Iran’s threat perceptions and arms control policies

Nonproliferation Review

Volumn 6, Issue 1, 1998, Pages 39-55

  Jones, Peter ^a  

^a Stockholm International Peace Research Institute   (Sweden)

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EID: 85010506542     PISSN: 10736700     EISSN: 17461766     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10736709808436734     Document Type: Article

References (92)

1. Virtually every Iranian speech to a disarmament gathering takes up this theme. For examples see: Statement by Mr. Amrollahi to the 1991 International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference, GC(XXXIV)/OR.325, April 22, 1991.
2. Statement by Mr. Velayati to the Conference on Disarmament, June 18, 1992, CD/PV.625, p. 5.
3. Statement by Mr. Kharrazi to the First Committee, October 14, 1992, A/C.1/47/PV.5, p. 52.
4. Statement by Mr. Amrollahi to the 1993 IAEA General Conference, GC(XXXVII)/OR.354, November 24, 1993.
5. Statement by Mr. Nasseri to the Conference on Disarmament, August 10, CD/PV.659, p. 6.
6. Statement by Mr. Kharrazi to the First Committee, October 24, A/C.1/49/PV.9, p. 15.
7. Statement by Mr. Velayati to the NPT Review and Extension Conference, April 21, 1995, NPT/CONF. 1995/32 (Part 3), p. 100.
8. Statement by Mr. Takht- Ravanchi to the First Committee, October 24, 1996, A/C.1/51/PV.13, p. 18.
9. Statement by Mr. Danesh-Yazdi to the First Committee, October 23,1997, AJC. 1/52/PV. 11, pp. 20-21.
10. Statement by Mr. Kharrazi to the Conference on Disarmament, June 4, 1998, CD/PV.796, pp. 2-5.
11. Statement by Mr. Ayatollahi to the IAEA Board of Governors meeting, Vienna, June 9, 1998.
12. Statement by Mr. Zarif to the Conference on Disarmament, June 18, 1998, CD/PV.798, pp. 2-4.
13. See, for example, Kharrazi First Committee statement, October 14, 1992, p. 56.
14. Statement by Mr. Behrouz Moradi to the First Committee, October 26, 1993, A/C.1/48/SR.13, p. 9.
15. Statement by Mr. Nasseri to the NPT Review and Extension Conference, May 11, 1995, NPT/CONF. 1995/32 (Part 3), p. 177.
16. Statement by Mr. Zarif to the Conference on Disarmament, June 18, 1998, CD/PV.798, pp. 2-4.
17. See the emotional statement on this subject by Ambassador Nasseri to the CD’s Ad Hoc Committee on Chemical Weapons, August 21, 1992, CD/CW/WP.435, p. 1.
18. Interview with senior Iranian Foreign Ministry official, Tehran, December 1997 (names withheld by request on this and all subsequent interview references to protect anonymity).
19. “Majlis Speaker on Acquiring Chemical Weapons,” October 19,1988; in FBIS-NES-88-202 (19 October 1988), pp. 55-56.
20. See “Extension of the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” NPT/CONF. 1995/L.3, May 5, 1995.
21. AFP, April 29, 1998, Reuters, April 30, 1998.
22. Though it is entirely possible that the Israelis would not have agreed to discuss the nuclear issue even if Iran had been at the table. For more on the Middle East arms control talks, see P. Jones, “Arms Control in the Middle East. Some Reflections on ACRS,” Security Dialogue 28 (March 1997).
23. See, for example, Nasseri statement to the CD, August 10, 1993, pp. 8-9.
24. Takht-Ravanchi statement to the First Committee, October 24, 1996, p. 19.
25. Interviews in Tehran, December 1995, December 1996, and December 1997.
26. See “Saudi paper calls for Gulf non-aggression pact,” AFP, December 15, 1997. The paper in question was government controlled.
27. See, for example, Statement of Mr. Kharrazi to the First Committee, October 26, 1995, A/C.l/50/PV.11, p. 13.
28. Statement by Mr. Takht- Ravanchi to the First Committee, October 24, 1996, A/C.1/51/PV.13, p. 19.
29. C. Faraj and P. Finnegan, “Kuwait, Iran to hold joint naval Exercise,” Defense News, February 9-15, 1998, p. 40. In March 1998, an Iranian naval vessel visited a Saudi port for the first time since the Revolution (“Iran Warship makes friendly visit to Saudi Arabia,” Reuters, March 9, 1998).
30. For a review of the Shah’s nuclear policy, see A. Cordesman, After the Storm: The Changing Military Balance in the Middle East (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1993), pp. 421-22.
31. See, for example, the statements cited in footnote 1. It is interesting to note, however, that the recent Iranian Statement on the India-Pakistan nuclear tests to the IAEA Board of Governors meeting did not mention Israel by name (Statement by Mr. Ayatollahi to the IAEA Board of Governors meeting, Vienna, June 9,1998). For a repudiation of the argument that all other regional weapons of mass destruction programs are related to Israel’s nuclear status, see P. Jones, “New Directions in Middle East Deterrence: Implications for Arms Control,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 4 (December 1997).
