The end of Mutually Assured Destruction?

Via Matt Fay, a very concise statement (PDF) of Daryl Press’ and Keir Lieber’s arguments regarding the end of nuclear “stalemate”, published in the Strategic Studies Quarterly:

[T]he same revolution in accuracy that has transformed conventional warfare has had equally momentous consequences for nuclear weapons and deterrence. Very accurate delivery systems, new reconnaissance technologies, and the downsizing of arsenals from Cold War levels have made both conventional and nuclear counterforce strikes against nuclear arsenals much more feasible than ever before. Perhaps most surprising, pairing highly accurate delivery systems with nuclear weapons permits target strategies that would create virtually no radioactive fallout, hence, vastly reduced fatalities. (p3)

The same models that were used during the Cold War to demonstrate the inescapability of stalemate—the condition of “mutual assured destruction,” or MAD—now suggested that even the large Russian arsenal could be destroyed in a disarming strike. Furthermore, the dramatic leap in accuracy—which is the foundation for effective counterforce—is based on widely available technologies within reach of other nuclear-armed states, including Russia, China, Pakistan, and others. (p4)

And why counterforce is a desirable capability:

Fielding powerful counterforce weapons may help deter adversary escalation during war— by convincing enemy leaders to choose a “golden parachute” rather than escalation—and would give US leaders better response options if deterrence failed … the United States should retain and develop nuclear weapons that bring together three key characteristics of counterforce: high accuracy, flexible yield, and prompt delivery (p7)

(An aside: ‘High accuracy, flexible yield, and prompt delivery’ certainly characterizes the direction in which South Asian arsenals are headed, even if at a crawl)

Richard Betts on deterrence, Iran, and ambiguity

Richard Betts, in a long Foreign Affairs essay on deterrence, talks about Iran:

Nevertheless, rather than planning to deter a prospective Iranian nuclear arsenal, the United States and Israel have preferred preventive war. Although many still hope to turn Iran away from nuclear weapons through sanctions and diplomacy, the debate within and between the United States and Israel over what to do if Iran moves to produce a bomb is about not whether to attack but when. U.S. President Barack Obama has firmly declared that he has not a “policy of containment” but rather “a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon,” and other administration officials have repeatedly emphasized this point. As promises in foreign policy go, this one is chiseled in stone. Backing down from it when the time comes would be the right thing to do but would represent an embarrassing retreat.

The logic behind rejecting deterrence is that Tehran might decide to use nuclear weapons despite facing devastating retaliation. The risk can never be reduced to zero, but there is no reason to believe that Iran poses more danger than other nasty regimes that have already developed nuclear weapons. The most telling example is North Korea. Although the American public has not paid nearly as much attention to North Korea, Pyongyang’s record of fanatical belligerence and terrorist behavior over the years has been far worse than Tehran’s.

Refusing to accept an iota of risk from Iran ignores the massive risks of the alternative of initiating war. Leaving aside the danger of being blind-sided by unanticipated forms of Iranian reprisal — for example, the use of biological weapons — the obvious risks include Iranian retaliation by overt or covert military means against U.S. assets. The results of the initially successful assault on Iraq in 2003 are a reminder that wars the United States starts do not necessarily end when and how it wants them to. Indeed, the records of the United States and Israel suggest that both countries tend to underestimate the prospective costs of the wars they enter. Washington paid fewer costs than expected during the Gulf War but faced a far higher bill than anticipated in Korea, Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and the second war against Iraq. Israel suffered less in the 1967 Six-Day War than expected but was badly surprised by the costs of the 1973 Yom Kippur War, the 1982 Lebanon war, and the 2006 war against Hezbollah.

Launching a war against Iran would also have negative spillover effects. First and foremost, short of an accompanying ground invasion and occupation, an air attack could not guarantee an end to Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons; it could guarantee only a delay and would almost certainly drive the Iranians to commit more fervently to building a bomb. If Iran’s capabilities were only temporarily degraded but its intentions were inflamed, the threat might become worse. Striking first would also fracture the international coalition that now stands behind sanctions against Iran, undercut opposition to the regime inside the country, and be seen throughout the world as another case of arrogant American aggression against Muslims.

Those costs might seem justifiable if launching a war against Iran dissuaded other countries from attempting to get their own nuclear deterrents. But it might just as well energize such efforts. George W. Bush’s war to prevent Iraq from getting nuclear weapons did not dissuade North Korea, which went on to test its own weapons a few years later, nor did it turn Iran away. It may have induced Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi to surrender his nuclear program, but a few years later, his reward from Washington turned out to be overthrow and death — hardly an encouraging lesson for U.S. adversaries about the wisdom of renouncing nuclear weapons.

One reason U.S. leaders might be reluctant to apply deterrence these days is that the strategy’s most potent form — the threat to annihilate an enemy’s economy and population in retaliation — is no longer deemed legitimate [...] But that inhibition should hardly be a reason to prefer starting a war, nor does it cripple deterrence. An acceptable variant would be to threaten not to annihilate Iran’s population but to annihilate its regime — the leaders, security agencies, and assets of the Iranian government — if it used nuclear weapons. Although in practice, even a discriminating counterattack of that kind would result in plenty of collateral damage, U.S. planners could credibly make the threat and could reinforce it by pledging to invade Iran as well — a step that would be far more reasonable to take after an Iranian nuclear strike than it was against Iraq in 2003. And even if legal concerns constrained the United States from massively retaliating against Iranian civilians, Israeli leaders would surely be willing to do so if Iran attacked Israel with nuclear weapons, since Israel’s national existence would be at stake. Those mutually reinforcing threats — that the fruits of the Iranian Revolution and even Iranian society itself would cease to exist — would be an overwhelming restraint on Tehran.

A nuclear-armed Iran is an alarming prospect. But there is no sure solution to some dangers, and this challenge presents a strategic choice between different risks. There is simply no real evidence that war with Iran would yield any more safety than handling the problem with good old deterrence.

Fine as far as it goes, but it misses what is now the more relevant debate over what will happen if Iran stays below the American red line in perpetuity.

Last week, The Economist reported that “[Obama] has told [Netanyahu] that America is now closer to the threshold for taking such a step” – that step being “an ultimatum to Iran that it must reach a deal on halting enrichment within months or face military action” – and “that he [Obama] is not prepared to allow diplomatic negotiations to run beyond this year without a big change in Iran’s attitude”.

If that is so, and I am somewhat sceptical that Obama would have been so committal, then we run into a problem identified by Betts earlier in his essay:  ”the deterrent warning must be loud and clear, so the target cannot misread it. Deterrence should be ambiguous only if it is a bluff”.

Iran is unlikely to take any obvious steps towards weaponisation – say, enrichment beyond 20% or the expulsion of inspectors. So what will that ultimatum look like? There will be considerable ambiguity over where other red lines should be drawn if the talks fail and Iran continues its nuclear advances: introduction of IR2s at Fordow? A certain number of cascades?

