March 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

A top U.S. State Department official has accused China of conducting a nuclear explosive test June 22, 2020, and says the U.S. government believes Beijing also is preparing for nuclear tests with yields in the range of hundreds of tons.

Thomas DiNanno, the undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, made the allegation in a speech at a Feb. 6 meeting of the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

It is the first direct accusation by the United States of a violation of China’s obligations as a signatory to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

The United States “is aware that China has conducted nuclear explosive tests, including preparing for tests with designated yields in the hundreds of tons,” DiNanno said.

China is widely known to have conducted 45 nuclear-test explosions between 1964 and 1996.

The State Department previously expressed “concerns” in an August 2019 compliance report about Chinese testing-related activities, including at a former test site at Lop Nur. At the time, the United States said China “probably carried out multiple nuclear weapon-related tests or experiments in 2018,” but fell short of concluding that China had violated the CTBT.

In the Feb. 6 speech, DiNanno alleged that China “sought to conceal testing by obfuscating the nuclear explosions [through decoupling] because it recognized these tests violate test ban commitments.” Decoupling involves conducting a nuclear explosion in a large underground cavity to mask its observable yield.

Although China, like the United States, is a CTBT signatory, it has not ratified the agreement, thus delaying the treaty’s formal entry into force.

The treaty prohibits all nuclear explosions, which the negotiating parties all understand are nuclear explosions that produce a self-sustaining, supercritical chain reaction of any kind whether for weapons or peaceful purposes.

“The U.S. accusation of Chinese nuclear explosive tests is completely groundless,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Lin Jian said Feb. 11 at a regular press briefing. The U.S. statement is a “fabrication of pretexts for its own resumption of nuclear tests,” he said.

U.S. President Donald Trump said Oct. 30 that the United States, which has honored a voluntary testing moratorium since 1992, would resume testing of nuclear weapons “on an equal basis” as other countries. (See ACT, November 2025.) DiNanno noted the president’s announcement in his Feb. 6 statement immediately before discussing the alleged Chinese tests.

“China urges the U.S. to renew the commitment of the five nuclear-weapons states to a moratorium on nuclear testing” and “uphold the global consensus on the ban on nuclear testing,” Lin said in his Feb. 11 statement.

The Chinese test occurred at 9:18 Greenwich Mean Time on the specified date and had an approximate magnitude of 2.75, Assistant Secretary of State Christopher Yeaw said Feb. 17 in a talk at the Hudson Institute.

The International Monitoring System operated by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization “detected two very small seismic events, twelve seconds apart” on June 22, 2020, said Robert Floyd, head of the organization in a Feb. 17 statement.

In the statement, Floyd said that the monitoring system “is capable of detecting nuclear test explosions with a yield equivalent to or greater than approximately 500 [tons] of TNT. These two events were far below that level. As a result, with this data alone, it is not possible to assess the cause of these events with confidence.”

“Mechanisms which could address smaller explosions are provided by the Treaty but can only be used once the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty enters into force. That is why it is important that the nuclear arms control framework includes the entry into force of the CTBT. The need is more urgent now than ever,” Floyd wrote. “Any nuclear test explosion, by any state, is of deepest concern.”

International and national seismic networks can detect events that produce shockwaves at much lower levels in certain areas of particular concern, such as former nuclear test sites. For example, the existence of seismic templates—comparable data on past seismic events—from known nuclear test sites may “enable the detection of new explosions today by [the monitoring system] down to a few tons of TNT yield or less for an underground explosion,” according to a 2020 report by Anna Péczeli and Bruce Goodwin, two experts with the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

NORSAR, the Norwegian seismology foundation, independently identified a small signal at 9:18 GMT from the region of Lop Nur but cautioned that “the precise epicentral location cannot be tightly constrained,” in a Feb. 19 press release.

NORSAR said the event displayed “strong compressional waves compared to shear waves, a feature that can be consistent with explosive sources.” However, “[n]atural earthquakes can produce similar patterns, particularly when observations are limited to a single high-quality station.”

The foundation “cannot confirm or refute the allegation that a nuclear test took place.”

According to a 2012 National Academies of Sciences (NAS) report on technical issues related to the test ban treaty, the maximum effectiveness of decoupling on record—in a salt dome—was a reduction in the measured yield of a nuclear test by a factor of 70.

