It is now more than a month after the horrific destruction of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan. As U.S. bombing of Afghanistan continues, few observers doubt that President Bush will hesitate to pursue a wider war should the investigation of Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terror network turn up evidence linking other governments with the events of September 11. At the top of the suspects’ list is Iraq. Already conservatives within the administration and in Congress have reportedly urged the president to “take out” Saddam Hussein once and for all, whether or not incriminating evidence is forthcoming. Others in the administration, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and Vice-President Dick Cheney, have been more cautious.1
Still, the crisis threatens to deepen. The Bush administration appears poised for expanded military action. For this reason it behooves us to explore the possible consequences, particularly whether a renewed military campaign against Iraq could trigger a wider war involving weapons of mass destruction. I will selectively review the pertinent literature on Saddam Hussein’s military capabilities, vis-à-vis the United States, Israel and other states in the region.
DOES IRAQ HAVE THE BOMB?
There is some evidence that Saddam Hussein revived his nuclear weapons program following the 1998 ouster of U.N. weapons inspectors.2 Unfortunately, in October 2001 the key question, does Iraq have the bomb, remains unanswerable. Earlier this year two alarming but so far unconfirmed reports appeared in the London press, the first in January in the London Telegraph. The story quoted an unnamed source, allegedly a defector from Iraqi’s nuclear bomb program, who asserted that Iraq possesses two “fully operational” weapons.3
A more substantial report appeared in February in the London Times. The story alleged that Saddam Hussein clandestinely acquired as much as 50 kilograms of highly enriched uranium in 1988 and tested an underground nuclear device on September 19, 1989.4 Three different sources were cited in the article. All claimed to be former Iraqi scientists. Allegedly the test went undetected because the device was small, on the order of 10 kilotons, and because it was positioned in an evacuated cavern beneath Lake Rezzaza, southwest of Baghdad. The cavern supposedly muffled the blast. The same technique, known as “decoupling,” was developed by the United States and may have been used by Israel to conceal one or more nuclear tests in the Negev desert in 1966.5
The sources quoted in the Times said that Iraq obtained the fissile uranium from South Africa, which pursued the uranium enrichment path to the bomb at its Valindaba plant between 1978 and early 1990. The plant was closed in 1990 following President F.W. de Klerk’s historic 1989 decision to dismantle South Africa’s bomb program. According to the Times, the alleged diversion was substantiated by a former South African intelligence officer, who stated that the material reached Baghdad by way of Brazil. One of the Iraqi sources also insisted that Saddam Hussein currently has nine nuclear weapons stored in a repository in the Hemrin Mountains north of Baghdad.6
I reiterate that these reports remain unconfirmed. Indeed, the story in the Times was disputed by Terry Wallace, a geophysicist at the University of Arizona, who undertook a seismological analysis.7 When Wallace compared the available seismic signals from Iraq with data from U.S. decoupling experiments, he found that the seismic data from Iraq was not consistent with a nuclear test. Weak seismic waves were present, but “from an event so tiny that it is difficult to determine its location accurately.”8 Wallace explained the difference between man-made waves and those generated by earthquakes: “In U.S. decoupling experiments the seismic signals always showed very large primary-to-secondary amplitude ratios at high frequencies, a powerful tool for discriminating between explosions and earthquakes. The phases in this case all clearly had both [primary and secondary] wave energy and significant high-frequency [secondary] energy, which would indicate a natural earthquake source.”9
Wallace could not rule out a fizzled test. But he noted that a cavern under a lake is a poor choice for a secret nuclear test site, because the overpressures from such a blast would almost certainly collapse the lake bed, causing a sudden drop in the water level: an obvious signature of a test. Wallace believes the story was a hoax.10 And this appears to be the view of most western intelligence experts. When I discussed the Times report with Frank Barnaby, the former nuclear-weapons designer suggested that the 1989 event might have been a radiological bomb.11 Such weapons require less fissile uranium, and never achieve a sustained chain reaction; hence no nuclear explosion. They do release large amounts of deadly radiation. Such a bomb might be attractive to a state with a shortfall of fissile material.