This ambiguity may even be realistically irresolvable. Setting a specific date, as Israel wants and The Economist suggests might have occurred, is deeply problematic: true, it is unambiguous (2014 comes when it comes), but it is also entirely non-credible, because Iran could temporarily trim down capabilities, undercut the objective basis for any military action, and slowly build back up to those levels.

More likely is a Schelling-esque approach: that the trigger for any future red line(s) is unambiguous (a specific date) but that the response is left ambiguous. But this still leaves open the possibility that, as Betts warns, Iran interprets this as a bluff.

Nuclear strategy and deterrence stability in Asia

Two new papers on South Asian nuclear weapons, both part of a Stimson series.

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Michael Krepon’s Pakistan’s Nuclear Strategy and Deterrence Stability is a stock-take of Pakistan’s nuclear forces:

The pacing and output of these programs suggest that it will be increasingly difficult for Pakistani (and Indian) spokespersons to assert that they will not engage in an arms race. The Pakistan-India dynamic is certainly the most pronounced nuclear competition since the Cold War ended, made even more complicated because New Delhi must factor in China’s nuclear weapon-related capabilities. Since Beijing’s nuclear posture can be affected by US ballistic missile defense programs, the interactive nature of the nuclear competition in southern Asia is even more complex and difficult to dampen than during the Cold War (p.15) [...] If reports are true that Pakistan is leading India in warhead numbers and operationally-ready missiles, and if the stewards of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal continue along current programming trajectories, New Delhi is likely to accelerate stockpile growth and hasten the transfer of missile programs from the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) to the military services (p.5)

On Pakistan’s red-lines:

[T]he most likely threshold for first use relates to significant losses of Pakistani combat aircraft in the event of hostilities. There are several reasons for this conjecture. The disparity in purchasing power between the Indian and Pakistani Air Forces is particularly evident, and the timelines for growing disparity in this sector are shorter than with respect to ground forces. Moreover, Indian leaders may be more inclined to use airpower than ground forces if faced with another highly provocative mass-casualty attack by members of a group with a history of connectivity to Pakistan’s intelligence services (p.12)

On Pakistani tactical nuclear weapons:

[H]owever one calculates the lay-down of tactical nuclear weapons against tanks in the field, requirements appear to be expansive, as well as a poor allocation of plutonium, even for Pakistan’s expanded production capacity. Moreover, Pakistan lacks the real-time surveillance capabilities to destroy armored columns, except where they are funneling into bridge crossings of water barriers (p.20)

On Pakistan’s higher nuclear management:

Pakistan’s nuclear requirements are set by very few military officers and one retired officer, Gen. Kidwai, with very little civilian oversight or ability to question military requirements. This absence of checks and balances is reminiscent of the Pentagon’s nuclear planning until the arrival of Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Alain Enthoven, and the “whiz kids” in 1961. The civilian whiz kids have yet to arrive in Pakistan. (p.25)

On crisis management:

The probability of Indian military ripostes and Pakistan’s first use of nuclear weapons would be reduced considerably if Pakistan’s military and intelligence services undertook greater efforts to prevent triggering events. (p.12) [...] While Pakistani leaders no longer trust the United States as an intermediary with India, no substitute to Washington is in clear view. Crisis management could therefore become even more challenging in the event of more spectacular attacks on Indian targets by individuals based and trained in Pakistan. (p. 30)

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The second paper, The Non-Unitary Model and Deterrence Stability in South Asia by George Perkovich, historian of India’s nuclear weapons, picks up on the question of nuclear crises induced by terrorist attacks:

If in fact Pakistani authorities do exert influence or control over organizations that have conducted terrorist operations in India (and elsewhere) and are merely denying it for tactical reasons, Pakistani authorities can fairly be treated as the authors of the signals that are sent by these actors. India can then seek to manage pre-conflict and intra-conflict deterrence according to the traditional model, while still facing severe challenges of escalation control [...] The graver problem arises if and when Pakistani leaders are not in control of the perpetrators of violence emanating from Pakistani territory. In that case, when faced with an attack, India would conclude that deterrence had failed or was inapplicable, but that if India did not retaliate, it would encourage further attacks and do nothing to compel Pakistani leaders to assert control over violent actors. But if India did retaliate, Pakistani leaders, feeling that they had not authorized aggression against India, would feel that India was initiating war. It is widely recognized that victims of aggression – defenders – are more highly motivated to retaliate because they have suffered an injustice. Knowing this, Pakistani defenders would feel that their threats to escalate in response to an Indian attack would be more credible than if they had been the initiators of the conflict. Indians, of course, would feel that this logic rewards Pakistani authorities for not exercising a monopoly on the legitimate use of force emanating from their territory, precisely the situation they want Pakistan to correct. (pp.13-14) [...] “because leaders of adversarial states must put any immediate conflict in the context of longer-term relations, they must think how their action or inaction today could raise or lower the risk of inviting more violence from the adversary in the future. Thus, forbearing counter-attack in one crisis, can be seen to weaken deterrence of future violence” (p.8)

On state unity and rationality:

The rationality requirement in deterrence is obviously challenged if and when terrorists, nihilists, or ecstatically violent actors are the opponent. A core assumption of rationality in nuclear deterrence is that actors seek self-preservation. Terrorists do not generally fit this model. Nor do state leaders who are unwilling or unable to control terrorists or who are willing to “bring down their own house” if in the process they can destroy their enemies (pp.6-7)

The most important part of Perkovich’s paper is the question of how Pakistan could limit what Krepon called “triggering events”, and how Pakistani steps might in the future be verified:

Moreover, if they decided to do so [crack down on jihadists] without careful preparations and public education, they would prompt attacks against the security establishment itself, as happened after the operation against the Red Mosque in Islamabad in 2007. Fortunately, Indian (and American) officials recognize the latter problem. What they most want is for Pakistani leaders to demonstrate not only in words but also in constant deeds a determination to delegitimize violence against India and arrest and prosecute actors who violate the law. Perfection in accomplishing this objective would not be expected, but clear and uncompromising effort would be. (p.15)

On verification:

Even if Pakistan were prepared to commit itself genuinely to make all feasible efforts to curtail the actions of groups that seek to export violence, what are reasonable ways to verify this commitment? This is extremely important insofar as it is possible that even in the midst of concerted state efforts to “disarm” militant actors some may persist and carry out attacks. To maintain stability, the recipient of such attacks (and the international community) would need some basis for judging that the attacks did not reflect the intention of the state whence the attackers originated (p.22)

And, finally, on the scale of the threat:

The challenge is enormous, obviously, but it is not impossible due to the vital fact that India does not harbor offensive intentions toward Pakistan. India does not covet territory that Pakistan controls. India does not wish for Pakistan to be dismembered. Indian leaders recognize that it is in their country’s interest for Pakistan to develop economically, to democratize politically, and to live in peace. India does not want Pakistan’s problems to spill over into its territory or restive Muslim populations. The two countries diverge in their visions for an ideal political outcome in Afghanistan, but could settle for an Afghan state that does not allow itself to be a base for hostile actions against Pakistan and India. The fundamental point is that India will not be a military or security threat to Pakistan if Pakistan will cease pursuing offensive strategies (albeit of a low-intensity nature) against it. (p.19)

All in all, a thoughtful paper. But I cant help but feel that one of the clauses – “if in fact Pakistani authorities do exert influence or control over organizations that have conducted terrorist operations in India” – is a little redundant, and that the underlying premise of “non-unitariness” is therefore a dubious one.

