The main decision-making body of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the Board of Governors, meets in Vienna on Monday for the first of four quarterly meetings in 2011. In a Q&A, Mark Hibbs examines the IAEA’s ongoing standoff with Syria over the country’s persistent refusal to cooperate with the IAEA to probe allegations of covert nuclear activities. Recent reports have raised the possibility of additional undisclosed sites where uranium processing may have occurred. But the IAEA and its board will likely avoid escalating the conflict with Syria in part not to distract from its dispute with Iran, but also so not to endanger a possible accord between Syria and Israel which might in turn favor a political resolution of Syria’s suspected clandestine nuclear activities.
- What is the IAEA investigating in Syria? Is Syria cooperating?
- What is the significance of the three undeclared sites? What is the IAEA saying about them?
- Will the IAEA turn up the pressure on Damascus in the wake of reports suggesting that Syria was engaged in more covert nuclear activities?
- Will the IAEA board pass a resolution condemning Syria, following up on discussions last month with the United States?
- IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano suggested in media interviews in recent weeks he would consider asking for a “special inspection” in Syria. Is he likely to do so?
- Will Syria continue to simply ignore the IAEA?
- Is there any truth to rumors that Syria has or had a covert uranium enrichment program?
- Will board members avoid taking action on Syria and Iran in fear of negatively impacting popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa?
- A year and a half into his term, how do board members regard Amano?
What is the IAEA investigating in Syria? Is Syria cooperating?
The IAEA is continuing to investigate the claim that Syria secretly built a reactor designed for plutonium production between 2001 and 2007. For the seventh consecutive quarter since August 2009, the IAEA said in a report written for its board of governors last month that Syria has not cooperated with ongoing investigations.
The IAEA wants information from Syria about the alleged reactor site, Dair Alzour, plus three other locations which, according to intelligence information provided to the IAEA by the United States and other countries, appear related to the reactor project.
But since 2008, Syria has blocked access to these sites. Based on information from IAEA member states, plus data from environmental samples taken by IAEA inspectors during a single visit to Dair Alzour in 2008 and at a research reactor in Damascus the last three years, the IAEA has argued that Syria’s explanations are both incomplete and increasingly inconsistent.
In 2009 and 2010, for example, the IAEA found out during routine oversight at the Damascus reactor that Syria had chemically processed raw uranium oxide at a heretofore undeclared location—a phosphate plant in Homs in western Syria—and did not declare that activity to the IAEA. IAEA analysis, including of open source scientific publications and explanations provided by Syria, suggests that Syria may have carried out still more undeclared nuclear processing activities. The IAEA is therefore keen to investigate whether uranium processing was carried out at these three other sites.
What is the significance of the three undeclared sites? What is the IAEA saying about them?
The three sites were first referred to by the IAEA in its reports to the board in 2008, but the IAEA has said virtually nothing publicly about their possible significance. Last month, however, names, locations, photographs, and other information concerning these sites were made public by a German newspaper and a U.S.-based researcher, ostensibly with the cooperation of officials from the governments which had provided the information to the IAEA. Their appraisal concluded that at one of the sites, Marj as-Sultan near Damascus, Syria may have covertly processed uranium oxide into a uranium-fluorine compound, UF4, for the production of uranium metal fuel for the now destroyed alleged reactor at Dair Alzour.
The IAEA did not provide this information to the board, including in its most recent report written last month. We don’t yet know the backstory on why the IAEA has not done this. When the IAEA drafted its most recent report to the board in February, it may not have reached a firm conclusion that the evidence pointed to specific nuclear activities. The IAEA may also have judged that making these details known would not contribute to Syria making a candid disclosure about the sites.
It is possible that the information on Marj as-Sultan was leaked to the media to give the IAEA an open-source reference upon which to justify asking Syria for an explanation of the sites. But the IAEA has requested access to these sites since 2008. It is therefore possible that the information was leaked by officials for other reasons, including rising frustration that the IAEA investigation has effectively been stonewalled by Syria for three years.
