NGO Statement for the Second Preparatory Meeting for the 2026 NPT Review Conference 
July 23, 2024 
Delivered by Daryl G. Kimball of the Arms Control Association
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The success of the global nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament system and our collective efforts to avert nuclear catastrophe have always relied on effective dialogue and diplomacy between the nuclear-weapon states to reduce the role and number and salience of nuclear weapons, combined with effective leadership and pressure from non-nuclear weapon states to achieve action on key NPT nuclear disarmament initiatives.

But for more than a decade, the NPT’s five nuclear-armed states have failed to engage on disarmament and meet their key NPT Article VI commitments, and they are spending tens of billions of dollars each year to modernize, upgrade, and, in some cases, to expand their deadly nuclear arsenals as if they intend to keep nuclear weapons indefinitely.

Today, while non-nuclear-armed states are actively engaging to promote nuclear disarmament, including through the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, there is no serious dialogue between nuclear-armed states, all appear to be increasing reliance on nuclear weapons with some even threatening potential nuclear use. Nuclear dangers are growing. None of the NPT’s nuclear- armed states can credibly claim they are meeting their NPT disarmament obligations. As a result, the viability of the NPT regime and global peace and security are at severe risk.

As UN Secretary-General António Guterres said in a special message on June 7: “Humanity is on a knife's edge. The risk of a nuclear weapon being used has reached heights not seen since the Cold War. States are engaged in a qualitative arms race. Nuclear blackmail has reemerged with some recklessly threatening nuclear catastrophe."

"Meanwhile," he said, "the regime designed to prevent the use, testing and proliferation of nuclear weapons is weakening. [We] need disarmament now. All countries need to step up, but nuclear weapons states must lead the way."

We agree. If we are to repair the NPT regime and avert a new nuclear arms race, or worse, the time for action is here and now.

The Disarmament Deficit and the Risk of a New Arms Race

Since 2013, when Russia refused talks on deeper nuclear cuts with Washington, the two governments with the largest nuclear arsenals -- which constitute approximately 90 percent of the global total -- have dithered and delayed on new disarmament talks and failed to resolve disputes on successful arms control agreements that have helped ease tensions and reduce nuclear risks.

The 1987 INF Treaty is gone and the last remaining treaty limiting the world's two largest nuclear arsenals, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, will expire in less than 561days.

Sadly, Russia’s illegal invasion of Ukraine has become the Kremlin’s cynical excuse to short- circuit meaningful channels of diplomacy that could reduce nuclear risk and enhance mutual cooperation on the common threats posed by nuclear weapons.

To date, Russian President Vladimir Putin has refused to engage with U.S. President Joe Biden's administration on its 2023 offer to discuss, "without preconditions," a new nuclear arms control framework to prevent an unconstrained nuclear arms race.

Without some kind of new understanding by the United States and Russia not to build up their arsenals beyond the currentNew START limit of 1,550 nuclear warheads on long-range missiles and bombers, each side could, in theory, double the size of their currently deployed strategic nuclear arsenals within about two years by uploading additional warheads kept in reserve on existing missile and bomber systems.

Meanwhile, China has engaged in an effort to rapidly build up the size of its smaller but still deadlynuclear force, which independent researchers estimate to consist of some 310 warheads on long- range missiles and perhaps 500 in total, and there is open-source information indicating that the size of China's nuclear force may grow significantly in the coming years. Unfortunately, Chinahas formally and publicly rejected U.S. offers for follow-up discussions on nuclear risk reduction and arms control issues.

Senior U.S. officials have said that: “... we do not need to increase our nuclear forces to match or outnumber the combined total of our competitors to successfully deter them.”

But a senior White House official also said on June 7 that: “Absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required.” We disagree and reject such talk as counterproductive and unnecessary.

The use of just a fraction of today’s nuclear arsenals would lead to mass destruction on an unprecedented, global scale. Halting the cycle of spiraling nuclear tensions is in every nation's interest.

Furthermore, under Article VI of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), Russia and the United States, along with China, France, and the United Kingdom, have a legal obligation to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament.” The treaty does not excuse them from their Article VI obligations because they feel disrespected or unfairly treated for some reason or another.

