The Middle East Braces for a Nuclear Iran

Saudi Arabia eyes diplomacy while Israel prepares for confrontation.

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Iranian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hossein Amir-Abdollahian meets Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud in Beijing, China, on Thursday. (Photo by Iranian Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

The United States’ two most influential Middle Eastern partners are diverging in their responses to Iran’s burgeoning nuclear capabilities as U.S. attempts to rein in the Islamic Republic flounder. While Israel prepares for the possibility of a military showdown, Saudi Arabia appears poised to make amends with its longtime regional foe while eyeing an atomic arsenal of its own.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister met with his Iranian counterpart Thursday in Beijing to sign a Chinese-brokered agreement to reopen their respective embassies and resume flights between their two countries after cutting diplomatic ties in 2016. They also pledged non-aggression and a mutual respect for one another’s sovereignty in their first meeting in seven years. Although there’s no indication they touched on Iran’s recent nuclear advances Thursday, they reportedly discussed the issue in talks before signing the deal. 

Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir said in January Iran had “an obligation to give up” its nuclear program, but the Saudis also want to keep the door open for their own nuclear program. The Islamic kingdom has repeatedly asserted its own right to control the nuclear fuel cycle, refusing to preemptively limit its ability to enrich uranium and reprocess spent nuclear fuel. This approach is in part due to Saudi Arabia’s desire to break its dependence on oil by utilizing domestic uranium reserves for a civilian nuclear program, but Saudi leaders have also openly pledged to build a nuclear weapon if Iran does. 

“[Saudi Arabia] has warned that if Iran obtains a nuclear weapon then this would push the whole region to a nuclear arms race,” Faisal J. Abbas, editor-in-chief of the Saudi Arabia-based Arab News, said in an interview. 

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  1. Token Liberal

    Israel did not hesitate to attack nuclear projects in Iraq and Syria. I feel certain Israel would have attacked in Iran as well if they could have. But as this article states, Iran has worked hard to disperse and protect its program. I suspect the military threat is a somewhat empty one. We may soon be left with "mutually assured destruction" as the only deterrent in that volitile region.

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    Chris Lynch

    Seeing "experts" estimate how long it will take Iran to build a warhead makes me laugh. I have been watching these people get it wrong since I was 20, and I'm close to retirement age.

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    Earl King

    The Sunni Shia divide among Middle Eastern countries is most pronounced between Saudi Arabia and Iran. They will never be partners, they have few aligned interests. Saudi Arabia does not have the same discontent that Iran faces within its population but it is there. There is more economic freedom in Saudi Arabia but still little work beyond oil. Tehran economy is a bit more diverse, now having an arms business to offer up exports.

    America has said Iran will never get the bomb, but I haven’t believed it. I do believe Israel but am dubious of their capabilities.

    In lie of a military strike, the US would more likely say they will retaliate against Iran if is uses a nuclear weapon. The current entreaties between China and Saudi Arabia are not good for the US. In fact it lays at the feel of Biden with whom many have called the dumbest man with regards to Foreign Policy. He is doing much to earn that title.
    Slow walking weapons to both Ukraine and Taiwan, the withdrawal in Afghanistan along with the above do not show a deft hand. I do give him marks for keeping NATO together. However neither Turkey nor Hungary should prevent Sweden from joining. In lieu Sweden and Poland should sign a mutual defense Treaty with Sweden. I highly doubt that Russia would attack Sweden before he attacked Poland or the Baltics. In this way Sweden would be aligned with NATO and effectively be a partner while we sit around wait for the dictator in Turkey dies.

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    EricRemcon@gmail

    Nice coverage of an important topic, Charlotte. I am disappointed in the level of comment engagement with your article.

    IMO, it is not a matter of if, but when Israel will execute a military strike on Iran nuclear facilities. It would be nice if the US would take a more upfront and honest approach to the problem.

    A Middle East nuclear arms race is in no one’s interest. The focus on “breakout” material times is a distraction (totally dependent on mostly basic centrifuge technology). The real focus should be on the missile tech that is largely ignored. If Iran wanted to make a bold move, they are more than capable of doing it NOW (e.g., dirty bomb). They are holding off until they have a continental ballistic missile.