But even if the Times report is false, the possibility remains that Iraq may soon acquire, or has already acquired, enriched uranium or plutonium. The danger of a diversion is very real. The existence of a nuclear black market has been known since the 1980s. And the problem became much more serious after the end of the Cold War. In the years following the breakup of the former Soviet Union, there have been hundreds of reported cases of attempted smuggling of fissile materials from former communist states. In one year alone, 1994, the number of cases doubled.12 Moreover, as with drug smuggling, it is safe to assume that for every known case, numerous others go unreported. As early as 1994, Sam Nunn, then chairman of the U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, called the smuggling of nuclear materials “the primary security challenge not only for the United States, but the world.”13
The matter is especially urgent in the case of Iraq, which faces few other remaining barriers to the bomb. Scott Ritter, a former U.N. Special Commission (UNSCOM) weapons inspector in Iraq, warned in 1998 that Iraq has the components for three “implosion-type devices, minus the fissile material.”14 Numerous other experts have expressed similar views.15 Should Iraq succeed in acquiring sufficient plutonium or enriched uranium, the government of Saddam Hussein could probably produce a nuclear weapon within months, perhaps weeks. It is in this context that the recent reports in the London press, as well as the likelihood of intensified U.S. military action against Iraq, must be evaluated.
WHY DID IRAQ NOT USE CHEMICAL WEAPONS DURING THE GULF WAR?
At the onset of the Gulf War, Western intelligence experts were convinced that Iraq was still years away from a usable nuclear weapon. The same experts believed that Iraq already had deployed chemical and possibly biological weapons. No one doubted that Saddam Hussein would use them.16 The prewar assessment about chemical weapons was later confirmed. Massive stockpiles of Iraqi chemical munitions survived the U.S. bombing campaign.17 But Iraq never used its chemical weapons. A declassified Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) document reported that analysis of Scud impact points uncovered no traces of chemical-warfare agents or their decomposition products.18 The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agreed and also found no evidence of the use of biological weapons.19
Israeli officials reported similar findings. None of the Scud attacks on Israel involved weapons of mass destruction. All the Scuds had been armed with conventional ordnance.20 The matter of why Iraq refrained from using the chemical and biological weapons in its arsenal is one of the intriguing questions to emerge from the war.
Some analysts speculated that the Iraqis had not yet mastered the fuse technology needed to detonate chemical warheads. Apparently, the successful delivery of a chemical agent is not a simple matter. For a chemical warhead to function properly, it must dispense the liquid agent in an aerosol form in the moments prior to impact. This is accomplished by means of a specially designed fuse located in the nose of the warhead. These proximity fuses must withstand the missile’s high terminal speed, nearly one mile per second, and the substantial heat build-up, shock and vibration of descent. The fuse charge must also breach the warhead casing without destroying the small load of toxic liquid. If any part of the fuse fails to work properly, dispersal of the chemical agent will not occur within the critical time period, and the toxic liquid will be destroyed or absorbed on impact.21
A very different sort of explanation was given by Husayn Kamil, Saddam Hussein’s brother-in-law and former chief of Iraqi nuclear-biological-chemical weapons development. Kamil stated in August 1995, after defecting to the West, that Iraqi officials were deterred from using chemical weapons by fears that the United States would respond with tactical nukes.22
An interesting twist on this question of deterrence was recently given in congressional testimony by Charles Duelfer, a former UNSCOM official. In his remarks before the House International Relations Committee on October 4, 2001 (less than a month after the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center), Mr. Duelfer stated that in his many discussions with Iraqi citizens during his UNSCOM tour of duty in Baghdad, he found that all Iraqis, from high government officials to the man on the street, were convinced that Iraq’s chemical weapons had deterred the coalition forces from advancing on Baghdad.23 And – who knows – those taxi drivers in Baghdad may well be correct. Deterrence probably worked both ways. By holding chemical weapons in reserve, Saddam Hussein survived to fight another day. This would certainly explain Saddam’s determination to acquire weapons of mass destruction, at any price.
