Digests and Blog

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…

  This week marks the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Agreed Framework between the United States and North Korea, an agreement meant to halt Pyongyang’s nuclear program, but one that would unravel before the decade ended. Over the past two decades the United States has tried a wide range of approaches to curb North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and disarm its nuclear arsenal, but to no avail. Although diplomatic relations between Washington and Pyongyang have remained elusive, continued diplomatic efforts remain the best path forward to deal with the North Korean nuclear threat.   Back…

"Chipping Away"? Technical level talks between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) resumed this week in Vienna after negotiators announced last week that they are still focused on reaching a comprehensive nuclear deal by Nov. 24. The expert talks follow last week's trilateral meeting in Vienna between Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, and P5+1 lead negotiator Catherine Ashton. A short meeting of the P5+1 and Iran at the political-director level followed the trilateral talks. Afterwards, both…

Between 2006 and 2010, the UN Security Council has passed six resolutions related to Iran’s nuclear program. As Iran negotiates with the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States) misconceptions abound about what the UN Security Council resolutions require Iran to do and how the resolutions impact conditions in a final nuclear deal. The Security Council resolutions were never intended to prevent an Iranian nuclear program in the future in compliance with the conditions of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. And the sanctions imposed by the resolutions…

Negotiators for the P5+1 and Iran will return to the negotiating table in Vienna next week, as talks on a comprehensive nuclear agreement are set to resume Oct. 14-15. A meeting between lead P5+1 negotiator Catherine Ashton and Iranian foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif is already on the books, along with a trilateral meeting that will include U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry. The U.S. negotiating team will also be in Vienna for the talks and a bilateral meeting with Iran on Oct. 14. A spokeswoman for the Iranian foreign ministry said a full round of talks between the P5+1 could take…

 The deployed strategic nuclear arsenals of Russia and the United States increased in size over the last six months, according to the latest data exchange under the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START). Taken together, operational U.S. and Russian strategic missile warheads and heavy bombers rose by 188, an amount larger than that possessed by five of the seven remaining nuclear weapons states in their entire arsenals.The uptick in strategic arsenals revealed by the most recent data exchange constitutes a surprising and troubling milestone at the mid-point for the seven-year…

  Officials involved in the high-stakes negotiations aimed at reaching a comprehensive agreement on Iran's nuclear program report limited progress after the latest round of meetings in New York. Both sides, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Iran, say that the most significant disagreement is over how to define Iran's uranium enrichment capacity over the course of the multiyear deal. Iran's Foreign Minster Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani came to New York expressing hope for a deal, but, unfortunately, they say its up to the P5+…

By Daryl G. Kimball Officials involved in the high-stakes negotiations aimed at reaching a comprehensive agreement on Iran's nuclear program report limited progress after the latest round of meetings in New York. Both sides, the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Iran, say that the most significant disagreement is over how to define Iran's uranium enrichment capacity over the course of the multiyear deal. Iran's Foreign Minster Javad Zarif and President Hassan Rouhani came to New York expressing hope for a deal, but, unfortunately, they say…