Multilateral enrichment facilities are not a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis
Quicktabs: Arguments
Working out the complex legal, financial and technical issues involved in setting up a new multinational enrichment arrangement in Iran would also present huge challenges. Not least of these is the practical problem of persuading foreign companies to enter into a venture with such obvious economic, security and political risks. In an industry in which personnel resources are already stretched to meet the growing demands of a nuclearenergy renaissance, it would not be easy to find experienced engineers prepared to work in an environment in which they would be expected to perform intelligence duties and work under the multiple personal security risks of self-destructive centrifuges, air strikes and hostage-taking. The market solution of providing sufficient remuneration to aract qualified personnel raises the additional question of who would cover the costs of what is likely to be an uneconomical venture. No Western company has any interest in the idea. Finally, there is the question of the political viability of engaging in such cooperation with a state that supplies explosives to militants to kill US and British forces in Iraq and has reportedly aided the Taliban to this purpose in Afghanistan, not to mention its support for violence against Israel and denial of that country’s right to exist. The nuclear threat is the most important issue regarding Iran, but it cannot be viewed in isolation.
Societal controls have their limits, however. Iran could to a large extent evade such controls by giving cascade-operation training to newly-minted nuclear physics graduates unknown to the international managers. Opportunities for technical diversion could grow as Iranian staff developed greater technical proficiency. Proponents of multilateral consortia reply that Iran may learn more advanced enrichment techniques anyway, and that enrichment technologies alone are not sufficient to manufacture a nuclear weapon. These counter-arguments have technical merit, but they are not persuasive. Even if intrusive inspections and societal monitoring minimised the risk of parallel clandestine operations to which technical know-how could be diverted, no inspection regime can protect against the risk of personnel being re-employed in an NPT break-out scenario.
Any option that involves Iran operating enrichment facilities carries the risk that these could be used to contribute to HEU production in the event of withdrawal from the NPT. The risk increases if Iran is able to build up a stockpile of LEU. By starting with LEU rather than natural uranium, Iran could reduce by a factor of four the time needed to produce HEU of weapons grade. Under the status quo, the risk of break-out increases with each day that Iran installs new centrifuges, improves cascade operation and stockpiles LEU. Fallback options for limiting such expansion may deserve consideration, although it remains doubtful that limits would be effective. Options that would provide Iran with additional technology that could be seized in a break-out scenario would exacerbate the danger. In a country that has expropriated foreign assets in the past and that still holds to revolutionary ideals, the possibility of seizure of multilateral enrichment equipment cannot be discounted.