 |
||||
|
||||
|
● Mehdi Falahati
Nuclear and missiles parts and technologies
From 1980, One Year After the Islamic Republic of Iran Was Established, to 2002, the Year in which For the First Time Iran’s Expanded Nuclear Program was Revealed : “Iran will never yield to international pressure to abandon its home-grown nuclear technology”, said Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, head of the Islamic Republic of Iran’s Guardian Council, a powerful un-elected supervisory body on October 7, 2005. He continued, “Americans should know that implementing sanctions by the Security Council will make us stronger. Such sanctions enabled us to build our Shahab-3 missile”, referring to Iran’s 2000 kilometres range ballistic missiles that would enable Iran to strike many countries around the region, and its arch-foe Israel or US bases in the Persian Gulf. “If you see that Iran’s industries are developing and we are manufacturing aircraft or military equipment…these are all because of sanctions”, Jannati said to the worshipers at a Friday prayer sermon1 in Tehran. Although, through that statement, Jannati tried to downgrade the US trade and investment embargo on Iran enforced in 1995, which among other rules and restrictions prevents US companies from investing in Iran, he wanted to remind everyone that Iran was familiar with sanctions and could jump through the hidden goals without any international pressure under which Iran has to function under the close eyes of the UN inspectors. The Iran’s ruling clerics know that the international community will not know about Iran’s nuclear activities if it rules out the engagement and follows the sanctions rout. No engagement, no awareness; this is the main weak point in the international community’s relationship with Iran, and this is the Iranian diplomacy’s golden achievement during the last 27 years. After the revolution, the new rulers called America “the Great Satan”, and considered the US embassy in Tehran as a “Spying Nest”. They stormed the embassy and took 52 US citizens hostage for 444 days. The US blocked all Iran’s assets and since then there have been no diplomatic relations between the two countries. Even if the Ayatollahs were interested in resuming the nuclear programs which had been started by the Shah through an international open market, they would not succeed because the main supplier and supporter of Iran’s nuclear programs before the revolution was the U.S. - the former close ally and the then main enemy. In the beginning of the new Islamic era in Iran the rulers decided not to resume the nuclear programs due to financial problems, and to cut the country’s dependency on the west as much as possible. The interim government of the then Prime Minister Mehdi Bazargan, withdrew any agreement on nuclear programs with other countries.2 The nuclear programs were just “limited to some researches” and the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) became a sub-institute in the Ministry of Energy.3 Of course, after the Iran-Iraq war started in 1980, Iranian rulers attempted to resume the nuclear activities. For example, the activities started at the Esfahan Nuclear Fuel Research & Production Centre’s temporary site in 1981. After 18 years, Iran’s hidden nuclear activities were revealed. In 2003 the Iranian government acknowledged that, from 1981 had carried out at the Esfahan Nuclear Technology Centre (ENTC) bench scale preparation of UO2, and at the Tehran Nuclear Research Centre (TNRC) bench scale preparation of ammonium uranyl carbonate (AUC), UO3, UF4 and UF6. To prepare this uranium conversion process, Iran also acknowledged that, the material important to uranium conversion had been produced in laboratory and bench scale experiments as of 1981 without having been reported to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).4 Since the early 1980s Iran has been under an embargo on nuclear technology. The U.S. urged the international community not to restart nuclear cooperation with Iran until “satisfactory reassurances about Iran’s non-proliferation credentials are forthcoming”. Thus Iranian officials started their mission to search every corner of the world in search of nuclear assistance, technologies and materials through middlemen, black markets, and non U.S. allied countries. Mr. Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani who was addressing and dictating Ayatollah Khomeini’s decrees and policies in the Iran-Iraq war and has been one of the most influential mullahs in Iran’s ruling policy, led a high level Iranian officials and experts team in an official trip to China and North Korea in 1985. According to Mr. Ali akbar Moinfar, the first Iranian oil minister after the revolution, Mr. Rafsanjani was interested in obtaining nuclear weapon.5 In the mid 1980, the intelligence services in some western countries received information about Iran’s attempts to obtain nuclear weapons technology. The US government had confirmed that Pakistan rebuffed an Iranian offer of money for nuclear weapons technology. The offer was made to Pakistan’s former army chief of staff, Mirza Aslan(Aslam) Beg.6 – the man who was one of the main aids of Abdul Qadeer Khan (so-called the father of the Pakistan’s atomic bomb) at his worldwide nuclear black market. Indeed, the first necessary steps towards implementing Iran’s nuclear programs were taken in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq war, when Iran was under strict sanctions. In December 21, 1981, Reza Amrollahi, the then head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), announced that huge uranium deposits had been discovered in four locations in Iran.7 The Iranian authorities continued to look for natural uranium resources with Chinese assistance. In March 1985, Iran announced that "high-quality uranium" in the Saghand region of the Yazd province (central Iran) after "several years of exploratory work," had been discovered. Approximately 5,000 tons of uranium are said to be located at the site.8 “Based upon a wide variety of data we know that since the mid-1980s, Iran has had an organised structure dedicated to acquiring and developing nuclear weapons.” He added that in terms of its “ organization, programs, procurement, and covert activities, Iran is pursuing the classic route to nuclear weapons which has been followed by almost all states that have recently sought a nuclear capability.”9 Regarding to similarity to Iraq’s case, just take an example: Scientists suggest that Iranian technicians could use the calutron10 and cyclotron11 to gain knowledge of electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) technology.12 Such technology could be used in building or reverse-engineer larger versions of the device to enrich uranium in another facility. To produce calutrons Iran tried to obtain facilities to make the large magnets that powerful calutrons required. To gain this goal Iran imported high-capacity computer-numerical-control (CNC), CNC drilling and vertical turning machines from Czechoslovakia in 1982-83. To increase the capability of the isotope