Until he invaded Kuwait, Iraq was a "friend" of the west.
This is another popular meme that doesn't have much truth to it. You may have noticed virtually all of Iraq's Saddam-era military equipment was of Soviet origin -- and Saddam's Iraq was a Stalinist state. At best he was semi-neutral.
The only good thing about Saddam from the West's point of view was he was fighting Iran, which was even worse.
despite having concluded this, the US and UK administrations were 'persuaded' to act unilaterally, against a background of accumulated intelligence reports.
There are so many things wrong with that view. First off, clearly the bigoted assertion that Iraqis could not achieve a state that allowed basic freedoms and democracy was wrong, and the neocons' basic premise was correct: everyone wants freedom, not just Westerners. The "civil war" talk has vanished, violence is below that of nations like Venezuela, and Iraq's GDP and basic services have doubled since 2002.
Second, it's long been well-established that Saddam was only a few years from a bomb in 1991.
Acquiring a Safeguarded Fuel Cycle
Since its inception in the early 1970s, Iraq's nuclear weapons program has depended on deception and determination. Originally, the plan, which one of us (Hamza) authored, was to acquire a complete nuclear fuel cycle able to produce and separate plutonium. The plan focused on the foreign acquisition of complete nuclear facilities with training in their use conducted in the supplier country.
During the 1970s, Iraq concentrated on acquiring nuclear facilities overseas that would have been under IAEA safeguards, since Iraq had signed the nuclear Non--Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1968. Nonetheless, Iraq reckoned it could defeat the safeguards at these facilities or secretly build undeclared duplicate facilities.
In 1976, Iraq succeeded in buying from France a 40-megawatt materials test -reactor called the Tammuz-1 reactor, or Osiraq reactor, that ran on weapons-grade uranium fuel. In 1979, Iraq established a radiochemical laboratory, equipped through a contract with the Italian company SNIA-Techint, suitable for laboratory research on reprocessing. It also acquired a fuel fabrication plant from Italy that was suitable for making natural uranium targets for secret irradiation in the Osiraq reactor.
Iraqi teams calculated that the Osiraq reactor could conservatively produce about 5 kilograms to 7 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium per year. This value could be higher or lower depending on how the targets were arranged in the reactor; it also depended on the frequency of visits by IAEA inspectors and French personnel. The Iraqis believed that the safeguards on the reactor, which would have included periodic inspections and surveillance cameras, could have been defeated. Prior to visits by IAEA inspectors and French personnel, Iraq planned to pull out the unsafeguarded targets. Iraq had also developed plans to defeat the cameras.
Before Iraq could illicitly produce any plutonium and put the IAEA's safeguards to the test, however, Israel bombed the reactor in June 1981, shortly before the reactor was scheduled to go into operation. The radiochemical laboratory and fuel fabrication plant were not bombed. Later, the fabrication facility was used to produce unsafeguarded targets which were irradiated in a Russian-supplied research reactor to produce plutonium. The reactor also irradiated bismuth targets to make polonium-210, a material used in beryllium-polonium neutron initiators which trigger the nuclear explosion. Material from the targets was extracted in the Italian radiochemical laboratory, which was expanded in the early 1980s.
Iraq Goes Underground
Following the bombing of the Osiraq reactor, Iraq decided to: (1) replace the Osiraq reactor or to develop a heavy water or enriched uranium reactor and associated plutonium separation capability; and (2) develop a uranium enrichment production capacity.
Iraq tried to replace the Osiraq reactor, but by 1985, it realized that it could not buy a replacement. Before the bombing, Iraq had developed plans and purchased some minor items for a 20- to 40-megawatt heavy water natural uranium reactor. After delays in buying a replacement reactor, Iraq decided to pursue this reactor project again. In the late 1980s, however, it put its plans on hold, facing resource limitations. But Iraq continued its efforts to learn how to separate plutonium from irradiated fuel and to make heavy water. Depending on the success of the enrichment programs, Iraq may have reconstituted the nuclear reactor project.
Even before the Israeli bombing of the Osiraq reactor, Iraqi scientists had been evaluating the development of uranium enrichment technologies. However, Iraq has declared that a decision by the Iraqi leadership to pursue these options came after the June 1981 bombing. An Iraqi evaluation finished in 1981 concluded that electromagnetic isotope separation (EMIS) was the most appropriate technology for Iraq and that gaseous diffusion was the next most appropriate option. Gaseous diffusion was planned to produce low--enriched uranium (LEU) which could be used as a feedstock for EMIS, dramatically increasing overall HEU production in EMIS separators. If EMIS was unsuccessful, the plan called for expanding the gaseous diffusion facility to produce HEU directly. At the time, gas centrifuge technology was viewed as too difficult to accomplish. (See below.)