I can’t imagine any serious scholar or analyst who would suggest that Pakistani authorities do not, at the least, “exert influence” over the relevant groups. The more interesting discussion pertains to, first, the cost of changing that relationship (I can’t think of an academic paper on this subject) and, second, the scale of policy shift that would be necessary to persuade the US and India that a “de-coupling” had in fact taken place (i.e., that this really was a non-unitary state). As of now, we’re a long way off.

 

Pakistan, NATO, and tactical nuclear weapons: two of a kind?

The Davy Crockett tactical nuclear weapon, at the Aberdeen Proving Ground in Maryland in March 1961.

There has been growing interest in Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons. Here’s Gurmeet Kanwal:

The Pakistan army’s continuing efforts to arm the 60-km Hatf-9 (Nasr) short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) with nuclear warheads will adversely impact deterrence stability on the Indian subcontinent as tactical nuclear weapons are inherently destabilising and invariably escalatory. The Nasr missile was first tested in April 2011 and then again in May 2012 and is reported to be a replica of the Chinese M-20.

On this subject, see also A.H. Nayyar and Zia Mian from 2010, Jeffrey Lewis and Rajesh Basrur last year, and Michael Krepon. The rationale for Pakistan’s use of such weapons is familiar to most, and often invokes NATO’s nuclear doctrine. It is worth understanding how exactly NATO’s nuclear thinking applies to Pakistan, and what this implies for how its arsenal might develop and how India might respond to this.

The most lucid explanation of NATO’s doctrinal precepts are to be found in the late Michael Quinlan’s 1997 RUSI Whitehall Paper, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons. Its available free online, and formed part of a longer book in 2009 (the book includes a chapter on India and Pakistan). The bolded sentences highlight the parts most strikingly relevant to Pakistan today:

Especially, though not only in the particular setting of the Cold War confrontation, plans and capabilities have had to provide options for use that could be credible; and this has meant, for example, developing weapons of greater accuracy and lower yield, and plans for more limited use and more constrained targeting, than might feature in an uncontrolled apocalyptic holocaust

[...]

The [NATO nuclear] doctrine was built around the Alliance’s strategic concept of flexible response, formulated during the 1960s. That concept has been much misunderstood and even caricatured. It did not, for example, envisage a pre-determined sequence of moves – an ‘escalation ladder’ – to be followed in the face of aggression; and though it did not rule out first use or early use of nuclear weapons, it was far from prescribing or assuming either. The core of the concept was always the timely use of the minimum force, whether conventional or nuclear, adequate to deny an aggressor success in his objective. Aggression against so broad and diverse an entity as the North Atlantic Alliance could have a wide variety of forms and scales; and providing a capability for apt and credible application of minimum effective force to fit any scenario therefore meant that there had to be plainly available a substantial range of military options from which the Alliance could choose both for initial resistance and for how best to proceed if the first option did not succeed. A narrow set of prescriptions for response, or a rigid doctrine for the order or number of follow-on options to be entertained, would have been the antithesis of flexibility, at odds both with the realities of the Alliance’s political, geographical and strategic diversity and with the deterrent merit of uncertainty.

NATO thinking was always clear that a major conflict was not to be conducted in sealed compartments, whether of territory or of force category, and still less in sealed compartments imposed by an aggressor to suit his strengths and preferences. The idea of possible escalation, in the sense of being ready to change the terms of the encounter in scope or intensity beyond what the aggressor had chosen, was essential, But NATO recognised also that the prospect of having abruptly to cross a wide gulf in these respects could scarcely be either acceptable to its own peoples or credible to a determined adversary. Deterrence required making it as hard as possible for any adversary to form the view that NATO would shrink from decisions on raising the conflict’s intensity, or to dare act on such a view.

The range of options available must therefore be an unmistakable continuum without huge gaps. That in turn meant that there had to be nuclear forces, backed by will and doctrine for their possible use, intermediate between conventional forces (NATO had no large offensive chemical armoury) and the ultimate strategic nuclear capability - the more so since, especially in the earlier days, that capability often entailed high weapon yield, low accuracy and uncertain penetrativity, so that precisely-limited use might not have been easy. From NATO’s inception the judgement was widely accepted that NATO’s non-nuclear forces might find themselves unable to repel or even arrest a large-scale and determined attack upon NATO territory. NATO, as a grouping of free sovereign states, could not espouse plans envisaging the ready surrender of any member’s territory and must therefore adopt a posture – ‘forward defence’ – that was was by no means optimal for military effectiveness.

Besides the overwhelming general fact of virtually inexhaustible destructive power in the hands of the postulated adversary, substantial studies of possible scenarios brought out – in retrospect, unsurprisingly – a more particular conclusion: that if, finding itself losing in a conventional conflict in Europe, NATO were to use nuclear weapons for military effect and the adversary then responded more or less symmetrically, it must be expected (with all due allowance for the uncertainty in such evaluations) that NATO would still, save perhaps in one or two narrowly specialised settings, find itself losing. In other words, NATO could not count on its nuclear weapons to substitute military victory for military defeat.

Recognition of this conclusion infused the work of the NPG [Nuclear Policy Group] for most of the later years of the Cold War. NATO nuclear doctrine had to concentrate upon the use of weapons to convey effectively to the adversary the message that he had mistaken NATO’s political tolerance and underrated NATO’s will to resist, and that for his own survival he must therefore back off. Much NPG work centred upon questions of targeting principle (it did not attempt detailed target selection) to fulfil this basic war-termination concept. The purpose would inherently be to convey a political message and induce a political response; but it was generally accepted that achieving this would require action with some substantial material effect going beyond just the shock, severe though that might be in first use, inherent in any nuclear action. ‘No-target’ demonstration – the detonation of a weapon over the Baltic, say – was occasionally canvassed, and the option continued to be recognised; but it found little real support. It was judged, surely rightly, that this might well suggest precisely a lack of the tough resolve that it would be the whole aim of the action to demonstrate. The heart of the judgement required would be to find the right balance between doing too little to drive home the message and doing so much as to provoke a ferocious reaction in rage or spasm.

It was usually thought that for most situations targets should preferably, though not with absolute necessity, be military ones with some bearing upon the non-nuclear operations in progress, so that the aggressor could not immediately sustain those operations unchecked but would be compelled at least to pause and address fresh and dangerous decisions.

[...]

One such consideration held that non-strategic war-termination strike (or ‘pre-strategic’ or ‘tactical’ or ‘theatre’ strike-the terminology never quite settled upon a uniformly-accepted usage differentiating among these) ought to be carried out by delivery systems evidently separate from the ‘strategic’ ones The argument ran that unless this distinction was maintained the Soviet leaders might mistakenly interpret the action as just the initial salvo The weight of this argument always however seemed questionable. NATO would undoubtedly accompany any ‘war-termination’ nuclear action by a major effort in explicit communication to convey what its purpose was and was not – this was indeed a major theme of study in the NPG’s work.

