Carnegie Endowment for International Peace

Time for a US/Iran Patch Up

Speaking to Tehran, With One Voice

With the Iranian nuclear crisis about to land in the Security Council, the events that led up to the war in Iraq point clearly to what needs to be done.

Exaggerating the Threat of Bioterrorism

The threat of bioterrorism has been greatly exaggerated. There are fewer state bioweapons programs today than 15 years ago and to date, no state is known to have assisted any nonstate or terrorist group to obtain biological weapons.

Europe Watches from the Galleries

Unlike the United States, European Union (EU) member states do not have an EU legal obstacle to surmount in order to renew nuclear trade with India. But before any EU nation embarks on trade, it will need the U.S. Congress to act.

Oh Canada!

U.S. President George Bush last week struck a deal with India that directly violates the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, as well as several major U.S. laws, setting off waves of criticism in the states and around the world. Canadian officials have not been part of that criticism. Instead, the nation that helped India build its first nuclear weapon may now help India build dozens more.

Ashley J. Tellis on President Bush's Visit to India

Ashley J. Tellis explains the strategic logic of a U.S.-India bilateral relationship, and provides an overview of the U.S.-India nuclear agreement, including India’s civilian-military nuclear separation plan.

Nuclear Pact to Spur U.S.-India Ties

U.S. civilian nuclear cooperation with India poses a danger for the international nonproliferation framework. This deal breaks thirty years of nonproliferation policy and will directly assist India's nuclear weapons program.

The US's Nuclear Cave-In

Premature Capitulation

There are many alternatives short of war for dealing with Iran's nuclear ambitions, but the wrong compromise today will only lead us all back to the brink tomorrow.

Nuclear Cave In

Buffeted by political turmoil at home, President Bush sought a foreign affairs victory in India.  To clinch a nuclear weapons deal, the president had to give in to demands from the Indian nuclear lobby to exempt large portions of the country’s nuclear infrastructure from international inspection.  With details of the deal still under wraps, it appears that at least one-third of current and planned Indian reactors would be exempt from IAEA inspections and that the president gave into Indian demands for “Indian-specific” inspections that would fall far short of the normal, full-scope inspections originally sought. Worse, Indian officials have made clear that India alone will decide which future reactors will be kept in the military category and exempt from any safeguards.  

The deal endorses and assists India’s nuclear weapons program.  US-supplied uranium fuel would free up India’s limited uranium reserves for fuel that would be burned in these reactors to make nuclear weapons.  This would allow India to increase its production from the estimated 6 to 10 additional nuclear bombs per year to several dozen per year.  India today has enough separated plutonium for 75 to 110 nuclear weapons, though it is not known how many it has actually produced.

The Indian leaders and press are crowing about their victory over America.  For good reason:  President Bush has done what Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and his own father refused to do--break U.S. and international law to aid India’s nuclear weapons program.  In 1974, India cheated on its agreements with the United States and other nations to do what Iran is accused of doing now:  using a peaceful nuclear energy program to build a nuclear bomb.  India used plutonium produced in a Canadian-supplied reactor to detonate a bomb it then called a “peaceful nuclear device.”  In response, President Richard Nixon and Congress stiffened U.S. laws and Nixon organized the Nuclear Suppliers Group to prevent any other nation from following India’s example.  President Bush has now unilaterally shattered those guidelines and his action would violate the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty proscription against aiding another nation’s nuclear weapons program.  It would require the repeal or revision of several major U.S. laws, including the U.S. Nonproliferation Act.  Nor has he won any significant concessions from India.  India refuses to agree to end its production of nuclear weapons material, something the U.S., the UK, France, Russia and China have already done.

This is where the president is likely to run into trouble.  Republicans and Democrats in Congress are deeply concerned about the deal and the way it was crafted.  Keeping with the administration’s penchant for secrecy, the deal was cooked by a handful of senior officials (one of whom is now a lobbyist for the Indian government) and never reviewed by the Departments of State, Defense or Energy before it was announced with a champagne toast by President Bush and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.  Congress was never consulted.  Republican committee staff say the first members heard about it was when the fax announcing the deal came into their offices.  Worse, for the president, this appears to be another give away to a foreign government at the expense of U.S. national security interests. (Read More)

A Deeply Flawed India Deal

In a February 14 letter to Congress, six nonproliferation experts and former government officials detailed the serious problems with the proposed US-India nuclear deal. Their core concern is that U.S. trade and cooperation would directly assist India’s nuclear weapons program. This would violate existing U.S. laws and the U.S. commitment in the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty “not in any way to assist, encourage, or induce any non-nuclear weapon State to manufacture or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.” 