While it is true that until last month no information about the three sites had been made public, the IAEA, with help from member states, has been investigating them since 2008. Intelligence information, in particular photos of equipment said to be inside facilities at these sites, may have been leaked recently, suggesting that the findings are new. However, IAEA investigators have seen some of this intelligence evidence as early as last fall and perhaps earlier.
Will the IAEA turn up the pressure on Damascus in the wake of reports suggesting that Syria was engaged in more covert nuclear activities?
Don’t bet on it. Prior to and since the 2007 Israeli attack, the United States, Israel, and European states have been trying to persuade Syria to agree to a peace settlement with Israel and to abandon its political alliance with Iran. Recent signs that the sides might be considering re-launching peace talks further complicate the situation. This effort is going on behind the scenes now and board members, who otherwise are prepared to deplore Syria’s lack of cooperation with the IAEA, are reluctant to provoke a crisis with Syria over its nuclear program which could torpedo talks between Syria, Israel, and other states.
Some board members believe that, in the longer term, the only conceivable favorable outcome of the Syria crisis with the IAEA would be for Damascus to cut a political deal with the West which would allow Syria—as Libya did in 2003—to terminate all undeclared nuclear activities in return for a political engagement. Without that, as long as Syria has significant current or past covert activities to hide, it has little incentive to come clean to the IAEA.
The IAEA’s response toward Syria is complicated by its ongoing inquiry into Iran’s nuclear program. The IAEA’s investigation on Iran has been hampered in the boardroom by an acrimonious divide between advanced, mostly Western countries, which favor a tougher IAEA posture, and some developing countries, which support Tehran’s claim that Iran has the right to develop sensitive nuclear capabilities.
Given this backdrop, the IAEA and many board members are wary about raising potentially explosive allegations about Syria—particularly if they are based on intelligence information obtained by the United States, European states, or Israel. The matter is further complicated by the fact that some board members are dismayed that Israel bombed the facility and that, thereafter, the United States withheld knowledge about Dair Alzour from the IAEA for more than half a year.
Will the IAEA board pass a resolution condemning Syria, following up on discussions last month with the United States?
A month ago, the United States discussed with other board members bringing forth a resolution which would object to Syria’s lack of cooperation with the IAEA. Some board members voiced reservations that doing so would take pressure off Iran at a time when Iran is becoming more recalcitrant. They also urged the United States to consider a resolution which would not directly condemn Syria but would, more generally, urge Syria and other states to cooperate with the IAEA.
Because of ongoing Middle East peace talks, even if the United States were to introduce a resolution on Syria, it would likely not cite Syria specifically for non-compliance, since the board would then be compelled, under the IAEA statute, to refer the non-compliance to the UN Security Council and the General Assembly.
IAEA Director General Yukiya Amano suggested in media interviews in recent weeks he would consider asking for a “special inspection” in Syria. Is he likely to do so?
Likewise, the answer is no. Since 2009 the United States has been urging Amano to request a special inspection. U.S. officials warned—indirectly referring to actions by Syria since 2008 to cover-up activities at Dair Alzour and other sites—that valuable evidence would be lost if action continued to be delayed.
Because Syria is believed to have been covering its nuclear tracks, as time progresses, Amano may be less and less willing to request a special inspection. Were the IAEA to go to these sites and find nothing, Syria would be vindicated and the political credibility of the IAEA could be damaged. As he has done in the past, Amano spelled out to member states in advance of this month’s board meeting that he is not eager to request a special inspection in Syria in view of the political risks. In some bilateral meetings, Amano has warned that launching a special investigation would further isolate Israel in the region.
Will Syria continue to simply ignore the IAEA?
Damascus will cooperate just enough to keep the IAEA at bay. In November, Amano wrote to Syria’s foreign minister urging Syria to resolve the conflict. Last month, Syria replied and once again did not agree to provide access to Dair Alzour or the three sites that were the focus of last month’s media reports.
