In what could amount to extraordinarily serious and dangerously destabilizing global event, the government of India announced today that Pakistani extremists may already be in  control of nuclear weapons sites in Pakistan.  This is particularly concerning given that Pakistan already has the world’s worst record for proliferation of nuclear technologies to date.  (In 2004 the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear program,  A.Q. Kahn confessed to being involved with a clandestine international network which was engaged in proliferation of nuclear technologies to Iran, North Korea and Libya — and is believed to have supplied Iran and North Korea with gas centrifuges and uranium hexaflouride.)

The Times of India reports:

India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has told President Obama that nuclear sites in Pakistan’s restive frontier province are “already partly” in the hands of Islamic extremists, an Israeli journal has said, amid considerable anxiety among US pundits here over Washington’s confidence in the security of the troubled nation’s nuclear arsenal.

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There was no official word from either Washington or New Delhi about the exchanges, with India in the throes of an election and US winding down for the weekend. But US experts have been greatly perturbed in recent days about what they say is Washington’s misplaced confidence in, and lackadaisical approach towards, Pakistan’s nuclear assets. The disquiet comes amid reports that Pakistan is ramping up its nuclear arsenal even as the rest of the world is scaling it down.

“It is quite disturbing that the administration is allowing Pakistan to quantitatively and qualitatively step up production of fissile material without as much as a public reproach,” Robert Windrem, a visiting scholar with the Center for Law and Security in New York University and an expert on South Asia nuclear issues told ToI in an interview on Thursday. “Iraq and Iran did not get a similar concessions… and Pakistan has a much worse record of proliferation and security breaches than any other country in the world.”

Windrem, a former producer with NBC whose book “Critical Mass” was among the first to red flag Islamabad’s proliferation record going back to the 1980s, referred to recent reports and satellite images showing Pakistan building two large new plutonium production reactors in Khushab, which experts say could lead to improvements in the quantity and quality of the country’s nuclear arsenal. The reactors had nothing to do with power-production’ they are weapons-specific, and are being built with resources who diversion is enabled by the billions of dollars the US is giving to Pakistan as aid, he said.

Windrem also pointed out that Khushab’s former director, Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood met with Osama bin Laden and his deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and offered a nuclear weapons tutorial around an Afghanistan campfire, as attested by the former CIA Director George Tenet in his memoir “At the Center of the Storm.” Yet successive US administrations had adopted an attitude of benign neglect towards Pakistan’s nuclear program and its expansion at a time the country was in growing ferment and under siege within from Islamic extremists.

US officials, going up to the President himself, have repeatedly said in public that they have confidence the Pakistani nuclear arsenal will not fall into the hands of Islamic extremists, and they have Islamabad’s assurances to this effect. But scholars like Windrem fear Pakistan’s nuclear program may already be infected with the virus of radicalism from within, as demonstrated by the Sultan Bashiruddin incident.

This comes on the heels of last Wednesday’s announcement by Pakistani president Zardari’s announcement that Pakistan’s nuclear facilities are secure:

As the AP reported last Wednesday:

Pakistan’s president is rejecting concerns that his country’s nuclear arsenal was in jeopardy.

The concerns are prompted by a surge in Taliban activity, and growing instability.

In London today, Asif Ali Zardari said Pakistan’s secret nuclear sites are secure. But he wouldn’t specify what safeguards are in place.

He says “anyone who is responsible in any government” will say that they are not concerned about the situation in Pakistan.

With due respect, Mr. Zardari — it would be the height of irresponsibility to not be overtly concerned at this juncture.  By many accounts, the government of Pakistan is currently perched at the tipping point, and by some estimates could fall to opposition within a matter of days.  .

President Obama has downplayed the situation, calling the threat of proliferation “overblown”.

The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports:

The Pakistani government and President Barack Obama say concern over the security of the nuclear weapons is overblown, and the country’s still-powerful army gives top priority to guarding them.

“I’m confident that we can make sure that (they are) secure,” Obama told reporters last week, adding the army “recognizes the hazards of those weapons falling into the wrong hands.”

But we must address the semantics of “proliferation”.  At this time, the potential of an outright theft of an intact nuclear weapon is likely to be an extremely low-level threat (although India’s announcement today certainly raises the threat level), and actually launching a missile would be impossible without acquiring centralized control.  Furthermore, it is believed that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is stored in an incomplete, disassembled state for security reasons, with warheads and missiles stored separately (although one must assume, within some geographic proximity).

