Iraq-A Threatening New Superpower
CARUS, W SETH
IRAQ A THREATENING NEW SUPERPOWER As Israel confronts the stones and Molotov cocktails of the intifada, it must also face the emergence of a new regional military superpower among its Arab...
...A spokesperson for the Senate Banking Committee said the legislative history of Section 12C includes a debate over whether information on export application licenses should be released but not over time limits...
...Concerned citizens could contact their senators and representatives if they are concerned about shipments to a given country, Ingram suggested...
...Soviet-supplied surface-to-air missiles have been converted in Iraq into weapons capable of attacking ground targets...
...By molding local management with foreign technology and expertise, Iraq has been able to develop capabilities far beyond what would otherwise have been attainable...
...It would be unreasonable to release it during the process—everyone has a bad-guy country to which they would want us to restrict exports...
...Many are well-known diseases, like typhoid, cholera, anthrax or plague...
...officials agree that Iraq has an active nuclear weapons program, but argue that it is at least 10 years away from building a bomb...
...Air Force AW ACS, which has been sold only to NATO and Saudi Arabia...
...The computer was not an unimportant piece of machinery, but it was Bryen's interpretation that the analog was going to be used for missile testing...
...Thus, even though Iraq has a population only one-third the size of Iran's, Baghdad was able to arm more people...
...However, a growing number are being extensively modified and even built in Iraq...
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...Iraq is also creating biotechnology institutes, raising concerns that methods for producing toxins are being developed at these institutes...
...The Department of Commerce argued that Congress had intended that the information remain confidential when it passed Section 12C, and the court agreed with Commerce...
...some are lethal...
...companies...
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...The design and construction of these facilities were made possible by the activities of companies throughout the West...
...Ultimately, the Commerce Department should be able to release the information for historical purposes, but not while an application is under licensing...
...West Germany, in particular, allowed its companies to operate freely in Iraq, where they remain today...
...The confidentiality of export license applications is not a matter of national security but of business confidentiality," says George Ingram, senior staff consultant to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, which oversees the Commerce Department Ingram, who has been with the committee for 16 years, doesn't recall "any discussion or report to suggest that there should be a time limit on restricting the release of the information...
...There has never been any other interpretation of Section 12C...
...Among the American companies that are reported to have assisted in the program are Hewlett-Packard, a large electronics firm...
...These were the missiles fired at Iranian cities in March and April of 1988...
...The management was provided by foreign experts in many cases...
...Richard Lesner had argued that under the Freedom of Information Act he was entitled to access information on what materials U.S...
...In 1987, Iraq obtained a key precursor needed to make mustard gas from a U.S...
...Nerve agents are made from phosphorus, and the Iraqis are now creating Responses from Former Undersecretary Freedenberg and Congressional Committees Moment invited former undersecretary of commerce Paul Freedenberg, the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Senate Banking Committee to respond to the issues raised by Stephen D. Bryen...
...Instead, it has offered a design that cannot be used to produce enriched uranium...
...Traditionally, toxins were not militarily useful because of the difficulties involved in their production in large quantities...
...Baghdad committed itself to a full-scale chemical weapons program in 1974, but for several years the Iraqis looked in vain for a Western chemical company willing to build "pesticide plants" for them...
...Moreover, Iraq's chemical industry will be so large that it will be impossible to distinguish between supplies going to legitimate plants and those going to factories making poison gas...
...This is especially disturbing in a context in which one Iraqi official, Lieutenant General Amer Houdi al-Saadi, minister of industry and military industrialization, stated: "Our experience in the war taught us you can't have separate factories for civil and military products...
...The raw materials to make the poison gas also came from Europe, much of it handled by Dutch trading houses...
...Even conservative estimates W. SETH CARUS predict that by the year 2000, Iraq will have a major arsenal of atomic bombs...
...This is now an experienced, battle-hardened army...
...The outlook is grim...
...More significantly, the Iraqis rebuilt the ballistic missiles provided by the Soviets...
...The size of the inventory is not known, but clearly includes hundreds of missiles...
...Overall management of complex programs was handled by Iraq, even when most of the work was done by foreigners...
...To an increasing extent Iraq relies on its own people to manage facilities and to design weapons...
