March 2025
Ten years ago, the United States, along with China, France, Germany, Russia, and the UK, negotiated one of the most far-reaching, complex and consequential nonproliferation agreements: the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The 2015 Iran Deal put in place limits on Iran’s nuclear program and intrusive international monitoring that ensured it would take more than a year to amass enough bomb grade material for just one bomb.
ACA’s director for nonproliferation policy, Kelsey Davenport, monitored the talks, we contributed ideas, and we provided detailed information and analysis about the Iranian nuclear program and the agreement that helped ensure Congress allowed for its implementation.
The deal was working as designed until 2018 when Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the JCPOA. In response, in 2019 Iran's leaders began to revive and expand their sensitive nuclear activities and they curtailed the ability of the International Atomic Energy Agency to monitor Iran's nuclear program.
As a result, Iran is now closer to being able to produce nuclear weapons than it ever has been. The possibility of a new crisis, or war in the region, over Iran’s nuclear program looms.
Absent the negotiation of a modest deal to ease mutual tensions and curtail Iran’s nuclear capacity, it is likely that by the end of 2025 the United States and European states will seek to reimpose UN sanctions on Iran. This, in turn, could lead Iran to pull out of the NPT, or start to produce weapons-grade uranium, or take both actions.
It is also possible that with or without U.S. support, Israel could launch military strikes to try to damage or destroy Iran's sensitive nuclear sites, which U.S. intelligence agencies estimate would only set back Iran's program by a few months and risk driving Tehran to determine that nuclear weapons are necessary to deter further attacks.
As Kelsey writes in a new ACA Issue Brief, “Since his re-election in November, U.S. President Donald Trump has consistently expressed support for reaching a nuclear agreement with Iran, but his administration’s rhetoric toward Tehran sends mixed signals about U.S. diplomatic intentions.”
In order to succeed she explains, “Trump needs to focus on articulating realistic objectives for an accord and developing a framework for an effective deal that can be quickly and verifiably implemented--and soon.” The Issue Brief, “The Art of a New Iranian Nuclear Deal,” spells out the elements of an effective solution.
Our team will continue to brief members of Congress, reporters, and key parties involved in the talks on Iran’s nuclear file to exercise the restraint and diplomatic skill that will be needed to avert a nonproliferation disaster.
Countryman on the Role of the “P5 Process” on Nuclear Risk Reduction
The Arms Control Association is fortunate to have Tom Countryman serving as the chair of our board of directors. He officially retired from his 35 years of service at the U.S. Department of State in 2017, but Tom is hardly resting. He remains very active speaking, engaging in meetings, and writing, on behalf of the organization across the country and the globe.
This coming month, he will be in Berlin to speak at major international security conference and then will be in Beijing, where he will join a nongovernmental experts group that is helping to inform the official nuclear weapons policy discussions that are part of the “P5 Process,” which involves governmental representatives from the five nuclear-armed states on the UN Security Council.
As Tom writes in a feature article, “The Potential of the P5 Process,” in the March issue of Arms Control Today, “Fifteen years ago, the five NPT-designated nuclear-weapon states began a process that was intended to reassure the world that Article VI was being taken seriously: the P5 process of consultations among the senior nuclear weapons policy officials, at the level of undersecretary or deputy minister, of the five states.”
Despite the breakdown in contacts due to Russia’s war on Ukraine in recent years, “the current moment offers an opportunity that the 2025-2026 chairman of the P5 process, the United Kingdom, must seize,” he writes.
“Maximizing such an opening will require ambition and decisiveness, traits not commonly associated with multilateral diplomacy or the P5 process, but of which the UK is more than capable,” he notes.
We’ll keep you updated on what progress might emerge from the consultations.
ACA at the TPNW Meeting of States Parties, NPT PrepCom Meeting
The third meeting of states-parties to the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons convened in March in New York. At the meeting, they adopted a report, a declaration, and a set of decisions for advancing the treaty’s implementation.
In contrast to many multilateral governmental meetings, TPNW meetings involve nongovernmental experts in the official proceedings. There are also comparatively more NGO side-events organized on the margins of the official event. ACA’s Shizuka Kuramitsu and Daryl Kimball attended the TPNW meeting, and ACA also co-organized a high-level breakfast roundtable in cooperation with the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung and Pace University on “The New Nuclear Normal? Preserving Security in an Insecure World.”
