Arms Control Wonk

A few weeks ago — ok, maybe longer — I commented on an interesting proposal (that I nevertheless disagree with) by Crispin Rovere and Kalman Robertson to prohibit low yield nuclear weapons. I agued (“Size Doesn’t Matter“) that I didn’t agree with the problem as framed, didn’t think the treaty could be verified and, in any event, thought entry-into-force of the CTBT would be a better use of our time and energy.

Rovere and Robertson asked for the opportunity to respond, which I think is quite reasonable:

Size Matters 

Crispin Rovere and Kalman A. Robertson

The following is our response to Jeffrey’s challenge to our study and its conclusions. We apologise for this taking some weeks, Crispin has been lost in the internet black hole of the DPRK for much of that intervening period, and has only just rejoined the technological landscape.

Jeffrey critiques our study in precisely the right way, asking what problem we are trying to solve, examining our proposed solution, and then comparing it to the possible alternatives.  He posits that low-yield nuclear weapons are not uniquely dangerous, that a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons with design yields below five kilotons would not be an effective way of dealing with them anyway, and that universalisation of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty would achieve the desired result.

We shall frame our response to these arguments in precisely the way that Jeffrey so excellently presented them…

 

1.         What problem are we trying to solve?

We are concerned about the perceived usability of nuclear weapons, and we argue that low-yield weapons are more ‘usable’, on aggregate, than other kinds of nuclear weapon. Unlike nuclear weapons of higher yields, low-yield weapons make nuclear conflict more likely by weakening the firebreak that separates conventional and nuclear war. As the yields of nuclear weapons approach those of conventional weapons, the probability of conventional conflict escalating to the nuclear level increases.

It is true, as Jeffrey argues, that in the case of the United States the retention of low-yield weapons within its arsenal may not greatly increase the probability of America conducting a nuclear first strike. This is due to America’s overwhelming conventional superiority, because the contingencies in which the United States would consider a nuclear strike are likely to require higher yield weapons (see pages 36-37 of the full study).  Nevertheless, U.S. possession of low-yield weapons causes non-nuclear armed states to apprehend the risk of their use in counter-proliferating strikes and they may respond accordingly by developing their own nuclear arsenals. Indeed it is for these very reasons that low-yield weapons are utterly pointless for the U.S to possess, and yet they are distinctly dangerous for other states such as Pakistan and Russia to retain. It is therefore in America’s interests to support the restriction of these weapons in a multilateral framework – precisely where the proposed treaty comes in.

 

2.         Does our proposal solve this problem better?

 Jeffrey is concerned that “if the Russians build these things, they will do so not for deterrence but because they plan to use them.” If this is true, then Jeffrey is right – it doesn’t matter what treaty is in place because we’re all going to be in a nuclear war.

But this is not typically why states pursue low-yield weapons. Rather, low-yield weapons are sought principally in order to deter conventionally powerful rivals. In other words, they are designed specifically as first strike weapons, to be used against conventional forces. Jeffrey is sceptical of Pakistan’s claims to be developing low-yield artillery, but even if they aren’t, India apprehends that Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine incorporates first strike scenarios involving low-yield weapons and is responding on that basis.

On verification, Jeffrey states that ‘in order to verify that no state possesses nuclear weapons of a certain yield, very intrusive measures would be necessary’. That would be true if the aim was to eliminate the technological possibility that a nuclear-armed state possesses nuclear weapons of low yield. But this is not the role of adequate verification.

In any nuclear arms control agreement, adequate verification means that, if a nuclear-armed state commits a militarily significant violation, it will be detected in sufficient time for other parties to take action that will effectively neutralise any resulting military advantage. If any nuclear-armed state violates a treaty banning low-yield weapons, it gets at most a marginal discernible advantage, immediately neutralised by the higher yield weapons held by potential rivals and/or the legal mechanism of the treaty. Consequently, verification requirements are almost vanishingly small.

Indeed, there are many treaties in international law that achieve their objectives without intrusive verification mechanisms. This is for one obvious reason – there is nothing substantial to be gained through a violation. The Anti-Personnel Landmine Convention, the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and the Convention on Certain Conventional Weapons have all created effective bans and yet they do not have any intrusive verification measures. Conversely, the NPT has stringent verification requirements (by way of IAEA safeguards) because there is a great incentive for some states to pursue nuclear weapons and their clandestine acquisition has profound consequences for the security of others. A treaty prohibiting low-yield weapons sits firmly in the former category because any state that has them, or gives them up, also has larger strategic alternatives.

To explain why, we can take Jeffrey’s Russia example. In a conventional conflict with the United States, Russia may calculate that the use of a low-yield nuclear weapon would not result in escalation to the strategic level, and that the United States will instead respond in-kind with low-yield weapons of its own. This could arguably benefit Russia, as its nuclear forces are far more capable than its conventional forces vis-à-vis the United States. But if a treaty prohibiting low-yield weapons were in place, then not only would such an attack be condemned by the international community, Russia would also be aware that America’s only option for retaliation would be to escalate. This understanding would no doubt factor seriously into the Russian calculus when deciding whether to cross the nuclear threshold in the first place. In other words, a treaty prohibiting low-yield weapons strengthens America’s nuclear deterrent, irrespective of whether Russia cheats by developing low-yield weapons.

It is through this lense that the verification issue must be viewed. Jeffrey makes the clever quip about “Frank Miller’s head exploding when he learns that we’re going to let the Russians examine all the electronics in our nuclear weapons.” Of course that’s not what we recommend, we simply say that any verification measures specifically for existing variable-yield weapons will depend on the electronics, and this may be the subject of separate negotiations between the states that possess them. For the reasons articulated above, the verification requirements are going to be modest, and will really depend on whether a state may have confidence that parties to the treaty aren’t deliberately fielding weapons that are specifically designed for nuclear first strike against conventional forces.

It is reasonable to assume that many thermonuclear weapons in advanced arsenals have primaries that, if they could be separately detonated without boosting, would result in a low-yield explosion (because such primaries tend to contain relatively small quantities of fissile material). This is an integral part of the physics of thermonuclear weapons and in this sense “swapping hydrodynamic codes”, to use Jeffrey’s expression, would indeed be worse than useless as a verification measure.

The fact that a state may have the capacity to detonate the unboosted primary of an otherwise high-yield weapon, such as an SLBM, to produce a low-yield nuclear explosion is unlikely to be a significant issue since no state could use it to deter a conventional attack without also openly violating the treaty.

3.         …than other, more likely outcomes? (such as entry-into-force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty)

Leaving aside the question of whether it is more likely or not, Jeffrey’s assertion is that universalisation of the CTBT would more effectively deal with the problems we seek to solve than the treaty we propose.  Although Jeffrey is right to point out the importance of the CTBT, and makes a good recommendation regarding confidence building measures at old Russian and US test sites, we must respectfully disagree with his assessment that the CTBT can substitute for a treaty prohibiting low-yield weapons.

To revisit the beginning, the problem we are trying to solve is as follows: to ensure the firebreak that exists between conventional and nuclear war is not undermined by the proliferation of low-yield weapons. The CTBT does not meet this objective.

Nevertheless, both a treaty prohibiting low-yield weapons and the CTBT multilateralise the arms control process in a manner that allows continued progress to be made on other arms control initiatives. Our proposed treaty actually makes the universalisation of the CTBT easier to achieve because it reduces incentives to test new low-yield designs. There is no reason why these two initiatives should not be pursued together, and we have previously written on the imperative of securing entry into force of the CTBT here, and here.

Jeffrey begins his critique of our proposed treaty by saying “it’s probably a bad idea”, but nothing in his argument actually suggests that it is. At most, he argues that it isn’t worth the political effort required, and on that point we differ, since taking non-strategic nuclear weapons into account in a multilateral framework is almost certainly a requirement for continued progress on nuclear arms control elsewhere.

We welcome the discussion that this proposal has generated, for it draws attention to the specifics of low-yield weapons in the broader arms control discourse. We believe that the introduction of low-yield weapons into unbalanced and unstable strategic rivalries carries greater risks of nuclear conflict than strategic weapons, which hitherto dominated nuclear arms control.

Yesterday, the two us — Jeffrey Lewis and Jende Huang — discussed AQ Khan’s residence in the upscale E-7 neighborhood of Islamabad, where he lived for many years including the period he was under house arrest.  Today, we turn our attention to his lake-side villa.

Khan’s lake-side villa played a central role in the unflattering profile of Khan by William Langewiesche that appeared in The Atlantic (“Wrath of Khan”) and Atomic Bazaar. Langewiesche argued that Khan built the lake house “in blatant disregard of the law” to demonstrate his power and status.  Khan disputed the account, calling it total rubbish.

Ok, but where is it?

Langewiesche’s piece in the The Atlantic says that the lake house was “about a mile from the navy’s sailing club, clearly in sight on the lake’s far shore” in an area called Bani Gala. If you type in “AQ Khan” into Google Earth’s search function, one of the result is “Dr AQ Khan House.

