Photo from Wikimedia Commons.

In the wake of the rocket launch by North Korea in April, which some experts believed was a cover for a missile test, and Iran’s recent launch of the Sajjil-2, a two-stage, solid propellant or solid-fuel, surface-to-surface ballistic missile with an estimated range of 2,000 to 2,500 kilometers, the issue of missile proliferation and defenses against ballistic missiles is once again on the front burner. This is not only of concern to the United States and its allies but also to Russia, China and the neighboring countries which fall within the range of these ballistic missiles.  

Among the questions that need to be considered:

• What is the real potential of these missiles?
• What is the best way to defend against these missiles?
• Can ballistic missile defence systems protect against these missiles?

The EWI-sponsored Joint Threat Assessment of Iran’s nuclear and missile potential by U.S. and Russian technical experts was a pioneering effort in addressing these questions. However, the EWI report is certainly not the last word on the subject.

To ensure an informed debate among experts and to address the questions listed above, EWI is pleased to host a moderated discussion forum on missile proliferation and missile defence. We are inviting experts to contribute their information and analysis. Please send your inputs to wmdforum@ewi.info.

Comments

Implications for the Joint Threat Assessment Report
By Ted Postol, Professor of Science, Technology, and International Security, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The JTA Report issued on May 19, 2009 did not provide an analysis of the capabilities of Iranian long-range solid propellant ballistic missiles. It was noted that there were reports that Iran had developed a solid propellant missile with a range of 2000 km, but the available data was insufficient for a serious analysis. On May 20, 2009, one day after the JTA report was released to the public, Iran successfully tested a solid propellant two-stage ballistic missile known as the Sejjil. Information that is now in the public domain, including testimony given to the Congress by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the technical characteristics of the Sejjil, makes it possible to provide an accurate and detailed assessment of the military and technical implications of this ballistic missile.

The Sejjil ballistic missile is a two-stage vehicle that is powered by solid propellant rocket motors. Preliminary estimates indicate that the first and second stage rocket motors differ little from each other, except that the second stage is shorter than the first. We estimate that the overall weight of the Sejjil would be about 21 tons when carrying a one-ton warhead. The Sejjil should be able to carry a one-ton warhead to a range of about 2200 km, giving it essentially the same range and payload characteristics as a liquid-propellant ballistic missile based on the technology of the Safir space launch vehicle. This means that within a few years the Iranians will have an operational system capable of delivering a 1000 kg warhead to a range of roughly 2000 km.

The JTA Report estimated that if Iran decided to build and deploy nuclear weapons, it could take six or more years to produce a nuclear warhead compact and light enough to fly on a ballistic missile. It concluded also that within that time Iran could produce a liquid propellant ballistic missile capable of delivering a 1000 kg nuclear warhead to 2000 km range. The crucial factor determining how long it would take Iran to develop and deploy nuclear-armed missiles is the time it would take to build a nuclear warhead of the right size and weight. The successful test of the Sejjil ballistic missile does not change that timeline.

On the basis of the Sejjil launch, we have estimated the size and weight of a ballistic missile that would have roughly the 5000 km range needed for Iran to be able to deliver 1000 kg nuclear warheads, when and if they are available, to Northern and Western Europe. This estimate assumes roughly the same level of solid propellant and casing technology demonstrated in the two-stage Sejjil missile. It assumes that the first and second stages of the Sejjil missile would be launched by a new and heavy first stage. In order to construct such a rocket stage with the same propellant and casing technologies used in the Sejjil, Iran would have to make major advances in understanding how to produce a much larger solid propellant rocket motor. It would also have to solve the other technological and production problems listed in paragraph 3.20 of the JTA Report.

If Iran eventually reaches a point where it could build such a large solid propellant rocket motor, we estimate that the resulting missile stage would have to weigh about 45 tons. The resulting vehicle would be a three stage missile with an overall weight of 65 tons or more. The weight of the American Minuteman III and the Russian SS-27 is about 35 tons. The large weight of a postulated solid propellant missile based on the technology demonstrated in the Sejjil launch would result in a missile that for all practical purposes would not be mobile. Although the Sejjil is an important alternative path to building long-range ballistic missiles, it does not demonstrate technologies that could rapidly evolve into ballistic missiles with ranges that could threaten Northern and Western Europe. It could also not evolve rapidly into a ballistic missile that could threaten the continental United States.

What are the implications of the May 20 test for the JTA Report? The first point to note is that the Sejjil test does not alter our estimate of when Iran might develop short-range and mediumrange nuclear-armed ballistic missiles. It does not alter the JTA Report’s conclusions about the long-term nature of the ICBM threat. Nor does it change our recommendations regarding the proposed missile defense deployments in Europe.

