Status of Iran's Nuclear Program: ISIS

Iran’s Nuclear Program: Status and Uncertainties
Prepared testimony by David Albright, President,
Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS),
Before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade, Subcommittee on the Middle East and Asia
March 15, 2007

The nuclear crisis in Iran continues to pose serious challenges to international peace and security. Since mid-2002, when an Iranian opposition group revealed the existence publicly of secret nuclear activities in Iran, the world has struggled to develop an adequate response to the Iranian challenge. ISIS remains concerned that the Bush Administration places too much emphasis on military action or regime change to solve the crisis, causing its diplomatic initiatives to be weakened or to be launched too late to have a significant impact. ISIS believes that a diplomatic, peaceful solution to the Iranian situation is both preferable and more likely to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

During the coming months, it is vital to understand what Iran has accomplished in its nuclear program, what it still has to learn, and when it might reach a point when a plan to pursue nuclear weapons covertly or openly could succeed more quickly than the international community could react. However, this task is difficult, and the risk of exaggerated or simply incorrect analyses about Iran’s nuclear effort remains, potentially leading to a military conflict with Iran. It is essential, therefore, that Congress insist on transparency from the administration and a full, fair, unclassified debate about the substance of Iran’s nuclear efforts, and what can be done to defuse the looming crisis diplomatically. Toward that goal, I thank the committee for holding this hearing today and inviting me to testify.

Iran’s Nuclear Program
Iran has invested heavily in nuclear industries in the last twenty years. It has sought a wide range of items overseas, including nuclear reactors, uranium conversion facilities, heavy water production plants, fuel fabrication plants, and uranium enrichment facilities. Many of its overseas purchases were thwarted, such as multiple efforts to buy research reactors and an attempt to purchase a turn-key gas centrifuge plant from Russia in 1995. However, in general, Iran found suppliers to provide the wherewithal to build nuclear facilities. A. Q. Khan and business associates in Europe and the Middle East, commonly called the Khan network, provided Iran the ability to build and operate gas centrifuges. Without their assistance, Iran would have likely been unable to develop a gas centrifuge program.

Iran’s current nuclear infrastructure is large and growing. Although many key facilities are not finished, Iran is close to operating a large power reactor at Bushehr and has started relatively large fuel cycle facilities. Table 1 summarizes the main declared nuclear facilities in Iran. Some of these facilities, such as Kalaye Electric, the formerly secret gas centrifuge R&D site in Tehran, are closed and others, such as the Arak heavy water reactor and the Natanz Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), are under construction. But the list shows that Iran intends to have one of the largest nuclear fuel cycle programs in the developing world. If Iran finishes its declared nuclear facilities, it would have a capability to produce highly enriched uranium (HEU) and weapon-grade plutonium for nuclear weapons.

Although most of the facilities listed in table 1 will be used for civil purposes, the fate of others remains difficult to determine. Determining the purpose of these facilities has been complicated, because Iran acquired so many capabilities in secret and did not fulfill its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to declare all its facilities, materials, and activities.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reported regularly on Iran’s lack of adequate cooperation to allow the inspectors to fully reconstruct the history of Iran’s nuclear program. In addition, Iran decided early last year to no longer implement the Additional Protocol and other transparency measures required by the IAEA. The February 22, 2007 IAEA report concluded that without more cooperation and transparency, the IAEA “will not be able to provide assurances about the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities or about the exclusively peaceful nature of that program.”

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