separation technology, the Iranian Minister for mines and metals signed a letter of intent in December 5, 1996, pledging Iran interest in buying the ailing former East German machine-tool maker Sket Magdeburg. Such a move would be similar to Iraq’s former arrangements with British machine-tool maker Matrix Churchill, from which Baghdad procured machine-tools used in its weapons of mass destruction programes.13 Due to lacks of a sophisticated industrial infrastructure to make large calutrons (same as Iran) Iraq imported unfinished calutron magnet cores from Germany. Not this similarity, neither any other such similarities could ever alerted the world community and its nuclear inspection centre, IAEA, concerning Iran’s taken steps toward making nuclear weapons as Libya’s case was revealed. On December 19, 2003, Libya announced that it would voluntarily rid itself of its Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) equipment and programs. Libya also declared that it had “decided to restrict itself to missiles with a range that complies with the standards of the Missile Technology Control Regime.” Libya declared its intention to comply in full with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), and that it intended to sign the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Additional Protocol and accede to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). All of these remarkable steps, Libya announced, would be undertaken “in a transparent way that could be proved, including accepting immediate international inspection.” Libya appears to be living up to these commitments. In cooperation with the United States, the United Kingdom, and the IAEA, Libya has dismantled its declared nuclear weapons program. Libya has destroyed more than 3,000 unfilled chemical munitions. They are planning to destroy their stockpile of approximately 23 tons of sulfur mustard gas under the supervision of the Organization of the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, (OPCW) which would have gone into those bombs. The declared SCUD-C missile program has been removed. Within the last few months, with Libya’s cooperation, the United States and the United Kingdom removed: Nuclear weapon design documents; · Gas Centrifuge components designed to enrich uranium; · Containers of uranium hexaflouride (UF6); · Five Scud C-s, two other partial missiles and related equipment; and · Approximately 15 kilograms of fresh high-enriched uranium reactor fuel that was removed by Russia with U.S. and IAEA support.14 One of the main supplier of Libya was so-called the Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb, Abdul Qadeer khan and his worldwide black market. This is the one who has been the main clandestine supplier of Iran’s nuclear programs, particularly for its enrichment uranium technology for almost 18 years (between 1985 to 2003). If not the entire world community, at least the US and the UK who were both involved in Libya’s nuclear disarmament and its announcement in the final days of 1993, had known Khan’s network role in Libya’s nuclear programs. According to the officials of both countries, the announcement of the Libya’s nuclear disengagement was the result of seven months of negotiations between the two and Libya. During the negotiations, Libya handed over not only the materials and equipments, but also the documents and information regarding the sources and countries where Qaddafi obtained all his necessary supplements. The international public information about Iran’s nuclear programs was limited to the rare and mostly incorrect reports that Iran used to prepare and submit to the IAEA, and was based on the US and European intelligence officials “unspecific statements”. In the early 1990s, one European official in Tehran said Iran may have sought help from Pakistan to enrich a large quantity of uranium concentrate acquired from South Africa in the late 1980s. Pakistan denied the alligation.15 In the same period, a high level US intelligent official said, in a congressional hearing, that the United States has no information indicating that Iran’s effort to obtain un-safeguarded enriched uranium has been successful. A U.S. official added that some factions within Pakistan supported aiding Iran, but they were overruled.16 Such reports and information were stated before 1993, the year of the US and the UK engagement in Libya’s disarmament. The world media and public opinions should have waited until February 2004 to be aware of the main supplier of Iran’s sophisticated uranium enrichment technology. As mentioned above, for years, Pakistan had denied that shared its nuclear knowledge and technology with other countries. But “with each day the evidence got stronger and when unnamed sources began to link the leaks with the military and President Musharraf himself, something had to be done”.17 On February 4, 2004, hours after President Parviz Musharraf personally met Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called “Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb” appeared live on the state television and offered his “deepest regrets and unqualified apologies to a traumatised nation” for leaking the country’s nuclear secrets to Iran, Lybia and North Korea. He said : “In my interviews with the consul government officials, I was confronted with the evidence and the findings and I have voluntarily admitted that much of it is true and correct”.18 In his confession on the live TV program, Abdul Qadeer Khan took full responsibility for his actions and asked for forgiveness. No one else appeared on that TV show, and although there were strong rumours about involvement of some top army officials, Dr. Khan stood alone. One day later, on February 5, 2004, President Musharraf pardoned his former Personal Assistant in Science Technology and publicly said that he had accepted a written apology from Abdul Qadeer Khan for selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. Then, the Pakistani government announced that Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan had lost all his official posts and was being kept under virtual house arrest. The official said “It is a conditional pardon and Khan knows he would be jailed if he tries to proliferate again in any way”.19 The job was done. A 69 year old man who is still considered by millions of Pakistanis as a national hero (because he has armed Pakistan with nuclear bombs) was kept under 24-hour security watch for the rest of his life. He apparently lives in his house at the foot of the Margalla hills at a suburban of Islamabad with his Dutch wife, Henny. On the same day that Dr. Khan was pardoned, President Musharraf said that the IAEA was welcome to come to the country and discuss the issue with Pakistan. “We are open and we will tell them everything,” he added.20 However, Dr. Khan is untouchable and no one is allowed to have an interview with him. He is still off limits to the UN agency watchdog, IAEA. The US and IAEA are eager to find more and more information about Iran’s nuclear programs, and Dr. Khan is the most relevant foreign