Proliferating Thoughts

It has been a couple of months but I am returning to the blogging fray. The intervening period has been devoted to grant-writing, national and internaitonal travel, day to day working type stuff and of course a bout of very unpleasant illness (only a cold but bad enough).

There have been a number of things that have popped up over the period of my absence that i am now in a position to highlight, mention and generally bring up. Hurrah for my loyal readership.

Unfortunately I have been overwhemed with proposal writing and other responsibilities for the last few weeks, though hopefully this period is almost at an end and I will able to resume the business of keeping people informed and striking down the dragons of false news.

In all likelhood I will also take the step of recharacterizing this blog to make it less focused, if only to keep my reader more entertained.

Somewhere out there is someone waiting to collect a prize from me, nothing extravagant but sure to be enjoyable. All you have to do is submit a comment that shows you are a real person and have read one of the posts.

Let the rush begin.

***UPDATE Saturday 26th July***

Congratulations to Lindwurm’s tochter who made the first comment, she will be recieving her physics package in the mail in a few days.

Google news is carrying what may be best described as an amusing story today. The billing is impressive but unfortunately the substance is rather less so. The headline and key passage;

Another Former High-Ranking Iraqi Official Confirms WMD Went to Syria

RM: Why do you think Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction are in Syria? Why didn’t he use them or simply destroy them before the war?

IT: I know Saddam’s weapons are in Syria due to certain military deals that were made going as far back as the late 1980’s that dealt with the event that either capitols were threatened with being overrun by an enemy nation.

Clearly this story is part of the continuing effort in some sectors to paint Syria in the darkest colors possible while maintaining that the 2002/03 WMD justification for the invasion of Iraq was valid.

The problem is that this particular effort is simply ridiculous. The headline could easily lead a casual reader to the conclusion that the “official” was directly involved with the shipping of WMD to Syria, or at least the decisions supporting that movement.

Alas no, the blurb at the start of the interview tells us most of what we need to know.

Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti says he was southern regional commander for Saddam Hussein’s Fedayeen militia in the late 1980s and a personal friend of the dictator. Units under his command dealt with chemical and biological weapons. He was known as the “Butcher of Basra” due to his campaigns and defected shortly before the Gulf War in 1991.

So essentially we are to accept that someone who defected prior to the first Gulf War is in a position to confirm shipments of WMD to Syria, not just a decision or intent to ship them, but actually confirm that items were placed on vehicles of some sort and transported across the border to Syria. However, we should not belabor this point as Ali Ibrahim al-Tikriti has “discussed this in-depth with various contacts of mine who have confirmed what I already knew.” This might also be described as hearsay. Apparently his information, and that of his contacts was not as convincing for the International Survey Group as it was for his interviewer and the “article’s” original author, Mr. Ryan Mauro.

Digging a little further I am surprised that Google News even bothered to pick this up, but realistically it is probably the result of a machine search. I like to think, naively perhaps, that no intelligent editor would run with this story.  However by far the worst thing about this item, and frankly it has to make you think a little harder about all such things that come up on sites like Google News, is that it actually dates back to early 2006. The interview was reposted by the Mr. Mauro on his website in June 2008 and then to the International Analyst Network webpage today which appears to be the reason that it was picked up. Essentially a bit of self-promotion by Mr. Mauro has resulted in this item rising from a well-deserved place in the news graveyard.

We can only hope that no-one else decides to give new legs to what might be best described as a zombie news-story.

Last Sunday in the wonderful land of Oz one of the major networks ran a quarter hour segment detailing the horrific story of US efforts to force Australia to allow live-agent testing of nerve agents in the rail forests of Queensland. The piece featured a number of former official, some current academics and “revelations” from a number of declassified documents. Emphasis was placed on the illegality of the proposed operations, the unreasonable pressure placed on Australia by the evil Americans, plans to “lie” to the Australian public and the dangers posed to the environment. Finally there were numerous references to the threats to the health and well-being of gallant Australian diggers (slang for Aussie soldiers) who were to be deliberately exposed to these extremely dangerous chemical agents. The overall tone is one of outrage with a hint of satisfaction that the truth has now been exposed. To wit, the presenter’s opening statement that “we can reveal plans to bomb Australia with deadly nerve gas.”

