Evaluating design intent in Iran’s ballistic-missile programme

Abstract

‘This is a clear-eyed assessment of the Iran nuclear deal and how it was working smoothly before President Trump's reckless withdrawal. No single volume makes better use of the facts to refute the criticisms levied by the Trump administration against the deal, or differentiates more clearly between those of Iran's ballistic missiles which could be allowed in a negotiated arrangement and those which should be prohibited.’

Angela Kane, Senior Fellow, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation; former UN High Rentative for Disarmament Affairs and UN Under-Secretary-General for Management ‘No one has contributed more to the public understanding of the complexities of nuclear proliferation and the attempts of various states to break out from the Non-Proliferation Treaty than Mark Fitzpatrick. Now he and his colleagues at the IISS have turned their focus to the withdrawal of the US from the JCPOA. Their new study is required reading for anyone concerned that this action could lead to yet another conflict in the Middle East or increase the risk of nuclear weapons spreading in the region.’

IISS

In July 2015, eight parties – France, Germany and the United Kingdom, together with the European Union and China, Russia and the United States on the one side, and Iran on the other – adopted the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran nuclear deal. Under the agreement, Iran accepted limits to its nuclear programme and stricter international monitoring in return for sanctions relief. Detractors, however, saw the deal as overly lenient towards Tehran. Donald Trump described the JCPOA as the ‘worst deal ever’, and announced in May 2018 that the US would cease waiving sanctions and withdraw from the agreement.

This Adelphi book argues that the unilateral withdrawal from the JCPOA was a grave error. Drawing on a deep understanding of the non-proliferation regime and their own technical expertise, the authors evaluate the principal criticisms of the JCPOA, some of which are unrelated to nuclear issues. The authors argue that the Procurement Channel – established by the JCPOA to give Iran a route to procure goods and services for its now-limited nuclear programme – has been an effective check on Iran's illicit procurement of nuclear-related goods. They also show that Iran's nuclear and ballistic-missile programmes are not intrinsically linked, for not all of its missiles were designed to be nuclear-capable. The fate of the JCPOA now hangs in the balance; its survival will ultimately depend on Iran.

Notes

1 This chapter draws on a report by two of the authors: Michael Elleman and Mark Fitzpatrick, ‘Are Iran’s ballistic missiles designed to be nuclear capable?’, IISS, 28 February 2018, https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2018/02/iran-missiles-nuclear-capable. This report was supported by a grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

2 White House Press Office, ‘Statement by the President on the Iran Nuclear Deal’, 12 January 2018, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-iran-nuclear-deal/.

3 United Nations Security Council, ‘Resolution 2231 (2015)’, S/RES/2231, 20 July 2015, Annex B, paragraph 3, https://undocs.org/S/RES/2231(2015).

4 Greg Thielmann, ‘The Iranian Ballistic Missile Launches That Didn’t Happen’, LobeLog, 16 March 2016, http://lobelog.com/the-iranian-ballistic-missile-launches-that-didnt-happen/.

5 The United States, for its part, has adopted a definition of a nuclear weapon as ‘any weapon that contains or uses nuclear material’. Nuclear material is further defined as ‘material containing any – (A) plutonium; (B) uranium not in the form of ore or ore residue that contains the mixture of isotopes as occurring in nature; (C) enriched uranium, defined as uranium that contains the isotope 233 or 235 or both in such amount that the abundance ratio of the sum of those isotopes to the isotope 238 is greater than the ratio of the isotope 235 or the isotope 238 occurring in nature; or (D) uranium 233’. See U.S. Code Title 18, Part I, Chapter 39, paragraphs 831–32, available at https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/part-I/chapter-39.

6 Louis Charbonneau, ‘Exclusive: Iran missile tests were “in defiance of” U.N. resolution – U.S., allies’, Reuters, 29 March 2016, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-missiles/exclusive-iran-missile-tests-were-in-defiance-of-u-n-resolution-u-s-allies-idUSKCN0WV2HE.

7 United Nations Security Council, ‘Third report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)’, S/2017/515, 20 June 2017, paragraph 3, https://undocs.org/S/2017/515.

8 UN Security Council, ‘Fourth report of the Secretary-General on the implementation of Security Council resolution 2231 (2015)’, S/2017/1030, 8 December 2017, paragraph 21, https://undocs.org/S/2017/1030.

9 Ibid., paragraph 23.

10 Aaron Karp, ‘Missile Technology Control Regime: Stemming the Spread of Missiles: Hits, Misses, and Hard Cases’, Arms Control Association, 13 April 2012, https://www.armscontrol.org/taxonomy/term/49?page=2.

11 Richard Speier, ‘The Missile Technology Control Regime: Case Study of a Multilateral Negotiation’, unpublished manuscript, submitted to the United States Institute of Peace under grant SG-31-95, Washington DC, November 1995, p. 22.

