"A Threat to the World?: The facts about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction"
by Glen Rangwala, 4 April 2002.
The UK and US governments have made a determined case that military action against Iraq would be a justifiable response to the threat from Iraq?s weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) ? that is, nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, together with the means of their delivery by long and medium range missiles. "Iraq poses a threat to the world because of its manufacture and development of weapons of mass destruction, which we know from some of the work of the inspectors." (Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, interview with David Frost, 24 March 2002).
However, a threat exists only when there is a confluence of intentions with capabilities. The US and UK have not demonstrated that the Iraqi regime has an intention to use WMDs either against neighbouring states or as an element in covert attacks on Western targets. This briefing examines the evidence for Iraqi capabilities to launch attacks using WMDs. It finds that there is little evidence to suggest that Iraq retains extensive WMD capacities. Furthermore, US and UK policy towards Iraq since the end of the Gulf War has not been driven by an arms control agenda, suggesting that these governments have not perceived Iraq to be threatening regional or international security through an accumulation of non-conventional weapons.
Under Saddam Hussein?s rule, and in the context of continued Western support, an extensive range of chemical weapons was used from at least 1983 as part of the Iraqi assault on Iran. Both during and in the immediate aftermath of that war, Iraq also used large quantities of chemical weapons on Kurdish areas of northern Iraq in a systematic attempt to punish and decimate their population due to the long-term Kurdish campaign for independence. As part of the ceasefire conditions to conclude the Gulf War (1990-91), the United Nations Security Council established a weapons inspectorate, UNSCOM, through Resolution 687 (3 April 1991). Together with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), UNSCOM was charged with overseeing the destruction of Iraq?s non-conventional weapons.
In May 1991, the Iraqi foreign ministry agreed to grant unimpeded access to all sites and facilities in Iraq to UNSCOM and the IAEA. It eventually agreed to a long-term monitoring programme of its facilities in November 1993, in accordance with Security Council Resolution 715, which gave UNSCOM and the IAEA unprecedented freedom of inspections. Video cameras, chemical sensors and temperature sensors were installed at over 250 sensitive sites in Iraq from 1994. Despite Iraq?s agreement to comply with these resolutions, it clearly failed to cooperate fully with the weapons inspections bodies. In particular, it concealed the extent of its past production of component materials for biological weapons, objected to overflights by U-2 surveillance planes hired from the US, only intermittently permitted inspections to so-called "presidential sites" and on Fridays (the day of worship), and obstructed inspection teams dominated by US nationals from entering military sites.
Nevertheless, UNSCOM recorded how there was compliance with most of its work for over seven years of intrusive inspections. As a result, UNSCOM?s executive chairman Rolf Ekeus reported to the Security Council on 11 April 1997 that "not much is unknown about Iraq?s retained proscribed weapons capabilities" (para.46). The long-term monitoring of Iraqi sites was largely unobstructed: "Iraq has sustained a good level of cooperation in the operation of the monitoring system" (report by UNSCOM?s executive chairman, 11 October 1996, para.61; similar statements made in subsequent reports). In its October 1997 report, UNSCOM stated that "the majority of [weapons] inspections were conducted in Iraq without let or hindrance" (Annex I, para.33). Even up to its final inspection report on 15 December 1998, UNSCOM was recording how "the majority of the inspections of facilities and sites under the ongoing monitoring system were carried out with Iraq?s cooperation". Non-cooperation was recorded in only 5 out of 427 inspections in the round before inspectors were withdrawn on the request of the US; those 5 instances resulted in minor delays, not inspection refusals. Nevertheless, this report was taken by the US and UK as a justification to launch the "Desert Fox" bombing campaign against Iraq later that month.
In the period between 1991 and 1998, the evidence provided by UNSCOM is not of Iraqi development of WMD but of the destruction of these weapons. This is demonstrated by the actual extent of the disarmament of Iraqi facilities.
1. MISSILES
All medium and long range missiles and missile production facilities were destroyed by UNSCOM between September 1991 and June 1992. Inspectors certified in October 1997 that they had proof that 817 out of the 819 Iraqi missiles of a range longer than 150km were destroyed (para.7). Iraq, UNSCOM recorded, had no missile launchers, either imported or indigenously produced. The Panel on Disarmament, established by the Security Council to review the extent and future of the Iraqi disarmament process, reported in March 1999 that "UNSCOM has also concluded that Iraq does not possess a capability to indigenously produce" either long range missiles or the so-called "Supergun" (para.17). There have been claims that Iraq has converted lorries into missile launchers since 1999. However, at issue are only short-range rocket systems which Iraq is not prohibited by the Security Council from developing (interview with Scott Ritter, The Observer, 17/03/02).
