Iran: half a step away from nuclear weapons Review by Serhey Bohdan

While Europe is busy with Ukraine, the balance of power in the Middle East is about to change due to the processes in Iran. Iran is half a step away from nuclear weapons and could produce them at almost any time if it so chooses. US President Biden is going to visit Israel and Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks, both of which are concerned about this development. The situation with Iran's nuclear program is just one illustration of a global reality in which there is a growing "military atom" and taboos about its use are gradually disappearing.

Nothing to lose

Last week, Tehran said it was launching new centrifuges to enrich uranium and shut down dozens of cameras installed by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) at its nuclear facilities to monitor its work there. In the West, there has been talking of the ultimate failure of attempts to negotiate with Iran on its nuclear program. In the current situation, Iran is not threatened by this. Everything that the US and its allies could have done in regard to this country, they have already done.

Back in March, Western countries hoped to restore the 2015 agreement designed to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons. The technical requirements of this document were aimed at preventing Tehran from approaching the creation of an atomic bomb in terms of nuclear materials closer than a conditional year. The agreement was broken by the previous US president in 2018, but the new president, Biden, agrees to return to it. True, Iran is being asked to agree to roll back its nuclear program for years in return for the temporary lifting of only some US sanctions. The Western invitation to the Iranian authorities to reinstate the nuclear deal looks particularly strange, despite Washington's refusal to reverse Trump's decision to declare the IRGC, part of the Iranian armed forces, a "terrorist organization," and the offer to agree to a "temporary," regularly ongoing lifting of sanctions.

Tehran hardly took such proposals seriously, and apparently just kept reprocessing uranium. At the end of May, the IAEA published a report on the state of Iran's nuclear program. According to the report, Iran already had more than 43 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60%. If it is enriched to 90 per cent and converted into metal, which will take several weeks, Tehran will have a real nuclear bomb in its hands. The only thing missing from this step is a political decision endorsed by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. In contrast, the political forces that came to power last year and are focused on continuing the revolutionary course have more radical positions. As the IAEA points out, President Raisi's government continues to block the investigation into the origin of traces of uranium at several sites not declared by Iran as belonging to its nuclear program.

Indeed, the main mystery of Iran's nuclear program is why hasn't Tehran yet created an atomic bomb?

The origins of the current nuclear program should be sought in the feelings of the deadlock experienced by the Iranian regime in the late 1980s. At that time, Tehran was faced with two unpleasant circumstances. Despite its huge losses in the war with Iraq, Iran was only able to reach its prewar borders. Amid these modest successes, the collapse of the Eastern bloc, in the shadow of which many states defied the West with impunity, left Iran alone with the global hegemon and its allies.

Some forces in the Iranian regime decided to seek rapprochement with the West. Others, most notably the IRGC, proposed alternative paths, including nuclear weapons. According to the then IRGC commander Mohsen Rezaei, as early as the late 1980s North Korea offered help with its nuclear program, but Iran's top leadership refused.

The reasons are clear. Firstly, the current Supreme Leader Khamenei, working with other influential Iranian politicians (Rafsanjani, etc.), has never sought confrontation with the West, moreover, he agreed to some "deals", and was certainly not inclined to implement a nuclear program without any particular reason. Secondly, nuclear weapons are not just nuclear devices, but also the means of their delivery, at least land-based ballistic missiles. But these, too, require technology and a scientific base, which Iran did not have at the time. And without them, it made no sense to buy a "bomb" abroad, having no infrastructure or human resources for it.

Iran's nuclear program and the fate of Kashchei the Immortal

The Iranian nuclear program began to work in earnest only in the early 2000s, facilitated by the decision of US President Bush to include the country in the "Axis of Evil" in response to the Iranian proposals of dialogue, and it seemed that the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq would be followed by intervention in Iran. Tehran's nuclear projects could not fail to provoke a reaction from Israel, which feared the emergence of a new powerful regional power. Israel has more than once successfully stopped countries that were masterminding something that did not please Tel Aviv. Sometimes quietly, as when German physicists helped Arab countries to develop rockets in the 1950s, or in the case of the Syrian nuclear centre built by the North Koreans in 2007. Sometimes openly, like when the Israelis bombed the Iraqi nuclear centre in 1981.

This was possible because these countries were importing military technology in the strict sense - paying foreigners, building a couple of expensive research facilities - and doing it "out of nowhere," in a country without any scientific and technological base. This led to the vulnerability of their missile and nuclear programs, which collapsed after a few precise blows like the fairytale Kashchei (an archetypal male antagonist in Russian folklore, whose soul is hidden in the needle), dying as soon as the hero managed to find the proverbial magic needle in a secret place.

But Iran's military programs are not the "Kashchei-like" ventures of Arab leftist nationalist regimes, because they are not based on some "magic needle", but on a broad infrastructure and human resources base. There are a lot of the same objects of the nuclear program, and they are dispersed throughout the country. Since the 1980s the Iranian leadership has been pursuing a policy of training and developing its own technology. This applies not only to nuclear weapons.

The following story illustrates the difference between Iran and other countries that have challenged the world order. In 1982 Libya bought six Project 641 submarines from the USSR. But their crews were never trained, and two years later they were no longer in service, their only purpose was to demonstrate to foreign delegations the advancement of the Libyan regime. Islamist Iran bought even more sophisticated Project 877 submarines from the USSR and Yeltsin's Russia. They bought three, although they were offered more - but the Iranians understood that they should not buy "iron" without learning how to use and maintain it. And they learned how, regularly began to sail them in the ocean spaces and even to repair them themselves. In other words, Iran has its own people and infrastructure to work with modern technology, and it's almost impossible to bomb it, unlike Syria or Iraq.