Refusing to engage at the negotiating table, combined with building an even greater nuclear destructive capacity, is a violation of this core NPT tenet.

Other crucial nonproliferation and disarmament agreements are being ignored or taken for granted. For example, the 1996 CTBT has effectively ended nuclear testing, but China, the United States, and six other states have failed to ratify and have held up the treaty's formal entry into force. And now Russia, in a counterproductive and cynical attempt to mirror the United States 'stance, has de-ratified the treaty.

Our civil society organizations, representing millions of voices around the globe, call on every delegation at this conference to press the NPT's nuclear five to fully respect and accelerate the implementation of their NPT disarmament commitments and to make good on your joint commitment, issued at the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, to achieve the “complete elimination of nuclear weapons.”

Specifically, as you prepare for the 2026 Review Conference, we urge all states parties to come together around the following priority action steps:

1. Demand that the United States and the Russian Federation immediately return to the nuclear arms control and disarmament negotiating table, fully implement their obligations under New START and agree on new arrangements to cap and reduce their nuclear arsenals before New START expires. At a minimum, Moscow and Washington should conclude a simple bilateral understanding that says that neither side shall increase the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons beyond the New START ceiling of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads until such time as they can conclude a more comprehensive framework agreement or set of agreements to limit and reduce their deadly nuclear arsenals.
   
   So long as Russia and the United States agree to cap their strategic deployed nuclear arsenals and work to negotiate a new nuclear arms reduction framework, the NPT's other nuclear-armed states, China, France, and the UK, should pledge to a nuclear freeze of the overall size of their nuclear arsenals and a fissile material production halt.
   
   Such an arrangement would lessen dangerous nuclear competition and create space for more intensive and wide-ranging arms control and disarmament negotiations not only between the United States and Russia, but also involving China, France, and the UK.
    
2. Call upon all five of the NPT's nuclear-armed states to engage in a serious high-level dialogue that leads to a joint commitment not to use or threaten the use of nuclear weapons and to agree that none will be the first to use nuclear weapons for any reason.
   
   We note that earlier this year, senior Chinese officials proposed that the five should "negotiate and conclude a treaty on no first use of nuclear weapons against each other,” and we note that China published a working paper on the topic earlier this month. In response to the idea, a seniorU.S. official said in April that "If they want to engage in a conversation of the many questions raised by their no-first-use proposal, we would engage.”
   
   In addition, the five NPT nuclear-armed states should consider how to update, implement, and multilateralize the 1973 U.S.-Soviet Agreement on the Prevention of Nuclear War, which pledges they will “refrain from the threat or use of force against the other party, against the allies of the other party and against other countries, in circumstances which may endanger international peace and security.” It requires that “if at any time there is the risk of a nuclear conflict [each side] shall immediately enter into urgent consultations…to avert this risk.”
   
   Such a dialogue would be an overdue way to operationalize the January 2022 joint statement from the NPT's five nuclear-armed states that a "nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought." However, these and other nuclear risk reduction measures cannot erase the tensions that can lead to nuclear war, they cannot remove the inherent dangers of nuclear deterrence policies, nor can they prevent dangerous forms of qualitative and quantitative nuclear arms racing.
    
3. Condemn threats of nuclear use as "inadmissible" and illegal. We condemn the recent threats from leaders of some nuclear-armed states underscoring their readiness to use nuclear weapons. Any threat to use nuclear weapons, at any time and under any circumstances, is extremely dangerous and totally unacceptable.
   
   We call on this conference, as the first meeting of states parties to the TPNW did in their 2022 consensus political statement to declare that “…any use or threat of use of nuclear weapons is a violation of international law, including the Charter of the United Nations," and to "condemn unequivocally any and all nuclear threats, whether they be explicit or implicit and irrespective of the circumstances.”
    
4. We also urge all NPT states-parties to constructively engage with the TPNW and if they have not already done so, to join the TPNW, which is a complementary approach that reinforces the taboos against nuclear weapons, bolsters the NPT, and creates additional pathways to verifiably cap, reduce, and eventually eliminate nuclear arsenals.
    
