NCRI – The nuclear deal agreed to by the world powers and the regime in Iran last week in Vienna falls short of guaranteeing that Tehran will not secretly enrich uranium at high levels for a nuclear weapon, former deputy chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog Olli Heinonen told a conference at the U.S. Senate on Tuesday.
Dr. Heinonen, who was Deputy Director-General for Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), said he believes that the regime in Iran “has not changed its nuclear course.”
Other panelists at the Senate briefing included: former US Senator Joseph Lieberman, former CIA director James Woolsey, former US Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control Amb. Robert Josesph, former White House communications strategist Dr. Lawrence Haas, and former Director of Policy Planning at the US State Department Amb. Mitchell Reiss.
Below is the text of Dr. Heinonen’s remarks at the Senate briefing entitled “Blocking Iran’s Pathways to the Bomb: the Role of Congress.”
Text of remarks by Dr. Olli Heinonen, former Deputy Director-General for Safeguards at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) – U.S. Senate briefing, July 21, 2015:
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. First of all, I would like to thank the organizers who invited me to share some of my technical views on this agreement in front of you. I would like to start by saying something about the nature of the agreement, the way I read it as a chemist from Brookline, Massachusetts. So first of all, I see this as a political agreement which has very far-reaching non-proliferation or proliferation consequences. It is aimed to solve the Iranian nuclear program and problem, but I see that that problem gets solved at some later day. I come to the timelines.
When I read it, the first impression to me is actually Iran has not changed its nuclear course. And there comes two important observations. First of all, Iran will maintain now so-called breakout capacity, all the infrastructure, it will be a nuclear threshold state for years to come. In the beginning it will be one year breakout time for uranium, after years ten it starts to reduce, and then plutonium enters into the picture maybe somewhere 20 years from now. At the same time, I don’t see that Iran is changing the basic approach to solve this problem, because its implementation of the Additional Protocol is provisional, voluntary measures are vague and provisional, and the biggest surprise to this end comes in the order of events. This agreement forces at the IAEA [inaudible] conclusion about the nature of Iran’s nuclear program may be some five or latest eight years from now. But this comes conditionally in this case. It says that first the IAEA reaches this conclusion and only then Iran goes to ratify the Additional Protocol. According to the IAEA practices and procedures it should be the other way around. All the other 124 states where the Additional Protocol is in force did it the opposite way. First they ratified, then the IAEA made investigations and then came to the conclusion. And for example, Libya is an example of such a case. Libya was found in noncompliance with safeguards (undertakings) in 2003, December. A couple of years it ratified the Additional Protocol but implemented it provisionally before. And the IAEA reached its conclusion in summer 2008. But there was never any condition that from the Libyan side that we will not ratify this agreement unless we are happy with the results. So this is I think it’s an important thing to observe.
Then to the enrichment program itself and the IAEA verification. If we look back at all the proliferation cases in the last two decades—Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya, North Korea, South Korea, they all have a few things in common. First of all, they basically never diverted nuclear material from declared facilities. And why? Because the risk was too high, the IAEA verification system is too robust, they will be vulnerable for early detection. So therefore all these countries opted for clandestine nuclear materials in clandestine facilities, and perhaps in certain cases with clandestine nuclear materials by misusing some smaller nuclear installations. To this end, this agreement has certain strengthening measures but it has also deficiencies which I would have expected this deal to fix. The good thing is here that it asks Iran to let the IAEA to apply some more modern instrumentation monitoring systems. We will see whether Iran will agree to that, but the important thing is that this will release the inspectors to look more on the clandestine part and don’t use their manpower sitting in Natanz or [Fordow]. So this is a good part.
But then we come to the other part where I would have expected a little bit more, and this is to do with the access to suspected sites, access to undeclared locations. There’s a lot of talk about this 24 day deadline where Iran can seek or delay the IAEA access. Actually, it’s an extremely long time, 24 days. Certainly you cannot erase an installation like Natanz or (Fordow) or big conversion facilities in [inaudible] without detection and leaving any trace. But if you are looking at the nuclear fuel cycle, and particularly if you are looking at nuclear weaponization, some of these installations are not that big. They don’t have that much heavy equipment. They can actually be modified in a couple of weeks’ time. And I give you a good example where I think it would be, just as an example, would be very difficult perhaps for the IAEA to derive a necessary conclusion at high confidence level. Let’s assume that there’s an installation which takes high enriched uranium hexafluoride, turns it to uranium powder, then to uranium metal, machines those metal pellets to the nuclear weapons component, exactly according to the system which (Dr. Abdul Khan) distributed to his network. That kind of installation is small, probably all fits to this room. It doesn’t have any heavy equipment, it has some [inaudible] boxes, lathes, instruments to do the quality control. The equipment can be removed practically over the night. The next two weeks the people have time to renovate the place, jackhammer the walls, jackhammer the floors, put tiles there, put tiles on the wall, repaint it, and remove the ventilation and you come to a new building. And something very similar happened in a couple of cases in Iran in 2003 where the IAEA didn’t find any whiff of enriched uranium in certain places where it should have been present. And why I say this is that this gives an opportunity which I think should be addressed from a technical point of view, and it’s a vulnerability for this verification system, remembering that these are very specific provisions in this Joint Plan Of Action. There’s a special segment which talks about the uranium metallurgy, plutonium metallurgy, which are prohibited activities for quite a few years to come. And then the last remark to this end is that let’s assume that someone is proliferating and wants to hide, he makes all these plans in advance, it’s a part of his design. So it’s not that he starts to scratch his head, oh IAEA is coming, what to do.
