Is Egypt ready to go nuclear?

NEW YORK - Does Egypt have clandestine nuclear and chemical weapons programs that could be turned on if the Arab world’s most populous country feels threatened by neighbors?

In the last several weeks, both the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have disclosed secret Egyptian operations in both areas — experiments in the development of plutonium and uranium fuel cycles as well as evidence of sophisticated chemical weapons help that was given to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

Neither report suggests that Egypt is going to deploy nuclear or chemical weapons, but the revelations once again raise concerns that the U.S. ally has its own superweapons programs. 

“Egypt has wanted to have it very different ways,” said David Albright, president of the Institute for Science in International Security and a former IAEA inspector himself.  “It wants to be seen as a responsible member of the world community, but it also is afraid of what Israel has,” meaning a nuclear arsenal. 

And with Iran also believed to be developing nuclear weapons and Libya admitting it once had such ambitions, Albright and others fear Egypt is quietly preparing for all eventualities.

Of the two new revelations, the nuclear concern has received more attention.

Failure to report nuke experiments
In February, the IAEA quietly criticized Egypt for failing to report a variety of nuclear experiments for more than 20 years. The agency noted that Egypt had used “small amounts” of nuclear material to conduct experiments related to producing plutonium and enriched uranium, both of which can be used to make nuclear weapons.

While the uranium experiments appear to have been 20 or more years old, the plutonium experiments were much recent. 

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According to the report, between 1990 and 2003 Egypt used its two research reactors at Inshas in the Nile Delta to irradiate “small amounts of natural uranium,” conducting a total of 16 experiments.  

According to the IAEA, none of the experiments fully succeeded; but in each case, they should have been reported to the agency under terms of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act. 

Finally, Egypt had to admit that it had not fully disclosed the extent of its nuclear facilities.

It failed to declare the pilot plant used for the plutonium and uranium-separation experiments and did not provide design information for a new facility under construction, also at Inshas.

This facility could be used for more extensive experiments, the IAEA believed, and noted that Cairo should have notified the IAEA of its decision eight years ago.

Chided, but not accused of clandestine action
The IAEA declared the lapses a “matter of concern” and promised to pursue verification.

“The agency’s verification of the correctness and completeness of Egypt’s declarations is ongoing, pending further results of environmental and destructive sampling analyses and the agency’s analysis of the additional information provided by Egypt,” the report said. 

Still the IAEA did not accuse Egypt of having a clandestine nuclear weapons program and the Egyptian government, in a statement issued in response, tried to downplay the concern, claiming “differing interpretations” of Egypt’s safeguards obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty had led to the problems.

And Cairo continued to emphasize that its “nuclear activities are strictly for peaceful purposes.”

Albright and others are not so certain.

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