This would reduce the observed yield of a test from several hundred tons to a single-digit ton of TNT equivalent.

But the NAS report noted that decoupled underground tests in rock would have a much lower effectiveness than in salt, reducing the observed yield by a factor of 20 to 40. China’s tests at its former Lop Nur test site were conducted in granite or other types of rock.

The 2012 NAS report concluded that “the uncertainty in the actual amount of decoupling would present a difficult technical challenge.”

If China were able to conduct an undetected test, the 2012 NAS report noted that explosions with yields under 100 tons could be useful for safety tests and developing low-yield, unboosted fission devices.

Tests between 100 tons TNT equivalent and 1 kiloton TNT equivalent could be used to “pursue improved implosion weapon designs,” “validate some untested implosion weapon designs,” and proof-test compact weapons.

If the alleged Chinese test was a hydronuclear experiment just above the criticality threshold, however, the usefulness of the test would be limited to safety tests, addressing some design code issues, and “validation of some unboosted fission weapon designs.”

China in recent years has resumed visible, above-ground drilling and infrastructure work at its Lop Nur test site, The New York Times reported in December 2023, citing imagery analysis by analyst Renny Babiarz.

March 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

The United States negotiated a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia that does not require a more intrusive monitoring arrangement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and may allow some type of uranium enrichment, according to a report the Trump administration sent to Congress that was obtained by Arms Control Today.

Saudi Arabia is expanding its civil nuclear program and announced plans to build two power reactors and fabricate nuclear fuel, including uranium enrichment. (See ACT, November 2023.) The United States had been reluctant to sign a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia over the proliferation risks posed by uranium enrichment without additional IAEA monitoring, due in part to Saudi threats to develop nuclear weapons if Iran does. (See ACT, April 2018.)

According to congressional sources, the United States and Saudi Arabia reached a compromise after years of negotiations, but it is unclear if Congress, which can review and block nuclear cooperation agreements, also known as “123 agreements,” will accept the nonproliferation obligations in the accord.

The administration has said little about the terms of the proposed 123 agreement, which must be negotiated before U.S. companies can transfer certain materials and technologies to a foreign country.

During Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to Washington in November, the White House announced a U.S.-Saudi framework for nuclear cooperation that “builds the legal foundation for a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar nuclear energy partnership” between the two countries “in a manner consistent with strong nonproliferation standards.” (See ACT, December 2025.)

The existence of the report to Congress on the agreement appears to confirm that the Trump administration relaxed U.S. demands that Saudi Arabia negotiate an additional protocol to its legally required safeguards agreement. The additional protocol would give the IAEA greater access to information about Saudi Arabia’s nuclear program and more tools to provide assurances that the program is peaceful.

According to a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for fiscal year 2020, the administration must provide a report to Congress if a state has not negotiated and implemented an additional protocol with the IAEA. The president must submit the report on waiving the additional protocol to Congress 90 days before sending a Nuclear Proliferation Assessment Statement to Congress. The statement assesses how the nuclear cooperation agreement meets nine nonproliferation criteria set out in the Atomic Energy Act. Under the Atomic Energy Act, Congress has 90 days to review a nuclear cooperation agreement.

Arms Control Today reviewed a copy of the report, which was submitted to Congress around Nov. 24. According to the report, Saudi Arabia and the United States will enter into a “Bilateral Safeguards Agreement,” which will include additional verification measures and asserts that the agreement will give the IAEA the “necessary tools to verify the absence of diversion of nuclear material.”

The report does not specify how the bilateral agreement will compare to the additional protocol, but it does say that the bilateral safeguards will only apply to nuclear facilities where sensitive U.S.-Saudi nuclear cooperation is taking place. The additional protocol would have applied to the entire nuclear program and sites that support it.

The report does not explicitly state that the proposed agreement will allow a domestic Saudi-run enrichment program, but the text suggests it will. According to the report, the bilateral agreement, “with the involvement” of the IAEA, will employ “additional safeguards and verification measures to the most proliferation sensitive areas of potential nuclear cooperation between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States (enrichment, conversion, fuel fabrication, and reprocessing).”

The report goes on to say that “nuclear material, equipment, or components will not be transferred to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia subject to the 123 agreement until the proposed Bilateral Safeguards Agreement has entered into force.”

