The North Koreans allegedly conducted secret, nearly undetected nuclear tests in 2010. And they almost got away with it. That is, until Lars-Erik De Geer, an atmospheric scientist at the Swedish Defence Research Agency in Stockholm, took a closer look at the monitoring data from Russian and Japanese stations close to North Korea.

Reporting in Nature, Geoff Brunfiel explains that, in May of that year, detectors in South Korean picked up some radioactive xenon which became the topic of discussion three months later at a gathering at the CTBTO. At the time, no one could figure out where the xenon came from. However, De Geer decided to examine the data more closely and, nearly a year later, concluded that the North Koreans had conducted two clandestine nuclear tests – one in April and one in May of 2010.

The appearance of xenon-133 and xenon-133m, according to De Geer, point to the possible tests in mid-April. Barium-140 and decay product lanthanum-140 were detected in May, which De Geer believes indicate a second test. “In Sweden, we saw this kind of thing decades ago from Russian underground tests.”  De Geer’s analysis will appear in the April/May issue of Science and Global Security.

But, not everyone is convinced of De Geer’s findings. Jeffrey Lewis, father of Arms Control Wonk and now director of the East Asia non-proliferation program at the Monterey Institute of International Studies in California and Ola Dahlman, a retired geophysicist who previously worked with the CTBTO, are skeptical that De Geer’s data conclusively point to nuke tests. Both believe that, absent additional data, including seismic data, it is not clear that the presence of xenon means that the tests did occur. Lewis, for example, points to the operation of a number of nuclear power plants in the vicinity of the sensors and which could have been responsible for the presence of xenon.

Nonetheless, the discussion surrounding the xenon detection and other data will no doubt serve to strengthen the network by encouraging analysis of abnormalities and other unexplained evidence picked up by the CTBTO’s sensors.

Members of the National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity, in an article posted on Science’s website on Jan. 30, explain their reasons for asking researchers to omit published details of their work, in which they manipulated the genetic composition of the N1N5 virus to make it transmissible mammal to mammal, through the air. The article is identified as a Policy Forum and is found in the upper right corner of Science’s hot topics/biosecurity webpage.

Meanwhile, Yoshihiro Kawaoka, the leader of the Wisconsin team contributing to the H1N5 work forcefully makes the case for urgently carrying on such work if global pandemics are to be prevented. Some opinion leaders, including the editorial board of the New York Times, have suggested that the work never should have been done in the first place. Besides rebutting that view, Kawaoka also takes exception to the Science Board’s recommendation that the bird flu papers be redacted. He argues that following the recommendation will put a huge administrative burden on the researchers, who will have to communicate omitted details to qualified researchers, without seriously impeding somebody who seriously wanted to manufacture a transmissible flu virus.

Director of National Intelligence chief James Clapper testified today in front of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, on intelligence community conclusions contained in the DNI’s annual Worldwide Threat Assessment.

In unclassified testimony, Clapper stated that Iran is “keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons, in part by developing various nuclear capabilities that better position it to produce such weapons, should it choose to do so. We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. Iran nevertheless is expanding its uranium enrichment capabilities, which can be used for either civil or weapons purposes.”  This conclusion is in marked contrast to what Israeli officials are saying.

Jacqueline Martin, AP

On North Korea, he said that it was too early to tell what Kim Jong Il’s successor, Kim Jong Un, had in store, but that as a proliferator, North Korea was still a threat. Said Clapper, “[North Korea's] export of ballistic missiles and associated materials to several countries, including Iran and Syria, and its assistance to Syria — now ended — illustrate the reach of the North’s proliferation activities. We remain alert to the possibility that North Korea might again export nuclear technology.”  Clapper added that the North Korean nuclear weapons program is a continued threat to global security, though the program is intended for self-defense: “We judge that North Korea would consider using nuclear weapons only under narrow circumstances” and “probably would not attempt to use nuclear weapons against U.S. forces or territory, unless it perceived its regime to be on the verge of military defeat and risked an irretrievable loss of control.”

After the Nuclear Threat Initiative released its Nuclear Materials Security Index, the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis in New Delhi posted a rebuke of sorts by Dr. Ch. Viyyanna Sastry, a Research Fellow, and Rajiv Nayan, a Senior Research Associate, both at the IDSA. In it, Sastry and Nayan allege that the NTI index was released as part of a “hidden agenda” related to the Global threat Reduction Initiative (GTRI), that NTI’s decision not to include radiological materials was arbitrary, refers to its methodology as faulty, and contends that the index reflects a political and Western bias.

Okay.  Fair enough.  In the spirit of democracy, the IDSA and any other think tank or analyst is welcome to comment on, deconstruct or otherwise dissect the NTI’s work.  However, I have a sneaking suspicion it actually comes down to this sentence in the IDSA piece: “It is surprising that the Report places India at the 28th spot in the first list with Vietnam, Iran, Pakistan, and North Korea below it.”

