Rising in Asia, a nuclear storm

Inside an unmarked office located above a mother-and-child store on Dubai’s Crescent Drive, senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards officer Brigadier Mohammad Eslami sat down for a meeting he knew could shape the fate of his besieged nation. The men across the table from his delegation, German engineer Heinz Mebus and Sri Lankan businessmen Mohamed Farouq and Buhary Syed Ali Tahir — men who held the nuclear djinn.

Brigadier Eslami left the meeting with a one-page, handwritten note, authored by the representatives of Pakistan’s nuclear-weapons czar AQ Khan, outlining a five-phase plan to develop nuclear weapons capacity. He had firm offers for centrifuges to enrich uranium to weapons-grade; vacuum and electric drive equipment; samples; technical drawings.

Khan was even willing to offer custom guidance of circumventing western export restrictions — indeed everything needed to build a nuclear bomb.

Three decades after that 1987 meeting, with President Donald Trump taking the nuclear wrecking ball to multinational efforts to contain Iran’s nuclear-weapons ambitions, it’s becoming clear that the djinn can’t be forced back into its bottle. For India, the looming nuclear weapons race in the region could have catastrophic consequences.

Earlier this month, President Trump announced he was walking out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, or JCPOA, seeking to restrict Iran’s nuclear-weapons programme. Put together by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, along with Germany, the deal saw Iran freeze its uranium enrichment programme and open up facilities to international monitoring — in return for an end to economic sanctions.

Silver Lining: Some experts argue nuclear proliferation may actually engender stability

Though the United States acknowledges Iran has kept its end of the deal, President Trump argues it is flawed because it simply freezes the status quo until 2031, with a complete commitment to denuclearisation. The Iranians could, the argument goes, push for a nuclear weapon after 2031, with a richer economy to back their drive.

Leaving aside the merits of the argument, Iran now has two options. The country could simply ride out its renewed sanctions, hoping President Trump’s term in office will prove short-lived. Then again, it could resume work at its nuclear weapons facilities — most of which are hardened to survive conventional attack.

Even as Iran considers its options, the United States is on the verge of signing an agreement with Saudi Arabia that would reverse decades of resistance to sharing reactor technology with the kingdom. The United States administration argues the deal is necessary to ensure the Saudis choose Westinghouse over South Korean, Russian and Chinese competition.

Key to the deal is what officials in Washington DC, are calling “flexibility” on future Saudi acquisition acquisition of centrifuges to enrich uranium, which originally contains less than 1 per cent of the fissile isotope U-235.

The Saudi nuclear agreement with South Korea allows the kingdom to enrich uranium to a level where 20 per cent consists of the isotope U-235 — well short of the level needed to make nuclear weapons. But to further enrich this uranium to 90 per cent U-235 takes just a tenth of the time of the original process, making it a key stepping stone on the road to having weapons-grade uranium.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman has publicly warned that if Iran makes a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia would do so too. Iran, though, has just as much reason to view Saudi Arabia’s fledgling programme with suspicion—and move first.

Iran’s decision will almost certainly be influenced by events at the other end of Asia, on the Korean peninsula. In spite of halting its pursuit of nuclear weapons, Iran is now being asked to concede even more. North Korea, by contrast, rode out sanctions, and demonstrated the ability to deliver a nuclear weapon using long-range ballistic missiles. Future negotiations will likely centre on capping North Korea’s arsenal for sanctions relief — not dismantling the capability to make more, if needed.

The big lesson isn’t hard to comprehend: Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi, who gave up his nuclear weapons plans as part of a deal with the West, ended up sodomised to death by Islamist rebels backed by those very partners.

Efforts to bribe regimes to give up its nuclear weapons don’t have a lot of weight behind them. Ukraine agreed to surrender its warheads in 1994, after receiving guarantees of territorial integrity from Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — which have proved worthless.

Kim Jong-un fears that his neighbours might sponsor an internal insurrection, or that the United States might chose to launch an attack, aimed at bringing down his regime. Nuclear weapons allow North Korea to threaten an apocalypse in retaliation.

Nations across Asia face similar dilemmas. For example, Vietnam could see the pursuit of nuclear weapons as a means to resolve the asymmetry of power with China. In 2000, South Korean scientists actually produced weapons-grade plutonium, an act the government claimed was unauthorised. In technological terms, both it and Japan can assemble nuclear weapons at short notice.

Some experts argue nuclear proliferation may actually engender stability. “In a conventional world, one is uncertain about winning or losing”, theorist Kenneth Waltz, noted 1981. “In a nuclear world, one is uncertain [only] about surviving or being annihilated”. Thus, he argued, “the measured spread of nuclear weapons is more to be welcomed than feared”.

Yet, the more nuclear states there are, and the more volatile their strategic circumstances, the chances of that outcome arising from missteps or miscalculation increases.

India doesn’t have the strategic heft to shape the actions of key players —but with its energy resources, trading partners and diasporas all at threat from the nuclear storm rising across Asia, New Delhi ought to be making the case for restraint as loudly as it can.

wire: @praveenswami |skype: praveenswami Praveen.Swami@protonmail.ch