EMIS
The goal of the EMIS program was to build two production units, each able to achieve 15 kilograms per year of weapons-grade uranium using natural uranium feed. Iraqi estimates of the HEU output using LEU feed (enriched to 2.5 percent uranium-235) vary between roughly 25 kilograms and 50 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium per year. The variation reflects different plant designs and performance uncertainties.
After several years of research and development work of mixed success, Iraq nonetheless started in 1987 to build its first EMIS production facility at Tarmiya, north of Baghdad. Also in late 1987, Iraq decided to build a replica of Tarmiya at Al Sharqat, about 200 kilometers northwest of Baghdad. This facility, which was built by Iraqis only, was originally viewed as a second production site that would come into operation roughly at the same time as Tarmiya. In the late 1980s, this plan was modified to one where Al Sharqat would operate after Tarmiya was finished. Iraq also sought unsafeguarded LEU on the international market during the late 1980s. However, it has declared that its search was half-hearted and unsuccessful. Whether this declaration is complete is unclear. As of 1997, the Action Team had not pursued this issue further.
The EMIS program faced repeated delays and technical problems, and by the time of Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, Tarmiya was at least a year behind schedule. At that time, Tarmiya was not expected to produce its first goal quantity of weapons-grade uranium, or 15 kilograms, until at least 1992, assuming that the plant would function well and that a stock of LEU would be used. If natural uranium was used, the date for the production of the first goal quantity would have been 1993 or later.
Because of the large size of EMIS facilities, few expect Iraq to try to secretly rebuild its EMIS production facilities. In addition, it still has to overcome several technical problems, including problems in vacuum technology and ion sources, before its separators would work properly. Armed with a stock of LEU, however, Iraq could produce 15 kilograms per year of weapons-grade uranium with a facility about one-third the size of Tarmiya.
Enrichment Options
By 1987 or 1988, when it became apparent to the Iraqi leadership that the gaseous diffusion program was not progressing well, Iraq decided to de-emphasize this effort. It instead concentrated on chemical enrichment as a source of LEU feedstock for the EMIS program. By 1990, Iraq had made little progress in building a chemical enrichment plant. However, both programs could be reconstituted, although substantial technical challenges would need to be overcome before Iraq could operate production-scale facilities.
After the cancellation of the gaseous diffusion program, the team started to work on gas centrifuges. The team had already been transferred from the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center to a new site on the northern edge of Baghdad near Rashdiya, later named the Engineering Design Center (EDC). This change reflected a change of authority from the Atomic Energy Establishment to the Ministry of Industry and Military Industrialization.
This group managed to acquire extensive overseas cooperation in designing and building gas centrifuges, so much so that inspectors have characterized the assistance as key to progress in the centrifuge program.
Despite such help, at the time of the Gulf War, Iraq was still a few years from an operating plant able to produce goal quantities of weapons-grade uranium, declared by the centrifuge program as 1,000 centrifuges producing 10 kilograms of weapons-grade uranium per year. Because of the relatively small size of a gas centrifuge program and the extensive progress made before the war, Iraq is viewed as likely to reconstitute its gas centrifuge program.
Weaponization
Iraq's effort to produce a nuclear explosive started in the mid-1980s. Under a 1988 plan, Iraq intended to have its first weapon by the summer of 1991, based on an implosion design. Iraq had worked on developing the capability to make fissile material for many years prior to this date, and Iraq has explained that the decision at that particular time reflected the expectation that domestically produced HEU would become available within a few years. Iraq intended that its nuclear weapons would be put on ballistic missiles. Iraq faced many problems in trying to reduce and ruggedize its design to fit on top of a ballistic missile.
Questions remain about the status of Iraq's weaponization program at the time of the allied bombing campaign in January 1991, when most activities were halted. Nevertheless, the Action Team inspectors have concluded that with the accelerated effort under the crash program, Iraq could have finished a nuclear explosive design by the end of 1991, if certain technical problems were overcome.
http://www.isis-online.org/publications ... t1298.html
Now it's true the intelligence community estimates post-1991 were probably overcautious, esp those regarding WMD. But prior to 991 they had erred the other way, and to echo a popular statement in 2002, this is kind of estimate where you want to err on the side of caution, because if you're wrong the smoking gun may come in the form of a mushroom cloud.