The NDAA states that the report must also describe “the manner in which such agreement would advance the national security and defense interests of the United States and not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons.”

The Trump administration argues that the proposed agreement will benefit U.S. interests, saying in the report that U.S. involvement in the Saudi nuclear program will “prevent strategic competition from seizing an opportunity to undermine United States national security interests for decades to come.” The report also argues that the United States must seize the opportunity to expand nuclear cooperation to “reestablish our leadership in the global civilian nuclear energy market and reap the benefits of expanded influence in foreign countries hosting our reactors.”

The Trump administration may face obstacles in Congress, where there is longstanding bipartisan support for negotiating a so-called gold standard nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia. The gold standard refers to a nuclear cooperation agreement similar to the one negotiated between the United States and the United Arab Emirates. Under that deal, the UAE committed to forgo uranium enrichment and plutonium reprocessing and adopt an additional protocol.

After the White House announced the Saudi framework for nuclear cooperation in November, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sens. James Risch (R-Idaho) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), respectively, said independently that any nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia must meet the gold standard.

Once the 123 agreement is delivered to Congress, members will have 90 days to review it. Congress can block the deal if both houses pass a resolution of disapproval; otherwise it will enter into force.

March 2026
By Libby Flatoff

In a major shift in policy, French President Emmanuel Macron announced a new nuclear strategy that would allow for temporary deployment of nuclear air forces outside of France and ordered an increase in France’s nuclear arsenal.

“I have ordered an increase in the number of nuclear warheads in our arsenal,” Macron stated March 2. “We will no longer communicate on the figures of our nuclear arsenal, unlike what may have been the case in the past.”

Macron stressed that, “My responsibility is to ensure that our deterrence maintains — and will maintain in the future — its assured destructive power.” He said called the approach “dissuasion avancée,” or advanced deterrence, noting that this new French approach creates opportunities for European allies.

France and Germany also announced Mar. 2 their intention to create “a ‌joint steering group to coordinate strategic doctrine and exercises,” in a move to increase cooperation on nuclear deterrence.

Comments from other European leaders in recent weeks provided hints of greater European defense and nuclear coordination. In a Jan. 29 speech, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said European states were “discussing the development of a joint nuclear umbrella with European allies,” although he insisted “Germany will not possess nuclear weapons.”

The shift in German government thinking is particularly significant. Bruno Tertrais, deputy director of France’s Strategic Research Foundation, noted that, “Germany’s mention of nuclear capabilities would have been unimaginable just five years ago.”

Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament’s foreign affairs committee, suggested that the “most logical, fastest, and most cost-effective option would be to use France’s nuclear capability as the foundation for an independent European nuclear deterrent,” according to Politico Feb. 5.

Meanwhile, in response to a question about hosting nuclear weapons on Swedish soil, Defense Minister Pål Jonsson stated Feb. 27 on Swedish radio SR, “If there were to be war, we would naturally consider any option that could secure Sweden’s survival and Swedish security.”

The shift in French and European policy is a response to growing NATO concerns that they can no longer rely on U.S. defense commitments in the event of an attack by Russia, including the potential employment of U.S. nuclear weapons,  such as the 100 plus forward-deployed U.S. nuclear gravity bombs that are stationed at bases in five countries in Europe.

Last July, France and the United Kingdom, which both possess nuclear weapons, issued a statement called the Northwood Declaration that commits them to coordinate nuclear policy and notes that their “nuclear forces are independent, but can be coordinated.” (See ACT, September 2025.) The declaration also established a nuclear steering group, co-chaired by French and UK officials, which held its first meeting in Paris Dec. 10.

European concerns deepened following U.S. President Donald Trump's statements threatening acquisition of Greenland and the new U.S. National Defense Strategy document, released in January. Despite the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine and its asymmetric intrusions on European infrastructure, the strategy document describes Russia as a “manageable threat to NATO’s eastern members” and calls on Europe to take “primary responsibility for its own defense.”

At the February 2025 NATO defense ministers meeting, U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, responding to a reporter’s question, reinforced European concerns. Hegseth said that, “without burden sharing, without creating the right set of incentives for European countries to invest, then [the United States] would be forced to attempt to be everywhere for everybody all the time, which in a world of fiscal restraints is, again ... just not reality.”

