Iran: A Rummy Guide
Back in June 2002, as the Bush administration started pushing hard for war with Iraq by focusing on fears of the unknown—terrorists and weapons of mass destruction—Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld explained that when it came to gathering intelligence on such threats, "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." Elaborating, Rumsfeld told a news conference: "There are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns; that is to say there are things that we now know we don't know. But there are also unknown unknowns. There are things we do not know we don't know."
Now there's a crisis brewing with Iran. And the same basic problem applies: what is known, what is suspected, what can be only guessed or imagined? Is danger clear and present or vague and distant? Washington is abuzz now, as it was four years ago, with "sources" talking of sanctions, war, regime change. In 2002, despite a paucity of hard evidence, Iraq was made to seem an urgent threat demanding immediate action. "We don't want 'the smoking gun' to be a mushroom cloud" is the memorable phrase used by the then national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice.
Given the results of Washington's rush into the Iraqi unknown, concern is growing about U.S. policy toward Iran. Yet the Iranian case is very different—and more dangerous. The latest report from the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency, released last Friday by Director-General Mohamed ElBaradei, makes it clear that Tehran is defying U.N. demands that it freeze its nuclear activities. European and American diplomats are considering resolutions calling for unspecified consequences—and, according to European sources, they have contingency plans for sanctions outside the United Nations if they're blocked by Russian or Chinese vetoes. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, lest there be any doubt about his stand, said, "The Iranian nation won't give a damn about such useless resolutions."
With the confrontation raising questions about future oil supplies, and fears growing that a seemingly crazy regime may soon acquire atomic bombs, the IAEA and Western intelligence agencies are working overtime to separate fundamental facts from guesswork and propaganda.
The Known Knowns
Tehran has a full-fledged nuclear-energy program. That's a known known, and the rabble-rousing Ahmadinejad is proud of it. (Indeed, he's made it a nationalist rallying cry: "By the grace of God, today Iran is a nuclear country," he declared again last week.) The country has used high-speed centrifuges to produce low-enriched uranium suitable for power generation. That, too, is confirmed by the IAEA. But the same techniques that Iran is using, and the machinery it's assembling, can also make the highly enriched uranium at the core of atomic bombs. Once the process is mastered, the question is not whether Iran can make a weapon, but whether it wants to. And who's next? Ahmadinejad talked last week about sharing the technology with Sudan's President Omar al-Bashir.
Iran insists the whole project is benign, and that it's now observing the letter of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty—which enshrines its "right" to peaceful nuclear energy. But, another fact: Iran kept its enrichment activities secret from 1985 to 2003, in clear violation of the treaty's safeguard agreements. And instead of continuing a freeze on some of its activities begun in 2003, which was supposed to help restore international trust, Iranrestarted nuclear-fuel enrichment earlier this year. Such facts led the IAEA board of governors, including a reluctant Russia and China, to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council for further discussion and possible action.
Yet it's also true that no solid evidence has ever been revealed linking Iran's known nuclear program to the actual development or production of nuclear weapons.
The Unknown Unknowns
At the other end of the information spectrum, on the invisible wavelength of unknown unknowns, is the hypothesis that the mullahs have an entirely secret, separate and thus-far utterly undiscovered nuclear-weapons program. Israeli officials commonly espouse this view, as do some American analysts. Former Reagan administration terrorism adviser and neoconservative scholar Michael Ledeen says he believes the Iranians already have the bomb. "Of all the hypotheses, the hypothesis that they don't is the least likely," he claims. A senior intelligence source from a country with close ties to Washington, who is not allowed to discuss intelligence matters on the record, says there's no smoking gun that points to a clandestine program. But he insists none may be needed. "What we have are a lot of dots," he says. "If you trace them and they outline an elephant, it's probably an elephant."
Israel, in range of Iranian missiles and often the victim of Iranian-backed terrorists, has every reason to be alarmed. Ahmadinejad, after all, talks about wiping Israel off the map. Yet Israeli estimates of how long it might take Iran to acquire atomic weapons—two years or less, in some cases—are often much shorter than others. "It's not the facts, it's the interpretation," says Ephraim Sneh, chairman of the Knesset's Defense Planning and Policy Subcommittee. "Maybe we define differently the definition of the 'point of no return'." Last month in Washington, top aides to U.S. intelligence czar John Negroponte told reporters they believe Iran will not have a nuclear bomb until after 2010, at the earliest.
"Are there secret facilities? I don't think so," says Gary Samore, nonproliferation expert in the Clinton administration, who recently wrote a major study of Iran's WMD programs. "Look, if there were, Iran would be very foolish to provoke acrisis over its known facilities. Their best course would be to soothe everyone by allowing the IAEA to monitor those, while secretly working away in the clandestine plants." Joseph Cirincione at the Carnegie Endowment is equally skeptical. "There's not a scintilla of evidence," he says. "Is it possible? Yes. Is it possible Iran has a base on the moon? Yes."
The Known Unknowns
Between clear fact and pure speculation lies the realm of questions based on shreds of evidence that actually exist. That's where the IAEA's investigators spend most of their time, and that's where they've encountered some of their greatest frustrations. "After more than three years of Agency efforts to seek clarity about all aspects of Iran's nuclear program, the existing gaps in knowledge continue to be a matter of concern," ElBaradei wrote with considerable understatement in last week's report.
There's still no paper trail showing the details of Iran's relationship with the clandestine nuclear network of Pakistani scientist AQ Khan. Some of the same middlemen who supplied Iran also supplied Libya, which turned over a trove of intelligence about the network to Western governments in 2003, and the Libyans got weapon designs. The Iranians said they did not, but some of the few papers they have shown the IAEA suggest weapon-related activity.
Libya also got designs and parts from AQ Khan's people for P-2 centrifuges, which are much more efficient than the P-1s Iran acknowledged first acquiring in 1987. Iran told the IAEA it got some P-2 technology in 1995, but did nothing with it until 2002. Then last month Ahmadinejad told students in the city of Khorasan that P-2s "are going through the research and testing phase." The IAEA is still waiting for Iran to explain.
As suspicious as all this sounds—and is—some evidence against Iran hasn't turned out to be as sinister as it seemed at first. The IAEA had discovered minute traces of highly enriched uranium on some Iranian equipment that seemed to indicate a clandestine program. The Iranians said they were "shocked" by the level of contamination, and that it must have been left there by someone—presumably the Pakistanis—using the centrifuges before Iran got them. Extensive tests "tend, on balance, to support Iran's statement," the IAEA concluded.
"The most important of the known unknowns is what this program is really about," says Matt Bunn, a nuclear expert at Harvard's Belfer Center. Is Iran determined to build a weapon, or does it merely want the option? Other analysts, including ElBaradei, have suggested its aim is to launch wide-ranging negotiations about the future of the whole region. But in the official report, there's no speculation about that. "The Agency cannot make a judgment about, or reach a conclusion on, future compliance or intentions," he said. There are just too many unknowns.
By Christopher Dickey and John Barry
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