NTI took the time to respond to the IDSA piece, countering that it did indeed consider including radiological materials, but that “While a real threat, radiological sources vary widely in terms of type of materials, nature of application (used by a diverse set of actors and facilities for medical, industrial and research purposes), and the consequences and impact of a dirty bomb attack. As such, they require a substantially different set of security requirements. Because the dirty bomb concern is an analytically different problem, we chose to focus on how to prevent a nuclear terrorism attack using a catastrophic nuclear yield-producing device fueled by dangerous weapons-usable nuclear materials.”

As for the charge of political and Western bias, NTI countered that relied on an independent panel of experts which had “more representation from the non-Western and developing world (e.g., Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, and South Africa) than any other sector to ensure the Index reflected an international point of view. The panel provided extensive input into the framework before data was gathered to ensure its objectivity.”

A little anecdote:  In the mid-1990s, a team from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission traveled to India under the helm of then-Chairman Ivan Selin.  At the time, the technical team found the safety and physical conditions of the nuclear facilities they visited strongly lacking.  Not wanting to offend their hosts, the team held their opinions.  However, Dr. Selin was so alarmed at the condition of the plants that he strongly pressed the head of the technical team to speak candidly about the condition of the nuclear facilities.  Needless to say, the Indian government was not pleased and vowed never again to allow the U.S. government to visit any of their nuclear facilities again. (Sidenote: The rift was not permanent and, after the 1998 test sanctions were lifted, the NRC again visited India and was able to gain access to the unsafeguarded nuclear plant at Chennai, as well as BARC. Yours truly was part of that visit.)

Now, the Indian government is by no means alone in showing technological pride in its innovations – after all, the Indians were cut off from Western nuclear cooperation after 1974 and, as a result, were forced to improvise, creating their own “INDU” reactor, a riff on the Canadian-Deuterium. or CANDU, Reactor given to them by Canada before the weapons test. However, as NTI rightly points out, the Index was created to instigate “a broad and deep conversation about the role of transparency in nuclear materials security…” NTI also adds that “…India and other states can take steps to make public its security regulations (absent sensitive information) and invite meaningful peer reviews.” I would add here that, of the Member States of the IAEA with nuclear power programs, one notable country has never requested a safety review of its facilities. Guess which one?

The creation of a modified H5N1 bird flu virus that can be transmitted through the air mammal-to-mammal has aroused wide consternation; a biosecurity advisory board to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommended the research findings be published only in a redacted form, so that a recipe for the hugely dangerous variant would not circulate widely.

The decisions this week by the Rotterdam and Madison researchers responsible for making the H5N1 virus variant to suspend their research for 60 days, and by Science and Nature magazines honor the HHS recommendation and publish the research in a redacted form, are reassuring but also somewhat disconcerting.

The statement by the Rotterdam and Madison research leaders, co-published online by Science and Nature yesterday, makes an odd impression. Written in a curious hybrid of third-person and first-person narration, it characterizes their research as “critical information that advances our understanding of influenza transmission” and yet recognizes “that we and the rest of the scientific community need to clearly explain the benefits of this important research.” They are declaring a 60 day moratorium on their work, they say, because “organizations and governments around the world need time to find the best solutions for opportunities and challenges that stem from this work.”

Where, one wonders, are the normally outstanding editors of Science and Nature? We don’t find solutions to opportunities, and had an editor firmly pointed this out to the lead researchers, perhaps they would have had to address the real issues raised by their work rather than tiptoe around them. Their statement refers to a “perceived fear that the ferret-transmissible H5HA viruses may escape from the laboratory,” as if this were the only or the main concern. The authors do not, contrary to what The New York Times reported today, refer at all the possibility of somebody maliciously replicating the virus variant and unleashing it on the world.

The discomfiting impression is that the lead researchers just do not get it, and that they have accepted some limited restrictions kicking and screaming. That impression is amplified by what the Rotterdam lead researcher Ron Fouchier told the Times: “It is unfortunate that we need to take this step to stop the controversy in the United States,” he said. “I think if this were communicated better in the United States, it might not have been needed to do this.”

Actually, if the researchers had never publicized their news at all and instead had communicated it confidentially to relevant authorities “it might not have been needed to do this.” Perhaps the researchers could have taken inspiration from a practice common in software engineering, where discovered vulnerabilities are communicated “responsibly,” giving software engineers the opportunity to fix them before they are widely known.

However that may be, somebody should probably tell Dr. Fouchier that the United States has probably the world’s strongest prohibition on “prior restraint” in publishing, and that the principle of no prior restraint is breached only with the greatest reluctance. Over government objections, The New York Times was allowed to publish the Pentagon papers, undermining the case for the Vietnam War, and The Progressive magazine published “The H-Bomb Secret,” despite Cold War paranoia.

