December 2023
By Kelsey Davenport

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) strongly condemned Iran’s decision to reject experienced agency inspectors and continued failure to fulfill its safeguards obligations. Despite these concerns, the agency’s Board of Governors took no action against Iran during its quarterly meeting in November.

States are permitted to reject IAEA inspectors, but IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told the board that Iran’s actions are “unprecedented and contrary to the cooperation that is required” to effectively implement a comprehensive safeguards agreement.

In a Nov. 22 press conference following his statement to the board, Grossi said that the inspectors that Iran de-designated in September include some of the agency’s most experienced experts on uranium enrichment. He said that excluding these inspectors is a “very serious blow” to the agency’s efforts to implement safeguards in Iran. The IAEA and Iran are discussing reinstating the inspectors, Grossi said.

The head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Mohammad Eslami, defended Iran’s decision to reject the inspectors. He said in October that the inspectors in question had “politically oriented agendas.”

Grossi also reported that implementation of an agreement reached on March 4 between the agency and Iran on addressing outstanding safeguards issues and voluntarily enhancing monitoring has “come to a standstill.” He said that there has been no progress on additional transparency since May and no further cooperation on the agency’s investigation into previously undeclared nuclear activities. (See ACT, June 2023.)

According to an IAEA report on Nov. 17, Eslami told Grossi during a September meeting not to expect progress on the March 4 agreement until sanctions are lifted. The report did not specify which sanctions, but Eslami likely was referring to U.S. and European sanctions that should have been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

Although Iran is not legally obligated to provide further monitoring, it is required to meet its safeguards obligations, which include addressing IAEA questions about uranium detected at two locations not declared to the agency. (See ACT, July/August 2021.) The undeclared uranium activities took place prior to 2003, according to samples taken by the agency, but the IAEA is still obligated to determine if the material involved is accounted for.

The IAEA also is looking into a discrepancy in uranium accountancy at Iran’s conversion facility. Iran’s initial responses regarding the discrepancy did not address the agency’s questions, but the IAEA noted in a Nov. 17 report that it is reviewing additional information provided by Iran on Nov. 8.

Grossi reminded Iran that all safeguards issues “need to be resolved” for the agency “to be in a position to provide assurance that Iran’s nuclear [program] is exclusively peaceful.”

Laura Holgate, U.S. ambassador to the IAEA, told the board on Nov. 22 that Iran’s “inadequate cooperation with the agency overall is unacceptable.” She said that Iran “should take actions that build international confidence, rather than undermine the [a]gency’s essential assurances.”

Holgate said that “Iran argues it is treated unfairly…[but the] reality remains that Iran continues to single itself out through its actions.”

In a Nov. 13 report, the IAEA provided updates on Iran’s uranium-enrichment activities. It said that Iran continued to produce uranium enriched to 60 percent uranium-235 at a reduced rate. The stockpile of uranium enriched to that level grew by nearly seven kilograms, to 128 kilograms. That quantity is about enough material for three nuclear weapons if it were enriched to weapons grade, or 90 percent-enriched U-235.

The IAEA report noted that the number of centrifuges Iran used to enrich uranium remained unchanged. Since the last quarterly report was finalized in August, Iran did install one additional cascade of IR-4 centrifuges at its Natanz uranium-enrichment facility, but did not begin operating it.

There were no changes to the number of centrifuge cascades at the Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant, despite Iran’s commitment in November 2022 to increase the number of cascades from eight to 16.

Holgate said Iran’s nuclear expansion has “no credible peaceful purpose” and called on Tehran to halt production of 60 percent-enriched U-235.

The United States also warned Iran against transferring ballistic missiles to Russia. Tehran has support the Russian invasion of Ukraine by transferring drones to Moscow in violation of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and restricted Iran’s ability to import and export certain missiles, drones, and related technologies. Those UN restrictions expired in October.

The Biden administration expressed concern in a Nov. 21 statement that Iran is considering providing Russia with short-range ballistic missiles for use in Ukraine.

