ABSTRACT
Possessing an enrichment capability is not the same as having the Bomb. If enrichment alone conferred weapons status, Japan, Germany, the Netherlands and Brazil would be considered nuclear-weapons capable. All produce enriched uranium for reactor fuel and have the technical capability to convert their industrial-scale facilities to HEU production. With the partial exception of Brazil, however, there is little international concern that any would do so. Their acceptance of IAEA safeguards, history of cooperation with inspections, societal transparency and minimal motivations for proliferating, as well as the economic rationale of their programmes and the absence of any sign of weapons intentions or weapons-related work gives the international community confidence in their non-proliferation bona fides. (Brazil’s less-than-perfect record on several of these criteria keeps it on some proliferation watch-lists.)
Iran is viewed differently. On each of the above criteria, Tehran has provided grounds for suspicion, or what ElBaradei has called a ‘confidence deficit’.1 Because its intentions are suspect, its capabilities tend to be judged according to worst-case assumptions. In Iran’s case, the line between a nuclear programme for civilian purposes and a military nuclear programme is thin to the point where it is perceived by many to be nonexistent. There nevertheless is still a distinction between civilian and military purposes. An oft-cited footnote to the 2007 NIE draws a distinction between Iran’s ‘declared civil work’ on uranium enrichment and ‘nuclear weapon design and weaponisation work’.2 Gareth Evans, president of
Brussels-based conflict-prevention NGO the International Crisis Group, has said that if the world could be confident that the line between civilian and military capability that lies at the heart of the NPT would hold in Iran’s case, it would not matter whether the country was capable of producing its own nuclear fuel.3 The issue is how to build that confidence, and whether it can be built at all while Iran continues enrichment activity.
