Iran should move beyond its "false nationalism" and embrace the significant benefits of a peaceful nuclear approach, Stanford scholars say.

In return, professors Siegfried Hecker and Abbas Milani wrote Jan. 21 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, the West should neither isolate nor attack Iran  – those approaches would not necessarily stop Iran from weaponizing its nuclear program if it chose to do so.

Interestingly, the Iranian government republished the Hecker-Milani article in Farsi on at least one official website. That could reflect, the scholars say, a "genuine internal debate" in Iran regarding its nuclear future directions.

Hecker is a professor in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies, and the institute's Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is also a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Milani is the director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University and co-director of the Iran Democracy Project at the Hoover Institution. He is also an affiliated faculty member of FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law.

In an interview, Milani expressed cautious optimism. "Clearly, this is an important fact that they allowed this article to be posted on an official website. They are rethinking their nuclear program. But there are many others who will oppose it as well."

He added that Iranian reformers – who won the last presidential election – understand that the confrontational approach of Iran's hard-liners was not working. Many people are hurting due to the economic sanctions: inflation is at least 35 percent by official measures and may actually be twice that, Milani said.

South Korean model

As Hecker and Milani wrote in the article, South Korea in the last few decades has become one of the world's preeminent peaceful nuclear energy countries by focusing on the profitable parts of the middle nuclear fuel cycle — reactor component fabrication, fuel fabrication and reactor construction.

However, Hecker acknowledged, there has been talk that South Korea may be seeking consent from Washington for enrichment and reprocessing options beyond peaceful uses. He pointed out, however, that South Korea has had a peaceful nuclear program for four decades.

The problem with a weaponized approach is that it steals away the resources and expertise needed for a civilian-minded energy program, the authors stated.

"For Iran, the lesson of the South Korean experience is clear: Tehran should decide to abandon its enrichment efforts because the costs – technological, economic and political – are not worth the price of keeping the nuclear weapon option open," Hecker and Milani wrote.

When Iran's covert nuclear program was discovered in the early 2000s, the West enacted crippling economic sanctions against the country. Despite oil revenue windfalls, Iran has an economy riled by inflation and on the verge of collapse. 

There is hope. An interim nuclear agreement between Iran and the United Nations Security Council plus Germany that went into effect Jan. 20 consists of a short-term freeze of portions of Iran's nuclear program in exchange for limited sanctions relief for Iran. The idea is to give the countries time to work toward a long-term agreement.

Milani said that after the short-term agreement was reached, Iran's inflation rate began to moderate and its currency rate began to stabilize. That small bit of economic relief may bolster the reformers' argument in favor of a civilian nuclear policy.

"There are many people in Iran who want to see this issue resolved peacefully," said Milani, explaining that the hard-liners are associated with the clergy and Iranian Revolutionary Guard.

How close is Iran to a bomb?

Hecker and Milani warned of a "breakout scenario" in which Iran's centrifuge program could make enough highly enriched uranium (90 percent uranium 235) for a nuclear bomb "in a matter of months or even weeks."  The Iranian scientists would still need to craft a bomb and develop the means to deliver a nuclear weapon, which requires a high level of miniaturization.

"Iran would need a number of years of research, development and testing before it could have a reliable, missile-deliverable nuclear warhead," they wrote, noting the periodic missile threats made by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard against the United States and Israel.

In an interview, Hecker said the primary challenge now is no longer how to keep Iran from the capability, but rather "how to convince Iran it is not in its interest to build the bomb."

He noted that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Mohammad Zarif told him that it was not in Iran's security interest to build the bomb. "In fact, he added, even the appearance of pursuing the bomb was bad for Iran's security."

As Hecker explained, completely getting rid of the Iranian bomb option is not possible through military action or sanctions with political pressure. "The only chance is through diplomatic means. We need to make it clear to the Iranian regime that they are better off without pursuing the bomb."

For now, Hecker and Milani wrote in their article, the interim agreement will temporarily prevent Iran from reaching a breakout scenario. While a delay is good, more must be done to actually stop the Iranians from militarizing their nuclear program. After all, external pressure did not stop Israel, Pakistan, India, South Africa or North Korea from building nukes.

"Such a decision, we believe, must be made internally, not externally driven," the two Stanford experts wrote.

The Iranian elite should take note of the scant returns of the country's nuclear efforts to date. "After 50 years, Iran has very little to show for its nuclear pursuit," they said.