...So Iraq was allowed to become a military superpower...
...Although the exporting company claimed that the pumps were to be used to purify vegetable oil, U.S...
...Although some of this assistance came from the Soviet Union and other Eastern bloc countries, the West was mostly responsible...
...As a result, Iraq continued to expand its facilities for the manufacture of chemical weapons...
...During the Iran-Iraq war, Iraq was able to acquire weaponry in large quantities...
...But the Iraqis began to attack populated areas in 1988...
...As a signatory to the Geneva Protocol, Iraq had agreed never to use chemical agents, except in retaliation for an opponents' use of such weapons...
...And it permitted the export of equipment needed by the Iraqis to build missile research and development facilities...
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...Some experts believe that the Iraqis have left the research stage and may now actually be producing biological agents...
...West German companies, undeterred by their government's policies, played a key role in the development of Iraq's chemical weapons capability...
...The material would still be shipped—they would just send it from another country and people here would lose their jobs...
...intelligence sources, Iraq now has the largest capacity for the production of chemical agents in the Third World...
...An Italian company is also reported to have been approached, but it too decided against putting together a facility of this type...
...The Iraqis also intend to start an aviation industry...
...Scientific Atlanta, a maker of antennas...
...The French government is willing to build Iraq a new reactor, but not in the same configuration as the original one...
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...By the war's end, Iraq was itself producing both chemical weapons and ballistic missiles...
...This assistance took many forms...
...Finally, in the area of conventional weapons, Iraq claims to be in the initial stages of producing, under license, the Soviet T-72 main battle tank...
...Starting in 1983, Iraq made extensive use of poison gas, killing or wounding about 50,000 people...
...In addition, Iraq has built several factories to manufacture large, solid-fuel ballistic missiles...
...The bulk of the effort is being devoted to projects that will allow them to control the entire process themselves...
...However, it is also needed to make another chemical, known as thiodi-glycol, which is easily turned into mustard gas...
...The main research facility for the Iraqi biological program is at Salman Pak, just south of Baghdad, according to a number of sources...
...It just says that no information can be released, period...
...gradually the production process is being turned over to the Iraqis...
...The first, known as the Baghdad-1, was a Soviet transport aircraft with a French air search radar fitted into a pod in the tail of the plane...
...By the end of the decade, it will probably have nuclear weapons...
...Iraq's military industries are, in a sense, an extension of the defense companies of countries around the world...
...Others are more obscure, like tularemia or equine encephalitis...
...officials believed that the pumps could be used as part of a centrifuge enrichment facility...
...Department of Commerce...
...Iraq has been trying to convince France to rebuild the Osirak reactor for the past seven years...
...It is clear that Iraq must have received foreign assistance to make this aircraft...
...Similarly, they will take phosphorus mined in Iraq, process it, and use it to make nerve agents...
...Iraqis now are not only building their own missiles, they are even designing their own missiles and rockets with the assistance of foreign engineers...
...But we would get into these arguments over how low-level something had to be for export approval...
...They already have modification programs to enhance the capabilities of their existing equipment...
...Modeled on the U.S...
...Until recently, most of Baghdad's missiles have been foreign-supplied, like the Soviet Scud-B missiles (with a range of 180 miles) and FROG-7 rockets (40 mile range...
...Eventually, it will make the entire tank...
...In addition, an Italian company provided a laboratory equipped to work with radioactive materials...
...As a result of these activities, the efforts of the Iraqis were slowed, but by no means halted...
...Most experts on nuclear proliferation, however, now accept the Israeli argument that Iraq was Nuclear Conventional Forces Ballistic Missiles Chemical Weapons Biological Weapons Present Capability I IBlihWI nnnl.it nVlJHHI pjjUtmr Ml...
...Biological agents are bacteria or viruses capable of killing or incapacitating people or animals...
...Iraq also makes electronic systems for its version of the tank...
...Officials from the United States, West Germany, Israel and Iran have expressed concerns about these efforts...
...AWACS needs more than two million lines of computer code to operate, and requires the development of a host of secret software methods...
...The best known aircraft of this type is the U.S...
...By 1980, however, the Iraqis had linked up with a dozen German companies—including Karl Kolb, a chemical supply company—that were quite willing to provide what firms elsewhere had declined to do...
