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Iran, nukes and the South Asian
puzzle
By Sultan Shahin
NEW DELHI - India,
Pakistan, North Korea, Russia, China. All these
countries are in the dock for providing varying degrees
of support to Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program.
But an intriguing focus of this issue is on South Asia's
two nuclear-armed neighbors with a long history of
hostility. Did they come together to help out Iran? Or
did they do it separately? Or is just one of them
involved? If so which one, and why?
Experts from
the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA) have found traces of weapons-grade uranium at
Iran's Natanz nuclear facility south of Tehran.
Confirmation of the find by the United Nations' nuclear
watchdog came in a 10-page report that was leaked to
international media by sources outside of the IAEA.
Iran has accepted that it has received foreign
help, and media reports have named Pakistan, which has
refused to sign the nuclear 1968 Non-Proliferation
Treaty (NPT), as one of countries whose nuclear
technology Iran is believed to be using.
Not to
be outdone, though, Pakistan intelligence has accused
India of being a culprit. Surprisingly, the allegation
was published by a Pakistani newspaper that is in the
forefront of efforts to promote normalization of
relations between the two countries and which is
generally considered sober, anti-establishment and
friendly to India - The Daily Times of Lahore, a sister
publication of the better-known and older weekly Friday
Times.
The paper then concluded, even from its
own analysis, that India is involved: it carried an
editorial the day after carrying the initial charges
espousing the view and offering its logic. More
bewildering is the Indian response - a perfunctory
denial followed by almost complete silence.
The
controversy started with Washington Post staff writer
Joby Warrick's investigative story "Iran admits foreign
help on nuclear facility". He claimed that IAEA data
pointed to Pakistan. Quoting UN documents and diplomatic
sources, Warrick said that Iran had admitted for the
first time that it had received substantial foreign help
in building a secret nuclear facility south of Tehran
that is now beginning to enrich uranium, turning it into
a key ingredient in the manufacture of nuclear weapons.
While Iran has not yet identified the source of
the foreign help, he said, evidence collected in Iran by
the IAEA implicates Pakistani companies as suppliers of
critical technology and parts. Officials familiar with
the UN investigation of Iran's program were quoted as
saying that Pakistan is believed by many proliferation
experts to have passed important nuclear secrets to both
Iran and North Korea. Pakistan has denied providing such
assistance.
Iran had denied making enriched
uranium at Natanz or any other facility prior to June of
this year, but the IAEA's report has dealt a serious
blow to Tehran's continuing claim of a purely peaceful
nuclear program. Over the past 18 months, Iran has begun
work on major facilities for processing and enriching
uranium, while simultaneously building a separate
reactor that can be used in the production of plutonium,
the Post reported.
Pakistan has often been
accused of exporting, notably, gas centrifuges used in
uranium enrichment, to both North Korea and Iran. The
Post quoted two officials familiar with the findings as
saying that the equipment said to be tainted was from a
type of centrifuge acquired by Pakistani scientists in
the 1970s and used in Pakistan's domestic nuclear
program. Iran told inspectors that it acquired design
plans for the centrifuge in 1987, although the transfer
of technology appears to have continued over several
years, officials said. Iranian officials promised to
provide the IAEA with a full account of where it
acquired each piece of equipment and how it was used,
the officials said.
Pakistan has never
acknowledged providing uranium-enrichment technology to
Iran. One of only a handful of countries that remain
outside the nuclear NPT, Pakistan technically is not
bound by many of the international restrictions on the
export of nuclear technology. The Post quoted Henry D
Sokolski, a top non-proliferation official in the
Pentagon during the George H W Bush administration, as
saying, "The notion that Pakistan wasn't involved is
getting less and less tenable. Some might make the claim
that this was something that happened in the past. But
it wasn't all that long ago."
According to a New
York Times report, the Institute for Science and
International Security's (ISIS) president, David
Albright, indicated that the information being gathered
in various capitals points to Pakistan as the likely
source of the centrifuge designs and components
necessary for uranium enrichment.
Cory
Hinderstein, senior analyst at ISIS, reportedly told the
Daily Times on August 20 that Pakistan was being
implicated on the basis of the design of the equipment
that Pakistan had at the time the transfer was
apparently made and "other information that we have".
She said that Pakistan wasn't the only country that may
have assisted Iran. She also stressed that at the time
Iran acquired the equipment, controls were much more lax
than they are today. She said that some Pakistani
companies may have been involved. All that, however, she
added, should be seen as having taken place in the past.
