Left Flank

The Economist explores the role of A.Q. Khan's in Iran's and DPRK's nuclear programs.

The network's customers for other nuclear technologies and equipment were Libya, Iran and North Korea, though suspicion has at times attached to Algeria, Saudi Arabia and Syria too. But Libya has been out of the bomb business since 2003. Jaws dropped when among the haul of equipment and documents it handed to inspectors was an Islamabad dry-cleaner's bag containing most (not all) of the drawings for a clunky Chinese-designed nuclear weapon from the 1960s, given to Pakistan before China decided that spreading the bomb was a dumb idea.

Unlike the Maoist model, the modern, computerised bomb design would fit easily on Pakistan's Ghauri missiles. Pakistan denies it, but these are a knock-off of North Korea's 1,300km-range Nodong rockets. Pakistan appears to have paid for its Ghauris with some nuclear assistance. Pakistan's president, Pervez Musharraf, denies this too. But in his autobiography he admitted that the Khan network had supplied Kim Jong Il's regime with some 20 uranium-enriching centrifuges.

Whatever the truth behind their missile deal, Pakistani officials were genuinely shocked to be told recently that Mr Khan was selling their most closely guarded weapons secrets too, according to Mr Albright. North Korea did test a nuclear device, in 2006. But its bomb used home-produced plutonium from Mr Kim's Yongbyon nuclear reactor for its fissile core; the Pakistani design touted by Mr Khan and his partners uses uranium.

Despite other evidence to the contrary, North Korea insists it got no uranium help from Pakistan or anywhere else. Recently (or so America and Israel say) it was caught out helping Syria to build a nuclear reactor (which Israel later flattened) that could produce plutonium for weapons, just like Yongbyon did. America seems ready to let both these matters go for now, so long as Mr Kim furnishes an accurate and verifiable inventory of his plutonium production. The gamble is that this would be a big step towards a six-party deal, to include South Korea, Japan, China and Russia, that could lead eventually to the dismantling of all North Korea's nuclear programmes.

Unlike Libya and North Korea, Iran flatly denies any weapons intent. It bought uranium-spinning equipment from Mr Khan, but says its nuclear work is entirely peaceful. Yet it has defied a string of UN Security Council resolutions demanding that the work be halted until inspectors can be sure of that. The trouble is that uranium enriched a little can be used in nuclear-power reactors, but when enriched a lot can be abused for bomb-building.

Iran's determination to enrich on regardless looks like dooming the latest offer of negotiations from America, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China. The six have promised Iran assistance with other, less proliferation-prone nuclear technology, and direct talks on a whole range of economic, trade and security issues that Iran itself raised in a set of counter-proposals last month. A crucial difference between the two offers is that Iran wants to enrich on regardless, on its own territory, whereas the six insist the work be suspended before negotiations start.

Unless Iran shows willing, says Britain's prime minister, Gordon Brown, European governments are prepared to extend their sanctions on Iran, for example by freezing the overseas assets of Bank Melli, Iran's largest commercial bank. (That move is not quite a done deal, but Mr Brown is confident it soon will be.) Despite record world energy prices, the Europeans may consider blocking investment in Iran's oil and gas industries too. America already has tough sanctions in place, though Russia and China do not.

Iran's insistence on enriching, whatever the cost, deepens suspicion of its motives. Now there are more worries. Like Pakistan's Ghauri missiles, Iran's Shahab-3 rockets are clones of Mr Kim's Nodongs. So the Khan network's modern warhead design would fit them just as nicely.

There is no evidence of any such transaction, but American and other intelligence agencies recently showed nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN's nuclear guardian, evidence pointing to Iranian weapons work which America thinks may have stopped in 2003—though others believe it continues. This includes both high-explosive testing for possible nuclear triggers and work on a Shahab-3 missile cone to accommodate a nuclear warhead. Iran has dismissed the material as fabricated. But it has yet to give a convincing explanation of why it had a document, supplied by Mr Khan and his associates, on shaping uranium into spheres—a technique useful only in weapons building.

ACW's jeffrey offers technical observations: «What does seem likely is that the device is small enough for the Nodong family, which includes Pakistan’s Ghauri and Iran’s Shahab.»

Yet, again, it's the politics that worries and infuriates me. The Bush administration is still coddling Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf, an approach CFR's Charles D. Ferguson would prefer to see replaced with a different diplomatic process. Ferguson rightly admits there are Washington officials, notwithstanding how the Tinners allegedly fooled the CIA after 2003 (via Danger Room's «Nuke Smuggler Peddled Missile-Ready Bomb Designs (Updated Again)», who have known about Khan's illicit activities for decades.

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