France, Germany, and the United Kingdom have warned Iran that it could face a snapback of UN Security Council sanctions, including the missile restrictions that expired in October, if it provides Russia with ballistic missiles. Iran has threatened to withdraw from the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty if UN sanctions are reimposed.

A provision in Resolution 2231 allows for the reimposition of UN sanctions on Iran. The reimposition cannot be vetoed.

December 2023
By Kelsey Davenport

Top defense officials from 18 countries condemned North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs and pledged to respond jointly to any attack that threatens South Korea’s security.

In a Nov. 14 statement, the states said that they “will be united upon any renewal of hostilities or armed attack on the Korean peninsula” that challenges UN principles and the security of South Korea.

The 18 states were South Korea and 17 of the 22 member states that contribute military personnel to the UN Command, the multilateral forces established by the UN Security Council in 1950 to restore peace on the Korean peninsula. The UN Command continues to monitor the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea and enforce the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War.

South Korea is not a member of the UN Command, and the Nov. 14 meeting in Seoul was the first high-level defense meeting between UN Command members and South Korea. South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol prioritized holding this meeting as part of his strategy to bolster South Korea’s defense against North Korea.

In a speech opening the meeting, South Korean Defense Minister Shin Won-sik said that if “North Korea again commits an illegal invasion of the South,” it would be a “serious act of betrayal” against the United Nations and “inevitably lead to strong punishment” by the UN Command and the international community.

He said that any country that assists North Korea in an attack “will face the same punishment.”

According to the joint statement, the officials also discussed “the utility and necessity of dialogue” for achieving peace on the Korean peninsula and the important role that all UN member states must play in implementing Security Council resolutions targeting North Korea’s illicit nuclear and missile programs.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin participated in the meeting and said in a keynote speech that the UN Command “helps maintain deterrence by assuring that we can sustain our forces” in the event of a conflict.

Austin noted that since the UN Command was created, there have been “major changes in the regional security environment,” including North Korea’s nuclear, missile, and cybercapabilities, and that the “shared commitment to the defense” of South Korea remains vital. He also expressed concern that Russia and China are helping North Korea evade sanctions and expand its military capabilities.

The North Korean Foreign Ministry called for the dissolution of the UN Command and referred to the body as
a “U.S.-led multinational war tool” that endangers the “security in the Asia-Pacific region.”

In a Nov. 13 statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the Foreign Ministry said the meeting proves that the United States plans to “occupy the whole Korean peninsula by force of arms” and is creating the conditions “for igniting the second Korean war.”

Prior to the UN Command meeting, Austin met with Shin to discuss the South Korean-U.S. alliance. The U.S. Defense Department said in a Nov. 13 press release that Austin and Shin agreed on three key priorities for the future: deterring strategic attacks, modernizing South Korean and U.S. capabilities to strengthen the “combined defense architecture of the alliance,” and strengthening security cooperation with partners in the region.

Austin and Shin also updated the 2013 Tailored Deterrence Strategy, which outlines U.S. extended nuclear deterrence commitments to South Korea.

According to Shin, the revisions are necessary to take into account North Korea’s advances over the past decade. He said the document outlines how South Korea will provide conventional assistance to support U.S. nuclear operations and states that the United States will use its full range of conventional and nuclear capabilities to defend Seoul from a nuclear attack by Pyongyang.

In a press conference following the meeting, Austin also said the United States will use its “full range of nuclear, conventional, and missile defense capabilities” to defend South Korea and that the recent deployment of U.S. strategic assets to the region demonstrates the “ironclad” U.S. commitment to South Korea. He said the United States is now “more forward deployed and more capable to respond.”

The North Korean National Defense Ministry said in a Nov. 16 statement in KCNA that the new deterrence strategy is “aimed at a preemptive nuclear strike” on North Korea and accused the United States of aggravating tensions by bringing strategic assets to the region.

