Egypt's Nuclear Dimension

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Monday February 14, 2011

Egypt's Nuclear Dimension - Joe Cirincione and Reid Pauly in The Huffington Post [link]

• Before he became a special advisor to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Robert Einhorn analyzed Egypt's history in The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices: "Considering the factors that have historically motivated countries to acquire nuclear weapons, one might assume that Egypt would be a likely candidate."
• In 2005, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) issued a report chastising Egypt for not disclosing a number of atomic research activities over the years. Just last year, the IAEA again launched an inquiry into the origin of highly enriched uranium particles that were detected at Egyptian research facilities in 2007 and 2008.
• Egypt has never signed the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BTWC) or the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), which it always links rhetorically to Israel's undisclosed nuclear weapons capabilities.
• Egyptian pursuit of nuclear technologies spans the political spectrum. The nuclear industry lobby, populist politicians distrusting Israel, Islamic fundamentalists with political ambitions, and parts of the military have flirted with nuclear weapons acquisition in the past.
• More positively, Egyptians have played a central role in the creation and strengthening of the global non-proliferation regime.
• Egypt has made the creation of a Middle East Free of Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) a central goal of its foreign policy. At the NPT Review Conference in 2010, agreement was reached only after all 187 nations agreed to the Egyptian-championed plan for a 2012 conference on the creation of a WMD-free zone in the Middle East.
• In the months and years ahead, the United States must ensure that Egypt's dormant nuclear ambitions stay that way.

Talks Only Solution to Iran Nuclear Issue: Gul - AFP [link]

• President Abdullah Gul said Turkey backs a negotiated settlement of the Iran nuclear issue by dialogue, as he prepared to travel to Tehran on his maiden official visit, state media reported.
• "Turkey wants a solution for Iran's nuclear issue through negotiations and dialogue," Gul told Iran's official news agency IRNA in what it said was an exclusive interview ahead of the scheduled trip.
• Gul begins a three-day visit on Monday which will see him meeting top Iranian officials, including his counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He will also visit the cities of Tabriz and Isfahan.
• "Iran is signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty and a member of the International Atomic Energy Agency. Thus, Iran's nuclear issue should be solved through negotiation and Turkey will continue to facilitate this," Gul said.
• Last month, Turkey hosted talks between Iran and six world powers aimed at allaying Western suspicions that Tehran is secretly developing nuclear weapons, but no progress was achieved.

A New Nuclear Triad? - Mark Thompson in “Swampland” a Time blog [link]

• Something profound is happening in the proposed 2012 $670 billion (including $117 billion for Afghanistan and Iraq) defense budget that will be released on Monday, but few are paying attention. You may want to, because it sets the nation on a path that, if history is any guide, will last for a half-century, and cost hundreds of billions of dollars.
• Both the Air Force and the Navy have gotten green lights to plan rebuilding all three legs of the nation's so-called nuclear triad. The triad was a creation of the Cold War to ensure that some unforeseen super-weapon developed by the Soviet Union couldn't destroy all of our nuclear weapons in first-strike, bolt-out-of-the-blue scenario (to use some Cold War lingo).
• Nonetheless, with the Pentagon currently spending more each year than it did during the Cold War, it's got to find somewhere to put all that money. So the nuclear triad not only marches on, it is going to be rebuilt.
• In late 2009, a senior U.S. nuclear-weapons designer argued that the nation seriously weigh moving to a "nuclear dyad" by scrapping its land-based ICBMs. But such a proposal, Jeffrey Richardson warned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, "will provoke debate from certain camps, most notably, the pro-nuclear camp that feels unconstrained by fiscal resources and strives for a risk-free world."
• The 35-year veteran of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory argued that the nation's leaders need to admit that strategic nuclear forces "should mitigate possible risk and provide a hedge against potential scenarios, but also acknowledge that the elimination of all risk is unachievable."

To Defend, or To Deter? - Lisbeth Gronlund in “All Things Nuclear” a UCS blog [link]

• One of the recently released Wikileaks documents is a State Department cable describing the February 8, 2010 meeting in Paris between Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and French Minister of Defense Herve Morin. Among other things, they talked about missile defense—and what they each had to say is both revealing and fascinating.
• One might expect that Gates would argue that missile defense would offer a limited defense that was better than nothing. Apparently he did not even suggest this possibility. Instead, he responded to Morin’s points by stating that missile defense contributes to deterrence. In particular, he argued that missile defense would deter limited nuclear missile attacks by countries such as Iran that might acquire that capability in the future.
• The first thing to note is that Gates’ focus on deterrence as a rationale for the U.S. defense system suggests that he agrees with Morin’s assessment that it would not provide a population defense.
• Second, Gates’ argument is essentially that a potential attacker would not be deterred by the certainty of a devastating military response, but would nonetheless be deterred by the possibility that its missiles would be destroyed in flight. That makes no sense.
• The question remains, does Secretary Gates really want to spend billions of dollars on a Potemkin defense to deter potential future missile states, or is he constrained by the political climate in Washington that requires all good Americans to support missile defense?

US: Poland Concerned About Armed Kaliningrad - Vanessa Gera in The Washington Post [link]

• Poland and other Eastern European countries are expressing concern to the United States about an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons believed to be at their doorsteps in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave, a top U.S. diplomat for arms control said Friday.
• Now the U.S. is hoping also to open preparatory talks with Russia on a possible reduction in tactical nuclear weapons, which are smaller battlefield arms such as short-range missiles, artillery shells, mines or gravity bombs. Such weapons have not yet been the subject of arms control agreements.
• Rose Gottemoeller, the chief U.S. negotiator of New START, visited Poland, Ukraine and the three Baltic states in recent days to hear how these countries view the issue of tactical weapons.
• There is a generalized concern about Kaliningrad and Russian propensity to, every time a concern is aroused in Moscow, to say, well, 'time to bring something else to Kaliningrad,'" said Gottemoeller, who is assistant secretary of state for arms control.
• Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski joined the debate on New START last year with a much-cited op-ed piece hailing the treaty as important to Europe's security. He called it a "necessary stepping stone" to future reductions in tactical nuclear arsenals.

IAEA's Amano: Iran Still Steadily Producing Uranium - Lally Weymouth in The Washington Post [link]

• The Post's Lally Weymouth talked to Yukia Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, last week in Vienna. Excerpts:
• Iran is somehow producing uranium enriched to 3.5 percent and 20 percent. They are producing it steadily, constantly.
• I can say they have well over 3,000 kilograms of enriched uranium of 3.5 percent and it is increasing.
• The main issue in Syria is the al-Kibar site that was destroyed by Israel in 2007. They have constructed new buildings and we visited after the destruction in 2008. After that we continued asking Syria to allow us further access, but they did not. As I didn't receive a response, I wrote a letter to the foreign minister in November.
• We need to have more access, better cooperation from Iran and better implementation of the rules. I am not against Iran. I just want everyone to respect and implement rules.