The most important change is that the test shows Iran to be capable of exploiting solid propellant technology. It is not yet clear whether Iran will take a strategic decision to emphasize solid propellant ballistic missiles over liquid propellant missiles as they continue developing their ballistic missile forces. Perhaps the Iranians have not yet made up their minds on this point.

Solid propellant missiles have advantages over liquid propellant missiles – they are quicker to launch and can more easily be deployed in silos or on mobile launchers. These two characteristics can make them less vulnerable to preemptive attack. However, when the missiles and their carrier vehicles are large, cumbersome, and heavy, mobile systems can be hard to operate, and hiding them is not a simple task. The Sejjil and its carrier vehicle probably weigh 40 to 50 tons and an IRBM based variant along with its carrier vehicle would be gigantic, weighing roughly 130 to 140 tons. An Iranian solid-propellant ICBM that uses the same rocket propellant technology demonstrated by the Sejjil would be substantially larger than the US MX ICBM. It would require a carrier vehicle that would be proportionately larger than that used to transport the MX. As with the MX, such an enormous ICBM could only be moved using huge and specialized carrier vehicles on roads constructed specifically to accommodate such vehicles.

Missile silos have become increasingly vulnerable to precision-guided munitions, and precision guided munitions can be expected to be in the arsenals of many nations as the technology becomes available worldwide. As such, although the successful launch of the Sejjil on May 20 is an important step in Iranian missile development, it does not mark an immediate or dramatic shift in the nature of the potential missile threat from Iran.

If anything, the test flight of the Sejjil reinforces the threat to the Middle East by providing Iran with an alternative (and perhaps quicker) path to the development of missiles capable of striking targets across the Middle East. This reinforces the argument made in the JTA Report that the urgent task is to secure US-Russian cooperation in resolving the crisis in the Middle East resulting from the Iranian nuclear and missile programs before a threat emerges to the whole of Europe and to the United States.

It is almost certain that Iran obtained substantial and extensive technological help from abroad in developing the solid propellant rocket motors for the Sejjil. The test firing of May 20 underscores the urgency of the JTA Report’s recommendation that the international community take steps to deal more effectively with the transfer of missile technology. This is an area in which US-Russian cooperation is of great importance.

A more complete technical analysis of the Sejjil Missile is available in the third technical addendum to the Joint Threat Assessment.

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The Republic and the Rahbar
By Gary Sick, Adjunct Professor of International Affairs at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. (Excerpted from the January 2009 issue of the National Interest.)

Contrary to conventional wisdom, Iran is neither the most dangerous nor the most pressing problem to be faced by the new U.S. administration in the Persian Gulf region. The Afghanistan-Pakistan nexus, comprised of two weak or failing states with potential access to a stockpile of nuclear weapons, is clearly the most urgent and the highest risk to U.S. core interests. Iraq is a delicate and urgent problem, which will occupy much of the early attention of the new administration as Washington and Baghdad choreograph a responsible exit strategy. Nevertheless, the decisions the Obama administration makes about Iran in its first few months will have a significant effect on our other commitments.

Alarm about the Iranian threat typically rests on two propositions. First, it is claimed that Iran is a revolutionary Islamic theocracy that is politically extreme and undeterrable since the Shia religion welcomes martyrdom. Second, it is argued that Iran’s ugly and belligerent rhetoric about Israel means that it will be quick to use any future nuclear weapon against Israel and its supporters, regardless of the consequences. Of course, Iran is no less capable of foolish and self-destructive decisions than any other government, but its record since at least the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988 has largely been that of a cautious power that puts regime survival above all ideological goals.

True, Iran’s political influence has grown substantially in the past seven years, but that sharp rise has in effect been an unearned gift. The United States in 2001 attacked and dispersed the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s worst enemy to the east; then in 2003 we attacked and destroyed the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq, Iran’s worst enemy to the west; finally, we oversaw the installation of a majority-Shia government in Baghdad for the first time in history, largely comprised of individuals and groups that had relied on Iranian shelter and support in the struggle with Saddam. At the end of that process, Iran was indeed far more powerful and influential than before, but that was almost entirely the inadvertent result of our own policies.

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The Futility of Regional Missile Defense
by Martin Senn, lecturer in international security, University of Innsbruck, Austria

Ballistic missile defense exacerbates rather than solves the problem of regional arms dynamics. Both in the Middle East and South East Asia we are currently witnessing major built-ups of missile defense systems but, contrary to the expectations of missile defense advocates, these deployments will neither have a dissuasive effect on US adversaries, nor will they offer credible protection of US infrastructure and allies and will therefore not contribute to non-proliferation efforts. The case of the Middle East clearly shows that missile defenses may prove to be a further destabilizing moment in a volatile region. 