Austin and Shin also met virtually with Japanese Defense Minister Mioru Kihara. Shin said the three countries discussed a previous commitment to share information about North Korean missile launches in real time and agreed to activate the mechanism to enable the information sharing in December.

The launch of the mechanism will enhance the “detection and assessment capabilities” of all three countries, according to a South Korean Defense Ministry statement.

Austin’s visit followed a joint U.S.-South Korean military exercise on Oct. 25 aimed at responding to “Hamas-style surprise artillery attacks,” referring to the Oct. 7 terrorist attack where Hamas fighters crossed into Israel and killed an estimated 1,200 people, mostly civilians.

The three-day drill was aimed at detecting a surprise attack and preemptively striking North Korea’s long-range artillery, which can target Seoul.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also traveled to Seoul in November. After meeting South Korean Foreign Minister Park Jin, Blinken said that the military relationship between Moscow and Pyongyang is “growing and dangerous” and that Washington will continue to track and expose military transfers between the two countries. In October, the Biden administration accused North Korea of shipping military equipment and munitions to Russia. (See ACT, November 2023.)

In a Nov. 11 statement in KCNA, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said that the United States should become “accustomed to the new reality” of North Korean-Russian relations, which “will steadily grow stronger.”

The statement said that if the United States is concerned about the relationship, it should “abandon the hostile policy toward the two countries” and “withdraw political provocations, military threats and strategic pressure” directed at North Korea and Russia.

One area where North Korea expressed interest in Russian assistance involves satellite launches. After failed launches in May and August, North Korea attempted to put a military reconnaissance satellite into orbit on Nov. 21 using the Chollima-1 space launch vehicle.

KCNA described the satellite launch as a success in a Nov. 22 statement and said that North Korea now has “eyes overlooking a long distance.”

The South Korean Joint Chiefs of Staff confirmed that the satellite entered orbit in a Nov. 22 press release but said it is too soon to say if it is functional.

It is unclear the extent to which Russia assisted North Korea with that launch.

December 2023
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

China and the United States held long-awaited talks on nuclear arms control on Nov. 6, the first such meeting in nearly in five years.

Although the meeting in Washington produced no specific result and no specific date for follow-on talks was announced, U.S. officials said the discussion, which occurred amid rising nuclear and geopolitical tensions, was worthwhile simply because it took place.

In separate statements issued shortly after the meeting, the Chinese Foreign Ministry and the U.S. State Department described the discussion between Sun Xiaobo, Chinese director-general of arms control, and Mallory Stewart, U.S. assistant secretary of state for arms control, verification, and compliance, as candid, in-depth, and constructive.

The State Department said the issues under discussion “related to arms control and nonproliferation as part of ongoing efforts to maintain open lines of communication and responsibly manage the [bilateral] relationship.”

The United States, it said, “emphasized the importance of increased [Chinese] nuclear transparency and substantive engagement on practical measures to manage and reduce strategic risks across multiple domains, including nuclear and outer space,” and “the need to promote stability, help avert an unconstrained arms race, and manage competition so that it does not veer into conflict.”

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the officials discussed the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, cooperation among the five nuclear-weapon states, nuclear security, nonproliferation and export control, compliance with the Biological Weapons Convention and the Chemical Weapons Convention, and outer space security and regular arms control.

According to Reuters, a senior U.S. official said on Nov. 7, “I wouldn't say we learned anything new from them or that they delved into a great amount of detail in terms of their own nuclear force, their buildup and whether or not their policy or doctrine could be shifting over time.”

The meeting occurred as Beijing and Washington sought to reengage after a prolonged estrangement and to find a way to manage their way forward as major competitors in an unstable world. The last bilateral meeting on arms control issues took place in 2018 in Beijing when Chinese and U.S. officials “exchanged views” on their respective nuclear policies and on mutual cooperation on nonproliferation, among other topics, according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Among Washington’s major current concerns is Beijing’s nuclear weapons buildup and its refusal to allow more transparency into the country’s nuclear program.

