Produced by the Monterey Institute's James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies

Updated July 2010

Nearly a dozen countries are known to have started nuclear weapon programs but then decided to halt them before obtaining nuclear arms. In addition, after the break-up of the Soviet Union in 1991, Soviet nuclear weapons remained on the territory of three successor states in addition to Russia: Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Each of these three voluntarily transferred these weapons to Russia by 1996, thus avoiding further proliferation of nuclear weapons.

Statue of Saddam Hussein Topples, April 9, 2003
Source: www.defense.gov

Saddam Hussein and Iraq. Iraq pursued a clandestine nuclear weapons program during the 1980s, but it did not succeed in developing nuclear weapons by the time of the 1991 Gulf War. After Iraq's defeat in that war, UN inspectors exposed the program and destroyed all known equipment. Nevertheless, U.S. and British intelligence services claimed that Iraq had begun to reconstruct its nuclear program, and used this assumption as a justification for the March 2003 invasion of Iraq and the subsequent overthrow of Saddam Hussein's regime. International inspectors (UNSCOM and UNMOVIC) had found no evidence to support this assertion before the war, however, and searches by the 1,700-member Iraq Survey Group after the war did not uncover a renewed Iraqi nuclear weapons program. A comprehensive report released in September 2004 by Charles Duelfer, the chief weapons inspector, concluded that Iraq had no nuclear weapons or the facilities to construct them, and that Iraq's nuclear program had ended in 1991 after the Gulf War. In June 2008, after a five-year investigation, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the final phases of a report finding that the Bush administration deliberately used faulty intelligence about Iraq’s alleged WMD programs to justify the U.S. invasion of that country in March 2003.

Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi and Libya. In December 2003, Libya agreed to eliminate all of its weapons of mass destruction programs in return for the lifting of economic sanctions by the United States and Britain and other assurances. Despite being a party to the NPT, Libya under Colonel Mu'ammar al-Qadhdhafi sought nuclear technologies, fissile materials, weapons designs and know-how from several countries including China, Pakistan, the Soviet Union (then Russia), Belgium, and Ukraine. Allegedly, Libya wanted a nuclear weapon to counter the covert Israeli nuclear program.  In 2003, Libya admitted to the IAEA that it had tried for more than a decade to develop a uranium enrichment capability and had acquired Chinese-origin nuclear weapon designs and fabrication documents. Under the 2003 deal, Libya agreed to transfer sensitive nuclear-related materials, and documents to the United States; to conclude an Additional Protocol with the IAEA; and to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. In 2004, U.S. and British teams dismantled Libya's nuclear facilities with IAEA oversight. Documents and components of the nuclear and ballistic missile programs were airlifted to the United States, and highly enriched uranium from Libya's Tajura Nuclear Research Center was sent to Russia for reprocessing. In return, the United States lifted most of its trade restrictions on Libya. In September 2008, the IAEA wrapped up its four-year investigation of Libya’s nuclear weapons program and the aid it received from the A.Q. Khan network. The IAEA issued a report finding that while Libya had a nuclear weapons program from the early 1980s to 2003, the Agency has verified that recently Libya has been complying with its obligations to the IAEA under its Safeguards Agreement. However, the Agency expressed serious concern that sensitive information from the Khan network about uranium centrifuge technology and nuclear weapons designs had been circulated electronically to Libya and other countries.