At the World Economic Forum, Jan. 21 in Davos, Switzerland, Trump reiterated that he was “not sure [if NATO] would be there for us” if there were an attack against the United States. That has become a frequent Trump complaint despite the fact that NATO invoked Article 5 for the only time in its history after the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the United States in 2001.

France has about 290 nuclear weapons and the UK has 225, according to independent estimates by the Federation of American Scientists. Neither country currently deploys its weapons within the borders of other nations.

March 2026
By Xiaodon Liang and Libby Flatoff

U.S. discretionary spending on national defense, including atomic energy activities, will rise by more than 17 percent in fiscal year 2026 to $1.05 trillion after Congress passed appropriations acts funding most of the government.

That total, reached after a cycle of tumultuous and disorderly budget processes, includes $893 billion approved through normal appropriations, as well as money provided last summer by a budget reconciliation act, which included $152.3 billion for the Pentagon and $3.9 billion for Department of Energy nuclear weapons activities. (See ACT June, July/August 2025.)

In May, the Department of Defense indicated it would spend $119.3 billion of the multiyear reconciliation money in fiscal 2026. But on Feb. 23 the department reversed course and said it would spend all of its multiyear allocation by the end of fiscal 2026, contradicting prior plans.

The Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) program—originally set to receive $4.3 billion in research and development and construction funding this year, according to the president’s budget request—now has an increased budget of $5.3 billion. Last fiscal year, the Trump administration reallocated $1.2 billion of the Sentinel’s enacted $3.2 billion budget to other defense programs.

The program continues to undergo a major restructuring following a 2024 review required by the cost control provisions of the Nunn-McCurdy Act. (See ACT, September 2024.) The Air Force announced Feb. 17 that it anticipates completing the restructuring effort and attaining a Milestone B decision by the end of 2026.

The service also said the Sentinel missile would reach initial operational capability in “the early 2030s.”

Although the Air Force now believes it will conduct a first flight test—from a pad, not a silo—of the Sentinel missile in 2027, the Government Accountability Office noted in a brief Feb. 18 report that its analysis of Pentagon information suggests a March 2028 date instead.

The B-21 bomber program will receive $10.1 billion this year, a significant increase from last year’s $5.3 billion enacted budget. Some $4.5 billion of that total will go toward expanding bomber production rates. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink announced Feb. 23 that lead contractor Northrop Grumman and the Pentagon had reached an agreement to increase production capacity by 25 percent.

Although President Donald Trump said Feb. 2 on a podcast that the United States had ordered 25 more bombers, the Air Force has not confirmed an increase in the total B-21 production order despite previous discussion. (See ACT, May 2025.)

The Columbia-class ballistic missile submarine program will be funded at $9.6 billion through regular appropriations, with an additional $1.4 billion of reconciliation monies allocated to associated industrial base investments, according to congressional funding tables. The program received $9.8 billion last year.

The Feb. 23 documents provided by the Pentagon describing how it plans to use the full $152.3 billion in reconciliation funds by the end of fiscal 2026 confirm that the Navy will attempt to spend $2 billion in one year on the nuclear-capable, sea-launched cruise missile, a figure drastically increased from $150 million last year.

The breakdown in the justification documents of spending on the new nuclear weapon do not add up to the $2 billion total, and the scope of work described suggests multiple years of effort.

Last fall, the Pentagon forwarded to Congress an initial tranche of planned reconciliation commitments totaling around $90 billion, shy of the $119.3 billion envisioned in the president’s budget request.

In that fall document, the sea-launched cruise missile would have received only $458 million in funding, which matches what the newly released reconciliation spending justification documents describe as funding for transitioning from “early program planning into system architecture maturation, risk reduction, and engineer development.”

The Missile Defense Agency’s hypersonic defense efforts, including development of the Glide Phase Interceptor, were funded by Congress through normal appropriations at $185 million, but reconciliation funds will provide another $2.2 billion in classified spending.

Congress has similarly provided $1.7 billion for the Space Force missile warning and tracking constellation in low-earth orbit, while the reconciliation documents suggest a further $7.2 billion for space-based sensors is “pending approval.”

The constellation received a rebuke from the Government Accountability Office in a Jan. 28 report that criticized the program as having “yet to demonstrate the development of timely, actionable, and accurate two-dimensional tracks on orbit and three-dimensional tracks on the ground needed to counter hypersonic and other evolving threats.”

