The Iraqi Biological Weapons Program - Deadly Cultures: Biological Weapons Since 1945 - page 189

grams, remain unresolved.” 20 These conclusions are further echoed by
UNSCOM's January 1999 report on the disarmament of Iraq's proscribed
weapons and by the March 2003 UNMOVIC Working Document on un-
resolved disarmament issues regarding Iraq's proscribed weapons pro-
grams.
As a result of the many persisting gaps in information, it is difficult yet
to assess with any certainty why Iraq chose to develop BW, what its ob-
jectives were in developing such weapons, and why it took so much ef-
fort to conceal its work on them. It is, however, possible to construct a
plausible explanation. The initial work on BW was probably seen as an
extension of work on CW, since BW such as toxins and living microor-
ganisms require significantly smaller quantities—kilograms rather than
tons—to be effective. There are also some indications that Iraq regarded
toxins as being CW rather than BW, although toxins are prohibited under
both the 1972 BWC and the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention.
The initial impetus for work on CBW was probably as declared by Iraq:
to provide a capability to respond to regional threats from Iran and Israel.
Iraq would have been aware that Israel, unlike Iraq, has not signed or ac-
ceded to the BWC. Iraq used CW extensively against Iran during the
1980s, and it has become apparent that Iraq believed that its use of CW
significantly affected the outcome of the war. The ISG has reported that
the Iran-Iraq war was the catalyst for Iraq's reactivation of BW efforts
and that one Iraqi asserted that if the war had lasted beyond 1988,
Saddam Hussein would have used BW against Iran. Iraq had produced
large quantities of chemical agents for immediate use against Iran—and
thus that long-term storage was not a requirement. This is a significant
difference in approach from the traditional Western approach, followed
in both the UK and the US, of seeking agents and weapons with long stor-
age lives that could be used to retaliate in kind when required.
Much of Iraq's CW capability—geared to the production of thousands
of tons of agent—was destroyed in the 1990 Gulf War by bombing. Iraq's
decision to conceal its BW program may have reflected an appreciation
that the program had been kept secret, was largely unknown outside
Iraq, and, as a consequence, had probably been little damaged as a result
of bombing and could therefore be successfully hidden. BW production
also involved smaller plant sizes and smaller quantities of materials than
the CW program. It is also possible that if bulk agents and weapons were