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Copyright © 1994-98, by the Middle East Data Project, Inc. All rights reserved.
President Clinton paved the way for the sale of civilian nuclear power plants to China on Oct. 29, after receiving "written assurances" from the Chinese that they would scale back cooperation with Iran in weapons of mass destruction.
But Chinese state-run weapons manufacturers and research institutes have billions of dollars at stake in Iranian weapons programs, and may hesitate to cut off ties from one day to the next, despite the pledge apparently made by Chinese President Jiang Zemin during the Washington summit.
China has repeatedly made such pledges in the past, and repeatedly broken them. China pledged in 1988 to stop sales of Silkworm missiles to Iran, only to turn around and build a Silkworm fabrication plant in Iran, then sell more advanced C-801 and C-802 anti-shipping missiles a few years later. In 1992, China pledged to abide by the guidelines of the Missile Technology Control Regime, only to sell M-9 production technology and solid-fuel booster technology in ensuing years, including technology now being incorporated into an entire new generation of Iranian ballistic missiles with ranges of up to 10,000 kilometers, capable of reaching the east coast of the United States..
In May 1996, China made a bilateral pledge to the United States to refrain from providing technology or support to unsafeguarded nuclear facilities. And yet, U.S. intelligence reporting shows that Iran has continued to provide support and technology for uranium conversion and enrichment plants in Iran, and to negotiate new reactor sales, while continuing nuclear cooperation with Pakistan, a nuclear threshold state that has refused to sign the NPT.
The problem with this latest Chinese pledge revolves around the technical interpretation by the Chinese side of what constitutes an unsafeguarded facility. The Chinese argument, which is legally correct, is that uranium milling and even conversion plants are not subject to IAEA safeguards, nor is the sale of technology that could be useful to an uranium enrichment program - unless it is actually installed in a declared enrichment facility. Obviously, if Iran has embarked on a clandestine nuclear weapons program, as the United States, Israel, and European allies believe, then it is not going to declare clandestine sites to the IAEA. Although an IAEA spokesman last week said the Agency has "no reason to complain" about Iran or China's declarations to the Agency, "the legal situation is unclear" as to what constitutes facilities that must be declared.
Additionally, it remains unclear what exactly the Chinese pledged not to do, since the White House has refused to release the text of the "written assurances" received from President Jiang. When a senior White House official briefed reporters on the pledge, on Oct. 29, he stated when pressed that China "will complete a few existing projects, and these are projects which are not of proliferation concern." In his comments to reporters, National Security Advisor Sandy Berger spoke of "two projects in particular" that the Chinese would complete, a turn-key facility to manufacture zirconium cladding for nuclear fuel rods, and an unspecified uranium conversion plant.
An IAEA spokesman in Vienna told The Iran Brief that neither project was subject to IAEA safeguards, but would normally be declared to the Agency by members of the London Nuclear Suppliers Group or members of the Zangger committee. Until now, China has refused to join either group, since they require prior notification of nuclear exports.
In the beginning: Iran and China signed a major bilateral agreement on scientific and technical cooperation during Majlis speaker Hashemi-Rafsanjani's state visit to Beijing in 1985, that reportedly included a secret side agreement on nuclear cooperation. Evidence of nuclear cooperation between China and Iran began to emerge soon thereafter, with the delivery of a small calutron in 1987 and the training of Iranian nuclear technicians in China as of 1989.
Chinese nuclear assistance to Iran accelerated in 1991, after Operation Desert Storm, when a second nuclear cooperation agreement between the two was signed. Iran sought to accelerate assistance from China when it became clear that its major nuclear suppliers at the time - Argentina and India - were preparing to cancel a series of contracts to build nuclear facilities in Iran as a result of intense U.S. pressure. Argentina was to assist Iran in uranium exploration and to build milling plants and a uranium conversion plant to manufacture uranium hexafluoride gas for enrichment purposes. India was to build a 10 MW research reactor, which would have served as a source of unsafeguarded plutonium.
