Intelligence information alerted us to the Kalaye Electric Company, a workshop on the southern outskirts of Tehran where the Iranians had tested a small number of centrifuges of the same model as those at Natanz. Kalaye was not a declared nuclear workshop. Our Iranian counterparts assured us that only “simulation studies” had taken place there and that no nuclear material had been used in these simulations. If this was true, then they were within their rights not to have reported it to the IAEA. But how could we be certain if we were not permitted to verify their assertion? We were caught in the classic catch-22 of the NPT: the Iranians had not declared the Kalaye Electric Company in their safeguards agreements, therefore we were not authorized to inspect it, absent some clear nexus to nuclear material. This was the primary loophole that had led to the invention of the Additional Protocol, but Iran had not signed on to the Protocol.
We decided to call Iran’s bluff. Noting Tehran’s public and private commitments to full transparency in its dealings with the IAEA, we asked the Iranians to allow us to visit Kalaye. We also asked for permission to take environmental samples.
The response came grudgingly, piecemeal. Iran gave Agency inspectors access to Kalaye but refused to allow samples to be taken. Eventually they relented, and inspectors were permitted to return and take environmental samples using “swipes”—small squares of cloth wiped over selected surfaces. The inspectors noted that the facility had been modified considerably in the months since their first visit and worried that the changes might affect the accuracy of their analysis. But when the swipes were analyzed in Member State laboratories (using double-blind samples to mask the origin), the results were definitive: the spectrum of enriched uranium particles in the samples demonstrated that nuclear material had been used in the centrifuge testing. Iran was caught, dead to rights.
Little by little the story began to change. Despite the AEOI’s claims that their centrifuge program was indigenous, IAEA centrifuge experts observed a strong resemblance to European designs. When confronted with the results of samples that had also been taken from the pilot centrifuge facility at Natanz—which showed the presence of low-enriched and high-enriched uranium particles—the AEOI said that components had been imported from abroad, and speculated that the particles had come from contaminated parts. In fact, we would find that nearly all of Iran’s centrifuge technology had been imported from other countries.
The question of whether Iran’s centrifuges had or had not been indigenously produced was important. The answer, one way or the other, would give the Agency information that we sorely needed. If Iran had produced the centrifuges domestically, it would have implied a far more elaborate R&D operation than was acknowledged, almost certainly including testing with nuclear material. If, on the other hand, Iran had imported all the parts, it implied that another country or countries had supplied the technology.
Undeclared nuclear material was also showing up. Stocks of natural uranium imported from China were discovered at the Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Laboratories (JHL) at the Tehran Nuclear Research Center. Neither the material nor the JHL had previously been reported to the IAEA. Much of this uranium had been converted into uranium metal, a form that has relatively few peaceful nuclear applications. Three cylinders of uranium gas in the form of UF6—the feedstock for enrichment—were found in storage; one of the smaller cylinders was found to be missing gas. The Iranian counterparts said it must have leaked.
I realized early on that we were dealing with people who were willing to deceive to achieve their goals and that we should not accept any attestation without physical verification. Of course, verification is a central tenet of IAEA inspection under any circumstance, but it was doubly critical in this case because of the deception that, disturbingly, had been endorsed and carried out at the highest levels of the Iranian government. As recently as May 2003, Aghazadeh had given a speech to the diplomatic missions in Vienna in which he had denied, categorically, that Iran had used any nuclear material in its centrifuge testing.
Each of the senior Iranian leaders I had met—President Khatami; Aghazadeh; Mehdi Karroubi, the speaker of the Majlis; and Ali Akbar Rafsanjani, the former president of Iran and the current head of the Guardian Council—had insisted that Iran’s nuclear program was exclusively intended for peaceful purposes. They had spoken with eloquence and conviction, their impeccably starched white shirts and well-tailored robes lending their delivery an air of sophistication and piety. Each had come across as well briefed and knowledgeable about the details of the enrichment program.
Rafsanjani, whom I met at his palace[6] and who seemed the savviest politician of the group, had spoken passionately: “I have seen so many of our people killed with chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq War. I cannot be the one advocating dialogue among civilizations and at the same time developing nuclear weapons.”
I was told by a number of people, including President Mubarak of Egypt, that according to Shi’ite theology it is sometimes acceptable to deceive for the right cause. The concept is called taqqiya, meaning to protect oneself or those under one’s care from harm. I made it clear to our Iranian counterparts that regardless of the origins of this behavior, their denials and ongoing cover-ups had deeply hurt their credibility with the international community. From the outset, they had dug a hole that would undermine their own diplomatic endeavors, what I referred to as starting out with a confidence deficit.
Yet even after being confronted with evidence proving their deception, the Iranians did not seem particularly embarrassed. They pointed to a long history of what they considered double dealings on the part of the West. In the era of the shah, Iran had announced plans to build twenty-three large nuclear power reactors, with the vocal support of the United States, Germany, France, and others. In 1975, a contract was signed with Kraftwerk Union, a German firm, to build the first plant at Bushehr. Iran also acquired a 10 percent share of Eurodif, a multinational company operating a uranium enrichment plant in France. But after the 1979 revolution, everything changed. Kraftwerk Union refused to continue constructing the Bushehr facility. The United States cut off Iran’s supply of research reactor fuel. France also refused to provide Iran with any more enriched uranium, despite multiple attempts and despite Iran’s share in Eurodif.
Given their history, the Iranians insisted that their actions had been justified. Peaceful nuclear science and technology remained central to Iran’s national goals. They needed a fuel cycle, they argued, because they did not have fuel suppliers from abroad other than the Russians, whom they regarded as not always reliable and who were charging them excessive prices. As for their past secrecy, they were adamant that it had been indispensable: the sanctions imposed on them by the United States and its allies prohibited any import of nuclear-related items, including peaceful nuclear technology. Despite operating under the radar, they had paid double, triple, or more for the technology and materials they had purchased from abroad. Keeping the program secret for as long as possible had been, they insisted, a necessary measure.
In diplomatic circles, back in Vienna, the Americans did not want to consider the Iranian arguments—despite having themselves been in the driver’s seat of the effort to isolate Iran for more than two decades. The fact that Iran had lied was, in their view, proof positive that Tehran intended to produce nuclear weapons. This conclusion was, of course, entirely premature in terms of the verification process; what the IAEA needed was hard evidence. But the U.S. statements of certainty regarding Iran’s nuclear weapon intentions soon began to be echoed by others in the West. Many representatives of developing countries were, by contrast, more sympathetic to Iran’s need to go underground to evade the sanctions.