One of the articles posted in Science magazine’s H5N1 bird flu package yesterday does a nice job of putting the HHS recommendation in the context of concerns about prior restraint. Putting the current controversy in the context of past cases, constitutional law, and government procedure, John D. Kraemer and Lawrence O. Gostin of Georgetown University emphasize that HHS merely asked Science and Nature to exercise restraint, without ordering them to do so.

A second article makes a strong case that our main focus should be on eradicating the bird flu virus itself, not bioterrorism or laboratory escape. The two studies “are a wake up call,” says Daniel R. Perez, of the University of Maryland’s Department of Veterinary Medicine. “Make no mistake, it is likely that these viruses can emerge in the field.”

If a human-transmittable bird flu virus emerges, will we be able to detect it and counteract it before it starts to wreck havoc? Not likely, say Michael T. Osterholm and Donald A. Henderson. Osterholm, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Minnesota and Henderson, a biosecurity expert at the University of Pittsburgh, highly affected countries like Egypt and Indonesia are not doing a good job of detecting and tracking the existing bird flu virus. So the notion that the Rotterdam-Madison research must be published in every detail to give us the tools to fight a human transmittable virus does not hold water. But “should a highly transmissible and virulent H5N1 influenza virus that is of human making cause a catastrophic pandemic, whether as the result of intentional or unintentional release, the world will hold life sciences accountable for what it did or did not do to minimize that risk.”

The 60-day moratorium is a good start, but there’s every reason to think more time than that will be needed to address the complex issues raised by the modified bird flu virus, as Osterholm told a reporter for Nature. Over-eager and excessively complacent researchers like Fouchier should be ignored, and the world should take as much time as it needs to develop procedures to deal with situations like this one. Meanwhile, as Perez argues and Osterholm and Henderson imply, we need to launch a much more aggressive campaign against the existing unmodified bird flu virus.

In its latest effort to highlight the danger of loose nukes – in this case, weapons-usable nuclear material – the Nuclear Threat Initiative has launched its Nuclear Materials Security Index. The intent, according to NTI co-Chairman, Chief Executive Office and public face of NTI former Senator Sam Nunn, is to provide a “country-by-country assessment of the status of nuclear materials security conditions around the world.” The Index, which identifies North Korea and Pakistan as having the world’s worst overall atomic material security conditions among the universe of 32 nations holding a threshold level of nuclear material, is intended to help pinpoint where the trouble spots are. The threat of nuclear terrorism still exists and the index points out these all countries possessing such materials have work to do, some more than others.

At the top of the heap, the Index ranked Australia the highest of the 32 nations. Hungary and the Czech Republic came in second and third place.  The United States was given a ranking of 13, while the United Kingdom was ranked 10th.  The other remaining acknowledged nuclear powers, France, Russia and China, were respectively ranked 19th, 24th and 27th.

Developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit, the NTI index assesses the 32 states that possess a minimum of 1 kilogram of weapon-usable nuclear material on their overall nuclear protective conditions by looking at five broad factors: quantities and sites; security and control measures; global norms; domestic commitments and capacity; and societal factors. The index also analyzed the nuclear security conditions in 144 other nations that have less than 1 kilogram of weapon-usable material using a subset of conditions such as domestic legislation criminalizing atomic materials smuggling and participation in international nonproliferation agreements. Denmark was in the top spot on that list. Throughout the process, the EIU and NTI were advised by an international panel of experts who included former IAEA Nuclear Security head Anita Nilsson, Carlos Augusto Feu Alvim da Silva, the former head of the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC), and Harvard Belfer Center nuke expert Matthew Bunn.

Speaking at the Index release on January 10th, Nunn said that they found that, while governments were becoming more engaged on nuclear material security, there was not a consensus about what security measures mattered most. He also stated that the Index was not meant to punish the low scorers while praising the high ones. “I want to be clear that the Index is not about congratulating some and chastising others. Instead, it should be used as a tool for initiating discussion, analysis and debate, as well as beginning to help build a consensus. My bottom line: If the world is to succeed in preventing catastrophic nuclear terrorism, all countries can and must do more to strengthen security around the world’s most dangerous materials. The NTI Index challenges governments worldwide to respond to the threat by taking appropriate steps to strengthen security conditions.”

Nunn hopes that the Index will help inform the Nuclear Security Summit process, including the upcoming March meeting in South Korea.