As far as I can tell all subsequent reporting seems to have been based solely on the broadcast by Nine News without any effort to do additional research. This is unfortunate as the original report is chock full of inaccuracies, false or unjustified linkages, anachronisms, and profound bias. Given the inflammatory tone of the report it is worth noting that no actual tests were conducted. It is also appropriate to question the efforts to link the proposals to the Vietnam War. The original proposals for the tests appear to date back to 1962, possibly even earlier, long before Vietnam became a major US concern. Nine News makes a big fuss about the revelations contained in newly declassified documents and posts several of these on the main article page to support its contentions. Unfortunately it does not post the bulk of the documents used in preparing its report, nor does it provide an easy way to locate them independently. This makes it much more difficult to verify or challenge the claims made.

Fortunately the blogger community has been active in this area and I would like to thank Bugs n’ Gas Gal for posting links to several rather large bundles of declassified documents in the Australian National Archives.

In part at least I think that the position being taken reflects the generalized distrust of the US increasingly common in the populations of countries such as Australia; NZ has a similar tendency. Beyond that however I suspect a number of historical experiences are providing a filter through which the the discussion of this latest “revelation” is being processed.

The most important of these filters is that produced by the use of Australian territory and personnel in nuclear weapons testing by the UK in the 1950s. Many Australian, and NZ troops were deliberately exposed to radiation effects during the various test cycles as part of the British effort to develop and understand the effectiveness of their nuclear weapons capability. After the tests had been completed there was a inadequate cleanup of the site that left significant quantities of plutonium and other contaminants littering the Australian desert where it had the potential to adversely affect fauna and local aboriginal inhabitants living off the land. A fresh effort at cleaning the area was undertaken in the 1980s and provoked considerable controversy. The result has been a serious (post-facto) mistrust of the motives and intent of great power allies that have engaged in, or proposed any variety of WMD testing involving Australia or its citizens.

This distrust has been reinforced by books such as Bridget Goodwin’s “Keen as Mustard.”  This 1998 book details the experiences of Australian troops that were exposed to mustard gas as part of a WW2 effort to better understand the behavior of that agent in tropical environments. As was typical for the period the test subjects were not adequately informed about the dangers associated with their participation in these trials. What seems to be missed in Australia is that Aussie troops were not being uniquely mistreated by the oppressive British colonial masters. This is clearly demonstrated by the recent cases where the British government paid compensation to former soldiers who were experimented on with nerve agents in the 1950s.

To return to the Nine News segment however, the first issue to address is the characterization of the proposed testing. There are frequent references to its illegality or lack of justification. Firstly, I am not aware of anything that would have made this testing illegal in the 1960s. The only international measure in place at the time regarding the use of chemical weapons was the 1925 Geneva Convention which was very limited in scope. Signatories pledged not to use chemical weapons in war. They did not however pledge to refrain from developing, testing or stockpiling chemical weapons. The environment for chemical warfare testing and development has become much more restrictive since the mid-60s. Legislation to protect the environment has become much more stringent over time as have requirements governing medical experiments using human subjects. In addition the Australian, and most other world governments, have signed on to the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) which has had the effect of limiting, though not eliminating defensive chemical warfare research.

Regarding the issue of justification for the proposed testing the report prominently features Dr. Chris Winder, (Professor in Applied Toxicology, School of Safety Science, University of New South Wales) observing that this testing was completely unjustifiable now or at the time.  Prof. Winder is billed as an expert who has researched the history of chemical weapons adding weight to his assertions that ‘fears that communist Chinese or Russian attackers might have used such weapons in a third world war “doesn’t justify it now and I don’t think it justified it then.”‘ Rather quaintly the producers, or Dr. Winder have attempted to bolster his credibility by filming him beside a small stack of books on the history of CW. As far as I can tell Prof. Winder’s expertise is in the toxicology of hazardous chemicals which would include organophospates such as nerve agents. His ability to speak on the technical aspects of how chemical warfare agents affect those exposed seems more than satisfactory and indeed he is used in this capacity early in the segment. However his grasp of the history of the development and use of chemical weapons seems rather less robust and is clearly affected by what appears to be a strong moral objection to chemical warfare. This distaste for chemical warfare is not uncommon but it is also unhelpful when discussing the process of developing chemical weapons.