In its latest report on China’s military power, the U.S. Defense Department estimated that China will possess in excess of 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030 and will accelerate development of its intercontinental-range ballistic missiles. (See ACT, November 2023.)

“Compared to the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army] nuclear modernization efforts a decade ago, current efforts dwarf previous attempts in both scale and complexity,” the report said. Regardless, China’s arsenal is dwarfed by those of Russia, which has 4,500 warheads, and the United States, which has roughly 3,800 warheads.

Biden has long called for China to join in arms control talks. The United States is ready to “engage China without preconditions, helping ensure that competition is managed and that competition does not veer into conflict,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told the Arms Control Association annual forum on June 2.

“It’s our hope that…Beijing will be willing to include substantive engagement on strategic nuclear issues, which
would benefit the security of both of our countries and the security of the entire world,” Sullivan said.

During the Stewart-Sun meeting, the U.S. delegation “highlighted the need to promote stability, help avert an unconstrained arms race, and manage competition so that it does not veer into conflict,” the State Department statement said. Beijing, on the other hand, “emphasized that China and the United States should carry out dialogue and cooperation on the basis of mutual respect,” according to the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

China also “stressed that the two sides should adhere to the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security [in order to] realize lasting peace and universal security in the world.”

The meeting between Stewart and Sun preceded the Nov. 15 meeting in San Francisco between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden and followed other recent high-level bilateral engagements, including between the U.S. secretary of state and the U.S. national security advisor with their Chinese counterparts.

According to a readout by the White House on the Xi-Biden talks, the leaders agreed that their teams will follow-up their discussions in San Francisco with “continued high-level diplomacy and interactions, including visits in both directions and ongoing working-level consultations in key areas, including on…arms control and nonproliferation.”

The State Department reported that the two leaders agreed to resume military-to-military communications and to continue their bilateral engagements “in key areas, including on commercial, economic, financial, Asia-Pacific, arms control and nonproliferation, maritime, export control enforcement, policy-planning, agriculture, and disability issues.”

In 2014, Xi told U.S. President Barack Obama that “the Pacific Ocean is broad enough to accommodate the development of both China and the United States and our two countries to work together to contribute to security in Asia.” When he met Biden, Xi told him that “planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.”

December 2023
By Mohammedreza Giveh and Daryl G. Kimball

The United States and its NATO allies will suspend participation in the landmark Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, following Russia’s decision earlier this year to withdraw from the pact.

The North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s principal political decision-making body, announced the decision Nov. 7, stating that the allies “will suspend the operation of their obligations to the treaty” effective Dec. 7.

“We concluded that we should not continue to be bound by a treaty to which Russia is not bound,” the U.S. State Department said in a statement. “Suspension of CFE [Treaty] obligations will strengthen the [a]lliance’s deterrence and defense capacity by removing restrictions that impact planning, deployments, and exercises.”

In its announcement, the council said that, with this “decision fully supported by all NATO allies,” the alliance intends “to suspend the operation of the CFE Treaty for as long as necessary” as a consequence of Russia’s withdrawal.

The decision was described by U.S. officials as a “suspension of all legal obligations” under the treaty that allows individual states to comply with certain provisions, such as data exchanges, on a voluntary basis.

At some point, states that have suspended participation might resume full, legally binding participation. Since Nov. 7, several NATO states have issued national statements outlining the provisions that they will voluntarily continue to meet.

The treaty, often described as the cornerstone of European security, was signed in 1990 and put equal limits on the quantity of conventional weaponry deployed by NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. It eliminated the Soviet Union’s quantitative advantage in conventional weapons in Europe and more than 72,000 pieces of NATO and Soviet military equipment.

Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, its withdrawal from the CFE Treaty, and now the decision by NATO states to suspend participation in the accord puts the conventional arms control system in Europe, which was painstakingly built over decades, into near total collapse.