In an Arms Control Association issue brief published on January 4, Greg Thielmann ably makes the case for trying to resolve the Iranian nuclear dilemma by means of old-fashioned diplomacy. The ACA’s introduction to the piece forcefully gets across just how drastically and dangerously U.S.-Iranian relations have deteriorated in the last months:

“At the end of 2011, the U.S. Congress passed new legislation to sanction transactions with the Central Bank of Iran. In response, Iran threatened to close the Strait of Hormuz…. Republican presidential candidates meanwhile charged Iran with everything from building nuclear facilities under mosques to declaring its intent to attack the United States with nuclear weapons. And the Obama administration stated repeatedly that “the military option remains on the table.”

In the meantime, on a slightly more positive note, Defense Secretary Panetta has specified that (only) Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would represent a red line for the United States. And whatever Republican contenders may have been saying, it’s clear the American public wants out of the old wars the country is in and does not want to get into new ones. But today comes news of another assassination in Iran, a sharp reminder that this particular war is not merely a cold one.

Thielmann argues for opening U.S.-Iranian diplomatic channels if only to avoid possibly fatal misunderstandings. Why, if we found it possible to deal with tyrants like Stalin and Mao, he wonders, cannot we deal with the unattractive crowd currently running the show in Tehran?

I have no quarrel with anything Thielmann says here. But let me introduce just two cautionary notes as to the limits of his analysis. First, though his issue brief find many pertinent cautionary tales in the cold war between the Soviet Union and the United States, we should bear in mind that the “real war” (to borrow a phrase from Richard Nixon and Walt Whitman) is not between the United States and Iran but between Iran and Israel. It is not the United States that is assassinating Iranian scientists, condoning such acts, or sabotaging nuclear facilities. Everybody knows it’s Mossad.

So if some real talking is going to take place, Israel needs to be made part of that conversation.

Second, let’s be clear that this is not just a cold war between Israel and Iran. Even during the worst years of the cold war the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union did not openly threaten to literally annihilate each other as living entities. And nor did the two superpowers assassinate each other’s scientists or blow up each other’s factories. What’s going on between Israel and Iran is virtually war, and it’s serious.

Evidently I’m not the only one who found the genetic manipulation of the H5N1 bird flu virus quite frightening. Last Sunday, the New York Times lead editorial was devoted to “An Engineered Doomsday.” The Times takes the view that the research should never have been done at all, suggests that nothing describing it should be published, and that only a small number of laboratories should be given access to the full research results.

“The Erasmus team [that did some of the work] believes that more than 100 laboratories and perhaps 1,000 scientists around the world need to know the precise mutations to look for [so as to detect a spontaneously occurring or maliciously induced transformation of the virus into a form transmissible through the air to humans],” the Times noted. “That would spread the information far too widely. It should suffice to have a few of the most sophisticated laboratories do the analyses.”

I’m inclined to agree with that recommendation, but counterarguments could be made, ironically, on the basis of presentations delivered on Monday at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ Doomsday conference in Washington, D.C. Kathleen Vogel of Cornell University and Marie Chevrier of Rutgers University, both well accredited experts on bioweapons, made the following observations:

• malignant viruses are a lot harder to make than you might think; prior to the bird flu (H5Ni) episode, there was an analogous incident in 2003, which one of the speakers analyzed; it turned out only a handful a hugely specialized labs worldwide had the equipment, personnel and know-how to replicate the malignant virus
• there has been no successful attempt to mass-manufacture a biotoxin: the Japanese cult Aum Shinrikyo signally failed in its efforts to produce anthrax
• nor has there been an attempt to actually commit mass murder with a bioweapon; even the presumed perpetrator of the 2003 anthrax attacks wrote on the envelopes he sent, “Contains anthrax. Take antibiotic.”
•nevertheless, bioweaponry represents a very real and scary threat; biology is now the most popular major among entering college students, because biotech is so hot; it’s the dream of all the smartest and most ambitious entering students to start inventing and fabricating new life forms; some of those students, it is implied, will turn out to be sociopaths
• accordingly, the bioweapons convention talks need to be invested with more urgency

I hope I have all that about right, and I apologize to Vogel and Chevrier if I do not. After eight straight hours of unrelenting doomsday talk, it was hard not be feel doomed and dazed.

Photo: Department of Defense

The notion of asymmetric power–referring generally to the danger of lesser powers resorting to unconventional weaponry and tactics as an answer to the United States’ immense conventional military superiority–has been in vogue among American defense analysts since the first Gulf War; Gulf War II and its aftermath, with the devastating appearance of the Improvised Explosive Device (IED), gave the idea more credence than ever. So it’s important to be clear about the root of that asymmetry. It’s a result not primarily of other countries’ weakness but of the wildly over-built U.S. military and the country’s stubborn belief that it’s still its job to be the world’s policeman.

Despite the end of the Cold War, the irrelevance of a global conflict between capitalism and communism, and the unthinkability of armed conflict between what once were called the world’s two superpowers, U.S. defense spending has increased more than 50 percent since 2000. Although the United States is arguably only the world’s second largest economic power (strictly speaking the European Union is the biggest), the United States spends more on its bloated military complex that the next 10 countries combined.

