Report: Iran has world's most active chem-war program

TEL AVIV - Iran has been hampered in its nuclear weapons programs but appears ready to use its growing arsenal chemical bombs, a new study says.

The study quotes experts as saying that Iran has most active chemical warfare program in the developing world. This includes the development of VX nerve agent and Novichok agent, said to be five to eight times more lethal than VX and the focus of a Russian program, Middle East Newsline reports.

But the study by Bar-Ilan University's Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies says Iran is hampered by the failure to develop a ballistic missile warhead that will deliver either a chemical, biological or nuclear weapon. The study says warheads developed for the Scud B are not suitable for an intermediate or long-range missile.

"To deliver effective biological and chemical weapons, Iran must develop warheads capable of delivering cluster munitions," says the study, authored by Seth Carus, a professor at the National Defense University in Washington. "The United States and Soviet Union are known to have developed such munitions and thus could be a source for such arms, if Moscow ignores U.S. pleas not to do so. Although Iran has made considerable progress in developing ballistic missiles, it is less clear that it has developed missile delivery systems for its existing chemical or biological agents."

Iran is also believed to have developed biological weapons. The study raises the prospect that Iran might have adopted agents developed by the former Soviet biological weapons program, such as Marburg, smallpox, plague, and tularemia.

The study says Iran appears ready to employ chemical weapons in future wars despite the struggle between reformers and the ruling conservative clergy. Carus cites the storage of chemical weapons on Abu Mussa, an island in the Gulf off the coast of Dubai.

"By merely possessing these weapons or by threatening to use them, Iran could also use them to gain leverage over neighboring states," the study says. "Even if the radicals lose influence in Teheran, there is no reason to believe that the Islamic Republic will constrain development of NBC [nuclear, biological, chemical] weapons."

Carus says Iran's chemical weapons program is the most advanced of its nonconventional arms projects. The biological weapons program has been constrained by budgetary woes.

The Iranian effort to acquire nuclear weapons has been hampered by an inadequate technical base, the report says. The result is that Iran has made little progress since 1996 in developing a nuclear warhead and could require up to 15 years to produce a weapon.

The report cites Iran's approval of inspections of the Bushehr nuclear facility by the International Atomic Energy Agency. "Although some experts discount the IAEA conclusions," the study says, "most believe that Iran is so early in the process of developing nuclear weapons that it has little need to hide its activities.