The danger of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East while real, is not imminent, Dr.John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said on Tuesday at the launch of its dossier titled: ‘Nuclear Programmes in the Middle East: In the shadow of Iran.’
20 May 2008: APP
LONDON, May 20 (APP)-The danger of a nuclear proliferation in the Middle East while real, is not imminent, Dr.John Chipman, Director-General and Chief Executive, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said on Tuesday at the launch of its dossier titled: ‘Nuclear Programmes in the Middle East: In the shadow of Iran.’
He noted that although some countries may be positioning themselves to be able eventually to produce fissile material, no country is known or seriously believed to be currently pursuing a nuclear-weapons programme as a result of Iran’s activities.
However, over time, Dr.Chipman believed Iran’s programme could become a powerful regional proliferation driver, building on regional rivalry, security concerns and one-upmanship.
“For the time being, these considerations are contributing to a regional surge in interest in nuclear energy. The question is how to keep this interest confined to purely civilian nuclear programmes.”
He said to date, no commercial contracts have been signed, no irreversible decisions have been made and most of the national plans have been limited to feasibility studies.
Indeed, Dr.Chipman, added there is reason to doubt the will and ability of many of the states in the region to follow through with the large technical, financial and political challenges of nuclear energy development.
From a technical point of view, he said, most of these states are starting from a very low base, lacking the necessary physical infrastructure, legal systems and trained scientific and engineering personnel.
Calling for preventive measures , the IISS official said there is time to put in place a robust regime of policies and practices that can serve as a bulwark against a proliferation cascade in the region.
Dr.Chipman stressed the need for a shared understanding that the proliferation risks of nuclear energy as manageable as long as countries accept full transparency with enforceable verification and concentrate on the technologies they really need while staying away from the sensitive parts of the fuel cycle.
In this regard, he mentioned that both Bahrain and United Arab Emirates recently stated unequivocally their intention to forgo enrichment and reprocessing. He said UAE has also published a white paper on its nuclear policy including acceptance of the IAEA safeguards additional protocol. “This sets a positive model for the region and beyond,” he said.
Included in the dossier are the study cases of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain,Qatar,the UAE and Oman, Turkey, Algeria, Israel and Iran.
Dr.Chipman said in the span of 11 months between February 2006 and January 2007, at least 13 countries in the Middle East announced new or revived plans to pursue or explore nuclear energy and since then several countries have solidified their plans.
“Notwithstanding the legitimate energy and economic motivations behind this sudden region-wide interest in nuclear power, political factors also play an important role,” he said.
The single most salient political factor, the IISS Director-General, pointed out, is Iran’s development of dual use nuclear technologies which motivates at least some of its neighbours to seek fledging nuclear capabilities of their own.
Dr.Chipman said there was no doubt that Iranian nuclear ambitions have put Israel in a spot. He said Israel initiated a nuclear programme in the mid 1950’s and crossed the weapons threshold about a decade later.
Remaining outside the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty, he said, Israel is considered to be a de facto nuclear weapons state with an advanced and sizeable arsenal. Israel has not acknowledged its nuclear weapons status and maintains a strict policy of nuclear opacity often called ‘nuclear ambiguity.’
Dr.Chipman observed that a nuclear-armed Iran would erase Israel’s nuclear monopoly, its most distinct strategic assets, which has served for about four decades as a kind of ultimate national insurance policy.
“Israel’s strategic calculations rest on a simultaneous commitment to both prevention of a nuclear Iran and future deterrence,” he said.
Mark Fitzpatrick, who edited the dossier, responding to a question, said Syrian fledgling nuclear ambitions were dealt a blow when Israel bombed an alleged facility on September 6 last year near the town of al-Kibar on the Euphrates river in the north-east of the country. Syria said that an unused military building had been hit.
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