Intervention in Libya Through a Persian Lens

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

Stories we're following today - Monday, April 4, 2011:

The Larger Game in the Middle East: Iran - David Sanger in The New York Times [link]

• On a Tuesday afternoon in mid-March in the White House Situation Room, as President Obama heard the arguments of his security advisers about the pros and cons of using military force in Libya, the conversation soon veered into the impact in a far more strategically vital place: Iran.
• The mullahs in Tehran, noted Thomas E. Donilon, the national security adviser, were watching Mr. Obama’s every move in the Arab world. They would interpret a failure to back up his declaration that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi had “lost the legitimacy to lead” as a sign of weakness — and perhaps as a signal that Mr. Obama was equally unwilling to back up his vow never to allow Iran to gain the ability to build a nuclear weapon.
• Every decision — from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria — is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until mid-January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration’s regional strategy: how to slow Iran’s nuclear progress, and speed the arrival of opportunities for a successful uprising there.
• In January, American officials were fairly confident that they had cornered Iran: new sanctions were biting, the Russians were cutting off sophisticated weaponry that Iran wanted to ward off any Israeli or American attack, and a deviously complex computer worm, called Stuxnet, was wreaking havoc with the Iranian effort to enrich uranium.
• But at least in public, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates told members of Congress not to expect that Iran’s nuclear program would accelerate much because of the attack on Libya — or that Iran’s security forces would crack down even more vigorously on the protest movements they have all but strangled. “My view is that, in terms of what they want to try and achieve in their nuclear program, they’re going about as fast as they can,” he said on Thursday. “And it’s hard for me to imagine that regime being much harder than it already is.”
• Inside Israel, a debate has resumed about how long the Israelis can afford to put off dealing with the problem themselves, fed by fears that Iran’s reaction to the region’s turmoil might be a race for the bomb. That could lead to the worst outcome for Mr. Obama — a war between Iran and Israel — and that consideration alone makes the case for the administration to see little room for error in handling the main act.

Japan to Release Low-Level Radioactive Water Into Ocean - Hiroko Tabuchi and Ken Belson in The New York Times [link]

• Tokyo Electric Power Company said Monday that it would release almost 11,500 tons of water contaminated with low levels of radiation from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant into the Pacific Ocean as workers struggle to contain the increasing amounts of dangerous runoff resulting from efforts to cool the plant’s damaged reactors.
• The water to be released is being dumped to make storage room available for water with more dangerous levels of radiation.
• “Unfortunately, the water contains a certain amount of radiation,” Mr. Edano said. “This is an unavoidable measure to prevent even higher amounts of radiation from reaching the sea.”
• Elements like cesium 137, which has a half-life of 30 years, collect in larger fish as they consume smaller fish, which means the problem may accumulate over time. Iodine 131 and other elements that have far shorter half lives are not as dangerous because it can take weeks for fish to make it to supermarkets and restaurants, according to Hiroki Otani, who teaches in the Health and Welfare Department at Tokyo Metropolitan University.

British Submarines to Receive Upgraded US Nuclear Warhead - Hans Kristensen for “Strategic Security” a Federation of American Scientists blog [link]

• Sea-launched ballistic missiles on British ballistic missile submarines will be armed with the upgraded W76-1 nuclear warhead currently in production in the United States, according to a report from Sandia National Laboratories.
• Approximately 1,200 W76-1s are current in production at the Pantex Plant in Texas. The W76-1 is an upgraded version of the W76-0 (or simply W76) produced between 1978 and 1987. In its full configuration, the upgraded weapon is known as the W76-1/Mk4A, where the Mk4A is the designation for the cone-shaped reentry body that contains the W76-1 warhead.
• The upgrade extends the service life by another 30 years to arm U.S. and British nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) through the 2040s.
• The transfer of nuclear technology from the United States to Britain is authorized by the 1958 US-UK Mutual Defense Agreement, which was most recently updated in 2004 and extended through 2014 to permit the “transfer of nonnuclear parts, source, byproduct, special nuclear materials, and other material and technology for nuclear weapons and military reactors” between the two countries.

Living With a Nuclear Iran - Robert Kaplan in The Atlantic [link]

• In 1957, A 34-year-old Harvard faculty member, Henry Kissinger, published a book, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, putting forth a counterintuitive proposition: that at the height of the Cold War, with the United States and the Soviet Union amassing enough hydrogen bombs for Armageddon, a messy, limited war featuring conventional forces and a tactical nuclear exchange or two was still possible, and the United States had to be prepared for such a conflict.
• “Iran,” Kissinger told me, “merely by pursuing nuclear weapons, has given itself a role in the region out of proportion to its actual power, and it gains further by the psychological impact of its being able to successfully defy the United Nations Security Council.”
• But in spite of Iran’s refusal thus far to avail itself of “the genuine opportunity to transform itself from a cause to a nation,” Kissinger told me, the country’s true strategic interests should “run parallel with our own.” For example, Iran should want to limit Russia’s influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia, it should want to limit the Taliban’s influence in neighboring Afghanistan, it should accept stability in Iraq, and it should want to serve as a peaceful balancing power in the Sunni Arab world.
• The success of containment will depend on a host of regional factors. But its sine qua non will be the ability of the United States to underline any policy toward a nuclear-armed Iran with the credible threat of military action. As Kissinger told me, “I want America to sustain whatever measures it takes about Iran.”

Syria: A Nuclear Plant Is Inspected, and Another Site Remains Off Limits - Reuters [link]

• The United Nations atomic watchdog inspected a Syrian plant on Friday as part of a long-stalled investigation into suspected covert nuclear activity.
• Syria, which denies any nuclear weapons ambitions, agreed last month that agency inspectors could travel to the Homs acid purification plant, where uranium concentrates, or yellowcake, have been a by-product.
• The inspection is unlikely to resolve questions about any covert nuclear activity in Syria. Syria has refused to allow follow-up inspections at the remains of a complex at Dair Alzour, which Israel bombed to rubble in 2007 and which American intelligence reports said was a nascent North Korean-designed reactor intended to produce bomb fuel.

Call For Joint UK-French Nuclear Deterrent - AFP [link]

• A British junior defence minister is calling for London and Paris to develop and build a joint nuclear deterrent, The Guardian newspaper reported Saturday.
• Armed Forces Minister Nick Harvey put the proposal to French defence experts at the ambassador's residence this week and told The Guardian that the plan was warmly received.
• Historic rivals Britain and France agreed a deal in November last year to create a joint military force and share nuclear testing facilities, heralding an unprecedented era of defence cooperation.
• The coalition has deferred a decision on replacing Britain's nuclear weapons programme -- the Trident missile-based system on board its submarines -- until after the next general election, to be held by May 2015.
• "The UK needs to revisit the case in the long term for the UK maintaining a permanent 24-7 at-sea capability. We pay an enormous premium to maintain this," Harvey said.