U.N. Sanctions, Iran Influenced Leader’s Moves

Strategic Intent

* Saddam Hussein so dominated the Iraqi regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.

* Saddam’s primary goal from 1991 to 2003 was to have U.N. sanctions lifted, while maintaining the security of the regime. He sought to balance the need to cooperate with U.N. inspections -- to gain support for lifting sanctions -- with his intention to preserve Iraq’s intellectual capital for WMD with a minimum of foreign intrusiveness and loss of face. Indeed, this remained the goal to the end of the regime, as the starting of any WMD program ... risked undoing the progress achieved in eroding sanctions and jeopardizing a political end to the embargo and ... monitoring.

* Saddam wanted to re-create Iraq’s WMD capability -- which was essentially destroyed in 1991 -- after sanctions were removed and Iraq’s economy stabilized, but probably with a different mix of capabilities to that which previously existed. Saddam aspired to develop a nuclear capability -- in an incremental fashion, irrespective of international pressure and the resulting economic risks -- but he intended to focus on ballistic missile and tactical chemical warfare (CW) capabilities.

* Iran was the preeminent motivator of this policy. All senior level Iraqi officials considered Iran to be Iraq’s principal enemy in the region. The wish to balance Israel and acquire status and influence in the Arab world were also considerations, but secondary.

* Iraq Survey Group (ISG) judges that events in the 1980s and early 1990s shaped Saddam’s belief in the value of WMD.... He believed that during the Iran-Iraq war chemical weapons had halted Iranian ground offensives and that ballistic missile attacks on Tehran had broken its political will. Similarly, during Desert Storm, Saddam believed WMD had deterred coalition forces from pressing their attack beyond the goal of freeing Kuwait. WMD had even played a role in crushing the Shia revolt in the south following the 1991 cease-fire.

* The former regime had no formal written strategy or plan for the revival of WMD after sanctions. Neither was there an identifiable group of WMD policymakers or planners separate from Saddam. Instead, his lieutenants understood WMD revival was his goal from ... his infrequent, but firm, verbal comments and directions to them.

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Finance, Procurement

* Saddam severely underestimated the economic and military costs of invading Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, as well as underestimating the subsequent international condemnation of his invasion of Kuwait. He did not anticipate this condemnation, nor the subsequent imposition, comprehensiveness, severity, and longevity of U.N. sanctions. His initial belief that U.N. sanctions would not last, resulting in his country’s economic decline, changed by 1998 when the UNSC [U.N. Security Council] did not lift sanctions after he believed resolutions were fulfilled.

* Iraq under Saddam successfully devised various methods to acquire and import items prohibited under U.N. sanctions. Numerous Iraqi and foreign trade intermediaries disguised illicit items, hid the identity of the end user, and/or changed the final destination of the commodity to get it to the region. For a cut of the profits, these trade intermediaries moved, and in many cases smuggled, the prohibited items through land, sea, and air entry points along the Iraqi border.

* Although Saddam had reluctantly accepted the U.N.’s Oil for Food (OFF) program in 1996, he soon recognized its economic value and additional opportunities for further manipulation and influence of [key Security Council member states].

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Delivery Systems

* Given Iraq’s investments in technology and infrastructure improvements, an effective procurement network, skilled scientists, and designs already on the books for longer range missiles, ISG assesses that Saddam clearly intended to reconstitute long-range delivery systems and that the systems potentially were for WMD.

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Nuclear Weapons

* [The ISG] discovered further evidence of the maturity and significance of the pre-1991 Iraqi nuclear program but found that Iraq’s ability to reconstitute a nuclear weapons program progressively decayed after that date.

* Saddam Hussein ended the nuclear program in 1991 following the Gulf War. ISG found no evidence to suggest concerted efforts to restart the program.

* Senior Iraqis -- several of them from the regime’s inner circle -- told ISG they assumed Saddam would restart a nuclear program once U.N. sanctions ended.

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Chemical Weapons

* Saddam never abandoned his intentions to resume a CW (chemical weapons) effort when sanctions were lifted and conditions were judged favorable.

* Saddam and many Iraqis regarded CW as a proven weapon against an enemy’s superior numerical strength, a weapon that had saved the nation at least once already -- during the Iran-Iraq war -- and contributed to deterring the coalition in 1991 from advancing to Baghdad.

* While a small number of old, abandoned chemical munitions have been discovered, ISG judges that Iraq unilaterally destroyed its undeclared chemical weapons stockpile in 1991. There are no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of chemical munitions thereafter, a policy ISG attributes to Baghdad’s desire to see sanctions lifted, or rendered ineffectual, or its fear of force against it should WMD be discovered.

* ISG judges, based on available chemicals, infrastructure, and scientist debriefings, that Iraq at [Operation Iraqi Freedom] probably had a capability to produce large quantities of sulfur mustard within three to six months.

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Biological Weapons

* In 1991, Saddam Hussein regarded BW as an integral element of his arsenal of WMD weapons, and would have used it if the need arose.

* ISG found no direct evidence that Iraq, after 1996, had plans for a new BW program or was conducting BW-specific work for military purposes. Indeed, from the mid-1990s ... there appears to be a complete absence of discussion or even interest in BW at the presidential level.

* Iraq would have faced great difficulty in reestablishing an effective BW agent production capability. Nevertheless, after 1996 Iraq still had a significant dual-use capability -- some declared -- readily useful for BW if the regime chose to use it to pursue a BW program. Moreover, Iraq still possessed its most important BW asset, the scientific know-how....

* Depending on its scale, Iraq could have reestablished an elementary BW program within a few weeks to a few months of a decision to do so, but ISG discovered no indications that the regime was pursuing such a course.

* ISG judges that in 1991 and 1992, Iraq appears to have destroyed its undeclared stocks of BW weapons and probably destroyed remaining holdings of bulk BW agent. However ISG lacks evidence to document complete destruction. Iraq retained some BW-related seed stocks until their discovery after Operation Iraqi Freedom.... ISG found no evidence that Iraq possessed, or was developing BW agent production systems mounted on road vehicles....

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CIA’s Iraq Survey Group