If a nuclear-armed Iran is worrying, the idea of al-Qaeda with nukes is appalling, says Alasdair Palmer

By Alasdair Palmer

Source:

17 April 2010

Mushroom cloud created by the explosion of an atomic bomb dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima on the 6th August 1945 Photo: PA

The international conference on “nuclear disarmament” organised in Tehran this weekend by the Iranian government is an attempt to distract the world’s attention from the fact that Iran is poised to acquire its own nuclear arsenal. An Iran armed with nuclear warheads, and the missiles with which to lob them at nearby countries, is a very frightening prospect – but it’s not nearly as frightening as terrorists armed with nukes.

The Iranian government controls a state, and thus has a population to protect. That means it can be deterred. The prospect of facing annihilation the moment they fire a nuclear weapon at any of their enemies in the West is enough to deter even the lunatics presently in power in Tehran from contemplating that step.

It was precisely that thought which stopped the Russians and the Americans from using their nuclear missiles. There were generals who advised Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike, just as there were Russian military men who urged their leaders to use their nuclear weapons against America. It didn’t happen because, while some of the men in power on both sides were crazy, they weren’t that crazy. They knew that launching a nuclear strike could only have one result: Armageddon, and the self-defeating destruction of their own country. The effectiveness of deterrence is confirmed by the fact that the only time atomic bombs were ever used, they were dropped on an enemy that was incapable of responding in kind.

But deterrence breaks down when terrorists get hold of a nuclear bomb. They don’t control states; they don’t have populations to protect. If a terrorist detonated a nuclear bomb in an American city, causing tens of thousands of deaths, how would the President respond? Who would he retaliate against? The difficulty of providing an answer to that question demonstrates why a terrorist group is much more likely to use a nuclear bomb, if it could get hold of one, than any state.

The President could decide to retaliate by obliterating, with nuclear bombs, whichever state he thought had “leaked” nuclear technology to the terrorists. That possibility might act as the deterrent which stops states sympathetic to some of the terrorists’ objectives – Iran, for example, or Pakistan – from leaking nuclear technology to any terrorist organisation in the first place. It may also be why President Obama has refused to rule out using nuclear weapons first: if the Iranians know that, should one of their bombs find its way into the hands of terrorists who use it, their country will cease to exist, that may encourage them to keep very close control of their own nukes.

Atomic weapons remain beyond the reach of any organisation smaller than a state. A “dirty bomb” – a device which spews lethal radiation – is much less complicated, and much more within reach of terrorist groups. But one of the problems with constructing a dirty bomb is that it is very difficult for those who build it not to be killed by the radioactive materials it requires. Eager suicide bombers may not mind that. The trouble is that the radiation is likely to kill them before they have managed to assemble the device, let alone planted and detonated it in a crowded city.

Still, terrorists acquiring a dirty bomb remains a very real possibility. There is no doubt that they would use one if they had it: al-Qaeda and its affiliates have said time and again that they want to cause the maximum number of casualties in “infidel countries that oppress Muslims”.

The consequences of a radiological bomb in London or New York might not be as extreme as sometimes claimed – it would not make vast areas uninhabitable for decades – but there would be panic on an epic scale. And if it happened here, how would a British Prime Minister respond? What could he do? I have no idea. And nor, I suspect, would he.