The United States withdrew from the 1990 Open Skies Treaty in 2020 over a compliance dispute, and Russia followed suit in 2021. (See ACT, July/August 2021.) This leaves the Vienna Document, a confidence-building mechanism by which participating states of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe agree to inspections and data exchanges to increase the transparency of their conventional forces, as the only remaining piece of the post-Cold War conventional arms control security architecture. U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told Arms Control Today that the United States intends fully to participate in and comply with the terms of the Vienna Document.

The dispute between Russia and NATO over the CFE Treaty dates back nearly a quarter century. After the breakup of the Warsaw Pact and the expansion of NATO in the 1990s, efforts were made to revise the agreement to replace the bloc-to-bloc and zonal limits with a system of national and territorial ceilings reflecting the new geopolitical reality.

During the 1999 treaty summit in Istanbul, treaty members signed an agreement known as the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty to update the CFE Treaty structure. Russia also pledged to withdraw its forces from Moldova and Georgia and to show restraint in its deployment near the Baltics. (See ACT, November 1999.)

But the United States and its allies did not ratify the adapted treaty, citing the ongoing deployment of Russian forces in Moldova and Georgia. Russia disagreed and complained that Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Slovenia were not subject to CFE Treaty limits. Moscow also wanted constraints eliminated on how many forces it could deploy on its southern and northern flanks. (See ACT, January/February 2008.)

In 2007, Moscow declared its “suspension” of the original treaty in reaction to the ongoing delay of the adapted treaty’s entry into force, thereby halting Russian implementation of treaty-related transparency commitments and conventional force ceilings.

In May 2023, Russia announced that it would withdraw formally from the pact in objection to NATO countries “fueling the Ukraine conflict” and embracing Finland and Sweden as new alliance members. (See ACT, June 2023.) The withdrawal will not have any impact on Russia’s military posture.

At a briefing on Nov. 8 for nongovernmental experts, U.S. officials reaffirmed public statements that the United States and its NATO allies remain committed to effective conventional arms control as a critical element of Euro-Atlantic security.

The officials also said that the allies will continue to pursue measures with responsible partners that aim to bolster stability and security in Europe by reducing risk, preventing misperceptions, avoiding conflicts, and building trust. They did not elaborate on specific measures that would be pursued.

December 2023
By Shannon Bugos

Russia said it will consider and respond to the formal written arms control proposal from the United States, which announced the proposal in June but did not transmit it until September.

The Wall Street Journal first reported on Nov. 1 that Washington sent Moscow a proposal in September. A senior Biden administration official told the newspaper that the United States awaits a response but hopes to initiate “a conversation on what a framework after New START could look like,” referring to the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expiring in 2026.

The proposal reflected U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan’s speech in June at the Arms Control Association annual meeting and “added additional details,” Pranay Vaddi, senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the U.S. National Security Council, told the Russian newspaper Kommersant on Nov. 3. (See ACT, July/August 2023.)

“Russia has not responded to it, but [Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei] Ryabkov said Russian authorities are working on a response,” Vaddi added.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has expressed skepticism that Russian-U.S. nuclear arms control talks would occur. “Dialogue is unequivocally necessary,” he said on Nov. 8. “But so far, the actual situation has not changed in any way.” Moscow repeatedly has stated that, as a precursor to any nuclear arms control talks, Washington must first withdraw support from Ukraine. (See ACT, April 2023.)

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin and other Russian officials have boasted about having what they called a superior Russian nuclear arsenal. No one “in their right mind would consider using nuclear weapons against Russia,” Putin said on Oct. 5.

A month later, Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev touted that, “[f]or the first time in the history of the existence of nuclear weapons, our country is ahead of its competitors in the [nuclear] domain.”

Russia launched its annual nuclear exercise, known as Grom, on Oct. 25, but it proved relatively scaled down compared to exercises in previous years.

“Putin led a training exercise that involved the forces and resources of the ground, sea, and air components of Russia’s nuclear deterrence forces,” the Kremlin said in a statement.

