Iran's alleged clandestine pursuit of a nuclear-weapon capability dominated the headlines last week during the ongoing Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. However, beyond the theatrics of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's verbal exchange, it is important to remember, and ultimately to address, the root cause of the Iranian nuclear problem -- namely, the spread of dual-use technologies such as uranium enrichment to countries outside the ring of first-order world powers.
The problem with uranium enrichment is its ambiguity: It is a vital component of the civilian nuclear power industry, yet it can also be used to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. The same centrifuges that enrich natural uranium to the levels required by many civilian power reactors can also enrich uranium to the high levels required by nuclear bombs.
Since uranium enrichment cannot be banned outright or limited to certain states by fiat, voluntary solutions must be found that make multilateral enrichment programs more attractive to states than pursuing their own national uranium enrichment programs. Coupled with an international norm discouraging the spread of national uranium enrichment facilities, states could then profit from enrichment while making the sovereign choice to eschew national control over the technology.