Close, but not quite right.

The home sits at the intersection of Palm and, well, “AQ Khan Road.” That would seem to be a good candidate for Khan’s lake-side villa. This photo of houses along the water, taken by Colin Cookman on 23 April 2009 and titled “The House that Nuclear Proliferation Built,” will be awfully helpful.

The large house, identified in Google Earth, probably does not belong to Khan.  It belongs to his next-door neighbor. There are a few pieces of evidence.

First, we have this 1995 photo provided by Simon Henderson (posted to Twitter by @micah_morrison) that shows Khan with his wife on what appears to be a red brick patio that sits along the lake.

The photograph posted by Colin Cookman shows the red brick patio (with gazebo) belongs to the more modest house just to the right of the large one identified as Khan’s in Google Earth. The red brick patio is also visible in satellite images.

Notice, too, the houses under construction to Khan’s left. The two closest are excellent matches for the neighbors next to the house with the lake-side brick patio.

Langewiesche provides a second clue, noting that “The most noticeable place is next door to Khan’s. It is under construction, and showy in the style of an international hotel. Khan’s house by comparison seems modest now … Khan’s garden, which slopes to the shore and was once his pride, is growing wild. He has a little speedboat beside a private dock, but it is open to the rain and is slowly swamping, settling nose-down into the water. Langewiesche published his account in November 2005, having “recently” traveled to Pakistan.

This 2004 image shows that the house marked “Dr. AQ Khan House” was under construction in 2004 – it is clearly Khan’s “showy” neighbor.

And, although this isn’t the greatest satellite photo, one can clearly see Khan’s speedboat, sitting at the dock in this 2005 image.  The neighboring house is still under construction and you could persuade me that Khan’s garden looks a bit overgrown.

Given the red brick patio, the boat dock and the construction timeline of the neighboring houses, AQ Khan’s lake-side villa is the one located at: 33°42’31.20″N,  73° 8’37.68″E

One question.  Starting in March 2009, in one satellite image after another, there are a bunch of cars parked in the driveway and, on many occasions, in the field across the street from Khan’s house. What are those doing there?

A further, small detail catches out notice.  In 1999, Celia Dugger wrote in the New York Times that Khan retained an “imposing brick house in Bani Gala, with a fountain on the front lawn, topped by a playful stone fish.”  The outlines of the fountain is visible in the satellite images. Whereas Langewiesche sees “a weekend house that drained … sewage into the water of the poor” as a metaphor for Kahn’s power and arrogance, the fountain reveals something less sinister and vaguely ridiculous– the petty vanity of the nouveau riche as depicted in Jacques Tati’s Mon Oncle :

Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. Follow him on Twitter: @armscontrolwonk

Jende Huang is a candidate for a Masters in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Monterey Institute. Follow him on Twitter: @jendehuang

Where does AQ Khan live?

Well, he has at least two houses in Islamabad – a lake-side villa in Bani Gala that was the subject of controversy as detailed by William Langeweische in The Atlantic and home in the E-7 neighborhood of Islamabad where he spent much of his house arrest. He is rumored to have been connected to additional homes, including properties in the E-7. As a knowledgeable commentator once asked, “Can anyone give a credible and, preferably, checkable list of the houses he owns?”

Well, that’s a tall order.  But the two us — Jeffrey Lewis and Jende Huang — have at least located his two main residences.  Let’s talk today about the home in E-7, where he served his house arrest.  We’ll talk about the lake-side villa tomorrow.

Like many business travelers, AQ Khan must have enjoyed returning home — in this case, to the house he built in Islamabad the late 1970s. It was from this “relatively modest, standard Islamabad house with few obvious signs of extravagance,” Khan oversaw his far-reaching proliferation network.

Islamabad is a planned city built starting in the 1960s, and is divided into five zones. A.Q. Khan’s neighborhood, E-7, sits at the foot of the Margalla Hills, at the northern edge of the largely residential Zone 1. The neighborhoods in Zone 1 are typically 2km x 2km squares, but E-7—an upscale enclave where many diplomats live—is shaped like a triangle, a sliver compared to adjacent neighborhoods.

Although one might expect Khan’s house to be difficult to locate, he has actually been quite open about his address. It’s listed on his CV, among  other places. Reporters have given the address of the home as Hillside Road, which forms the northern border of E-7. Google maps isn’t much help, nor have our friends in Mountain View sent a Street View car to Islamabad. Fortunately, Pakistani real estate companies, wanting to provide their potential clients with information about their future homes, has published the master plan for E-7.

There it is. Lot 207 lies near a creek on the northwestern part of E-7. Matching that location with satellite imagery, gives us this house, with the U-shaped driveway facing Hill Side Road:  33°43’40.01″N,  73° 2’38.76″E

That’s Khan’s house, right in the middle.  The image is from 2009, although it hasn’t changed much over the years.

This location agrees exactly with the location given by a knowledgeable commentator, SH, at Arms Control Wonk in 2008.  SH added that Khan’s “house (with a swimming pool) backs onto another street. The house to the immediate east is his former (rented) guest house – there is gate allowing direct access. This building is where his security guards are now based. Down the alley/road at the rear, accessible via another gate from his garden, were two other rented houses he was formerly associated with – one is where one of his daughters used to live (but doesn’t any longer). Another was his former guest house, before he started renting the house next door to where he lives.”

Lots 217 and 218 are good candidates for the two rented houses, although we cannot confirm this. Maybe SH can. House 218 is now a restaurant.  House 217 is a woman’s clothing boutique.  If Lewis makes it to Islamabad, he knows where he is going for dinner and shopping for the Mrs.

The satellite images match perfectly pictures of Khan at home, celebrating the end of his house arrest.  As you can see from these two pictures of a jubilant AQ Khan being released from house arrest, he has a semi-circular red brick driveway, one that is partially covered with a portico.

We expected to see outward signs of security.  According to Rob Crilly in The Telegraph in 2013, Khan’s house since 2011 has been  ”…ringed by uniformed police officers with AK-47s. Roadblocks control traffic, floodlights illuminate an area of scrub that has been cleared of trees and machine gun positions have been dug in all around.” Looking at satellite imagery  – images from May 2011 and June 2012, four images from September 2012, another image from December 2012 and three more images from January 2013 — we see, well, nothing. No roadblocks, no police vehicles, no recently cleared scrub and no machine gun positions. We contacted Rob Crilly on Twitter a couple of times, but he hasn’t responded yet. [Another colleague noted that the roadblock is located at Hillside and 10th. That spot is usually in the shadow of a tree, but on some days it looks like there may be some sort of obstruction there.]

Considering the scope of his illicit activities – and the rather ugly end some of his colleagues met – we would have expected  Khan to keep a lower profile.  Guess not!

Tomorrow, the lake-side villa that caused so much commotion.

Jeffrey Lewis is the founding publisher of Arms Control Wonk.com. Follow him on Twitter: @armscontrolwonk

Jende Huang is a candidate for a Masters in Nonproliferation and Terrorism Studies at the Monterey Institute. Follow him on Twitter: @jendehuang

This is the spot where the Defense Threat Reduction Agency eliminated Albania’s chemical weapons stockpile.

I’ve spent the last few weeks ruminating on the challenges of finding a third party to accept Syria’s chemical weapons.

Most Syria’s stockpile is in bulk form (mustard and precursors for sarin and VX.) The current plan is to consolidate the precursors at a site near one a port such as Latakia or  Tartous, then ship the materials to a third country for destruction by mobile assets like the Field Deployable Hydrolysis System.  Norway recently declined to be that third country. Others have made it clear they are not interested.

One of the challenges, I think, is relates to a larger problem in implementing our nonproliferation policies.  We’re good at doing the parts we like, but we often leave behind a mess.  As a result, states that cooperate on nonproliferation issues aren’t always left feeling good about having cooperated.

Consider the case of Albania.

In 2002, Albania announced that it had discovered 16 tons of Chinese supplied chemical weapons dating to the dictatorship of Enver Hoxha at a bunker near Qafëmollë (sometimes rendered as Qaf Molle).  Here are some pictures of the bunker and the munitions, which is located at:  41°20’43.36″N,  19°57’21.90″E

Tirana appealed for help.  (Matthew Tompkins has questioned the veracity of the “discovery” story although that does not change our timeline or Tirana’s experiences.)

It took a while, including an attention grabbing visit by Joby Warrick of the Washington Post, who ultimately wrote a pair of Washington Post stories on the discovery and disposition of Albania’s chemical weapons stockpile, with a nice image of a guard near a (now demolished) pill box. Joby gives excellent driving directions to the site, by the way. That story upset the locals, but seemed to do the trick in Washington. A few years later, Senator Lugar would be encouraged not to say too much about the process for fear the natives might get restless.