Appropriators also modestly reduced base funding for several missile defense programs, citing budget execution problems and funding requests that were ahead of actual program need.

The reconciliation documents indicate that details on Pentagon plans for spending $5.6 billion on “space-based and boost phase interceptor capabilities” have been classified.

This year’s appropriations bills also convey congressional concern about several key nuclear policy issues not tackled in the National Defense Authorization Act, which was signed into law in December.

In the act funding the Pentagon, defense appropriators expressed concern that the Defense Department “lacks a clear plan to meet strategic [nuclear command, control, and communications] requirements after the current legacy Space-Based Infrared systems age out,” despite an enacted $1.4 billion budget for the Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared satellite program intended for geosynchronous and polar orbits.

In a joint explanatory statement, appropriators noted that although they support efforts to create a proliferated missile warning system in low-earth orbit, this constellation is “not designed to meet the strategic indications and warning requirements.” Energy and water appropriators also called for the prompt release of a pit production study by the JASON advisory group within 60 days of the report’s completion.

March 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

Congress authorized $57 million this year for a prototype of a new nuclear weapon delivery system that the U.S. Air Force is considering acquiring to destroy hard and deeply buried targets, according to budget documents.

This is the second fiscal year in which the service has asked for and received funding for its work on the program after Congress provided an initial $39 million last year. The Biden administration’s last budget request estimated that the Air Force’s portion of the program would cost $353 million over its lifetime.

In parallel, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)—the agency responsible for designing and producing U.S. nuclear weapons—is conducting a multi-year Phase 1 concept assessment of options to defeat hard and deeply buried targets. (See ACT, July/August 2025.)

The new weapon, provisionally called the air-delivered nuclear delivery system, would address the requirement for “an enduring capability for improved defeat of [hard and deeply buried] targets” identified in the 2022 Nuclear Posture Review, according to Air Force budget justification documents.

The documents note that the program also responds to the findings of a Pentagon study of options for hard and deeply buried targets mandated by the fiscal year 2023 National Defense Authorization Act.

In the course of designing the new weapon, the Air Force Research Laboratory is initially planning for integration with F-15E strike aircraft and B-2 bombers.

According to the budget documents, in fiscal year 2026, the Air Force intends to continue modeling and simulation analysis of design options, designing and procuring components for building prototypes, and conducting ground tests of prototypes, among other activities.

When the Biden administration unveiled in October 2023 a higher-yield variant of the B61-12 life-extended gravity bomb, the B61-13, it said that weapon would provide an additional option for “harder and large-area military targets.” This would pave the way for retirement of the older megaton-yield B83-1. (See ACT, December 2023.)

At the same time, the administration did not decide to retire the B61-11, a dedicated earth-penetrating variant of the B61 bomb. Although several older variants of the B61 have been consolidated through a recently completed life-extension program into the B61-12 design, the B61-11 was not.

The budget documents are unlikely to refer to the B61-13. That weapon is already in production and will only be delivered by strategic bombers, not fighter jets such as the F-15E, NNSA said in a May 19 press release.

“The B61-13 represents an intermediate answer” to the problem of destroying hard and deeply buried targets, wrote David Hoagland, the NNSA’s acting deputy administrator for defense programs, May 20 in War on the Rocks.

The George W. Bush administration also pursued a nuclear bunker-buster under the Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator program. Congressional opposition led to cancellation of the program by 2005.

Unlike the proposed air-delivered nuclear delivery system, the Bush-era program did not advance as far as prototyping work within the Air Force before it was canceled, even though the NNSA bomb design work had proceeded beyond concept studies to the next stage, known as a Phase 6.2/6.2A feasibility and design, definition, and cost study.

March 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors held an extraordinary meeting in January to discuss nuclear security and safety risks in Ukraine after repeated Russian strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure.

The Netherlands requested the Jan. 30 meeting. In a statement to the IAEA’s 35-member board, Dutch Ambassador Peter Potman expressed “grave concerns” about Russia’s attacks on Ukrainian electrical substations, noting that the strikes bring the “prospect of a nuclear accident to the very precipice of becoming a reality.”