The simple fact is that in the 1950s the great powers incorporated nerve agents into their military arsenals. They sat there beside biological and nuclear weapons, all of which might well have been used against armies and civilian populations in the event of war. The German development of an entirely new class of chemical warfare agent during WW2 took a little while to be fully absorbed but once it was the discovery reinvigorated what had been an increasingly irrelevant and neglected part of the military arsenal. Although the US was active in the development and production of chemical weapons its activities were not unique. The Soviet Union also produced vast quantities of nerve agents, showing a particular preference for Soman, an especially nasty G agent, and was planing to use them in the event of a conflict. As a matter of prudence the US and its allies, which also had plans for the use of chemical weapons, had no choice but t test these weapons and become familiar with their battlefield characteristics. The most important chemical warfare lesson to come out of WW1 was that unprepared troops, and by this we mean inadequately equipped or insufficiently trained, suffer dramatically higher casualty rates than those who were well prepared.

In this context some environments are more challenging than others. One of these is forest, and tropical forests are a subset of this difficult problem. The most serious problem in protecting troops against nerve agents is the absolute need to avoid skin contact. The solution has been having troops wear protective suits that fully enclose the body using impermeable layers or absorbent materials. In either case the individual must also wear a protective mask and heavy impermeable gloves. Soldiers wearing these ensembles have proven to very vulnerable to heat stress, even in relatively mild climates. Using 1950s and 1960s style protective gear in a rainforest would have been difficult at best. Anything that could minimize the amount of time that a soldier needed to spend in such gear would have been welcome.

One thing that can reduce the amout of time spent in protective gear is the ability to accurately detect chemical warfare agents and decontaminate materiel, facilities and potentially terrain. It is also important to clearly understand how long the agents persist in the local environment. This last consideration can be highly variable and tropical rainforests present a difficult situation. The frequent intense rainfall may have the effect of washing away or diluting the agents more quickly than would be typical for a drier temperate environment. Equally the high heat and humidity are likely to affect the persistence of the chemicals. But, detection may be complicated by these factors as well. The dense foliage has the potential to provide many more surfaces on which chemicals may adhere, some of which will actually shelter the agent from rainfall effects. Furthermore the canopy has the effect of blocking out the sun, reducing the effects of sunlight on the deposited agent. There is an argument that simulants would be more than adequate for testing and training purposes but this argument overlooks the need to establish baselines using the agent or material that is being simulated in the environment in which it is to be used.

This post has gotten more than a little long and so it is going to be split into two parts with the second to follow.

END OF PART ONE

A number of CW related issues are floating around me at the moment. These include; the appropriateness of continued Western financial support for the Russian CW destruction program; The question of how, exactly, the CWC is supposed to provide a meaningful contribution to preventing terrorist use of chemical weapons; how to address the fundamental problem in dealing with CW destruction issues in the US where communities want to see the weapons destroyed immediately but are unwilling to support increased taxes, and continue to introduce new roadblocks in the form of environmental considerations that have the effect of slowing the process; the ongoing delay in Iraqi CW accession; and finally the never-ending shrill cries from alarmists / cassandras about the impending doom that terrorists with WMD will bring down on our collective heads any day now.

Then there are of course the other issues of interest and concern as well. One is the possibly hopeless efforts of NASA to put in place a set of launchers that are capable of meeting the requirements of their chosen mission architecture for a return to the moon. And the level of concern associated with this program rises to a high level without even considering the possibility that the chosen architecture is itself deeply flawed. Allowing domestic politics to intrude, ever so briefly, I am troubled by the manner in which the US political system has functioned up to now this election season to throw up two major party presidential candidates, neither of which seem ideally suited to the challenges that they will be facing once in office. Somewhat turgidly phrased but any other way of saying my point seemed a little impolite.