...Iraq now has at least a dozen different types of missiles and rockets with ranges of 24.8 miles or more, according to information that has become available in the last few months...
...At this point Iraq can proceed almost alone...
...And it has already shown it has no hesitation in using these weapons...
...It will be able to produce many of its own weapons, including highly sophisticated systems of a type made only by countries with large and sophisticated defense industries...
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...AWACS, the Adnan-1 has a revolving radar like the one on the AWACS...
...There was discussion, when the committee was deciding whether to have a Section 12C at all, about the conditions under which committees of jurisdiction could have access to the information...
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...Factories were designed and built by companies in Western Europe and the United States...
...The Iraqis are now taking advantage of the cease-fire with Iran to expand their chemical weapons program...
...In all cases, the Department of Commerce granted export licenses for the equipment...
...An indication of Iraq's vaulting ambitions are its efforts to produce airborne early warning aircraft...
...We wouldn't want a public debate over every application under licensing...
...Investments in infrastructure are critical to this process...
...And all this backs up a substantial ballistic missile program...
...Experts indicate that these are state-of-the-art facilities equal to the best available anywhere in the world...
...I' S. ¦ 111¦ i * Mm i h. i.i ki.i.Lx...
...Despite dependence on foreign support, however, the projects are clearly Iraqi...
...In addition, Baghdad has two other strategic weapons programs underway—biological agents and nuclear weapons...
...The limited information now available suggests that Iraq has invested at least SI billion in its ballistic missile program...
...The bulk of the activity came from Western Europe...
...Only two other countries in the world currently produce aircraft of this type, the Soviet Union and the United States...
...2, which is now being built at Musayyib (south of Baghdad), will convert refined petroleum into a widely used chemical called ethylene, and close to two dozen derivative chemicals...
...Iraq was producing poison gas in sufficient quantities to use on the battlefield by 1983...
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...In early 1989, the Washington Post claimed that Israeli officials feared that Baghdad would be able to produce a nuclear device within two or three years...
...Neither the ballistic missiles nor the poison gas attacks would have been possible without considerable foreign support...
...Iraq has built a highly sophisticated research and development complex, known as Sa'ad 16, that will allow them to do their own design work on missiles in the future...
...Even the United States, nominally prohibiting the export of armaments to either side, permitted the Iraqis to buy equipment useful for military purposes, including, for example, 100 Hughes and Bell helicopters now used by the Iraqi Air Force...
...In contrast, the Iranian military had only 600,000 men under arms, supported by another 350,000 reservists...
...For one thing, we wouldn't want to make our licensing system unattractive to U.S...
...Export controls will mean little when Iraq starts producing its own supplies of precursors...
...Other projects of a similar nature are enabling Iraq to make nerve agents in large quantities...
...While I was at Commerce we enforced regulations against Iraq rigorously, and nothing on the munitions list was shipped to Iraq...
...In 1984, a team of experts sent to Iran by the United Nations discovered definitive proof of Iraq's use of chemical agents...
...companies were exporting to the Soviet Union...
...The International Atomic Energy Agency claims that since Iraq was a signatory of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, there was no reason to believe that the Osirak facility would be used to support a nuclear program...
...In addition to working on traditional biological agents, Iraq is exploring toxins, according to several experts...
...The ominous developments I have described obviously have important implications for Israel...
...At that time, the French government signed an agreement to provide the Iraqis with a high-powered research reactor capable of producing the enriched uranium needed to build an atomic bomb...
...In 1987, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the district court decision on access to information on export license applications in the case of Lesner vs...
...It is also clear that Iraq intends to become a nuclear power...
...It is now negotiating with a number of countries for the right to build advanced training aircraft under license...
...Iraq's efforts to develop the bomb date back to 1974...
...An American company was asked to design a pesticide plant, but backed off when it became wary of Iraq's insistence on making only the most deadly types of pesticides...
...Members of the Senate Banking and House Foreign Affairs Committees can request this confidential information from Commerce or the Government Accounting Office...
...So long as Iraq was fighting a war with Iran, officials in Washington cast a blind eye on Iraq's strategic weapons programs, because officials feared the consequences of an Iranian victory...