32. At the time this essay was written, Iran had massed 250,000 troops on the Afghan border and tensions remained high between the two sides. On the origins of the dispute, see M. Huband, “No war with Taliban, Iran insists,” Financial Times, September 7, 1998, p. 4.
33. D. Jehl, “Tehran threatens Taliban over missing diplomats,” International Herald Tribune, September 7, 1998, p. 1.
34. See “A Caspian Gamble - A Survey of Central Asia,” The Economist, February 7-13, 1998.
35. G. Sick, “The Coming Crisis in the Persian Gulf,” in G. Sick and L. Potter, eds., The Persian Gulf at the Millennium: Essays in Politics, Economy, Security and Religion (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), p. 12.
36. See, for example, D. Long and C. Koch, “Gulf Security in Broad Perspective,” in their edited volume, Gulf Security in the Twenty-First Century (Abu Dhabi; The Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research, 1997), pp. 1-12
37. The following is based on S. Lotfian, “Threat Perception and Military Planning in Iran: Credible Scenarios of Conflict and Opportunities for Confidence-Building,” in E. Arnett, ed., Military Capacity and the Risk of War: China, India, Pakistan and Iran (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
38. S. Chubin, “Iran’s National Security: Threats and Interests,” in G. Kemp and J.G. Stein, eds., Powder Keg in the Middle East: The Struggle for Gulf Security (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1995), and numerous interviews with Iranian researchers and officials during four trips to Iran between 1995 and 1998.
39. An excellent account of the dispute may be found in R.N. Schofield, “Border Disputes in the Gulf: Past, Present, Future,” in Sick and Potter, The Persian Gulfat the Millennium, pp. 127-166.
40. “See, for example, T. McNaugher, “Iran’s Military Posture: Whether ‘Hegemonic’ or ‘Defensive,’ Iran’s Force Build-up Complicates U.S. Defense PI anning,” Middle East Insight, vol. 11, no. 5 (1995).
41. Interviews with senior U.S. and Iranian naval officers involved in Persian Gulf operations. The desire of the two navies to avoid incidents is referred to in E. Sciolino, “Quietly, America takes steps to answer an Iranian opening,” International Herald Tribune, March 27, 1998, p. 12. Rumors abound of work towards an informal set of operational understandings. Such an understanding is suggested and further discussed in P. Jones, “Maritime Confidence-building in the Persian Gulf,” The Iranian Journal of International Affairs 8 (Summer 1996).
42. J. Borger and M. Kettle, “Israel goes underwater to counter Arab bomb,” The Guardian, July 21,1998, p. 6.
43. See S. Bakash, “Iran’s Unlikely President,” New York Review of Books, November 5, 1998.
44. M. J. Gasiorowski, “The Power Struggle in Iran,” unpublished paper.
45. For general overviews of the situation in Iran, see R. Wright, “Dateline Tehran: A Revolution Implodes,” Foreign Policy, no. 103 (Summer 1996).
46. “Children of the Islamic Revolution; A Survey of Iran” The Economist, January 18-24, 1997.
47. M. Torkzahrani, “Iran after Khatami: Civil Society and Foreign Policy,” The Iranian Journal of International Affairs 9 (Winter 1997-98), pp. 499-512.
48. R. Allen, “Iran’s factions wary after Tehran mayor’s arrest,” Financial Times, April 14, 1998, p. 4.
49. D. Jehl, “Year into Khatami’s term, tension mounts in Iran,” International Herald Tribune, May 25, 1998.
50. D. Gardiner, “Tehran celebrates a year of reform politics,” Financial Times, May 25, 1998.
51. Interviews with Iranian officials in Tehran, December 1997 and February 1998.
52. A. Cordesman and A. Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1997).
53. M. Eisenstadt, Iran’s Military Power: Capabilities and Intentions (Washington; The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 1996), chap. 2.
54. M. Eisenstadt, Iran’s Military Power.
55. For more on the idea that Iran poses a limited conventional military threat to its Persian Gulf neighbors, if any at all, see J.D. Green, “Iran and Gulf Security,” in Long and Koch, Gulf Security in the Twenty-First Century, esp. pp. 21-23.
56. See, for example, “Built in Iran: the push for self-sufficiency,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, October 15, 1997, p. 23.
57. For more on this trend see I. Anthony and P. Jones, International Arms Transfers and the Middle East, Emirates Centre for Strategic Studies and Research, Occasional Paper no. 21, 1998.
58. For example, SIPR1 estimates that Saudi Arabia imported almost five times as much as Iran, while Kuwait and the UAE each imported roughly 30 percent more than Iran. This data may be found in S.T. Wezeman and P.D. Wezeman, “Transfer of major conventional weapons,” SIPRI Yearbook, 1998: Armaments, Disarmament and International Security (Oxford; Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 291-317, especially the table on pp. 300-01. This data may also be found on the SIPRI homepage (http://www.sipri.se/projects/armstrade/facts_and_figures.html).