Back to international politics I am appalled by the path that is being taken in Zimbabwe. At this point it seems clear that there is no longer a possibility of peaceful regime change in that country. President Mugabe and his supporters have deliberately closed all doors and paths for peaceful opposition to the government. Although the opposition MDC appears to be continuing with its efforts at achieving peaceful change the withdrawal from the Presidential run-off is a disaster for that country. ZANU-PF probably feels that it has achieved a great victory and no doubt this will encourage the President to take whatever actions he deems appropriate to ensure that the MDC’s hard-won parliamentary majority has no impact. In the wake of the Presidential elections, which Mugabe cannot help but win now, we should expect efforts to suborn, or simply remove, a sufficient number of MDC MPs to restore a ZANU-PF majority.

At some point the leadership of the MDC, or a portion of the grass-roots organization, is going to turn to violence. Given, from the standpoint of the MDC and its supporters, the absolute necessity of Mugabe’s removal from office, and the impossibility of achieving this through peaceful means, and the ongoing, and probably in the post-election environment, escalating campaign of violence directed against MDC members it is just a matter of time before armed insurrection is adopted as the new approach. Naturally this will be a new disaster for what is already a deeply troubled country, the more so given that such a campaign of violence will be unlikely to meet with swift success, especially without support from neighboring countries. And of course any such developments in Zimbabwe can only have a negative impact on its neighbors, as is increasingly being recognized.

The desperate call for UN intervention by Morgan Tsvangiri is unlikely to produce any useful result and may even be a personal disaster for him. His call includes a statement to the effect that “[w]e do not want armed conflict, but the people of Zimbabwe need the words of indignation from global leaders to be backed by the moral rectitude of military force.” Although the reference to armed conflict is intended to refer to the likely implications of attempts to introduce a UN peacekeeping force, which Mugabe would almost certainly resist it can also be seen as the beginning of the road to violence. Earlier in his statement Tsvangiri asked “What do you do when you don’t have guns and the people are being brutalized out there?” At presnt his answer is call on the UN for help, a weak reed to rely on at any time. But clearly another answer to his question is ‘get your own guns.’ As far as his personal well-being is concerned it seems reasonable to conclude that Mugabe will not take kindly to Tsvangiri’s appeal to the UN. The MDC’s deputy leader is already being charged with treason for much lesser activities than calling for the introduction of foreign military forces. Politically the appeal may also be damaging as it allows Mugabe to offer “evidence” to support his claims that the MDC seeks to enable the recolonization of Zimbabwe.

All in all the situation in Zimbabwe is depressing. It does not affect me in the least but that does not mean that I can’t have sympathy as I watch a once prosperous society circle the drain.

Just in case anyone had leapt to the not entirely unjustified conclusion that I was only interested in questions of chemical weapons arms control and proliferation, I offer a short rant on the topic of missile defense opposition.

I have been working through the latest issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this week, amongst other activities, and have finally been able to devote some time to the article by George Lewis and Theodore Postol. In essence the article takes the opportunity to restate a number of longstanding objections to efforts to develop and deploy long-range missile defense in the context of current U.S. proposals for deployment of such a system in Europe.

This blog entry is not interested in disputing the technical details of missile defense countermeasures which I am nowhere near as qualified to discuss as the authors of the BAS article. However, there is one aspect of their discussion that I want to highlight. The authors warn us of the pointlessness of undertaking the deployment of these systems, given that they are hideously expensive, won’t provide an effective defense and are easily circumvented using the most elementary countermeasures. Yet at the same time they are concerned that planning, let alone actually carrying out the proposed deployments will seriously disrupt relations with Russia. Although the possibility is not broached in this article it has certainly been suggested in other forums that missile defense deployment will at a minimum revive the U.S. - Russia arms race that ended with the Cold War. On more than one occasion missile defense opponents have also suggested that deployment of current and proposed systems have the perverse effect of actually increasing the danger to the U.S., and by extension the world at large, by provoking an arms race with China.