President Obama made just that point in yesterday’s slightly peculiar Pentagon press briefing, which appears to have been staged to get the top brass used to the idea that defense spending cuts are ahead–and to send a message that team players will be expected to act the part of team players. But the president was not suggesting that U.S. defense spending should now be cut 50 percent and then some, which would be the logical thing to do now that the neo-imperialist fantasies of former Defense Secretary Rumsfeld and former Vice President Dick Cheney have been discredited and repudiated. No, what the president was evidently doing was positioning the military to accept the $450 billion in defense cuts already mandated by the budget supercommittee, and the additional cuts of $500 billion that will have to be made if congressional Republicans and Democrats are unable to agree on alternative spending cuts. Together, those cuts would equate to about 15 percent of the U.S. military budget, as the highly respected defense analyst Lawrence Korb pointed out in an interesting exchange published in the Sunday New York Times’s Review section on Nov. 13 last year.

Korb argued that the United States could easily go further than that, for example by reducing the number of its nuclear warheads from 5,000 to 311, “as recommended by some Air Force strategists” (as he said); reducing the number of aircraft careers and Air Force fighters by 25 percent; and cutting ground forces by 100,000 to pre-9/11 levels.

Readers reacting to Korb pointed out that the United States could in fact go even further than that, for example by ending its quixotic attempt to develop a leak-proof missile defense system, retiring 50 naval ships and scrapping plans to build up to a fleet of 300 ships, dumping plans to replace the current fleet of nuclear missile submarines, and sharply curtailing the “modernization” of U.S. nuclear weapons. (In that connection, here’s another idea not mentioned by those readers: Shutter one of the country’s two nuclear weapons laboratories, either Lawrence Livermore or Los Alamos, and reduce the other’s budget by 75 percent.)

Responding to those readers, Korb said, interestingly, that he basically agreed with them. So what are the prospects of cuts going even further than those resulting from the supercommittee’s mandate? Regrettably, not good.

On the positive side of the ledger, there now seems to be a bipartisan consensus, as The New York Times has pointed out, that defense spending needs to be cut; indeed, the supercommitte’s mandate was an implicit acknowledgement of that consensus. In a poll of its readers the Times published earlier last year, when they were asked where they would most prefer to see U.S. spending reduced, defense spending ranked at the very top. Though some of the Republican presidential candidates have made intemperate remarks about taking military action against Iran, Ron Paul appears to have got considerable traction with his neo-isolationist argument that the U.S. president should first and foremost keep the country out of unnecessary armed conflicts. Whoever the Republican presidential candidate turns out to be, Obama will surely be able to prevail with a position that avoiding new military entanglements will have equal place with preparedness in his second administration.

But on the negative side, there’s no indication that the president is ready or ever will be to confront head-on the country’s military and intelligence establishments, by far the country’s biggest and more fearsome vested interest. It’s hard to imagine that any president will ever have the guts and skill to face that challenge. But until one does, American military asymmetry will continue to provoke other countries to seek an equalizer, whether it’s an old-fashioned nuke or some much more fearsome biological or chemical device.

The IAEA’s confirmation that Iran had a full-fledged nuclear-warhead development program up until 2003 and the agency’s suspicions that come elements of that program have resumed or continued?

The fact that an inexperienced and untested young man may now have his hands on North Korea’s nuclear football, with the country’s leadership determined as ever not to suffer the fate of East Germany’s?

The near collapse of relations between the United States and Pakistan, which is making nuclear weapons faster than any other country even as it hovers on the brink of being a failed state?

No, for this blogger’s money, the scariest story of all in 2011 came at the very end of the year, with the news that the bird flu virus had been genetically modified–without a great deal of effort, evidently in just a handful of steps–so that the germ now could be transmitted from one mammal to another as an aerosol.

Back in the good old days, when it was generally assumed that those possessing weapons of mass destruction would not dare use them if their use were self-destructive, the bird flu news would not have been especially alarming.

But we no longer live in those good old days, and it’s not just a matter of Islamist suicide bombing. There have been other sects proclaiming apocalyptic visions, notably Japan’s Aum Shinrikyo. Suicidal Islamists may be misguided but their attitudes and passions are not unintelligible. Aum Shinrikyo was truly irrational–and yet it attracted highly skilled technologists into its ranks, it sought weapons of mass destruction, and it did not shy away from self-destructive acts.

The bird flu news was scary enough to prompt Science magazine to reluctantly depart from its normal policy and seriously consider, at governmental urging, withholding  some of the details of how exactly the virus was genetically modified. “Editors at the journal Science are taking very seriously a request by the U.S. National Security Advisory Board,” they said

As for this humble blogger, he was immediately reminded of a noted paper the Stanford historian David Holloway published in the late 1970s about “the dogs that did not bark”: Holloway, working on a history of the Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons program under Stalin, found that it was the decision of western scientists to stop publishing atomic research in the early 1940s that tipped Soviet scientists off to the fact that a nuclear weapons development program–the Manhattan Project–was being launched.