2. NUCLEAR
Iraq?s nuclear facilities were fully accounted for. After rigorous inspection, the IAEA reported to the Security Council on 13 April 1998 that Iraq had compiled a "full, final and complete" account of its previous nuclear projects, and there was no indication of any prohibited activity. After the US insisted that the intrusive inspections regime be continued, the IAEA repeated this conclusion in its report of 4 July 1998, and stated in December 1998 to the Security Council that Iraq?s nuclear weapon programme had been eliminated, "efficiently and effectively", with Iraqi cooperation. The Security Council Panel on Disarmament itself reported in March 1999 that "there is no indication that Iraq possesses nuclear weapons or any meaningful amounts of weapon-usable nuclear material or that Iraq has retained any practical capability (facilities or hardware) for the production of such material". Iraq continues to allow IAEA inspectors into Iraq to check its facilities: the IAEA reported that its most recent inspection in January 2002 was carried out with full Iraqi compliance. It is difficult to see how the widely-repeated claim made by Foreign Office minister Ben Bradshaw that Iraq could "develop a nuclear weapon within five years" has any basis given the accounting of Iraq?s past attempts to produce fissile material and the ongoing IAEA monitoring.
3. BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS [BWs]
UNSCOM recorded its destruction of al-Hakam, Iraq?s main biological weapons facility, in May-June 1996. The Security Council?s panel recorded in March 1999 that "the declared facilities of Iraq?s BW programme have been destroyed and rendered harmless" (para.23). Iraq had concealed the extent of its past development of its biological weapons capabilities until the defection of Husayn Kamil Hassan, the former director of Iraq?s Military Industrialization Establishment, in August 1995. However, weapons inspectors were unable to find any evidence that Iraq had revived a programme to produce biological weapons. Scott Ritter, who headed UNSCOM?s unit charged with uncovering Iraq?s attempts at concealing its WMD facilities, wrote in Arms Control Today (June 2000) that, "in all of their inspections, the monitors could find no meaningful evidence of Iraqi circumvention of its commitment not to reconstitute its BW program". Furthermore, Ritter has maintained that Iraq has never been able to develop an effective dispensing mechanism for biological weapons, which would be necessary for their use in an offensive capacity.
4. CHEMICAL WEAPONS [CWs]
By June 1992, UNSCOM?s chemical destruction group had supervised the destruction of Iraq?s stocks of mustard and nerve agents, precursor chemicals, loaded munitions and rockets containing sarin nerve gas. On 15 October 1993, Rolf Ekeus, Executive Chairman of UNSCOM from 1991 to 1997, reported to the Security Council that substantial progress had been made in dismantling Iraq?s chemical programmes. Ritter has reported that both he and Ekeus were convinced that the disarmament of Iraq?s chemical weapons was almost complete by early 1995. UK government ministers have frequently cited the final substantive reports delivered by UNSCOM on 25 January 1999 to back up their claim of Iraq?s retention of chemical weapons. The reports? recurring phrase was that Iraq?s claims to no longer possess quantities of CWs (and, to a lesser extent, BWs) that it is known to have produced prior to 1990 "cannot be verified". However, it would be mistaken to take this as evidence that Iraq has retained stocks of chemical weapons. Iraq refused to provide UNSCOM with details of its past use of CWs against Iran during the war of those two countries (1980-88), due to the political ramifications of releasing this information. As a result, a large quantity of the CWs produced by Iraq in the 1980s and unaccounted for by UNSCOM would have been used against Iranian civilians and armed forces. Even if some of these items were retained by Iraq, they could no longer be used by Iraq as the chemical agents would have long deteriorated (UNSCOM internal papers of January 1998, cited by Ritter in Arms Control Today article, at n.5).
Given this track record, it is no surprise that many of the weapons inspectors, when candid, have recorded the extensive disarmament of Iraq. Reviewing the 9 years of Iraqi disarmament, Rolf Ekeus stated in a presentation at Harvard University on 23 May 2000 that "in all areas we have eliminated Iraq?s [WMD] capabilities fundamentally". Ritter wrote in Arms Control Today (June 2000) that: "it was possible as early as 1997 to determine that, from a qualitative standpoint, Iraq had been disarmed. Iraq no longer possessed any meaningful quantities of chemical or biological agent, if it possessed any at all, and the industrial means to produce these agents had either been eliminated or were subject to stringent monitoring. The same was true of Iraq?s nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities."
One of the most surprising aspects of UNSCOM?s work was not Iraqi obstruction but precisely its willingness to allow inspectors to destroy Iraqi facilities. Iraq has remained under frequent bombardment since 1991, in particular in the "no-fly zones" declared by the US and UK. US administrations have repeatedly ? and not just after September 11 ? proclaimed their intention to overthrow the Iraqi regime, and have frequently indicated that economic sanctions will not be terminated even if the weapons inspectors declare that Iraq is fully disarmed. US Secretary of State Warren Christopher, writing in the New York Times on 29 April 1994, stated that "The US does not believe that Iraq?s compliance [with its disarmament obligations] is enough to justify lifting the embargo". His successor, Madeleine K. Albright, made the same declaration in a major policy speech at Georgetown University on 26 March 1997. Through such measures, the Iraqi leadership was deprived of any incentive to comply with the weapons inspectorate.