This is an proposition that has been nagging at me for some years now. If the missile defense opponents are correct that current and proposed systems are completely incapable of defending against an attack using the most elementary countermeasures, which they argue are extremely simple to develop and effectively deploy, then how is it possible that Russia or China can find this system the least bit threatening. Both of these powers have the capability to overwhelm existing missile defense by sheer weight of numbers even if they refrain from the use of countermeasures. Furthermore, why is it reasonable to presume that Iran is capable of deploying effective countermeasures such as balloons, chaff or jammers that will render a defense ineffective and not make the same presumptions for Russia and China, the more so given that Russia deployed MIRVS and decoys in the 1960s. Indeed Russia has successfully demonstrated a maneuvering reentry vehicle that was specifically designed to get around active defenses. In this context the question becomes one of why would Russia even object to a U.S. missile defense effort. If it is so very ineffective it would make more sense for the Russians and Chinese to welcome the U.S. determination to pour a significant proportion of its limited R&D funding down a hole in the ground. Every dollar spent on missile defense is a dollar that is not being spent on something that might actually be more of a problem for them.

So where does this leave us? If the systems simply don’t, and indeed won’t work, how can they possibly represent a sufficient threat to the Russians that they could lead to a revived arms race or a breakdown in relations. If they are likely to provoke a breakdown in relations should we conclude that the systems might actually be effective? Do the Russian’s know something about the effectiveness of U.S. missile defenses that domestic opponents of these systems do not? Are Dr. Postol and the rest of the missile defense opponents wrong about the ease and effectiveness of countermeasures? Have the Russians lost the ability to produce countermeasures? Do the Russians simply have much more faith in the ability of the U.S. technical community to make this system work given enough time and money?

As I said, it is an issue that has been nagging at me for some time. It could be that there is an extremely simple answer that I have subconsciously cast-aside or that I have not even thought of. But as things stand at least one of the arguments of the missile defense opponents is unconvincing. Like I said, a bit of a rant on the topic of missile defense. Dr. Lewis is actually here in Ithaca so maybe I will take the opportunity to ask him these questions directly at some point.

Following on from my last post responding to an AFP report on the outcome of the 2nd CWC Review Conference the OPCW has at last released the final report on the RevCon which includes the final declaration. The specific issue I addressed was that of CW destruction deadlines.

In my previous post I noted that if true, the AFP report had a number of difficult implications. Now, having had the chance to read through the declaration it is clear that the AFP report was not an entirely accurate reflection of the content of the declaration (I am trying not to be unkind). As best as I can determine the source of the AFP claim that the deadline for destruction of all CW stockpiles had been extended to 2012 was a misunderstanding of the following passage.

The Second Review Conference also reaffirmed the importance of the obligation of the possessor States Parties to complete the destruction of their chemical weapons stockpiles within the final extended deadlines as established by the Conference at its Eleventh Session.

This meaning of this statement is quite differed to that which I noted in the AFP report, specifically that the states parties:

“agreed on Saturday a new global deadline of 2012″ for CW destruction. It goes on to note that the United States, Russia, India and Libya “previously had individual deadlines, some of them earlier than 2012, but have signed up to the revised founding treaty.”

Essentially the RevCon simply noted that the various CW possessor states that have not yet completed destruction of their CW stockpiles all have been granted extensions to their deadlines and called on those states to take appropriate measures to ensure hat they meet those deadlines. There is nothing about revisions to the treaty, or a “new global deadline.” As such the thorny question of what to do when the United States and Russia fail to meet their 2012 deadline, as seems almost inevitable at this point, has been put off into the future.

The other CW possessor states remain exactly where they were in March 2008 with the following final destruction deadlines: South Korea (31 December 2008); India (28 April 2009); Libya (31 December 2010).