Israel in engaged in the deployment of a multi-level defense system, the United Arab Emirates have purchased THAAD and PAC-3 system, Kuwait s about to receive a PAC-3 and PAC-2 upgrades, and Turkey is reviewing Russian, Chinese, and US missile defense systems. Missile defense has thus become a reality in the Middle East and the US is not only a major supplier of technology but has also been advocating the interconnection of different national defense systems since the days of the Clinton administration. Following an illustration provided by the Missile Defense Agency, this integration of regional PAC-3, THAAD, and Aegis systems (the latter are deployed on cruisers of the US Fifth Fleet) are supposed to shield a considerable part of the Arabian Peninsula with the thickest defense being in the littoral regions of the Persian Gulf.

Washington’s motivations in this regard obviously include an economic dimension, as the deployment or joint development of BMD ensures profits for arms producing companies. Still, US missile defense policy in the Middle East is not solely grounded in the economic realm, but is primarily intended to serve as a counter-weight to what has been perceived as an aggressive military build-up of Iran. As such, it is expected to have four functions. First, a dense network of active defense systems is seen as a considerable enhancement of the ability to deter Iran (by denial) and therefore also as freeing Washington from the burden of providing extended deterrence in the volatile Middle East. Second, the ability to defend against Iranian missile strikes is intended to contain the demand of US allies for an indigenous nuclear weapons capability, and thus to have a non-proliferation function. Third, the deployment of MD is expected to fulfill a counter-proliferation function by dissuading Iran from continuing with its ballistic missile program. Fourth, BMD should offer protection of critical infrastructure such as military or oil producing facilities and population centers in the case that deterrence of an Iranian missile strike fails.

However, these expectations are misleading because they fail to recognize both the importance Tehran attaches to its missile deterrent and Iran’s ability to react to BMD deployments in the region. For Iran, ballistic missiles are not merely a means of choice but rather of necessity given the poor state of its conventional forces. In addition, Tehran saw the merits of missile and asymmetric warfare during its war against Iraq and the Gulf War of 1991. Overall, Iran’s deterrence strategy relies to a considerable extent on its ability to strike U.S. facilities and allies in the region with ballistic missiles.

From Tehran’s perspective, the accelerating deployment of missile defenses in the region is therefore probably seen as a challenge to its ability to deter external intervention. In line with its perception of revisionist U.S. and Israeli intentions vis-à-vis the Islamic Republic, Tehran will see regional missile defenses as one pillar of an offensive strategy, which eventually aims at crippling its nuclear program or even at toppling its ruling regime. Put simply, missile defense capabilities in Iran’s neighborhood will be seen as anything but defensive.

It is therefore plausible to expect that Tehran will not remain passive or, as missile defense advocates hope, recognize the futility of its missile program. Contrary to the picture of a developing country, which is helpless in view of the technological edge of US defense systems, Iran could choose a number of measures to counter these systems. Although its ability for symmetrical reaction is limited, as Russia has so far declined to sell modern air and missile defense systems (although China might step in), the range of asymmetrical measures is broad. Iran could uphold or even accelerate the production rate of its Shahab-3 missiles and it could equip these missiles with submunitions containing chemical (or biological) agents. These submunitions not only provide missile defense systems with too many targets to intercept but also compensate for the inadequacy of ballistic missiles. Therefore, they ideally suit Iran’s needs. In addition to ballistic missiles with submunitions, Tehran could also increase its efforts in the field of cruise missile technology, which still poses a considerable challenge to missile defense systems.

All of these measures are utterly counter-productive from the perspective of non-proliferation and strategic stability in the region. Not only would they stimulate the arms dynamic in the Middle East but they would also move the ambitious goal of a weapons of mass destruction free zone in the Middle East further into the future and thus also impede efforts towards global nuclear disarmament. What is more, missile defense will not ease Washington’s burden regarding the security of its allies. As Iran’s reactions will be perceived as a further aggressive arms build-up, US allies in the region will continue to seek US protection.

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Defense for a Real Threat
by retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Trey Obering and former Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman

In a Washington Post op-ed, Obering and Edelman refute many of the joint threat assessment's conclusion.

"The apparent reelection of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and his frequently expressed commitment to pursue nuclear and ballistic missile capability, underscore the importance of proposed U.S. radar sites and missile defense interceptors in Eastern Europe," they write. "Critics of the plan frequently recycle the arguments repeatedly invoked by Russian diplomatic and defense officials during rounds of U.S.-Russian diplomacy throughout 2007-08, including two meetings between their foreign and defense ministers."