...Tragically, Iraq's advanced military capability could not have been developed without foreign support...
...According to U.S...
...In early 1989, the U.S...
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...Part of the problem was the unwillingness of certain countries to take seriously the need to prevent chemical proliferation...
...In the future, Iraq wants to manufacture combat aircraft...
...These engineers have received training abroad, in most cases, and have worked alongside foreign experts hired by defense industries...
...It was made to protect companies from unfair scrutiny by the press...
...See Seth Carus's article, "Missiles in the Middle East: Will They Upset the Military Balance...
...No longer tied down in the war it provoked with Iran, Iraq is now free to fight a surrogate war in Lebanon with another of its archenemies, Syria...
...However, recent advances in biotechnology may allow the creation of bacteria that can easily produce substantial quantities of toxins...
...For example, Petrochemical Complex No...
...American companies are also being encouraged to build chemical factories in Iraq, including some that could be used to support the manufacture of chemical weapons...
...It will manufacture ballistic missiles, chemical weapons and possibly even biological agents...
...They have adopted Soviet MIG-23 fighters to give them aerial refueling capabilities...
...By the early 1990s, Iraq will be increasingly independent of foreign military assistance...
...Among the related products will be a material known as ethylene oxide, which is widely used to make antifreeze for automobiles...
...The implicit threat to Israel is painfully clear...
...lomlul in m ¦ I. in...
...Our argument at Commerce was that these computers would not be of any value to missile technology...
...These included 190 Iraqi-produced Al-Husayn missiles fired at Teheran and other important Iranian cities during the "War of the Cities" in March and April 1988...
...It did little to prevent the Iraqis from using chemical weapons...
...And Iraq has long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering a nuclear warhead anywhere in the Middle East...
...The U.S...
...A typical toxin is snake venom, which can be highly lethal in small doses...
...They want to free themselves from dependence on uncertain foreign support...
...Finally, Baghdad wanted to strengthen its links with the United States, and such a process would have been undermined if Washington reacted harshly to Iraqi use of chemical weapons...
...At the same time, the United States supported efforts to tie Iraq to pro-Western Arab countries like Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, in the vain hope that these relationships would have a moderating influence on the Iraqis...
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...It is a low-speed analog that we may have used in the past in our missile programs, but that doesn't make it militarily relevant today...
...Tqxins, chemical substances created by living organisms, are closely related to biological agents...
...In June 1989, Iraq showed off a successor aircraft, the Adnan-1...
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...By the early 1990s, the Iraqis will pump oil from the ground, process it in their own chemical plants, and produce mustard gas...
...and Wiltron, which makes sophisticated engineering equipment...
...European engineers designed and built them, and Western companies provided the equipment and training...
...chemical company, Alcolac, based in Baltimore...
...Planes of this type carry radars that enable them to locate aircraft at long distances and at low altitudes...
...The Al-Husayn missiles fired in 1988 were Scud-B missiles extensively modified to double the normal range of 186 miles...
...During the war, Iraq fired nearly 400 ballistic missiles at Iranian cities...
...It has manufactured the 125-millimeter barrels for the main gun for some time, because the Soviet Union was unable to supply replacements...
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...A subsidiary of West Germany's largest defense contractor, MBB, was responsible for much of the equipment...
...Now it is probably too late to put the genie back in the bottle...
...In addition, the Iraqis were able to evade U.S...
...Unfortunately, recent signs of pragmatism in Baghdad do not mean that Iraq will necessarily become a responsible member of the international community...
...Press reports indicate that as much as 40 percent of the equipment used in the laboratories at Sa'ad 16 came from the United States...
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...export restrictions and acquire the precursor chemicals needed to make poison gas...
...Some people were arguing that we shouldn't sell any computers at all to Iraq, but the regulations at that time spoke only of high-level technology computers...
...Similarly, a British company refused to build a plant, having been warned off by British intelligence...
...Just as its Osirak reactor was about to be activated, Israeli aircraft destroyed it...
...Although the Iranians may have exaggerated the number of people who died at Halabja, journalists who visited the town immediately after the attack affirmed that the losses were heavy...
...And it is beginning to learn how to design and build the systems without relying on foreign assistance...
