An excellent issue brief from the Arms Control Association points out that a ban on major weapon deliveries, hardly mentioned if at all in most press coverage, is one of the most significant provisions of the sanctions the UN Security Council imposed on Iran last week. Resolution 1929 directs all states to “prevent the direct or indirect supply, sale or transfer to Iran…of any battle tanks, armored combat vehicles, large-caliber artillery systems, combat aircraft, attack helicopters, warships, missiles or missile systems…or related material” and “shall prevent the provision to Iran…of technical training, financial resources or services” pertaining to the maintenance or use of such weapons. That is, the sanctions not only bar new sales of heavy weapons to Iran but prohibit provision of continued assistance with weapons already transferred.
As the issue brief points out, given that China and Russia have been Iran’s major military suppliers since the 1979 revolution, it is especially significant that they agreed to the ban on heavy weapons sales, which will have a real impact on Iran’s capabilities. The issue brief includes at the end a long and impressive list of Russian and Chinese weapons transactions that could be affected by Resolution 1929. Russia’s 2007 promise to supply Iran with the S-300 air defense system was considered a possible loophole in the sanctions resolution. But on June 11, the same day the ACA brief was issued, Putin told Sarkozy in Paris that Russia would continue to freeze delivery of the system.
The ACA brief, written by Greg Thielmann with Matthew Sugrue, points out that the rebuff by Russia and China is a political as well as a military blow to the Iranian regime, ”raising…questions about the government’s competence in managing foreign affairs.” The rebuff also raises questions about the government’s ultimate intentions. If the cost to Iran of pursuing a nuclear weapons capability is a rather stiff near-term deterioration of its conventional military capabilities, as well as almost complete diplomatic isolation, why does it want that capability so badly? Is it just the usual lure of prestige plus an element of deterrence, or is there a faction in the government that wants to actually use nuclear weapons upon acquiring them?
Thielmann and Sugrue complain–rightly, I feel–that much of the press has sold the sanctions resolution short, underestimating its possible impact and the diplomatic triumph it represents. An exception among journalists has been Gerald F. Seib of the Wall Street Journal, whose coverage has been balanced and nuanced. In his June 11 assessment, Seib observed that the effectiveness of the sanctions will depend critically on whether the major European countries and the United States follow up with stiff implementing rules and enforcement. In fact, this week both the United States and the European Union announced tough additional sanctions.
If the major industrial countries remain firmly resolved, the effect surely will be to slow Iran’s nuclear weapons program somewhat, especially as its government cannot completely rule out the possibility of collective military action if it steps over a red line too abruptly. But nobody thinks the sanctions will stop the country’s weaponization effort. In terms of fissionable uranium, Iran already is more than halfway to its first bomb; in terms of designing and building a bomb, it’s to be assumed that Iran acquired the blueprints for a working nuclear weapon from A.Q. Khan.
What to watch for next? Evidence that Iran is testing the implosion mechanism for the bomb with conventional explosives, without fissionable material in the core. That would indicate it may be less than a year from having a working weapon.
