IRAN — STEALTHILY NUCLEAR

An extract of “The New Era of Nuclear Strategy : From Cold War Arsenals To Nuclear Sufficiency”  Amazon publisher

Don't the Iranians have some strong reasons to believe that only a reliable nuclear force can guarantee their security? Everyone remembers that in 1990, during the Gulf War, three nuclear countries — the United States, France, and the United Kingdom — did not cease to support their aggressor, Saddam Hussein's Iraq, by supplying arms at every turn. Even today, the Western enmity towards Iran is materialized by the delivery of sophisticated weapons to the states that surround it and that make no secret of their hostility. Countries whose combined defense budgets are nearly ten times greater than that of Iran. Thus, to rely on a deterrent force is a categorical imperative stated by George Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency director, in his 2003 testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee: “WMD [weapons of mass destruction] programs that are seen as guaranteeing Iran’s security1.

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In the 1970s, with the help of the USA and France, the Shah's Iran was planning to acquire a nuclear bomb. A project that revolutionary Iran took up again in 1981 under the guise of civilian applications. It was only in 2000 that the West became aware of Iran's clandestine uranium enrichment program and became concerned that it might be destined for non-peaceful uses. It is not the purpose of this document to retrace Iran's uranium race, which has perfectly accommodated the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which is supposed to limit its enrichment activities to civilian purposes. So much so that, in 2023, there is every reason to believe that Tehran may have stored kilos of enriched uranium with a purity of over 90% in highly protected sites.
How does Iran intend to proceed? Kamal Kharrazi, senior advisor to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, after acknowledging that “it’s no secret that we have become a nuclear threshold country,” said: “In a few days we were able to enrich uranium up to 60%, and we can easily produce 90% enriched uranium ... Iran has the technical means to produce a nuclear bomb, but there has been no decision by Iran to build one2”.

Iran should, therefore, not go as far as assembling a nuclear warhead. Its supreme leader has declared that the production, stockpiling, and use of nuclear weapons are all forbidden under Islam (haram). Khamenei’s fatwa, or religious edict, against the acquisition or manufacture of nuclear weapons, was first revealed in a statement from Iran to the International Atomic Agency (IAEA) in Vienna in August 2005. More, on February 26, 2021, Ayatollah Khamenei publicly declared: “If we had decided to build a nuclear weapon, then you and powers greater than you would not have been able to stop us. But we have not decided to do so because of our Islamic thinking. Our Islamic thinking says that a weapon that is used for killing civilians, non-military people, and ordinary people is forbidden. However, if we had wanted to do so, who are you to prevent us? You yourselves do not observe these principles3.”
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Can Tehran go further?
From a technical point of view, it is no longer necessary to detonate an experimental charge to ensure that one has succeeded in crossing the nuclear threshold. The knowledge that one can have of the architecture of bombs, the mastery of power electronics, is such that there are few uncertainties regarding the detonation and the successful fission of a device. On the other hand, a nuclear testing, even underground, will be synonymous with extreme sanctions and therefore with isolation and reinforced deprivation, in parallel, even if this is not a certainty, with a Middle East conflagration.
Instead of these hardships and a leap in the unknown, for Tehran, adopting as policy of nuclear ambiguity would be a clever way of acquiring the ultimate instrument ensuring its security, the permanence of the Shiite presence in the Middle East, while making its return to the international community inevitable. Moreover, relying on a virtual atomic force is not endangering, on the contrary. This is what the Iranian Press Agency emphasizes, taking up the assessments of Daniel R. DePetris in Newsweek: Iran's adversaries in the Middle East are already sufficiently dissuaded from attacking Iranian territory thanks to non-state groups such as the Lebanese Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen, the Shiite groups in Iraq and Syria, as well as Palestinian groups.
For the West, to take the Islamic Republic at its word and give it the same recognition as it has given to Israel, will be at a minimum cost to avoid the disaster and the humiliation of its displayed impotence.

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(1) The Worldwide Threat in 2003; https://irp.fas.org/congress/2003_hr/021103tenet.html
(2) Parisa Hafezi, Khamenei adviser says Tehran 'capable of building nuclear bomb,' Al Jazeera reports, Reuters, July 17, 2022, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/khamenei-adviser-says-tehran-capable-building-nuclear-bomb-al-jazeera-2022-07-17/
(3) Khamenei.ir, Nuclear mass destruction: The American way, not Iran’s, Feb 26, 2021, https://english.khamenei.ir/news/8394/Nuclear-mass-destruction-The-American-way-not-Iran-s

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Edouard D Valensi
Edouard.d.valensi@gmail.com

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