Iran has one commercial reactor, built by the Russians and only partially ready for electricity production. Another reactor, used primarily for medical isotope production, is on its last legs. The new Iranian reactor planned for Arak is not of modern design nor suited for medical production, and presents serious proliferation concerns because it will produce plutonium suitable for bombs.

"Iran's pride and joy, the uranium centrifuge program, can enrich in one year only as much uranium as the European consortium Urenco can produce in about five hours," wrote Hecker and Milani.

Change in government

The timing may be right for a new nuclear approach, Hecker and Milani wrote. In his September 2013 speech at the United Nations, Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, acknowledged that other nations could have "legitimate concerns" about Iran's nuclear program.

"That admission opens up the possibility for objective debate within Iran on the economic and technical costs of its current nuclear trajectory," wrote the Stanford professors. Such a debate would include business leaders, intellectuals and a broad spectrum of civic groups advocating on behalf of the "enormous benefits" of a safe, peaceful nuclear program.

"For this to happen, the international community must of course provide reliable access to uranium and enrichment services," they wrote.

Hecker added that Washington must demonstrate that it is prepared to cooperate with Tehran on a "peaceful nuclear pursuit, and not continue to isolate it."

As for Iran, it would need to operate transparently and implement specific protocols to assure the international community that it would not return to the nuclear weapons option. Both the West and Iran need to save face on such a deal, Milani said.

He noted, "The Iranians need to make a deal that has some real concessions, but they need to sell it at home as a victory."

As Hecker put it, if the Iranians want nuclear energy and relations with the West, they need "nuclear integration, not isolation."

Clifton B. Parker is a writer for the Stanford News Service.

CISAC affiliate Anja Manuel argues in this blog post that for the U.S. government, the crucial issue at the upcoming meeting of the key parties to the conflict in Syria is determining if and how to intervene and provide support in a conflict where there may no longer be real "good guys" or supporters of U.S. national interests. 

CISAC and FSI Senior Fellows Siegfried Hecker and William J. Perry write in this New York Times OpEd that Iran has little to show for its 50-year pursuit of a nuclear program. They argue Iran should forego its attempts to build the bomb and concentrate on learning how to build better nuclear power plants, which would aid the country's beleaguered economy and promote international cooperation.

"Japan and South Korea became leading global reactor vendors by doing so," they write. "This could constitute a pragmatic and honorable choice. Such a solution offers the best opportunities for technical and industrial development with greatest economic gain and and least danger of proliferation."

William J. Perry was only 18 when he found himself surrounded by death, a young U.S. Army mapping specialist in Japan during the Army of Occupation. The atomic bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki and World War II had just come to an end. 

“The vast ruins that once had been the great city of Tokyo – nothing, nothing had prepared me for such utter devastation that was wrought by massive waves of firebombing rained down by American bomber attacks,” said Perry, who was then shipped off to the island of Okinawa in the aftermath of the last great battle of WWII.

More than 200,000 soldiers and civilians had been killed in that closing battle of 1945, codenamed Operation Iceberg. 

“Not a single building was left standing; the island was a moonscape denuded of trees and vegetation,” Perry told a rapt audience during a recent speech. “The smell of death was still lingering.” 

The young man quickly understood the staggering magnitude of difference in the destruction caused by traditional firepower and these new atomic bombs.

 “It had taken multiple strikes by thousands of bombers and tens of thousands of high explosive bombs to lay waste to Tokyo,” he recalls. “The same had been done to Hiroshima and then to Nagasaki with just one plane – and just one bomb. Just one bomb. 

“The unleashing of this colossal force indelibly shaped my life in ways that I have now come to see more clearly,” said Perry, who would go on to become the 19^th secretary of defense. “It was a transforming experience. In many ways – I grew up from it.” 

William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.

William J. Perry in 1945 in his U.S. Army Air Corps uniform.  Photo Credit: U.S. Army

Now, nearly seven decades later, the 86-year-old Perry has come full circle. His new winter course will take students back to his fateful days in Japan after the United States became the first – and last – nation to use atomic weapons. He’ll go through the Cold War, the arms race and expanding nuclear arsenals, and today’s potential threats of nuclear terrorism and regional wars provoked by North Korea, Iran or South Asia. 

Living at the Nuclear Brink: Yesterday & Today (IPS 249) – to serve as the backdrop for an online course at Stanford next year – concludes with the declaration Perry made in 2007: The world must rid itself entirely of nuclear weapons. And students will get a primer on how to get involved in organizations that are working on just that. 

