International Herald Tribune
Iraq probably does not have enough chemical or biological weapons or long-range missiles to offer serious military resistance to U.S. armed forces protecting nearby countries or even invading Iraq itself, according to an independent assessment by a leading Western think tank.
But the Iraqi threat could achieve a quantum leap overnight thanks to a "nuclear wild card" in Baghdad's armaments drive, according to the report on Iraq's arsenal of nonconventional arms, which was issued by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a nongovernmental organization in London.
If the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, could acquire weapons-grade fissile material from a foreign source, Iraqi military engineers "could probably produce" nuclear warheads within a few months, the report said.
It called this possibility of an Iraqi nuclear breakout "a real risk that could dramatically and quickly shift the balance of power" in the Middle East and change U.S. thinking about military action to disarm Iraq and oust Saddam.
The London insititute produces a highly respected annual study of the world's military forces, and the timing of the Iraq report and the authoritativeness of the institute assure that the report will contribute to the U.S.-inspired debate over what to do about Saddam.
In contrast to its finding that Iraq has not yet succeeded in finding the fissile material it needs for nuclear weapons, the study reported alarming gaps in Western knowledge about the state of Iraq's arsenal and delivery capabilities for biological warfare.
It warned of new forms of possible strikes against Israel and other American allies in the Middle East, for example, by infecting Palestinian suicide bombers with smallpox so they spread the epidemic before dying. The best Western response lies in mass vaccination, which so far has not been deemed necessary.
Such "infectious agents are potentially the greatest threat," the report said. It added that "almost nothing is really known about Iraq's work with infectious agents before or after 1991," including the period of UN inspection from 1991 until 1998, when the monitors were expelled.
The overall thrust of the report generally agrees on key points with the threat advanced by U.S. officials. Those points are expected to be disclosed by President George W. Bush on Thursday when he addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York.
The report avoided speculating on Saddam's intentions. Instead, it was designed to provide an objective, publicly available picture of the military threat posed by Iraq.
Citing only nonsecret sources, the 75-page report, "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: A Net Assessment," drew on analysts who were not named but who in some cases clearly have worked as UN monitors.
The report, its authors said, "underlines the fact that Iraq has maintained its ambitions in all areas of weapons of mass destruction" and that the threat continues to grow despite sanctions and other international countermoves aimed at preventing Iraq from building its biological war arsenal or getting nuclear materials.
As far as is known, the report noted, Iraq has not been able to obtain the black-market fissile material for a nuclear weapon. "But the possibility cannot be ruled out," it said.
Like the Bush administration, the report stresses the lavish investment and obdurate concealment by Iraq in Saddam's pursuit of weapons of mass destruction.
Policymakers, the report concluded, face a dilemma: "Wait and the threat grows; strike and it may be used."
A third possibility - "Wait, and Saddam may still use it" - is likely to be stressed by the Bush team, a presidential adviser said.
While Saddam continues seeking nonconventional weapons, his military assets of all sorts are much smaller today than they were during the Gulf War. In particular, Iraq's aggressive capabilities apparently remain sharply limited by a lack of sophisticated long-range missiles and delivery systems such as heavy-duty sprays.
Without them, the report said, Iraq's big supplies of anthrax and other toxins or large amounts of chemical weapons do not appear to pose a decisive threat on the battlefield against troops well protected with air cover.
"Iraqi aircraft and missiles armed with chemical munitions could disrupt logistical operations in rear areas and threaten unprotected civilian populations within range but are unlikely to cause mass casualties," the report concluded.
Civilian targets, the report said, would probably suffer more from panic and local disruption than from major casualties because Iraqi warheads would bury most of their germ or gas agents on impact. When Iraq destroyed large numbers of Iran's forces with poison gas in their war in the 1980s, the attack was delivered by thousands of short-range Iraqi artillery shells that would nowadays be exposed to air strikes.
A striking finding concerned Iraq's missile forces. In all, it concluded, Iraq probably retains only a handful of Al-Hussein Scud missiles, the Iraqi-improved version of Soviet-made missiles that hit Israel and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf War in 1991.
While Iraq said it had destroyed all its missiles in this category, the institute says, it seems to have managed to hide a dozen of them. That number is about one-third of the published official U.S. estimate. It is deemed too few to get past Israel's newly deployed force of defensive Arrow missiles designed to intercept small numbers of missiles like the Al-Hussein.
But unknown factors are often cited in the report as a reminder that Saddam may have made undetected progress on secret weapons.
"Already, we had a close shave," according to Francois Heisbourg, chairman of the council of the International Institute of Strategic Studies. Evidence uncovered after the Gulf War showed that Iraqi scientists were close to putting their uranium-enrichment plants into operation in 1991. Without the war, Iraq would have had enough production for two bombs a year.
The program was discovered and destroyed by air attacks during the war and by UN disarmament teams in postwar Iraq. Otherwise, the report said, "Iraq could have accumulated a nuclear stockpile of a dozen or so weapons" by the end of the 1990s.
