The Birth of a Bomb - A History of Iran's Nuclear Ambitions Part II

 

by Erich Follath and Holger Stark Spiegel

 

 

2nd part of 3

 

Camouflage and Deception

 

In the mid-1990s, the Iranians start building secret facilities to house the centrifuges, marking the beginning of a game of camouflage and deception that has continued to this day, and with which the country is forfeiting the right to uranium enrichment, to which it is formally entitled. The Kalaye Electric watch factory in a Tehran suburb is converted into a facility to house a centrifuge, and a new, secret nuclear complex is built near Natanz, 250 kilometers south of the capital.

 

After the devastating Iraq War, a heavy weight has descended on the country. It is becoming increasingly evident that the mullahs have no effective solutions, neither for the economy nor to address social issues. The West, for its part, doesn't know what to think of a regime that is sending out cautious gestures of goodwill, while at the same time dispatching death squads against members of the opposition living abroad.

 

Meanwhile, in neighboring Pakistan, Khan is celebrating the biggest triumph of his life. On May 28, 1998, Pakistan conducts several successful nuclear tests. Khan becomes a national hero, helped in large part by a Swiss family of engineers. Khan became aware of Friedrich Tinner when he obtained Urenco's list of suppliers in the Netherlands, and the Pakistani soon became friendly with Tinner's son Marco. Khan calls the Tinners, who become part of his network, "a wonderful, honest family." The younger son Urs, who drops out of high school at 16 and is soon deeply in debt, is the black sheep of the family, making him an ideal target for the CIA.

 

The American intelligence agency has since become more vigilant and has identified the Pakistani nuclear jihadist as a threat to world peace. But the extent of his deals remains unclear. Langley decides to infiltrate the organization with a middleman. The CIA agent with the codename "Mad Dog" discovers that Urs Tinner has moved to Dubai and is now working for friends of Khan.

 

It is now the year 2000, and there is a mole in the Khan network, someone with very close connections. Urs Tinner enjoys the trust of his boss and, in the Dubai office where he works, is permitted to scan secret nuclear construction plans intended for illegal sale to third parties. In mid-2000, the Americans' efforts pay off when they discover that Iran and Libya have awarded new nuclear contracts to Khan. But Washington still believes in a hand's off policy at this point, and soon Sept. 11 creates new priorities, in which Pakistan's cooperation is needed. The UN Security Council gives its blessing to the American retaliatory strike against al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden's terrorist camp in Afghanistan, and Islamabad officially sides with Washington.

 

The CIA believes that it has everything under control as far as Khan is concerned, but he proves to be anything but an easily controlled marionette.

 

And there is another player in the Iranian nuclear program that hasn't even appeared on the Americans' radar screen, someone whose role remains mysterious to this day. The trail leads to Russia.

 

'Arming to Threaten the Peace of the World'

 

Act 3: How a BND Agent Discovers the 'Laptop of Death' Vyacheslav D. is an internationally recognized specialist in the field of nanotechnology. His good reputation is based on a discovery he and his fellow Soviet scientists made in July 1963. When they exposed carbon to the shock waves from an explosion, the abrupt compression turned the carbon into gems called nanodiamonds. The Iranians have no need for sparkling gems, but they are interested in all things related to detonating a bomb -- which is where the Russian comes in. During the Cold War, D. spent years working on the Soviets' nuclear weapons program. Chelyabinsk-70 in Siberia, 1,500 kilometers due east of Moscow, is the Soviet version of Los Alamos. The Russians have been building nuclear bombs there since 1955, and now their scientists are experimenting with ways to make them smaller. D. works in the scientific research institute at Chelyabinsk.

 

The Iranians take notice of D. in 1992, when he and his colleagues publish a groundbreaking essay in a professional journal. In the article, they discuss the challenge of making the shock waves expand as uniformly as possible after an explosion, an important factor in the detonation of a certain type of nuclear warhead. To this end, many small channels have to be cut into the warhead "so as to be able to measure the intervals at which the waves arrive," D. writes. According to IAEA sources, a deal is struck around 1995.

 

From then on, the Russian scientist will work for Tehran. Whether he is fully aware of the real goal of the project is unclear.

