One of the key dangers administration officials have focused on in recent weeks is that Saddam Hussein could obtain a nuclear weapon. Now a respected independent group in London has offered its own analysis of Iraq's nuclear program. The International Institute of Strategic Studies says Iraq still does not have the uranium to make a nuclear weapon, but the institute's Terry Taylor says Iraq does have hundreds of nuclear experts on its payroll.
Mr. TERRY TAYLOR (International Institute of Strategic Studies): We're talking about highly qualified engineers, physicists, people who know nuclear physics well, know how to make a weapon. This program's been going for more than 20 years. These are people with a lot of experience and who've tried a lot of routes to making such a weapon, and they're very imaginative about how they go about their work.
SIEGEL: NPR's Steve Inskeep covers national security issues, and joins us now.
Steve, this is one of several estimates of Iraq's nuclear ability that we've heard. Are we any closer to knowing how close Iraq is to actually building a bomb?
STEVE INSKEEP reporting:
What's interesting, Robert, to me is that all of the estimates, whether you're listening to experts in Europe, experts in the United States or the US government, the basic facts essentially are the same. Everyone seems to agree on the basic facts even if people disagree on the interpretation. The Iraqis probably do--according to most of these estimates, including this latest one, probably do have the knowledge to make a nuclear weapon if they have the right equipment and the right material. At the moment, they probably do not have the material.
In the 1990s, UN weapons inspectors were able to destroy most of Iraq's most critical nuclear facilities. It would be very difficult to rebuild them again. It would be easier for Iraq simply to steal or buy some weapons-grade uranium, highly enriched uranium, on the international market. That's the hardest stuff to get. If they got it, they could relatively quickly make a weapon. Without that, however, it would be a difficult task.
SIEGEL: Now you also mentioned facilities. Yesterday, Vice President Cheney said that Saddam Hussein has tried to obtain equipment to rebuild those facilities. Here's what Cheney said on NBC's "Meet the Press."
(Soundbite of "Meet the Press")
Vice President DICK CHENEY: He has been seeking to acquire, and we have been able to intercept and prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel, the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge. And the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly enriched uranium, which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.
SIEGEL: Steve, Saddam Hussein trying to obtain the tubes to build a centrifuge. What does it show?
INSKEEP: It definitely Iraq's intent, if we can give credit to this US intelligence report. And we do not know the country of origin of this material. We don't know exactly how or where it was intercepted. But US officials assert that this is so, and if that's the fact, it certainly shows Iraq's intent to continue working on the program.
Maybe not much more than that, though. Nuclear experts say that if you are going to take low-grade uranium, standard uranium like you'd take out of the ground, and turn it into weapons-grade or highly enriched uranium, you need a lot of equipment. These centrifuges are just one part of an immense facility that you would have to build. It would use a tremendous amount of energy. It would be every difficult to hide from the United States or from its allies. You still need an awful lot of know-how and equipment to create highly enriched uranium. This centrifuge just shows that Iraq is trying to get one thing. The big question, really, is whether Iraq can obtain the material some other way.
SIEGEL: Now Vice President Cheney makes another kind of argument, which is apart from what we do know about what Iraq is doing, we actually only know a small percentage of what's going on in Iraq.
INSKEEP: Well, that's what he says, 10 percent, maybe 20 percent, maybe 30 percent. Cheney points out, 'OK, the United States was able to intercept this one shipment,' or several shipments, actually, we're told, 'of this one type of material that you could need to produce a nuclear weapon.' What if there are other shipments that the United States was unable to detect? What if those were able to arrive in Iraq? What if other things are happening? What if there are materials that were hidden from the United Nations weapons inspectors throughout the 1990s when Iraq was playing this game of deception? And what if those materials still exist? What if Iraq does have some way simply to buy, on the open market, somewhere some highly enriched uranium? That's said to be quite unlikely, but certainly not impossible.
And so the fundamental question that US officials are facing here is: Do you go to war based on what you don't know? US officials and independent experts are essentially saying, 'We're not going to know if Iraq has a nuclear weapon or not.' What US officials would rather focus on is Iraq's intent here. They will say clearly Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would like to have a nuclear weapons, and that's not a possibility that Americans, they say, should be comfortable with.
SIEGEL: So if it doesn't have one, it's not for lack of trying, they say.
INSKEEP: Yes, that's what they would say.
SIEGEL: Thank you, Steve. NPR's Steve Inskeep.
