The National Interest

THERE IS a global consensus that any agreement with Iran on ensuring its nuclear program is for civilian purposes only will have to involve inspections to verify its disarmament. But as a former weapons inspector, I have very bad news for you: a weapons-inspection regime in Iran will not work. Inspections themselves are most effective when both the state being inspected and the inspecting countries are fully on board—and even then there are limits. An inspection regime can never ensure full disarmament. We can only hope it would detect major violations.

Tehran has shielded its nuclear program from outside examination, and, moreover, the Iranian government has made clear that it will not fully divulge—even when caught—all of the details of its nuclear activities and their support networks, both domestic and foreign. Iran has refused repeated IAEA requests for interviews with the scientists and engineers responsible for large areas of its secret atomic work, and it has refused to disclose the details of its involvement with North Korea and with Pakistan’s A. Q. Khan nuclear smuggling network. To date, the unmasking of Tehran’s activities owes far more to the tip-offs provided by an Iranian dissident group, the Mujahedin-e Khalq, which in 2002 told the world about Iran’s nuclear facility at Natanz, than to the regime itself.

The result is that Iran now has a broad capability in all aspects of the nuclear-weapons process: from converting natural uranium into enriched uranium using gas centrifuges; to designing and testing the components of a nuclear weapon; to working on the construction of a missile-deliverable warhead; to building and testing missiles capable of delivering that nuclear warhead over significant distances.

What we do not know with any certainty is the full extent of this clandestine program: the location of undisclosed nuclear facilities; the extent to which Iran has already attempted to enrich uranium to the levels necessary for nuclear weapons (at least in small amounts); how far along it is in the design and production of much more efficient gas centrifuges capable of continuous operation and greater production of enriched uranium than its initial models; the exact status of its weapons and warhead design-and-testing programs; and whether it has made a formal decision to proceed to the production of nuclear weapons. The point is clear: this is a complex process with numerous steps, numerous unknowns and numerous potential obstacles to some kind of clarity of thought.

It would be foolish to assume that existing IAEA inspections could effectively confirm that Iran was living up to its announced intention. It would also be unwise to assume that the U.S. and other governments have a clear view of the type of inspections that would be required to even begin to make sure Iran kept its supposed promises. But above all, it would be foolish to think we know the minimum requirements for an effective inspection regime if Iran were to suddenly announce that it had abandoned all activities not essential to a peaceful nuclear-energy program.

EVEN BEFORE getting to the overwhelming detail of a workable inspection regime, we must understand this: a prerequisite is trust. The international community is skeptical about almost everything the Islamic Republic does in the nuclear realm. And Iran is unlikely to ever be an honest broker. For more than twenty years now, Tehran has engaged in systematic efforts to protect a clandestine nuclear program from discovery by IAEA inspections. Abetted by a broad effort of deception and denial—they seek foreign assistance in the design and production of centrifuges, they import undeclared natural uranium, they acquire data on nuclear weapons and missile warheads, and they build secret nuclear facilities, some hidden in tunnels and others in military bases—the Iranian government has shown every sign that it plans to covertly continue arming itself.

Additionally, almost all of the power players that started and carried forward Iran’s nuclear capabilities still have political influence. That even the leaders of the political opposition in the Islamic Republic, like former-Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, were, while in government, strong supporters of Iran’s clandestine nuclear program is often overlooked. In opposition they continue to speak of their belief in their country’s right to pursue nuclear activities. Ever since the Iraqis used chemical weapons against Iran during the Iran-Iraq war, the consensus among Tehran’s ruling elite has been that they need to have a deterrent. The two U.S.-led wars against Iraq and strident U.S. rhetoric about the necessity of regime change in Iran only increased that desire for a deterrent that would hold the United States at bay. What started out as a nuclear-weapons program has, for political reasons, been called a civilian-nuclear-power effort, though the repeated disclosures of the extent of Iran’s clandestine atomic infrastructure, including elements such as work on neutron-initiation devices and warhead design, has built up a general belief that the ultimate goal is a nuclear force. And in large part, the Iranian elite still support the weaponization of their nuclear capabilities.

A vicious circle ensues. The Iranians distrust and feel threatened by the West; in turn, the West and Iran’s neighbors fear the Islamic Republic. Without some level of trust or agreement that the condition being verified is in everyone’s interest, the requirements for effective inspection become extremely onerous. Iran has a toxic relationship with any number of states, both within and outside the Middle East. And these are the same states that, in many cases, sit on the IAEA’s Board of Governors and the UN Security Council; they are the ones that would provide essential support and personnel for inspection and verification activities. The lack of mutual trust would certainly endure during the inspection and verification process, providing fertile ground for disputes and delays.

