Sam Ryu is a private American citizen who has worked as an analyst. His background is in Political Science and International Relations, and he specializes in the analysis of American foreign policy and geopolitical issues related to the Middle East. He runs an analytic blog at rexanalytica.substack.com. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.
Title: An Assessment of the Nuclear Ambiguity Caused by the Islamic Republic of Iran
Date Originally Written: June 6, 2024.
Date Originally Published: July 8, 2024.
Author and / or Article Point of View: The article is written from an unbiased, analytic point of view of Iran’s denial activities, its provocative uranium enrichment activities and statements, and its known history of covert nuclear weapons development.
Summary: Concerns that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon could fall victim to faulty analysis or cognitive biases. Iran might be misleading its perceived adversaries regarding its nuclear activities for strategic regional deterrent effects or covertly developing a latent nuclear weapons capability. These two possibilities are not mutually exclusive of each other, and both require evidence to prevent miscalculation and unnecessary escalation.
Text: Iran’s denial activities make it more difficult to discern whether Iran is merely misleading its perceived adversaries as a strategy to support its regional power status, or whether it is developing a latent nuclear weapons capability. In the fall of 2023, Iran barred entry to around one-third of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) key enrichment-related inspectors (which were designated for Iran), and continues to deny them access[1]. On June 5, 2024, the IAEA voted to censure Iran, due to Iran’s refusal to provide credible answers to existing problems, and told Iran to reverse the ban it had placed on the key inspectors[2]. In May 2024, Iran continued to enrich uranium to a 60 percent purity level as talks with the United Nations stalled[3]. In February 2024, Ali Akbar Salehi, former foreign minister of Iran, suggested that Iran already has all the necessary components for a nuclear bomb[4].
While the evidence may point to an explanation that Iran is developing a latent nuclear weapons capability, it is also possible that Iran is misleading its perceived adversaries in an attempt to maintain deterrence. However, these possibilities are not mutually exclusive, which makes IAEA inspections and verification all the more important. It is also important to exercise sound analytic thought and avoid jumping to any conclusions. Even if Iran manages to enrich uranium to 90 percent (weapons-grade highly enriched uranium), this does not mean that Iran has mastered the technical competence required to weaponize the fissile material, e.g., running computer simulations, designing and testing the nuclear warhead components, and conducting a live nuclear test. There is no evidence to suggest that Iran has ever test detonated a live nuclear weapon.
In the case that Iran is misleading for the time being, Iran is attempting to manage a very difficult game. The need to comply with the IAEA to avoid further sanctions, the need to show good will in the nuclear negotiations with Western countries, and the need to deter its regional enemies and competitors, e.g., Israel and Saudi Arabia, stand in contradiction because of the nuclear weapons issue. Given Iran’s relatively weak conventional military capabilities, an asymmetric advantage through nuclear weapons benefits Iran. The United States’ support for Israel and Saudi Arabia may heighten Iran’s existing threat perception. Attempting to maintain strategic deterrence while attempting to obtain sanctions relief can cause significant problems and analytic failures, as seen previously in the case with Iraq’s Saddam Hussein[5].
Several steps can be taken to avoid analytic failure, miscalculation, and unnecessary escalation with Iran. If the prevailing view or hypothesis asserts that Iran is covertly developing a nuclear weapon, it needs to be challenged, alternative hypotheses need to be tested, and information needs to be critically analyzed. A shared consistency test can show that Iran’s denial activities are also consistent with the explanation that Iran is merely misleading for strategic deterrence. Successful IAEA inspections of Iran’s nuclear activities could determine the extent of Iran’s nuclear capabilities and potentially expose Iran’s weaknesses, i.e., inspections could give indications into how far along Iran is in terms of being able to successfully manufacture a nuclear weapon. Therefore, denying access to inspectors would be a means to protect the misleading.
