1、R E P O RTA P R I L 20 1 9BE L F E R CENTER REPORTThe IranNuclear Archive:Impressions and ImplicationsAaron ArnoldMatthew BunnCaitlin ChaseSteven E.MillerRolf Mowatt-LarssenWilliam H.TobeyBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs Harvard Kennedy School 79 JFK Street Cambridge,MA 02138www.b
2、elfercenter.orgStatements and views expressed in this report are solely those of the authors and do not imply endorsement by Harvard University,the Harvard Kennedy School,or the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.Layout by Jacob CarozzaCover photo:The nuclear archive warehouse outsi
3、de Tehran(satellite image via Google).Copyright 2019,President and Fellows of Harvard College Printed in the United States of AmericaBE L F ER CENTER REPORTR E P O RTA P R I L 20 1 9The Iran Nuclear Archive:Impressions and ImplicationsAaron ArnoldMatthew BunnCaitlin ChaseSteven E.MillerRolf Mowatt-L
4、arssenWilliam H.TobeyiiThe Iran Nuclear Archive:Impressions and ImplicationsAbout the AuthorsAaron Arnold is a Research Fellow with the Project on Managing Atom at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.His current work focuses on the implementation and enforcement of trade controls
5、 for pre-venting WMD proliferation.Prior to his current position,he worked as a nonproliferation and counterproliferation subject matter expert at the U.S.Department of Defense and U.S.Justice Department,where he specialized in threat finance and sanctions evasion.Aaron holds a PhD and MPP in public
6、 policy and national security from George Mason University and a BA in international relations from Virginia Tech.Matthew Bunn is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Universitys John F.Kennedy School of Gov ernment,and the faculty leader of the Project on Managing the Atom.Before coming to Harvard,Bu
7、nn served as an adviser to the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy,as a study director at the National Academy of Sciences,and as editor of Arms Con-trol Today.He is the author or co-author of more than 25 books or major technical reports(most recently Preventing Black-Market Trade i
8、n Nuclear Technology),and over 150 articles in publications ranging from Science to The Washington Post.Caitlin Chase is the Project Coordinator for the Intelligence and Defense Projects at Harvard Kennedy Schools Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.She manages the projects day-to-da
9、y operations and external partnerships,as well as the Recanati-Kaplan Fellowship for active-duty intelligence officers from 11 different intelligence agencies and 8 different countries.She coordinated the 2018 and 2019 Elbe Group meet-ings,bringing senior retired military and intelligence flag offic
10、ers from the United States and Russia together for an unprecedented three-day track II dialogue.She graduated from Duke University in 2016 with a B.A.in Public Policy and a Certificate in Markets and Management,where she focused on American Grand Strategy,U.S.Foreign Policy in the Middle East,and Mi
11、ddle Eastern and Arabic studies.Before coming to the Belfer Center,Caitlin worked as a consultant for Cathartes Private Investments.iiiBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs|Harvard Kennedy SchoolSteven E.Miller is Director of the International Security Program,Editor-in-Chief of the qu
12、arterly journal,International Security and also co-editor of the International Security Programs book series,Belfer Center Studies in International Security(which is published by the MIT Press).Previ-ously,he was Senior Research Fellow at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute(SIPRI)an
13、d taught Defense and Arms Control Studies in the Department of Political Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Miller is editor or co-editor of more than two dozen books,including,most recently,The Next Great War?The Roots of World War I and the Risk of U.S.-China Conflict.Rolf Mowatt
14、-Larssen is the Director of the Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center.Prior to assuming the Director position,Rolf served as a senior fellow at the Center and served over three years as the Director of Intelligence and Counterintelligence at the U.S.Department of Energy.Prior to this,he served f
15、or 23 years as a CIA intelligence officer in various domestic and international posts,to include Chief of the Europe Division in the Directorate of Operations,Chief of the Weapons of Mass Destruc-tion Department,Counterterrorist Center,and Deputy Associate Director of Central Intelligence for Milita
16、ry Support.Prior to his career in intel-ligence,Mr.Mowatt-Larssen served as an officer in the U.S.Army.He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy,West Point,NY.He is married to Roswitha and has three children.William H.Tobey is a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and Interna
17、tional Affairs at Harvard Kennedy School.From 2006 to 2009,he was Deputy Administrator for Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation at the National Nuclear Security Administration.Mr.Tobey also served on the National Security Council Staff under three presidents,in defense policy,arms control,and counterpro
18、liferation positions.He is a member of the Nuclear and Radiation Studies Board of the National Academies of Sci-ences,Engineering,and Medicine.ivThe Iran Nuclear Archive:Impressions and ImplicationsTable of ContentsIntroduction.1Clarifying Irans Nuclear Program.4Strategic Intent.4Technical Progress.
