to accelerating its enrichment capacities, Iran was also pursuing an
alternative route, “the plutonium route,” the prime minister
said.
“Unhappily, the situation is not getting any better; it’s actually
getting worse,” he stressed to his visitors. “Iran is determined to get the
bomb, and we must be even more determined to prevent them from getting
it.”
For the West to stop deluding itself that Rohani is a 'moderate' who is going to curb Iran's nuclear program, it needs to see interviews like this one, which I hope you will all tweet, post to Facebook and otherwise spread (along with the rest of this post, of course). It has had far too little exposure. In this videotape of a pre-election interview, Iran's new president,
Hassan Rowhani, bragged about deceiving the West over the Islamic
regime's illicit nuclear program and claimed credit for vastly expanding
it. Video courtesy of Nasim Online - Translation: Reza Kahlili
If he is telling the truth – and there is no obvious reason why he would lie about the timing
he refers to – the timeline he outlines for bringing Iranian centrifuge
cascades online in substantial numbers makes a poignant contrast with
the reporting of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at the
time.
The
contrast highlights just how in the dark IAEA was during this period,
at least about the centrifuges. (It’s also worth highlighting, in
general, the timeline of what was going on during the EU-brokered
negotiations Rouhani refers to in the video.) Certainly, many in the
West had an uneasy suspicion that, by the end of 2005, Iran may have
accomplished more than IAEA was officially aware of. But, as late as
February 2006, IAEA acknowledged the following decisive condition:
Due
to the fact that no centrifuge related raw materials and components are
under Agency seal, the Agency is unable effectively to monitor the
R&D activities being carried out by Iran except at the [Pilot Fuel
Enrichment Plant],* where containment and surveillance measures are
being applied to the enrichment process.
*
The Pilot Fuel Enrichment Plant, or PFEP, is a facility located at
Natanz where Iran initiates new enrichment processes on a small scale.
The co-located main Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) houses the
industrial-scale enrichment cascades, where Western analysts have
assessed the bulk of the uranium enrichment to be done.
The IAEA was even more in the dark once Iran developed its own uranium mining capability and therefore did not have to report to the IAEA on how much uranium it had. And it gets worse. Iran has two underground facilities in Esfahan and Natanz which the IAEA has not visited since 2004 and ever, respectively.
In
its February 2006 report, linked above, IAEA regretted the lack of
transparency in the Iranian nuclear program, which made it difficult to
resolve questions about its nature (emphasis added):
Without
full transparency that extends beyond the formal legal requirements of
the Safeguards Agreement and Additional Protocol — transparency that
could only be achieved through Iran’s active cooperation — the Agency’s
ability to reconstruct the history of Iran’s past programme and to
verify the correctness and completeness of the statements made by Iran,
particularly with regard to its centrifuge enrichment programme, will be
limited, and questions about the past and current direction of Iran’s nuclear programme will continue to be raised.
IAEA
basically had its November 2004 baseline for centrifuges at the PFEP to
work with during this period. It did not have a good handle on what
was going on in the larger FEP, nor did it have the slightest idea what
was going on in the underground facilities at Esfahan, where extensive tunneling activities were revealed in late 2004
IAEA visited an underground chamber at Esfahan in November 2004, but it
was empty at the time. IAEA has not visited Esfahan’s underground
complex since, nor has it ever been allowed to visit the vast underground network identified at Natanz by 2007.
Jennifer Dyer concludes:
Certainly,
if Rouhani referred in the video to operational centrifuges in 2005,
his totals are between 1,536 and 2,836 more than the baseline of
operational centrifuges known to IAEA in 2005. We may never know for
sure how many there were operational then. Among other things, that
means we may well not know how many there are operational today.(We
have other reasons for not being certain about that, of course.)
One thing we do know, however, in our little universe of known knowns about the Iranian nuclear problem, is that the uranium enrichment curve has continued to accelerate. It may have accelerated more than we know, but it has accelerated at least as much as we know.
Think tank: Iran to have 'undetected' nuclear capability by mid-2014
A report issued by the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS) on Tuesday warns that Iran will achieve a "critical capability" to produce sufficient weapon-grade uranium by mid-2014, without being detected, simply by carrying out its current plan to use centrifuges at its declared Natanz and Fordow nuclear facilities. ISIS recommended that the IAEA increase inspections, but suggests that is unlikely to help. According to ISIS, if the US and/or Israel don't act before Iran becomes nuclear capable, Iran will have one or more nuclear weapons.