The United States, thanks to the leadership of then-Senator Richard Lugar, ultimately paid for security at the site, including fences and armed guards, as well as for deployment of a mobile incinerator. DTRA contracted with Eisenmann AG  for the incinerator unit and URS to manage the project.   (The incinerator was placed in a tent on a concrete slab next to the building and several underground bunkers.)

The United States, according to Bob Mikulak, ultimately “contributed over 45 million dollars to assist the Republic of Albania in eliminating 16.6 metric tons of chemical weapons agents at Qaf Molle, destroying 100 percent of its stockpile in a verified manner” by July 2007.

Sadly, that’s not the end of the story.  Here we pick up the story based on cables from Wikileaks.  What about all the hazardous waste?

The Albanian Ministry of Defense had agreed to take it, planning to construct a hazardous waste storage facility with assistance from the European Union.  That process went nowhere. The US complained to the Europeans, but the EU canceled the project in the wake of local opposition.

The hazardous waste sat in containers on the concrete pad.  The containers started to leak.  In late 2007-early 2008, the US hired an environmental remediation firm, Savant Environmental, “who determined the problem was worse than originally thought. Many of the containers were leaking salts of heavy metals, primarily arsenic, lead and mercury. In addition, the conexes were not waterproof, and since contaminated components had not been properly cleaned before being put into the conexes, condensation and water leakage were dissolving some of the contaminants and causing them to leak out onto the ground.”

Savant Environmental repackaged the waste and placed it in 20 shipping containers.  There it sits, visible from space.  Good for twenty years.  Well, fifteen now.  Ish.

Those containers are still sitting on the concrete pad, out in the open.  Here is a satellite image from August.

It’s hard to say about security on site.  I don’t see any evidence of security, but perhaps the guards get dropped off by bus or there are electronic alarms.  Still, the site seems relatively unprotected.  Someone posted a picture from 400 meters up the road on August 2011, which looks to be the remains of the rest of the base connected to the chemical weapons storage site.  Things look pretty deserted to me, beyond some basic fencing and signs saying “keep out.”

The stuff isn’t a chemical weapons threat any more, of course, but it is an environmental hazard.  Just sitting in some shipping containers.  (Did you know they were called “conexes”?)

I raise the issue because it reminds me to the saga of the M/V Mochegorsk – the cargo of Iranian munitions seized in Cyprus that later exploded.  We aren’t always so great on the follow-through when it comes to nonproliferation, especially once the strictly national security part is over.  I realize that individual states have to take some responsibility, but if we’re going to argue that nonproliferation is shared interest we can’t say the hazardous waste from chemical weapon demilitarization or disposing of seized munitions aren’t part of our shared responsibility.

I don’t want to leave the impression that I am criticizing the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, which did more than anyone else in this saga save for maybe Dick Lugar and staff. They can’t do it all, for goodness sake. And lord knows, pressing for US assistance to Albania didn’t help Lugar win his primary.  It would be nice if the Europeans stepped up on the construction of a hazardous waste facility in Albania or the Chinese agreed to make amends for selling a nasty government some nasty weapons. Or even the Russians, for propping up Joe Stalin’s buddy. I know Wikileaks hates the United States, but those leaked cables suggest Washington worked harder than any other country — even if the US wasn’t perfect all the time.  The Italians complained about the risk from the site, but what did they offer?

Maybe Albania is no worse off than if it had left the chemical weapons rotting in the bunker, slowly poisoning the hillside — but that setts the bar pretty low. If we want to persuade states to take, for example, Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, it would help if Albania’s story had a happy ending. And we — not just Americans, but everyone who cares about nonproliferation — should take special care that whatever country takes Syria’s chemical weapons stockpile isn’t left regretting that decision.

Cables from Wikileaks: The Italians are annoyed. Eisenmann AG suffers some setbacks. Senator Lugar visits. Explaining delays to Germans. We tell the EU to step it up. Albania has a hazardous waste problem. Things at Qafemolle are worse than we thought. Albania still has a hazardous waste problem. This is all the Chinese’s fault.

I’ve also got a nice little annotated .kmz file, but I haven’t put it up yet.

One of the nicest things about relocating to Monterey is that Avner Cohen, a colleague from my days at the University of Maryland, has relocated too. Avner, like me, is a lapsed philosopher with a deep interest in nuclear weapons — there is probably no one who knows more about the Israeli nuclear weapons program.  Well, no one who can talk, anyway.

Avner’s knowledge is based on decades of research.  Now, that material is available to other scholars.  Avner donated to the Woodrow Wilson Center his research materials — tens of thousands of pages of copies of archival documents, countless press clippings, and hundreds of hours of oral history interviews — that form the basis for his books, Israel and the Bomb and The Worst Kept Secret. Some of these materials are now online.

As part of the announcement process, Avner wrote an op-ed for the New York Times.

I am pleased to note that Avner also accepted my suggestion to collect all the wonky bits that might not interest a general reader in a long-form piece for the blog.  You are in for a real treat.

How Nuclear Was It? New Testimony on the 1973 Yom Kippur War

Avner Cohen[1]

Two weeks ago the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP), which is housed at the History and Public Policy Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington D.C., released the first installment from my personal archival collection, known now as the “Avner Cohen Collection,” on its digital nuclear archive web site.

The key item in this release is a video interview (as well as a written transcript) which I made in 2008 with the late Azarayahu ‘Sini’ Arnan, a former senior advisor in the Israeli government, who provides a dramatic eyewitness description of a closed-door ministerial consultation in which Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir overruled Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, halting preparations to ready the country’s nuclear weapons for a possible demonstration during the 1973 War.[2] This interview upends conventional assumptions that Israel was very close to using nuclear weapons in this conflict (or even threatened to use nuclear weapons) and provides unique insight into how the Israeli government came to this decision.

On the day of the release, which coincided with the 40^th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, the New York Times published an op-ed piece I authored about the Sini interview.[3] It was in this context that my colleague Jeffrey Lewis suggested that I should write something for this blog that will go beyond what I already said in the New York Times and elsewhere. Almost with no hesitation I told Jeffrey, sure, I’ll do something. That something will try to discuss the nuclear dimension of the 1973 War beyond what was discussed before, and it will also be homage to this great blog that for some time I have had the desire to be a contributor.

So here it is and I hope it will stir some further discussion.

***

Ever since the 1973 Yom Kippur War, for some four-odd decades, there have been outstanding and lingering questions on the war’s nuclear dimension. What exactly happened in Israel on that front during the war? How close really was Israel to the nuclear brink? If indeed Israel conducted nuclear-related activities on the ground, as is commonly believed, what was the purpose and the target of those activities?

Then there is a higher layer of questions, more historiographical in nature: What is the place of the 1973 Yom Kippur War in the context of the nuclear age? Can we plausibly compare the nuclear situation in 1973 with the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962? Which was more dangerous?

Over the last four decades a certain “mythology” has been built over the issue. Soon after the war, rumors started to spread that Israel had indeed come close to the nuclear abyss. There were anonymous tales about bomb or bomb components being rushed to Israeli air bases as well about missile alerts.

Time magazine was the first to elevate those rumors to the level of published claims. According to an unsigned story on April 12, 1976, in the early phases of the war Prime Minister Golda Meir ordered the assembly and arming of 13 nuclear bombs. The story suggested that it was that specter of nuclear escalation that led U.S Secretary of State Henry Kissinger to act firm and fast to provide Israel with the most massive weapons airlift in history. A few years later American playwright William Gibson used this alleged episode in developing his 1988 one-actress Broadway play Golda’s Balcony. [The play was turned into a film in 2007, with Valerie Harper—who in the 1970s played Rhoda on The Mary Tyler Moore Show—portraying Golda Meir. Here’s the trailer:

[Avner, this movie looks terrible -- Ed.]

Subsequently, others have followed and elaborated further on that nuclear lore.  Seymour Hersh is probably the author who provided this mythology its loudest voice.  In his 1991 book The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and American Foreign Policy, in a chapter entitled “Nuclear Blackmail,” Hersh added further details and extra drama to this mythology. He made a reference to an unnamed “Israeli official,” someone who served in the prime minister’s office, who confided to him that the decision “to arm the weapons…was reached easily.” That someone also told him that the nuclear issue dominated Golda Meir’s war cabinet meeting on the late morning of October 8.[4]

According to Hersh, following a briefing by the nation’s nuclear chief, Shalheveth Freier, the ministerial forum decided to “arm and target the nuclear arsenal in the event of total collapse” and also to “inform Washington of its unprecedented action,” demanding that Washington initiate an “emergency airlift” to supply Israel with the arms and ammunition required to continue waging an “all-out war effort.” According to Hersh, Israel used the nuclear alert approved on October 8th as “nuclear blackmail.” [5]

Since the publication of Hersh’s book, other [non-Israeli] authors have followed that general narrative, academics and journalists alike, such as Martin van Creveld, Walter Boyne, Walter Isaacson, Richard Sale, and others.  Like Hersh, these authors rely either on unnamed sources or appeal to rumors. One exception was William Quandt, the NSC point man for Middle East issues during the 1973 War, who confirmed openly in 1991 that the United States government did pick up “something” during the war that indicated that Israel had placed its Jericho missiles on some sort of alert.