19、6Reconstitution Capability.8Implications for Nonproliferation.9Foreign Assistance and Procurement.9Detection of Secret Facilities and Activities.11Next Steps.13Appendix A:Key Elements of a Nuclear Weaponization ProgramWhats New in the Israeli Documents on Iran?.14Appendix B:Mysteries of the Iran Nuc
20、lear Weaponization Archive.18Why did Iran decide to manufacture nuclear weapons when it did?.18What was Iran thinking about its ability to keep the effort secret?.19vBelfer Center for Science and International Affairs|Harvard Kennedy SchoolWhat were the specific reasons for the partial stop work ord
21、er in late 2003?.20How did Irans strategic intent change over 2003-2019?.21Why did they pick the numbers five nuclear weapons of 10 kilotons each as goals?.21Why did the extensive penetration of Irans program not reveal this information before?.22Where is Irans uranium casting work?.22How were they
22、going to try to buy HEU?.23Where were the other centrifuges developed and tested,and how much progress did that effort make?.24Why did they not declare one particular set of nuclear material?.24What actions is the IAEA taking?.24Cover ImageThe nuclear archive warehouse outside Tehran(satellite image
23、 via Google).1Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs|Harvard Kennedy SchoolIntroductionOn April 30,2018,Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu re-vealed in a speech that Israel had succeeded in removing from Iran an enormous collection of material from an archive Iran had compiled re
24、lated to Tehrans nuclear program.1 Israeli officials estimate that they took approximately twenty percent of the entire archive.This trove in-cluded some 55,000 pages of documents and a further 55,000 files on CDsfiles that included photos and videos in addition to documents.These materials permit a
25、 detailed examination of Irans nuclear activ-ities in the period 1999 to 2003,when Iran issued a“halt order”that curtailed its full-blown weapons program(though as discussed below,some activities continued).In January 2019,the authors traveled to Israel to receive a briefing on the archive from seni
26、or Israeli intelligence officials.The Israeli officials provided a detailed summary of their conclusions on the archives history,contents,and implications,which included showing copies of some archive documents and photographs along with a few origi-nal documents that Israeli officials believed to b
27、e critical to a broader understanding of the archive.Officials also provided us with copies of selected documents and photographs.We did not have access to the entire archive.Nor did we have any authentication experts in our group.Moreover,many of the docu-ments shown or provided to us are written i
28、n Farsi,and our group did not include Farsi speakers.For these reasons,we cannot validate the authenticity of the materials with certainty.Moreover,we cannot judge whether or not exculpatory information for some portions of the ac-tivities covered might exist within the archive.We do judge,however,t
29、hat the scope and detail of the documents provided,and the degree to which they dovetail with publicly available records on Irans nucle-ar weapons program,make a convincing case that the archive is real,though reflective of a discrete period of time now more than a decade 1 The transcript of Netanya
30、hus remarks can be found in“Full Text:Netanyahu Claims Iran Nuclear Deal Based on Lies,”Haaretz,April 30,2018.2The Iran Nuclear Archive:Impressions and Implicationsin the past.2 It is our understanding that the U.S.government and the Inter-national Atomic Energy Agency(IAEA),both of which have recei
31、ved full copies of what Israel acquired,have been going through their own pains-taking processes of assessment and confirmation of authenticity.Not everything in the archive is new.For several decades,officials and ana-lysts in Washington and elsewhere have known that Tehran was interested in and wa
32、s making efforts to work toward a nuclear weapons capability,so the existence of Irans nuclear weapons program is neither new nor sur-prising.However,the Israeli officials who have been through the material in detail believe the archive provides an unprecedented and extensive look back at the organi
33、zation,the scale,the objectives,the capabilities,and the progress of Irans nuclear program.This appears to be by far the fullest picture that exists of where Iran was headed and what it had achieved.Broadly,what the archive shows is that in the period 1999-2003 Iran had a well-organized,purposeful,a
34、nd impressive nuclear weapons program that had made considerable progress.While the Israelis believe they acquired only 20 percent of the total archive,they believe the materials they seized provide a reasonably complete picture of the total program,in part because they include overall program manag