If the United States and Israel hesitate to strike out of fear of
facing international opposition, the ISIS warned, "Iran could have time
to make enough weapon-grade uranium for one or more nuclear weapons."
According
to the report, breakout times at critical capability would be "so
short" that there would not be enough time to organize an international
diplomatic or military response.
"IAEA inaction or caution could
make an international response all but impossible before Iran has
produced enough weapon-grade uranium for one or more nuclear weapons,"
the ISIS report stated.
...
According to the ISIS, there are reasons to conclude the Iran could
now be building a new centrifuge plant, "based primarily on Iranian
officials’ past statements."
A new plant could produce sufficient weapon-grade uranium relatively quickly if the centrifuges worked well, the ISIS reported.
"The
immediate priority must be limiting the number and type of Iran’s
centrifuges at Natanz, Fordow, or a site not yet finished," the ISIS
stated, calling on the P5+1 negotiators to achieve the suggested
conditions and prevent the progression of the Iranian nuclear program.
But don't hold your breath waiting for Obama to do something. It's going to be up to Netanyahu to act. What could go wrong?
If launched and operated successfully, the new machines would enable
the Islamic state to sharply speed up sensitive atomic activity which it
says is for peaceful energy purposes but which the West fears may be
aimed at building nuclear bombs.
"It is clear Iran can build them. The question is how many and how good are they," one Western envoy said.
The
planned deployment of next generation centrifuges underlines Iran's
refusal to bow to pressure to curb its nuclear program, and may further
complicate efforts to resolve the dispute diplomatically and avoid a
spiral into war.
Iran announced early last month that it would
build about 3,000 advanced centrifuges. But experts and diplomats said
it was unclear whether it had the capability and materials needed to
make so many, and also to run them smoothly.
Although still far
from the target number, one diplomatic source estimated that roughly
500-600 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings had now
been put in place at the Natanz enrichment facility in central Iran.
That compares with 180 two months ago, according to the UN nuclear
watchdog's latest report on Iran, issued in February. At the same time,
Iran had more than 12,000 old-generation centrifuges installed at
Natanz, but not all were enriching.
According to a report in Iranian media, Iran is building 3,000 'advanced centrifuges' to be installed in its Natanz nuclear facility.
Iran is building about 3,000 advanced uranium-enrichment centrifuges,
Iranian media reported on Sunday, a development likely to add to
Western concerns about the Islamic state's disputed nuclear programme.
Iran
announced earlier this year that it would install the new-generation
centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment plant, but Sunday's reports
in Iranian agencies appeared to be the first time a specific figure was
given for the number of new machines.
Prime Minister Netanyahu warned on Thursday that Iran is nearing the 'red line' after an IAEA report indicated that Iran has installed 180 advanced centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility.
In a confidential report, the International Atomic Energy
Agency (IAEA) said 180 so-called IR-2m centrifuges and empty centrifuge casings
had been hooked up at the plant near the central town of Natanz.
If
operated successfully, such machines could enable Iran to significantly speed up
its accumulation of material that the West fears could be used to devise a
nuclear weapon. Iran says it is refining uranium only for peaceful energy
purposes.
The report also said Iran had increased to 167 kg (367 pounds)
its stockpile of uranium refined to a fissile purity of 20 percent - a level it
says it needs for conversion into reactor fuel. About 240-250 kg of 20 percent
enriched uranium is needed for one atomic bomb if refined to a high
degree.
Iran resumed converting higher-grade enriched uranium for fuel
production in December and had since fed 28.3 kg of the material for this stated
purpose, the report added.
It further said that "extensive" activities -
an allusion to clean-up and renovations - at Iran's Parchin military site would
seriously undermine an IAEA investigation to determine whether explosives
research relevant to nuclear weapons was done there.
In response, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that Iran is
closer today than ever before to obtaining the necessary enriched
uranium for a nuclear bomb. The White House said that the window remains
open for diplomacy with Iran but will not stay open indefinitely.
Netanyahu
termed the report "very grave," and said it proved that Iran is moving
swiftly toward the red line he set out at the UN in September. He said
during that address that Iran must be stopped before it crosses that
line, something he said at the time could happen as early as the spring.