5. Call upon all members of the Conference on Disarmament to agree to a work plan that allows for negotiations on a comprehensive fissile material cutoff treaty and on legally binding negative security assurances against nuclear attack for non-nuclear-weapon states. The June 14 decision to establish subsidiary bodies on these and other topics was a positive but small step forward that is not sufficient.
    
6. Jointly reaffirm their support for the de facto moratorium on nuclear testing and call upon the remaining nine NPT hold-out states to take concrete action before the 2026 NPT Review Conference to ratify the CTBT. The last such statement from the five NPT nuclear- armed states in support of the CTBT was issued in the form of UN Security Council Resolution 2310 from September 2016. In the meantime, NPT states parties should demand that the nuclear-armed states refrain from threats to resume nuclear testing and actively press them to agree on new technical measures to build confidence that any ongoing nuclear experiments at their former test sites are fully compliant with the zero-yield CTBT.

Work to advance these and other disarmament goals must continue well beyond this meeting and be pursued at the UN General Assembly, at the UN Security Council, and at the highest levels in bilateral and multilateral meetings, and beyond.

All nuclear weapons make us all less secure. Embarking on a safer path through disarmament diplomacy is imperative. Thank you for your attention.

Sincerely,

Daryl G. Kimball, Executive Director, Arms Control Association

Melissa Parke, Executive Director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Rebecca Eleanor Johnson, Dr. Director, Acronym Inst. for Disarmament Diplomacy

Peter Wilk, M.D., Administrative Chair, Back from the Brink Coalition (USA)

Thomas Countryman, former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Arms Control, Chair of the Board of Directors, Arms Control Association

Oliver Meier, Policy and Research Director at the European Leadership Network*

Hans Kristensen, Director, Nuclear Information Project, Federation of American Scientists, and Associate Senior Fellow to SIPRI*

Götz Neuneck, Prof. Dr. rer. nat., Chairman, Federation of German Scientists (VDW)*

Bridget Moix, General Secretary, Friends Committee on National Legislation

John Holum, former Director of the U.S. Arms Control Disarmament Agency and ACDA Director Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security

John Hallam, People for Nuclear Disarmament, Human Survival Project (Australia)

Bernard Norlain, Général dare aérienne (2S), Président, Marc Finaud, Vice President, and Blaise Imbert, Treasurer, Initiatives pour le Désarmement Nucléaire (IDN)

Ulrich Kühn, Head of Arms Control and Emerging Technologies Program, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg*

Tobias Fella, Dr., Project Head, Challenges to Deep Cuts, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH)*

Lucian Bumeder, Researcher, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH)*

Margaret Beavis, Dr., Co-Chair, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Australia

Jean-Marie Collin, Director, International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, France

Michael Christ, Executive Director, International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW), and, Chuck Johnson, Director, IPPNW-Geneva Liaison Office

Hideo Asano, Secretariat Staff, Japan Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons

Yayoi Tsuchida, Assistant General Secretary, Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs

Angela Kane, former United Nations Under-Secretary-General and High Representative for Disarmament Affairs

David Cortright, Professor Emeritus, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame*

Deepshikha Vijh, Executive Director, Lawyers Committee on Nuclear Policy

Francesco Lenci, retired Research Director at the National (Italy)Research Council (CNR) and current Research Associate

Benetick Kabua Maddison, Executive Director, Marshallese Educational Initiative

Aaron Tovish, Senior Adviser, NoFirstUse Global*

Jay Coghlan, Executive Director, Nuclear Watch New Mexico

Valeriia Hesse, Non-Resident Fellow, Odesa Center for Nonproliferation (OdCNP)

Bill Kidd MSP, Co-President, Parliamentarians for Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Scottish Parliament*

Kevin Martin, President, Peace Action

Akira Kawasaki, Executive Committee member, Peace Boat (Japan) Brian Campbell, Executive Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility

Denise Duffield, Associate Director, Physicians for Social Responsibility-Los Angeles

Shaghayegh Chris Rostampour, Policy and Communications Coordinator, Physicists Coalition for Nuclear Threat Reduction

Frank von Hippel, Senior Research Physicist and Professor of Public and International Affairs Emeritus at Princeton University