...It is also widely accepted that Iraq has a biological weapons program...
...The source of the foreign support is not known...
...IRAQ A THREATENING NEW SUPERPOWER As Israel confronts the stones and Molotov cocktails of the intifada, it must also face the emergence of a new regional military superpower among its Arab neighbors—Iraq...
...That the Iraqis are willing to use poison gas on their own minorities sends a frightening message to their enemies...
...In response to such a query, committee members could investigate, for example, exports to Iraq...
...Iraq simply could not duplicate this effort on its own...
...Initially, Iraq used^the chemical weapons almost exclusively on the battlefield...
...Iraq's nuclear program was dealt a major setback in 1981...
...Ironically, the first such target, in March 1988, was the Kurdish town of Halabja, inside Iraq itself...
...in the October 1988 MOMENT...
...By the early 1990s, the outside world will no longer be able to constrain Iraq's production of chemical agents...
...Iraq's use of chemical weapons against innocent civilians, its atrocious record of human rights violations, and its forced resettlement of its Kurdish population provide powerful evidence to the contrary...
...In the course of its eight-year war with Iran, Iraq expanded its regular army to more than a million men, supported by another 650,000 men in the part-time Popular Army...
...Iraq will be able to do this because of the investments it is now making in its commercial chemical industry...
...These companies built Iraq a number of small chemical pilot plants capable of producing mustard gas and nerve agents...
...Many American experts have concluded that Iraq has moderated its policies towards Israel, and is disinclined to become militarily involved in hostilities with the Jewish state...
...All are highly infectious...
...More recently, U.S...
...Customs Service seized several vacuum pumps that were about to be exported to Iraq...
...factories capable of producing pesticides can be adapted to make poison gas as well...
...Iraq is investing heavily in its pharmaceutical industry...
...The Iran-Iraq War also provided Iraq with the occasion to develop and expand its ballistic missile and chemical weapon capability...
...The technology to make biological weapons is the same as pharmaceutical companies use to make antibiotics, vaccines and other drugs...
...Freedenberg calls Section 12C of the Export Administration Act (see box, p. 53) a "very strong law...
...Alarmed by Iraq's violation of international law, a group of Western countries formed the Australia Group, a body of government representatives from 18 countries who coordinate efforts to control the supply of precursor chemicals, to prevent Iraq from acquiring the chemical precursors used to make poison gas...
...Section 12C was created by Congress to keep information on export applications secret It never says anything about when the information can be released...
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...Iraq not only has the largest conventional military force in the Middle East, it has augmented this with ballistic missiles and chemical weapons...
...According to Iranian figures, 5,000 innocent men, women and children died during the poison gas attacks...
...The United States bears much of the responsibility...
...intelligence has uncovered information that the Iraqis are otherwise attempting to build uranium enrichment facilities...
...Although they could not make public the information, they would be in a position to determine whether release of that information were important for national security, the only condition under which such release is permitted...
...Thus, the petrochemical complex will produce perfectly legitimate chemicals, and at the same time provide Iraq with an ability to make virtually unlimited quantities of poison gas...
...In any event, it is only a matter of time before Baghdad has the bomb...
...At the time, Israel was vilified for this action...
...Needless to say, the Iraqis have refused the offer...
...Freedenberg remembers the incident regarding the analog computer described by Bryen: "The debate [with Bryen] was over whether the technology of the computer was high-level enough to be useful for missile technology...
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...Most of the materials used in missile technology went through the State Department, and we saw export license requests to ship general technology...
...a large phosphorus-based industrial infrastructure...
...thifif Iraq's Arsenal Future Capability Slh IraF hjf llrjil* |x rtsililr In iHn...
...r.iilt.i attempting to build nuclear weapons...
...Thus, Iraq not only has strategic weapons, like poison gas and ballistic missiles, it is increasingly able to produce those weapons at its own factories...
...Iraq has produced two aircraft of this type...
...A Chilean company has recently helped Iraq build its own facilities to manufacture cluster bombs...
...The risk that they are wrong, however, falls on Israel...
...A major culprit is West Germany, but there are many other lesser players, including the United States...
Vol. 14 • December 1989 • No. 7