The scary thing about the airborne bird flu virus is not merely that it can be made and has been made, but that millenarian fanatics now know it can be done and has been done. The National Security Advisory Board’s request and Science’s reaction confirm the gravity of the bird flu development.

In a follow up to yesterday’s post, I have come across a piece in Time Magazine by Eben Harrell of Harvard’s Belfer Center. In it, Harrell discusses the thriving nuclear export business Kim John Il established during his reign in which he allegedly provided equipment for fissile materials production and missile technology to countries such as Syria and Iran. Such links are evidenced by, for example, the fact that the Al-Kibar reactor bombed by the Israelis closely resembled the North Korean plutonium reactor at Pyongyang.

With information from North Korean defectors, the Harrell piece also provides an interesting nugget of information about how the illicit export network allegedly functions.

AFP/Getty

“What’s not clear is how much this network relied on support or at least authorization from Kim Jong Il. But reports from North Korean defectors once involved in the tripartite proliferation network suggest it is highly sophisticated and involves many different layers of officialdom. It may work something like this: North Korean state trading companies working directly for the DPRK regime set up branch offices in mainland China. These companies contract private Chinese firms to send purchase orders to the local subsidiaries of European industrial machinery companies, who have set up shop in China specifically to cash in on China’s growing domestic market.  These domestic orders, of course, are not subject to export controls, so without knowing it, western subsidiaries sell dual-use technology — industrial tool and dye equipment, for example — directly to private Chinese firms, who then use their established routes to transport the goods to North Korea. In terms of sales, North Korea state trading companies are also contracting private Chinese firms to move sensitive goods through Southeast Asia (including Myanmar) and on to clients in the Middle East.”

Harrell concludes by emphasizing that the potential vacuum created by Kim Jong Il’s death should prod the West to stop the DPRK’s illicit nuclear trade network once and for all.  As I noted yesterday, one can only hope that the regime change indeed provides some opportunity for breakthrough in the ongoing impasse on the Korean Peninsula.

REUTERS/Petar Kujundzic/Files

With the sudden demise of “Dear Leader” and cult personality/despot Kim Jong Il several days ago, all eyes have turned to his hand-picked successor, Kim Jong Un. While his father had the benefit of nearly twenty years of preparation for his role as megalomaniacal leader, Kim Jong Un has not. This has troubled analysts who rightly point out that the young gun Un now theoretially has his hand on the North Korean nuclear trigger. Elaine Grossman at Global Security Newswire puts a fine point on it. She notes that, while the U.S. and Russia have a “nuclear football” designed to launch nukes from a remote location, “It is not known whether there was any comparable mobile command capability for the North Korean despot. More broadly, questions remain about whose finger can now access the veritable trigger over the nation’s deliverable weapons — if there are any.” Elaine adds that Kim Jong Il’s sudden passing has “…thrust Kim Jong Un, believed to be in his late 20s, into a new leadership role without the benefit of much experience. Whether he has inherited immediate control over North Korea’s possible small handful of nuclear weapons is one among many pressing questions on the minds of Korean Peninsula experts and governments around the world.”

According to Asia specialist Bruce Klingner of the Heritage Foundation in Washington, “Kim Jong Un is a pale reflection of his father and grandfather. He has not had the decades of grooming and securing of a power base that Jong Il enjoyed before assuming control from his father”. Said Victor Cha, former Asia affairs chief at the U.S. National Security Council, “The most likely scenario for regime collapse has been the sudden death of Kim (Jong Il). We are now in that scenario.” In the December 19th piece in the WaPo by Joby Warrick, Cha added that “there’s really no situation worse than this: to have the most opaque regime with nuclear weapons and without a clear leader….It doesn’t get more dangerous than that”

Citing a 2009 piece by the International crisis Group, Elaine also highlights the fact that Kim Jong Il exerted very tight control over his country’s nuclear assets in a very “personal and centralized system” such that, should he be unable to lead, could “create instability and uncertainty.” Add to this the fact that the fact that Pyongyang is estimated as having enough fissionable material for 6-10 warheads, and you have the makings of a troublesome scenario.

The big question is whether the change in leaders opens up the potential for more fruitful six party talks. Given the extreme secretiveness of the regime – after all, we didn’t even know of Kim Jon Il’s passing until two days after it happened – and its penchant for dramatic flourishes (images of the deceased leader in his big glass box surrounding by “Kimjongilia” flowers), the next several days will be critical is trying to establish what the regime of the young Un will look like and whether or not is will present any opportunities for a breakthrough on the Korean peninsula.