She said that there was no evidence or suspicion that
Pakistan was making such transfers today. Asked when the
alleged transfers may have taken place, she replied,
"Somewhere around the early 1990s, we think." (The
elected administrations of first Nawaz Sharif and then
Benazir Bhutto would have been in power in this period.)
Robert Einhorn, a weapons proliferation
specialist at the Center for Strategic and International
Studies in Washington said that the Iranian claim of
contamination seemed plausible. The Iranian equipment is
widely believed to have come from Pakistan, said
Einhorn, a former US assistant secretary of state for
non-proliferation. "If centrifuges that had operated in
Pakistan were sent to Iran, it is very possible that
uranium contaminants would show up when IAEA inspectors
tested the equipment. The IAEA report said that more
work was needed to arrive at conclusions about Iran's
statements that there have been no uranium enrichment
activities in Iran." However, despite Iranian denials
that it has produced highly enriched bomb-grade uranium,
an IAEA spokesman said on Tuesday that it was "urgent"
that Iran provide more information to clarify the source
of the uranium of a sort that could be used to make
weapons.
An op-ed piece by Jim Hoagland,
however, alleged on August 21 in the Washington Post
"rogue state" Pakistan's help towards the Iranian
nuclear program. The Pakistani response was predictable.
"Such allegations are completely false," said an embassy
letter to the newspaper. Islamabad has an "impeccable
record" as far as non-proliferation is concerned, it
said, imploring Hoagland to "go beyond making statements
that are not based in facts and put his decade-old
anti-Pakistan rhetoric to rest as it has now lost its
novelty".
As further response and in a clear bid
to deflect attention, Pakistani intelligence suggested
an Indian-Iranian nuclear nexus. It told Daily Times
Washington correspondent Fasih Ahmed that India and Iran
are continuing collaboration on nuclear and chemical
weapons programs. Countering continuing allegations of a
Pakistan-Iranian nuclear nexus, the paper said that "the
establishment is now wheeling out evidence of
Indo-Iranian collaboration".
The latest
intelligence reports indicate, the paper said, that
India is "still actively" helping Iran process nuclear
fuel, design warheads and fine-tune missile accuracy.
Indian scientists are believed to be working at Talkhab
and Chah-e-Lashkar, suspected sites of nuclear research
laboratories and possible enrichment facilities. It
quoted senior sources as saying, "At least two
Mumbai-based Indian [defense] companies are working at
the site under assumed names". Both sites have a large
deployment of India's Akash missiles.
In
addition, Bharat Dynamics, a government of India
enterprise, is alleged by Pakistani intelligence to have
provided Agni missile motors and chemical warheads to
Iran's largest missile manufacturer, Shahid Hemmet
Industrial Group research facility, for its Shehab.
Indian scientists are working with Iranian counterparts
on adapting the chemical warheads for the Shehab-3 and
Shehab-4 ballistic missiles, it said.
Another 11
Indian scientists are also said to be working at the
Zelzal missile plant in Esfahan, suspected home to a
small reactor and a zirconium production facility for
cladding reactor fuel. Indian scientists are also
believed to be working at the facility in Varan, some 70
kilometers from Tehran, on Iran's space program. The
report says that a number of Iranian scientists are
presently working at the Indian Space Research
Organization facilities at Bangalore and Hyderabad.
The Bush administration expressed concern in
April 2001 over reports that India was assisting Iran
with its satellite and space program, it claimed. In
1991, Nucleonics Week claimed that India had offered to
supply Iran with a 10-15 MW heavy-water nuclear reactor
and a 5 MW reactor to Syria. This prompted the US to
send a high-ranking emissary to New Delhi to discourage
the sales. The-then foreign minister Madhavsingh Solanki
said that India would not proliferate "in a big way" and
would subject all reactor exports to IAEA safeguards.
India also countered that Iran's nuclear program began
with US assistance.
Iran's Shehab is based on
North Korea's Nodong missile. Since 1985, Pyongyang has
provided Tehran with complete missile systems, engines
and transporter-launchers in return for shipments of
crude oil, according to intelligence reports. The US
Central Intelligence Agency has accused Iran of
acquiring weapons technology from a number of other
sources, including China, Libya and Russia.