Over the four decades since the war, the nuclear lore about 1973 has turned into an urban legend: nobody knows how exactly it originated and who the real sources were, but it is commonly believed as true or near-true. I call this lore (rumors/claims/conjectures) a “mythology” because they could not be traced to any identifiable source, Israeli or otherwise, who could directly and openly confirm any of those reports. Mind you, Quandt’s testimony, vague as it was, was not about nukes but rather about missiles.[6]

***

Not only are there no positive identifiable confirmations to any of those allegations, but at least two prominent Israelis, figures who were in a position to know, took the effort to openly and firmly deny Hersh or other Hersh-like claims. The first was the late Shalheveth Freier (1920-1994), Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission head during the 1973 War, and the official who was mentioned by name in Hersh’s account.  After the publication of The Samson Option, Freier sought vigorously and publicly to discredit Hersh’s narrative in any possible platform, especially those factual claims that were about him. While Freier refused to provide a positive account of his own, and was even unwilling to detail his specific reservations, he was adamant that Hersh’s account was false. I saw Freier in action on this crusade at least twice.

The second Israeli to deny openly Hersh’s account was the late Professor Yuval Ne’eman.  Ne’eman was a former Israeli Minister of Science and Acting Chair of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission (both positions were held under Prime Minister Menachem Begin in the early 80s), who served during the war as Moshe Dayan’s personal liaison in strategic communications with the United States. In an article titled “The USA-Israel Connection in the Yom Kippur War” that was published in a Center for National Security Negotiations (CNSN) Occasional Paper (based on a lecture that Ne’eman gave in a small CNSM meeting which I helped to arrange in Washington D.C. in February 1996), Ne’eman made a point to totally discredit Hersh’s “nuclear blackmail” narrative and provided a very vague and partial account of his own on the Israeli nuclear dimension of the 1973 War.

Against this background of absence and denial the interview which I conducted in 2008 with my friend, the late Arnan “Sini” Azaryahu, just ten months prior to his passing, stands up as distinct, revealing, and intriguing. None of what Sini told me during that interview was new to me. In fact, I had heard it all from him before and sometimes more than once, including his testimony on Dayan’s nuclear proposal in the 1973 War. When I arrived in Israel in January 2008 and learned that Sini’s physical health had deteriorated, I hired a videographer and rushed to his home in order to preserve those precious memoirs. Sini understood my interest and cooperated.  My purpose on that day was simple: to record those extraordinary testimonies that I otherwise feared would be lost forever. I knew that on those nuclear-related incidents Sini might have been the last surviving individual who had witnessed that history in its making.[7]

In particular, I was interested in saving Sini’s testimony on two key historical events, this 1973 war nuclear encounter and a key nuclear decision by Ben Gurion in 1962. Both episodes involve fateful moments in Israel’s nuclear history that have otherwise left almost no trace in the public record, either in documents or in other oral testimonies. This particular 12-minute interview segment concerns one such episode: the story of the small ministerial consultation that took place in Prime Minister Golda Meir’s office on the early afternoon of the second day of the 1973 Yom Kippur War. The content of the interview is now in the public domain, so I will not repeat it here one more time.  Instead, in line with Jeffrey’s invitation, I use this space to address some of the open and intriguing issues involving this testimony.  I start with the two broad issues—overall significance and the fundamental limitations of oral history—and then I move to some particular issues:

The Overall Significance 

Minister Yisrael Galili’s first words to Sini as he sees him when the ministerial meeting adjourned, “something like that never happened to me before,” reveal how unprecedented and extraordinary that encounter was. Never before were Israeli leaders asked to activate the nation’s nuclear weapons for a possible demonstration. Never before had the minister of defense believed that Israel was fighting for its life as a nation and fast approaching an apocalyptic moment. This is a testimony about that kind of extraordinary moment.

Its significance ties in with the issue of credibility. It is the first and only testimony made by a credible, identifiable source regarding a discussion of the nuclear issue at the level of the Israeli war cabinet. As such the testimony challenges the nearly four-decade old “mythology” cited earlier alleging that Israel “almost” reached the nuclear brink during the 1973 War. At the very least it questions the Hersh-inspired narrative by which Israel was very close to actually using nuclear weapons, or that Israel used its nuclear assets as a strategic tool to pressure or even “blackmail” the United States to begin an airlift to Israel with a massive amount of military supplies. This mythology, which was never backed up by direct evidence and is considered by many as true, is now seriously questioned.

Not only does Sini’s testimony question the old narrative, but it suggests a new narrative, a narrative that acknowledges the nuclear dimension but colors it with the hue of nuclear restraint. In essence, even during the darkest hours of the 1973 War, when Israel’s hold on the Golan Heights appeared to be slipping away, the Israeli national leadership, and most significantly Prime Minister Golda Meir, were not willing to consider even a modest proposal to take action and prepare the nation’s doomsday weapons for a possible demonstration.

Oral History and the Fragility of Human Memory

As dramatic and powerful as it is, this is one oral testimony from one human source. Even if the core of the testimony is historically accurate and sound—and I believe it is—it is by no means exhaustive or comprehensive. At best, it is a snapshot of one particular historical encounter. We do not know really what preceded it or what followed, nor do we know about relevant decisions and activities that took place at other, lower-level but nuclear-relevant junctions.

I interviewed Sini in 2008, when he was 91 years of age and thirty-five years after the events in question. I was aware of that. As is common in oral history, there is an epistemic gap between the testimony’s core and periphery: while the core—e.g., an encounter, an event, etc.,—tends to remain vivid and sharp years later, the periphery—context, background, etc.—tends to be foggy, often reincorporated with and embedded into other personal recollections and/or pieces of public knowledge. These are standard features of human memory. Oral testimony, at its best, is a snapshot of one dramatic moment, not more.

This is so true about Sini’s testimony. While the core is in focus—Dayan’s nuclear proposal, substance and style—the periphery is blurry and personal. Sini could not nail down the exact day and the time that the event took place. It was I, not Sini, who concluded that the encounter must have taken place on the second day of the war, Sunday, October 7, in the afternoon. He wasn’t specific about the content of the meeting as a whole, and some of what he said was untrue.

Indeed, since the interview I’ve gained access to the original minutes of the ministerial meeting that preceded his testimony (those minutes were formally declassified and released in 2010 by the Israel State Archive), and they show that in the meeting, contrary to Sini’s recollection, there was no discussion about sending Minister Chaim Barlev to the Northern command; that discussion took place in another meeting.

The General Context 

Though Sini’s knowledge (and/or memory) of the preceding memory is fragmentary and even inaccurate on some peripheral aspects of the situation, ultimately those minutes provide fantastic background which help us understand Dayan’s proposal.  As expected, the encounter that Sini describes is not included. One can safely surmise that neither Dayan nor the other ministers would have dared to discuss the nuclear issue while the minutes were being recorded.

The background of the meeting, particularly Dayan’s state of mind, is the key to understanding his nuclear proposal.[8] On the previous morning, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s “Mr. Security” and hero of the 1967 Six-Day War had been so confident of Israel’s military ability to defend itself that he opposed mobilizing the entirety of the nation’s reserve force, despite intelligence reports indicating an imminent Arab military assault. Less than a day later, after visiting both front-lines, Dayan had been transformed into a prophet of doom. In a number of well-documented episodes earlier that day, Dayan murmured about the demise of the “Third Temple,” a reference to the modern state of Israel.

With this state of mind, Dayan entered the conference room at the prime minister’s office, where Meir was anxiously waiting his arrival from Sinai to hear his assessment of the military situation. According to the official minutes, ten people attended the meeting: Golda Meir, the three senior ministers constituting Meir’s war cabinet (Dayan, Allon, and Galili), and six other senior staff and personal aides. Contrary to Sini’s testimony, Chief of Staff General David Elazar was not present when the meeting started; he joined towards the very end.

The meeting began at 2:50 PM as Dayan started with his assessment of the military situation. He began by noting that overnight Israel had lost its lines on both frontiers. Israel could not hold its few isolated posts along the canal and it must cut its losses by retreating to new defensive lines on both the Golan and in the Sinai. “Those posts that we can evacuate, we should evacuate; those who we cannot evacuate, they will stay, even surrender. We should tell them: we cannot reach you out; try to break out [to us] or surrender.”

Dayan also predicted that Jordan would soon join the battle against Israel. He read the situation as an all-out war in which the invading Arabs forces would not stop. “The fight is over the entire land of Israel. Even if we withdraw from the Golan Heights, this would not solve anything.”  There were already hundreds of casualties and he expected many more.