The Prime Minister's Office said that preventing Iran from obtaining
nuclear weapons will be the first issue on the agenda when US President
Barack Obama comes to visit in less than a month's time.
Memo to Obama: You'd better decide soon whether you're going to deal with this, because Netanyahu is not going to wait forever.
The brief note quoted Iran as saying new-generation IR2m “centrifuge
machines ...will be used” to populate a new “unit” — a technical term
for an assembly that can consist of as many as 3,132 centrifuges.
It
gave no timeframe. A senior diplomat familiar with the issue said work
had not started, adding that it would take weeks, if not months, to have
the new machines running once technicians started putting them in. He
demanded anonymity because he was not authorized to divulge confidential
information.
Mark Fitzpatrick, a non-proliferation expert and
former senior official at the U.S. State Department, described the
planned upgrade as a potential “game-changer.”
“If thousands of
the more efficient machines are introduced, the timeline for being able
to produce a weapon’s worth of fissile material will significantly
shorten,” said Fitzpatrick, of the International Institute for Strategic
Studies.
“This won’t change the several months it would take to
make actual weapons out of the fissile material or the two years or more
that it would take to be able to mount a nuclear warhead on a missile,
so there is no need to start beating the war drums,” he said. “But it
will certainly escalate concerns.”
Iran has sent a letter to the IAEA informing it that it plans to use more modern, faster centrifuges to enrich uranium (but 'only' to 5%) at its Natanz facility outside Tehran.
The letter said that Iran would use the new
centrifuges - a model called IR2m - at a unit in the Natanz plant where Iran is
enriching uranium to a fissile concentration of up to five percent, according to
an IAEA communication to member states seen by Reuters.
"The Secretariat
of the Agency received a letter from the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran
(AEOI) dated 23 January 2013 informing the Agency that 'centrifuge machines type
IR2m will be used in Unit A-22' at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP) at Natanz,"
the IAEA communication said.
Iran says it refines uranium to power a
planned network of nuclear power stations. But the West fears that the material,
if enriched much further to 90 percent, could be used for weapons. Iran says its
nuclear program has only peaceful goals.
The Islamic republic has for
years been trying to develop more centrifuges that are more efficient than the
breakdown-prone 1970s IR-1 models it now uses for production.
The sanctions are really having an effect on Iran's desire to pursue a nuclear weapon, aren't they? What could go wrong?
London's Daily Telegraph has gotten a pretty good idea of what's in that IAEA report to be released later this month. If they have the report, they're not saying, but they cite 'western diplomats' who have apparently seen it. And it doesn't really allow for any conclusion other than the fact that Iran is developing nuclear weapons.
Yukiya Amano, the organisation’s director-general, is unlikely to draw a definitive conclusion that Iran is making nuclear weapons, but according to Western diplomats the facts will make any other conclusion implausible.
They believe the IAEA has substantiated evidence from intelligence reports, interviews with Iranian scientists and on-the-ground inspections that Iran is carrying out a nuclear weapons programme in parallel to its civilian energy goals.
The agency will sound the alarm over Iranian scientists’ work to develop a ballistic missile warhead capable of carrying a nuclear device. It has already uncovered evidence that Iran has been carrying out research into triggers for nuclear weapons.
Inspectors have also questioned Iranian scientists on simulation programmes that they believe are designed to design and test a potential weapon.
“This is the product of a vast amount of work by the IAEA which will show the level of evidence they’ve accumulated and make clear a number of supplementary indications they have uncovered,” said a Western diplomat. “It makes an inescapable case that Iran has ambitions to militarise the uranium it has been enriching at its production facilities.”
Another official said: “The Iranians have been very evasive, and quite clever about it at times. It’s been difficult to discover the smoking gun. But this will be more detailed than before. The director-general will point to black holes in the Iranians’ explanations. It will undoubtedly increase the pressure.”
...
The IAEA will provide indications that enriched uranium production is moving from the long-established Natanz facility to Fordow, an underground plant that is regarded by Iran as bomb-proof near the holy city of Qom. Iran has produced more than 70kg of 20 per cent enriched uranium and would easily increase its output if production shifts to the mountain plant. Scientists say that 20 per cent enriched uranium can be refined to the 90 per cent weapons grade level without design changes in the production lines.
The report is likely to provide further ammunition to the case of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister, for pre-emptive military action.