Because the government in Tehran believes that the regime is under military and political threat from both the West and the Sunni regimes of the Gulf, it views intrusive inspections as part of an effort to gather intelligence and, ultimately, to overthrow the Islamic Republic. Tehran would be deeply suspicious about the motivations of the personnel in-country; there is every reason to believe that Iran would attempt to hinder and limit their activities.

EVEN IF that elusive trust could be achieved, the purpose of IAEA oversight remains one of the most misunderstood elements of discussions about establishing an effective international inspection and verification regime. Inspection and verification are often thought of as ways to prevent a state from developing nuclear weapons. This is certainly not the case, and what’s more, it would be well beyond the capabilities of any conceivable inspection regime tasked with this verification mandate. If a country decides to break its international obligations and proceed with a nuclear-weapons program, the only options are military action by other countries or the acceptance of an atomically armed state. Inspectors simply do not have the military force that would be required to dissuade Iran or any other nation determined to breach its obligations and acquire nuclear weapons.

Equally surprising to many is that the objective of inspection and verification would not be to guarantee a complete absence of clandestine nuclear activities in Iran. The number of inspectors and level of intrusiveness necessary to ensure that no programs of that sort are taking place in a country Iran’s size is far greater than anything that can be contemplated.

Instead, the goal is to create the equivalent of a strong plate-glass window that Iran would have to shatter if it were to embark upon a militarily significant nuclear program—and that inspectors could be reasonably expected to detect that shattering. The aim is not the unachievable—detecting all cheating—just the early and certain detection of any cheating that could significantly advance Iran’s capability to possess nuclear weapons. So we might not need to know that Iran has dug a new tunnel. But we do need to know that they have the designs for a nuclear warhead and have taken the steps required for its production and deployment.

Yet even this more modest goal will not be an easy one to reach. And it will come along with some stringent requirements for Iran and the international inspection regime.

IRAN’S STATUS as an almost-nuclear-capable state is a key part of what makes inspections so difficult (for the only thing more difficult is to inspect a state that has already procured and tested some part of an atomic arsenal). When a country gets to this stage, former-President Ronald Reagan’s widely cited statement of “trust, but verify” becomes nigh impossible. For with countries like Iran, once the secrets of nuclear-weapons design and construction, uranium enrichment, plutonium separation, and missile and warhead construction have been mastered, it is only a very small step away from acquiring nuclear weapons and their means of delivery.

The fact that inspectors must let Tehran carry out its civilian-nuclear effort, yet distinguish from that the moment Iran moves from a power-generation program to a military one, makes this a task largely unachievable by mere mortals.

A successful inspection regime would require a level of transparency by Iran that is beyond the pale of anything such an aggressively authoritarian state would allow. And inspectors would need to be there on a permanent basis.

One large hindrance thus far to unmasking the Iranian clandestine nuclear program has been the lack of a permanent inspection presence in the country able to immediately follow up on intelligence leads. Tehran, for example, delayed for almost a month the inspection of the centrifuge enrichment facility near Qom. Such delays allow the Iranians to clear sites of incriminating evidence before inspectors arrive. If Iran were to be allowed to continue its uranium-enrichment efforts, even with limitations as to the degree of enrichment, full-time international inspections would be required to guard against diversion.

IRAN HAS a host of facilities that could in some way be used to fashion a nuclear weapon. The IAEA needs access to all of this infrastructure.

All facilities designed to explore, plan or actually produce any means of enriching uranium and any nuclear-related activities have been, are currently being or are planned to be carried out must be declared to the inspectors and subject to whatever intrusive measures they deem appropriate. IAEA inspections in Iraq, North Korea and Iran have been treated as a game of cat and mouse. If the inspectors can find something, for example, that now-infamous undeclared centrifuge plant at Qom, then Iran will admit to its existence and after some delay give the inspectors access. This is a formula for certain distrust and frustration—not for effective inspections. The failure to reveal all nuclear-related sites should be viewed as a serious breach of Iran’s obligations with real consequences, like air raids, economic sanctions or targeted bombings, not just as a challenge that the inspectors must overcome.

These necessary revelations would certainly include all sites involving nuclear-material production, reactor operation and any activity related to the nuclear-fuel cycle—from uranium procurement through reprocessing of spent fuel—because it is the acquisition of highly enriched uranium or weapons-grade plutonium that remains the hardest task for a state seeking to acquire nuclear weapons. Iran must declare the military bases, industrial and research facilities, and the financial and trading establishments that support the importation of nuclear-program components. Access to computer and communication networks would also need to be ensured because some significant parts of the nuclear-weapons process can be carried out in otherwise-permitted research and industrial facilities and with the aid of computers no more advanced than those found today in most universities.