The Argentine National Institute for Applied Research, INVAP began work on uranium mining and milling facilities as of 1989 which were visited by an IAEA inspection team in 1992. China took over where the Argentineans left off, and sent teams of geologists to Iran to explore for new uranium deposits. In June 1994, Iran's Interior Minister Ali Besharati announced that a Chinese technician under contract to Iran's Atomic Energy Organization at a previously undisclosed uranium plant in Rudan, near the town of Fasa in Shiraz region, had been kidnapped by "bandits." Subsequent reporting identified Rudan as the potential site of a Chinese-built hex plant. [For a more complete account of Iran's uranium programs, see TIB 6/1/95]
On Jan. 21, 1990, an agreement was signed between Minister of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics, Ali Akbar Torkan, and General Jiang Xua, the Deputy Director of China's Commission on Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (COSTIND), to build a 27 Megawatt plutonium production reactor in Isfahan. The sale was negotiated by the China Nuclear Energy Industry Corporation (CNEIC), the export arm of China's Ministry of Energy Resources. U.S. satellite photographs, taken in September 1991, documented major construction work at the site and the presence of large numbers of Chinese technicians. Press reports on these photographs triggered public concern in Washington over Chinese-Iranian nuclear cooperation.
Experts now believe the earlier reports may have confused the plutonium production reactor with a 27 kW training reactor being built by the Chinese at the Isfahan Nuclear Technology Center at about the same time, which was inaugurated by President Rafsanjani in June 1994 and placed under IAEA supervision. Alternately, there is some speculation that the Chinese might have canceled work on this reactor as a result of pressure from the Bush administration.
Missile projects: China was an early supplier of missile technology to Iran, with the first known transfers of solid fuel technology dating from 1985. Iran built several families of artillery rockets, including the 200-km range Zelzal-2 and the 150-km range Nazeat-10, with Chinese assistance and using Chinese solid-fuel propellant technology. During the 1980s, Iran purchased chemicals to manufacture solid fuel (such as ammonium perchlorate) on the international market, including in the United States. To avoid increasingly-intrusive Western Customs efforts to shut down this trade, Iran asked China to build solid fuel propellant plants in Iran, and today is believed to be self-sufficient in the basic chemicals needed for these propellants.
More recently, China has become a supplier of subsystems, guidance kits, and telemetry equipment for Iran's long-range missile projects, the Shahab-3 and Shahab-4. Both missiles use liquid-fuel and are being developed primarily with assistance from Russian state-owned ballistic missile plants and design institutes. These missiles have ranges of 1,300 km and 2,000 km respectively, bringing Israel into range for the first time, along with NATO bases in Turkey and U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.
A German intelligence report on Iran's unconventional weapons programs and ballistic missile programs dated April 1997 listed China as a major supplier in all areas - nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile. But it singled out China's support for long-range solid-fuel ballistic missile projects in Iran which, "when completed, will be comparable to modern Western systems." Iranian purchases of manufacturing equipment in China "clearly demonstrate the intention in the future to manufacture large quantities of solid rocket fuel," the report states. China stands out as "Iran's most important partner in this project." While China did not deliver complete weapons systems, it "sold to Iran essential know-how for the manufacture of solid rocket fuel."
Using this technology, Iran is now developing an entire family of long-range solid-fuel missiles, according to intelligence sources in Europe and Israel, capable of reaching targets in Europe and the Eastern seacoast of the United States. The new missiles will have ranges respectively of 4,500 km and 10,000 kilometers, and will incorporate technologies and know-how purchased from Russia as well.
Foreign suppliers: For these longer-range projects, Iran is likely to depend more on Russia than China. U.S. intelligence experts argue that China's solid-fuel technology "is not home-grown, but was originally imported from the Soviet Union, Japan, and the West, and they still depend on these suppliers for many components, machine-tools, and even specialty chemicals." A major Japanese chemical supply house, Sumitomo Chemicals, is believed by U.S. intelligence to have supplied chemical products used by China's solid-fuel propellants industry. The company thought it was supplying chemicals to civilian end-users.