The
initial report blaming India was followed by an
editorial in the Daily Times the next day arguing that
Pakistan could not possibly be helping Iran's nuclear
weapons-building efforts. The crux of the argument was
that while India has been earnestly engaged in
developing strategic relations with Iran, Pakistan has
been having trouble with the country for some time.
Giving the background, it said, "This trouble
goes back to the first Afghan war against the Soviet
Union [in the 1980s] when Imam [Ruhollah] Khomeini could
not align policy with General Zia [ul-Haq]. But it
climaxed during the second Afghan war when Pakistan was
supporting the Taliban against the Northern Alliance
backed by Tehran. In Pakistan, sectarianism that came in
the wake of jihad killed Shi'ites and a number of
Iranian officials on duty in Pakistan. Iran began
rivaling Pakistan's trade route strategy in Central Asia
and began cooperating with India strategically to the
detriment of Pakistan's regional security.
"In
January this year," it went on, "there was news that
India and Iran had signed a secret defense agreement
providing for the stationing of Indian troops on Iranian
soil in case of war. Given this state of affairs, it is
difficult to imagine Pakistan selling nuclear technology
to Iran. On the other hand, given the growing
Indo-Iranian strategic partnership, it is feasible that
the Indians are selling it for good money. The first
alarm about India selling nuclear reactors to Iran was
raised as far back as 1991 ... almost everyone excluding
America and Europe from within the nuclear club seems to
have been involved in nuclearizing Iran. Out of all of
them, Pakistan is least likely to have pitched in."
That a "strategic consensus" has been emerging
in India-Iran relations is no secret. While there has
been something of a paradigm shift in the relationship
since President Mohammad Khatami visited India as chief
guest at the republic day military parade in January
this year, India and Iran had started developing some
convergence of interests since the time of the Shah of
Iran in the 1970s.
During the Shah era, Iran was
emerging as a regional Gulf power, with US help, and
India had emerged as a preeminent power in South Asia,
having defeated Pakistan militarily in 1971 and helped
the emergence of Bangladesh (previously East Pakistan)
as an independent nation. In the Pakistani view, as
expressed by strategist Maqsudul Hasan Nuri, "Iran,
then, wanted to convey to Pakistan that if Islamabad
could diversify its links with some Gulf countries,
Tehran, too, could do so in South Asia with countries
like India."
In reality India-Iran relations
were never so Pakistan-centric, nor are they so now
despite the convergence of their interests on
Afghanistan and their need to counter Pakistan's
policies for that country. Even during the Shah era, the
two countries were promoting trade relations, for
instance, and were particularly interested in developing
relations in the field of science and technology.
However, when Khatami paid a four-day official state
visit to India from January 20 to 24 this year, he first
visited Pakistan from December 23 to 25, seeking to give
a clear message that he wanted to have good bilateral
relations with both of them. He has always offered his
services to help the two come together and sort out
their differences on Kashmir. Of course, his trip to
India revealed the qualitative difference in his
country's relations between the two countries.
While Khatami was in India, India and Iran
signed "The New Delhi Declaration" in which a vision of
"strategic partnership" for a more stable, secure and
prosperous region through enhanced regional and global
cooperation was underlined. Both countries signed seven
agreements pertaining to economic exchanges, science and
technology, information technology, educational
training, reconstruction of Afghanistan and terrorism.
They also agreed to "explore opportunities for
cooperation in defense, including training and exchange
of visits".
In the burgeoning India-Iran
relations, a variety of factors are involved. The fact
that India has the second largest Muslim population in
the world and also the second largest Shi'ite population
after Iran, for instance, is not lost on the Iranian
leadership. This sets the scene for meaningful cultural
exchanges and deepening traditional ties at a popular
level.
A Hindu fundamentalist-led coalition
government in India and a Muslim fundamentalist
government in Iran may appear to be unlikely partners.
But by the same token, they are also able to demonstrate
in practical terms, by forging close ties, that they are
not as extremist as they may be perceived to be. An
internationally isolated Iran obviously needs to change
the world's perception about it, particularly since US
President George W Bush declared it to be a part of his
so-called "axis of evil" along with Saddam Hussein's
Iraq and North Korea.
Nothing can better
advertise Khatami's idea of a "dialogue among
civilizations" and help Iran break out of international
isolation than the close ties he is forging with India.
India, too, faced with insurgency in Muslim parts of
Kashmir and a near-permanent enmity with Pakistan would
like to show that it does have close strategic Muslim
friends. This need has become all the greater now as it
is also in the process of developing closer strategic
ties with Israel and the US, neither of whom are exactly
popular in the Muslim world.
