127-132 Book Review -Eng.Qxd

SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: RESEARCHERS FOR IRAN, PLUTONIUM FOR NORTH KOREA, ENRICHMENT FOR ISRAEL Vladimir Novikov, The Problem of Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons at the Present Stage. Moscow: RISS, 2007, 328 pp. Reviewed by Anton Khlopkov In this book, one of Russia’s few consistent researchers in nonproliferation, Vladimir Novikov, looks at the missile nuclear potential of the de facto nuclear weapon states and those states which are closer than others to the creation of a nuclear explosive device (NED).1 The value of the study is to a large extent predetermined by the comprehensive approach taken by the author, who looks at both political and technological aspects (the author is a grad uate of the Moscow Institute of Aviation). Every reader of this book (as of any other) will probably disagree with some of the author’s conclusions (I, for one, find it much harder than the author to imagine a realistic situation in which North Korea would agree to the scrapping of existing NEDs), yet we must thank him for piecing together numerous data from nearly 400 sources, thus giving the reader plenty of scope to make sense of the present state of the nonproliferation regime and identify the caus es of its current crisis. MADE IN U.S.A The author’s examination of the sources of expertise of Iranian nuclear scientists and researchers in related areas of applied science deserves special attention. Only seven or eight years ago, it was, as it were, accepted wisdom in Western literature (with a few exceptions) that the main successes of Iranian nuclear scientists were the result of cooperation with Russia in the 1990s–2000s (sometimes the dubious honor was shared by Russia and China). The myth was partly debunked following the exposure of Abdul Qadeer Khan’s network, when irrefutable evidence emerged that the source of the centrifugal enrichment technology (and more besides) was Pakistan and not Russia, as had been believed in the first weeks after the dis covery of the Iranian enrichment plant in Natanz. And yet there have been plenty of skeptics afterwards too: they started saying that even if technologies were not Russian the expertise of scientists had certainly come from Russia. Having studied the papers of the U.S. General Accounting Office, Novikov demonstrates in his book the extent of training of Iranian scientists at U.S. universities and research institutes. The author estimates that about 200 scientists were trained at leading U.S. laboratories and uni versities for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran during the Shah’s rule (p. 245). Some may object that this was nearly thirty years ago, and that the scientists trained for the Book review Shah’s regime have long left Iran for Canada, the U.S.A, and other countries in search of a bet ter life. The facts tell a different story… Many did indeed stay on and carved out a career for themselves in the U.S.A. Thus Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate Farid Bamdad has for many years now been a member of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. A significant number of U.S. SECURITY INDEX No. 1 (86), Volume 15 127 educated Iranian scientists however have been successful in their home country. Thus Mohammad Zaker became chief of a nuclear research reactor, and Mansour Haj Azim, deputy head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran. The latter has been named by the Western media as the curator of a secret research centre involved in research in the area of making nuclear weapons. Ali Akbar Salehi, until recently Iran’s permanent representative at interna tional organizations in Vienna, is also a former MIT postgraduate student.2 In view of their high level of training, Iranian students are at present still being admitted by lead ing U.S. universities with strong technical programs, including Harvard and Stanford, the California Institute of Technology, MIT and others. In 2003, fifteen Iranian students were enrolled for postgraduate studies at the Electrical Engineering Department at Stanford alone; most of them were graduates of the Sharif University of Technology, for which the curricula were created in the 1960s1970s in cooperation with MIT. Moreover, according to the data from the Institute of International Education published in the annual Open Doors studies, a total of 2,420 students from Iran studied in the U.S.A in the academic year 2005–2006.3 According to the same study, a year later the number of Iranian students at U.S. universities «increased con siderably.»4 It is however not only U.S. universities that continue to teach Iranian students in hitech areas. In early 2006, the Japanese Foreign Ministry discovered that about 40 Iranian scientists at Japanese universities and research organizations were involved in «advanced dualuse nuclear research.» They had all easily obtained visas to study and do research in Japan. Furthermore, even