12 The US also had more sophisticated nuclear weapons that weighed considerably less than 500 kg: the W54 warhead used for the Davy Crockett recoilless-spigot gun in the 1950s weighed about 23 kg.

13 Although the Soviet Union argued that the Scud-B had a range of 299 km, and therefore was not a Category I system, the 1,000 kg mass of the Scud-B’s warhead put the system well over the threshold. As Iraq demonstrated in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a warhead can sacrifice some mass for greater range.

14 Interview with a former member of the UN Panel of Experts created pursuant to resolution 1929 (2010), January 2018.

15 ‘Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) Annex Handbook 2017’, pp. iii and 329–39, http://mtcr.info/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/MTCR-Handbook-2017-INDEXED-FINAL-Digital.pdf.

16 White House Press Office, ‘Statement of Interdiction Principles: Fact Sheet’, 4 September 2003, https://www.state.gov/t/isn/c27726.htm.

17 See, for example, Peter Van Ham, ‘The MTCR at 30: Ideas to Strengthen the Missile Technology Control Norm’, Cligendael, November 2017, https://www.clingendael.org/sites/default/files/2017-11/PB_The_MCTR_at_30.pdf.

18 Nick Wadhams and Kambiz Foroohar, ‘Haley Says Missile Parts Prove Iran Violated UN Resolutions’, Bloomberg, 14 December 2017, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-14/haley-says-missile-parts-prove-iran-is-violating-un-resolutions-jb6u2ik9. Haley additionally claimed, without legal basis, that the missile transfer was also a violation of the JCPOA.

19 Rick Gladstone, ‘Iran Violated Yemen Arms Embargo, U.N. Experts Say’, New York Times, 12 January 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/12/world/middleeast/iran-yemen-saudi-arabia-arms-embargo-un.html.

20 Israel’s presumably nuclear-armed missiles are the most lethal among the states normally considered to comprise the Middle East. Israel’s Jericho-III intermediate-range ballistic missile may have the longest range, reportedly of 5,000 km. Saudi Arabia’s Dongfeng-3 missiles imported from China in 1987 have a 4,000 km range, although the missiles have never been test-launched in Saudi Arabia and their operational capability is uncertain.

21 United States Senate, Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, ‘Statement of Mr. Michael Elleman – Iran’s Ballistic Missile Program – Before the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs’, 24 May 2016, https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/052416_EllemanTestimony.pdf.

22 Max Fisher, ‘Deep in the Desert, Iran Quietly Advances Missile Technology’, New York Times, 23 May 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/23/world/middleeast/iran-missiles.html.

23 Jeremy Binnie and Nick Hansen, ‘Iran Releases Khorramshahr Missile Test Video’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 28 September 2017, http://www.janes.com/article/74455/iran-releases-khorramshahr-missile-test-video.

24 US Department of the Treasury, ‘Treasury Sanctions Those Involved in Ballistic Missile Procurement for Iran’, 17 January 2016, https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/jl0322.aspx.

25 IISS, Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A Net Assessment (IISS: London, 2010), p. 122.

26 ‘Iran warns Israel of military deterrence, missile might’, Al-Alam, 25 May 2014, http://en.alalam.ir/news/1597338; ‘Iran’s statement in response to Trump’s speech, US new policy’, Islamic Republic News Agency, 13 October 2017, http://www.irna.ir/en/News/82694750.

27 William J. Broad and David E. Sanger, ‘Relying on Computer, U.S. Seeks to Prove Iran’s Nuclear Aims’, New York Times, 13 November 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/13/international/middleeast/13nukes.html.

28 An altitude of 600 m is also reasonably consistent with the dispersal of chemical bomblets containing mustard gas or an equivalently toxic chemical agent. The altitude is probably too low for sarin, Tabun or VX, all of which possess a large enough toxicity to cover a much larger territory. Conventional, high-explosive cluster warheads are typically dispersed at much lower altitudes.

29 Michael Adler, ‘US Briefs on Alleged Iranian Nuclear Warhead Work’, Agence France-Presse, 10 October 2005; Dafna Linzer, ‘Strong Leads and Dead Ends in Nuclear Case Against Iran’, Washington Post, 8 February 2006, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/07/AR2006020702126.html.

30 Mark Fitzpatrick, ‘Assessing Iran’s Nuclear Programme’, Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, vol. 48, no. 3, Autumn 2006, pp. 5–26 (p. 10).

31 International Atomic Energy Agency, ‘Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement and Relevant Provisions of Security Council Resolutions 1737 (2006), 1747 (2007), 1803 (2008) and 1835 (2008) in the Islamic Republic of Iran’, GOV/2010/10, 18 February 2010, paragraph 41, https://www.iaea.org/sites/default/files/gov2010-10.pdf.