“The exercise included practical launches of ballistic and cruise missiles,” it added.

Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu said that this year’s exercise involved “delivering a massive nuclear strike by strategic offensive forces in response to an enemy nuclear strike.”

Meanwhile, NATO held its annual exercise for 10 days beginning Oct. 16. Known as Steadfast Noon, the exercise included the participation of 13 allied countries and more than 60 aircraft taking part in training flights over Italy, Croatia, and the Mediterranean Sea.

“The exercise involves fighter aircraft capable of carrying nuclear warheads, but does not involve any live bombs,” the alliance said in a statement on Oct. 13. “The exercise is not linked to current world events and the bulk of the training is held at least 1,000 kilometers from Russia’s borders.”

After the exercises ended, Shoigu warned of “the threat of a direct military clash between nuclear powers,” laying blame on the United States for its “steady escalation” of conflict and its destruction of “the foundations of international security and strategic stability,” including arms control agreements.

December 2023
By Kelsey Davenport

The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) warned that strikes against nuclear power plants must be avoided after an explosion damaged a nuclear power plant in Ukraine. Two days after the Ukrainian facility was targeted, Moscow alleged that Kyiv attempted a drone strike on a nuclear facility in Russia.

The Khmelnitsky Nuclear Power Plant is located in northeastern Ukraine and includes two reactors, one of which is shut down for maintenance. There was no direct strike on the nuclear power facility, but ancillary buildings at the site suffered damage from the shockwaves after Ukraine shot down two drones in the vicinity of the power plant.

IAEA Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a press release on Oct. 25 that the explosion shattered windows and temporarily cut power to external radiation monitors but did not affect nuclear safety and security at the facility.

Grossi said the incident underscores “the extremely precarious nuclear safety situation in Ukraine, which will continue as long as this tragic war goes on.” He warned that “hitting a nuclear power plant must be avoided at all costs.”

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that the attack on the Khmelnitsky plant shows Russia’s willingness to “target nuclear power stations and other critical facilities” and demonstrates that the “pressure on the terrorist state is insufficient.”

Zelenskyy also said that his country will “not only defend ourselves, but also respond” to attacks on critical infrastructure.

An IAEA press release on Oct. 27 noted that Russia reported drone activity in the vicinity of the Kursk Nuclear Power Plant in western Russia near the Ukrainian border. The Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement that it thwarted a Ukrainian attempt to carry out a “terrorist attack” against the nuclear facility that same day.

According to the ministry, none of the three drones caused any damage to the facility, but one exploded near a building used to store spent nuclear fuel.

Russia also said it shot down nine Ukrainian drones near the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant on Nov. 2.

Ukrainian nuclear energy company Energoatom continues to operate the Zaporizhzhia complex, but the site has been occupied by Russian forces since Moscow attacked it in violation of international law during the early days of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (See ACT, April 2022.)

In October, Grossi said that Zelenskyy “personally assured” him that Ukraine will not directly bomb or shell the Zaporizhzhia plant but that “other options are on the table” as Ukraine tries to retake the facility.

Maria Zakharova, spokesperson for the Russian Foreign Ministry, accused Ukraine of attempting to disrupt the IAEA’s rotation of staff stationed at Zaporizhzhia and of “carrying out criminal and irresponsible provocations.”

Despite the drone attack, the IAEA confirmed in a Nov. 3 statement that a new team of agency experts was able to rotate into the Zaporizhzhia complex.

Grossi said that the IAEA presence at the site is “vital for efforts to keep this major nuclear facility safe and protect people and the environment in Ukraine and beyond.”

Two of the six units are in hot shutdown to generate steam to heat the nearby city of Enerhodar, where many Zaporizhzhia plant personnel live, and to run the power plant. The other four units are in cold shutdown.

According to the IAEA statement, Russia is still blocking agency access to three of the reactor rooftops. Earlier this year, Zelenskyy accused Russia of planting explosives on the rooftops of the reactors. (See ACT, September 2023.)