59. Indeed, some U.S. analysts believe that Iran has relied on the fact that Iraq has not been able to buy weapons since 1991 to invest disproportionately in maritime forces, because Tehran has not had to fear a resurgent Iraq during this period. If this logic is true, we may expect Iran to invest much more heavily in its land and air forces if the sanctions ever come off Iraq. See “Iran makes most of military sanctions imposed on Iraq,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, June 24, 1998, p. 4.
60. See, for example, the sources cited by Gary Sick in “Rethinking Dual Containment,” Survival 40 (Spring 1998), pp. 16-17.
61. See, for example, C. Hedges, “A vast smuggling network gets advanced arms to Iran,” The New York Times, March 15, 1995.
62. For an excellent summary of Iran’s nuclear program, that comes to the conclusion that they are not close to the capability to produce a weapon and will not be for at least 10 to 15 years, see A. Koch and J. Wolf, “Iran’s Nuclear Procurement Program: How Close to the Bomb?” The Nonproliferation Review 5 (Fall 1997), pp. 123-135.
63. See also W. Seth Carus, “Iran’s Weapons of Mass Destruction: Implications and Responses,” Middle East Review of International Affairs 2 (March 1998).
64. Interviews with Iranian officials, May 1998.
65. See the extensive discussion of this issue in Koch and Wolf, “Iran’s Nuclear Procurement.”
66. See the Statement by Mr. Amrollahi to the IAEA General Conference, September 16, 1991, GC(XXXV)/OR.334, October 21, 1991, esp. p. 32.
67. See Statement by Mr. Kharrazi to the Conference on Disarmament, June 4, 1998, CD/PV.796, pp. 2-5.
68. Statement by Mr. Ayatollahi to the IAEA Board of Governors meeting, Vienna, June 9, 1998.
69. Statement by Mr. Zarif to the Conference on Disarmament, June 18, 1998, CD/PV.798, pp. 2-4.
70. Though there are reports that Iran asked Pakistan for such assistance, but was refused. See J. Hoagland, “Briefing Yeltsin on Iran,” The Washington Post, May 17, 1995, p. A23.
71. E. Sciolino, “Report says Iran seeks atomic arms,” The New York Times, October 31, 1991, p. A7. Whether individual Pakistanis may have assisted Iran, perhaps by revealing sources and methods of clandestine supply, is another matter.
72. Cordesman and Hashim, Iran: Dilemmas of Dual Containment, pp. 291-295. See also the Center for Nonproliferation Studies chart on Iran (http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/wmdme/iran.htm).
73. See also Carus, “Iran’s Weapons of Mass Destruction.”
74. P. Finnegan and S. Rodan, “Israelis Scale Back Iran Missile Estimate,” Defense News, February 2-8, 1998, p. 8.
75. See the Statement by Mr. Takht-Ravanchi to the First Committee, October 24, 1996, p. 18.
76. See Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Bac-teriological (Biological) and Toxin Weapons and their Destruction, April 10,1972, Article I, paragraph 1.
77. M.R. Gordon and E. Schmitt, “Seepage of missile technology from Russia to Iran comes under fire,” International Herald Tribune, April 27,1998.
78. D. Buchan, “Clinton urges Yeltsin to halt Iran missile transfer,” Financial Times, May 18, 1998.
79. For background on Iran’s missile programs, see A. Karp, “Lessons of Iranian Missile Programs for U.S. Nonproliferation Policy” The Nonproliferation Review 5 (Spring-Summer), pp. 17-26.
80. D. Lennox, “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Projects: Uncovering the Evidence,” Jane’s Intelligence Review (June 1998).
81. T. Weiner, “Iran tests new missile that could reach Israel,” International Herald Tribune, July 24, 1998.
82. D. Mulhoiland, “Iranian missile test highlights broader proliferation threat,” Defense News, July 27-August 2, 1998, p. 8.
83. B. Bender, “Shahab 3 only partial success,” Jane’s Defence Weekly, July 29, 1998, p. 5.
84. Karp, “Lessons of Iranian Missile Programs”.
85. Lennox “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Projects”.
86. interviews with Israeli defense officials, Tel Aviv, November 1997.
87. Associated Press, “Iran missile plans worry Israel, U.S.,” San Jose Mercury News, September 27, 1998, p. A15.
88. Karp, “Lessons of Iranian Missile Programs.”
89. Sick, “Rethinking.”
90. U.S. State Department, Notice In Federal Register of Terrorist Organizations, October 8, 1997 (http://www.usis.it/wireless/wf971008/97100808.htm).
91. R. J. Smith, “Iran a terror state? ‘Yes, but,’ U.S. intelligence says,” The International Herald Tribune, May 6, 1996, pp. 1, 6.
92. Interviews in Tehran, 1997 and 1998.