The widespread availability of new technology has meant the risk of nuclear terrorism “has never been so high as it is today,” the director of the UN Counter-Terrorism Centre, Mauro Miedico, stated in a UN publication published on Sunday.
“Terrorist groups and individuals engage much more strongly with new technologies. Terrorist groups have recruited experts, including AI specialists, and we have seen the use of drones in terrorist acts,” he explained. “This potentially makes it more possible that they will launch a dirty bomb via drone.”
While the UN expert asserted that, until now, there has never been an incident of nuclear terrorism, he noted that terror groups such as Al-Qaeda have openly expressed their intent to carry out such an attack.
It would be 'almost impossible' to deter Al-Qaeda if they got nuclear capabilities
Former deputy National Security adviser in Israel, now an adjunct professor at Tel Aviv University and Columbia University, Prof. Chuck Freilich (New York University) told The Jerusalem Post that unlike many terror groups, Al-Qaeda’s “nihilistic” nature would mean “it would be almost impossible to deter them" from actually using nuclear weapons if they obtained such capabilities.
Though Al-Qaeda’s structure has been reduced to a dispersed, decentralized network of franchise groups, according to the Combating Terrorism Center, the UN publication instances in past years where uranium dioxide was stolen and possibly trafficked to countries with a high concentration of the terror group’s members.
“We haven’t had any examples of nuclear terrorism so far,” Miedico said, “And that’s partly due to the mechanisms that are currently in place, but we need to continue supporting Member States’ efforts, to make sure that it never happens.”
Miedico asserted that a key protection against a terrorist nuclear event would be for all UN Member States to become parties to the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism (ICSANT).
Drones from Iran, or proxies, targeted UAE nuclear plant
Miedico’s comments came the same day drones from Iran or one of its proxies targeted the UAE’s sole nuclear power plant in a drone attack on Sunday. The UAE decried the incident as an “unprovoked terrorist attack.”
Freilich said that there was a “very low probability” of a terrorist nuclear attack on Israel, but asserted that there would be an “extraordinarily high risk if it happens” despite Israel’s many protections.
Hamas and Hezbollah would be unlikely to ever create a nuclear incident, due to the impact it would have on the Palestinian and Lebanese population, but the remote possibility of such an incident makes it a “severe threat,” he commented.
“It is also unlikely, although not impossible, that Iran would give a nuclear weapon or the components to build it to any of the regional actors. It would lead back to them and lead to the kind of devastating response that they would probably not want to ever have to confront,” he continued, explaining that it was more likely Iran would use nuclear potential as an insurance policy or tool of intimidation rather than something it would actually use.