    Everyone needs to start focusing on the dangerous angle!

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  5. Sawinston

    Thanks again, Charlotte. Another excellent piece.

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  6. Petera

    The article talks about an Iranian nuke setting off a nuclear arms race in the Middle East. But probably Israel already has nuclear weapons and probably this is a major factor in Iran's calculations. Of course, I trust Israel with nuclear weapons a lot more than Iran, but that's besides the point. I bet the ayatollahs feel differently.

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      DougAz

      Israel has many nuclear weapons. For decades

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  7. DTruitt

    Geopolitically, Israel has always taken the position that Iran simply cannot be allowed to have nuclear weapons, even at the cost of all out war with Iran. There is some line in the sand that has not yet been crossed that will trigger a war - including the likely use of Israeli nuclear weapons - against Iran. We don't know where that line is, or whether the US government knows where that line is ... or even if the successive Israeli governments, which have been operating like a turnstile for the last several years, even knows exactly where that line is.

    Obviously Iran hopes to make their nuclear weapons a fait accompli by the time Israel realizes the line has been crossed. But the problem with that approach is that Iran not only has to hide the fact that a single weapon exists, but that a whole bunch of practical nuclear weapons must exist in a useable stockpile before Israel realizes the line has been crossed, so that Israel is deterred from launching their own nukes due to a retaliatory strike.

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    1. Israel.D.Gale

      Israel is a democracy that does not need to be "deterred" from a nuclear first strike, any more than the US does.

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  8. DTruitt

    As I recall, Iran has always been "two weeks away from having enough uranium for a bomb" since at least the mid 2010s, which was the presumed reason for the Obama admin's nuclear negotiations with Iran.

    With all this emphasis on uranium, it should be noted that uranium makes lousy nuclear weapons, because it is inefficient in the size of blast to the amount of fissionable material required compared to plutonium. Most nuclear weapons have been plutonium not uranium.

    To be a truly threatening nuclear power, Iran would need large amounts of plutonium which is produced in ordinary reactors fueled by non-weapons grade uranium, and uses uranium 238 - unfissionable unenriched uranium, not U 235 - as the feedstock. That requires a great deal of additional time and expense beyond what it takes to produce weapons grade uranium.

    Therefore to produce truly useful plutonium 239 for practical implosion type weapons, all it takes is an ordinary commercial nuclear power reactor modified to allow the fuel rods to be easily and frequently replaced without shutdowns such that the minute amounts of P 239 can be extracted from the irradiated pellets. There is also additional processing involved in reducing the amounts of plutonium 240 - a contaminant - from the plutonium produced in the reactor.

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    1. Ob4icu

      Thanks for that interesting info. Can you expand upon the difference between a uranium-based and a P239-based bomb? On a purely practical level, what are the implications for things like time-to-manufacture, impact/effectiveness, size and delivery mechanisms? I'd like to try to understand more about how these differences might impact how soon Iran is likely to have a meaningful weapon that Israel (and possibly the US) must take action to stop. Thanks.

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      1. Jaybrown

        I don't believe Iran is interested in developing a modern nuclear stockpile. As a terrorist state, having a few simple gun-assembled uranium weapons of low to moderate yield would be sufficient to threaten and deter its neighbors, while not enough (see NK, Pakistan, India) to cause major powers (except Israel) much heartburn for their own safety and deterrence capability.

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        1. DTruitt

          That's where you're wrong. That would be no deterrent to Israel, for one thing, or the United States or NATO, for another, just having a couple of inefficient warheads that would be delivered by what, exactly? The only delivery vehicle for such a weapon would be a very heavy bomber, like the B-29, of which Iran owns zero. Such a weapon will not fit onto a ballistic missile.

          Nope - Iran has to develop a stockpile of reasonably efficient and effective implosion warheads small and light enough to fit on the nose of a ballistic missile, or cruise missile. Enough of them to deter Israel. One or a couple will just result in a nuclear attack by Israel.

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          1. Jaybrown

            Weapons can be delivered by boats and land vehicles.

