, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2011
As Egypt remains in a state of political upheaval, observers worry about what would happen to any potential WMD resources in the hands of a potential new government with unpredictable foreign policy aims, NBC News reported yesterday (see
, Nov. 15, 2010).
Intelligence documents and U.S. officials indicate that Washington's
longtime ally has clandestinely conducted research on nuclear weapons
and other weapons of mass destruction for decades.
"If we found another country doing what they've done, we would have
been all over them," an unidentified ex-U.S. intelligence officer said.
Cairo has acknowledged that it
sought to acquire a nuclear weapons capability in the
1960s after it discovered Israel had also developed nuclear arms. Egypt
joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in 1968 and, under the
now-embattled Mubarak regime, has led calls for the Middle East to be
established as a WMD-free zone. Egyptian officials, however, have hinted
that should Iran acquire a nuclear weapons capability that their nation
would pursue a deterrent of its own (see
GSN, June 10, 2010).
Egyptian demands that Israel and Iran curb their nuclear activities
"are hard to meet," according to Institute for Science and International
Security President David Albright. If a planned 2012 U.N. meeting on
establishing a WMD-free zone in the Middle East fails to make progress
"that could be a catalyst for [the Egyptians] to leave the" Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.
Last year, the International Atomic Energy Agency announced it had
launched a probe into the origins of highly enriched uranium particles
that turned up at an Egyptian atomic research center in 2007 and 2008.
The U.N. nuclear watchdog also chastised Cairo in 2005 for not reporting
a number of atomic experiments over the years. The Arab state has
conducted both plutonium processing and uranium enrichment endeavors,
NBC reported. The plutonium work seems to have been abandoned two
decades ago.
Cairo said it had "differing interpretations" with the International
Atomic Energy Agency regarding the nation's duties under the Nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty.
Egypt halted a nascent civilian atomic
energy effort following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster. Last month,
Cairo said it expected to soon call for international proposals to
build the first of four planned atomic energy reactors (see
GSN, Jan. 19).
Albright said Cairo's atomic operations suggest it is seeking full
nuclear cycle capabilities, which can produce both nuclear reactor fuel
and fissile material.
"For 15 years, they have made credible moves to build up their
nuclear fuel cycle capability," he said.
Naval Postgraduate School nonproliferation analyst James Russell,
though, argued it would be foolish for economic and political reasons
for Cairo to return to its nuclear weapons research.
"The question is, would a follow-on regime [to Mubarak] want to
revisit this?" Russell said. "Would it look at the set of calculations
and pursue not a peaceful program but consider constructing an illicit
program? The answer is that we don't know, but we do have an idea of
what the costs of doing that would be ... and the prospect that they'd
have a pretty damn difficult time trying to hide it."
Thus far, Egyptian protesters have been
focused on domestic political and economic grievances with the Mubarak
regime. Foreign policy matters and religious issues have largely been
absent from their demands, which include free and fair elections and a
new constitution. Former IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei has
become a senior opposition figure and has been raised as a potential
leader of any transitional government (see
GSN, March 17, 2010).
"The calculus argues for not doing this ... even for an Islamic
regime," Russell said.
Still, Egypt does not "have a clean record" in other fields of
weapons proliferation, according to Russell and others. Should the
United States end its substantial military subsidies to Egypt, Cairo
might decide to make up the difference by producing and exporting
additional arms systems.
A lengthy 2005 CIA report stated that Iraq in 1981 paid Egypt $12
million "in return for assistance with production and storage of
chemical weapons agents."
The help was said to encompass aid in the production of sarin nerve
agent weapons and alterations enabling Iraqi rocket technology to allow
the weapons to hold and release chemical toxins. Iraq used chemical
weapons in its 1980-88 war against Iran.
Sarin is one of the most complex chemical warfare agents and Egypt's
development of the toxin is a sign of the country's chemical weapons
sophistication, defense analysts say.
Egypt also used chemical weapons against Yemen in the
1960s. It has neither signed nor ratified the Conventional Weapons
Convention.
The nation in the 1980s also collaborated with North Korea on missile
upgrades for both states, NBC News reported (Robert Windrem,
NBC News, Feb. 7).