I just want to point out that when Obama took office, Iran had 1,000 kilos of low enriched uranium - they now have four times that. And as recently as June, I reported that they had 38.3 kilo of medium enriched (20%) uranium. The number cited above is nearly double what I reported in June.
The Telegraph also adds a couple of things that were only hinted at in the Israeli media yesterday (until last night) and that were couched in terms of being 'scheduled long in advance.' The Telegraph says otherwise.
The dramatic disclosures came as the Israeli defence ministry confirmed that it had fired “a rocket propulsion system” from its Palmach airbase after a white streak was spotted in the skies above the centre of the country early yesterday.
The ministry, which insisted that the launch had been long planned, censored further details. But Western experts concluded that Israel had fired a Jericho-3 ballistic missile, which is capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and could form a component of any attack on Iran.
It also emerged that Israel’s air force simulated a long-range attack at a Nato base in Sardinia last week.
The exercise, which was not initially disclosed in Israel, included an air-to-air refuelling component. Potential targets in Iran lie between 950 and 1,400 miles from Israel’s borders. Any mission to destroy them would would require aerial refuelling.
I think Israel is telling Obama that if he doesn't take action, Israel will. Obama isn't as big a fool as we sometimes think he is, and he knows that Israel attacks Iran, US interests will not be spared by Iran's response.
Israeli defense officials are concerned that Iran will adopt the Israeli policy of nuclear ambiguity.
Iran has mastered the fuel enrichment stage of its nuclear program and has proven its ability to enrich uranium to as high as 20 percent. General assessments are that if it so decides, it would take Iran just a number of months for it to enrich a sufficient quantity of uranium to over the 90% that would be required for one nuclear device.
Another alarming element for Israel is Iran’s announcement last month that it is moving a cascade of advanced centrifuges to the Fordo facility dug inside a mountain near Qom that Barak said in 2009 was immune to standard air strikes.
The current assessment in Israel is that Iran is working to accumulate a large quantity of low-enriched uranium that will enable it at a later stage to reprocess the material and enrich a larger quantity to higher levels and manufacture a number of nuclear devices.
“Iran very well could continue on its current course for a while, during which it continues to enrich uranium like it is today but without going to the breakout stage and publicly making a nuclear weapon,” the senior official said.
If that were to happen, the concern in Israel is that Iran would not immediately declare that it has developed a nuclear device – assuming that it did so without expelling international inspectors from Natanz – to avoid providing the world with the justification to either increase sanctions or to use military action to stop it.
At some point, if the United States will not take out Iran's nuclear capability, Israel will have to do so. The longer this game of 'chicken' keeps going on, the less likely Israel is to succeed, and the more likely that the attempt to take Iran's nuclear capability out will be more painful. Stuxnet and blowing up nuclear scientists are short-term setbacks that do not keep Iran from its long-term goal. At some point in the not-too-distant future, we will have to bite the bullet and do the job ourselves.
In a bid to keep its enrichment activities out of the eyes and bombers' range of other countries' intelligence services, Iran is moving its uranium centrifuges to an underground bunker.
"Transferring Natanz centrifuges to Fordow (near Qom) is under way with full observance of standards," Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani told state broadcaster IRIB. "Fordow's facilities are being prepared and some centrifuges have been transferred."
Iran announced in June that it would shift its production of higher-grade uranium to the underground site at Fordow, in defiance of international calls on Tehran to halt uranium enrichment which some countries say is aimed at developing nuclear bombs, a charge Iran denies.
Iran only disclosed the existence of Fordow to the UN nuclear watchdog in September 2009 after learning that Western intelligence agencies had detected the mountain site.
Moving sensitive nuclear work to the underground bunker could offer greater protection against any attacks by Israel or the United States, which have both said they do not rule out pre-emptive strikes to stop Iran getting nuclear weapons.
And of course, there's no reaction from the West.
There was no immediate comment from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Abbasi's comments.
In an interview with Reuters on Friday, IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano said that moving centrifuges to Qom and increasing enrichment capacity was a "further deviation" from several UN Security Council resolutions, which demand that Iran suspend all enrichment-related activities to foster serious negotiations on a peaceful solution to the dispute .
When asked whether Iran was installing centrifuges at Fordow, Amano told Reuters that his agency "would know better in coming week," referring to the latest quarterly report on Iran's nuclear activities due next month.
Amano said the IAEA was in talks with Iran on how the agency's inspectors would monitor activities at Fordow.