 

It is a process of nuclear armament that remains long hidden from the world, until one of those golden, late-summer days in Washington in mid-August 2002. The People's Mujaheddin of Iran, part of an umbrella coalition of Iranian exiles called the National Council of Resistance of Iran, is holding a press conference at the Willard Intercontinental Hotel in Washington. It isn't exactly the preferred venue for the Iranian dissidents who are trying to bring down the regime with bombs in Tehran and protests in European capitals.

 

 

A Global Political Sensation

 

The Iranian exiles meet with the press in the Taft room on the third floor. "What I am showing you today are two top-secret sites that the Iranian regime has sought to conceal until now," says a spokesman of the People's Mujahedin. His words are a global political sensation. A heavy water reactor to produce plutonium in Arak? An enrichment plant in Natanz? Is it possible that Iran has been operating a nuclear program for years?

 

The regime critics claim that the presentation is the "result of our own intensive research," but this isn't true. In fact, the Israel intelligence service provided the group with its information. To enhance credibility, the government in Jerusalem has sought to obfuscate its authorship. In Arab countries, such a sensation would only be treated as yet another consequence of an endless series of alleged Zionist propaganda.

 

The unexpected exposure of Iran's Manhattan Project changes everything. So far the Iranians have managed to keep the development under wraps, but now the global public is shining its spotlights on the country. It marks the beginning of a major political controversy that will end with an alternative: war or peace?

 

By then, US President George W. Bush had already coined the term "Axis of Evil," in reference to Iraq, Iran and North Korea. These three countries, Bush says in January 2002, are "arming to threaten the peace of the world." He openly threatens war, saying: "The United States of America will not permit the world's most dangerous regimes to threaten us with the world's most destructive weapons."

 

The new doctrine of the neo-conservatives in the US administration, who seek to change the world order with armed force, is that armed intervention is justified if there is so much as a threat to American interests. Soon the concept of "regime change" in Tehran starts making the rounds. Iran's revolutionary leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, fears for the continued existence of the Islamic Republic.

 

Mohamed ElBaradei, the Egyptian head of the Vienna-based IAEA, flies to Tehran in July 2003. His inspectors have been traveling around the country since March, installing cameras, seals and measuring devices for monitoring purposes, and they have been asking many questions. It has now become much more difficult to keep things a secret, and it will gradually become clear just how far the Iranian scientists have already come technologically.

 

 

Test Detonations

 

In the summer of 2003, the Tehran engineers conduct test detonations based on the Russian method. According to information that is leaked later on, the explosive device consists of a hemisphere with a diameter of 27.5 centimeters (11 inches), encased in a shell of annealed aluminum. Just as Vyacheslav D. described in his 1992 essay, the Iranians drill tiny holes into the aluminum shell and place small explosive charges into the holes.

 

The charges are designed to simultaneously ignite a large charge of conventional explosives inside the hemisphere.

 

 

The goal of the test is to determine whether the ensuing shock waves coming from all sides act simultaneously on the potential nuclear core. About 1,000 fiberglass sensor wires are arranged inside the hemisphere to transmit a light signal to a digital measuring device. A high-speed camera takes pictures at intervals of a fraction of a second. This allows the scientists to analyze the course of the experiment.

 

If the Western intelligence services are to be believed, the results represent a technical breakthrough. The message of the summer of 2003 is that the detonator technology appears to be controllable Even as the engineers are announcing their successes, international pressure seems to be having an effect. US intelligence intercepts internal

instructions from the Iranian government that suggest a drastic reduction in the military research budget. A number of scientists complain that they are no longer being allowed to pursue their projects. The government is so concerned about the discovery of its secret nuclear projects that, in February 2004, bulldozers appear in front of a building at the Physics Research Center in northeast Tehran, which houses a military segment of the

nuclear research program. The fact that Western intelligence agencies are able to monitor internal Iranian communications is due in part to the work of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND.

 

 

An Important German Source

 

The Germans have an important source in Tehran, a person with the codename "Dolphin," who is managed by personnel at the BND's Department One at the agency's headquarters in Pullach, outside Munich. A businessman who works for the government in Tehran, the source has only a coincidental connection to the business of splitting atoms. Through his work, which involves pouring steel and concrete in Isfahan, Natanz and elsewhere, Dolphin gradually gains access to the inner circle that is pressing ahead with the secret program for the regime.