Complicating the matter of monitoring the situation, is that Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is stored on Soviet-style mobile launchers and rail-freight lines — making sattelite tracking of Pakistan’s weapons difficult for foreign intelligence agencies.

But “proliferation” of dangerous radioactive materials is indeed a real threat at this time .

Reuters reports:

Two scenarios are particularly worrying, analysts say.

If the Taliban encroached close to an area where warheads are stored, the military may feel it needs to try to move them — and the convoy could be vulnerable to capture.

“The Pakistani military say their procedures for moving nuclear weapons are very well thought out, but that is always a weak point, moving your nuclear assets,” Kuusisto said.

The second, and likelier, scenario would be that despite the vetting procedures in place, Taliban or al Qaeda sympathisers managed to get employed in a nuclear facility and were able to steal enriched uranium or other radioactive material.

Vetting of personnel can never be foolproof.

“What chills me is that the military says personnel assigned to sensitive nuclear facilities are all vetted by the Pakistan intelligence service,” said Steve Vickers, president and chief executive of FTI-International Risk and a former head of criminal intelligence for the Hong Kong police.

Now, in light of the government of India’s statement that “nuclear sites” may already be compromised, we must ask specifically which scenario they are describing?  Neither one of course, bodes well for global stability or for keeping the lid on the nuclear genie.

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Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies have produced an extensive and detailed strategic  analysis of Israel’s offensive options regarding a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities.   The 114 page study examines in exhaustive detail, all available data on Israel’s offensive capabilities, Iran’s arial defense capacities, Iran’s nuclear technology and the respective long range missile arsenals of both nations.

The report’s conclusion: “A military strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities is possible … [but] would be complex and high-risk and would lack any assurances that the overall mission would have a high success rate”.

Complicating any military operation are the following factors:

1. Intelligence regarding underground or secret enrichment facilities is incomplete. As such, the strategic effectiveness of a 100% destruction of  known facilities cannot be precisely determined — since unknown facilities could potentially survive an Israeli strike.
2. Israeli intelligence regarding a completion date for an Iranian weapon is imprecise. Estimates vary between 2009 and 2012.   US intelligence estimates put a completion date closer to 2013.    The date is important because Israeli estimates favor a strike sooner than later.  The window of opportunity may already be closing.  It is widely agreed that no strike can or will occur after Iran has obtained a nuclear weapon.

While issue #2 above raises the question of “when”, it is issue #1 that presents the greater challenge:  Is any strike likely to be effective?

A Partial Strike?

To this question Toukan and Cordesman introduce the scenario of a partial strike:  What if only the three primary sites for nuclear research and refinement were destroyed?  Would there be any effective strategic result from a partial destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities?   The study examines a likely scenario involving the destruction of the installations at Arak (plutonium production), Isfahan (uranium enrichment) and Natanz (heavy water production).  The study estimates that the destruction of these primary facilities would set Iran’s program back by only a few years.

Offensive Requirements

The study estimates that a strike on Iran’s nuclear infrastructure would require at least 90 aircraft in total, including:

1. All 25 F-15E’s
2. Approximately 65 F16I/C’s
3. 5 KC-130H’s for re-fueling
4. 4 B-707’s for re-fueling

Flight Routes

A detailed analysis of potential flight paths concludes that the likely flight path would follow the Syrian/Turkish border, traversing Iraq near it’s northeastern territory into Iran.  Additional flight routes over Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq were also analyzed — and although shorter, include more complex political issues.

We believe these political issues to be overstated in the report due to a shared Iraqi, Jordanian and Saudi fear over a nuclear Iran.

Defense Assessment

First, there are fortification issues at Natanz (The facility is buried 8 meters underground and is fortified with a 2.5 meter thick concrete wall.  The centrifuge facility is buried 25 meters underground and has a protective concrete wall which is at least several meters thick).  Israel possesses over 600 US made “bunker busters” which could be used to penetrate the fortifications — bit the efficacy of bunker busters is mitigated by the necessity for extreme pilot accuracy in deployment.

Secondly, there are there are Iran’s considerable arial defense systems.  These include:

1. Batteries of Hawk SA-5 and SA-2 surface-to-air missiles.
2. Rapier, Crotale and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
3. 1700 anti-aircraft guns directly protecting the strategic targets.
4. Iran’s 158 combat aircraft
5. The S-300V anti-aircraft defense system supplied by Russia to Iran last year.