though the Japanese government has included the University of Tehran on the list of for eign organizations arousing suspicion in terms of nonproliferation, the University of Tokyo, Tohoku University and the University of the Ryukyus have all concluded agreements on aca demic exchanges with the University of Tehran.5 Russia almost entirely wound up the training of Iranian graduate and postgraduate students in exact and applied science in the second half of the 1990s, thus stopping the export of its social, economic and technological standards, which is an important and integral part of build ing longterm bilateral relations. At that time (under pressure from the U.S.A) drastic measures were preferred, so instead of adjusting the programs of Iranian specialists’ studies and remov ing from them any disciplines with dualtechnology potential, the entire training programs were closed down. It may now be time to review the position of the state on this issue, obviously with due regard to the national interests and to Russia’s international obligations on nonprolifera tion. Everyone interested in the issue of training of personnel for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran is advised to study thoroughly the relevant section of the monograph (pp. 245–247). URANIUM ENRICHMENT IN THE MIDDLE EAST: DO AS WE DO, DO IT WITH US, DO IT BETTER THAN WE DO In recent years, when discussing nuclear nonproliferation at the level of states, the focus has actively been shifted from the issues of universality to those of observing obligations under the Nuclear NonProliferation Treaty (NPT) and safeguard agreements with the IAEA. The fact that India, Pakistan and Israel are outside the NPT is therefore recalled ever less frequently. And when people talk of the right to uranium enrichment, they mean the right of Iran, Libya and other countries of the Middle East. In the book, the author raises the issue of Israel’s enrichment facilities. According to the author’s conclusions, «there is no doubt that laboratory facilities for uranium enrichment do operate in the country»; the author goes on to say that «one cannot rule out the possibility (however small) that Israel has semiindustrial facilities for uranium enrichment capable of pro ducing the necessary quantity of ‘nuclear explosives.’» Therefore, the author concludes, «the possibility that Israel has nuclear explosive devices based on weaponsgrade uranium does exist after all, and cannot be ignored» (p. 189). In these conditions, can one effectually demand that Iran should suspend work on uranium enrichment? 128 SOMETHING FOR EVERYONE: RESEARCHERS FOR IRAN, PLUTONIUM FOR NORTH KOREA, ENRICHMENT FOR ISRAEL THE BLACK MARKET IN NUCLEAR MATERIALS AND TECHNOLOGIES: THE SCALE OF THE THREAT Nearly 10 years ago I chanced to attend the defense of a thesis at one of the country’s leading universities on the subject of illegal sales of nuclear materials (NM) and a black market in NM and technologies (NT). Opposing the student’s conclusions, a member of the university’s teaching staff maintained that there was no black market in NM and NT, nor could there be. It has become clear since that there can… there can indeed… In the book, Novikov deliberates on the scale of the problem. The author turns to the problem of illegal sales of NM and technologies in the section devoted to the Pakistani nuclear program (pp. 117–174). According to his information, 70 companies in Germany alone, acting in contravention of their national law, supplied to Pakistan complex electronic equipment, complete plant for the production of uranium hexafluoride, beryllium hexafluoride, zirconium hexafluoride, etc. (p. 117). Here it is once again worth recalling Abdul Qadeer Khan’s network, which later redistributed the technologies received to third countries, and another extensive organization, UmmaTameereNau, founded by a former senior official of the Pakistani Atomic Energy Commission, Bashiruddin Mahmood, which offered its expert ise in the production of nuclear weapons on the foreign market.6 And if we now multiply all this by the number of Pakistani state and private organizations involved in nuclear and missile pro grams – there are about 90 of them (p. 119), and also the number of countries whose individ uals and legal entities had, according to the IAEA, taken part in the operation of A.Q. Khan’s network (there are 40), then the potential scale of the black market becomes truly alarming… Clearly, to resolve this problem, constant coordination of efforts of the leading players on the international arena is required; yet for various reasons this is not happening so far, not least with regard to Pakistan. ACCOUNTING FOR PLUTONIUM Anyone who follows closely the effort to settle the crisis involving the North Korean nuclear pro gram should be advised to look at p. 276, where the author examines North Korea’s facilities for the production of weaponsgrade plutonium.

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