These problems – conventional inferiority, a lack of strategic depth (stemming from politics in NATO’s case, but territory and infrastructure in Pakistan’s), a fear that limited war would create “sealed compartments, whether of territory or of force category” and neutralize nuclear weapons – are directly and highly applicable to Pakistan.

But many of these subtleties are not brought out in the Pakistani context. This is especially as regards the very limited battlefield effectiveness of such weapons, and hence their role as political signals to compel de-escalation rather than military instruments to physically and durably block an offensive. The use of the descriptor”tactical”, rather than “non-strategic” or “sub-strategic”, has contributed to this confusion, although some (Nayyar and Mian, Tellis)  have tried to explain the surprisingly limited effects of nuking tanks.

Quinlan even addresses the issue of the safety of tactical nuclear weapons, a problem that often comes up in discussions of Pakistan (like that of Kanwal, excerpted above):

It used sometimes to be suggested that the forward deployment of nuclear delivery units on West German territory posed, in face of a postulated Warsaw Pact offensive, a ‘use-or-lose’ dilemma which, whether as inescapable fact or even as deliberate stratagem, could drive the timing of NATO nuclear action and so set the ‘threshold’. This was, however, in no way part of NATO’s doctrine or planning (and forward commanders had neither the authority nor, at least in later years, the physical power to launch nuclear weapons without political clearance).

Even if Quinlan is right (and Paul Schulte suggests otherwise, claiming that in the 1950s NATO “seems to have supported a temporary policy of U.S pre-delegation of very short-range battlefield nuclear weapons, including Atomic Demolition Munitions, especially on the Central Front in Germany”), then there are still some significant differences with Pakistan – the primary one being that Pakistan’s lopsided civil-military relations look very different to NATO’s.

In 2005, for instance, Feroz Hassan Khan, a senior official in Pakistan’s nuclear secretariat, the Strategic Plans Division, explained that “partial pre-delegation” of weapons would be an “operational necessity because dispersed nuclear forces as well as central command authority … are vulnerable” (see here, p.15).

A second difference is that NATO gradually placed less and less emphasis on tactical nuclear weapons (withdrawing more and more after 1979 as part of the “dual-track” policy), because of the ”eventual improvement of its conventional capabilities that, spurred by Warsaw Pact equipment improvements and doctrinal innovations, resulted from Western technical and, especially American, electronic advantages”. (Schulte, p.53). Pakistan, by contrast, is conventionally falling behind in terms of military spending and technological edge (see this KSG report, p.10). This suggests its reliance on nuclear weapons will grow, not diminish.

A third difference lies in the response to tactical nuclear weapons: “the Soviet General Staff, led by Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, seems to have concluded in the late 1970s that their most effective option against NATO would be conventional but extremely rapid deep operations conducted, after massive aerial surprise attacks, by operational maneuver groups” – so far, apart from the qualifier “deep”, this blitzkrieg-like approach should remind you of India’s own evolving limited war doctrine, dubbed Cold Start (Cold Start is, of course, supposed to entail shallow incursions).

But the similarity ends there: ”Ogarkov knew that many in NATO doubted that their political leaders would agree quickly to use nuclear weapons”. The Soviets would fight “the war in such a way as to delay NATO taking the decision to use nuclear weapons until it was too late for them to be able to influence the outcome of the war” (Kelleher, cited in Schulte, p.53). Whereas NATO was a multinational alliance with a variety of perspectives on where the nuclear threshold ought to lie, Pakistani decision-making – whatever its pathologies – is certainly simpler and more responsive. India cannot rely on Pakistani hesitation, even though it, India, would surely calibrate the level of force so as to make any Pakistani decision a difficult one.

If Pakistan does place increasing stress on limited nuclear options, and tactical nuclear weapons in particular, then understanding the differences from the NATO precedent – the ones discussed here, and plenty of others – will be as important as seeing the similarities.

Iranian nuclear weapons: dubious reporting, dubious red lines

In an interesting if thinly sourced piece on how Iran is withdrawing IRGC special forces from Syria, The Sunday Times threw in this nugget at the end, as if it were no big deal:

Western intelligence officials see the next few months as a race between Iran’s programme to build a nuclear bomb and sanctions intended to ruin its economy.

This is a remarkable and, if untrue, irresponsible claim.

Both the United States and Israel continue to believe that Iran has not yet decided to build a nuclear bomb (which is distinct from conducting activities relevant to the fabrication of a bomb). This is a clear and widely-sourced claim. See Jeffrey Lewis here, Micah Zenko here, the chief of staff of the IDF here, Haaretz reporting here, and DNI James Clapper, here (“we don’t believe they have actually made the decision to go ahead with a nuclear weapon”).

There is a debate over when Iran would acquire enough uranium enriched to 20% required for one bomb, and whether and how quickly Iran could securely and/or secretly further enrich that to weapons-grade. But these debates are are all hypotheticals. In fact, Iran’s conversion of 20% enriched uranium to fuel plates actually makes it harder and slower to produce a bomb (for some strange reason, the media has only picked up this story a few days ago despite it being obvious from the IAEA’s August report).

The Sunday Times is saying is that Iran is racing for a bomb, which directly contradicts this very large and diverse mass of reporting and analysis.

My guess is that they did not mean to make this claim. But it is staggeringly poor journalism, and a very dangerous claim in the current environment. American newspapers were chastened by their experience of interpreting and reporting on WMD intelligence prior to the Iraq War, and have responded impressively and maturely. British newspapers – with a few honourable exceptions – have shown poor judgment, repeatedly made alarmist claims, and failed to convey the nuances of this technically complex subject.

Moreover, if Iran were racing for a bomb, which it is very obviously not, then the constraint would not be sanctions. Sanctions, however severe, are not going to bring down the regime in the space of the (at most) eight month period in which Iran could, if it wanted, have more than adequate 20% enriched uranium for one or more bombs. The constraint is instead  the risk of detection and vulnerability during breakout. A dash for a bomb can easily outrun sanctions, which operate only over a longer period. Saddam hung on for 12 years, even as sanctions inflicted a devastating toll on civilians (“near apocalyptic” as early as 1991). But it would still run into the other obstacles.

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Red lines:

On a related note: as it’s a day of the week ending in “y”, Israel has thrown out a new red line for Iran’s nuclear programme. Netanyahu’s UNGA speech appeared to place his desired red line at the point at which Iran obtains enough 20% enriched uranium for one bomb, a point he estimated would arrive during the spring or summer of 2013 (this seems reasonable, but it ignores the possibility that Iran will keep converting some to fuel). This Netanyahu line differs from the presumptive American red line(s) insofar as Iran would cross this one even before making any decision to enrich beyond 20%.

Now,  according to Special Envoy for the Israeli Prime Minister Zalman Shoval, “the red line for Israel is when the Iranians have produced enough fissionable material from which they can produce at least a dirty bomb within a short time”.

