Friday, March 2, 2012

Why Israel May Be Tempoted To Use Tactical Nuclear Weapons On Iranian Nuclear Facilities

The Perceptions Game in Israel, Iran and the U.S.

March 2, 2012

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An Iranian media report of a pipeline explosion in Saudi Arabia’s Eastern Province on Thursday served as a reminder of the impact that instability in Iran’s neighborhood can have on world oil markets. By extension, the event showed the impact Iranian propaganda efforts can have in deterring a military attack.

The claim that a fire had broken out near a pipeline between Awamiya and Shabwa appears to have emanated from an Eastern Province-based Saudi Shiite Facebook group. The group posted pictures purportedly portraying a blaze near a pipeline. The report was picked up by Iranian media outlet PressTV more than four hours later and spread from there. There was no independent confirmation of a purported attack, and all indications so far point to this being another propaganda move by Iran to shake the markets. It is the latest development in the long-running drama pitting Iran against Israel and the United States, with the central question being whether and when the two sides will go to war. Each actor is actively managing perceptions to serve their interests on the matter, and those perceptions don’t always line up with reality.

Israel

The narrative Israel seeks to project is of a country that feels increasingly existentially threatened, one barely able to keep itself from carrying out an airstrike on Iran’s nuclear reactors. This, of course, is the perception Israel has sought to create at varying levels of intensity during much of the past several years. Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak was in Washington this week, ahead of a planned visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is scheduled to arrive March 5. A leak published Wednesday in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz claimed that Netanyahu planned to demand in a meeting with U.S. President Barack Obama that he get on board with an Israeli-approved series of red lines on Iran. Were Tehran to cross them, Netanyahu’s demand allegedly went, the United States would publicly agree to work with Israel on a strike against Iranian nuclear facilities.

Someone from the Netanyahu government likely issued the leak to Haaretz to help solidify the perception that Israel desperately wants to take action against Iran. The reality -- as U.S. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey pointed out in late February -- is that the Israeli military lacks the capability to conduct a successful operation on its own. Israel could always launch the first strike, but it would be betting that the United States would come to its defense and finish the job, especially if Iran resorted to mining the Strait of Hormuz. Seeing how Israel cannot afford to lose American support, this is a big bet. Israel cannot miscalculate on this assumption, and this significantly constrains its ability to act.

The United States

The United States has little appetite for a war with Iran right now, for a variety of reasons. For one, the specter of a conflict in the Persian Gulf sending crude prices skyrocketing is unappealing, especially as Obama campaigns for re-election. Washington, however, also has a strategic interest in stemming the spread of Iranian power. It will therefore keep its military options on the table, while remaining open to the prospect of negotiations with Tehran as a means to keep tensions from escalating.

Washington is seeking to spread the perception that a war with Iran right now is simply not worth the cost. Its publicly stated intelligence assessments do not put Tehran close to obtaining a deliverable nuclear device with which it can threaten its neighbors, sapping the sense of urgency for any action. The United States has recently sought to dampen public support for military action by creating the expectation that such a move would increase the risk for Iranian retaliation elsewhere on the globe. The day after Haaretz published the report on Netanyahu’s planned ultimatum to Obama, a report in The New York Times -- a publication known to be a favored target for leaks from the current administration -- stated that participating in a strike on Iran would generate retaliatory actions abroad that would likely target U.S. citizens.

More than anything, however, Washington is wary of the war's impact on the price of oil. That edginess plays directly into Iran’s hands when considering the perception Tehran wants to create.

Iran

Iran shares Washington's primary goal: to popularize the notion that attacking Iran isn’t worth the cost. Iran uses the threat of retaliation as a foreign policy strategy unto itself, articulated by Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and clarified in recent comments made by IRGC Commander Mohammed Ali Aziz Jaafari. Jaafari told state media that Iran had “entered a new phase and now it is our threats which are affecting the enemy.”

Iran’s biggest leverage to deter an attack is its ability to impact the price of oil on global markets. Its most obvious card is the Strait of Hormuz. Merely threatening to mine the Strait has in the past been enough to dominate world headlines. Iran is extremely reluctant to use this card, of course, because once played, it cannot be played again -- it is Iran's so-called “nuclear option.”

Iran of course can do more than issue threats. Its formidable land army can project power beyond its borders; it has covert capabilities in eastern Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and -- though proven rather ineffective in recent instances -- in Asia as well. But its main deterrent is Tehran's ability to impact the price of oil in its own backyard, something that Thursday’s incident in Saudi Arabia proved effectively.

Smart concrete

Iran makes some of the world’s toughest concrete. It can cope with earthquakes and, perhaps, bunker-busting bombs

Mar 3rd 2012 | from the print edition

A DUAL-USE technology is one that has both civilian and military applications. Enriching uranium is a good example. A country may legitimately do so to fuel power stations. Or it may do so illegitimately to arm undeclared nuclear weapons. Few, however, would think of concrete as a dual-use technology. But it can be. And one country—as it happens, one that is very interested in enriching uranium—is also good at making what is known as “ultra-high performance concrete” (UHPC).