Imagine the following scenario: inspectors are roaming around Iran trying to find a clandestine centrifuge plant. They have information that it is hidden in an Iranian military base, but that is all they know. Which base and where in that base is unknown. The inspectors would like to descend on various sites without notice, with equipment capable of searching underground as well as above ground, and carry out environmental sampling. And, by the way, they will be using highly accurate GPS and satellite data to thoroughly map the base in an attempt to see if anything seems unusual or out of place. Too, of course, the inspectors would insist on interviewing personnel and looking over anything entering or leaving the base during their time in situ. This level of intrusiveness would make full-body scanning at airports seem benign indeed.

OF COURSE, all of this infrastructure would be useless without raw materials that will eventually arm a weapon, so Tehran must disclose still more: a full and complete declaration of all of its nuclear components. That is the only way to verify Iran is not attempting to produce a nuclear weapon. This would include, but not be limited to, all holdings of uranium in any of its various states, along with plutonium, radioactive sources of any kind and heavy water, as all of these could eventually end up being used to make fuel for a nuclear weapon. And it goes further still. Prior notification of any intent to import materials related to permitted nuclear programs would have to come from Tehran and be approved by the inspection regime. To make any of this happen, the international inspection regime would have to draw up a defined list of nuclear materials and components whose importation is absolutely prohibited.

Beyond gatekeeping, all uranium enrichment needs to be closely monitored. Enrichment at levels up to 8 percent can legitimately be used in nuclear-power reactors, but again, inspectors will have to walk that fine line between discerning what is intended for civilian-nuclear purposes and what will be used for a weapon. All uranium enrichment at levels greater than 8 percent simply must be prohibited. This would be difficult because the enrichment process, while precise at the atomic level, is very imprecise at the industrial-process level, so it is hard for inspectors to determine both the quality and the quantity of enriched uranium.

On top of this, every enrichment plant inevitably ends up with some amount of uranium stuck on pipe walls and inside valves. Over time, the amount of uranium that is unaccounted for can be significant. Inspectors and the nuclear industry refer to this as MUF, the missing uranium factor. With full access and a cooperative plant staff, inspectors can reach confident judgments about whether the MUF at a given site is reasonable or a possible sign of nuclear-material diversion from civilian waste heaps to nuclear-weapons production. This is going to be a difficult task in Iran, where inspectors were not given access to enrichment plants during the design and construction phase, and so far have not been given continuous access during actual production; they have no baselines from which to gauge explicable amounts of uranium residue.

Plutonium too must be monitored. Yet once more, distinguishing work that benefits Iranian society from that which threatens nuclear weaponization is a largely impossible task. To produce plutonium, natural uranium must first be irradiated. Then the fissionable plutonium isotope, Pu-239, can be separated out. The separation of plutonium up to the microgram level has become an acceptable activity in nuclear labs worldwide; it is considered fundamental science and is used for research into alternative nuclear-fuel cycles. Yet all separation of plutonium must still be monitored because even experiments at microgram-level separation can provide important data and experience relevant to the isotope’s use in nuclear weapons. On the other hand, plutonium separation above that threshold should be prohibited, and the inspectors must be given prior notification of all work on separated plutonium regardless of the amounts involved.

Additionally, the inspectors will need to watch like hawks for those experiments that turn innocent-enough-at-the-time materials into nuclear-weapons-ready fuel. For a nuclear reaction to take place, the fissile material used as fuel must reach a critical mass—that is, the amount of neutrons is sufficient to create a self-sustaining nuclear reaction. Of course criticality experiments are a normal part of the design and operation of a civilian nuclear-power plant, as is the storage of fresh or irradiated fuel. But in order to make a nuclear weapon, fissile material must pass from below critical mass to supercriticality in a very short period of time. Those interested in making nuclear weapons need to experiment with this process. All nuclear-criticality experiments unrelated to reactor-safety issues must be banned, and even still, international supervision of those experiments related to the safe operation of nuclear-power reactors will need to be tracked.

Plus there are all the ways to secretly siphon fuel from civilian projects. Any nuclear reactor that is capable of on-line refueling must also be subjected to continuous international inspection. Most nuclear-power plants require that the reaction be halted and the pressure vessel opened in order to gain access to the nuclear fuel. This is an easy-to-observe and hard-to-hide activity. On the other hand, almost all research reactors and a small number of nuclear-power designs permit on-line refueling. This makes the detection of clandestine fuel removal much harder; it is a major pathway to plutonium production that should be closed. And all spent fuel from nuclear reactors of whatever type must be under the supervision of the international inspectors because it provides yet another way to illicitly produce plutonium.

