The World's Most Dangerous Man

A question of time. The biggest missing pieces of the puzzle are how far Iraq has progressed in building a centrifuge plant for enriching uranium hexafluoride gas, and where the Iraqis are conducting their centrifuge research. The U.S. is fairly confident that Iraq does not yet have a prototype centrifuge plant running, and that belief is largely behind the 5-to-10-year estimate. But, says W. Seth Carus, a missile expert at the U.S. Naval War College Foundation and a longtime observer of Iraqi weapons programs: "If I were doing it and I were them, I'd have it in a place where you couldn't take pictures of it, underground and preferably in the side of a mountain."

U.S. officials admit that their assessment has another major loophole. "The estimate has a caveat—that they don't get significant assistance from abroad," says one administration expert.

But a growing body of evidence suggests that Iraq's nuclear program is getting considerable foreign assistance from West German companies, China and perhaps Pakistan. U.S. intelligence officials say Pakistan may be contributing to the Iraqi nuclear effort by providing Baghdad with vital expertise and technology for its uranium-enrichment program, in return for cooperation on acquiring restricted items.

The American nuclear capacitors that were confiscated in London last March, and a shipment of vacuum diffusion pumps that U.S. Customs officials seized in March, 1989, are both items that Pakistan may be seeking for a second enrichment plant it reportedly is constructing at Golra. Cardoen Industries, a Chilean arms company with close ties to Iraq, is suspected of transshipping sophisticated oscilloscopes from Europe to Iraq for testing detonating devices. Carlos Cardoen, head of the company, denies selling any oscilloscopes to Iraq. Officials in Bonn say a West German company, H & H Metalform, has sent equipment suitable for manufacturing centrifuges to Iraq, and at least two German technicians are believed to have helped Iraq assemble a plant for the equipment. U.S. intelligence officials say that China is helping Iraq to manufacture the special magnets needed to balance the centrifuges.

Experts say Iraq would need 1,000 centrifuges working for a year to enrich enough uranium to make one bomb. Synchronizing the centrifuges is a complex task: They fly apart if not aligned properly. And even if they work, they tend to break down easily. Special magnets are needed to minimize friction. Vacuum pumps and piping move the uranium hexafluoride gas from one centrifuge to another, in what is known as a cascade.

U.S. officials assume it will take Iraqi engineers time to master the mechanics and techniques needed to build and operate a centrifuge enrichment plant. But Simon Henderson, the former editor of MidEast Markets, believes Iraqi engineers, with their experience in Iraq's flourishing arms industry, will have less difficulty building a centrifuge plant than did Pakistan. "Making centrifuges work stretched the Pakistanis' capabilities, but it doesn't necessarily stretch Iraqi capabilities," he says.

How fast Iraq acquires a bomb also depends on what kind of nuclear device it wants. The fastest route, says nuclear expert Leonard Spector of the Carnegie Endowment, would be for Iraq to build a uranium bomb using an implosion method, as soon as it has amassed enough weapons-grade material. This type of bomb would require non-nuclear testing, but the tests could be conducted secretly in a building or underground. One or two unwieldy bombs might be enough to intimidate Iraq's Persian Gulf neighbors, but they would be unlikely to provide the deterrent Iraq wants against nuclear-armed Israel. More likely, Hussein will keep his program secret until he can build nuclear warheads, a more lengthy and complicated process but one that eventually could make him the most feared leader in the Middle East.

THE CHEMICALS