Trump increases the risk of war

President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal of the US from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA, more commonly referred to as the Iran Nuclear Agreement) this past May 8 has upended the entire international system for controlling the proliferation of nuclear weapons and vastly increased the risk of war. Here’s why.

Nuclear weapons require the manufacture of large quantities of “fissile” material, that is, material that, when it releases a neutron (a subatomic particle contained in the atom’s nucleus) during the fission process—when the atom splits into two smaller atoms with the release of energy—the emitted neutron is at the right energy to then cause a neighboring atom to fission, also releasing another neutron at the right energy. The process proceeds in a “chain reaction” that leads to a very large release of energy. 

There are only two fissile elements used as the “fuel” in nuclear weapons: plutonium-239(that is, plutonium that contains 239 neutrons and protons in its nucleus), and uranium-235. Plutonium does not exist in nature; it has to be created in a nuclear reactor, using uranium as the reactor fuel, and then chemically separated out from the reactor products in a big, expensive nuclear fuel reprocessing plant. Naturally mined uranium ore contains mostly uranium-238, which is not fissile; the small amount of uranium-235in natural uranium ore must be “enhanced” by a large and expensive industrial process. The modern method of enhancement is done with high-precision gas centrifuges in a multi-step process that brings the uranium up to mostly uranium-235. Such material is called highly enriched uranium (HEU).

The key to controlling the development of a nuclear weapons capability is in controlling the ability to manufacture the fissile fuel. The JCPOA does just that. As for plutonium, Iran agreed to re-design its Arak nuclear reactor so that it is unable to produce sufficient quantities of plutonium. Further, all the spent fuel from the reactor is shipped out of the country, and provisions in the JCPOA prohibit Iran from building additional reactors or reprocessing facilities. As for uranium, JCPOA required Iran to dismantle 2/3 of their centrifuges and eliminate 98% of their uranium-238stock. 

How do we know the Iranians won’t cheat? JCPOA incorporates the most intrusive verification processes ever included in any arms control agreement, vastly more comprehensive and intrusive than any of the arms control treaties the US had with the former Soviet Union (now Russia). JCPOA has allowed the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to install in Iran’s declared nuclear facilities tamper-proof fiber optic seals, radiation-resistant surveillance cameras, and diagnostic sensors that detect minute quantities of fissile materials; allows on-site inspections of declared nuclear facilities by IAEA inspectors with 24/7 access; and set up computerized accounting programs to track all Iranian imports of any items that could be used in a nuclear weapons program. 

This intrusive inspection regime essentially guarantees that any Iranian cheating will be quickly and easily detected. This fact has not, however, deterred critics of the JCPOA, with one of their principal objections being that the Iranians cannot be trusted to keep to the agreement. In fact, in the more than two-and-one-half years JCPOA has been in force, the IAEA has certified that Iran complies. The original core of the Arak reactor was removed in January 2016, and in April 2017 the first commercial contracts were signed to rebuild the reactor based on a conceptual design approved by China and the US.

Another common critique is that JCPOA only covers declared nuclear sites, so Iran could be doing nuclear weapons development at secret sites, and how would we know? Actually, we would know, because any covert attempt to manufacture the fissile material would be easily detected by existing intelligence assets. Further, the JCPOA includes a process for IAEA inspectors to gain access to undeclared sites in Iran within 24 days, a time period too short for Iran to “clean up” evidence of the presence of fissile materials.

A more substantive critique is that JCPOA leaves a small Iranian uranium enrichment capability in place. This is true, but such capability is allowed by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Iran ratified in 1970. The NPT allows any non-nuclear-weapons state that is signatory to the treaty to have civilian nuclear power reactors under IAEA monitoring so they cannot convert the low-enriched fuel in their power reactors into weapons-capable fissile fuel. 

Of course, President Trump did not highlight any of these critiques as his reasons to withdraw the US from the JCPOA. Instead, he continues to say it is a “bad” deal and he wants to continue to squeeze Iran with more sanctions to get a better deal. He has not said, however, what would constitute a better deal. From other things the President and Republicans in Congress have said, one can reasonably conclude that the real reason critics want to end the deal is that they want a complete capitulation of Iran and ultimately regime change.

If this is the President’s real motivation, then he did exactly the wrong thing. By withdrawing the US from the JCPOA, he has undermined the Iranian moderates, strengthened the hand of the anti-Western radicals in Iran, and thus made the desired changes in Iranian behavior much less likely, while at the same time seriously damaging US relationships with our international partners and US credibility in maintaining and strengthening international agreements to control the spread of nuclear weapons. The chaos, instability, and uncertainty brought about by the President’s ill-considered action makes it much more likely that the only way he can get a change in Iran is by war.

Jeff Colvin is a part-time Gettysburg resident and an active member of Gettysburg Democracy for America. He has spent his professional career as a research physicist, first at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and then at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, the two US nuclear weapons design laboratories.