If we talk about larger-scale military intervention, invasion, and occupation of Iran, it has been impossible since the mid-2000s because of a series of conflicts with Western involvement - the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, etc. To say nothing of present times, when the West finds it difficult to pay attention to Iran's nuclear program amid the escalating conflict with Russia and tensions with China.

For a while, it seemed that the Western establishment would be able to negotiate some kind of "deal" with Tehran that would convince it to limit its nuclear activities, but the 2015 agreements were doomed even without Trump. In a sense, they were hopelessly undermined by the Maidan in Kyiv, when relations between the West and Putin's Russia broke down. After all, before that, even in the early 2010s, the Russian leadership helped to push Iran down.

Without close cooperation between the West and Russia, it became impossible to implement a program to draw Iran into international nuclear control regimes, nor to supplement the nuclear deal with the critical components without which it is meaningless in the long term. These are deals on the missile program and on spheres of influence in the region.

From peaceful to military atom

But we shouldn't forget that a "nuclear Iran" now looks much less scandalous than even in the 2000s. This is due to the spreading normalization of nuclear weapons in the world. At first glance, it may seem that nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945 and that global policy has taboo in this respect. But in fact, in recent decades humanity has been moving toward increasing and diverse use of the atom for military purposes.

The most obvious examples are the actions of the US, which is increasingly eager to involve its allies in the "military atom". This looks especially grotesque in the context of the loud "green" campaigns in the countries concerned, in which the same Euro-Atlantic forces have at times advocated for a rejection of the "peaceful atom". For example, the German government, dominated by the Green Party, which has long campaigned to shut down nuclear power plants, recently earmarked billions to buy the planes the Bundeswehr needs to take part in nuclear weapons use.

As another example, last fall, the US and Great Britain scandalously persuaded Australia to abandon the conventional submarines already under construction in France in favour of American or British nuclear-powered submarines. They use reactors with highly enriched or "weapons-grade" nuclear fuel.

Global nuclearization is also taking place at a more subtle level. In particular, the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons is being erased. It is emphasized that modern explosives are approaching tactical nuclear weapons in their destructive power. In 2017, the US used a bomb in Afghanistan with a charge equivalent to 11 tons of TNT, even slightly more than existing tactical nuclear weapons. The main drawback of tactical munitions is radioactive contamination, but this aspect is beginning to look less dangerous against the massive use of conventional munitions containing radioactive substances. On June 10, the Chinese Foreign Ministry called on the US and NATO "to give a reasonable explanation for their actions as soon as possible and to compensate the victims of depleted uranium bombs." The statement came on the occasion of another anniversary of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. At the time, NATO countries dropped some 22,000 tons of bombs on the small country, including 15 tons of depleted uranium bombs.

Depleted uranium munitions have so far been used by the US and (somewhat) its closest ally, Britain. Washington denies that depleted uranium leads to deadly consequences. Despite the scientific absurdity of such denials, it is possible to "lubricate" the problem, since cancers have a long incubation period, and the effects on the environment and the food chain are only apparent in the long term. Meanwhile, a number of studies in Serbia and Iraq have documented an increase in cancer rates among local populations after the use of uranium bombs. In a world where the military atom in all its manifestations is increasingly becoming the norm, and the difference between conventional and nuclear weapons is losing its clarity - the creation of an atomic bomb by more and more countries is likely to be increasingly perceived as some kind of inevitable evil, rather than something to be prevented in the interest of all mankind.

The finish line

Tehran is at the finish line for nuclear weapons. Tehran is in no hurry. Theoretically, it could even stop before it reaches the finish line - as it has stopped several times in the past two decades. It has been suspended by forces within the Iranian regime trying to get better relations with the West. This includes the West itself.

And time after time, the West has refused to engage with these potential partners among the more liberal forces in the Iranian establishment. The whole tragedy of the Khatami and Rouhani presidencies is the latter's unrequited willingness to negotiate. Other forces are now in power in Iran, but in the country's pluralistic political system there are always options for finding an agreement.

But this is only possible if a serious, guaranteed offer is made to Iran to lift sanctions and further engagement. This does not happen, is the antagonism too great? Sure, it happens. After decades of mutual hostility between Red China and the "world-eating" US, Henry Kissinger, advisor to US President Nixon, flew to Beijing in 1971 and made Mao an offer he could not refuse. The PRC and the US then cooperated up until the 2010s.

But this requires politicians of the right caliber, who are not always at the top of world politics. Stopping Iran's nuclear program through a multilateral international mechanism is now impossible because it is impossible to involve Russia. Worse yet, Russia is no longer playing on the side of the West: as US Secretary of State Blinken said on May 25, the Americans suspect that the Russian government and companies, including Rosneft, are helping Iran to supply oil to Europe in violation of US law. And this means that the US and its allies can do almost nothing with Tehran's nuclear projects because, as already said, there is currently no alternative, military option to stop the Iranian program.

Officially, the Iranian nuclear weapons may be tested or demonstrated most likely after the change of generations in the Iranian leadership. We are talking, of course, about the Supreme Leader, since the current one, Khamenei, is probably still not inclined to cross the nuclear line. But it is unlikely that the new people in Tehran (as embodied by President Raisi, who can easily be imagined as the next Supreme Leader) will continue this course.

Iran's possible nuclear weapons would be another step in the global process of proliferation of the "military atom". The current international system is simply incapable of stopping this process. With the accompaniment of rhetoric and arguments about democracy, rights, and values, we are witnessing the spread of military technologies that cannot but destroy all life on the planet.