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        Sir. Orc

        For point of reference Fat Man was a plutonium bomb while Little Boy was a uranium bomb. Fat Man had a far larger blast yield but with a much smaller core - most of the bombs mass was the detonation mechanism required to crush that core in perfect synchronization. Little Boy was used first as the feasibility of a plutonium bomb was uncertain at the time, which slowed the development of Fat Man somewhat.

        In general plutonium is much more energy dense and unstable than uranium, so bombs using it as a core will have higher blast yields relative to the mass of the core (at least from my rather limited knowledge of nuclear physics). As DTruitt mentioned above, plutonium is absolutely required for implosion type weapons which are the simplest kind of nuclear weapon to build.

        Even an implosion weapon is very complicated mechanically as it requires the charges that crush the core to be detonated with perfect precision. Gun-type designs which would use uranium are even more complex as they require precise shaping of the core in addition to the timing of the detonations. It should also be noted that other materials must be added to the bomb in order to maximize the fission (and in fusion bombs - the fusion) which itself directly the yield of the bomb.

        So long story short, plutonium weapons are to some degree easier to build in pure logistical terms, but uranium weapons are easier to design in terms of the science. Both are incredibly complex - assuming Iran is developing uranium weapons because it is unsure of its technological proficiency in developing plutonium ones I would say that it still would be some years away as it need to refine the actual mechanism of the bomb and the secondary platings and accelerants required to sustain the reactions.

        It should be noted most nuclear weapons - especially fusion weapons - use a mix of both materials (though they tend to favor plutonium as the primary material). This is because they can be used in tandem in a gun-type mechanism to create even larger yields.

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        1. Jaybrown

          Fat Man was about 25kt, Little Boy around 20kt. Not so "far larger" yield.

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        2. DTruitt

          Actually, it's easier to design and build a gun type uranium bomb than an implosion plutonium device, which is why during the Manhattan Project the gun type bomb was never a question ("will it work?), whereas the implosion type was much more complicated to design and test ... much of the design and testing work in Los Alamos was devoted to getting the implosion device to detonate properly. But gun designs are necessarily far larger and heavier, not suitable for use on missiles, and only work with uranium 235.

          Uranium isn't very efficient in a device as compared to plutonium device.

          Where different warheads today differ in design is whether they are simply a single pit with boosted accelerant (via tritium gas that undergoes fusion within the fission detonation), or whether they are a true thermo nuclear device that uses a two stage warhead, i.e., one stage exploding via fission to create the necessary X ray field to detonate a second pit that undergoes fusion rather than fission, thus releasing more energy. Not only does it release far more energy, but it also can use depleted uranium (natural uranium that was used for enrichment and has had the U 235 fraction removed for use in reactor fuel).

          Modern designs can also feature adjustable yields depending upon design details and the amount of tritium boosting done.

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          Sir. Orc

          Also, to better answer the question about time. Plutonium does not occur naturally, so the only way to get it is through a process like that DTruitt described above. This means any plutonium weapon will take longer to build and develop than a uranium one.

          Nuclear tests are also almost impossible to hide. The only way I know is to basically do them in another county’s borders where you might maintain plausible deniability - and even that is unlikely to fool most intelligence agencies. The only countries likely to cooperate with Iran in this regard with any nuclear technical proficiency are China, Russia, and North Korea.

          That Iran is enriching uranium suggests unsurprisingly that it is trying to develop an arsenal quickly. More to the point, it suggests they at least have a design they think will work for a nuke, and they are planning to test it. On the other hand, they may have a design they know for sure works because they either tested it in another country, or more likely sat in on those tests and had blueprints shared with them. It would take only maybe a year or two to develop enough bombs to actually threaten their neighbors if they had a working design. Based on the history of China’s own arsenal, if they do not have a working design it may take them another 2-3 years on top of that to develop one - assuming all required infrastructure for testing is in place.

          So given all this, I’d probably say that Iran is at least about 2-5 years away from having a functional arsenal of uranium bombs given the amount of enriched uranium they are developing.

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  9. Israel.D.Gale

    Thanks, Charlotte. Good, balanced perspective. It's hard to see how an Israeli strike on Iran is avoidable.

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