Frederick K. Lamb, Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy and Core Faculty Member, Program on Arms Control and Domestic and Intl. Security, University of Illinois*

Norman Solomon, National Director, RootsAction.org

Jennifer Allen Simons, Dr., The Simons Foundation Canada

Tomohiko Ashima, Executive Director for Peace and Global Issues, Soka Gakkai International

Carlo Trezza, former, Italian Ambassador for Disarmament, Chairman of the UN Secretary-General’s Advisory Board for Disarmament Affairs, and Chairman of MTCR

Scott Yundt, Executive Director, Tri-Valley Communities Against a Radioactive Environment (USA)

Tara Drozdenko, Director, Global Security Program, Union of Concerned Scientists

Colleen Moore, Director of Peace With Justice, The United Methodist Church — General Board of Church and Society

Elena K. Sokova, Executive Director, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation*

Noah Mayhew, Senior Research Associate at Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non- Proliferation*

Sean Arent, Nuclear Weapons Abolition Program Manager, Washington Physicians for Social Responsibility

Jacqueline Cabasso, Executive Director, Western States Legal Foundation

Elayne Whyte, Ambassador, and President of the TPNW negotiations, Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies*

Darien De Lu, President, Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom, U.S.

David Swanson, Executive Director, World Beyond War

*Institution listed for identification purposes only.

May 24, 2024

The Arms Control Association (ACA) welcomes this opportunity to respond to a letter dated February 7, 2024, from the UN Office for Disarmament Affairs inviting civil society organizations to submit their views on autonomous weapons systems (AWS) and ways to address the challenges and concerns they raise from humanitarian, legal, security, technological, and ethical perspectives.

These submissions, the letter indicated, would contribute to the Secretary-General’s forthcoming report to the General Assembly, pursuant to General Assembly Resolution 78/241 of December 22, 2023, calling on the Secretary-General to seek the views of civil society organizations on these matters.

In Resolution 78/241, the General Assembly expressed its concern, inter alia, about the “impact of autonomous weapon systems on global security and regional and international stability, including the risk of an emerging arms race [and] lowering the threshold for conflict and proliferation.”

The Arms Control Association shares these concerns about the impact of AWS on international peace and stability. For more than fifty years, the ACA has worked to promote effective measures to reduce nuclear risks through national self-restraint, diplomatic engagement, bilateral and multilateral arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament, and other forms of international regulation.

Notwithstanding the ACA’s primary focus on reducing the dangers posed by nuclear weapons and achieving full nuclear disarmament, we believe that the deployment of autonomous weapons systems and automated battlefield command-and-control (C2) systems pose a significant risk to strategic stability, and therefore require strict regulation and oversight.

We highlight in this submission two specific escalatory concerns: the integration of autonomy with nuclear command, control, and communications (NC3) systems, and the use of conventionally armed AWS to target and destabilize nuclear forces. 

Threats to Strategic Stability Between Nuclear-Armed States

In its influential 2016 report on autonomy, the U.S. Defense Science Board distinguished between two categories of intelligent systems: those employing autonomy at rest and those employing autonomy in motion. “In broad terms,” it stated, “systems incorporating autonomy at rest operate virtually, in software, and include planning and expert advisory systems, whereas systems incorporating autonomy in motion have a presence in the physical world and include robotics and autonomous vehicles.”¹

Both categories of intelligent systems pose troubling implications for strategic stability and the risk of nuclear war. Major powers are automating their battlefield C2 systems and equipping them with algorithms for calculating enemy moves and intentions, selecting the optimal countermoves, and dispatching attack orders directly to friendly units for implementation—all with minimal human oversight. Research by a number of analysts suggest that in future conflicts among the major powers, such systems will contribute to and increase the risk of mutually reinforcing escalatory moves, potentially igniting accidental or inadvertent nuclear escalation.²

Although none of the nuclear powers are thought to be extending this type of software to autonomously manage their nuclear forces, many states see a potential for and are likely already developing AI algorithms to assist discrete components of their nuclear early warning and launch systems, for example with the interpretation of possible enemy missile launches.³

It is essential that AI software used to support these applications remain physically disconnected from nuclear launch authority to prevent any possibility of an unintended AI-triggered nuclear exchange. Concern about this possibility reinforces the already strong rationale for nuclear-armed states to move away from nuclear postures that call for prompt retaliatory nuclear counterattack.

