IRAQ’S NUCLEAR PROGRAMME
“Saddam is doing everything he can do without special [nuclear] material, and [he is] betting on acquiring the material outside Iraq. There are places they can go and find it on sale. And when that happens, they’ll be able to surprise the world with a finished weapon” – David Kay, leader of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s inspection missions to Iraq (Quoted in The Record (Bergen County, New Jersey), 4 August 2002).
Iraq now has all the elements of a workable nuclear weapon, except the fissile material needed to fuel it, according to defectors. With Iraq’s trade links now reopening, and 7,000 nuclear engineers employed, it is feared that this final stage will not take for long.
Before UN inspectors left Iraq, the following had been ascertained:-
• Iraq had developed a blueprint for a nuclear bomb. It is a sphere measuring 32 to 35 inches in diameter, with 32 detonators. It would weigh less than a tonne and would fit on a Scud missile.
• Iraq has already tested a nuclear bomb dummy, with a non-nuclear core
• Iraq was running 30 nuclear research and production facilities. It had laboratory-scale plutonium separation programme and was also working on a radiological weapon, which scatters nuclear material without an explosion
Sep 1990 After the invasion of Kuwait, Iraq launches a “dash for the bomb”, hoping to complete construction within a year.
Aug 1995 Saddam’s son-in-law, Lt General Hussain Kamil, defected to the US. He had been placed in charge of the WMD programme and provided substantial evidence.
Aug 1995 Faced with this, Iraq then admitted to starting its attempts at a fast-track nuclear programme, which involved diverting nuclear fuel from power stations to the weapons laboratories
May 1998 Iraq ordered six “lithotripter” machines, saying they would be used to treat kidney stones. Each machine contains a high-precision electronic switch which triggers atomic bombs. It ordered six extra switches.
May 2000 The IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency, which also carried out inspections on Iraq until Dec 1998) discovered and destroyed an Iraqi nuclear centrifuge which had been stored in Jordan.
Sep 2000 Saddam publicly calls for his “nuclear mujahedin” to “defeat the enemy.”
Dec 2001 A former Iraqi nuclear scientist, Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, who has defected to the US, gives an interview to the New York Times from a safe destination in Bangkok (An interview with Mr Saeed was arranged by the Iraqi National Congress, an exiled opposition group to Saddam, whom had helped him escape. It appeared on p1 of the New York Times on 20 December 2001, entitled: “A nation challenged: Secret sites.”). His evidence is described as “plausible” by Richard Butler, an Australian former head of UN Iraq inspections. Mr Saeed said that:-
• Iraq has reactivated 300 secret weapons laboratories since the withdrawal of UN weapons inspectors
• Nuclear production and storage facilities are being hidden to the rear of government companies and private villas in residential areas.
• Weapons are being stored underground in what are made to look like water wells, lined with lead-filled concrete.
• Several empty facilities have been prepared, so projects can be on the move and withstand the bombing of one facility.
• Material from Leycochem, a German construction company, had arrived for under UN-approved schemes, but then redirected to nuclear development.
Feb 2002 George Tenet, CIA director, tells US Congress that Saddam “never abandoned his nuclear weapons programme. Iraq retains a significant number of nuclear scientists, program documentation and probably some dual-use manufacturing.”
Mar 2002 August Hanning, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Services, tells the New Yorker magazine that “It is our estimate that Iraq will have an atomic bomb within three years.” (Germany has been particularly assiduous in tracking Saddam, as he is known to have used German and UK companies when trying to build a nuclear bomb before the Gulf War. Mr Hanning was quoted in the New Yorker, 25 March 2002. “The great terror,” page 52.)
July 2002 Khidir Hamza, a defecting Iraqi nuclear science director, gives extensive evidence to US Congress (A full transcript of his Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony, to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, is available on Federal Document Clearing House, dated July 31 2002.). It includes:-
• “With the workable design and most of the needed components for a nuclear weapon already tested,” he said, “Iraq is in the final stages of its programme to enrich enough uranium for the final component needed in the nuclear core.”
• German intelligence, with whom he has been in contact, believes Iraq now has “ten tonnes of uranium and one tonne of low-level uranium” – enough to make three bombs by 2005.
• “The Iraqi economy is basically on a war footing,” he concluded. “If Saddam manages to break into the nuclear club, he will become the undisputed leader of the Arabs.”
July 2002 Saddam tells Iraqi state television that allegations of an Iraqi weapons programme are “almost a joke.” |