The experts say, “Building upon the already strong U.S.-Indian partnership is an important goal, and we remain convinced that it can be achieved without undermining U.S. leadership efforts to prevent the proliferation of the world’s most dangerous weapons.”

U.S.-India Nuclear Deal: Perkovich Q&A with CFR

The Bush administration's particular approach towards the India civil nuclear agreement was ill-considered, in essence giving India, or attempting to give it, everything, and throwing out all the rules in return for too little.

Nouveauté in Nuclear Deterrence

On January 19 French president Jacques Chirac announced slight changes to the county’s nuclear deterrence strategy.  Chirac seemed to expand the definition of France’s vital interests to include oil.  He would not hesitate to use nuclear weapons and protect these interests, he said, and to deter any terrorist attacks on those interests.  Shortly after, French Defense Minister Michèle Alliot-Marie amplified this new crease in French strategy in speeches to the public and to French parliament members.  

Some French experts say that Chirac’s speech had nothing to do with a growing Iranian threat.  “One knows that this type of speech is prepared several months in advance and by definition cannot be directly linked to current affairs,” wrote Bruno Tertrais, a senior associate at the Foundation for Strategic Research in an analysis entitled La Dissuasion Revisitée (Deterrence Revisited). (Read More)

The Sampson Option

In 1958, an American U-2 spy plane flying over Israel spotted an unusual construction site near the small Negev Desert town of Dimona. The facility featured a long perimeter fence, building activity and several roads. Israeli officials initially called the facility a textile plant; they later changed their minds and described it as a "metallurgical research installation."

'The Nuclear Deal Was India's Idea'

Pillar of Truth

Paul Pillar’s new Foreign Affairs article--full of stunning insights and revelations--is required reading for all concerned with accountability for the misinformation provided to the American people before the war and with the wisdom of restructuring the intelligence agencies before a full investigation had been completed.

The New Brinksmanship: Iran's Nuclear Threat

No Military Options

Iran is moving to restart its suspended uranium enrichment program. Negotiations with the European Union have collapsed and the crisis is escalating. Does the United States -- or Israel -- have a military option?

Crisis to Crisis

United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan warned in a major speech last week that “we cannot continue to lurch from crisis to crisis, until the [NPT] regime is buried beneath a cascade of nuclear proliferation.”

Heavy Metal

If you do not know the difference between uranium metal and uranium oxide, you never heard of “Green Salt” until today, and you have been more interested in Pittsburgh vs. Seattle than Tehran vs. Vienna, here’s your chance to catch up on the latest developments in the Iranian nuclear showdown. 

We provide answers (with extensive quotes from the confidential IAEA report) to three key questions:  What did the IAEA report say that was new, what does reporting to the Security Council mean, and what happens next?

1. What new evidence was in the January 31 IAEA confidential report on Iran?

Iran has taken some measures to attempt to assure the IAEA that it is in compliance with its safeguards agreement. Yet key issues remain unresolved, including explanation of particles of enriched uranium found on centrifuges, IAEA access to critical sites and scientists, and the interesting document detailing how to turn uranium into a metal.  This later procedure has no role in fuel production; uranium in metal form is only used in nuclear weapons

The updated brief by the Deputy Director General for Safeguards says:

“Iran has shown the Agency more than 60 documents said to have been drawings, specifications and supporting documentation handed over by the intermediaries, many of which are dated from the early- to mid-1980’s. Among these was a 15-page document describing the procedures for the reduction of UF6 to metal in small quantities, and the casting of enriched and depleted uranium metal into hemispheres, related to the fabrication of nuclear weapon components. It did not, however, include dimensions or other specifications for machined pieces for such components. According to Iran, this document had been provided on the initiative of the network, and not at the request of the AEOI. Iran has declined the Agency’s request to provide the Agency with a copy of the document, but did permit the Agency during its visit in January 2006 to examine the document again and to place it under Agency seal.”