source for them. But if, as Dr. AH Nayyar, a one-time Khan acquaintance says, the Pakistani government has been possibly involved in Khan’s network21, then any direct contact and interview with Khan, may disclose the possible Pakistani government’s role in the nuclear smuggling and harm President Musharraf and his ruling circle as a whole that is a global anti terror war’s close ally. Pakistan has not yet signed the NPT and its nuclear programs are not disclosed to the UN watchdog. That, as a matter of national security and interest, could be an excuse or a reason for the Pakistani government not to allow anyone to interview the top nuclear scientist of the country. But if the matter concerns humanity rather than one single nation and government, then the world public opinion may ask for much more transparency. During the first days after Mr. Khan was pardoned by the Pakistani President, there were some published criticism regarding Mr. Mosharraf’s initiation to pardon Dr. Khan as a shocking act and considered leaking the nuclear secrets as a crime against humanity. But the exiting motion was downgraded soon. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan said “Obviously it is a very difficult situation that he [President Musharraf] has to deal with – he is dealing with a national hero”.22 And the then US Secretary of State Colin Powel said: “ This is a matter between Mr. Khan, Who is a Pakistani citizen, and his government”. Mr. Powel added that he was going to talk to President Musharraf about it.23 The world public opinion knows nothing about what the US and Pakistani officials have told each other about Khan’s case and to what scale Khan’s network aides the rogue states and possibly terrorist organizations. Just one day after the above statements of Mr Annan and Mr. Powel, US officials acknowledged that two senior Pakistani nuclear scientists who were very close to A.Q. Khan, met Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar , and Al-Qaeda’s first person, Osama Bin Laden in Kandahar, several times before the fall of the Taliban. They were later questioned on their return to Pakistan.24 As a senior US official said: Dr Khan’s role in destabilising the 21st century would “loom up there” with Hitler and Stalin’s impact on the 20th century. “The horse is out of the barn. At this point, we can’t stop the technology from spreading,” former Clinton aide Gary Samore said.25
Who is Abdul Qadeer Khan? He was born in 1935 in a middle-class Muslim family in Bhopal, India. Pakistan, as the Muslim part of the former British India, declared its independent in 1947. Five years later, A.Q. Khan immigrated to Pakistan and located in Karachi. He was graduated at the University of Karachi and went to West Germany and Belgium for further studies, getting a doctorate from the Catholic University of Leuven in Belgium in 1972. On May of that year, Khan was employed by Physics Dynamic Research Laboratory (FDO) in Amsterdam, as a metallurgist. FDO was a subcontractor to a Dutch-German and British consortium called URENCO. The URENCO uranium enrichment plant established in 1970 in the Netherlands specializing in using highly classified centrifuge technology to separate fissionable uranium-235 from uranium-238. The technical complexity of this system is the main obstacle to would –be nuclear powers developing their own enrichment facilities.26 A.Q.Khan could soon be a senior scientist at the URENCO plant, with access to the most secret areas of the plant as well as to documentation on centrifuge technology, and have an office at that facility by late 1974, the same year that India’s first nuclear bomb was tested. The India’s nuclear test could not be simply observed by Pakistanis. The relationship of the two countries had always been full of tension and they fought three wars from October 1947, the year of the partition of India and Pakistan, until 1971, three years before the first nuclear test of India occurred, and less than five years earlier than A.Q.Khan returns to Pakistan with some classified documents that he stole from URENCO. In 1975 while Dr. Khan was on leave in Pakistan, he was asked by the then Prime Minister Zolfikar Ali Bhutto to “take charge of Pakistan’s uranium enrichment program”.27 Khan went back to his office in URENCO and within few months smartly gathered whatever classified documents and blueprints for uranium centrifuge that he thought would have been useful to start a centrifuge program in his country. He also started to contact some Dutch and German firms to make sure that he will later be able to buy the necessary tools such as aluminium rotor from them. In January 1976, Khan suddenly left the Netherlands to Pakistan. Just at the time when Khan left the Netherlands, two Dutch firms were involved in the export of 6,200 unfinished maraging steel rotor tubes to Pakistan, a Dutch government report says.28 By July of that year, Khan worked under supervisory of Munir Ahmad Khan, who was the head of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission (PAEC). In July 1976 Z.A.Bhutto officially put A.Q.Khan in charge of the uranium enrichment project, “reporting directly to the Prime Minister’s office”. On 31 of the same month, Khan founded the Engineering Research Laboratories (ERL). The “laboratories” soon became the main place of making Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and the centre for the worldwide nuclear equipments and blueprints proliferation. Not only the Netherlands, but also companies and firms from Switzerland, Germany, Britain, United States by way of Canada and Turkey, and Italy, have supplied Dr. Khan with materials and components needed for manufacturing highly enriched uranium.29 Zolfikar Ali Bhutto wrote in his 1979 memoirs: “We know that Israel and South Africa have full nuclear capability. The Christian, Jewish, and Hindu civilisation have this capability. The Communist powers also posses it. Only the Islamic civilisation was without it, but that position was about to change”.30 Pakistan’s refusal to sign the 1970 Nuclear Non-proliferation treaty, has allowed the country not to be inspected by The UN nuclear watchdog and no public accounting of its nuclear activities. This self-isolated environment made Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program and the network of the Pakistan’s nuclear bomb master universally almost invisible. Khan first concentrated on work for his own country’s bomb making. He used not only the stolen equipments and documents to do his assignment but also used his pre-managed contacts with the European firms. He reportedly travelled to the Netherlands and some other European countries to buy his laboratories equipments for several times. Five years later the “laboratories” turned to a sophisticated enrichment uranium plant and was renamed by the then Pakistani President General Mohammad Zia ul-Haq as Dr. A.Q. Khan Research Laboratories (KRL). From the mid 1980s Khan and his colleagues at the KRL published publicly detailed how to make and test uranium centrifuges. The scientific papers were followed by “sales