 

The agents from Pullach prefer to meet with Dolphin during his trips abroad, which, shortly before the end of the millennium, the regime still allows. Dolphin is a smart man who knows that the intelligence agencies love betrayal but not the betrayer. To cover his back, he takes out a form of life insurance: He collects all the classified documents about the nuclear program he can get his hands on, digitizes them and hides the laptop as a

deposit on his own security. He doesn't want to stay in Iran forever, but would rather defect, preferably to the United States.

 

The CIA has also taken notice of the Iranian businessman. He is a manageable entity, someone who is actively involved in the nuclear program and, when Dolphin first expresses his desire to leave Iran, the BND decides to bring in the CIA. But then a fatal error occurs and, in 2003, the Iranian intelligence service uncovers Dolphin's contacts in the United States. Like so many other opposition figures, he is arrested one day. His wife manages to flee the country with their children, taking the laptop with her. She marches into the American consulate in Istanbul, where she tells her story and is referred to the CIA. Dolphin disappears into one of Tehran's notorious prisons, but his wife and children are flown to the United States.

 

 

The laptop becomes her Green Card.

 

The 'Green Salt Project' The more than 1,000 pages of documents on the computer include Iranian correspondence relating to the conversion of uranium oxide into uranium

tetrafluoride. The Iranians refer to this step as the "Green Salt Project" and, according to the documents on the laptop, the program is managed under a department known as “Project 5.13." Its goal is to produce a ton of the "green salt" per year. The laptop also contains a document dated May 2003, under the letterhead of Kimia Maadan, a Tehran-based company. The Iranian ambassador to the IAEA will later deny the existence of the project in question, and he will claim that the company was merely involved in uranium

production at a mine near the town of Gachin. But business records at SPIEGEL's disposal reinforce the suspicion that Kimia Maadan is in fact a part of the Tehran Defense Ministry.

 

The US government presents the material from the laptop in a bugproof room at the German Chancellery, the office of the chancellor. The Americans have political reasons for getting the Germans involved. After the intelligence disaster surrounding the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Americans are now looking for partners to share the responsibility. But Frank-Walter Steinmeier, chief of staff to Chancellor Gerhard SchrÃder, and his intelligence coordinator Ernst Uhrlau don't want to be subservient to

the Americans. They don't trust Bush and his CIA.

 

Finally, the United States decides to let the UN weapons inspectors in Vienna -- and the most world's most important figure on the subject of nuclear security -- in on the secret of the "laptop of death."

 

 

'A Very Dangerous Man'

 

Act 4: The True Identity of Iran's Biggest Adversary in the West If there was ever a man more unlike James Bond in the world of espionage, it has to be Olli Heinonen. He has the telltale beginnings of a paunch, he wears off-the-rack suits and he favors ties in the decidedly uncool shades of yellow and gray. The IAEA's easy-going deputy director general has not only been underestimated before, he also possesses a healthy dose of a

virtue the Finns call sisu: tenacity, stubbornness and endurance. He also happens to be one of the world's preeminent nuclear specialists.

 

Heinonen grew up in Helsinki, where he earned a doctorate in radiochemistry and later worked at the Finnish nuclear research center. He accepted a job with the IAEA in 1983 and began working his way up the ladder. He became friends with Mohamed ElBaradei, the dedicated former Egyptian diplomat, who would soon be named director general of the nuclear watchdog agency. The two men spent several months together at North Korea's Yongbyon nuclear facility. The IAEA was later ejected from North Korea when the authoritarian regime began building the bomb and sealing deals with Pakistan and Iran.

 

Heinonen soon becomes fascinated by the realm of the Persians. The Iranians suspend the IAEA's activities after the revelations about Natanz and Arak, and it isn't until six months later that Heinonen receives permission to resume inspections. He uncovers suspicious signs at the Kalaye factory and senses that there must be more. He suspects that Khan is behind the deals.