THE SCUD MISSILE
Although the Iraqi Scud missile has the capability to deliver chemical, biological and nuclear warheads, the conventionally armed Scuds fired at Israel and coalition forces during the Gulf War caused few casualties. Aside from its dubious value as a terror weapon, the conventionally armed Scud proved ineffective from a military standpoint. So unimpressed was the U.S. field commander General Norman Schwarzkopf that he contemptuously told the press that a coalition soldier had “a greater chance of being struck by lightning in south Georgia than of being hit by a Scud in Riyadh.”24
The Scud’s lackluster performance was due, in part, to Iraqi modifications to the Scud design, which were intended to increase the range of the missile. These alterations did succeed in extending the Scud’s range quite substantially, in fact, but also caused flight-instability problems. Unlike more modern ballistic missiles, the Scud warhead does not detach from the body of the missile after the boost phase (the period when the rocket motor fires and accelerates the missile). The missile body reenters the atmosphere still attached to the warhead. The modifications made the missiles unstable and often caused them to disintegrate before impact. Such break-ups seriously degraded accuracy and overall performance.25
But the Scud’s poor showing during the Gulf War should be no cause for complacency. Iraq has an abundance of scientists and skilled technicians to work on these kinds of problems and has had a decade in which to do so. We know, for example, that during the 1990s, Iraq sought and probably acquired advanced gyroscopes and guidance systems from cash-starved Russia.26 It is therefore reasonable to suppose that in a future war, Iraqi missiles will not simply fall into the desert or break up in flight. We should expect Scud performance to improve significantly.
”THE GREAT SCUD HUNT”
It is interesting that the so-called “Master Attack Plan” developed by coalition forces prior to the Gulf War ignored Iraq’s mobile Scud-missile launchers because they were deemed strategically insignificant and too difficult to attack.27 Consistent with his low opinion of the Scud, General Schwarzkopf believed that he had more important things to worry about.
The flaw in this strategy became glaringly evident in the first days of the war, when Baghdad began lobbing Scuds at Israel from the western desert. Overnight, the mobile Scuds became a source of grave concern. Washington feared that a chemical-weapons attack on Tel Aviv would trigger a massive Israeli retaliation that would shatter the solidarity of the anti-Iraq coalition. No doubt, though he stopped short of using chemical weapons, this was precisely – and predictably – Saddam Hussein’s intention.
On orders from Washington, the coalition immediately changed gears and mounted an ad hoc campaign to seek out and destroy the Iraqi mobile Scud launchers in western Iraq. It had no great success in doing so. The campaign developed into a cat-and-mouse affair that appears to have been won decisively by the Iraqis. During the 43 days of the war, coalition aircraft flew approximately 1,500 sorties against the mobile launchers yet were unable to confirm a single kill.28 Coalition air crews did report the destruction of about 80 mobile launchers. Another score or so were claimed by special-operations forces, but not one of the claimed kills was actually confirmed. An official post-war survey concluded that .”. . . most, if not all, of the objects involved now appear to have been decoys or vehicles such as tanker trucks with infrared and radar signatures that are impossible to distinguish from mobile launchers. Few mobile Scud launchers were actually destroyed.”29 This sober assessment was cited in a later report with the added words, “Luckily, the Iraqi Scuds were inaccurate and carried only conventional ordnance.”30
The primary reason for the ineffectiveness of the air campaign was the lack of a “real time” intelligence-response capability. Time and again the position of a Scud launcher would be reported by a coalition spotter either from the ground or the air. And time and again the launcher would escape into the desert before strike aircraft could arrive on the scene. During the course of the war, U.S.-led forces never did succeed in overcoming the mobility of the Iraqi Scud launchers. Scud attacks continued throughout the war.