An IAEA expert mission was able to access the roof of one of the reactors in October and could observe parts of the rooftops of two other reactors. Grossi said in an Oct. 11 statement that agency experts did not see any mines or explosives, but he emphasized the importance of visiting all six rooftops “one after the other.”

Grossi said the agency will continue to request access to assess adherence to the five principles for ensuring the safety and security of the Zaporizhzhia complex that he presented to the UN Security Council in May. The principles include refraining from using the power plant to store heavy weapons or station military personnel and refraining from attacks “of any kind from or against the plant.” (See ACT, July/August 2023.)

The IAEA also said its experts “need access to all six turbine halls together” and have only been granted partial access to three of the turbine halls.

Grossi said the agency will continue to maintain an expert presence at the Zaporizhzhia site “as long as it is necessary.”

December 2023
By Michael T. Klare

Responding to growing public anxiety over the potential dangers posed by the expanding use of artificial intelligence (AI), President Joe Biden issued an executive order on Oct. 30 intended to ensure the “safe, secure, and trustworthy” application of the powerful technology.

The order followed the public release of ChatGPT and other generative AI programs that are able to create text, images, and computer code comparable to that produced by humans. On occasion, these programs have suffused those materials with false and fabricated content, provoking widespread unease about their safety and reliability.

Other AI-enabled products used to identify possible criminal suspects also have been shown to produce inaccurate outcomes, raising concerns about racial and gender biases introduced when the systems were being “trained” by computer technicians.

To overcome such anxieties, the executive order mandates a wide variety of measures intended to bolster governmental oversight of the computer technology industry and to better protect workers, consumers, and minority groups against the misuse of AI. Most of these apply to domestic industries and institutions, but some have a significant bearing on national security and arms control.

One of the order’s most consequential measures is a requirement that major tech firms such as Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI notify the federal government when developing any “foundational model”—a complex AI program such as the one powering ChatGPT—“that poses a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health.” They must also share the results of all “red team” tests, programs designed to probe newly developed AI products and identify any hidden flaws or weaknesses, conducted by those firms.

Although the Oct. 30 order does not empower the government to block the commercialization of programs found to be deeply flawed in these tests, it might deter major institutional clients, including the U.S. Defense Department, from procuring such products, thereby prompting industry to place greater emphasis on safety and reliability.

Along similar lines, the order calls on the National Institute of Standards and Technology to establish rigorous standards for red-team testing of major AI programs before their release to the public. Compliance is not obligatory, but such standards are likely to be widely adopted within the industry. The same standards also will be applied by the departments of Energy and Homeland Security in overcoming potential AI system contributions to “chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and cybersecurity risks.”

More closely related to national security and arms control is a measure intended to prevent the use of AI in engineering dangerous biological materials, a significant concern for those who fear the utilization of AI in the production of new, more potent biological weapons. Under the Biden order, strong new standards will be established for biological synthesis screening, and any agency that conducts life science research will have to abide by them as a condition of future federal funding.

Several other key provisions bear on national security in one way or another, but in recognition of the issue’s complexity, the order defers full consideration of AI’s impact on these issues to a separate national security memorandum to be developed by the White House National Security Council staff in the coming months. Once completed, this document will dictate how the U.S. military and intelligence communities “use AI safely, ethically, and effectively in their missions.”

December 2023
By Michael T. Klare

The U.S. Defense Department has announced several initiatives designed to accelerate the military’s appropriation of private sector advances in artificial intelligence (AI) while still adhering to its commitments regarding the responsible and ethical utilization of these technologies.

Senior Pentagon officials are keen to exploit recent progress in AI in order to gain a combat advantage over China and Russia, considered the most capable potential U.S. adversaries.

But they recognize that the large language models used to power ChatGPT and other such generative AI programs have been found to produce false or misleading outcomes, termed “hallucinations” by computer experts, that make them unsuitable for battlefield use. Overcoming this technical challenge and allowing for the rapid utilization of the new technologies have become major Pentagon priorities. The Defense Department took one step toward that goal on Nov. 2 with the release of an updated “Data, Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence Adoption Strategy,” which will govern the military’s use of AI and related technology in the years ahead.