 

ElBaradei dispatches his deputy on a secret mission to investigate the presumed black-market dealer's network and to examine his connections to Iran.

 

But even as the stoic Finn is collecting data, the Western intelligence agencies have intensified their scrutiny of the Khan connection. When the CIA raids the German freighter BBC China in the Italian port of Taranto in October 2003, it discovers a shipment from Khan to the Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi. It marks the end of the Libyan atomic program that Khan has been selling to Tripoli.

 

 

West Ratchets Up Pressure on Pakistan

 

By now, the West is putting so much pressure on Pakistan that President Pervez Musharraf drops his support for Khan, allowing a national hero to fall. In his 11-page confession in early 2004, which remains classified to this day, Khan says that the Iranians offered him a deal worth billions. Now, more than ever, Heinonen is convinced that Khan is the source of many Iranian nuclear components.

 

On a May day in 2004, the IAEA's answer to James Bond receives a call from a woman who appears to be surprisingly well-versed on nuclear matters. He meets with her in a cafe in Vienna's Millennium Building, which is typically empty around lunchtime. Heinonen is convinced she is a CIA agent (in fact, all indications suggest that she was sent by "Mad Dog," the head of the Tinner espionage operation). She arranges a series of meetings between the nuclear detectives' top dog and the Swiss family, which take place at Vienna's Hotel Intercontinental and at Lake Constance. She also provides the IAEA with access to the hard drive containing the sensational information about Iran's nuclear program, the "laptop of death." It is the same material that Heinonen will later use in his closed-door meeting with diplomats.

 

 

The Robert Oppenheimer of Iran

 

At that presentation in Vienna, in February 2008, Heinonen projects an organizational chart onto the wall that depicts the structure of the Iranian nuclear program. The name at the center of the chart is that of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a key figure behind Tehran's nuclear ambitions. He is apparently the Robert Oppenheimer of the Iranian nuclear program.

 

Like Oppenheimer, who, beginning in 1942, secretly worked as the scientific director of the Manhattan Project at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, Fakhrizadeh also keeps an extremely low profile, determined to prevent leaks of information about the military portion of Iran's nuclear research effort.

 

His physics research center is located in northeastern Tehran, where visitors are turned away and told to write to a post-office box address. The center's logo resembles Saturn.

 

For a long time, the world takes no notice of the scientist, who was born in 1961, joined the Revolutionary Guard as a young man and later took a job at the Defense Ministry. Fakhrizadeh has two children and, to this day, occasionally gives lectures at Tehran's Imam Hossein University. He is as much a brilliant physicist as a phantom, and he has always taken pains to ensure that no photos of him exist. Fakhrizadeh renames his organization several times after the Natanz enrichment facility is discovered. Today it is called FEDAT (Field of Expansion and Deployment of Advanced Technologies). About 600 people are believed to be working for him.

 

According to an intelligence dossier that has been circulating between Washington, Vienna and Tel Aviv for a few months, 12 departments report to Fakhrizadeh. A report from the "chairman," which bears Fakhrizadeh's signature and is dated Dec. 29, 2005, is addressed to these departments. The report is titled: "The Outlook for Neutron-Related Activities in the Coming Four Years."

 

A neutron generator is a key element on the path to a nuclear explosion. The device, which shoots deuterium at tritium, is placed into the center of a hollow sphere of enriched uranium, where its purpose is to trigger the desired chain reaction. This may be the way the Pakistanis detonated their bomb, and apparently Iran is pursuing the same approach. Fakhrizadeh's memorandum is a sort of master plan, which describes the planned cooperation between FEDAT and the Shahid Beheshti University and holds out the

possibility of additional permanent posts for academics. "Our capacities are adequate at the moment," Fakhrizadeh writes, "but of course they are not perfect."

 

The IAEA is also familiar with the strategy document. The nuclear inspectors have asked the Iranian government several times for permission to meet with Fakhrizadeh, but to no avail. The Iranian officials argue that the scientist works exclusive in the conventional defense industry. The UN placed his name on a blacklist in 2007, and the European Union characterizes Fakhrizadeh as a "high-ranking scientist in the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics."

 

 

Erich Follath and Holger Stark Spiegel

Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

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