Equally nothing has been done to make things easier for new possessor states joining the convention. They will continue to be in technical non-compliance with the CWC from the moment they join and until they can secure an extension to their destruction deadlines, a process which can often take several Executive Council sessions. The original destruction deadline was ten years after entry into force (EIF) of the CWC (28 April 2007) with provision for an extension of up to, but no more than, five years (28 April 2012). The truly difficult situation will arise after 2012 as currently there is no way for a state party to legitimately extend its destruction activities beyond 28 April 2012 irrespective of when they join the CWC. There is an argument to be made that tying the CW destruction deadlines to the Convention’s EIF was a mistake in so far as it presumed that all possessor states would sign on either before EIF or shortly thereafter. An alternative approach would have been to tie the deadlines to EIF for the particular state party, although this would have serious drawbacks, not least the potential extension of destruction activities into the 2020s or beyond.

As things stand this AFP report has underlined an important consideration, namely that the reports of wire-services are not reliable and should always be supplemented by primary source material wherever possible.

So it appears that the AFP has gotten enough information together to justify putting out a couple of reports on the results of the 2nd CWC Review Conference. The first addresses the thorny problem of CW demilitarization. Although the report is welcome it raises many more questions than it answers.

The CW demilitarization process has been running very seriously behind schedule. The extent of the problem can be described in several ways some of which make it look worse than others. For instance, with the exception of Albania, which had a trivial CW stockpile, no State Party (SP) has met its CWC deadline (29 April 2007) for completing the process of destroying all CW stockpiles and associated facilities. All of the SPs required extensions to allow them to legitimately extend their destruction efforts beyond 2007.

However, this bald observation overlooks very important details. For instance, although India obtained an extension of its deadline the new date was only 28 April 2009 and in early 2008 India indicated that it had already destroyed 93% of its Cat. 1 CW. By contrast, both Russia and the United States have requested and secured the maximum possible extension of five years allowing them to extend their efforts out to April 2012, not that anyone is particularly confident that they will successfully complete destruction by that date either. Then we have Libya which joined the CWC to great acclaim in early 2004. To date it has not even begun destruction of its admittedly small stockpile. Although there was great optimism at first and the United States was pledged to assist with the destruction process those arrangements broke down in 2007 leading to some uncertainty about exactly how or when Libya will begin to fulfill its obligations.

So anyway, it is with some “curiosity” that I read the AFP report that the CWC SPs have “agreed on Saturday a new global deadline of 2012″ for CW destruction. It goes on to note that the United States, Russia, India and Libya “previously had individual deadlines, some of them earlier than 2012, but have signed up to the revised founding treaty.” In addition to the problem that this report makes no mention of South Korea (sorry, my bad), An Unnamed State Party, it is painfully uninformative about the impact of this decision. For instance,does this mean that India is no longer obliged to destroy its Cat. 1 CW stockpile by April 2009? How will this “global deadline” be implemented Unless the RevCon took additional decisions all that has been adopted is a political declaration which cannot of itself adjust individual SP deadlines. Does this mean that the SPs in question, specifically India, Libya and the ROK will all be coming to the next Executive council session with draft decisions extending their destruction deadlines? If this is the case the decision can only be seen as counter-productive, especially in the Libyan case where the goal should be to accelerate destruction efforts rather than postpone them.

The one positive outcome of this aspect of the final declaration, which is being presented by AFP as modifying the CWC, itself a problematic contention given that the RevCon is not an amendment conference, is that it may make life a little easier for any CW possessor states that join the convention prior to 2012. At present if Syria, to pick an example, were to join the CWC next week it would already be in technical non-compliance for not destroying its CW stockpile by the treaty deadline of April 2007, an awkward position to be in at the start of one’s membership in an organization. Of course any new members would still face a very constrained timeline for destruction and it will be interesting to see how the OPCW proposes to deal with any new CW possessor members that join after 2012, or alternatively that join so close to the April 2012 deadline that they cannot possibly meet it. Still for the moment at least this is a largely hypothetical question. Furthermore the situation of these states may potentially be addressed by the effort to deal with the Russian and US cases in the run-up to 2012. Current US destruction plans have the potential to extend out as far as 2023 and Russia is not expected to meet the 2012 deadline. At some point the question of how to square this timeline with the requirements of the CWC will have to be comprehensively addressed.