“They did not live through the Cold War, so they were never exposed to the dangers and therefore it doesn’t exist to them; it’s just not in their world,” Perry said of millennial and younger students. “I want to make them aware of what the dangers were and how those dangers have evolved.”

Perry and former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, both Democrats, joined former Republican Secretaries of State George P. Shultz and Henry A. Kissinger in launching a series of OpEds in The Wall Street Journal (the first in 2007) that went viral. Together they outlined how nations could work together toward a world without nuclear weapons.

“I think I have some responsibility since I helped build those weapons – and I think that time is running out,” Perry said in an interview. 

Perry helped shore up the U.S. nuclear arsenal as undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, procuring nuclear weapons delivery systems for the Carter administration. Later, as secretary of defense for President Bill Clinton, his priority became the dismantling of nuclear weapons around the world. 

Today, he works on the Nuclear Security Project along with Shultz, Kissinger and Nunn. Former New York Times correspondent Philip Taubman documents their bipartisan alliance in the book, “The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb.” That fifth cold warrior is Sidney Drell, the renowned Stanford physicist and co-founder of CISAC. 

Taubman, a consulting professor at CISAC, will guest lecturer in Perry’s class, along with CISAC’s Siegfried Hecker, David Holloway, Martha Crenshaw and Scott Sagan. Other speakers are expected to include Shultz, a distinguished fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution; Andrei Kokoshin, deputy of the Russian State Duma; Ashton B. Carter, who just stepped down as deputy secretary of defense; Joseph Martz of the Los Alamos National Laboratory; and Joeseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.

The world is far from banning the bomb. According to the Ploughshares Fund, an estimated 17,300 nuclear weapons remain in the global stockpile, the majority of which are in Russia and the United States.

                                                                                                CyperusMedia.com

President Barack Obama declared shortly after taking office in his first foreign policy speech in Prague that because the United States was the only country to have used nuclear weapons, Washington “has a moral responsibility to act.” 

“So today, I state clearly and with conviction, America’s commitment to seek the peace

and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” Obama said back in May 2009. 

Perry – a senior fellow at CISAC who received his BS and MS from Stanford and a PhD from Pennsylvania State University, all in mathematics – laments the regression of the movement to dismantle the nuclear legacy of the Cold War. 

Obama has so far not acted on his pledge in his contentious second term, as China and Russia expand their stockpiles. North Korea and Iran are attempting to build nuclear weapons and India and Pakistan are building more fissile material. The U.S. Senate still has not ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the U.S. and Russia have not moved forward on a follow-up to the New START Treaty. 

Perry recognizes that the issue is slipping from the public conscience, particularly among young people. So he’s putting his name and experience behind a Stanford Online course slated to go live next year. It will correspond with the release of his memoir, “My Journey at the Nuclear Brink” and will take a more documentary approach, weaving together key moments in Perry’s career with lectures, archival footage and interviews and conversations between Perry and his colleagues and counterparts. 

"Bill Perry has had a remarkable career and this project draws on his unparalleled experience over a pivotal period in history," said John Mitchell, vice provost for online learning. "We hope his brilliant reflections will be useful to everyone with an interest in the topic, and to teachers and students everywhere." 

At the heart of his winter course, online class and memoir are what Perry calls the five great lessons he learned in the nuclear age. The first four are grim remnants of what he witnessed over the years: the destructive nature of the atomic bombs on Japan; his mathematical calculations about the number of deaths from nuclear warfare; his work for the CIA during the Cuban Missile Crisis; and one pre-dawn call in 1978 from the North American Aerospace Defense Command saying there were 200 missiles headed toward the United States from the Soviet Union. That turned out to be a false, but terrifying alarm. 

His fifth final lesson is hopeful, if not cautionary. It goes like this: 

As secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997, Perry oversaw the dismantling of 8,000 nuclear weapons in the former Soviet Union and the United States and helped the former Soviet states of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus to go entirely non-nuclear. In that mission, he often visited Pervomaysk in the Ukraine, which was once the Soviet Union’s largest ICBM site, with 700 nuclear warheads all aimed at targets in the United States. 

On his final trip to Pervomaysk in 1996, he joined the Russian and Ukrainian defense ministers to plant sunflowers where those missiles had once stood. 

“So reducing the danger of nuclear weapons is not a fantasy; it has been done,” Perry said. “I will not accept that it cannot be done. I shall do everything I can to ensure nuclear weapons will never again be used – because I believe time is not on our side.”