Neither Dayan, nor anyone else in the room understood the situation beyond knowing that it was national nightmare. Prime Minister Meir said at one point, “there is no reason why they [the Arabs] would stop . . . they already tasted blood,” and Dayan continued her thought, stating that the Arab forces intended “to conquer Israel, to eliminate the Jews.” Minister Allon continued, “Moshe is right. In this situation there is no other way.” This exchange highlights that Dayan was not the only one who believed at that point that this was a war of survival; they all fell into that kind of outlook.

When Prime Minister Meir reminded the forum that the full government was about to convene for a formal session in less than in an hour, Ministers Galili and Dayan proposed to postpone that meeting to 9 PM. Prime Minister Meir adopted the suggestion and announced that until then they would continue with informal consultation. At that point (4:20 PM) the formal meeting ends, the forum was adjourned, and the minutes stop. Chief of Staff Elazar and non-essential staff left the room, leaving the prime minister with her three senior ministers. There is no one to take the minutes of the rest of the conversation. It is now that Sini’s encounter takes place, an encounter that probably was deliberately designed not to be included in the regular minutes of the meeting.

The Nuclear Context

Probably the major difficulty in interpreting Sini’s testimony is the lack of knowledge and clarity on the Israeli nuclear situation at the time. This applies to both the size and status of the nuclear inventory, as well as on the organizational structure and the command and control procedures that governed the system.

On the former issue, the size and the status of the arsenal, it is plausible that on the eve of the 1973 War Israel had a small nuclear inventory of weapons, say, between ten to twenty first-generation fission (PU) weapons (roughly, Nagasaki-type). One could speculate further that most of the inventory was in the form of aerial bombs (probably configured for the Mirage) and some were early prototypes of missile warheads for the Jericho I (which in October 1973 was apparently not yet operational). One could also assume that Israel probably kept its atomic stockpiles unassembled, where the nuclear cores were probably kept separated in a special facility run by the civilian nuclear agency (IAEC and not by the IDF). Hence, to assemble and arm the aerial bomb safely would be probably a lengthy, complex operation that required a small group of dedicated and trained personnel. To get the personnel and to conduct the operation is something that could easily have taken over half a day, possibly longer.

On the latter issue, while it is commonly known that the nuclear agency is under the command of the prime minister, it is less known what the exact role of the Minister of Defense is in running and overseeing the nuclear system, either at times of peace or war. Presumably Israel developed a version of its own of the “dual key” command and control system (which apparently was in rudimentary form prior to 1973) that requires the active participation of both functionaries in mobilizing and activating nuclear weapons. The fact that nuclear weapons infrastructure must include non-nuclear organizational entities under the control of the Ministry of Defense makes the situation even more complex. While some fundamental documents and procedures relating to the principles of command and control must have been in existence in 1973, it is unclear how detailed or vague they might have been. In any case, we do not know what kind of authorities the prime minister and the minister of defense need to have in order to activate the system on their own, individually or jointly, and to what extent they were required to bring such requests to the higher ministerial forum.

The result is that a great deal of the governance context to understand Dayan’s proposal is unclear. Can the prime minister instruct her nuclear chief to take steps to prepare for a nuclear demonstration? It is very probable. Indeed, one can assume that Prime Minister Golda Meir, being ex-officio in charge of the nuclear agency, had already been in touch with Shalheveth Freier, her nuclear chief, on key issues requiring her approval or knowledge after the war had broken out, the day before. For example, as Ne’eeman noted, the prime minister must have approved earlier a decision to shut down the country’s nuclear reactors. Additionally, the prime minister had likely received some kind of a status report in written or oral form on the readiness of the nation’s nuclear inventory. But the early afternoon of the 7th was probably the first time that Freier was summoned to the war ministerial forum with the expectation that he would or could receive Meir’s approval to Dayan’s request, and would possibly brief the prime minister and her senior ministers on the operational aspects of the proposal.

It is clear from the testimony that the proposal was Dayan’s idea, and that he arranged for Freier’s attendance, but many other procedural issues about Freier’s attendance remain unclear. What was the exact purpose of Freier’s summoning? Who formally summoned Freier to attend the meeting, given the fact that Dayan had returned from the Sinai just minutes earlier? In any case, it is implausible that Dayan could or would have summoned Freier on his own without approval or consultation with Meir.

Furthermore, it remains unclear when and how Prime Minister Meir first learned about Dayan’s nuclear ideas, what her initial reaction to his proposal was, and whether Meir personally asked Freier to attend the meeting. It is also unknown what kind of communication, if any, took place between Freier and Dayan (and/or their respective offices) prior to the meeting.

As Sini suggests, Meir had probably been aware of Dayan’s thinking, perhaps from meeting face to face just prior to the formal meeting. Yet her original reaction to his nuclear proposal is unclear. It seems that she could have approved the proposal on her own authority—it appears as though she had the authority to do so—but she did not want to, and instead left Dayan’s request to the ministerial forum. Was the role of the forum merely consultative, with the ultimate decision lying with the prime minister? Alternatively, one would think that Meir could have endorsed Minister of Defense Dayan’s proposal and presented it as her own request—this would have made a huge difference to the members of the war cabinet—but apparently Meir did not endorse Dayan’s proposal, and left it to him to present it as his own idea. Indeed, it is not clear from the testimony whether Dayan asked only for the prime minister’s approval or whether he actually asked for the forum’s approval.

Furthermore, we know almost nothing about how the Israeli nuclear command and control system worked in 1973, if indeed Israel had any rigid formal procedures. It is unclear to what extent decision-making on the nuclear question was covered by well-defined procedures that articulated the division of labor and authority among the prime minister, the minister of defense and the cabinet. Sini does make a brief reference in his testimony to a “double key system,” a command and control system requiring approval from both the minister of defense and the prime minister in order to activate nuclear weapons. In any case, we have neither factual nor procedural clarity on any of these issues.

Dayan’s Nuclear Proposal 

So what did Dayan actually have in mind when he proposed to the prime minister that Israel should prepare for a “nuclear demonstration”? There are many outstanding questions involving the specifics of Dayan’s proposal and its underlying technical and strategic context. Analytically, one could divide those questions into two groups: first, the specifics of Dayan’s proposal (what exactly he proposed to do); and second, the state of Israel’s actual nuclear capabilities, that is, the capabilities required making Dayan’s proposal feasible.

On the former subject, all that we know from Sini’s testimony is that Dayan proposed that Meir would order Shalheveth Freier, the nation’s nuclear chief, to initiate “preparations” towards a “nuclear demonstration”—explicitly a demonstration, not to use against any targets—to save precious time (“half a day”) should the need become imminent and necessary. Beyond this, we know nothing; all else is mere speculation. Still, it is interesting to consider what a “nuclear demonstration” might have involved and whether the suggested timeframe of 6–12 hours was realistic. Israel was presumably capable of conducting an underground detonation of a weapon with a yield on the order of Hiroshima or Nagasaki (~20kt). However, even with a pre-drilled testing facility, the setup time required would have probably exceeded the half-day timeframe, without even considering the political uncertainties involved in conducting an underground test in time of war. Moreover, even if an underground demonstration could have been carried out, there would be serious doubts about its effectiveness on the Egyptian and Syrian governments and little to no indication that it would have applied sufficient pressure to cause a cessation of hostilities. Such a demonstration makes very little strategic, logistic or political sense.

A far more effective demonstration within Israel’s technical capabilities and the suggested timeframe would have been one or more high altitude bursts over unpopulated areas of Syria, Egypt or both. Such blasts would be conducted at a time (probably shortly after dark) to make the demonstration visible in the capital cities of Cairo and Damascus, thereby avoiding any debates that might have been associated with an underground demonstration and ensuring extreme public pressure on the Syrian and Egyptian governments.

Furthermore, it is highly likely that the Israeli Air Force (IAF) had a small group of pilots pre-trained on nuclear missions in French Mirage aircraft (used to avoid conflict with the commitment Israel had given that its US-supplied aircraft were not to be used for nuclear weapons missions) and the necessary adaption kits for nuclear payloads ready to install very quickly. The IAF presumably would have been able to rapidly move weapons, configure the Mirage aircraft for nuclear strike missions, assemble pilots pre-qualified for nuclear missions, organize escorts, and brief and launch such demonstration missions within 6 to 12 hours.

Given the situation, one can safely suggest that Dayan’s idea was probably to prepare logistically and organizationally for a high altitude aerial burst over a desolate area. It would require the IAF and the Israel Atomic Energy Commission working closely with one another to assemble a handful of weapons for the demonstration. Presumably, all those issues should have been explained to the forum in Freier’s briefing, but that presentation was never authorized, and was consequently never delivered. Dayan’s proposal was killed before it even had a chance to be discussed.

In the final analysis, Dayan’s nuclear idea was a declaration of despair. Had Israel conducted a nuclear demonstration in the middle of the war, would it have been understood by all as an anguished decision of last resort? Although it could be argued that such a demonstration strategy might have forced Egypt and Syria to pause hostilities, Israel would have been seen as weak and effectively defeated by resorting to the use of nuclear weapons. Would it have been in the Israeli interest to convey such a message? Could a military situation be envisioned where such a move would make sense? Furthermore, such a demonstration would have unleashed an immediate nuclear arms race in the region, in addition to the inevitable near-term international condemnation and demands for Israeli disarmament.