This is an even more incoherent red line than many of those suggested earlier, for the simple reason that enriched uranium is not used in dirty bombs:  ”these materials, perhaps counterintuitively, are not radioactive enough. Their radioactive emissions don’t travel far and are blocked by simple barriers, including skin and clothing. A dirty bomb would use small amounts of highly radioactive materials such as cesium or cobalt, not uranium”. If Iran did use uranium in a dirty bomb, it wold need “some 1,400 tons of uranium – when all Iran has now is 6 tons total”.

British nuclear weapons and non-deployment: misunderstanding the “Japan option”

The Guardian’s top story is on the future of British nuclear weapons, based on comments by former Lib Dem minister, Sir Nick Harvey. It indicates a less-than-stellar understanding of the subject by the paper:

Harvey said past policy on Trident had been dictated by the 1980s view that the only deterrent to a nuclear attack from the then Soviet Union was the belief that the UK could “flatten Moscow” in retaliation. This led to the UK building Trident and having at least one armed submarine at sea every hour of every day since.

This phrasing misses the point about “Continuous at Sea Deterrence” (CASD). The point of CASD was not that it was necessary to inflict a certain amount of damage, but that ”a surprise attack on Western Europe by the Soviet Union was a central driver for UK force planning” (Chalmers, p2).

Nick Harvey’s suggestion that “the Russia of the 21st century [...]  might find all sorts of damage to be unacceptable short of flattening Moscow” is both reasonable and slightly besides the point : CASD is not about what Britain needs to inflict on Russia, but what assumptions are made about what Russia can and might do to Britain.

As Malcolm Chalmers points out (see piece cited above), the assumption is indeed changing in favour of the view that “the UK homeland does not face a significant threat of attack by other states. Nor, it is assumed, could one emerge without an extended period of strategic warning”. The point, in other words, is not that Russia is more deterrable today, but that the prospect of a Russian first strike has receded.

The second problem with the article is its discussion about the prospect of a non-deployed arsenal:

Instead of replacing Trident with a like-for-like 24-hour nuclear armed submarine presence at sea after the current system is due to be taken out of service in 2028, cheaper alternatives are being considered. These range from stepping down the patrols, to designing missiles to be launched from aircraft, surface navy ships or land, to a delayed launch system on the model employed by other countries, including Japan.

Er, what? “Delayed launch system”? There are all sorts of strategic, technical and financial reasons why alternatives to Trident might be problematic. But, regardless of where one stands in that debate, the comparison to Japan is just bizarre. The paper explains Harvey’s suggestion like this: ”the UK would store the warheads in a secure military location, from where they could be removed, put on the tip of a missile and put to sea within weeks or months”.

This is nothing like Japan. In fact, this passage demonstrates a serious confusion between (1) nuclear latency, (2) a rapid breakout capability, and (3) a non-deployed arsenal.

(1) Japan is latent because it has “made large investments in a civilian nuclear power industry, without developing the sort of expertise that would allow the quick assembly of a nuclear device, or the production of delivery vehicles”. Its access to plutonium, technological sophistication, and satellite launch experience mean that it could hypothetically build a deliverable nuclear bomb – but we’re talking years. Clearly, this isn’t what Harvey means.

(2) Rapid breakout refers to the possibility of quick assembly, but minimal attention to delivery systems and the suchlike. An example would be India in the late 1980s and 1990s. From ~1986 onwards, it is presumed that India could easily and quickly put together a bomb. But it couldn’t properly drop this from a plane, or put it on the tip of a missile. India only carried out its first “fully instrumented aircraft drop test” of a bomb in 1994, roughly eight years after preparing a bomb. I don’t think Harvey is suggesting that Britain just wings it like this.

(3) A non-deployed arsenal is similar, but it requires a higher degree of integration and preparation e.g. the fissile core might be stored separately to the warhead, as Pakistan claims of its arsenal, but the warhead would otherwise have to be ready to go (“for a rainy day”, as Harvey quaintly puts it). This is what Harvey means by “put on the tip of a missile”. He envisions the possession of bombs that are basically together, and fully functioning delivery systems – including options like cruise missiles.

Depending on the delivery system, this requires a far higher degree of weapons development [1] and operational planning for alerting procedures than is suggested by the comparison with Japan. The analogy is fundamentally misleading.

Notes:

[1] E.g. “Any programme to develop and manufacture a new cruise missile would cost far more than retaining the Trident D5 missile. In capability terms, cruise missiles are much less effective than a ballistic missile [...] Therefore it was clear that, in terms of both cost and capability, retaining the Trident D5 missile is by far the best approach” – Defence White Paper: The Future of the United Kingdom’s Nuclear Deterrent, December 2006, p25

India and “No First Use”

Earlier this year, the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS) in Delhi released a document, India’s Nuclear Doctrine: An Alternative Blueprint, intended as a “constructive critique” of India’s existing doctrine.

India’s first draft nuclear doctrine in 1999 was a rush job, designed to alleviate international pressure after the previous year’s nuclear tests. In 2003, a more formal document was issued, one which basically accepted India’s “No First Use” pledge and promised “non-use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states” i.e. negative security assurances. (Scott Sagan has a nice overview).

In the decade since, most of the debate has been on whether India’s promise of massive retaliation should change to something more credible, such as “assured retaliation” or “flexible response”. There has been comparably little debate over whether India should retain NFU. Last year, former foreign and defense minister Jaswant Singh called for the policy to be reconsidered. See also Reshmi Kazi here and Ali Ahmed here.

The IPCS doctrine, which has an impressively diverse range of authors (many of the other Delhi think-tanks are represented), has an interesting take on this.

It states that:

In adherence to a policy of no first use, India will not initiate a nuclear strike.

The ambiguous use of “strike” is unhelpful. The term has a specific meaning in orthodox deterrence theory, usually referring to a specific type of nuclear first use – preemptive counterforce (see Quinlan, p6, para. 5).

But even more curious is its clarification of what “initiate” means: “‘Initiation’ covers the process leading up to the actual use of a nuclear weapon by an adversary. This would include mating component systems and deploying warheads with the intet [sic] This will enable the Prime Minister to gain the flexibility to decide upon an appropriate response”.

The unfinished sentence aside, this is a fairly … bold definition. It means that if Pakistan mates its warheads to missiles as part of nuclear alerting during a crisis, it can be understood to have “initiated” a nuclear strike. That denudes NFU of all meaning.

The IPCS doctrine also alters negative security assurances a bit: “India will not resort to the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons against states that do not possess nuclear weapons, but such states shall be deemed nuclear weapons states if they ally with or assist nuclear armedstates against India, and/or assist them during hostilities”.

If India had a strict NFU pledge, then these assurances are irrelevant – how would a non-nuclear state initiate a nuclear strike on India in the first place? But, with this definition, you can just about craft a scenario whereby nuclear preparations by a nuclear-armed state count as “initiation”, which then doctrinally permits Indian nuclear use against any non-nuclear ally or co-belligerent of that first state. This is pretty fanciful stuff, but then the nature of nuclear doctrines is that they are supposed to cater to a wide range of scenarios.

