Digests and Blog

And the Ministers Descend....U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was the first foreign minister from the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) to join the talks in Vienna. Kerry arrived at the Coburg Place last evening for a meeting with P5+1 lead negotiator Catherine Ashton and Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif. The meeting lasted over two hours. Kerry met with Zarif and Ashton again today. Also on the schedule is the arrival of British Foreign Secretary Phillip Hammond and French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabuis. They will meet with Kerry…

Four Days and Counting... With four days left before the Nov. 24 deadline, negotiators are still pushing for a deal and not discussing extension. Talks are ongoing in Vienna today, including a bilateral meeting between Russia and Iran and various technical meetings. Over the past three days, negotiators have met in a variety of formats, including several bilateral meetings between Iran and the United States. Media briefings are scarce, and it is difficult to ascertain how much progress is being made behind closed doors. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will likely play a critical role when…

At a Nov. 14 press conference, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel announced the release of two reviews, one internal and the other external, on the Pentagon nuclear weapons enterprise.  Ordered in response to the revelations about troubling lapses and poor morale in the nation’s nuclear forces, particularly the ICBM force, the reviews found what Hagel described as “systematic problems.” Hagel attributed the root cause of these shortcomings to “a lack of sustained focus, attention, and resources, resulting in a pervasive sense that a career in the nuclear enterprise offers too few opportunities…

Crunch Time High-level negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 resume in Vienna today, a week out from the Nov. 24 deadline. P5+1 lead negotiator Catherine Ashton, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif and the political directors from the P5+1 countries (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) are already at the Coburg Palace, where the talks are being held. Zarif and Ashton were scheduled to kick things off with a working lunch. Last week, the P5+1 met in Muscat, Oman on Nov. 11. That meeting followed two days of trilateral talks between Zarif,…

12 Days and Counting... The United States and Iran wrapped up two days of talks on a comprehensive nuclear agreement in Muscat, Oman on Monday. Lead P5+1 negotiator Catherine Ashton joined U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Iranian Foreign Minster Mohammad Javad Zarif. A full meeting of the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Iran at the political director level followed the trilateral session in Muscat on Tuesday. Negotiators did not give much away about what was accomplished during the two days of talks. Although there was no press…

  Iran is making progress on the additional measures it agreed to take in July to roll back parts of its nuclear program, according to the most recent quarterly report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). While some of these actions are not yet completed, it may be possible for Iran to meet these requirements by the Nov. 24 deadline. According to the Nov. 7 report, Iran is continuing to comply with the conditions of the Joint Plan of Action (JPOA), an interim deal that Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) reached in…

Focused on Reaching an Agreement The schedule is now set for the last few weeks of negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) on a comprehensive nuclear agreement before their Nov. 24 target date. The P5+1 will meet on Nov. 7 for a coordination meeting, followed by a trilateral meeting between the United States, Iran, and lead P5+1 negotiator Catherine Ashton in Oman on Nov. 9-10. Then, all seven countries will return to Vienna on Nov. 18 for talks through the Nov. 24 deadline. The Arms Control Association will be on the…

Last Monday – October 27 – marked the fifty-second anniversary of a day when the world came staggeringly close to nuclear war. Despite the many decades that have transpired since that fateful date, the story of that day remains a worthy one to re-tell, for all the things that went wrong, the one thing that went right, and for the enduring implications it has for the command and control of nuclear weapons on submarines in today’s world. On that day in 1962, deep in the Cuban Missile Crisis, a U.S. destroyer began dropping depth charges on a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine with the intention of…

Amano in Town The Director-General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Yukiya Amano will be in Washington today, Oct. 31, to talk about the challenges in nuclear verification and the agency's role in monitoring the nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States). You can watch it live, online at 10:30 a.m., Washington time. Yesterday, Amano met with U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to discuss the IAEA's work with Iran and the nuclear negotiations. Back in Vienna, the technical teams remain hard at work as the…

  Misconception: The U.S. and Iranian public do not support a comprehensive nuclear deal. The negotiation between the United States and its partners (China, France, Germany, Russia and the United Kingdom) and Iran over the latter’s nuclear program is now racing against time, as the Nov. 24 deadline for a comprehensive deal approaches. Diplomats continue to seek creative  options to seal a comprehensive deal to ensure that Tehran’s nuclear program is exclusively peaceful, and they are pursuing an agreement that would accept some uranium enrichment by Iran, but with substantial limits and…