"What we are doing is that we are monitoring and we are negotiating the new safeguard approach to verify the activities," he said. "They are having close contact with us to agree on the new safeguard procedure."
Last week Russia launched a fresh diplomatic campaign to re-engage Iran in nuclear talks with world powers that stalled in January over Iran's insistence on its right to enrich uranium despite UN resolutions calling on it to stop.
The West - including Israel - is backing itself into a corner where it won't be able to strike Iran if it wants to.
An internal report issued by Iran's intelligence services warns that due to the Stuxnet computer worm, attempts to start the Bushehr nuclear power plant could lead to the country's entire electronic grid being shut down. Iran is blaming the US and Israel.
The report, written by the Iranian Passive Defense Organization, chaired by Revolutionary Guards Gen. Gholam-Reza Jalali, states that Stuxnet has so thoroughly infected the operating systems at the Bushehr power plant that work on the plant must be halted indefinitely.
If the Bushehr power plant were to go on line, “the internal directives programmed into the structure of the virus can actually bring the generators and electrical power grid of the country to a sudden halt, creating a “heart attack type of work stoppage,” the report states.
The report was obtained by the “Green Liaison news group,” Iranian journalists affiliated with presidential candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi, and was translated into English by Reza Kahlili, a former Revolutionary Guards officer who spied on behalf of the CIA for over a decade while inside Iran.
The report claims that Stuxnet “has automatic updating capabilities in order to track and pirate information,” and that it “can destroy system hardware step-by-step."
Gen. Jalali has held two press conferences in recent weeks where he has given tantalizing glimpses into the conclusions of his top-secret task force to analyze and defuse the Stuxnet computer worm.
At one, he blamed Israel for collaborating in developing the worm and claimed that his experts had traced “reports” sent by the worm back to Texas.
“Enemies have attacked industrial infrastructure and undermined industrial production through cyberattacks. This was a hostile action against our country,” Jalali said. “If it had not been confronted in time, much material damage and human loss could have been inflicted.”
Oh - remember that new worm called Stars I reported on last week? Here's a hint of what it might do....
On Monday, Jalali claimed that his intelligence unit, which merges computer analysts from the intelligence ministry and the Revolutionary Guards intelligence service, had found a new computer virus attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities called “Stars.”
He called “Stars” an “espionage virus,” and said that it copied government files and was difficult to destroy in its early stages.
Just Journalism talks to Avner Cohen about the Stuxnet worm.
On Monday, Middle East news coverage was given over to the story reported in the New York Times – and subsequently picked up by The Times of London, The Daily Telegraph and The Guardian – that Israel and the United States had coordinated in developing the Stuxnet computer worm, now said to have possibly delayed Iran’s nuclear weapons programme for another four years. The implication in all the articles was that an Israeli military strike on Iran was no longer an imminent event. (Just Journalism analysed the UK media coverage of the New York Times story here.)
Cited as an authority in the original article was Dr. Avner Cohen, a senior fellow at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and the author of The Worst-Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb, a new history of Israel’s undeclared but widely acknowledged nuclear weapons programme. Cohen told the press that from what he could tell, and from what his sources had told him, Israel had indeed had a role in constructing and testing Stuxnet.
Just Journalism spoke with Dr. Cohen over email to further elaborate on the Israel-Stuxnet connection.
Iran analyst Gary Sick looks at the possible Iranian reaction to the news in Sunday's New York Times that the US and Israel are behind the Stuxnet computer worm.
This comes just a few days before you sit down to negotiate with Americans and others over your nuclear program. Will you be intimidated and therefore demonstrate more willingness to compromise? Or will you play either a stalling game or perhaps a more belligerent game until you can improve your negotiating position?
From this point on, will you be more or less likely to cooperate with the IAEA? Will the Non-proliferation Treaty (in which Iran agreed not to build a nuclear weapon in return for international protection against any nuclear powers) seem like a reassurance or a threat?
Will you retaliate by launching a cyber counter-attack against one or more large U.S. facilities (dams, power plants, refineries, public utilities, nuclear facilities, etc.) which, as the NYT story acknowledges, are known to be vulnerable to cyber attack. Although Iran’s capabilities are hugely overshadowed by those of the United States and Israel, cyber warfare may be an attractive way to level the playing field — the ultimate in asymmetric warfare. U.S. interests, of course, are not all located in the continental United States.