Then IAEA and intelligence, another thing, which actually is to do with the same thing. I was a little bit surprised that when IAEA is asking access to suspected sites that they need to give not only some reason for the visits, but actually some kind of information why it asks this access. I think that this doesn’t bode well with intelligence agencies, because this actually means that the IAEA when it goes to ask access have to share the facts which it has with the inspected party, which can then adjust its story if it sees it’s doable, or I think the worst, the intelligence organization may be a little bit hesitant to share some information with the IAEA.
Then what will be the chances to find clandestine production or manufacturing of centrifuges? Well, certainly perhaps better than under current IAEA safeguards arrangements and arrangements for the Additional Protocol. But I don’t think that it went far enough. Because here we have the same problem as in the past, first of all the provisions say that Iran will declare the number of centrifuges and certain centrifuge components, IAEA will count them and monitor them, particularly at locations where Iran will manufacture those. But traditionally Iran has actually manufactured those also at the military (workshops). So this agreement doesn’t directly provide access to those, only to the declared sites. So you have to go through the same special access process to get there. And the problem will be here that the manufacturing of centrifuges leaves very little trace, and those installations are already dealing with the same types of material, which are using [inaudible] steel, high strength aluminum or carbon fiber for the missile program or some other military programs. So I think that there we have certain deficiencies.
Then for any verification regime the thing has to start with the broader baseline declaration. It is not foreseen in this agreement. There will be declarations under comprehensive safeguards agreements, [inaudible] rolling with Iran since 1974. There will be some additional declarations which come from the Additional Protocol and its implementation. But actually those declarations come 180 days after this agreement and turns into force. And then will be the declarations under this voluntary undertaking. But none of them provide anything about the history. None of them provide anything about installations which were there which have been dismantled, and commodities which were acquired to those, only uranium or plutonium needs to be declared, but not those dual use items, not those special tools, not those special materials. So I see this also as a kind of deficiency to this.
Then when it comes to the inspectors and IAEA resources, I was surprised that only designated inspectors are going to be part of this process, because particularly when you go to investigate nuclear weaponization, centrifuge R&D, centrifuge manufacturing, plutonium metallurgy, uranium metallurgy, you need to have some special talents and skills which the IAEA inspectorate doesn’t normally have, plus that they will not—the important thing is also that IAEA inspectorate doesn’t start to proliferate. So therefore I would have liked to see there something like using all experts also from the United States of America as part of the IAEA team and not solely by inspectors.
And then due to the time pressure I just say a couple of words about this possible military dimension, and how I see it now proceeding. There is a separate agreement between IAEA and Iran, it’s called roadmap. It has certain parts which the IAEA has shared with its board of governors but then it has secret annexes which are only between Iran and the IAEA. And then there is a time schedule where IAEA writes in a little bit more than one month’s time—actually one month’s time—questions to Iran, Iran answers them by mid-September and then there will be discussions in mid-October, and the IAEA will give its final assessment by mid-December. I think that from technical point of view it’s very hard, regardless what is written to that secret assessment, to come to the conclusion about the true nature of Iran’s nuclear program by mid-December. I don’t think that the IAEA can come to complete solution unless the evidence is so complete that this was a nuclear weapons program. And for sure it cannot certify that it knows all its aspects, because it leaves only two months’ time to do all this visits, take the samples, analyze them, go to the manufacturing facilities, talk with the people, talk with the designers, go to the other countries to find the equipment which was procured and then go to Iran to see whether you got the same equipment, take the [inaudible], so two months’ time will be very short. So a lot of questions will remain open at the end of December. So this in a very short concise way I have my testimony tomorrow here in the House so there will be a much longer list, also positive aspects and not only negative ones.