As we see, the list goes on and on, the number of sites gets greater and greater, the demands on inspectors’ time increase and increase, and the possibility of completing all of these tasks becomes more and more elusive.

FINALLY, THERE is the weaponization process. The rest means virtually nil without a way to send a nuclear-armed missile soaring across the globe (or at least past a border or two). Iran would need to declare in advance, and allow inspectors to monitor, all missile tests with ranges beyond 150 kilometers and/or payloads greater than 150 kilograms. Any missile with capabilities beyond these ranges could serve as a nuclear-weapons delivery system.

Inspectors too must be granted the right to monitor all missile-test, -production and -deployment sites. Iran would need to experiment a great deal to build a missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, an astoundingly precise weapon. The nuclear reaction in a warhead has to take place in less than a second. Physicists measure the time it takes in “shakes” (each shake is equal to 10 nanoseconds), a term that was, believe it or not, derived during the Manhattan Project from the then-common expression “two shakes of a lamb’s tail.” Getting this timing right is hard enough to do with a nuclear weapon at rest, and it is a major hurdle if the weapon is mounted on a missile flying at supersonic speeds. The extreme dynamic pressures of a missile launch and reentry can render a nuclear-weapon design inert. So, Iran must either be given the secrets to ensuring that its warhead design will work or carry out instrumented tests to confirm that it has solved this problem. Inspectors need to try to determine whether Tehran has made progress on this front.

This is how inspection regimes fall apart. The realities on the ground are too complex for inspectors to ever be able to promise even a 50 percent guarantee of success. And in point of fact, this is only the first half of what would be necessary to (potentially) prove Iran was military-nuclear-program-free. To even set this intrusive inspection regime in motion, Iran would have to sign an international agreement. This too is rife with difficulties.

IT WILL be as hard for the international community to pull its weight in establishing an inspection and verification regime that could be relied upon to detect any significant breach by Iran as it would be to get the Islamic Republic to submit to its mandates.

Only on superficial examination would one conclude that arms-control and inspection regimes work, that just because an inspected state lives up to its obligations, all is well. The relationship between the inspected and the inspection regime is much more symbiotic than often realized and can turn destructive when either side is unable or unwilling to live up to its obligations. The history of inspection regimes shows that they usually fail either because technological or political change makes them irrelevant or, more often, because the states that demanded inspections, when challenged by a violator, prove to be unwilling to bear the economic and political costs to make them effective.

The truth is that the IAEA does not have the capability or the cohesion of its member states that would be necessary to make and sustain an effective inspection regime. There has been no agreement on the standard of proof or methods for resolving divergent interpretations that arise during the course of inspections. For example, in the past, the IAEA has reached conclusions with which Iran has strongly disagreed, and Tehran has limited or suspended cooperation with the inspections in turn. The issues remain unresolved because of the fundamental problems on both sides of the inspection aisle. There is no reason to believe this sad state of affairs will change.

The basic mechanisms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), set up in 1970, have been flawed from the beginning. The treaty recognized that all states had the right to the full nuclear-fuel cycle—essentially all the elements of a nuclear weapon—but it concentrated inspections only on detecting the diversion of any declared stocks of nuclear material from civilian to military purposes. Inspecting and searching for clandestine nuclear activities was ruled out—that is, until the discovery in 1991 of the secret and undetected Iraq program, followed belatedly by similar discoveries in North Korea and Iran. There is now an Additional Protocol intended to give the inspectors the rights and capabilities required to detect undeclared programs (which Iran signed and then backed out of). But the key problem is with the mechanisms themselves. For this agreement to work, the international community will have to hold Iran to far stricter requirements than any other state has ever agreed to under the NPT (wide-area, continuous environmental monitoring; a permanent inspection presence; inspectors with the right to go anywhere with any instruments without delay and so on). The countries imposing these obligations on Iran would realize that the requirements could easily become the norm for effective IAEA inspections in all states—and indeed they should be. But the possibility of having to implement them across the board would make the international community very hesitant to support such expansive inspections.

