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The China-Iran Nuclear Pipeline: How to Shut It Down

(Foreign Affairs) Orde F. Kittrie - President Obama has said that the final nuclear deal with Iran will "cut off every pathway that Iran could take to develop a nuclear weapon." Yet there could be a pathway that would include Iran creating a secret, parallel nuclear program with technology and materials covertly procured from foreign suppliers. Both the U.S. and the IAEA will have limited capacity to detect either secret nuclear facilities within Iran or the covert receipt by Iran of nuclear-related materials. It is therefore critical to be able to deter or prevent foreign suppliers from sending nuclear-related materials to Iran. Little attention has been paid to the longtime leading suppliers of Iran's nuclear program: ostensibly private brokers based in China. Foremost among them appear to be Karl Lee (also known as Li Fangwei) and Sihai Cheng, who, according to U.S. federal and state prosecutors, have shipped vast quantities of key nuclear materials to Iran. One recent analysis by experts closely tied to the UK Defense Ministry concluded, "China continues to be the key source of goods and technology for the prohibited nuclear and missile programs of Iran and North Korea, with some officials estimating that China is used as a transit route for up to 90% of goods destined for those programs." The massive scale of Iran's nuclear and missile program procurement from China in recent years is a sign that China serves as a potentially pivotal back door source of nuclear materials for Iran. If a nuclear deal is to succeed, its implementation will require much more cooperation from Beijing than it has provided thus far. The writer is a professor of law at Arizona State University and a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who participated in negotiating several U.S.-Russian nonproliferation agreements.
2015-07-16 00:00:00
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