There are some other interesting aspects to the document. “This document also does not speculate on the complicity of states in the motives and actions of sub and non-state actors” i.e. we have absolutely no idea what to do if Lashkar-e-Taiba gets a dirty bomb. The authors also, understandably, take a pop at the non-credibility of massive retaliation:

Ethically, the punishing of a whole population for the decisions of its leadership is unsustainable. Moreover, executing massive retaliation would expose India to risking international isolation. There is also the operational consideration, that territories captured or in dispute will be destroyed and rendered uninhabitable for a long time. The suggested alternate wording provides flexibility, while a doctrine based on reflex massive response curtails India’s options.

This – flexibility – certainly seems the direction in which India’s nuclear posture is, slowly, headed.

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons (and A.Q. Khan’s perpetual motion machine)

Bruno Tertrais has published a new paper, Pakistan’s nuclear and WMD Programmes: Status, evolution and risks (PDF), at the EU Non-Proliferation Consortium. Its mostly a synthesis of existing information, but sums things up nicely.

On the evolving nature of Pakistan’s requirements for nuclear sufficiency:

Guaranteed unacceptable damage implies survivability even after a first strike by the adversary. Pakistan is likely to use an Indian pre-emptive strike as a planning assumption (coupled, in the future, with the deployment of missile defence by India) … a former SPD officer wrote that for a set of 10 possible targets, a country might need 68–70 warheads (without taking into account the risk of a pre-emptive strike).

On Pakistan’s need for creativity in counter-value targeting:

A diversification of targets could make Pakistani deterrence more credible, given that a strike on Indian cities would produce massive casualties among its Muslim population—something that might be hard to consider for a country whose very creation was justified by the need to provide a sanctuary and a natural homeland for South Asian Muslims. [1]

For the reverse (and slightly weird) idea, that India would ”spare Karachi because Indian Muslims’ relatives live in the city”, see here.

On Pakistan’s nuclear readiness:

It is widely assumed that Pakistan’s nuclear systems are kept on low alert. In peacetime, missiles may not be mated with warheads, and in 2003 President Musharraf referred to a ‘geographical separation’ between them. It is also possible that warheads are kept in a disassembled form. However, the SPD insists that it has never confirmed such arrangements; Kidwai states that forces are not on ‘hair trigger alert’ but that ‘separation is more linked to time rather than space’. A former SPD official has also denied that the warheads were kept in disassembled form. The time required to convert weapons into a state of launch readiness is uncertain. Some accounts suggest that assembly would only take minutes, while other refer to hours. Kidwai said in 2002 that it could happen ‘very quickly’.

On Pakistan’s weapons potential:

Pakistan began producing HEU in the mid-1980s …  It may be producing 120–180 kg per year, enough for 10–15 warheads … Pakistan has [also] begun developing an important plutonium production capability … Khushab-1 can produce 5.7–11.5 kg of plutonium per year depending on its duration of operation, enough for 1–3 warheads … The [total] potential production of warheads today is 7–18 per year.

In late 2010 Pakistan had enough fissile material for at least 160 warheads, and perhaps as many as 240. The coming online of the third and fourth Khushab reactors could bring the total Pakistani buildup capacity to 19–27 weapons per year.

If you assume Pakistan has a 100 warheads today, and take the lower bound for the potential production rate (19 weapons per year), it would take Pakistan under seven years to surpass the UK’s total stockpile (225 weapons), just over seven years to reach China’s level (240) and just over a decade to reach that of France (290) – with these latter figures taken from the Federation of American Scientists. For a useful chart that displays these comparisons, see here. See also the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ useful review, Pakistan’s nuclear forces, 2011.

Anyway, back to Tertrais. On Pakistan’s command and control

The foreign minister is deputy chairman of the Employment Control Committee (ECC), which defines nuclear strategy and would decide on nuclear use. It includes the main ministers and the military chiefs … The planned deliberative process for nuclear use is compared by the SPD to that of a ‘board of directors’. The principle of unanimity was affirmed by the NCA in 2003. A decision to use nuclear weapons would need ‘consensus within the NCA, with the chairman casting the final vote’. If consensus were impossible, however, a majority vote would  suffice. Given that the ECC comprises five civilians and four military ex officio members (not including the SPD head), it is not unreasonable to conclude that the military would be the de facto decision maker. However, it would probably ensure that the civilians shared the responsibility of the decision to use nuclear weapons.

On nuclear safety:

As stated above, weapons are probably kept in a disassembled form, but there is considerable uncertainty about the location of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons. Some suggest that even the director of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) does not know where the weapons are.  It would make sense for most of them to be located in the northern and central parts of Pakistan, in the safest and most secure area of Punjab. After the terrorist attacks on the USA of 11 September 2001, Pakistan ordered a redeployment of its arsenal (to at least six new secret locations according to one account), for fear of an Indian attack. A similar redeployment occurred after the Abbottabad raid by the USA in May 2011, this time for fear of a US raid. Pakistan plays some kind of shell game with its nuclear weapons and dummy locations reportedly exist. If the country has about 100 warheads, it would be surprising if more than 10 sites host weapons at any given time. Some of these sites are subterranean and Pakistan has certainly gone to great lengths to physically protect them.

See also Christopher Clary’s useful 2010 paper for IDSA, Thinking about Pakistan’s Nuclear Security in Peacetime, Crisis and War.

On the nuclear codes:

The last line of defence is coding. Coding is now carried out during the manufacturing process: the launch officer receives the code a few moments before use and inserts it via a computer. For aircraft, pilots receive the code during flight. It has been surmised that 12-digit alphanumerical codes, generated by the Military Intelligence agency, are used. Codes are physically present on bases, split between two officers according to a two-man rule. There are both enabling and authenticating codes. These arrangements are supplemented by ‘a tightly controlled ID system’ and there is no involvement of intelligence services in the chain of command. Atsome points in the chain of command, a three-man rule operates ‘for technical reasons’, according to the SPD One informed source claims that the arming code is divided between three persons.

Gauging the possibility of unauthorized use depends on the exact nature of the codes used by Pakistan. Are the arming mechanisms buried deep in the warhead design, or can coding be bypassed? Do they include disabling features? Is there a code for each warhead or set of warheads, or just a general nuclear release enabling mechanism? Does physically arming a warhead depend on a code transmitted down the chain of command at the last minute, or would the code(s) already present at the base be enough?

Finally, on the EU’s concerns:

 EU members might have military facilities within reach of Pakistani longer-range missiles (e.g. France and the United Kingdom in the Gulf) or temporary bases and personnel (during an operation in the region). In the case of a deterioration in Pakistan’s relations with the West, this could be a subject of concern.