Potman said that attacking Ukraine’s electric grid is a direct violation of IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi’s seven indispensable pillars for ensuring nuclear safety. Grossi announced the seven pillars in 2022, shortly after Russia’s illegal, full-scale invasion of Ukraine and occupation of the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant. Pillar 4 says “there must be a secure off-site power supply from the grid for all nuclear sites.”

The Netherlands, along with 11 other board members, requested that Grossi share a written assessment of the “increased nuclear safety risks in Ukraine” ahead of the board’s quarterly meeting in March. The assessment will help members “assess the extent to which a nuclear accident is imminent,” Potman said.

Grossi told the board Jan. 30 that nuclear power plants cannot operate safely without off-site power and noted a clear deterioration in Ukraine’s energy grid since the agency began monitoring it in 2024. He said IAEA teams will continue to visit substations in Ukraine to assess impacts on nuclear safety and security.

Russia’s ambassador to the IAEA, Mikhail Ulyanov, objected to the extraordinary meeting, saying the topic falls outside of the board’s purview. He accused members of using the meeting to “try to put pressure on Russia.” In a Jan. 30 statement, he said that Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are a direct response to Ukrainian strikes on Russian civilian infrastructure.

Ukraine’s foreign ministry, in a statement the same day, said that the “deliberate and systemic” Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure create “direct nuclear risks.” Ukraine said it would propose an amendment to the IAEA statute “aimed at limiting the rights of the aggressor state within Agency bodies.”

Howard Solomon, the interim chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Mission to International Organizations in Vienna, called for all strikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure to cease. He said the current situation is “unacceptable and extremely dangerous.”

Russian attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure continued after the meeting despite Grossi’s warnings.

In a subsequent Feb. 6 statement, Grossi said attacks on electrical infrastructure caused a reactor unit at an unspecified, operating nuclear power plant in Ukraine to automatically disconnect from the grid and shut down.

He said the “latest grid event is a stark reminder of the ever-present risks to nuclear safety and security arising from deteriorating grid conditions,” and called for restraint from further attacks. Attacks continued despite Grossi’s warnings.

March 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

France took over the presidency of a multilateral initiative combating weapons of mass destruction (WMD) proliferation and plans to increase the visibility of the group’s work in 2026.

The Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction was founded in 2002 by the Group of Eight industrialized countries (now the Group of Seven). Composed of 31 members, the Global Partnership uses a matchmaking process to pair donor expertise and funding with projects aimed at reducing WMD threats and proliferation. The chair of the G-7 serves as president of the Global Partnership and sets priorities for its work agenda.

In a January statement, France highlighted how the “evolving security landscape and the rapid advancement of technologies are reshaping the nature” of proliferation risks and pledged to adapt the initiative’s work to meet these challenges. Specifically, the French presidency will focus on three strategic objectives. First, France will focus on ensuring that the Global Partnership’s “governance and strategies are … robust and effective.” Second, France will look to “actively engage new countries and organizations” and potentially expand the initiative’s membership. Third, France will focus on enhancing communication and awareness, to highlight the initiative’s work and foster “deeper understanding” of WMD threats and solutions.

Canada, the president for 2025, highlighted the Global Partnership’s accomplishments over the past year in an outgoing message. The January statement said that the 31-member body launched a new strategy for addressing WMD-relevant technologies, such as artificial intelligence and gene editing, to identify how the partnership can use these tools for “deterrence, detection, and response.” Canada also noted that partnership members endorsed new biosecurity deliverables and a revised chemical security strategic vision.

Under Canada’s presidency, the Global Partnership implemented 344 projects in 158 countries. Nearly half of the projects focused on enhancing nuclear and radiological security. Ukraine continued to be a priority for nuclear security work, as member states funded projects designed to enhance the protection of nuclear facilities and train law enforcement in counter-nuclear smuggling efforts. Partners also funded new nuclear security projects to identify and address cyber vulnerabilities in emerging technologies, such as small modular reactors, according to the annex.

More than 100 projects sought to mitigate biological threats, including continued efforts to build biosecurity capacity in Africa and Asia. Partner states also supported projects designed to enhance bio-detection capabilities.

Fifty-six projects focused on chemical security, including support for the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’s work in identifying undeclared chemical weapons in Syria and mitigating the threats posed by Russia’s use of toxic chemicals against Ukraine.