While we do not know what exactly triggered Dayan’s nuclear proposal or how much time and thought he put into it, we do know that Dayan was in a state of acute shock by the afternoon of the second day of the war; some even describe it as near breakdown. It is evident that his nuclear proposal reflects a gloom and doom state of mind.

Final Thoughts

It is important to recognize that Sini’s testimony is so far the only direct and credible Israeli eyewitness testimony on the nuclear dimension of that war. There is still a great deal unknown.

One primary reason for the general obscurity of the subject is Israel’s code of silence on all nuclear matters. Given the culture of secrecy and the institutional censorship in Israel on all nuclear issues, it is not surprising that the nuclear dimension of the war has remained undocumented.

Sini’s testimony is novel. It contradicts, if not flatly refutes, the Hersh narrative and instead offers a much more nuanced and restrained story. It acknowledges that the 1973 war had a nuclear dimension, but that dimension was much more minor and contained than previously believed. Even a “just in case” preparatory proposal was ultimately ruled out by Prime Minister Meir and her trusted political advisors. Dayan’s nuclear proposal went nowhere.

Sini’s testimony reveals that the Israeli leadership, with the notable exception of Minister of Defense Moshe Dayan, recognized the danger of the nuclear brink during the1973 war and refused to approach it. In that meeting, Israel discovered its own commitment to the nuclear taboo.

A guest post by R. Scott Kemp.

Friend of Wonk R. Scott Kemp is an assistant professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT, where he directs the Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy. Here, he asks what sort of negotiated outcome with Iran would suffice to address the threat of nuclear breakout. The charts in this post, prepared by the University of Maryland’s Steve Fetter, could help negotiators design an agreement. Scott’s last guest post at ACW was in June 2013.

Well, this is the moment we’ve been waiting for.  Both Iran and the United States have been making positive sounds about the nuclear issue. Obama says he has made Iran a top diplomatic priority for the United States. According to diplomats who met recently with Iranian Foreign Minister Zarif, Iran will consider limits on the number of operating centrifuges and stocks of LEU. The E3+3 and Iran have a meeting scheduled for Geneva on October 15 and 16.

Now it’s time to get down to brass tacks.

While Zarif’s offer of caps is welcome, what really matters is the level of confidence that can be gained from an agreement.  To a large extent, that can only come by increasing the time it would take Iran to make a bomb, which in turn depends on the size of Iran’s nuclear program.

Why does the size of the program matter? There is a fundamental problem with safeguards at enrichment facilities: even if the IAEA could instantaneously detect an attempt to make a bomb, it would take some non-trivial length of time to respond, especially if there is to be a political response and not just a last-ditch military strike. Iran’s “breakout” time needs to be considerably longer than U.S. Central Command’s bare-minimum response time.

The problem is that Iran has already amassed a considerable enrichment capability; by some estimates, it could produce a bomb’s quantity of HEU in less than two months, even if Iran doesn’t use any of its 20%-enriched material.  Merely capping the program at the present size isn’t going to provide enough assurance to restrain the hawks back in the United States. Some rollback of the program, even if not done immediately, is really the only path to confidence and stability.

In this post, I give you the tools to decide just how much rollback is needed by enabling you to calculate the breakout time based on some retained centrifuge-enrichment capacity and the residual stocks of enriched uranium. It’s a Choose Your Own Adventure for nuclear diplomacy.

Where Does Iran Stand Today?

In adding up the numbers, I’m going to set aside the 20%-enriched uranium program and focus exclusively on the 3.5%-enriched uranium program located at FEP, the underground facility in Natanz. I make this simplification because I believe that some closure of the 20% program can be negotiated and the 20%-enriched uranium stockpile can either be converted to fuel elements or removed from the breakout calculation through one of many available technical options.

According to the last IAEA report, at Natanz as of August 24, 2013, Iran had 89 fully installed cascades of IR-1s and was working on 37 more.  Of those 89 IR-1 cascades, 54 were operating. Each IR-1 cascade contains 174 centrifuges and each IR-1 is about 0.9 SWU/year. That gives a capacity of:

IR-1 (operating):  9,396 centrifuges =  8,500 SWU/year

IR-1 (installed): 15,486 centrifuges  =  14,000 SWU/year

The IAEA also reports that Iran has six cascades of IR-2ms installed and is working on 12 more. None have been fed with uranium and we do not know for sure the exact layout of these cascades or how efficient they will be.  However, we could assume the IR-2m cascades also contain 174 machines. We could also assume, consistent with my calculations, that the IR-2m produces about 5 kg-SWU/year/centrifuge. Correcting for some cascade losses, a reasonable net performance would be around 4.7 SWU/year/installed IR-2m centrifuge.  That gives:

IR-2m (potential): 1,044 centrifuges =  4,900 SWU/year  = 5,450 IR-1 equivalents

Notice that this tiny installation of IR-2m centrifuges has more than half the potential of all the currently operating centrifuges at Natanz.  That underscores an obvious but important point: we cannot negotiate simply on the basis of numbers of centrifuges. We must base our computation on the maximum potential separative capacity installed, measured in units of SWU/year. There is some nuance to how one actually goes about accounting for and verifying this number.

In addition, Iran has “stored” separative work in the form of enriched uranium. Thus, from the breakout perspective, the residual stockpile of LEU matters because there is a direct trade-off between the number of centrifuges required and the size of the LEU stockpile available. The IAEA report indicated that Iran had a net accumulation of 5,576 kg of low-enriched uranium (not kg of UF6), which we assume has an enrichment of around 3.5%.

How Long to the Bomb?

Well, let me instead tell you how long to a notional nuclear weapon’s quantity of HEU, rather than to a fully fabricated bomb.  The below charts were produced by Steve Fetter as a result of some discussions we’ve been having.  Steve based these on the standard of one IAEA Significant Quantity (25 kg of uranium-235 contained within HEU), which is reasonable for a first-generation implosion design with manufacturing losses. Some believe Iran would need more than a single bomb; I’m of the view that a single bomb is significant—especially one based on HEU.

Centrifuge performance is based on my estimate of 0.9 SWU/IR-1/year.  We have attempted to include the effects of adjusting the tails to optimize the utilization of the LEU stockpile. However, we have ignored second-order effects such as the time required to adjust the cascades, losses from suboptimal cascade configurations or off-optimal centrifuge operation, and machine crashes associated with working on the cascades.  These problems will extend the breakout time, but the calculations below are the right place to start because they give the most efficient credible case.

These charts show the same thing under different presentations. This first chart shows the trade-off between time and centrifuges under assumptions of different LEU stockpile sizes:

This second chart lets you pick a breakout time and trade off between LEU stockpile size and centrifuge plant capacity:

What Constitutes A Workable End State?

Whatever makes you comfortable.  Policymakers will have to decide how many months of advance warning they can tolerate–or rather, how few.  From one perspective, a relatively short period is acceptable if it allows for swift and decisive military action.  I am of another view: even if military action is swift, it will only be temporarily decisive, resulting in Iran’s withdrawal from the NPT and pursuit of the bomb at a newly constructed clandestine location.  More breathing room is needed to avoid such a precarious balance, preferably closer to a year. That much time would enable reinstitution of sanctions of the harshest type and hopefully lead to a peaceful outcome before resorting to military means.

Oh my, China has built a lot of centrifuges for uranium enrichment in recent years.

You may know that China purchased several modules of Russian centrifuges in the 1990s, installing them at Hanzhong and Lanzhou.  You may also know that China built a large facility at Lanzhou that appears to house a domestic centrifuge enrichment facility.

What you almost certainly don’t know is that China now appears to have constructed another indigenous centrifuge facility near Hanzhong. And if you did know, but didn’t tell me … well … I am sort of sore at you.

The two indigenous Chinese centrifuge facilities together represent about 700,000-800,000 SWU per year. (Centrifuge capacity is measured in separative work units or SWU.) Add that to the four Russian-supplied modules totaling 1,500,000 SWU and I think maybe URENCO should get that anti-dumping case ready.

THE CHINESE LEU IS COMING.  THE CHINESE LEU IS COMING.

Details after the jump.

The Chinese have had a centrifuge program since the late 1970s. The program began in earnest in 1977.  China developed a supercritical centrifuge using maraging steel in 1981 “on the basis of materials published abroad.”  Apparently China made a little low enriched uranium before experiencing a period of “reorganization” in 1983-1986. AQ Khan claims he “put up a centrifuge plant” near Hanzhong sometime before 1985. Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t. It is certainly possible that the Chinese were less than impressed with his contributions, prompting the reorganization and return to the drawing board.

Ultimately the Chinese did purchase modules of centrifuges from Russia in the 1990s, the first of which were installed at Hanzhong and placed under safeguards.