32 The total volume of the weapons bay in the Ghadr-1 re-entry vehicle is about 0.33 cubic metres. When loaded with a conventional high explosive, this translates to a weapons mass of about 600 kg. The structural components of the re-entry vehicle probably weigh 150–300 kg, depending on the reinforcements required. The Soviet- made Scud-B, for example, has a total warhead mass of 987 kg, of which 799 kg is high-explosive material, and 188 kg is inert shell, with fuses and other accessories.

33 Jeremy Binnie and Andy Dinville, ‘Satellite imagery shows accuracy of Iran’s ballistic missiles’, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 31 October 2012.

34 Behnam Ben Taleblu, ‘Iranian Ballistic Missile Tests Since the Nuclear Deal – 2.0’, Foundation for Defense of Democracies, 25 January 2018, http://www.defenddemocracy.org/content/uploads/documents/MEMO_IranBallisticMissile.pdf.

35 ‘Photos Show IRGC Used Zolfaqar, Qiam Missiles in Deir Ezzur Attacks’, Fars News Agency, 19 June 2017, http://en.farsnews.com/newstext.aspx?nn=13960329000502.

36 Alireza Nader, ‘Profile: Revolutionary Guards Chief Gen. Jafari’, The Iran Primer, United States Institute of Peace, 21 January 2013, http://iranprimer.usip.org/blog/2013/jan/21/profile-revolutionary-guards-chief-gen-jafari.

37 ‘Iran says UN resolution not linked to ballistic missiles’, Agence France-Press, 20 July 2015, https://www.yahoo.com/news/iran-says-un-resolution-not-linked-ballistic-missiles-175508977.html?ref=gs.

38 Javad Zarif, ‘Iranian Foreign Minister: “Arab Affairs Are Iran’s Business”’, Atlantic, 9 October 2017, https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/iran-persian-gulf-jcpoa/542421/.

39 Javad Zarif, ‘We Do Not Have a Nuclear Weapons Program’, New York Times, 6 April 2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/06/opinion/we-do-not-have-a-nuclear-weapons-program.html.

40 Ahmad Majidyar, ‘I.R.G.C.: No Need to Boost Our Missile Range as They Reach Most U.S. Bases in Mideast’, Middle East Institute, 31 October 2017, http://www.mei.edu/content/io/irgc-no-need-boost-our-missile-range-they-reach-most-us-bases-mideast.

41 Bozorgmehr Sharafedin, ‘Iran warns it would increase missile range if threatened by Europe’, Reuters, 26 November 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-missiles-europe/iran-warns-it-would-increase-missile-range-if-threatened-by-europe-idUSKBN1DQ007.

42 Michael Elleman, ‘Banning Long-Range Missiles in the Middle East: A First Step for Regional Arms Control’, Arms Control Today, 2 May 2012, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2012_05/Banning_Long-Range_Missiles_In_the_Middle_East_A_First_Step_For_Regional_Arms_Control.

43 US National Air and Space Intelligence Center, ‘Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat’, June 2017, p. 2, http://www.nasic.af.mil/Portals/19/images/Fact%20Sheet%20Images/2017%20Ballistic%20and%20Cruise%20Missile%20Threat_Final_small.pdf?ver=2017-07-21-083234-343.

44 Bill Gertz, ‘Iran Conducts Space Launch: Simorgh launcher part of long range missile program’, Washington Free Beacon, 20 April 2016, https://freebeacon.com/national-security/iran-conducts-space-launch; Lucas Tomlinson, ‘Iran rocket suffered “catastrophic failure,” likely blew up, US official says’, Fox News, 28 July 2017, http://www.foxnews.com/world/2017/07/28/iran-rocket-suffered-catastrophic-failure-likely-blew-up-us-official-says.html.

45 Richard Goldberg and Behnam Ben Taleblu, ‘Iran’s New Missile Cap Offer Is a Total Sham’, National Interest, 8 November 2017, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/irans-new-missile-cap-offer-sham-23108.

46 ‘Photos Show IRGC Used Zolfaqar, Qiam Missiles in Deir Ezzur Attacks’, Fars News Agency.

47 Based on author interviews with Russian specialists, including Dr Vadim Vorobei, who was hired by Iran in the late 1990s to provide lectures on missile-manufacturing technologies.

48 ‘Iran tests new missile after U.S. criticizes arms program’, Reuters, 23 September 2017, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-military-missiles/iran-tests-new-missile-after-u-s-criticizes-arms-program-idUSKCN1BY07B.

49 Ali Arouzi, ‘Iran Shows Off Khorramshahr Ballistic Missile After Trump Speech’, NBC News, 22 September 2017, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-shows-khorramshahr-ballistic-missile-after-trump-speech-n803701.