Digests and Blog

 Hossein MousavianPhoto: Jackie Barrientes/ACA By Kelsey Davenport and Greg Thielmann This week, former Iranian nuclear envoy Hossein Mousavian presented a fresh take on the 20 percent uranium enrichment issue. With the next round of nuclear talks in danger of bogging down over Iran's right to continue enriching uranium, Mousavian's suggestion warrants a closer look as a potential interim compromise for the P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Germany) and Tehran. Speaking on June 4 at the Arms Control Association's annual meeting, Mousavian put forth a…

By Daryl G. Kimball This week in Baghdad, the P5+1 group (the United States, China, France, Germany, Russia, and the U.K.)--led by EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Ashton--met for two days with the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council of Iran, Saeed Jalili, and his team on Tehran's disputed nuclear program. As the diplomats met inside a guest house in the fortified Green Zone, the world waited anxiously for some tangible progress. While each side presented revised versions of earlier proposals to resolve their respective concerns, the meeting concluded without an agreement on…

The NATO summit in Chicago ended, as expected, with the Alliance and Russia at loggerheads on missile defense. With great fanfare, NATO inaugurated the first phase of its missile interceptor system. In response, Russia skipped the summit, tested a new long-range ballistic missile, and threatened to attack parts of the NATO missile interceptor system to be deployed in Eastern Europe. This is not progress. Yet the United States and Russia must solve the missile defense puzzle if they hope to get on with reducing their nuclear arsenals below the limits set by the 2010 New START Treaty. Both…

By Daryl G. Kimball, Oliver Meier, and Paul Ingram At their May 20-21 summit in Chicago, NATO leaders missed an important opportunity to change the Alliance's outdated nuclear policy and open the way to improving European security by the removal of the remaining 180 U.S. nuclear bombs in Europe, which serve no practical military value for the defense of the Alliance. The Alliance's Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) was launched at NATO's Lisbon summit in November 2010 primarily to resolve differences among allies on the future role of nuclear weapons. The result is an indecisive…

 (Image Source: Missile Defense Agency - FTM-16 E2a Flight Test) By Tom Z. Collina The House Armed Services Committee's (HASC) May 9 vote to build a third strategic missile interceptor site on the East Coast by the end of 2015 is generating a great deal of controversy, and for good reason. A close look at the HASC proposal shows that it is premature at best. House Republicans, such as Rep. Michael Turner (R-Ohio), are using a forthcoming classified report by the National Research Council (NRC) to justify their proposal for an East Coast site. However, Rep. Turner is cherry-picking the NRC's…

By Paul Ingram and Oliver Meier NOTE: This post follows up on an article published in Arms Control Today, May 2, 2012 To the surprise of many, NATO foreign and defense ministers agreed on a draft text of the Deterrence and Defense Posture Review (DDPR) report during their April 18-19 Brussels meetings. The agreement on the 3½-page draft was possible because Germany, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States presented other allies with a compromise proposal, which was adopted with only minor revisions. Even though the document still has to be approved by heads of state and government…

No sooner than it had pledged on February 29 to halt long-range ballistic missile tests, nuclear testing, and uranium enrichment at its Yongbyong nuclear facility, the North Korean regime announced it would launch a long-range ballistic missile-ostensibly to lift a satellite into orbit. The April 12 launch failed shortly after liftoff, the fourth such long-range missile test failure. While North Korea probably cannot miniaturize a nuclear warhead to fit on its missiles yet, a third nuclear test would allow them to make significant progress in that direction. Now the governments of the…

The March 30 release of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) report on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) generated significant media attention, several opeds, and welcoming statements from key senators. Released at a press briefing late on a Friday afternoon before a two-week Congressional recess, the NAS study -- "The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban - Technical Issues for the United States"-- might easily have been overlooked by the media and members of Congress. Fortunately, long-awaited report was covered by several prominent news outlets. Matt's Wald's story "U.S. Has No Need…

From 1946-1958, the United States conducted a series of 67 atmospheric nuclear test explosions in the South Pacific that devastated the indigenous peoples in the Marshall Islands. During most of that time, the Marshall Islands was a part of the United Nations Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands administered by the United States. According to the preliminary findings of United Nations Special Rapporteur Calin Georgescu the communities affected by nuclear testing over sixty years ago in the Marshall Islands have “yet to find durable solutions to the affected population." “They feel like…

Image Source: U.S. Representative Michael Turner Photo By Kelsey Davenport Lawmakers attempting hold New START implementation hostage to budget increases were stuck a serious blow last week when the House and Senate Appropriations committees lined up in support of the administration's decision to zero out funding for the Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Facility (CMRR) and delay construction of the building for at least five years. Neither appropriations committee moved to restore any funding for the CMRR when they voted on the fiscal year 2013 budget for the National Nuclear…