Meanwhile, autonomy in motion in the form of conventionally armed AWS, in combination with advanced, AI-enhanced autonomous intelligence and reconnaissance systems, could contribute to accidental or unintended nuclear escalation by creating the impression that an attacker is conducting a disarming counterforce strike, aimed at eliminating or degrading the target state’s nuclear retaliatory capabilities. Crisis instability created by the possibility of disarming conventional strikes against nuclear forces is a long-standing concern, but the introduction of autonomous systems to the problem further exacerbates nuclear dangers. 

Of particular concern is the potential of loitering AWS to reveal the location of elusive nuclear retaliatory forces, such as mobile ICBMs or ballistic missile submarines. Deployed in enough numbers, AI-enabled AWS swarms could endanger those nuclear forces states presently believe to be the most survivable.⁴ The fear that an AI-controlled AWS swarm could uncover the locations of a nuclear-armed state’s submerged submarines or road-mobile ICBMs could prompt that state to place its weapons on a higher state of alert in a crisis and possibly trigger their unintended or accidental use.

Retaining Human Control

The Arms Control Association strongly adheres to the principle that the decision to use nuclear weapons must always remain the responsibility of a human being, and that such decisions conform with the Laws of War and particularly International Humanitarian Law, which rules out the employment of nuclear weapons particularly in response to nonnuclear threats. The profound legal, ethical, and humanitarian ramifications of any nuclear weapons employment—potentially extinguishing the lives of millions of people and rendering the planet uninhabitable—demand that humans, and never machines, bear the responsibility and moral culpability for their use.

Starting from this premise, and in recognition of the risks of escalation described above, we also believe that any fully autonomous weapons systems or automated battlefield C2 systems operating outside of continuous human supervision when in combat should be prohibited under binding international law.

In addition, we believe that all other lethal weapons systems featuring autonomy should be regulated in order to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law, including by insisting on human responsibility and accountability.

In response to expert warnings and the United States’ own concerns about the integration of AI in NC3 systems, the Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review asserts that the United States “will maintain a human ‘in the loop’ for all actions critical to informing and executing decisions by the President to initiate or terminate nuclear weapons.”

We also note the statement by China’s Permanent Representative to the UN Ambassador Zhang Jun at the UN Security Council Briefing on March 18, 2024, on Nuclear Disarmament and Non-proliferation, in which he declared: “Countries should continue to enhance the safety, reliability, and controllability of AI technology and ensure that relevant weapon systems are under human control at all times.”

While helpful, such assurances and exhortations are insufficient to guard against the significant risks of AI integration in battlefield decision-support systems and especially in NC3 systems involved in nuclear weapons employment. Therefore, we believe that binding legal measures, of the sort described above, are needed to ensure human control over the use of nuclear weapons.

Recommended Actions

In accordance with these basic principles, the Arms Control Association offers these additional recommendations to the Secretary General and the General Assembly:

1. Mindful that the use or threat of nuclear weapons has been deemed “inadmissible” and contrary to international law and the Treaty on the Prohibition on Nuclear Weapons, the UN General Assembly should call on all nuclear-armed states to commit—either through coordinated action or in a binding agreement—to retain human control over any decision to use nuclear weapons and to insert automated, failsafe “tripwires” in advanced command-and-control systems to disallow action leading to or resulting in nuclear weapons employment or escalation without human approval.

Ideally, the nuclear weapons states should themselves take steps toward creating an international norm that recognizes and affirms this principle by issuing unilateral statements that decisions involving nuclear use will always be reserved for human beings. A more ambitious but more effective measure would be a multilateral statement by the P5 that jointly commits to the same norm.⁵ The Secretary-General of the United Nations can assist in the creation of this norm by encouraging nuclear weapons states to discuss the topic in multilateral and bilateral formats.