March 2026 (published online Feb. 26)
By Daryl G. Kimball

Eight years after abandoning the 2015 nuclear deal that was effectively blocking Iran’s path to a bomb, and less than a year after Israeli and U.S. forces struck key Iranian nuclear facilities, U.S. President Donald Trump has dispatched his envoys to try to persuade Iran to permanently give the option to enrich uranium or face another, possibly much larger, U.S. attack.

Renewed U.S. military strikes on Iran would be counterproductive, reckless, and unjustified on nonproliferation grounds. Such a war of choice against Iran, without congressional approval, would violate the Constitution and the 1973 War Powers Act. It also would violate Article 2(4) of the UN Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force in international relations.

The June 2025 U.S attacks severely damaged Iran’s major uranium enrichment facilities, but not its resolve to retain a nuclear program or its nuclear know-how. Nor did the operation remove or help account for 440 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 that Iran already had stockpiled.

Instead, the military operation derailed diplomatic talks and Iranian cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). As a result, the IAEA has not been able to access any of the bombed sites or to account for the nuclear material, which is a violation of Iran’s safeguards obligations.

Nevertheless, it is clear that it would take Iran years to fully rebuild its enrichment plants and months to enrich small amounts of uranium to bomb-grade and to process it into metal for a weapon. There is no imminent threat; Iran is not close to “weaponizing” its nuclear material so as to justify another U.S. attack.

Trump has not yet explained his case for war. He may believe the threat of strikes or “limited” attacks can force Iranian leaders to capitulate. That is highly unlikely. He has reportedly told advisers that if diplomacy or a targeted attack does not lead Iran to give in to his demands, he will consider a much bigger attack that is intended to drive the state’s leaders from power.

The reality is that even an ostensibly limited U.S. military strike runs a serious risk of unleashing an Iranian counterattack and prolonged regional conflict. Meanwhile, the leaders of nuclear-armed Israel are lobbying Trump to take an even more aggressive position and threatening to strike Iran’s ballistic missile sites themselves even if there is a new U.S.-Iran agreement to constrain the nuclear program.

Another wave of U.S. or Israeli attacks on Iran likely would drive Iranian leaders away from negotiations and strengthen the argument inside Iran that only possessing nuclear weapons can protect the state from external attack. Other nations in the Middle East and beyond likely will draw a similar conclusion, increasing the odds of expanded nuclear proliferation in the years ahead.

Instead, the United States and Iran should continue to work without delay to arrive at pragmatic solutions that address international concerns about Iran’s residual nuclear capabilities and materials stockpiles and remove the threat of a wider war.

Tragically, Trump’s negotiators are trying to address problems that had been addressed by the nuclear deal that Trump unilaterally abandoned in 2018, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). That agreement imposed clear limits, prohibitions and intrusive IAEA inspection requirements on Iran that were to last for 10 or 15 years, with some being permanent. For example, the JCPOA barred any production of any highly enriched uranium by Iran through 2030.

Iran insists a new agreement to address concerns about its nuclear program is within reach. If each side refrains from insisting on maximalist positions, that may be possible.

At a minimum, Iran must finally allow a resumption of more intrusive IAEA inspections, and fully account for its nuclear material and centrifuge manufacturing sites. Given that Iran’s major enrichment plants and uranium conversion facilities are damaged or appear idle, Tehran should also agree to temporarily and voluntarily suspend uranium enrichment for a period of several years, which is not necessary for Iran’s current domestic nuclear energy needs. Iran reportedly made an offer that is closer to this formula on Feb. 26.

For his part, Trump should not insist on broad limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles, which leaders in Tehran see as essential to deter external attacks. Washington can and should extend targeted sanctions relief, recognize Iran’s right to pursue the peaceful use of nuclear energy as outlined in Article IV of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and agree that in the future Iran can engage in limited centrifuge manufacturing and low-level uranium enrichment as part of a new regional nuclear fuel consortium with other Gulf states.

Trump should also extend guarantees that there will be no further U.S. attacks and, given the threat of unilateral Israeli aggression, pledge that he will not provide U.S. support for Israeli attacks on any Iranian nuclear or military facilities so long as Iran and its regional proxies refrain from attacking Israel, the IAEA is allowed to do its work, and Iran meets its safeguards obligations.

The resumption of U.S.-Iranian nuclear talks is a critical opportunity to reduce proliferation risks and avert what would be an illegal, deadly, and counterproductive regional war.