ICG Piece on DPRK

As reported last week in the New York Times, South Korea is seeking renegotiation of a 1974 treaty that bars it from acquiring spent nuclear fuel reprocessing or uranium enrichment plants–so-called “fuel cycle facilities” that can be used both to support a nuclear energy sector or an atomic weapons program. At the time the treaty was adopted, the right-wing authoritarian South Korean government was understood to have some interest in developing nuclear weapons, and so the treaty was implicitly intended to block that path.
Today, the democratic South Korean government’s ostensible rationale for wanting to reprocess spent nuclear fuels is to help deal with a seemingly intractable spent fuel disposal problem. But, as Princeton’s Frank von Hippel explained in an analytic article last year, the notion that reprocessing solves the waste disposal problem is dubious to begin with, and in South Korea’s case there is an obvious alternative.
Of course, like other countries that have intently sought fuel cycle facilities in the past–Germany, Japan, Brazil, to name the most significant–it is implicitly understood in South Korea that such facilities could open the road to a nuclear weapons program. At a time when North Korea has gone nuclear in defiance of concerted international efforts to stop it, having that fall-back nuclear weapons capability must be widely considered not such a bad thing in South Korean governmental circles.
In light of what clearly is a genuine North Korean threat, it would be better in principle if the case against South Korean reprocessing could be argued strictly in terms of energy, as that may be the more effective argument. But given that revision of a 1974 treaty is involved, inevitably the United States will have to make its case on the basis of arms control–and that means it ultimately may have to give in.
If it did, how would the South Korean situation be different from Iran’s, where the United States and the other great powers are taking an ultra-hard line. There are two obvious differences, and they are huge. First, South Korea is pursuing fuel cycle facilities openly, whereas Iran has concealed its efforts whenever it could, in flagrant violation of Nonproliferation Treaty obligations. Second, Iran had an active and comprehensive program to actually develop nuclear weapons, and some elements of that program may be ongoing; if South Korea ever had such a program, it was in an altogether different era and under a different regime.

As the clock ticks, it appears Israel will have to pick between two frightful scenarios; attack Iran or live with a nuclear Iran and the constant fear of annihilation.

This choice crossed my mind during a recent trip to Israel. While at the ancient fortress of Masada overlooking the Dead Sea, the tour guide proclaimed that Masada is one of the Jewish people’s greatest symbols. Israeli soldiers sometimes use it for training and they are known to take an oath there: “Masada shall not fall again.”

Therefore, knowing the Israeli’s and their history, it wouldn’t be a surprise if they eventually pick option one.

If they do, and theoretically war does breaks out [but lets hope it doesn’t], it will undoubtedly be a missile and air force fight. Therefore, it makes logical sense to scrutinize the weaponry/capability on both sides.

AIR FORCE: edge: Israel
Fighters/bombers are the main aircraft that would likely be used. Israel has a range of Lockheed Martin F-16s and Boeing’s F-15. Israel has ordered Lockheed’s F-35 and the sale has been approved by the US Congress. However, it was announced yesterday [12 December] that the Israeli air force is upgrading its Lockheed Martin F-16C/D jets amid growing concerns the delivery of 20 of the US F-35 stealth fighters will be delayed past 2017.

Israel also has a large UAV arsenal. It was reported in November that the Israeli’s largest unmanned aircraft, Eitan, is scheduled to begin operations within several months after eight years in development. Eitan was developed in order to reach Iran and Sudan.

Iran, on the other hand, has a number of F-14’s, Dassault Mirage F1s and MIG29s. However, the issue of spare parts and replacement equipment has hit them hard.

Iran was supposedly negotiating with Russia to buy 250 Sukhoi Su-30 “Flanker” fighter-bombers in 2007, but it is believed that this deal never took place.

MISSILES: edge: neither

Neither country can be seen as having an edge in this particular war.

Iran has made great strides in its missile technology. In October 2010, Iran carried out an unannounced test of its Sejil-2 missile, sometimes known as the “Ashura.” The Sejil is a solid propellant missile with a range of approximately 2,000 kilometers (1,200 miles). It was first flown successfully in November 2008. In February of this year, Iran successfully tested a modified Shahab-3, a liquid-fueled missile based on the North Korean Taepodong series. It reportedly has a range of approximately 900 kilometers, bringing northern Israel into Iran’s range.

One recent blow to Iran’s missile program came in November when General Hasan Moghaddam, a commander of the Revoluntary Guard and missile expert was killed in an explosion at an ammunition depot west of Tehran.

Nevertheless, the threat to launch “150,000 or more” missiles if Iran was attacked, was delivered to army volunteers by Iranian Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi on 11 December. Iranian officials have also threatened retaliation against Turkey’s NATO installation, should an attack on Iran take place. For more information, see the International Institute for Strategic Studies Iran’s Ballistic Missile Capabilities: A net assessment.