Click here to read their op-ed in the Washington Post

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Missile Defense: Unready for the Real World
by IBM Fellow Emeritus Richard L. Grawin, one of the American contributors to the U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment on Iran's Nuclear and Missile Potential

In a response to Trey Oberling and Eric Edelman's op-ed in the Washington Post (see previous comment), Richard L. Garwin suggests that Obering and Edelman "were incorrect about the technical worthiness of the proposed U.S. missile defense system in Europe."

Click here to read Garwin's letter to the editor of the Washington Post

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Iran's Ballistic Missile Potential
by David Montague, retired President of Lockheed-Martin Missile Systems Division; Uzi Rubin, former director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization and current CEO of Rubincon Defense Consulting Ltd.; and Dean Wilkening, senior research scientist at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University.

This paper questions what we believe to be an overly pessimistic, and potentially misleading, assessment of Iran's ballistic missile potential presented in the recently released EastWest Institute report entitled Iran's Nuclear and Missile Potential: A Joint Threat Assessment by U.S. and Russian Technical Experts....

In general, the JTA report tends to downplay Iran's ballistic missile accomplishments, leading to the conclusion that it will take many years before Iran is capable of threatening Europe or Russia with Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missiles, or the United States with Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles. We do not believe that a ballistic missile threat to Europe or the United States is necessarily imminent because it depends, among other things, on political decisions taken by Iran. However, we believe that Iran’s technical accomplishments in the area of ballistic missiles are further along than the JTA report and the Technical Addendums lead one to believe.

Click here to read Montague, Rubin and Wilkening's complete response (277K PDF)

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Comments on “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Potential”: A Paper by David Montague, Uzi Rubin, and Dean Wilkening
By David Holloway and Theodore Postol

We have reviewed the paper “Iran’s Ballistic Missile Potential” by David Montague, Uzi Rubin, and Dean Wilkening. Montague et al. assert that the Joint Threat Assessment (JTA) downplays Iran’s ballistic missile accomplishments and, in particular, minimizes Iran’s development of solid propellant ballistic missiles.

In this response we will do two things:

1. We will show that Montague et al. provide a misleading portrait of the contents and findings of our report by selectively quoting bits and pieces of text from the carefully drafted discussions of the matters they claim to criticize.

2. We will show that their claims about the performance of future postulated Iranian solid-propellant IRBM’s are based on hidden and incorrect scientific and engineering assumptions and on large and inexplicable errors in their numerical calculations. The engineering parameters of the missiles they postulate are totally inconsistent with their assertions that solid propellant ballistic missiles based on Sejjil technology could be relatively light and mobile and that they would be easy to develop and could be quickly deployed.

Click here to read Holloway and Postol's complete response (116K PDF)

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More Debate Re: EastWest Institute's JTA
By Geoffrey Forden

Given the potential danger posed by Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, the prudent course might appear to be to always err on the side of overestimating Iran’s ability to develop and produce its own long-range missiles. There is, however, reason to avoid like the plague overestimating: it can trigger inappropriate responses such as the invasion of Iraq where WMD was alleged and yet it didn’t exist. We are still suffering from that overestimation and will continue to do so for quite a while. The answer, of course, is to make sure you get it right.

That is why it is important that scholars continue to debate the nature and capability of Iran’s missile development program.

Click here to read Forden's complete response on ArmsControlWonk.com (116K PDF)

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Response to David Holloway’s and Theodore Postol’s Comments on ‘Iran’s Ballistic Missile Potential’
By David Montague, Uzi Rubin and Dean Wilkening

We have read "Comments on ‘Iran’s Ballistic Missile Potential’" by David Holloway and Theodore Postol with great interest and, after careful review of those comments and our original calculations and assumptions, we conclude that our original analysis is valid as it stands. We encourage the careful reader not to be distracted by the tone and confusing calculations presented in the “Comments.” The errors in the “Comments” are consistent with the errors that led to an underestimation of Iran’s missile potential in the original Joint Threat Assessment (JTA) report and its Technical Addendums, namely a significant underestimation of Iran's solid-propellant missile potential. Regardless of motivation, such an underestimation could lead to policy recommendations inconsistent with US, allied, or for that matter, international security interests.

Click here to read Montague, Rubin and Wilkening's complete response (298K PDF)

N.B.: Montague, Rubin and Wilkening refer to the photo on the cover of the EWI joint threat assessment report. In the interests of full disclosure, the photo was chosen by EWI's editorial staff, not by Theodore Postol or David Holloway.

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