So anyway, just an initial thought or two based on what may be an incomplete report. Hopefully things will become much clearer once the final declaration is actually publicly released.

After a fashion at any rate. On March 26th, Arms Control Wonk (ACW) featured my February WMD Insights article on the essentially unnoticed changes that have taken place in the US intelligence community’s assessments since 2003. I really like the ACW blog and I am regularly impressed by the quality of the material posted there. So naturally I was quite pleased to see something that I have written get a positive mention on the site. In the period between the article being finished and ACW drawing attention to it there were a number of developments that had the potential to affect the results of my analysis.

Firstly, on February 27th, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) head, Lt. Gen. Michael Maples testified before the House Armed Services Committee on Current and Projected National Security Threats to the United States. He had testified before the Senate Intelligence subcommittee earlier in the month but all that got released in time for my article was a transcript of his three page oral statement that said nothing about Iran’s suspected WMD programs. However, following the February 27th hearing DIA released the 37 page written version of General Maples statement and that did include language addressing DIA’s assessment of Iranian WMD programs. As things currently stand this is the most up-to-date official statement on the current US assessment of Iran’s CW and BW activities.

The good thing, for me at least, was that this new statement did not undermine my article.

The second thing that happened, which also had the potential to affect my conclusions, was that at the beginning of March, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) publicly released the long overdue Sec. 721 reports for 2005 and 2006. The 2005 report did not represent a problem in that it continued the low-key assessments that I had noted developing over a period up to and including 2004’s report. The 2006 report however was a little more problematic as it included a passage stating that “We [DNI] judge that Iran maintains a small, covert CW stockpile.” As is the case with these reports there is no way to know why DNI has decided to reintroduce the concept of an Iranian CW stockpile. At the same time there is no way to determine what it is about Iranian activities that leaves DNI convinced that there is a stockpile while DIA appears to feel otherwise. Presumably the issue is a difference over the assessment of available information.

ACW drew particular attention to the conclusion of the 2006 Sec. 721 report “that Iran maintains a small, covert CW stockpile” and wondered exactly how small a CW arsenal has to be to be considered small given that “large” has covered everything from the Russian stockpile of over 40,000 tons to the pre-Gulf War 2 suspected Iraqi stockpile of approximately 100 tons.

This question piqued my interest and I decided to dig a little into the material I had to hand to try and square up the DNI position that Iran maintained “a small, covert CW stockpile” with the DIA position that “Tehran maintains dual-use facilities intended to produce chemical warfare agents in times of need and conducts research that may have offensive applications.” This effort resulted in the following comment that I posted to ACW.

In trying to square this stuff up I noticed that Iran had an OPCW Schedule 1 inspection in 2001 and 2003 and has reported a National Protective Program since 2003. Unfortunately OPCW stopped specifying the breakdown of its inspections by country in 2004. However in October 2007 the OPCW reported (S/657/2007) that Iran was one of 18 countries that had met the deadline for submission of annual declarations regarding projected activities and anticipated production in 2008 at schedule 1 facilities.

On the basis of the admittedly limited information I wonder if perhaps the DNI’s “small, covert CW stockpile” is in any way associated with an Iranian Single Small Scale Facility. At a minimum it seems highly probable that DIA’s “research that may have offensive applications” is associated with the ongoing activities of Iran’s Schedule 1 facility. Based on the available public information DIA’s analysis seems reasonably well-grounded. On the other hand the sudden re-emergence of DNI’s Iranian CW stockpile after several years in which it was absent from public statements and reports is more difficult to account for.

If DNI’s stockpile is tied to Iran’s declared Schedule 1 facility, then assuming that Iran is making a point of not violating CWC thresholds, which may or may not be reasonable, its CW stockpile may be in the range of 10 to 1,000 kilograms of agent. Which barely could be considered small.

Since posting this comment I have a given a little more thought to the question and it has led me back to an issue which I have never gotten around to providing an article type treatment for. Specifically, how US intelligence assesses the work of facilities conducting defensive CW research which are allowed to operate under the terms of the CWC.