***

On a sort of related note, I was amused by A.Q. Khan’s recent interventions in the case of Pakistan’s magical car-that-runs-on-water. The father of Pakistan’s nuclear bomb appears to be quite taken with the invention:

Former science minister Dr Atta ur Rahman has bravely tried to stem the tide of nonsense by pointing out that the laws of thermodynamics rule out perpetual motion machines, but Dr Qadeer Khan (father of the Islamic bomb and national hero) steps forward to defend the inventor … he says that Readers Digest wrote many years ago that apparently ridiculous inventions may turn out to be true and one can easily see that there is no gas tank in this great man’s car, so the proof is already here … I am NOT kidding.

Video (Urdu):

“The brink is a curved slope”: Thomas Schelling on strategy

I’ve been re-reading some Thomas Schelling, and reminded of how much insight there is on nearly every paragraph of every page (as has been said: “whole careers in international relations have been built out of codifying a few sentences in Schelling”).

Some excerpts, below.

First, The Strategy of Conflict (1960):

On the (then) paucity of strategic studies:

“[M]ilitary services, in contrast to almost any other sizable and respectable profession, have no identifiable academic counterpart … Within the universities, military strategy in this country has been the preoccupation of a small number of historians and political scientists, supported on a scale that suggests that deterring the Russians from a conquest of Europe is about as important as enforcing the antitrust laws”. (p8)

On trying to persuade someone you’ll carry out an irrational threat:

“And one can suspend or destroy his own “rationality”, at least to a limited extent; one can do this because the attributes that go to make up rationality are not inalienable, deeply personal, integral attributes of the human soul, but include such things as one’s hearing aid, the reliability of the mail, the legal system, and the rationality of one’s agents and partners”. (p18)

The famous part on trip-wires:

“We are led in this way to a new interpretation of the ‘trip-wire’ [of US troops in Europe]. The analogy for our limited war forces in Europe is not, according to this argument, a trip wire that certainly detonates all-out war if it is in working order and fails altogether if it is not.

What we have a graduated series of trip wires, each attached to a chance mechanism, with the daily probability of detonation increasing as the enemy moves from wire to wire. The critical feature of the analogy, it should be emphasized, is that whether or not the trip wire detonates general war is – at least to some extent – outside our control, and the Russians know it”. (p192)

On brinksmanship and the brink:

 The brink is not, in this view, the sharp edge of a cliff where one can stand firmly, look down, and decide whether or not to plunge. The brink is a curved slope that one can stand on with some risk of slipping, the slope gets steeper and the risk of slipping greater as one moves toward the chasm. But the slope and the risk of slipping are rather irregular …

Brinksmanship is thus the deliberate creation of a recognizable risk of war, a risk that one does not completely control. It is the tactic of deliberately letting the situation get somewhat out of hand, just because its being out of hand may be intolerable to the other party and force his accommodation”. (p200)

On the social construction of nuclear red-lines:

“The inhibition on the penetration of a border, or on the introduction of a new nationality into the conflict, is like that on the introduction of a nuclear weapon; it is the risk of enemy response . And an important determinant of enemy response is his appreciation of what he has tacitly acquiesced in if he fails to respond, or makes only an incremental response, to our symbolically discontinuous act.

What we are dealing with in the anaysis of limited war is tradition. We are dealing with precedent, convention, and the force of suggestion. We are dealing with the theory of unwritten law … What makes atomic weapons different is a powerful tradition that they are different …

Certain characteristics of limits, particularly their simplicity, uniqueness, discreteness, susceptibility of qualitative definition, and so forth, can be given an objective meaning, one that is at least pertinent to the process of tacit negotiation”. (pp258-263)

***

And excerpts from Arms and Influence (1966). You can get one of the best chapters, The Art of Commitment, here [PDF].

On strategy as punishment:

“Military stategy can no longer be thought of, as it could for some countries in some eras, as the science of military victory. It is now equally, if not more, the art of coercion, of intimidation and deterrence. The instruments of war are more punitive than acquisitive. Military strategy, whether we like it or not, has become the diplomacy of violence”. (p34)

On limits to the madman theory:

“A government that is obliged to appear responsible in its foreign policy can hardly cultivate forever the appearance of impetuosity on the most important decisions in its care …

Deterrent threats are a matter of resolve, impetuosity, plain obstinacy, or, as the anarchist put it, sheer character. It is not easy to change our character; and becoming fanatic or impetuous would be a high price to pay for making our threats convincing” (pp40, 42)

On why clear signaling requires that red-lines separate things clearly:

This, I suppose, is the ultimate reason why we have to defend California-aside from whether or not Easterners want to. There is no way to let California go to the Soviets and make them believe nevertheless that Oregon and Washington, Florida and Maine, and eventually Chevy Chase and Cambridge cannot be had under the same principle …

Once they cross a line into a new class of aggression, into a set of areas or assets that we always claimed we would protect, we may even deceive them if we do not react vigorously. Suppose we let the Soviets have California, and when they reach for Texas we attack them in full force. They could sue for breach of promise. We virtually told them they could have Texas when we let them into California; the fault is ours, for communicating badly, for not recognizing what we were conceding. California is a bit of fantasy here; but it helps to remind us that the effectiveness of deterrence often depends on attaching to particular areas some of the status of California.

The principle is at work all over the world; and the principle is not wholly under our own control. I doubt whether we can identify ourselves with Pakistan in quite the way we can identify ourselves with Great Britain, no matter how many treaties we sign during the next ten years. (p56)

On how this principle differs for the two superpowers:

There is an interesting geographical difference in the Soviet and American homelands Our oceans may not protect us from big wars but they protect us from little ones. A local war could not impinge on California, involving it peripherally or incidentally through geographical continuity, the way the Korean War could impinge on Manchuria and Siberia, or the way Soviet territory could be impinged on by war in Iran, Yugoslavia, or Central Europe  …

This gives the American homeland a more distinctive character – a more unambiguous “homeland” separateness – than the Soviet homeland can have … Like virginity, the homeland wants an absolute definition. This character the Soviet bloc has been losing and may lose even more if it acquires a graduated structure like the old British Empire. (pp57, 62)

More on the need for simple threats:

“There is a simplicity, a kind of virginity, about all-or-none distinctions that differences of degree do not have. It takes more initiative, more soul-searching, more argument, more willingness to break tradition and upset expectations, to do an unprecedented thing once”. (p132)

And how the credibility of an adversary’s red-lines can be inadvertently bolstered (lessons here for India and Pakistan):

If we always treat China as though it is a Soviet California, we tend to make it so. If we imply to the Soviets that we consider Communist China or Czechoslovakia the virtual equivalent of Siberia, then in the event of any military action in or against those areas we have informed the Soviets that we are going to interpret their response as though we had landed troops in Vladivostok or Archangel or launched them across the Soviet-Polish border. We thus oblige them to react in China, or in North Vietnam or wherever it may be, and in effect give them precisely the commitment that is worth so much to them in deterring the West …

We credited the Soviets with effective deterrence and in doing so genuinely gave them some. We came at last to treat the Sino-Soviet split as a real one; but it would have been wiser not to have acknowledged their fusion in the first place. (pp60, 62)

On what can – and cannot – be credibly threatened as part of coercive diplomacy or nuclear strategy (and, by implication, why a strategy of flexible response may be more credible [PDF] than massive retaliation):

When the Russians put missiles in Cuba, why cannot the President quarantine Vladivostok, stopping Soviet ships outside, say, a twelve-mile limit, or perhaps denying them access to the Suez or Panama Canal? And if the Russians had wanted to counter the President’s quarantine of Cuba, why could they not blockade?