brochures touted gear marketed by the khan laboratory that would groove vital to anyone eager to produce Pakistani-designed centrifuges”.31 Enrichment of uranium in KRL by Pakistani-designed centrifuges led to a successful detonation of Pakistan’s first nuclear device in May 1998. Khan was feted as a national hero and the then Pakistani President, Mohmmad Rafiq Tarrar awarded him a gold medal for his role in masterminding the Pakistani nuclear programme. Two years later, in 2000, the Pakistani government ran its own advertisement announcing procedures for commercial exports of many types of gas centrifuges and their parts. Many of the items which where listed in the advertisement “would be useful in a nuclear weapons program”.32 These classified documents advertised and published in a world in which the United Nations have founded an “active nuclear watchdog” and there are powerful countries with their world-branded intelligent services. As if the only people in the world who knew what was happening through Khan’s circle were his customers! No one was aware, and otherwise, they did not care, that Abdul Qadeer Khan used the vast logistic system available to him, which included government cargo planes, to ship the components to middlemen,33 and travelled with military personnel from his laboratories.34 Khan reportedly made as many as 44 foreign trips to Dubai and separately also to Malaysia, Libya and Iran, in just four years, from early 2000 to early 2004.35 The network was connected with two main registered companies, one in Malaysia called Scuomi Precision Engineering (SCOPE) [Scomi Group Berhad], and another in Dubai called Gulf Technical which was run by a Sri Lankan businessman called Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir, who, the Khan’s investigators say, placed the order for the Libyan equipments. Khan used to prepare the blueprints, the centrifuge components used to be fabricated at the Malaysian firm and then the submitted orders from different countries were supplied through Bukhari in Dubai. As many independent analysts and investigators say, there is no reason to believe that the list of network customers was limited to Libya, North Korea and Iran, the only countries officially mentioned in connection with the Khan’s case. Let’s take an example to be familiar to how the intelligence failed to recognise the matter. In December 2004 new information revealed that Dr. Khan sold $100 million worth of nuclear gear to Libya and as a “sweetener” included blueprints for a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb. So, what was the main issue that concerned the US and the IAEA? As the New York Times reported, experts from the US and the IAEA are said to have quarrelled over who should have control over blueprints and “after hours of tense negotiation, agreement was reached to keep it in a vault at the Energy Department in Washington, but under the IAEA seal”. The other main issues were lost or well downgraded. Just “ US experts were unsure who else had those designs besides Libya, and if the designs had also been passed on to Iran, Syria or the Al-Qaeda organisation”.36 Less than a year later, a new finding by the IAEA filled all relevant news agency’s headlines: A document which describes how to make what could be the explosive core of an atom bomb was found, possibly by accident, in two or three cardboard boxes full of papers which Iran handed over to IAEA. The document was in a binder and consisted of some 10 pages. One day after the IAEA confidential report to its 35-nation board confirmed findings the document, Iran used the familiar running forward tactic and said “by handing over the document Iran was showing its good faith”. But according to the western diplomats “Iran may have handed over the document by accident to UN inspectors”.37 An interesting point was that, the document “was not the blueprint the Libyans had”;38 which means:
No intelligence service might have found when and how all these happened. It should be noted that Khan was under surveillance and for three decades the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) watched him closely. The former CIA chief George Tenet says: “We were inside his residence, inside his facilities, inside his rooms”.39 A.Q. Khan knew he was under the surveillance and once told a British journalist, “the British try to recruit members of my team as spies”.40 Did he performed more sophisticated than the CIA, MI6, and the other intelligence services? In 1983 Khan was convicted, in absentia, in a Dutch court for conducting nuclear espionage and sentenced to four years in prison. In 1985, his conviction was overturned based on an appeal that he had not received a proper summons. Former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers revealed in early August 2005 that the Netherlands knew of Khan stealing nuclear secrets but let him go on two occasions after the CIA expressed their wish to continue monitoring his movements.41 Letting the subject free and monitoring his movements is a basic and common step that the intelligence services usually take, to augment their knowledge and understanding of the subject. But, for instance, regarding North Korea’s missile technologies quid pro quo for the Khan’s uranium enrichment technologies, American intelligence agencies knew apparently almost nothing precise about the trade, until the summer of 2001, where American spy satellites spotted missile parts being loaded into a Pakistani cargo plane near Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. Although Pakistani President, General Musharraf denied that any nuclear transfers ever occurred, the trade was in fact between Pakistan and North Korea; because what did Khan could do with the missile parts by loading them to Pakistan?!42 About two years later, in the spring of 2003, the US announced some sanctions against the Khan laboratories, but only cited the illegal missile transactions, and not for a nuclear transfer, since there were “insufficient evidences”, a move some dissenting officials suspected was a concession to avoid embarrassing the unelected Pakistani President, General Musharraf, a key US alley in its war on terror.43 But, in any case, the US was aware of the danger and put pressure on President Musharraf to do something about. In March 2001 Khan was dismissed as director of the nuclear lab by order of Parviz Musharraf. Though Khan was appointed as special advisor to the government, the reason for his dismissal reportedly coincided with concerns about financial improprieties at the lab as well as general warnings from the United States about Khan’s proliferation activities.44 After his dismissal as the director of the nuclear lab, Khan took a brand new post, a Special Science Adviser to the government, and continued to lead smuggling nuclear technologies network. Indeed, being sacked from the previous post and appointed to the new post made no changes in his mission. As mentioned above, he made as many as 44 foreign trips to Dubai and separately also to Malaysia, Libya and Iran, from early 2000 to early 2004.
