For Iran, a nuclear option more trouble than it was worth

[bananas]

http://thebulletin.org/iran-nuclear-option-more-trouble-it-was-worth9064

For Iran, a nuclear option more trouble than it was worth
Siegfried S. Hecker
18 January 2016

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Beyond sanctions relief, however, there are other reasons Iran agreed to send the bulk of its low-enriched uranium out of the country and remove the core of its Arak reactor—actions that significantly lengthen the time it would take to build up a nuclear weapon program. Recent history suggests that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, backed by the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also decided the price of continuing to pursue a nuclear weapon outweighed the benefits.

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To understand why Tehran accepted such restrictions on its nuclear program, one must look beyond Iran’s technical capabilities to its motivations. Although Iranian leaders’ 30-year nuclear quest got them within a month or so of producing enough highly enriched uranium for one bomb, they were still a long way from having a nuclear arsenal. Even less progress had been made toward indigenous nuclear electricity. Even so, the cost to Iran was high. The manner in which it pursued its nuclear quest managed to unite the P5+1, resulting in UN Security Council sanctions that seriously crippled its already weak economy. Moreover, the development of Iran’s nuclear program was fraught with external attempts at sabotage, and left the nation vulnerable to attacks from a deeply concerned Israel.

Iranian leaders were also aware that a successful nuclear weapons program could risk provoking adversarial neighbors, like Saudi Arabia, to pursue their own clandestine programs—an unacceptable prospect that would threaten Iran’s chief political interests in the region. Meanwhile, they saw that with the Middle East in turmoil, and Saddam Hussein’s regime having been toppled by the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Iran was able to extend its influence in the region without nuclear weapons. I believe it was for these reasons Tehran concluded the real cost of visibly maintaining the nuclear weapon option exceeded whatever potential advantages the program could bring.

In New York back in 2013, Zarif told our group that acquiring what he called “strategic” capabilities (meaning nuclear weapons) would make Iran less safe, rather than more. Iran, he said, is now a regional powerhouse in terms of its economy, natural resources, and conventional military power. If Iran were to acquire, or even appear to attempt to acquire, strategic capabilities, it would cause outside powers to interfere and make it a target. In retrospect, he was signaling that Tehran had shifted its strategy after Rouhani’s election in 2013—from steady pursuit of a nuclear weapon in defiance of the UN Security Council, to a willingness to scale back its nuclear program and put the weapon option on the back burner in return for sanctions relief and regaining a place in the international community.

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Many have argued, justifiably, that lifting the sanctions targeted at the nuclear program and allowing Iran’s economy to recover will strengthen Iran’s hand in the Middle East and allow it to further destabilize the region while strengthening its own geopolitical ambitions. Others, of course, believe that bringing Iran in out of the cold of international opprobrium may stabilize the Middle East. We don’t know which will happen, but it is much preferable to let the issues play out without the complication of nuclear weapons or fissile material in Tehran’s hands.

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Siegfried S. Hecker

Siegfried Hecker is a senior fellow and affiliated faculty member at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He is also a research professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering at Stanford. He is director emeritus of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he served as director from 1986 to 1997 and as senior fellow until July 2005.

[longship]

1. This is an important article. Please read.

And The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists is a very good source.

Watch for their annual reset of the doomsday clock in a couple of days. It is now three minutes before midnight. With this alone, I predict that they will set the clock back.