To give effect to a norm reserving nuclear use to human control, the nuclear weapons states should integrate technical tripwires that prevent escalation to nuclear weapons use without human intervention in all deployed C2 systems. Critically, this would also mean ensuring that all AI-enabled C2 systems for conventional military operations are carefully and deliberately prohibited from giving instructions to nuclear weapons systems.

2. The UN General Assembly should call upon on all states to commit to retaining uninterrupted human control over any AWS potentially involved in strategic counterforce missions and to exclude such weapons systems from AI-enabled decision-support systems that could assign and authorize counterforce missions without human oversight.

Such commitments are urgently needed because unauthorized, accidental strikes on nuclear forces by loitering autonomous strike systems could give rise to false warning of an incoming strategic attack. Likewise, unauthorized conventional strikes could be accidentally launched either by AWS originally assigned an observation mission or by a central decision-support AI that issues erroneous commands to an AWS strike force.

To prevent this category of accidental escalation, states should ensure that forces assigned to conventional counterforce missions with strategic implications remain under human control at all times and forego integration with AI systems altogether. This would also preclude the possibility of a battlefield C2 system programed to support strategic counterforce missions accidentally gaining authority to launch nuclear weapons.

3. The UN General Assembly should convene an expert body to assess the types and roles of AI algorithms that are used in nuclear command and control systems and the dangers these could pose, and to consider limitations on such algorithms. This body should also evaluate whether there are certain roles within NC3 systems that should never be assigned to algorithms.

Automation of simple tasks within the nuclear chain-of-command is not new, but the types of AI algorithms that might be adapted to military operations are expanding. AI models have increased in capability and complexity as early machine learning methods have been superseded by deep learning techniques. As AI researchers develop these techniques further, the capabilities of tomorrow’s algorithms may expand significantly.

Given the rapid pace of research into new AI models and the lack of existing norms and understandings between nuclear powers about their application, the United Nations could play a key role in convening experts to track the technical evolution of these models. A multilateral technical effort would supplement unilateral research into risks, creating an ecosystem in which advanced research can be shared among concerned states.

Conclusion

At this juncture, the most pressing priority is the endorsement by the United Nations of basic norms regarding human control over nuclear weapons launch decisions to which all nuclear weapons states can agree. Although there may be little serious opposition to the principle that humans must remain in control of nuclear weapons systems, arriving at a formulation acceptable to the nuclear weapons states will still require deft diplomacy as well as the full-throated support of UN member states.

The UN General Assembly is also poised to play a pivotal role in promoting research on the dangers posed by AWS and AI-enabled battlefield C2 systems to nuclear stability, and to devise practical measures to reduce these risks. We therefore urge the Secretary-General and the General Assembly to carefully consider our assessment of the risks posed by autonomous weapons systems to strategic stability and our recommendations for reducing those risks. 

July 16, 2024 
By Kelsey Davenport 
Director for Nonproliferation Policy, Arms Control Association

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HIGHLIGHTS 

• Since 2019, Iran has significantly expanded its sensitive nuclear activities, which has irreversibly altered the pathways available to Iran if the decision were made to develop nuclear weapons.
• The proliferation risk posed by Iran’s nuclear advances is amplified by the monitoring gaps that Tehran created by reducing IAEA access and monitoring.
• Iranian officials have long denied any interest in nuclear weapons but there are new signs that Iran may rethink the prohibition on nuclear weapons if security conditions change.
• Iran’s technical expertise cannot be reversed, and its nuclear infrastructure is less vulnerable to attack. As a result, military strikes against Iran would set back the program, but only temporarily, and risk driving Tehran to develop nuclear weapons.
• Tehran has signaled its willingness to de-escalate tensions, including on its nuclear program. Leaders in Washington should seize this opportunity to incentivize Tehran to take steps that increase monitoring of its nuclear program and reduce proliferation risk.
• The experience of the 2015 nuclear deal demonstrated the limitations of transactional bargaining. The regional nuclear environment also has shifted since 2015 and there is an increased risk that additional states will seek to match Iran’s capabilities. The United States should be thinking now about alternative frameworks for negotiating a longer-term nuclear deal, or series of deals, that take into account Iran’s nuclear advances and mitigate regional proliferation risks.