Sensitive Russian nuclear aid to Iran has stopped, US officials say

A Bush administration official faced tough congressional questioning June 12 on a proposed agreement for nuclear cooperation with Russia, but he appeared to address one key point of concern by indicating that Russian nuclear assistance to Iran was now limited to work on the Bushehr reactor.

Since the agreement was submitted to Congress May 13, letters and statements issued by lawmakers have focused on Russian assistance that could help Tehran's efforts to produce and deliver weapons of mass destruction, or WMD.

Reports -- including one by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, which supports the proposed agreement -- had indicated that Russia still may be providing Iran with some sensitive nuclear assistance. That term generally refers to technology or equipment related to enrichment, reprocessing or heavy-water production.

At the June 12 hearing before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Robert Einhorn, a co-author of the CSIS study, cited reports that such transfers had taken place since the US-Russia agreement was initialed a year ago, although he also said that there "apparently [have been] strong assurances at the highest levels of the Russian government that any further sensitive cooperation between Russian entities and Iran will stop."

But in remarks at the hearing and in brief comments to reporters later, John Rood, the State Department's acting under secretary for arms control and international security, appeared to go further than that. He said the administration believes Russia's nuclear assistance to Iran is now limited to Bushehr, and that the US has no "substantial concerns" about that assistance. But he declined to state flatly that there was no Russian nuclear assistance beyond Bushehr.

In a subsequent interview, a second US official said that assistance to Bushehr will continue but that concerns about other nuclear ties between Russia and Iran have been resolved. Asked about the apparent change, the official said it would be reasonable to conclude that the cessation was a recent development.

At one time, the Bush administration objected to Russia's involvement in the Bushehr project. But since then, Russia has negotiated arrangements under which Moscow is supplying fresh fuel to Bushehr and is to take back spent fuel from the reactor. President George W. Bush has praised Russia for instituting those arrangements.

In his prepared remarks, Rood said the arrangements "mitigated our concerns." He repeated that formulation several times, prompting Howard Berman, the California Democrat who chairs the committee, to comment that "mitigated" is "a funny term."

Many lawmakers and others have objected to the Bushehr assistance. However, UN Security Council sanctions on Iran make an exception for Bushehr.

Certification conundrum

A focus of congressional criticism has been the Bush administration's request for a waiver of the certification requirements of the Iran, North Korea and Syria Nonproliferation Act, or Inksna. Under that law, presidential certification of Russian nonproliferation credentials with regard to Iran is a precondition for US payments to the Russian space agency.

Among the requirements are that Russia oppose the proliferation to Iran of WMD and missile systems capable of delivering them, and that Russia demonstrate a sustained commitment to seeking out and preventing the transfer to Iran of goods, services, and technology that could contribute to such programs.

Congressional critics -- led by Florida's Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the top Republican on the committee -- have argued that it is contradictory for the administration to be pushing for the nuclear cooperation agreement while it is unable to make the Inksna certification. Berman, who said at the beginning of the hearing that he has not made up his mind about the agreement with Russia, said the waiver request "seems to be, at least, on the surface, a bit of a problem."

But Rood said he did not believe there was an "inconsistency," because Inksna establishes a legal standard that is different from the one in the Atomic Energy Act. The second US official said that because Inksna has a "very, very low threshold," it is difficult to state with confidence that all of its requirements have been met. Also, as both officials noted, Inksna is not limited to nuclear assistance.

Much of the congressional criticism has focused on Russian aid to Iran in areas such as missile technology and advanced conventional weapons. The critics have cited a March 2007 letter from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence saying that "Russian entities continue to provide assistance to Iran's ballistic missile programs."

But Einhorn said, "This is a nuclear agreement, and nuclear is the most important aspect" of Iran's behavior.

Rood argued for the nonproliferation benefits of the agreement, saying that the administration "has reason to believe that U.S. willingness to enter into negotiations that Russia had long sought, as well as the U.S. decision to carry them forward to a successful conclusion, had a definite and positive impact on the way Russia came to regard certain nonproliferation issues and take steps to deal with them." He declined to elaborate on that point, saying that details are in the classified annex to the Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement. That assessment was submitted to Congress along with the agreement.

Rood also cited potential civilian benefits of the agreement, including cooperation in developing fast reactors. As he noted, the US cannot send fast-reactor assemblies to Russia for testing -- as contemplated under the Bush administration's Global Nuclear Energy Partnership -- without an agreement.

But another witness at the hearing, Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, said a great deal of nonproliferation and technical work can take place -- and already is taking place -- without the agreement. The kinds of work that require the agreement -- such as joint fast-reactor development -- are "precisely what you should not be doing," he said.

Sokolski -- who, like Einhorn, is a former US nonproliferation official -- also cited the lack of nuclear liability protection in Russia and concerns expressed by US companies on that point.

Meanwhile, a June 9 Nuclear Energy Institute memo focused on another aspect of the agreement. US companies cannot send nuclear material to Russia without the agreement in force, and the same is true for non-US companies holding US-obligated material. A nuclear industry official said last week that the lack of an agreement could put US companies at a disadvantage in selling their products and services to Japan, for example, because Japan is now barred from sending reprocessed US-obligated uranium to Russia for re-enrichment.

Created: June 18, 2008

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