Will you (Iran) cut back your nuclear development or double down on your efforts? (Part of the answer to that question depends on resources. If Iran has been holding back, which is not impossible, then it has some capacity to actually speed up its efforts; if Iran has few or no intellectual, material and scientific reserves, its choices may be quite limited; that seems to be the working assumption of the authors of the worm.)
I wouldn't read so much into the assumptions of the people who developed the worm. Sick is leaving out another aspect of the war on Iran's nuclear capabilities, which might or might not be from the same source: the liquidation of Iran's nuclear scientists. It's not that they're assuming that Iran has no further resources - they're apparently trying to take care of those as well.
There is another assumption that Sick ignores. The perpetrators of Stuxnet (rationally) assumed that Iran will not cooperate in negotiations regarding its nuclear program. They ascribe zero credibility to Iran. Therefore, since they wish to avoid having to take military action against Iran's nuclear plant, with its potential for thousands of deaths, they attacked the program itself through cyberspace. I believe it was a brilliant plan.
Behind Dimona’s barbed wire, the experts say, Israel has spun nuclear centrifuges virtually identical to Iran’s at Natanz, where Iranian scientists are struggling to enrich uranium. They say Dimona tested the effectiveness of the Stuxnet computer worm, a destructive program that 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.
“To check out the worm, you have to know the machines,” said an American expert on nuclear intelligence. “The reason the worm has been effective is that the Israelis tried it out.”
Though American and Israeli officials refuse to talk publicly about what goes on at Dimona, the operations there, as well as related efforts in the United States, are among the newest and strongest clues suggesting that the virus was designed as an American-Israeli project to sabotage the Iranian program.
...
The worm itself now appears to have included two major components. One was designed to send Iran’s nuclear centrifuges spinning wildly out of control. Another seems right out of the movies: The computer program also secretly recorded what normal operations at the nuclear plant looked like, then played those readings back to plant operators, like a pre-recorded security tape in a bank heist, so that it would appear that everything was operating normally while the centrifuges were actually tearing themselves apart.
The attacks were not fully successful: Some parts of Iran’s operations ground to a halt, while others survived, according to the reports of international nuclear inspectors. Nor is it clear the attacks are over: Some experts who have examined the code believe it contains the seeds for yet more versions and assaults.
“It’s like a playbook,” said Ralph Langner, an independent computer security expert in Hamburg, Germany, who was among the first to decode Stuxnet. “Anyone who looks at it carefully can build something like it.” Mr. Langner is among the experts who expressed fear that the attack had legitimized a new form of industrial warfare, one to which the United States is also highly vulnerable.
Officially, neither American nor Israeli officials will even utter the name of the malicious computer program, much less describe any role in designing it.
...
By the accounts of a number of computer scientists, nuclear enrichment experts and former officials, the covert race to create Stuxnet was a joint project between the Americans and the Israelis, with some help, knowing or unknowing, from the Germans and the British.
The project’s political origins can be found in the last months of the Bush administration. In January 2009, The New York Times reported that Mr. Bush authorized a covert program to undermine the electrical and computer systems around Natanz, Iran’s major enrichment center. President Obama, first briefed on the program even before taking office, sped it up, according to officials familiar with the administration’s Iran strategy. So did the Israelis, other officials said. Israel has long been seeking a way to cripple Iran’s capability without triggering the opprobrium, or the war, that might follow an overt military strike of the kind they conducted against nuclear facilities in Iraq in 1981 and Syria in 2007.
Two years ago, when Israel still thought its only solution was a military one and approached Mr. Bush for the bunker-busting bombs and other equipment it believed it would need for an air attack, its officials told the White House that such a strike would set back Iran’s programs by roughly three years. Its request was turned down.
Now, Mr. Dagan’s statement suggests that Israel believes it has gained at least that much time, without mounting an attack. So does the Obama administration.
For years, Washington’s approach to Tehran’s program has been one of attempting “to put time on the clock,” a senior administration official said, even while refusing to discuss Stuxnet. “And now, we have a bit more.”
...
Dr. Cohen said his sources told him that Israel succeeded — with great difficulty — in mastering the centrifuge technology. And the American expert in nuclear intelligence, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the Israelis used machines of the P-1 style to test the effectiveness of Stuxnet.
The expert added that Israel worked in collaboration with the United States in targeting Iran, but that Washington was eager for “plausible deniability.”
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