A.Q. Khan and Iran Pakistani President, Parviz Musharraf, while publicly announced that he had pardoned Abdul Qadeer Khan on February 5, 2004, asked a question “What is the motive of the people?” and he, himself, answered “Money, Obviously. That’s the reality.” But Abdul Qadeer Khan had attempted to introduce himself as a radical Moslem who was loyal to Islam as an ideology, whose aim was not earning money, but sharing his capabilities with whole Moslem world. If he seems to be a fervent nationalist, the reason is that the Pakistani nation is built as a Moslem one, and that’s why A.Q. Khan who was born in Bhopal, India, immigrated to Pakistan, the Moslem part of the former British India, when he was 17 years old (five years after the partition of subcontinent). After years that his nuclear black market network expanded, A.Q. argued it was “no crime to ship” the nuclear components “to another Moslem country”. As a senior politician said, “Dr. Khan never spoke of selling the technology, only of sharing it”.45 He condemned Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and renounced the system that limits legal nuclear know-how to the five major nuclear powers, a system that has ignored Israel’s nuclear weapon while focussing on the fear of an “Islamic bomb”. He declared that “All western countries are not only the enemies of Pakistan but in fact of Islam”.46 This type of statement is very familiar in Iran. In fact, this is the common statement of all Iranian officials, even the most moderate part of the regime. For instance, in 1992, the time that Khan-Iran’s relations was fully expanded, Iran’s then vice president, Ataollah Mohajerani, who has been considered as the most moderate member of both Rafsanjani (1989-1997) and Khatami (1997-2005) government, said “The nuclear capabilities of Israel and the Muslims must be equalized. If Israel is allowed to have a nuclear capacity, then Islamic states, too, should be given the same right.”47 The same statement had been announced by an Iraqi government official in 1978, two years after Iraq purchased Osirak research reactor from France. “If Israel owns the atom bomb, then the Arabs must get an atom bomb. The Arab countries should possess whatever is necessary to defend themselves,” the Iraqi official said.48 Such is the position declared by the Arab and Moslem countries and groups that are either on the nuclear route or are ambitious to obtain nuclear technology; the countries and groups that are ideologically committed to wipe out “their enemies” from the world map. According to the former Pakistani Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, the country had “operational nuclear weapons in 1989”, nearly a decade before it actually conducted the tests, and by 1988, “uranium enrichment was at 93%”49, the purity required to produce bomb. That means in 1980s Pakistan had a sophisticated enrichment uranium technology, and Khan, the leader of the uranium enrichment scientists of the country, had enough capabilities to sell or “share” it with other Moslem part of the world. In 1980 the longest war in the 20th century started between Iran and Iraq. None of the two countries bounded itself to the international rules and conventions, and both of them were extremely eager to obtain more deadly and devastating weapons. Iraq used chemical weapons against its own people of a Kurdish town, Halabja, in north of the country, and biological and chemical weapons against Iranian troops during the eight year war, but could not use the nuclear weapon. Although Iran unsuccessfully struck Iraqi nuclear reactor, Osirak, twice in the first months of the war, Israel successfully struck Osirak in 1981 and destroyed almost completely the reactor. Iran, itself, attempted to start a vast nuclear project, partly in Bushehr, south of Iran. As one Reagan Administration official during the Iran-Iraq war said: “If either Iran or Iraq had nuclear weapons as their disposal, they would use them.”50 Iraq, unable to use the nuclear bomb, was very afraid of Iran’s nuclear project. Iran’s nuclear complex in Bushehr, which was 77% completed by the time, was bombed six times during the war, in March 1984, February 1985, March 1985, July 1986, and twice in November 1987, which destroyed the entire core area of both 1000 MW light water reactors of the site. In that Period, some reports revealed Iran and Pakistan had signed a secret agreement on peaceful nuclear cooperation.51 The deal included a provision for a number of Iranians to be trained in Pakistan at the Institute of Science and Technology in Islamabad and the Nuclear Studies Institute. A.Q. Khan visited the damaged Iranian nuclear complex at Bushehr in February 1986 and again in January 1987. The second visit to Bushehr was followed by the Iranian officials meeting with Khan (according to some reports with his assistances). The meeting secretly held in Dubai resulted in a written five-point phased plan to supply Iran with nuclear materials including 2,000 centrifuges and equipment for making the core of a bomb.52 One year later, in 1998, A.Q. Khan, as the head of Pakistan's uranium enrichment program held talks with officials at the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.53 In 1989, two years after the secret meeting in Dubai mentioned above, Iran received the first centrifuges assemblies and components. Through 1995, Khan is reported to have shipped over 2000 components and sub-assemblies for P-1, and later P-2 centrifuges to Iran. More advanced components for P-2 centrifuges are suspected to have arrived in Iran in 1995. According to “Khan’s chief lieutenant” Bukhari Sayed Abu Tahir, Iran paid approximately $3 million for these parts.56 Iran’s ruling mullahs who were eager to become a nuclear power as soon as possible, made several meeting with A.Q. Khan and his assistants in Iran, Dubai and Pakistan and paid millions of dollars to the network to obtain the nuclear know-how, from mid 1980s to mid 1990s. Regarding with the expanding of Iran-Khan relations, which was occurred at the first term of the Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto (1988-1990), according to confessions by A.Q. Khan and his aids to Pakistani investigators, “any nuclear technology shared with Iran had been approved” by the commander of Pakistani Army (1988-1991) Gen. Mirza Aslan Beg. The commander of Pakistani army was not the only top army official who was involved in Pakistani nuclear sharing with Iran during the first term of the then Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s office, the defence advisor to B. Bhutto, Gen. Imtiaz (1988-1990) also was pretty involved in the affairs and in fact, as A.Q. Khan has claimed “equipment and drawings shipped to Iran were supplied as a result of pressure from him”. Khan also admitted to “meeting Iranian scientists in Karachi at the request of Dr. Niazi, a close Mrs. Bhutto aid. In return for the help, Iran transferred millions of dollars to foreign bank accounts, with some money funnelled through the Bank of Credit and Commerce International. That bank collapsed in 1991.”57
