Russian nuclear know-how pours into Iran

As Aeroflot Flight 515 from Moscow begins its predawn descent into Tehran, the group of middle-aged Russian experts on board begins to fill out landing cards for Iran.

Pulling out dog-eared, still-valid Soviet passports, the men write down their profession – engineer – and their destination: Bushehr, the city on the Persian Gulf that is home to Iran's nuclear-power project – and to 1,000 Russian engineers and technicians.

Russia sees the Bushehr reactor as a mammoth civilian venture, an $800 million nuclear power project that adheres to international norms, brings home cash, and ensures close relations with the Islamic regime in Tehran.

But from the United States' perspective, oil- and gas-rich Iran doesn't need nuclear power. And so the reactor is an indication that Iran – using the civilian project as a cover, the US alleges – is gaining sensitive Russian technology that will help Tehran's hard-line mullahs acquire nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Curbing such proliferation is a key strategy of the US-declared "war on terror."

Despite top-level denials of wrongdoing from Moscow and Tehran, and piecemeal indications that Russia has refused several questionable Iranian requests in recent years, US officials say that illicit technology and know-how transfers from Russian entities to Iran are continuing, and could spoil rapidly warming US-Russia relations.

"The quality of the relationship with Russia really depends fundamentally on how they address this question in the future," John Bolton, the US undersecretary of state in charge of arms control, warned last week. Russia says it is playing by the rules, and that it has an even greater interest than the US in preventing nearby Tehran from acquiring nuclear capability.

Officially, the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) says that both Russia and Iran – for their declared nuclear projects – are adhering to all guidelines. Russia notes that, under a nonproliferation agreement, the US is building a similar reactor in North Korea – another country labeled by Washington as part of an "axis of evil."

But the secretive world of nuclear and missile exports; the murky role of Russia's security services, often vulnerable to bribery; and the desperation of Russia's nuclear scientists, impoverished since the USSR's fall, have created new risks. US concerns focus not on mishandling of nuclear materials at Bushehr – which are to remain under internationally monitored Russian control – but on the possibility that Russian know-how will create a nucleus of Iranian experts who could apply new knowledge to a weapons program.

"The new generation [of nuclear experts] may work in Iran, and may work on nuclear weapons, because their lives are too hard and they want money, money, money," says Valentin Tikhonov, a Russian Academy of Sciences expert who authored a report last year on the "human factor" of Russian proliferation, for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "Most can't see the difference between working on civilian or war production – for them it doesn't matter," Mr. Tikhonov says. "In these conditions it is difficult to speak about human values, about the dangers of their work. They only want to survive. It is a catastrophic situation." Most Russian nuclear scientists make less than $50 per month, according to the report.

Under US pressure, three key missile technology deals to Iran were stopped by Russian authorities in the late 1990s. And the sale of critical laser information that could help Iran make fuel for nuclear weapons was suspended in 2000. Still, US sources say such cooperation continues.

"[Russia] is giving meaningful help [to Iran] in mastering the nuclear-fuel cycle, and some critical technologies like sophisticated metal alloys [and for] laser isotope separation techniques ... that are involved in building the bomb," says a senior US official, who asked not to be further identified. "There's enough to see a pattern of a determined Iranian effort that has unfortunately struck positive responses from some Russian entities."

While Russia calls for evidence of US claims, however, passing on such intelligence is "tricky" because of Clinton-era cases that went awry, the US official says: "When some sensitive information was passed to the Russians, they didn't stop the activity, but they stopped the leak. That leads to great reticence to blow any more sources."

Russian analysts argue that Moscow's concerns about Iran precisely mirror Washington's, and that it also wants to stop "freelance" technology transfers.

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