When doctors trace the history of an epidemic, they often look to find “patient zero,” the first to catch the disease before it spreads. No doctor worth his salt, however, would ever suggest that epidemics, be they Ebola, MERS, SARS, or influenza, spontaneously and simultaneously start in different countries and only spread within a state’s artificial political boundaries.
So it might also be with proliferation. It was Pakistani nuclear scientist A.Q. Khan who provided blue prints for a nuclear weapon to Libya, North Korea, and Iran. The ‘Axis of Evil’ may have been a rhetorical flourish, but at its heart, there was a core of truth, at least when it came to the interplay between North Korea and Iran.
The deal struck between the P5+1 and Iran spells out an inspections regime for declared nuclear facilities inside Iran. Analysts and non-proliferation specialists can debate the effectiveness of that inspections regime, but what they all must acknowledge is that it is limited to the territory of the Islamic Republic. To assume, however, that Iranian scientists will only be based inside Iran is naïve. In 2007, an Israeli airstrike destroyed a covert Syrian nuclear site. Whether Syria received assistance from North Korea and/or Iran may be unclear, but what is known is that it did not build its program indigenously.
That raises the question of cooperation. And if cooperation occurs, for example, between Tehran and Pyongyang, Tehran and Damascus, or, for that matter, between Tehran and Khartoum, it would be foolish to assume that laboratory experiments and small scale facilities must be located in the Islamic Republic of Iran itself. After all, not every nuclear site is Bushehr, Natanz, or Fordo; many facilities are just as effective but much smaller.
Perhaps the Iranian government will uphold the letter of the agreement and not conduct illicit research and experimentation inside Iran itself, but it would be very easy to conduct the same work off-site. Given how North Korea’s primary interest is cold, hard cash, how convenient it must be for Iran not only to have the off-site loophole remain wide open, but also look forward to a $100 billion windfall to purchase continued proliferation cooperation.
from AEI » Latest Content http://ift.tt/1LB6E9q
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