One the speakers, Austria’s director for disarmament, Amb. Alex Kmentt, summarized the report on a TPNW consultative process on nonnuclear weapon state security concerns about nuclear weapons and nuclear deterrence.
Next month, our team will attend portions of the April 28-May 9 Preparatory Committee Meeting for the 2026 nuclear Nonproliferation Review Conference at UN headquarters in New York to deliver one of the several NGO presentations and engage with diplomats and other colleagues.
Look for a special interview on the status and future of the NPT featuring the three most recent chairs of the preparatory committee meetings in the April issue of Arms Control Today.
ACA Is On the Move!
Beginning May 1, the Arms Control Association office will take occupancy in a nice, new, and more economical office space at:
1100 H Street NW, Suite 520
Washington, D.C. 20005
After several years at our current office, which is located just south of Dupont Circle in Washington, D.C., our new office building is centrally located near Metro Center in downtown D.C. Our email addresses and phone numbers will remain the same.
Welcome to Our New Herbert Scoville Peace Fellow: Lipi Shetty
Since it was established in 1987, the Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellowship program has successfully provided an opportunity for young people to become involved in arms control and national security.
The program that serves a pipeline for new talent in the field was established in honor of “Pete” Scoville, who served at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency in the 1960s and later, as a founder and then president of ACA, he spearheaded public campaigns against the MX missile, MIRVed warheads and the Star Wars program. Former Scoville fellows include Kelsey Davenport, Kingston Reif, and Daryl Kimball, to name just a few.
We’re excited to welcome Lipi Shetty as a Spring 2025 Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace fellow at the Arms Control Association. She is passionate about advancing nuclear disarmament and arms control and addressing the harms caused by past nuclear weapons production and testing.
Her interests are studying the humanitarian and environmental impacts of nuclear colonialism, combatting risks associated with nuclear weapons modernization programs, and using interdisciplinary approaches to further disarmament.
She is a former participant of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation’s Young Women in Nonproliferation Initiative, where she studied international disarmament and nonproliferation frameworks under her mentor María Antonieta Jácquez Huacuja, Coordinator for Disarmament, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control at the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs of Mexico.
She was also a participant in the 2023 Hiroshima-ICAN Learning Academy on “Nuclear Weapons and Global Risks”, where she learned from global Hibakusha, government officials, academic experts, and grassroots leaders.
Lipi recently participated in the Third Meeting of State Parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.
ACA Annual Meeting Set for the Fall of 2025
This year we will convene for our annual meeting in Washington, D.C. in the fall (rather than the usual May/June schedule). This later date will help us take into account the many developments that are reshaping the international security landscape.
Once again, we hope the event will provide our members and partners with an opportunity to gather – in person and online – to learn more about the latest policy debates and practical options for addressing weapons-related security threats.
ACA In the News
“Will Korea’s ‘sensitive’ country designation impair cooperation with the U.S.?” Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2025. Tom Countryman noted that “there is no other country in the world that does not already have nuclear weapons where the public debate about maybe getting nuclear weapons is as loud as it is in the Republic of Korea right now.”
“US designated South Korea a 'sensitive' country amid nuclear concerns,” Reuters, March 15, 2025. Noting that Foreign Minister Cho Tae-yul said that nuclear weapons were not "off the table", Daryl Kimball, such "provocative" statements suggest South Korea is a proliferation risk and the U.S. Department of Energy was prudent to put the country on its “sensitive” list.
“Trump downplays China-Russia-Iran nuclear talks, says they may discuss 'de-escalation,'” Fox News, March 13, 2025. Cites ACA data on the number of Russian, U.S. and Chinese nuclear weapons.
“North Korea is about to join a dangerous club after unveiling first nuclear submarine,” Metro (London), March 9, 2025. Cites ACA data estimating that North Korea has an estimated 50 warheads and enough bomb grade nuclear material to assemble 90 more.
“Expert: consultation between Russia and the United States are needed to prevent a nuclear race,” TASS, March 5, 2025. Russia’s main new agency interviewed Daryl Kimball on the state of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on the 55th anniversary of its entry into force.