Meanwhile, Israel is reportedly deploying its own Jericho missiles around Jerusalem and in the West Bank. It may be a military drill to test a new engine for the long-range Jericho III design. Its specifications are classified, but military experts believe the Israeli missile to be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to any destination in the Middle East, most of Europe, North America and Africa.

Ballistic missiles are one thing, but the ground to air missile capability would play an equally crucial role in this war.

Iran has in its possession Russia’s S-300 Russian ground-to-air radar systems. The S-300 is considered one of the world’s most versatile radar-missile systems and can simultaneous track hundreds of semi-stealth cruise missiles, long-range missiles and aircraft, including airborne monitoring jets. According to military sources, as many as ten intruders can be simultaneously engaged. For more on Iran’s defense strategies, see the report by Meepas, an independent political and economic analysis company.

Israel recently teamed up with Greece, who also has the S-300, to obtain information on how to defeat Iran’s radar system. Israel flew a number of its jets into the S-300’s massive electronics and was able to record details about defeating, jamming and circumventing the potent radar system. The exercise was appropriately called “Glorious Spartan.”

Israel itself has the assistance of NATO’s early warning radar station in Turkey, which is there to protect the Jewish State against Iranian missile attacks. Ankara agreed to host the radar in September as part of NATO’s missile defense system aimed at countering ballistic missile threats from neighboring Iran.

However, Israel recently revealed more details about its own air defense systems when it hosted international journalists in May. This included a closer look at its Iron Dome anti-rocket missile defense system. Israel also has the Arrow system, which came about via President Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars program. Israel assisted in the research and development effort, and the latest Arrow 2 air defense system can intercept missiles at a high altitude according to air defense standards. The Arrow 2 can cover major parts of Israel, but the more advanced and sophisticated Arrow 3 is currently being developed.

Senior Israeli military officers described a “new era” in defense, now that rockets and missiles have become the “main effort” of Israel’s enemies and the civilian population is on the front line.

PURE SIZE- edge: Iran
Israel is only 8,000 sq miles and could fit into Florida eight times. Compare this to Iran’s area of 636,374 square miles and we see a real difference here. Iran is only 4% smaller than Alaska.

NUCLEAR CAPABILITY- edge: Israel
The one way to take down a bigger enemy is with a bigger weapon and that is what Israel possesses. According to Jane’s Defense Weekly, Israel has between 100 and 300 nuclear warheads, but most guesses are between 60 and 400.

The Israeli military possess land, sea and air methods to deploy their nuclear weapons. This includes, tactical aircraft, submarine launched cruise missiles and ICBMs.

COMBAT READINESS- edge: Israel
Israel is by far the most combat ready country in the region. It has been involved in numerous campaigns including the 2007 Israeli fighter-bomber attack on a suspected nuclear installation in Syria.

The last real operation launched by the Iranian air force was during the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s.

BIG QUESTION MARKS:
The area size factor alone is enough to prove the point that Israel cannot attack Iran by itself. It would simply not be able to inflict enough damage unless it uses nuclear weapons, and it wouldn’t dare cross that line.

Yiftah Shapir, director of the Military Balance Project at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies argues that Israel is “far from capable of disabling the Iran nuclear program. That would take at least a month of sustained bombing. That’s not something Israel can carry out alone.”

With that in mind and if this war breaks out, will America be Israel’s only ally? The UK? Saudi Arabia? And on Iran’s side? The vast majority of the Middle East?

This also leads to a whole of host of questions:

• Could the Israelis attack over Iraqi airspace? Will Turkey allow them to use theirs? What if Iran bombs the NATO installation? Would Turkey allow them then? How about Saudi airspace? They said they would in the past.
• What role would US have in the Iranian attacks? Where will they be launched from? The Qatari emir has said the U.S. will not be allowed to use its military base in the tiny Gulf state in a military conflict with Iran, the Financial Times reported.
• Would Hezbollah and Hamas strike Israel along with Iran?
• What role would China and Russia play, as they are now claiming they will protect Iran if they are attacked?
• Roughly 27,000 US forces are deployed at an array of bases and sites throughout the Gulf, along with a 50,000-strong contingent in Iraq and thousands more aboard naval ships, a US military official told AFP. How can Washington reassure their allies (Qatar, UAE, Oman etc) that they will be protected from Iran?
• Will those countries’ allow the US military to continue to use their air bases? Over flight rules? Access to strategic water routes?

No one wants this war, but it seems to becoming closer and closer as long as Iran continues with their nuclear ambitions. It would be a war filled with an unthinkable amount of human causalities and it would destroy the world’s economy.

Lets hope the continued bilateral and multilateral dialogue and diplomacy proves effective. But in the very end, Israel is the only who can determine what is best for its safety and security.