35、ement documents.Israel has provided materials from the archive to several parties,including national governments,international organizations,academic researchers,and journalists.3 In his speech(which was accompanied by a slide presenta-tion),Prime Minister Netanyahu made public many of the key revel
36、ations and documents in the archive.Subsequently,Israel shared the entire col-lection with the IAEA,the United States,the United Kingdom,and France.Still other governments have been briefed on the contents of the archive,as 2 Iran has categorically denied the authenticity of the archive since its re
37、velation.According to a statement released by Irans U.N.mission in New York,“Iran has always been clear that creating in-discriminate weapons of mass destruction is against what we stand for as a country and the notion that Iran would abandon any kind of sensitive information in some random warehous
38、e in Tehran is laughably absurd.”See Joby Warrick,“Papers Stolen in a Daring Israeli Raid on Tehran Archive Reveal the Extent of Irans Past Weapons Research,”The Washington Post,July 15,2018.https:/ The Institute for Science and International Security in Washington,D.C.,for example,has produced a se
39、ries of papers based on documentation obtained from the Iran nuclear archive.Available at isis-online.org.3Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs|Harvard Kennedy Schoolhave journalists from Israel and elsewhere.4 Some prominent Israeli fig-ures have even proposed putting the entire arch
40、ive on the internet in order to facilitate analysis of the vast trove of materials,though as it includes detailed nuclear weapon designs,we would strongly recommend against complete disclosure.5 This brief report summarizes the groups conclusions about what the ar-chive reveals about Irans program.T
41、he report is in three parts.First,the main body offers six overall impressions and implications from our brief-ings on and review of the archive materials.Second,Appendix A offers a table comparing what was publicly known before the archive to what the archive appears to reveal,in each of the severa
42、l key elements of a nuclear weapons program.Third,Appendix B summarizes important questions that remain open.All participants in the group agree on this report.Participants in the group represent a range of views on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action(JCPOA)and on what policies the United States
43、and other countries should take now to address Irans nuclear program;we do not believe that the facts in this report lead inexorably to any particular policy conclu-sion.Indeed,all potential policy choices appear fraught with difficulty and uncertainty.Nevertheless,we believe the policy discussion w
44、ill be strength-ened by having a common factual basis to draw on,and we hope this report will contribute to that objective.4 See,for example,David Sanger and Ronen Bergman,“How Israel,in Dark of Night,Torched Its Way to Irans Nuclear Secrets,”New York Times,July 15,2018,and Joby Warwick,“Papers Stol
45、en in a Daring Israeli Raid.”For an extensive account,including photos of many of the key documents,see Ronen Bergman,“Irans Great Nuclear Deception,”YN,November 23,2018,available at https:/ Yonah Jeremy Bob,“Ex-Foreign Ministry Official:Put Secret Iran Nuke Archives on Internet,”Jerusa-lem Post,Feb
46、ruary 18,2019.In our discussions,details of nuclear weapons designs were fuzzed out to avoid revealing classified information.4The Iran Nuclear Archive:Impressions and ImplicationsClarifying Irans Nuclear Program1.Strategic Intent:Irans senior leadership approved a program to manufacture nuclear wea
47、pons and carry out an underground nuclear test.This was a coherent,organized,top-down program,not a rogue operation.During the many years of the Iran nuclear controversy,there has been speculation about the nature of Irans nuclear program.Was it aiming for a weapon or for a hedging option?Was there
48、an unambiguous decision from the top or was this a loosely coordinated bottom-up effort?Did this pro-gram have a firm grounding in state policy or was it largely the product of efforts by relatively autonomous actors such as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps(IRGC)?Could this be a case of technol
49、ogists going further than authorized or understood by the political authorities?If the archive documents are authentic,all such speculations can now be set aside.The materials make it clear that Irans nuclear weapons pro-gramknown as Project AMADwas unambiguously aimed at producing nuclear weapons.I
50、t had an approved and budgeted plan for manufactur-ing five nuclear weapons and carrying out an underground nuclear test.At least one document indicates that the decision to actually manufacture nuclear weapons and carry out a test was approved by a committee that at the time(though this is not note