Iran is an earthquake zone, so its engineers have developed some of the toughest building materials in the world. Such materials could also be used to protect hidden nuclear installations from the artificial equivalent of small earthquakes, namely bunker-busting bombs.

To a man with a hammer…

Leon Panetta, America’s defence secretary, seems worried. He recently admitted that his own country’s new bunker-busting bomb, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP, pictured above being dropped from a B-52), needs an upgrade to take on the deepest Iranian bunkers. But even that may not be enough, thanks to Iran’s mastery of smart concrete.

UHPC is based—like its quotidian cousins—on sand and cement. In addition, though, it is doped with powdered quartz (the pure stuff, rather than the tainted variety that makes up most sand) and various reinforcing metals and fibres.

UHPC can withstand more compression than other forms of concrete. Ductal, a French version of the material which is commercially available, can withstand pressure many times higher than normal concrete can. UHPC is also more flexible and durable than conventional concrete. It can therefore be used to make lighter and more slender structures.

For this reason, Iranian civil engineers are interested in using it in structures as diverse as dams and sewage pipes and are working on improving it. Mahmoud Nili of Bu-Ali Sina University in Hamadan for example, is using polypropylene fibres and quartz flour, known as fume, in his mix. It has the flexibility to absorb far heavier blows than regular concrete. Rouhollah Alizadeh of the University of Tehran may do better still. Dr Alizadeh, a graduate of the University of Tehran, is currently working at Ottawa University in Canada on the molecular structure of cement. That could pave the way for a new generation of UHPC with precisely engineered properties and outstanding performance.

One way to tamper with the internal structure of concrete is to use nanoparticles. Ali Nazari and his colleagues at Islamic Azad University in Saveh have published several papers on how to do that with different types of metal-oxide nanoparticles. They have worked with oxides of iron, aluminium, zirconium, titanium and copper. At the nanoscale materials can take on extraordinary properties. Although it has been demonstrated only in small samples, it might be possible, using such nanoparticles, to produce concrete that is four times stronger than Ductal.

All of which is fine and dandy for safer dams and better sewers, which threaten no one. But UHPC’s potential military applications are more intriguing—and for many, more worrying. A study published by the University of Tehran in 2008 looked at the ability of UHPC to withstand the impact of steel projectiles. These are not normally a problem during earthquakes. This study found that concrete which contained a high proportion of long steel fibres in its structure worked best. Another study, published back in 1995, showed that although the compressive strength of concrete was enhanced only slightly by the addition of polymer fibres, its impact resistance improved sevenfold.

Western countries, too, have been looking at the military uses of UHPC. An Australian study carried out between 2004 and 2006 confirmed that UHPC resists blasts as well as direct hits. The tests, carried out at Woomera (once the British empire’s equivalent of Cape Canaveral), involved a charge equivalent to six tonnes of TNT. This fractured panels made of UHPC, but did not shatter them. Nor did it shake free and throw out fragments, as would have happened had the test been carried out on normal concrete. In a military context, such shards flying around inside a bunker are a definite plus from the attackers’ point of view, but obviously not from the defenders’.

Those people who design bunker-busters no doubt understand these points and have their own secret data to work with. Nevertheless, during the Gulf war in 1991 the American air force found that its 2,000lb (about a tonne) bunker-busters were incapable of piercing some Iraqi bunkers. The bomb designers went back to the drawing board and after two generations of development the result, all 13 tonnes of it, is the MOP. So heavy is it that the weapon bays of B-2 stealth bombers have had to be strengthened to carry it. It can, reportedly, break through over 60 metres of ordinary concrete. However, the bomb it is less effective against harder stuff, penetrating only eight metres into concrete that is just twice as strong. It is therefore anyone’s guess (at least, anyone without access to classified information) how the MOP might perform against one of Iran’s ultra-strong concretes.

America’s Defence Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA), the organisation that developed the MOP, has been investigating UHPC since 2008. This investigation has involved computer modelling and penetration testing. The agency’s focus appears to be on the idea of chipping away at a target with multiple hits. However, this approach requires great precision; and the air force is ordering only 20 MOPs, so there is little room for error.

Deep bunkers can be tackled in other ways. The DTRA has looked at what is known in the jargon as functional defeat, in other words bombing their entrances shut or destroying their electrical systems with electromagnetic pulses. They are also working on active penetrators—bombs which can tunnel through hundreds of metres of earth, rock and concrete. Development work is also under way on esoteric devices such as robot snakes, carrying warheads, which can infiltrate via air ducts and cable runs.

In the meantime, though, the Pentagon is stuck with the “big hammer” approach. The question is how reliably that hammer would work if the order were given to attack Iran’s underground nuclear facilities. It would be embarrassing if the bunkers were still intact when the smoke cleared.

from the print edition | Science and technology