This outcome helps to explain the imposition after the war of the no-fly zones. Despite the rhetoric about protecting the Kurds in the north and the Shiites in the south – and events proved this to be just rhetoric – it appears the zones were imposed to “box” Saddam into central Iraq, thus preventing him from posing a threat to Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Israel. The zones enabled the coalition air forces to better monitor the desert launching areas where the mobile Scuds had proved so elusive.
After the war, it appeared that Iraq still retained a substantial missile inventory. In 1992, the CIA estimated the residual force at “perhaps hundreds” of missiles.31 The early estimates were scaled down, however, as U.N. weapons inspectors proceeded to deconstruct Saddam Hussein’s war machine. UNSCOM supervised the destruction of 48 Scuds plus additional components and found evidence that Iraq had unilaterally destroyed another 83 missiles.32 Ultimately, UNSCOM was able to account for nearly all of Iraq’s original inventory of 819 Soviet-made Scuds. However, in 1995, U.N. inspectors learned that before the Gulf War, Iraq had launched its own program to manufacture missiles based on the Scud design. And the following year UNSCOM concluded that Iraq had indigenously produced as many as 80 Scuds, none of which have yet been accounted for.33
GUNS OVER BUTTER
Iraq’s pattern of military spending in the 1980s made it dependent on a wide spectrum of technological imports. The country’s economy was in crisis even before the Gulf War because of the high military cost of the conflict with Iran. The war in the Gulf and the subsequent sanctions hastened the collapse of the Iraqi economy and turned the fiscal crisis into a humanitarian catastrophe.34 At the cost of incalculable suffering to the Iraqi people, U.N.-imposed sanctions did prevent Iraq from recovering its military readiness, which in the view of analyst Anthony Cordesman is today at only a fraction of the level of 1990.35 Nevertheless, by pursuing an aggressive policy of “guns over butter,” again at great cost to his own people, Saddam Hussein was able to revive key military programs, especially those associated with ballistic missiles and weapons of mass destruction.
Such a policy is perfectly understandable, given the above-noted view inside Iraq that Iraqi chemical weapons prevented the occupation of Baghdad by coalition forces in 1991. Massive air strikes by the United States and United Kingdom during Operation Desert Fox in December 1998 were aimed, in part, at destroying Iraqi missile-production facilities. The attack prompted Saddam Hussein to order U.N. inspectors out of the country. Later the CIA reported that Iraq had begun the reconstruction of these same facilities.36 In 2001, it is safe to assume that in the absence of U.N. inspections Saddam Hussein has continued to rebuild his missile force.
With regard to weapons of mass destruction, UNSCOM reported to the Security Council in 1997 that Iraq still had not provided a clear picture of the country’s biological weapons program. Indeed, it was not until the defection of Husayn Kamel to the West in 1995 that Iraq even admitted that such a program existed. With regard to chemical weapons, the same report included a laundry list of concerns about Iraqi refusals to account for inventories or permit verification by inspectors.37 Today few experts doubt that Iraq has both kinds of weapons.38
PONDERING THE IMPONDERABLE
In 2001, the same concerns about the mobile Scuds that prompted sober reflection in the first days of the 1991 war need to be revisited, especially by those eager to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. The Gulf War was an exercise in restraint, in the sense that neither side used weapons of mass destruction. Next time things may be very different. The Scud missile may be primitive by U.S. standards, but it is nonetheless capable of delivering biological, chemical and nuclear warheads. If the United States moves militarily to topple Saddam Hussein, does anyone believe that the Iraqi leader will hesitate to use all of the weapons at his disposal? Even if Iraq does not have nuclear weapons, a “successful” war from the standpoint of the United States would still necessitate 100-percent detection, identification, pursuit and kill rates of the same Iraqi hardware that proved so elusive in Desert Storm. Anything less would have consequences that few care to contemplate. To be sure, since 1991, the U.S. military has greatly improved its ability to counter mobile missile launchers. The question is whether “better” will be good enough.