Back in 2006, I found China’s safeguarded centrifuge facility near Hanzhong — the Shaanxi Uranium Enrichment Plant — in Google Earth. Until 2005, the IAEA consistently mistransliterated the place name as “Hanzhang,” but the Chinese characters were always correct.   I don’t know what possessed me to double-check. Maybe because I hated my life in Cambridge. Anyway, I also found a blurry photo of the facility on the CNNC website and that was plenty.

It’s here: 33°15’42″ N, 107°25’49″E

At the time, I wrote a long piece about matching the ground-truth and satellite images that I will probably never publish. (I actually got hung up on the totally irrelevant detail of the Chinese characters for Heping, the location of the gaseous diffusion plant.)  Anyway, the really important details are the layout of the buildings, the pipes on the roof and the fact the name of the facility and the China National Nuclear Corporation logo are mowed into the fricking lawn.   I call that high confidence.

CSEP stands for China Shaanxi Enrichment Plant. Here’s the logo for comparison.

This image is rather old — it dates to 2005. Now here is a 2012 image from Digital Globe.  Notice anything different?  Like two brand new giant buildings?

One is a new Russian-supplied centrifuge facility, the other is an indigenous Chinese centrifuge facility.  Busy beavers.

The Russian-supplied facility was completed in 2011.  It is clearly the finished building.  It has a given capacity of 500,000 SWU.  That’s a lot of SWU given the size of the building. It’s big, but not that big.  The other Russian-supplied modules produce about 20 SWU/m2. To accommodate 500,000 SWU as advertised, this plant would have to produce nearly 28 SWU/m2.

Fear not! I notice that the General Director of TENEX, Alexey Grigoriev, toured the facility and said “It is a state-of-art, compact and truly beautiful facility where together with our Chinese comrades we have worked out not only the optimal design and technological solutions, but also the principles of efficient interaction that laid a solid foundation for implementation of new bilateral projects.”

In other words, they really jammed a lot of crap in there. Tenex also released a photo of the site, which makes my previous sleuthing totally unnecessary.

While I expected to see the new Russian facility, I did not expect to also see a smaller version of the indigenous plant at Lanzhou.  The Chinese facility is the partially completed building in the back.

The indigenous centrifuge facility at Hanzhong (left) is about half the size of its sister facility at Lanzhou (right).  Hanzhong has half the floorspace (two 60 m x 150 m halls instead of two 130 m x 150 m halls) and half the number of mechanical draught fans to cool the facility (8 in Hanzhong, 16 at Lanzhou).  Since Lanzhou reportedly has a capacity of 500,000 SWU year, I’d tentatively call Hanzhong 250,000 SWU.

I’ve tried to make a nifty little table.  One thing that I notice is there are three different clusters of efficiency: the newest Russian module with 28 SWU/m2, the first three Russian modules with 20 SWU/m2 and the two new indigenous Chinese facilities with 13-14 SWU/m2.  It would seem the Chinese have a way to go before catching up with the Russians.

(Oh, one more thing. Take a close look at the new photos of the roof “E” shaped administration building. SOLAR PANELS! Hippies.)

Yep, the Norks are firing up the ol’ gas-graphite reactor at Yongbyon just like they said they would in April.

With Yongbyon breeding plutonium and twice as much floor space at the enrichment facility, the North Koreans are probably happy to keep talking.

Here are the initial stories from Kyodo and AP, as well as my piece with Nick Hansen.

38North provided Nick and I  with the satellite image showing steam coming from the turbine building, while Kyodo’s Tomo Inoue is citing “diplomatic sources” in Asia.

As it happens, Glyn Davies is traveling in the region at the moment – so its a good bet Davies briefed similar images to our allies in South Korea, is now telling the Chinese and will tell the Japanese once he gets to Tokyo.  Whether the leaks to Kyodo are from the briefers or the briefees, I don’t know.

Now that I’ve had my say on the Obama’s administration’s opportunity to defuse the Syria crisis, let’s consider the other side of the coin. What if doesn’t work? What if the United States, France, and whoever else comes along in the process end up resorting to force?

What follows is an essay by Aaron Stein, a research associate at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a doctoral candidate at King’s College London. Aaron lays out a case for the carefully constrained use of force, reminiscent of certain parts of the second half of Schelling’s Arms and Influence — combined with an even more ambitious diplomatic agenda than I personally think is in the cards. 

Minding Assad’s Red Line: Escalatory Warfare and the Incentive for Limited Strikes

Aaron Stein

In late 1973, shortly before the start of the Yom Kippur War, Egypt is alleged to have provided Syria with chemical artillery shells. The Arab combatants were already aware of Israel’s nuclear capability, and reportedly saw chemical weapons as a tool to deter Israel’s nuclear capabilities, as well as a weapon of last resort should the better-equipped and -trained Israeli army threaten Cairo or Damascus.

As the Syrian civil war continues, weapons initially slated to deter Israel are now being deployed on the battlefield against the Syrian opposition. However, Syria’s tactics, thus far, suggest that the regime will only resort to large-scale chemical weapons use when Damascus is directly threatened. Thus, while the nature of the threat to Syrian regime has changed, some elements of Syrian WMD doctrine persist.

In the 1980s, Damascus began to import precursor chemicals and develop the technical know-how to produce, deploy, and deliver chemical weapons. Yet, as part of its larger effort to deter Israel, Syrian officials opted for a policy of opacity, and only hinted at the weapons’ existence. Syria’s official policy suggests that Damascus was intent on using the weapon solely as a method of deterrence, rather than as an overt coercive tool to advance other aims.

From “Strategic Parity” to Low-Level Use

Syria’s posture indicates that Damascus, like other WMD-possessing states, viewed its chemical arsenal as its weapons of last resort, rather than weapons to be used on the battlefield. Thus, for state-to-state deterrence, Syria’s possession of chemical weapons allowed the regime to achieve a semblance of “strategic parity” with Jerusalem and, most importantly, to prevent the escalation of smaller-scale conflicts, such as clashes between Israel and Lebanese Hezbollah.

During the Syrian civil war, President Bashar al-Assad has employed his chemical weapons in ways reminiscent of Egypt in Yemen and Iraq during the Iran-Iraq War. However, unlike these previous cases, Assad initially took steps to conceal his use of chemical weapons and is reported to have made an effort to decrease casualties. For example, during a 23 December 2012 attack in Homs, the regime is alleged to have diluted Sarin with isopropanol, in order to decrease the body count and to hide symptoms.

The regime’s very deliberate use of chemical weapons suggests that the Syrian dictator was intent on skirting President Barack Obama’s stated “red line” against the use or movement of chemical weapons. The President indicated that there would be “enormous consequences” if the United States “start[ed] seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.”  Obama’s ambiguous policy suggests that the United States was primarily interested in deterring another Halabja-style attack and intent on preventing the transfer of chemical weapons to Hezbollah.

Thus, while the regime did use chemical weapons against rebel-controlled territory, it nevertheless took steps to conceal its actions, which suggests that the American red line did have some influence on Syria’s behavior.

Moreover, in keeping with the president’s somewhat ambiguous declaratory policy, the United States signaled through inaction that, in the words of an unnamed intelligence official, “as long as they keep [the] body count at a certain level, we won’t do anything.” This approach, while brutal, was consistent with the Obama administration’s unstated policy of minimizing its involvement in the Syrian conflict while coercing the regime to keep its use of chemical weapons to an absolute minimum.

Little Left to Lose?

But after the 21 August attack, which the United States estimates killed 1,429 people, the American calculus finally changed. In one respect, the 21 August attack represents a continuation of the regime’s previous chemical tactics. French intelligence asserts that the attack was intended to force rebel forces from strategic areas in and around Damascus. Yet in other areas of geo-strategic significance in the past- like Homs and the Damascus suburbs – the regime appears to have kept with its previous policy of minimizing casualties when it used chemical weapons.

Thus, 21 August does represent a serious escalation, departing sharply from how the regime used chemical weapons previously. French intelligence indicates that the attack was a preface to an offensive “to loosen the [rebel’s] grip” and to secure a strategic site because “the regime feared a wider attack from the opposition on Damascus at that moment.” The relatively unrestrained use of chemical weapons appears to reflect an urgent need to protect the capital from rebel advances. If true, this claim suggests that the regime values Damascus more than other cities, is prepared to take extraordinary steps to ensure that the capital does not fall to the rebels, and, most importantly, that the regime’s grip on power is no longer as firm as previously reported.

President Obama has argued that the United States now has an obligation to strike Syrian forces, in order to “deter” Assad from using chemical weapons on such a large scale again, to “degrade” his capabilities to do so, and to coerce the regime to enter into negotiations with the opposition. The United States is proposing a limited three-day strike similar in scope to Operation Desert Fox in Iraq in 1998. And, in a departure from the George W. Bush administration’s policy in Iraq and the West’s undeclared policy in Libya, President Obama has explicitly stated that the goal of the strike is not regime change, but rather to respond to the flagrant use of chemical weapons against civilians.