But Syria dangled what one Vienna diplomat called a “tiny carrot” by offering to permit the IAEA to inspect the Homs site. Syria and the IAEA had agreed last September on modalities for access to this and other sites, but no progress was made. Amano’s report to the board concluded that Syria’s February offer “could represent a step forward…to resolve all outstanding technical issues.”
The Homs site, however, is not the location prompting the most IAEA concern. Far more critical are Dair Alzour and the three sites believed to be related to it. But Syria’s offer to discuss access to Homs adds another reason why the board will not pass a resolution deploring Syria’s lack of cooperation.
Is there any truth to rumors that Syria has or had a covert uranium enrichment program?
The IAEA has investigated for several years whether Syria has been trying to enrich uranium. If Syria has produced UF4, this material could be fluorinated further to create UF6, the feedstock for enrichment plants. But if the IAEA believes that Marj as-Sultan, or another site, Masyaf, are related to uranium enrichment, it has not told the board that.
Unless the board is notified of such a finding, the governors will not take any action to investigate that allegation. Since about 2004 Western intelligence agencies have made some findings suggesting that Syria may be operating gas centrifuges. A senior Syrian official told me in 2007 that he personally rebuffed an offer by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan, who proliferated Pakistan’s centrifuge know-how to Iran, Libya, and North Korea, to do “joint academic research” in Syria.
Will board members avoid taking action on Syria and Iran in fear of negatively impacting popular uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa?
The protests have thus far had little direct impact on the thinking of board members because no one can predict the outcome of the uprisings. Some officials from board member countries said last week that the wave of political change across the greater Middle East should prompt caution by the board because none of the states with significant uprisings so far have been concerned with nuclear issues.
A year and a half into his term, how do board members regard Amano?
From the outset Amano was seen by developing countries as favoring the interests of advanced, Western nuclear states. U.S. diplomatic cables from 2009 obtained by Wikileaks suggest that Western governments likewise see Amano in this light. They also view Amano as both politically astute and cautious—in step with his actions vis-à-vis Syria.
Since last fall, the board includes a group of developing countries seeking cooperation from Western states on nuclear energy development. They may see Amano more favorably than other developing states do. At a board meeting last December, these states supported the creation of an IAEA nuclear fuel bank—a project which Amano had been wary of embracing in light of criticism from many developing countries against the project. At this month’s board meeting, the developing countries on the board may vote in favor of a resolution to establish another multilateral fuel assurance program involving the IAEA designed to ensure that contracts for the supply of enriched uranium reactor fuel are not broken for non-commercial reasons. The resolution will likely be tabled by the European Union, the United States, and Russia.
Amano was elected in 2009 by a narrow margin with the board divided between advanced and developing countries, and some observers predicted he would not be re-elected for a second four-year term. Pundits quip that, during the last six months, Amano reshuffled the secretariat to allow his key aides to manage the agency and let Amano concentrate on his re-election in 2013. In fact, all incoming IAEA leaders have made major personnel and organizational changes.
Amano’s changes are now becoming apparent. Most significant among them was Amano’s announcement to the board last month that, effective April 1, Amano will liquidate the small but—under past director general Mohammed ElBaradei—extremely influential—department called External Relations and Policy Coordination (EXPO) and combine it with the Director General’s Office (DGO) to form the Director General’s Office for Policy (DGOP). It will be headed by Rafael Grossi, Amano’s chef de cabinet.
ElBaradei’s final years were punctuated by damaging and bitter rivalries among a few key aides and deputies and Amano’s reorganization was in part meant to eliminate the bureaucratic source of these conflicts. Western states which in 2009 supported Amano’s candidacy did so in part because they believed that ElBaradei had run the IAEA too independently. In February Amano told the board that establishing DGOP would ensure that the agency’s activities are in line with the guidance of member states. This will mean that the IAEA will be less subject to politicization of its work, but tighter control at the top might discourage transparency.