After the removal
of the Taliban from the political scene in Afghanistan
at the end of 2001, Iran and India are helping each
other in wooing neighboring Central Asian nations to
build a second line of defense against extremism that
could affect their security. They are also cooperating
with each other in countering growing US and Chinese
influence in the region. Iran is particularly attempting
to cultivate Afghanistan's neighbor Tajikistan, apart
from trying to build bridges with Kazakhstan and
Azerbaijan, in order to acquire a larger share of the
oil wealth of the Caspian Sea. By giving transit trade
facilities to India to reach out to Central Asia, Iran
also benefits in terms of improving its ports and
transportation infrastructure.
Iran has also
emerged as India's potential gateway to Afghanistan,
Central Asia and Europe. New Delhi and Tehran are
working together to develop transport corridors from
India to these destinations through Iranian territory.
Defense cooperation is another area where relations are
bound to grow, now that Iran has become a key factor in
India's energy security calculation. The two sides are
now moving to fill that gap. India's Chief of Naval
Staff, Admiral Madhvendra Singh, has already visited
Iran as part of high-level defense exchanges. Ship
visits and military cooperation in other fields are also
being planned.
Economic cooperation,
particularly in the field of energy, continues to be
another strong incentive for coming closer. Iran has
huge gas reserves and India has huge energy demand for
fertilizers and power generation. As Pakistan itself
stands to gain from Iranian gas supplies, it is not
inconceivable that Iranian gas becomes available to
India with pipes running through Pakistan.
Iran
wants to make use of the Indian textile industry's
expertise in the machinery used in the textile business,
Iran consul general Mehdi Honardoost said in Ahmedabad
on Tuesday. Pharmaceutical, textile, food processing,
information technology and infrastructure industries
offer a huge potential for Indian companies to form
joint ventures in Iran, he said at an interactive
session with industrialists of Gujarat.
Honardoost said that with the setting up of free
trade zones in Iran over the past three years and with
the India-Iran-Central Independent States trade corridor
taking shape rapidly, the climate for investing in Iran
has become very conducive. "Drugs, petrochemicals,
textiles, garments, information technology and chemicals
are some areas where joint ventures could be fruitful
for both the partners," he said. "There is a whole new
world of opportunity emerging with the new trade
corridor being set up between India, Iran and Central
Asian countries. And with the setting up of free trade
zones, foreign direct investment is increasing 70
percent every year," he said.
India-Iran
strategic dialogue was initiated by Indian Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee during his visit to Tehran
in 2001. The third round of India-Iran strategic
dialogue was conducted recently. Wide-ranging talks
between India's Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal and
Iran's Deputy Foreign Minister Mohsen Aminzadeh took
place. They assume great significance in the wake of
renewed US threats against the Iranian regime and
India's rejection of the US stand towards Iran. India
even consulted the Iranian government before saying "no"
to the US about sending troops to Iraq.
But it
cannot be assumed by any stretch of imagination that
India would abandon for the sake of these ties its tried
and tested policy of not proliferating nuclear or
missile technology. Engaging Iran remains a diplomatic
tightrope walk for India. In the case of Pakistan
accusing India of providing missile and nuclear weapon
technology to Iran, it is not difficult to see
Islamabad's motives. But it is not always so easy.
When Jane's Defense weekly reported in January
that India's naval chief and Iran's defense minister had
signed a defense pact under which India could use
Iranian land and air space and military bases against
Pakistan, India quickly denied having signed any such
pact. The report had caused a sensation and some degree
of alarm, not only in Islamabad, but also in Washington
and Beijing. What does and should worry Pakistan,
however, is the proximity of Indian and Iranian views
over Afghanistan. Neither of the two liked Pakistan's
interference in the county and its association with the
Taliban. Even today they are not happy with Pakistan's
attitude towards the Northern Alliance.
Despite
growing strategic ties, however, the possibility of
India's vast democratic and bureaucratic apparatus
allowing its politicians, even if they so desired, to
engage in nuclear and missile proliferation and
technology transfer is close to zero. Some private
companies engaging in trade in materials that could be
helpful to Iran's nuclear and missile program in some
way cannot, however, be totally ruled out. At the same
time, it is difficult to disregard arguments that rule
out Pakistan having had the motive at any time in the
past decade and a half to help Iran in the field of
nuclear and missile technology. The jury is thus still
out.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd.
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