Looking for All Possible Ways The Iranian regime, thirsty for nuclear technology, could not bound itself only to the Khan’s black market, and attempted to go through any other possibility as well. In fact, before contacting A.Q. Khan, the ruling clerics had tried other routes, importing materials and starting activities at some sites. For the first time, in 1983 Islamic Republic of Iran publicly announced its inclination to obtain nuclear technology. In March of that year the new Islamic rulers announced the first of their five years development plans including a restarting of Iran’s nuclear plan with the help of India.58 Although like all other countries with which Iran sought assistance in nuclear technology, India could not fully cooperate with Iran because of the US pressure and sanctions. This is an arguable view, some politicians suggest that Iran’s nuclear ambitious history shows that Iranian authorities tried to obtain nuclear technology through a public world market in the beginning, but as they have faced more and more walls of sanctions they have gone through more and more illegal and underground ways. As all facts suggest, the Islamic Iran’s authorities decided to proceed with their nuclear programs on any price no matter how from the early 1980s. In 1985 they required key “flow-forming” equipment, useful in forming steel and aluminium centrifuge tubes, from the German firm Leifeld,59 and made some contracts with China and Argentina. Continuation of the Iran-Iraq bloody war did not stop the western and multi-national companies to send their delegates to Iran to look for their benefits through mullah’s nuclear ambitions. The negotiation further could not be fruitful due to many differences between the main contractor, Germany, and Iran. Argentina, itself, had attempted to be one of the main suppliers to Iran’s nuclear programs from mid 1985 to 1997. After almost 18 month of the preliminary agreement that was signed in December 1985, in May, 5, 1987, Iran and Argentina’s Investigaciones Aplicadas (INVAP) signed a contract implied the Argentina’s firm to supply Iran with a new core of its research reactor at Tehran University. The core was originally designed by the United States in 1967 (before the Iranian revolution) to take 93% enriched uranium ( the required purity to make a nuclear bomb). According to the contract signed with Argentina, the INVAP agreed to modify the core to operate with 20% enriched uranium. The agreement signed in May, 5, 1987 was aimed for Iran and Argentina’s broader nuclear cooperation. Argentina agreed to train Iranian educated, experts and scientists to enable them to work on fuel cycle technology, and providing the 115.8kg of 20% enriched uranium to Iran.61 The IAEA approved the sale of the enriched uranium to Iran in September 1988, but delayed the supply in June 1989. The order was to be fulfilled by mid 1990. As of the late 1980s, Iran sought hot cells from Argentina. Hot cells are described as “heavily shielded rooms with remotely operated arms used to chemically separate material irradiated in the research reactor, possibly including plutonium laden ‘target’.”62 On December 1991 some of the world news agencies reported that Argentina “was selling hot cells to Iran”. In 1992, under the US pressure, Argentina rejected Iran’s request for a heavy water plant, denied selling hot cells to Iran and Carlos Menem, the then Argentine President blocked the shipment of “dual-use technology from INVAP to Iran”. The blocked shipment included nuclear reactor materials, tubing and machine tools; equipment for a uranium conversion and purification pilot plant; and the equipment for fuel fabrication pilot plant.63 By April 1992 Argentina apparently suspended all contracts for nuclear projects in Iran,64 although some sources said that Argentina’s nuclear fuel (115.8kg of 20% enriched uranium) was delivered to Iran in 1993.65 The Islamic Iran attempted to get nuclear fuel from South Africa. At the time of the previous regime, the Shah of Iran, Tehran had purchased 15% of Rossing uranium mine, run by Rio Tinto-Zinc of London in South African-occupied Namibia. Since the mullahs government was without any organized finance resources at the beginning, the first country from which the ruling mullahs attempted to get uranium was South Africa, with which Iran could deal on its ownership on the Rossing mine. Iran secretly bought uranium from the British-run mine in Namibia. It is said that the deal was fulfilled from the early 1980s.66 In late 1988 and early 1989, different sources reported that large quantities of uranium concentrate were delivered to Iran from South Africa.67 The natural uranium arrived in Iran to be enriched by the would be-centrifuges that their first assemblies and components arrived in Iran, from another country, at about the same time. In 1987, less than two years ahead of the “Father of Pakistan’s Nuclear Bomb” Abdul Qadeer Khan shipped the assemblies and components to Iran, he had sold centrifuge drawings to “his Iranian brothers”. (In 2005 Iran admitted to IAEA that it received centrifuge drawings in 1987 from an “unnamed foreign intermediary”). In 1993, South Africa voluntarily relinquished its nuclear weapons. President F. W. de Klerk declared to a special joint session of the South African parliament on March 24, 1993, "at one stage South Africa did develop a limited nuclear deterrent capability," but "early in 1990 final effect was given to decisions that all the nuclear devices should be dismantled and destroyed." There were obviously thousands of South African scientists, technicians, and other employees who had worked on the country’s secret nuclear weapons program, and as of March 1993 were being dismissed by the President De Klerk's announcement. The Islamic government of Iran could hire a number of technicians in 1997, whose job were eliminated following the demise of South Africa’s nuclear weapons program.68 Inviting the nuclear scientists and technicians throughout the world and hire them, has been one of the Iran’s key foreign policies in the last two decades. In the mid 1985, a number of migrated Iranian scientists returned home; among them Fereydun Fesharaki, a top energy expert who is considered as head of the Shah’s secret nuclear weapons program. Fesharaki was invited by the new government and returned home on January 1987.69 On October 1988 at a conference in Tehran, Iran’s then parliament speaker HoJJatol-Islam Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who has played a key role in the strategy of Iran’s foreign policies appealed to Iranian nuclear scientists in exile to return home. In August 17, 1989, Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani was elected as the forth Islamic Republic President, and