A surprise attack by the United States would not be easy to achieve. More likely, U.S. intentions would become known days and perhaps weeks ahead of time. Tensions during this period would reach an impossible level. Wired to a hair-trigger, the entire region would wait, breathless, for the first shot to be fired. Nor is it likely that Saddam would wait to be attacked; since he who strikes first is always at an advantage. Israel too would be tempted for the same reason to break ranks and preemptively hit Iraqi positions in the western desert. Washington might find it impossible to restrain Ariel Sharon, who would angrily cite the failure of coalition forces to halt the Scud attacks during the 1991 Gulf War. Hizballah forces in Lebanon would launch Katusha rockets at northern Israel, and Syria might well be drawn in with its massive arsenal of chemical weapons. Should missiles fall on Tel Aviv, Israel would probably respond with the nuclear weapons that officially do not exist.
The United States would prevail in such a war. Saddam Hussein would be defeated – but at what cost? The use of nukes against one or more Arab states would be the end of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. The United States would be confronted with its own duplicitous policies vis-à-vis Israel and very likely would lose its remaining influence in the Middle East. The world would face a terrible conundrum: how to find its way – our way – back to a common humanity.
The alternatives will be neither pleasant nor easy. But almost anything is better than the scenario just described. When a man (or a nation) arrives at the edge of a precipice, the only sane move is to stop, take a deep breath, turn around, and find another way forward.
1 Kelly Motz, “Terrorism: Iraq Watch,” The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, posted at http://www.iraqwatch.org/updates/update.asp?id=pol200109211811.
2 Kelly Motz, “What has Iraq been doing since inspectors left? What is on its shopping list?,” posted at http://www.iraqwatch.org/updates/update.asp?id=wpn200107231601.
3 Jessica Berry, “Saddam Has Made Two Atomic Bombs, Says Iraqi Defector,” London Telegraph, January 28, 2001.
4 Gwynne Roberts, “Saddam Has Tested Nuclear Weapon,” London Sunday Times, February 25, 2001.
5 Taysir N. Nashif, Nuclear Warfare in the Middle East: Dimensions and Responsibilities, (Princeton: Kingston Press, 1977), pp. 24-25.
6 Gwynne Roberts, op. cit.
7 Terry Wallace, “Did Iraq Conduct a Nuclear Weapon Test?,” Trust and Verify, March-April 2001, posted at http://www.vertic.org/tnv/marapr01/iraq.html.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.
11 Telephone conversation, October 21, 2001.
12 Craig Whitney, “Smuggling of Radioactive Material Said to Double in a Year,” The New York Times, February 18, 1995.
13 Statement on ABC’s Primetime Live, 10:00 PM, August 19, 1994.
14 “Iraq’s Breakout Potential,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Vol 1. No. 12, September 22, 1998, http://ceip.org/programs/npp/brief12.htm.
15 For example, David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), stated in 1998 that “. . . if Iraq were to obtain weapons-grade uranium or plutonium from abroad, they may be able to turn this into a nuclear weapon fairly quickly – within a year.” “Special Policy Forum Report, Iraq’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Past, Present, and Future Challenges,” No. 301, February 18, 1998, posted at http://www.washingtoninstitute.org/watch/Policywatch/policywatch1998/301.htm; also see the testimony of Paul Leventhal, president of the Nuclear Control Institute, before the Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Wednesday, March 22, 2000, posted at http:// www.nci.org/index.htm; also see Gary Milhollin, director, The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, “Saddam’s Nuclear Shopping Spree,” The New Yorker, The Talk of the Town, December 13, 1999, p. 44.