A hasty answer may be that it just is not done, or is not “justified,” as though connectedness implied justice, or as though justice were required for effectiveness. Surely that is part of the answer; there is a legalistic or diplomatic, perhaps a casuistic, propensity to keep things connected, to keep the threat and the demand in the same currency, to do what seems reasonable. (p87)

There is an idiom in this interaction, a tendency to keep things in the same currency, to respond in the same language, to make the punishment fit the character of the crime, to impose a coherent pattern on relations” (p147)

The rest of the book looks at the manipulation of risk, how to fight and end a nuclear war, and the dynamic of arms racing and arms control.

Iran on the brink (of what?)

Note: post amended with a correction at the bottom

Dan Senor, a foreign policy adviser to Mitt Romney, has declared that “”Iran is on the brink of getting a nuclear weapon”.

This is hardly unprecedented language. A few months ago, The Times (of London, that is) splashed “Iran close to Bomb after nuclear breakthrough” on its front page. That headline was changed for the online edition – but it still pronounced Iran “one step away from the Bomb”. The Telegraph was just as injudicious: “Iran on brink of nuclear weapon, warns watchdog”. Ditto The Daily Beast, which also put Iran “on the brink of nuclear weapons”.

This language might not surprise many people. After all, the proverbial “brink” is becoming a bit of a foreign policy joke. Yemen and Pakistan both seem to approach it asymptotically. But it does convey the requisite urgency and alarm.

Danielle Pletka, vice-president at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), argued that though Senor’s claim may be wrong, Iran was “on the brink of a weapon’s capability”. She explained as follows:

Iran has 73+ kg of 20% LEU, needs 85[kg] for a bomb. [M]aking the bomb’s easy. I call that “brink”.

These figures don’t appear to be correct.

This seems like a good time to quote three chunks of an Arms Control Wonk post from two months ago:

All too often, pundits make serious mistakes when converting a real measurement like kilograms into the more evocative “bombs worth.” Few pundits make clear their assumptions on how much nuclear material is needed for a weapon in which context. Invariably, the result is to exaggerate either the danger faced or averted. The problem is especially bad when the topic is an amount of highly enriched uranium.

The concept of “significant quantity” of uranium is important in this regard:

IAEA safeguards standards define a significant quantity as “the approximate amount of nuclear material for which the possibility of manufacturing a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded. Significant quantities take into account unavoidable losses due to conversion and manufacturing processes and should not be confused with critical masses.” And the current IAEA glossary defines that threshold amount for HEU as 25kg of U-235 in HEU.    (U235 is the stuff that goes boom.)

So the claim that Iran needs 85kg of 20% LEU is clearly untenable. [1]  In fact, even

[o]ne hundred kilograms of 20 percent HEU contains 20 kg of U-235 — less than one significant quantity.

How much does Iran actually have, and how much does it need? On the basis of the February IAEA report, Daryl Kimball estimates that

[a]lthough Iran has now produced about 110 kilograms of 20% enriched uranium, it has dedicated 8 kilograms to make fuel assemblies for the TRR. That material would no longer be part of a ready stockpile of 20% enriched uranium that can be rapidly converted to weapons-grade. Iran would need at least 120 kilograms of 20% material in order to make enough weapons grade uranium for a single weapon. It would want sufficient material for more than just one weapon if it were to decide to produce them. [emphasis added]

Some estimates are more conservative. Iran Watch, part of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, estimates the quantity “to produce a bomb’s worth of weapon-grade uranium metal” to be higher, at 140 kilograms.

Others are more generous. The ScienceWonk blog at the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) judges that:

A hundred kilograms of uranium enriched to 20% U-235 [just under what Iran is estimated to possess at the moment] will have about 20kg of U-235. But a fissionable mass of 94% pure U-235 weighs about 16kg so Iran might have enough uranium with further enrichment to the weapons-grade level to make a single nuclear weapon – maybe two. [emphasis added]

The AEI’s own blog says the following:

If Iran required 25 kg of weapons-grade uranium to fuel one bomb, it would take 4.7 months after September when it is projected to have 141 kg uranium enriched to 20%. [emphasis added]

***

In fact, there are three distinct questions about timelines.

The first is how much time it would take Iran to enrich a “significant quantity” of uranium to 20% (not long).

The second is how long it would take Iran to enrich that stockpile further to weapons-grade (obviously, longer). The answers to both of these questions depend on a complex set of assumptions about how and where they conducted the enrichment.

The third question is how long it would then take to fabricate a nuclear device, if they chose to do so (and, it bears repeating, that they are not thought to have made any such decision). There is a range of views here:

Greg Jones claims it’s easy:

the viewpoint that it will take Iran years to develop the non-nuclear components required for a nuclear weapon is hard to square with the actual historical experience of the nuclear weapon states. It is well-known that for past nuclear weapon programs, the key impediment was the need to acquire the fissile material (HEU or plutonium) for the weapon.

Jacques Hymans, writing in Foreign Affairs, says it’s hard:

The Iranians had to work for 25 years just to start accumulating uranium enriched to 20 percent, which is not even weapons grade. The slow pace of Iranian nuclear progress to date strongly suggests that Iran could still need a very long time to actually build a bomb — or could even ultimately fail to do so. Indeed, global trends in proliferation suggest that either of those outcomes might be more likely than Iranian success in the near future.

This is because of “Iran’s long-standing authoritarian management culture”:

In a study of Iranian human-resource practices, the management analysts Pari Namazie and Monir Tayeb concluded that the Iranian regime has historically shown a marked preference for political loyalty over professional qualifications. “The belief,” they wrote, “is that a loyal person can learn new skills, but it is much more difficult to teach loyalty to a skilled person.” This is the classic attitude of authoritarian managers. And according to the Iranian political scientist Hossein Bashiriyeh, in recent years, Iran’s “irregular and erratic economic policies and practices, political nepotism and general mismanagement” have greatly accelerated. It is hard to imagine that the politically charged Iranian nuclear program is sheltered from these tendencies.

Further reading: a presentation (PDF) by Maseh Zarif for AEI, some questions by ISIS about the intelligence on the Iranian program, former ambassador Thomas Pickering writing on negotiations, a wrap-up of Senate testimony on Iran, and a useful NYT timeline of US-Iran interaction on nuclear issues.

***

[1] Note, however: “Tehran claims it has enriched to only 19.75%, thereby avoiding the 20% level, which is notionally the divide between low-enriched uranium and HEU” [Op-Ed, Olli Heinonen and Simon Henderson]

***

Update/correction: Maseh Zarif correctly notes that I confused solid and gas figures for enriched uranium, and that I omitted to note that a lower-bound for one bombs-worth of enriched uranium was as little as 15kg (much lower than the IAEA’s 25kg “significant quantity).