image: The Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona, Israel is shown. The reactor under the dome (circled above) has produced plutonium for Israel's nuclear weapons, with the plutonium separated from the spent nuclear fuel in an adjoining underground reprocessing plant. view more
Credit: Princeton University
PRINCETON, NJ—The recent nuclear agreement with Iran could serve as a first step toward a Middle East free of nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. There is more that needs to be done, however, according to a recent report issued by the International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM), a group based at Princeton University and made up of nuclear experts from 18 countries.
In order for the Middle East to become a nuclear-weapon free zone, all states in the region – including Iran – would have to agree to steps that permanently reduce the risk of civilian nuclear facilities being used as a cover for secret nuclear-weapons programs. Under such a zone, Israel – the only regional state with nuclear weapons – would have to cease its production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium, the key materials for nuclear weapons. Israel also would have to declare and begin to reduce its current stockpiles, eventually eliminating them.
"Together, these measures would bring about a nuclear weapon-free Middle East and would make that zone more robust when in force," said Frank von Hippel, a founder of the Woodrow Wilson School's Program on Science and Global Security, co-chair of IPFM and professor emeritus of public and international affairs.
The idea of a nuclear weapon-free zone has proven successful in Southeast and Central Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean. In 1974, a Nuclear Weapon Free Zone (NWFZ) in the Middle East was first proposed by Iran and Egypt as an attempt to roll back Israel's nuclear weapons and restrain further proliferation in the region. Since then, all Middle East countries have signed the United Nations' Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), except for Israel.
IPFM estimates that Israel has produced enough plutonium to make on the order of 200 nuclear warheads, assuming each weapon would need four to five kilograms. A nuclear arsenal of this size would be the fifth largest in the world – bigger than Britain's, almost the same size as China's and about two-thirds as big as France's. Israel's plutonium is produced in a reactor housed at the Negev Nuclear Research Center near Dimona (see image). An underground reprocessing plant adjoining the reactor is used to separate the plutonium from the spent nuclear reactor fuel, the report notes.
"By shutting down the Dimona reactor and reprocessing plant, Israel would cap the amount of plutonium that it could use to make nuclear weapons," said Zia Mian, a research scientist with WWS' Program on Science and Global Security. "This could be verified remotely by Israel's neighbors and would be the first step toward regional monitoring by prospective parties of a Middle East Weapons of Mass Destruction-Free Zone."
To reduce the risk of secret nuclear-weapons programs, the report recommends that all states in the region – especially Iran, the only country in the region with civilian uranium enrichment plants and an operating nuclear power reactor – commit to:
- A ban on the separation and use of plutonium;
- A ban on the use of highly enriched uranium as fuel for reactors;
- A limitation on uranium enrichment to the very low levels needed for power reactors;
- No stockpiles of enriched uranium but rather a "just-in-time" system of production; and
- Placing enrichment activities under multi-national control.
"If such measures could be adopted globally, it would significantly strengthen the global nonproliferation regime and the foundation for a nuclear-weapon-free world," said Harold Feiveson, a co-founder of the Program on Science and Global Security who helped draft the NPT treaty.
Several of the above measures were part of the recent November 2013 nuclear deal between Iran and a group of six world powers (the United States, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia). Iran agreed that, for least six months, it would not separate plutonium nor would it build a facility capable of doing so. Iran also agreed that it would not enrich uranium above the 5 percent level used for power reactors, and that it would reduce its stockpile of already enriched uranium. These measures, the report notes, would serve as significant barriers to any Iranian effort using civilian facilities to quickly and secretly produce materials for nuclear weapons.
Although the report does not specifically discuss chemical and biological weapons, the researchers stress the importance of all countries in the region complying with the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and the Biological Weapons Convention. This has become particularly important in light of chemical weapons use in Syria in 2013, and the country's subsequent decision to agree to the CWC, declare its stockpile and destroy its weapons. The researchers say that Egypt and Israel, now the only countries in the region that have not joined the CWC, should follow suit.
To verify that all countries are complying with their commitments, the IPFM report suggests Middle East states consider a regional organization that could supplement the inspection activities of the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, that work respectively to assure that countries are upholding the NPT treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention.
"Such an organization would provide all countries of the region an additional basis for confidence that all their neighbors are complying with the obligations they will undertake by joining a zone free of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction," said Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who has been with the Program on Science and Global Security since 2010 and formerly served as a member of staff to Iran's Supreme National Security Council and as Iran's ambassador to Germany.
This is the 11th report issued by IPFM, and it has also released its seventh Global Fissile Material Report 2013, detailing stocks of nuclear weapons materials held by countries around the world. The Middle East report has been presented at briefings at the United Nations in New York City; Doha, Qatar; Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, Israel; and Amman, Jordan.
The report can be found here: http://fissilematerials.org/library/rr11.pdf
IPFM is co-chaired by von Hippel and Professor R. Rajaraman of Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Its 29 members include nuclear experts from Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, the Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States. Short biographies of the panel members can be found on the IPFM website.
Founded in 1930, the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University is a major international center of advanced training and research in public affairs. The Woodrow Wilson School is an institution with the energy and strength to tackle the most serious issues of the present day, and the vision and experience to prepare the leaders who will shape the public policies of the future.
The International Panel on Fissile Materials (IPFM) was founded in January 2006. It is an independent group of nuclear experts from eighteen countries, including both nuclear weapon and non-nuclear weapon states. The mission of the IPFM is to analyze the technical basis for practical and achievable policy initiatives to secure, consolidate and reduce stockpiles of nuclear-weapons materials, primarily highly enriched uranium and plutonium.