Not only have US administrations removed the incentives for compliance, but they have also demonstrated to the Iraqi regime that it risks its own survival by cooperating with the inspectorate. The US made repeated attempts to use UNSCOM in order to further the goal of toppling the Iraqi regime. Examples of this process include:
* UNSCOM hired U-2 surveillance planes from the US in order to track the storage of WMDs, and the information obtained from their overflights through Iraq remained accessible to the US government. According to numerous press reports, in November 1992 the US supplied data gathered in this way to Israeli authorities, who used it to plan the assassination of Saddam Hussein. The Israeli commandos were killed in a training accident on 5 November 1992 before their mission commenced (reviewed in Middle East International, 19 March 1993, pp.9-10; Leslie Susser, "Target: Saddam," Jerusalem Report, 5 March 1998, p. 14).
* The US repeatedly blocked any acknowledgement by the Security Council of compliance by Iraq with UNSCOM and the IAEA. Examples include the proposal of Russia, China and France in March 1993, after Iraq permitted the inspection of a number of sensitive sites, of an acknowledgement in a Presidential statement; the attempts by the Russian ambassador throughout 1994 to tie continued cooperation with a gradual lifting of the oil embargo; and the proposal of Russia to move IAEA inspections from an intrusive inspections system to long-term monitoring once the IAEA had declared in April 1998 that its disarmament mission in Iraq had been completed successfully. By systematically refusing any acknowledgement of Iraqi disarmament, the US left Iraq with the impression that it would veto any moves to end the sanctions regime however extensively Iraq complied, thus discouraging its continuation.
* According to Scott Ritter (in his book Endgame, especially pp.135-36), the US infiltrated a number of members of the CIA?s Special Activities Staff into UNSCOM from Spring 1992, in order to track internal Iraqi communications. US officials admitted in 1999 that information collected by UNSCOM monitoring was retained by Washington to assist with the destabilization of the Iraqi regime, and that Israel was also provided with access to this material (Washington Post, 8 January 1999). The CIA operatives, acting under the cover of UNSCOM inspectors, were also used to contact members of the elite Special Revolutionary Guards who were engaged in plotting a coup against the Iraqi regime in June 1996, and to pass communications equipment to them. The scheme was uncovered by Iraq and publicised, as confirming their previous allegations that UNSCOM inspectors were part of communications channels for coordinating a coup.
* From May 1996, the US intelligence operatives within UNSCOM devised a procedure ? Operation "Shake the Tree" - for staging confrontational inspections with the aim of provoking Iraq to engage in concealment practices, and so provide political ammunition to the US government. This tactic was used without the knowledge of UNSCOM?s executive chairman, but was notified to Charles Duelfer, UNSCOM?s deputy executive chairman and former State Department Official. This casts further doubt upon Duelfer?s legitimacy as a commentator on the current crisis.
* The US deliberately attempted to make the UNSCOM report of 15 December 1998 highly critical in its tone, to serve as a causus belli. As the Washington Post reported on 16 December 1998, Clinton administration officials played "a direct role in shaping [UNSCOM executive chairman] Butler?s texts during multiple conversations with him". The report served as the US pretext to attack Iraq in Operation "Desert Fox". The US ambassador the UN also advised Richard Butler to withdraw staff from Iraq in December 1998 so that the US and UK could bomb (recounted in Butler?s book, Saddam Defiant, p.210). This was done even though Iraq had cooperated with the majority of inspections, and that it was apparent that the Iraqi regime would not allow UNSCOM to return if they were withdrawn.
The US ensured that Iraq was left with numerous reasons to avoid cooperation with UNSCOM. If US policy really has been driven by the need to disarm Iraq of WMDs, then it has been irrational. Their response to incomplete but extensive compliance has been to label it as non-compliance, bomb Iraq and use the weapons inspectorate as a facility to overthrow the Iraqi leader. In this way, the Iraqi regime was taught that cooperation with the weapons inspectors could well lead to its own demise. Furthermore, the implication is that the US placed a low priority on assessing and countering Iraq?s potential possession of WMDs whilst the UNSCOM inspectors were there, reflecting the low level of the threat that was actually perceived by the US of Iraq?s nuclear, chemical or biological capabilities.
No evidence at all has surfaced of Iraq?s attempts to rebuild WMDs since the withdrawal of inspectors in December 1998. This point is reaffirmed in the latest briefing to the US Congress from the Congressional Research Service ("Iraq: Compliance, Sanctions, and U.S. Policy", 29 November 2001, p.6/CRS-3): "U.S. reports since 1999 note that [..] there is no hard evidence that Iraq is reconstituting banned WMD programs".
If there are concerns over Iraq?s WMD capabilities and intentions, the crucial obstacle to their assuagement is a US policy that prioritises the leadership change agenda over the arms control agenda. As it remains unclear what has transpired in Iraq since the last inspectors were withdrawn in 1998, the clearest path to reestablishing an ongoing weapons monitoring system is for the US to drop the leadership change agenda; for the partial lifting of sanctions as reward for Iraqi compliance thus far; and for an articulation of a clear path to their full lifting, which the Security Council has so far failed to provide.
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