An inconsistency test would also be necessary to determine which existing evidence or information is inconsistent with the hypotheses. This kind of analytic thinking further reinforces the importance of testing alternative hypotheses. For example, if Iran is suspected of covert nuclear weapons development, clandestine activities can be expected, e.g., construction of nuclear facilities. For example, Iran publicly announced the construction of several new nuclear plants, but did not provide early design information to the IAEA, and refused to provide design information until six months prior to the plants receiving fuel[6]. The refusal to provide early design information does raise concerns that safeguards or non-proliferation barrier implementations cannot be assessed until the facilities are essentially operational. However, the public announcement of these facilities refute the notion that Iran was secretly constructing these plants.
Problems can occur if confirmation bias seeps into the analytic process, and missing evidence is automatically accepted as suspicious. Missing evidence is not necessarily evidence of denial. Automatically treating missing information as being consistent with denial fails to consider that missing information can be consistent with the hypothesis that there is nothing suspicious going on. If reality constantly shows that there is no evidence to support a covert nuclear weapons development explanation, alternative hypotheses must be considered at this point as well.
Establishing indicators would also be necessary to assess the view that Iran is developing a nuclear weapon. Some of these indicators will be technical in nature, and by back-casting what materials would be needed to fabricate and test a nuclear weapon, this information can be compared to the available evidence to determine if Iran is engaging in illegal procurement activities to obtain such materials. However, due to the dual-purpose nature of some of the materials, e.g., high-speed cameras, evidence with a strong diagnostic value that points to nuclear weapons development should be valued rather than evidence with shared consistency across multiple competing hypotheses.
Assuming the worst of Iran while explaining away its intent as a product of its internal factors fails to appraise the impact of external factors that can fuel Iran’s threat perception. According to Kahneman & Tversky’s research in cognitive psychology, this is called a fundamental attribution error, or the tendency to “… underestimate the impact of situational factors and to overestimate the role of dispositional factors…” or to jump to conclusions while “… overlooking the impact of relevant environmental forces and constraints[7]…” There is no doubt that Iran has not been transparent in disclosing all of its nuclear related activities[8]. However, the regional threats that Iran perceives should be considered seriously, i.e., the tit-for-tat militarized conflict with Israel and Saudi Arabia’s explicitly stated intent to develop nuclear capabilities. Miscalculation and escalation can risk provoking Iran into developing a nuclear weapon.
Endnotes:
[1] Albright, D., Burkhard, S., & Stricker, A. (2024, May 31). Analysis of the IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report – May 2024. Institute for Science and International Security. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-the-iaeas-iran-npt-safeguards-report-may-2024/
[2] Liechenstein, S. (2024, June 6). UN nuclear agency’s board votes to censure Iran for failing to cooperate fully with the watchdog. Associated Press. https://apnews.com/article/iran-iaea-nuclear-inspectors-61c660f9851790e7f53a9daacef5a95c
[3] Iran continues uranium enrichment as UN talks stall. IranWire. (2024, May 28). https://iranwire.com/en/news/129967-iran-continues-uranium-enrichment-as-un-talks-stall/
[4] Albright, D., Burkhard, S., & Stricker, A. (2024, May 31). Analysis of the IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report – May 2024. Institute for Science and International Security. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-the-iaeas-iran-npt-safeguards-report-may-2024/
[5] Jervis, R. (2010). Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War. Cornell University Press.
[6] Albright, D., Burkhard, S., & Stricker, A. (2024, May 31). Analysis of the IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report – May 2024. Institute for Science and International Security. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-the-iaeas-iran-npt-safeguards-report-may-2024/
[7] Kahneman, D., Slovic, P., & Tversky, A. (1982). Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge University Press.
[8] Albright, D., Burkhard, S., & Stricker, A. (2024, May 31). Analysis of the IAEA’s Iran NPT Safeguards Report – May 2024. Institute for Science and International Security. https://isis-online.org/isis-reports/detail/analysis-of-the-iaeas-iran-npt-safeguards-report-may-2024/