16 Defense Intelligence Agency, “Chemical and Biological Warfare in the Kuwait Theater of Operations; Iraq’s Capability and Posturing,” undated; Central Intelligence Agency, “Report on Iraqi Chemical/Nuclear Warhead Systems,” 1991; Defense Intelligence Agency, “Scud Chemical Agent Coverage Patterns,” August 1990.
17 Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, eds., Gulf War Air Power Survey: Summary Report, (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1993), pp. 80-82.
18 Defense Intelligence Agency message, subject: “IIR 6 284 0008 94/Detection of Chemical Agents By Czechoslovak Unit during Desert Storm, Part III,” 141325Z, October 1993.
19 Central Intelligence Agency, “CIA Report on Intelligence Related to Gulf War Illnesses,” August 2, 1996.
20 Special Assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, “Middle East Trip Provides Useful Information Exchange,” January 27, 1998.
21 “No Chem Scuds?” Armed Forces Journal International, March 1991, p. 23.
22 Central Intelligence Agency, “Review of NESA Files,” February 21, 1996; Central Intelligence Agency, “Why WMD were Withheld,” March 1991.
23 U.S. Policy Towards Iraq, Hearing of the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (NY), chairman, October 4, 2001.
24 Counterforce Ops, The Centre for Defence and International Security Studies (CDISS), Department of Politics and International Relations, Lancaster University, U.K., posted at http://www.cdiss.org/scudnt2.htm.
25 Dale A. Vesser, acting special assistant for Gulf War Illnesses, Medical Readiness and Military Deployments, Department of Defense, “Iraq’s Scud Ballistic Missiles,” 2000236-0000003 Ver 1.1, posted at http:// www.gulflink.osd.mil/scud_info_ii/index.htm.
26 Vladimir Orlov and William C. Potter, “The Mystery of the Sunken Gyros,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November/December 1998, Vol. 54, No. 6.
27 Counterforce Ops, CDISS, posted at http://www.cdiss.org/scudnt2.htm.
28 Thomas A. Keaney and Eliot A. Cohen, op. cit., pp. 78-79.
29 Ibid., p.83.
30 McNair Paper Number 41, Institute for National Strategic Studies, Radical Responses to Radical Regimes: Evaluating Preemptive Counter-Proliferation, May 1995: Lessons of the Gulf War. posted at http:// www.fas.org/spp/starwars/program/docs/41war.html.
31 David C. Isby, “The Residual Iraqi ‘Scud’ Force,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, Vol. 7, No. 3, p. 115.
32 United Nations Special Commission, “UNSCOM’s Comprehensive Review,” Annex A, Status of the Material Balances in the Missile Area, and cover letter, January 25, 1999, web site: www.un.org (as of March 10, 2000).
33 John Pike, “UNSCOM and Iraqi Missiles,” Federation of American Scientists, November 2, 1998, posted at http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/iraq/missile/unscom.htm.
34 Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Military Balance in the Gulf,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, July, 2001.
35 Ibid.
36 CIA report, August, 2000, cited in Cordesman, July, 2001.
37 “What is at Stake in the UNSCOM Crisis in Iraq: Summary of the Iraqi Threat,” Report of the Secretary General on the Activities of the Special Commission, S/1997/774, October 6, 1997.
38 Anthony H. Cordesman, “Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East,” Center for Strategic and International Studies, June 2001. Consider also the recent Congressional testimony of Gary Milhollin, director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control: “In biological weaponry, the experts that I have spoken to, who seem to be the foremost ones, believe that Saddam Hussein is now essentially self-sufficient – that Iraq has the strains, the equipment, and the know-how necessary to make biological weapons – that it is pretty much independent now of imports. We know that Iraq did not account for all the biological agent that it made before the Gulf War, and we know that it produced anthrax. I think a reasonable assumption is that that capability still exists and is an active threat.” Statement before the House International Relations Committee, Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia, October 4, 2001.
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