became the successor of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei who was declared the Iranian supreme Leader after the death of Ayatollah Khomeini in 1989. Rafsanjani was the first Iran’s Islamic leading mullah who comprehensively revived the country’s nuclear programs and tried administratively and technologically to provide all possibilities to pay Iran to the nuclear path. Under his presidency the Atomic Energy Organisation of Iran (AEOI) came under the presidential office again and the head of the AEOI Reza Amrollahi, was appointed as one of Iran’s three vice Presidents. (The “tradition” of appointing head of the AEOI as a vice President began from the first term of Rafsanjani’s presidency in 1989 and has continued to the present time). Right from the start of Rafsanjani’s presidency, he sent his so-called ambassadors to the other countries, particularly to Europe and the U.S. in order to attract Iranian educated, experts and scientists to return to Iran. According to the U.S. officials many Iranian nuclear scientists who had left after the Shah was overthrown, returned to the country. Some of them were interested in working on uranium enrichment, others on chemically reprocessing irradiated nuclear fuel to obtain plutonium-both potential routes to bomb materials.70 A year before he became Iran’s President, Mr. Rafsanjani clearly declared that he did not believe in the international law. In 1988, at the time that Iran-Iraq war was about to end, Mr. Rafsanjani as the then acting commander-in-chief of the armed forces said in a talk with military officers that the war “taught us that international laws are only scraps of paper.”71 This sort of thinking led he and his aides at the ministries (specially at the intelligent and Security Ministry-VAVAK) to try to obtain nuclear materials and know-how from any source and any smuggler. The Iranian government organized circle, and extended its network over the whole world, from Russia and the former Soviet Moslem republics to the northern Europe, and from the eastern and western Europe to the United States. In the mid 1991 the US media reported that two Iranian nationals, Reza (Ray) Amiri and Mohammad (Dan) Danesh, illegally export Tektronix oscilloscopes to Iran from the United States. The oscilloscopes are used to process nuclear weapons test data. Amiri and Danesh also export logic analysers, pulse generators, and other electronic equipment that could be used to develop nuclear weapons. They were indicted for illegally shipping the materials to Iran. In that same year, some sources reported that three or four nuclear warheads were stolen from Kazakhstan during the chaotic period in which the Soviet Union collapsed. In the meantime, according to the sources, an Iranian senior intelligence officer, Dr. Mehdi Chamran, visited Kazakhstan. Mehdi Chamran, who received a PhD in nuclear physics from the University of California, Berkeley, served as Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad’s spokesman during his Presidential campaign in 2004, and currently is the chairman of the Tehran City Council, was reportedly the man behind the secret Iran-Kazakhstan "semi-official" nuclear weapons deals.73 At the beginning, the reports were not seriously draw attention of the western political and diplomatic analysis, but in 1993, when the beryllium factory officials in Kazakhstan revealed Chamran’s visit, the alarm bells at the western intelligent services started to ring. Chamran apparently visited Kazakhstan at least twice in 1991 and 1992. In 1991 Chamran met with the high-ranking Khazak official with access to the Semipalatinsk nuclear test and development site. About one year later, Chamran visited Kazakhstan again. Factory officials at a beryllium plant in Ustkamenogorsk, Kazakhstan, revealed that an Iranian delegation visited the plant in August 1992. Although the factory officials as well as Kazakh authorities denied any sales to the Iranian, the British Broadcasting Corporation (B.B.C.) reported that the Iranians purchased beryllium, a key component in nuclear weapons production, on that occasion.74 After Dr. Chamran’s first visit to Kazakhstan in 1991, a top-secret report from the Russian intelligence service claimed that Iran had obtained at least two nuclear warheads from a batch listed as missing from Kazakhstan.75 One year later, on March 1992, vice president of the German Federal Intelligent Service (BND) Paul Muenstermann said that “Iran received two of three warheads and medium-range nuclear delivery systems that are missing from Kazkhstan.” Russian General Victor Samoilov, who handled disarmament issues for the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) [including mostly all countries that are formed after the Soviet Union collapsed], admitted that three nuclear warheads were missing from Kazakhstan, but the CIS officials as well as Iranian authorities rejected the claims.76 In December 1992, a tapped phone conversation clearly revealed that Iran had attempted to buy the nuclear warheads. Two Iranian diplomats discussed on telephone the fate of the “missed” warheads. One of the diplomats was an Iranian Foreign Ministry official Abdolrahmani (surname) who was in charge of relations with the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, and another was Iranian Deputy Sirus Naseri Tabatabai-Kia, who was second in command in the Iranian delegation to United Nations institutions and international organizations in Geneva. Sirus Naseri, has been involved in the whole process of Iran-Eu Nuclear negotiations (2003-2005) as one of the top member of the Iran’s team. In the tapped phone conversation between Abdolrahmani and Naseri, which is obtained from an European intelligence service, Abdolrahmani confirms that one of the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union sold the warheads to Iran. Sirus Naseri notes that the purchases "completed their mission in the best possible way." Abdolrahmani says that the warheads had not arrived because of a problem with transportation, and that he does not know how much the warheads cost because "some other guy arranged the issue of the payment." In the course of the conversation, the name of the then Iranian defence minister Akbar Torkan is mentioned in connection with the sale.77 Nothing else was heard about the warheads. The Caucas and Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, and their loose borders, made the best possibilities for Iranian regime and the WMD smugglers in accessing each other. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were many declared missile parts and nuclear materials as lost materials and devices. The materials that Iran attempted to obtain through smugglers in that area were usually the “lost” materials. In November 14,1992 Mayak Radio Network in Moscow reported that an undisclosed portion of the uranium 238 was stolen from the Russian Chepetsk plant apparently made its way to Grozny, Chechnya, where it was purchased for 280 million rubbles by buyers from Azerbaijan who intend to sell it to Iran for $15 million.78 A long decade investigation on this matter confirmed the previous report and suggested that 300 kilograms of low-enriched uranium were stolen in 1992 for resale in Europe and the Middle East. According to the Environmental Foundation Bellona “Of special concern are the multimillion-dollar sales of some of the pinched uranium in Grozny, which authorities said were bound for Iran. The high prices paid indicate a higher grade LEU that could feasibly be burned in reactors and reprocessed for plutonium, defence analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said.”79 Again from Cuacas: in April 7, 1998, Azerbaijani customs seized 22 tones of steel alloy (may be used in making centrifuges and missiles) on the Azerbaijani-Iranian border. Deputy Department Head of the Azerbaijani Ministry of National Security, Tofig Babayev, said that four people had been arrested for attempting to sell a container of a cesium isotope for $1.4 million.80 Eighteen months later, in September 21, 1999, four other men (reportedly Georgians) were arrested while trying to sell 1kg of uranium-235 in Batumi, Georgia. According to the Leader of the Georgia Academy of Sciences Physics Institute's Atomic Centre, the U-235 was destined to Iran.81 Under Hashemi Rafsanjani’s presidency, The Iranian secret service (SAVAMA) was expanded and its foreign section became very active to find nuclear brokers throughout the world and to deal with them. In October 5, 1993, four Iranian suspected working for SAVAMA were arrested in Turkey while trying to purchase 2.5kg of uranium. According to the Turkey’s then chief of the police anti-smuggling department, Salih Gungor, visitors from Russia brought the uranium into Turkey, where they sold it to Turks, and then the Turks were trying to sell it to the Iranians.82 The nuclear smugglers and middlemen thirsty for money, had found an ambitious customer, and even some foreign diplomats were being involved in those deals. In March 1996 the European media revealed that Iran was buying enriched uranium from Russian diplomats in the northern city of Afghanistan, Mazar-e-Sharif. A Shiite populated town,Mazar-e-Sharif, has been one of the Iran’s regime base in Afghanistan, where the Iranian Consulate General has been an active Iranian intelligence body in coordination with Iran’s Consulate in Peshawar. According to the western diplomatic sources the stolen nuclear materials were smuggled from Russia to Afghanistan and then to the Pakistani border town of Peshawar. It is said that, Mazar-e-Sharif has been a transit location for the smuggled materials and one with a large Russian consulate, with Peshawar as the final destination, where, there are smuggled enriched uranium, super-powerful magnets, catalysts, and metal alloys for making thermo-nuclear warhead shelling. And Iran has been the main buyer of those materials.83 In purchasing the nuclear materials through the black market, the Iranian Intelligence agents seemed to be more active during the last month of the Rafsanjani’s second term of presidency (in 1997) and in the beginning of his successor’s term-the Mohammad Khatami’s first term of presidency.84 In the last days of August 1997, the western intelligence agencies found that an Iranian businessman, Hoseyn Jafari, had attempted to procure a spectrometer, a very rare and sensitive nuclear weapon technology which is used in nuclear weapons research to analyse whether uranium is sufficiently enriched, from a British firm VG Elemental. Hoseyn Jafari reportedly had met members of the Iranian delegation, among them Saiid Musavi, then vice chairman of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, at a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey and offered to supply the spectrometer for $3 million.85 In the beginning of 1998, the European intelligence agencies, after a two years investigation uncovered a network that supplied Iran with the materials and equipments used for producing missiles and nuclear warheads from Britain through Germany and Austria. British customs officials disclosed the Iranian regime attempted to use Britain as a conduit for acquiring high-strength steel of a quality used in missile casing, and centrifuges for weapons-grade uranium. On April of that same year, the then British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook stated that Britain foreign espionage service (MI6) and the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), had “tracked Iran’s nuclear weapons programme, and enabled Britain to disrupt Iranian attempts to procure British technology” in 1997.86 In order to uncover and crack down the whole network, in Germany police discovered a front company for Iran’s Defence Industries Organisation, a main department of the Iranian Defence Ministry. In raiding the front company the police found documents detailing a huge purchasing operation to obtain weapons of mass destruction.87 While in Britain the Iranian regime’s efforts to obtain the nuclear materials and missile technology apparently stopped, the regime’s efforts through its secret agents and the middlemen in Russia and the northern Europe continued. In November 14 of that same year, an Iranian citizen, Reza Teymouri was arrested in Russia in connection with acquiring dual-use technology that could be used to develop nuclear weapons.88 And in Sweden, the state television reported in October 11, 1999, that Iranian agents had clandestinely shipped US electronic equipment used in Swedish nuclear reactors from Sweden to Iran.89 The Swedish police arrested an Iranian-born Swedish Ehsan Amouzandeh, who, in November 25, 1999, was convicted of smuggling the equipment to Iran. He was sentenced to four months in jail.90 As the chronological reports show, during the last two decades the Iran’s regime attempted to obtain nuclear technologies and materials through any possible sources, no matter how much the price or the quality of matter was. Along with receiving the nuclear know-how and technologies through the black-markets and the middlemen, the Iranian Islamic regime entered in a very active relationship with the potential countries through those Iran could have gained its nuclear goals. China has been Iran’s chief supplier of the nuclear-related technologies in the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s (before Russia becomes the first nuclear supplier to Iran). Note that the original design of Pakistani nuclear bomb is Chinese, and Pakistani nuclear bomb is considered as a mirror of China’s bomb. Along with gaining Chinese assistance to construct a number of nuclear facilities, the Iran’s regime has had its special and close relation with North Korea, from where it has imported the ballistic missiles technologies. The missiles are able to carry nuclear warheads.
…/
|