The latter is a considerable concern as the S-300V is a highly sophisticated, modern anti-aircraft defense system which could potentially eliminate 20% to 30% of Israeli’s strike aircraft.

Collateral Damage

The report also notes that a strike on Bushehr would result in mass deaths due to radioactive contamination over 100’s of square miles.   Cancer deaths in later years would likely reach the hundreds of thousands.  Additionally, the environmental impact of radionuclides would extend north (due to wind dispersal) to Bahrain, Qatar and the UAE.

Military Response

Iran’s direct military response would likely include a counterattack with Shahab-3 ballistic missiles — which are capable of reaching 100% of Israeli territory.  (There is also a threat of a chemical warheads being used.)

Proxy attacks would also occur through Hamas and more directly Hezbollah — whose missile capacity has been more than restored since the cessation of hostilities during the last conflict.

In addition to the certainty of a direct military response, the report estimates that Iran’s nuclear ambitions would likely emerge undetered — if not accelerated.

Political Impact

The CSIS report summarizes the political fallout from a surprise Israeli attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities succinctly:

It is possible that Israel will carry out a strike against Iranian Nuclear Facilities, if the U.S. does not, with the objective of either destroying the program or delaying it for some years. The success of the Strike Mission will be measured by how much of the Enrichment program has it destroyed, or the number of years it has delayed. Iranian acquisition of enough Uranium or Plutonium from the Arak reactor to build a nuclear bomb.

The U.S. would certainly be perceived as being a part of the conspiracy and having assisted and given Israel the green light, whether it did or had no part in it whatsoever. This would undermine the U.S. objectives in increasing stability in the region and bringing about a peaceful solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict. It will also harm for a very long period of time relations between the U.S. and it‘s close regional allies. [emphasis ours]

Arab States have become extremely frustrated with the U.S. and the West double standard when addressing the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East. Arab countries will not condone any attack on Iran under the pretext that Iran poses an existential threat to Israel, whilst Israel has some 200 to 300 nuclear weapons, and the delivery means using the Jericho missiles. In addition to Israel still occupying the West Bank and the Syrian Golan Heights.

It is doubtful that an Israeli strike on Iranian Nuclear Facilities would bring Syria into a direct conflict with Israel. Syria knows very well that alone it‘s military forces are no match to Israel. However, proxy actors such as Hizbullah would engage Israel in ant-symmetric attacks, with Syrian and Iranian assistance.

Threat Assessment

Somewhat disturbing in our minds is the report’s assessment of overall risk to Israel in world with a nuclear-capable Iran.  The report weights heavily the deterrent of mutually-assured-destruction should a nuclear capable Iran conduct a nuclear first-strike on Israel, and concludes that even if Iran had nuclear weapons it would likely never use them.

While we agree with Toukan and Cordesman that the threat of a direct nuclear exchange between a nuclear armed Iran and Israel would be mitigated due to the threat of mutually-assured-destruction, one must consider firstly, that Iran’s preferred method of military confrontation with Israel  has been indirect and by proxy of well-known extra-national military groups; and secondly, that proliferation of nuclear weapons in the Middle East is in and of itself deeply threatening to Israeli security and would represent a new and extraordinarily dangerous phase for Israel.

US Foreign Policy Today

Last Thursday, US State Department spokesperson Ian Kelly reiterated the desire for a “multilateral track” for dealing with Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

“We believe that the multilateral track is the way to go…  Our goal is to make them abandon their nuclear program in a verifiable way, and we will continue with this track. We decided that we want to let Iran get back to the table, to engage them, because the previous approach of isolating Iran didn’t work. But we don’t have a clear timetable.”

Ha’aretz reports today:

U.S. President Barack Obama has sent a message to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding that Israel not surprise the U.S. with an Israeli military operation against Iran. The message was conveyed by a senior American official who met in Israel with Netanyahu, ministers and other senior officials. Earlier, Netanyahu’s envoy visited Washington and met with National Security Adviser James Jones and with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and discussed the dialogue Obama has initiated with Tehran.

The message from the American envoy to the prime minister reveals U.S. concern that Israel could lose patience and act against Iran. It is important to the Americans that they not be caught off guard and find themselves facing facts on the ground at the last minute.

We find this response from the White House to be somewhat lacking in any real policy initiative.  It is also hard to interpret concepts like “last minute” and “caught off guard” when the issue of a rapidly approaching nuclear Iran has been on the radar of policy makers for years now, and all efforts to use diplomacy, incentive, inspections, sanctions and threats have failed to deter Iran’s progress.