Even if we could get that far, a clear requirement would be strong and continuing support by the IAEA’s Board of Governors, its director general and, most importantly, the UN Security Council to enforce these treaty provisions. Arms-control inspections are easier for political bodies and leaders to support in the abstract than in actual operation. Inspectors often find evidence of cheating and deception by the party being inspected and bring this to the political bodies for action. But by their very nature, such groups do not like to confront facts that require actions of uncertain and even unpleasant consequences. Individual IAEA inspectors in the 1980s raised serious questions about the extent and direction of Iraq’s nuclear program. These suspicions were buried and the inspectors moved to other jobs. Even after the 1991 Gulf War, the IAEA leadership at first rejected inspection findings that showed massive violations by Iraq. Beginning in the early 1990s, the IAEA leadership gave Iran a public “clean bill of health” on living up to its safeguard obligations in the face of questions from inspectors. Even after a twenty-year-long clandestine program started to be revealed, the IAEA inspectors have had a hard time getting the political leadership to confront Iran. North Korea was allowed to cheat on its obligations to permit safeguard inspections for four years before the higher-ups in the IAEA confronted it, at which point North Korea simply walked away from the NPT. It is easier to temporize and delay than to confront violations. The net result is that violators become emboldened and inspectors become demoralized, learning to look the other way when transgressions are discovered.

There will likely continue to be a fragile basis of political support—both inside Iran and internationally—for any intrusive inspection regime, and so when cheating or disagreements occur, no one will have the will necessary to keep inspections on track. Moreover, Iran, given its substantial oil resources and key geopolitical location, will remain an attractive place for investment. Tehran has shown that it knows how to manipulate access to its resources and markets to achieve political leverage. China has made it very clear that it will not hazard its multibillion-dollar investment in Iran’s petrochemical industry to support action. Russia is the major supplier of Iran’s nuclear-power industry. India is also a key trading partner that has been slow to support sanctions.

Moreover, a large body of adequately trained, equipped, supported and financed inspectors would be needed for an intrusive inspection regime in Iran. Forming such a group would be more difficult than one might expect. Given how close Iran has moved toward being fully capable of producing nuclear weapons and their missile-delivery systems, and with Tehran’s history of shielding these capabilities from detection, only a few countries have a large-enough body of technically qualified people to fit the bill. You need to be a nuclear-armed state to have the people capable of running inspections. And you need enough manpower to be able to spare that personnel. That leaves us with countries like the United States, the United Kingdom and France, which would be viewed with great distrust by Iran. On the other hand, Russia and China would probably be viewed as biased in favor of the Islamic Republic. Israel, Pakistan and India have nuclear weapons, but have not signed the Non-Proliferation Treaty and would hardly seem an appropriate source of inspectors. So, creating a technically qualified group of people acceptable to Iran and that at the same time would be judged qualified and independent by others would be a huge hurdle.

Add to this the fact that the international community would have to agree to a transparent and enforceable dispute-resolution process that would operate under the authority of the UN Security Council and the task gets harder still. Current IAEA inspections in Iran have been an off-and-on proposition with shifting levels of Iranian cooperation. When unhappy with the inspectors’ demands for documents and access, or with sanctions imposed when it failed to comply with IAEA and Security Council demands, Iran has limited the activities and access of the inspectors. If this were to be the norm, any new inspection regime would quickly become not a confidence-building mechanism but a source of lack of confidence in Iran’s intentions.

IF ALL of these requirements and conditions could be met, would they keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons? The answer must be NO. Inspections and arms-control agreements cannot prevent a state that has made a decision to violate its solemn oath to breach its obligations from doing so. All you can ask of inspections is that they provide a high level of confidence that any such breach would be detected at an early-enough stage that the other parties to the agreement would have the opportunity to take action before militarily serious consequences result.

If the conditions and requirements outlined here could be met, there would be a very high probability that any Iranian effort to produce nuclear weapons would be detected prior to the acquisition of such weapons in a form that is usable for military activities. Then the question would be how would the states impacted by this decision respond. That decision goes well beyond the world of inspections and inspectors. And I would strongly argue that when inspectors move beyond honestly and fully reporting what they observe into the realm of worrying and tempering their observations according to the political consequences that might result, that is precisely the point when inspections become the greatest danger to international peace and security. If inspectors are tempted to see or hear no evil, believing that by doing so, they can prevent turning themselves into the catalysts for war, deception becomes the guiding principle. That is, until a nuclear-weapons program becomes armed and ready, and the consequences undeniable and catastrophic.

David Kay led the UN inspection after the first Gulf War that uncovered the previously unknown Iraqi nuclear program and, after the most recent Gulf War, led the CIA’s Iraq Survey Group that determined that there had been no Iraqi weapons of mass destruction at the time of the war. He is now a private consultant in Washington, DC.