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Attack on Iraq could lead Saddam to unleash his chemical and biological weapons, warns Jane's report
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| 12 November 2002 |
Attack on Iraq could lead Saddam to unleash his chemical and biological weapons, warns Jane's report
If the US and its allies wage war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein could order chemical and biological weapons to be unleashed - potentially directly into Western or allied cities. "Additionally, an invasion might actually increase the likelihood of terrorist access to and acquisition of Iraq's chemical and biological assets," argues a new report in the authoritative Jane's Terrorism & Security Monitor magazine.
"During the 1991 Gulf War, Saddam authorised commanders of his missile forces to launch biological and chemical weapons at Israel if US-led coalition forces had marched on Baghdad," states Andrew Oppenheimer, author of the report. "Presumably, if the US were to invade Iraq to enforce a change of regime, Saddam could give such apocalyptic orders again."
Although Saddam only has short-range missile delivery systems, the West should not dismiss the other ways that these weapons can be deployed. The report argues that Saddam could well decide to disseminate these weapons to anti-West terror groups such as Al-Qaeda or alternatively have his own followers deploy them.
"Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting an attack using weapons of mass destruction against the US would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims with him," states the report. "While he is not likely to share his weapons with anyone as long as he remains in power, it is less apparent, however, whether this limit to proliferation would still apply under conditions in which his regime was collapsing and his power was under threat."
Smallpox is increasingly regarded as a threat and the possibility that Iraq has turned it into a weapon is causing Western analysts much concern. Iraqi specialists are known to have been working with the camelpox virus, which may be used for the development of such a smallpox virus. Iraq doesn't have the technology to deploy smallpox in a missile but it is a lethal weapon when dispersed into crowds, for example.
The report describes a worst-case scenario in which warehouses around the US potentially already have such weapons deployed within them, ready for dispersal in aerosol form via smokestacks or into water supplies. A concerted attack on Iraq could result in Saddam revealing the location of one such site to show that there is a real threat.
The West and its allies should be thankful that Iraq lacks any strong motivation for a covert attack. "This is because there would be no glory or gain for Iraq, and if Iraq was identified or suspected as the source of the attack, there would undoubtedly be an overwhelming and devastating counterattack that would eliminate the Iraqi leadership," states the report. However, the allies should be very mindful of Saddam's political and psychological predisposition to attack, should the Iraq situation deteriorate.
Further reassurance might be gained from the lack of mass casualties when potentially apocalyptic weaponry is deployed in real-life situations. If they are to achieve mass casualties, chemical weapons and especially biological weapons require resources and that are usually lacking in those who wish to deploy them--including many Iraqi agents. When the Aum Shinrikyo cult bombed the Tokyo underground with Sarin in 1995, less deaths were caused than by the conventional explosion that rocked the USS Cole in 2000. "These facts support the argument that weapons of choice for terrorists are, for now, truck bombs and other conventional tools that are markedly less technically demanding, less resource-intensive, and less dangerous for the perpetrators - suicide bombers aside," argues the report.