Small is… Less Ugly, Anyway

But even if the stated goal isn’t regime change, the use of force could inadvertently set in motion a scenario whereby the United States directly contributes to the re-crossing of Bashar al-Assad’s own chemical red line. In an interview with Reuters, a number of unidentified Syrian military commanders indicated that they feared that the cruise missile strikes would pave the way for a large-scale rebel offensive. While the Syrian military has taken steps to prepare for the American attack, its leaders still have reason to worry that the rebels will take advantage of the strikes and advance on key positions. In this event, further use of chemical weapons appears likely.

The United States therefore has a strong incentive to curtail its strikes, in order not to avoid tipping the balance of power and bringing about just what it seeks to prevent. Moreover, the risk of further large-scale chemical weapons use necessitates intense American action to try and prevent further use, without resorting to military action. Thus, if Bashar al-Assad’s response to Russia’s recent proposal to place Syrian chemical weapons under international control is sincere, the United States has an interest in pressing the Syrian dictator to take action. However, the immense difficulties associated with accounting for and then destroying chemical weapons in a war zone suggests that the Russian proposal may actually be infeasible.

The United States should therefore continue with its efforts to plan for military action, as well as continue to take steps to prepare for all possible contingencies should diplomacy fail. In a nightmare scenario for U.S. policymakers and American allies in the region, a large-scale strike that Assad interprets as intended to overthrow his government could lead him to consider using chemical weapons against regional targets to punish American allies before he himself is toppled.

Too Late to Manage the Consequences of Failure

Deputy Foreign Minister Faisal al-Mekdad indicated in an interview with the Wall Street Journal that Damascus would target Israel, Jordan, and Turkey if they are complicit in an American led strike. While the United States and its regional allies have taken steps to address the threat, the defenses put in place thus far are inadequate.

The Turkish government, for example, has increased its military deployments on the border and has sent 400 Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear (CBRN) specialists to assist and train first responders. In addition, NATO has deployed six Patriot batteries in southern Turkey and American and British specials forces are reported to have trained Turkish and Jordanian commandoes to secure suspected chemical weapons sites in Syria.

Nevertheless, Turkey still remains ill-prepared to deal with a large-scale chemical attack. In 2008, a local Turkish manufacturer began production of 162,000 CBRN suits for the Turkish armed forces. But as of now, only 2,000 have been delivered. Moreover, reports indicate that most of Turkey’s American supplied gas masks are expired and the armed forces, as well as civilians, would suffer mass casualties in a large-scale chemical weapons attack.

In Jordan, the United States has also deployed Patriot missile batteries, F-16 fighter jets, and a few hundred military planers and communication experts to help monitor the border and to train Jordanian soldiers to respond to a chemical attack. However, in the event that Syria fires a barrage of missiles at regional targets, the missile defenses deployed in Turkey and Jordan would be overwhelmed. And, absent effective local passive defenses, the number of casualties could be quite high. In turn, this further underscores the need to mind Assad’s chemical red line, before the United States strikes Syrian targets.

Getting Ready for the Next Round

The United States therefore should continue to pair its military preparations with very clear signals to the Assad regime about the limited scope of military action, and the strikes should match those signals. The United States’ initial strikes could only target the units suspected of carrying out the 21 August strike, as well as longer-range delivery vehicles that could be used to target its regional allies. After this action, the United States could keep naval assets within range of Syria and signal its willingness to use force again, should Assad cross the red line again.

In doing so, it is critical for the U.S. to maintain a posture of not seeking regime change in both word and deed. Even in the event of follow-up strikes, the United States should continue to exercise restraint. Too great an increase in the scope or intensity of the strikes risks leaving Assad with too little to lose and thereby forcing him to use his weapons to stave off regime collapse. The American mission therefore should continue to be aimed at punishing the regime for violating international norms, rather than changing the dynamics on the battlefield.

At the same time, the United States should signal to Assad that his targeting of regional allies would escalate the level of American involvement and lead to a military campaign intended to force him from power. Turkey, by virtue of its membership in NATO, has already received a strong and overt American commitment to aid in its defense. Thus, Washington and Ankara should signal that any action taken against Turkey would lead to invocation of Article 5 of the Washington Treaty and thereby result in an overwhelming Western led military operation against the Assad regime. The same such guarantee could be given to Jordan, albeit outside the NATO context.

Israeli Ambassador to the United States Michael Oren has downplayed the need for a direct American security commitment, saying, “We can defend ourselves.” However, history suggests that in the event of an attack, the United States would come to Israel’s aid, albeit in ways short of direct military intervention on behalf of the Jewish state. The clear communication of this policy would be intended to coerce Assad to take de-escalatory steps, in the event he feel threatened, and clearly communicate the threshold for escalatory American action.

Bringing the War to a Close

Precisely because this policy necessitates an open-ended commitment to the punitive use of force, it is critical that the United States pairs military action with political efforts designed to foster a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Military strikes cannot eliminate Assad’s chemical-weapons threat, and could even lead to their further use. The only way to neutralize the threat is to remove the incentive to use the weapons. The only way to do that is to negotiate an end to the war.

This strategy has its less attractive features. One drawback is that Assad will continue to use conventional weapons against civilians without an effective response from the United States or its allies. But from the outset of the current debate, the Obama administration has made clear that its decision to use force came about as a result of the violation of the norm against the use of WMD, rather than a commitment to alter the dynamics on the ground. Sticking to that policy offers a way to minimize the likelihood that Assad uses chemical weapons on a large scale again, while also keeping the tools to respond at the ready should he test American resolve again.

Aaron Stein is a research associate at the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) and a doctoral candidate at King’s College London. He blogs at Turkey Wonk. Follow him on Twitter: @aaronstein1.

I’ve written a column for Foreign Policy arguing that the United States should act on Syria’s offer to accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention.

What follows is an initial list of thoughts about the modalities for a United Nations/Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons special commission on the elimination of chemical weapons in Syria.

I’ll probably update this post repeatedly as more people weigh in with ideas and comments.

I think we  are looking for two commitments from the Syrians.

First, Syria needs to affirm that the 1925 Geneva Protocol, to which it is a party, prohibits the use of chemical and biological weapons in all conflicts, including intrastate conflicts.

Second, Syria needs to sign and ratify the Chemical Weapons Convention, and accede to the Biological Weapons Convention.

Under the Chemical Weapons Convention, Syria would have to submit a declaration detailing its chemical weapons programs within 30 days, but would have ten years to eliminate any stocks of chemical weapons. Obviously, the Security Council must insist on an expedited process to secure and dispose of Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. Moreover, the CWC contains a number of provisions that may not be appropriate given the exigency of the current situation, including detailed instructions outlining the details of chemical weapons destruction. It is important for the Security Council to establish a special commission empowered with broader latitude than the OPCW has under the CWC and backed by the threat of enforcement under Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter. This need not be an indefinite arrangement.  After the Security Council determines that Syria’s chemical weapons stocks have been eliminated, Syria can remain in the CWC as a normal state party.

In the first few weeks, the Security Council would pass a resolution, invoking Chapter VII of the United Nations Charter, creating a special commission, staffed largely by OPCW personnel, to oversee the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons programs. It is important that the Security Council empower this Commission to act in ways that extend beyond the mandate of the OPCW for the initial period covering the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons programs. In this period, Syria would submit an interim declaration and agree to a document outlining the rights, privileges and immunities of the special commission.

Within months, UN/OPCW inspectors would be present in Syria, overseeing the process of securing and destroying Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles. The UN/OPCW would have to make an initial technical judgement about how much of existing stockpiles and equipment can be destroyed on site, including through the use of mobile chemical weapons destruction facilities; how much can be removed from Syria, possibly overland into Jordan (The Jordanians have said they prefer a diplomatic solution.  I am  voluntelling Amman.); and what must be left in place under tag and seal. Leaving chemical weapons, precursors or production equipment under tag and seal is, I think, the least appealing option.

At the same time, UN/OPCW inspectors would have to attempt to verify the correctness and completeness of the Syrian declaration. Here politics intrudes. There will be pressure, of course, to account for what happened on August 21, as well as the months leading up to it. The CWC is not blind to history.  At the same time we are empowering our UN/OPCW team with extraordinary powers, we need to be clear as a policy matter that our priority goal is securing and eliminating Syria’s chemical weapons programs.  Issues of historical collaboration and culpability can be deferred for the time being.

I don’t think we can know how long it will take to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons stockpiles, given uncertainties about their size, type and location, to say nothing of the sort of cooperation the UN/OPCW may or may not get from the Syrian government.  But I would expect the process to take more than year.

No matter — even a partial elimination of the stockpile is worthwhile. Almost any amount of cooperative disarmament will be more effective than a Desert Fox-like Operation.  Even if  Assad were to surrender only a portion of the stockpiling before reneging on his commitments, the United States and its allies would be in a better legal and political position to use force, with fewer chemical weapons to target.