Pentagon officials said the strategy, which updates earlier versions from 2018 and 2020, is needed to take advantage of the enormous advances in AI achieved by private firms over the past few years while complying with the department’s stated principles on the safe, ethical use of AI.

“We’ve worked tirelessly for over a decade to be a global leader in the fast and responsible development and use of AI technologies in the military sphere,” Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks told a Nov. 2 briefing on the new strategy. Nevertheless, she said, “safety is critical because unsafe systems are ineffective systems.”

Although the new strategy claims to balance the two overarching objectives of speed and safety in utilizing the new technologies, the overwhelming emphasis is on speed. “The latest advancements in data, analytics, and artificial intelligence technologies enable leaders to make better decisions faster, from the boardroom to the battlefield,” the strategy states. “Therefore, accelerating the adoption of these technologies presents an unprecedented opportunity to equip leaders at all levels of the Department with the data they need.”

The emphasis on speed is undergirded by what appears to be an arms racing mindset. “[China] and other strategic competitors…have widely communicated their intentions to field AI for military advantage,” the strategy asserts. “Accelerating adoption of data, analytics, and AI technologies will enable enduring decision advantage, allowing [Defense Department] leaders to…deploy continuous advancements in technological capabilities to creatively address complex national security challenges in this decisive decade.”

To ensure that the U.S. military will continue to lead China and other competitors in applying AI to warfare, the updated strategy calls for the decentralization of AI product acquisition and utilization by defense agencies and the military services. Rather than having all decisions regarding the procurement of AI software be made by a central office in the Pentagon, they can now be made by designated officials at the command or agency level, as long as these officials abide by safety and ethical guidelines now being developed by a new Pentagon group called Task Force Lima.

Such decentralization will accelerate the military’s utilization of commercial advances in AI by allowing for local initiative and reducing the risk of bureaucratic inertia at the top, explained the Pentagon’s chief digital and AI officer, Craig Martell, at the Nov. 2 press briefing.

“Our view now,” he said, is to “let any component use whichever [AI program] pipeline they need, as long as they’re abiding by the patterns of behavior that we need them to abide by.”

But some senior Pentagon officials acknowledge that decentralization on this scale will diminish their ability to ensure that products acquired for military use meet the department’s standards for safety and ethics.

“Candidly, most commercially available systems enabled by large language models aren’t yet technically mature enough to comply with our ethical AI principles, which is required for responsible operational use,” Hicks said. But she insisted that they could be made compliant over time through rigorous testing, examination, and oversight.

Overall responsibility for ensuring compliance with the department’s safety and ethical standards has been assigned to Task Force Lima, a team of some 400 specialists working under Martell’s supervision.

The task force was established to “develop, evaluate, recommend, and monitor the implementation of generative AI technologies across [the Defense Department] to ensure the department is able to design, deploy, and use generative AI technologies responsibly and securely,” Hicks said on Aug. 2 when announcing its launch.

As she and other senior officials explained, the task force’s primary initial mission will be to formulate the guidelines within which the various military commands can employ commercial AI tools for military use.

Navy Capt. Manuel Xavier Lugo, the task force commander, said the project will examine various generative AI models “in order for us to find the actual areas of [potential] employment of the technology so that we can go ahead and then start writing specific frameworks and guardrails for those particular areas of employment.”

December 2023
By Sharon Squassoni

Before the violent attack by Hamas on Israel in the early morning hours of October 7, Israel and Saudi Arabia had been inching toward a bilateral agreement on normalizing relations, reportedly brokered by the United States.

For the Middle East, this could have had huge implications for peace, security, and cooperation akin to those of the 1978 Camp David Accords. The rumors began circulating in August that the United States was not just brokering the agreement but would provide security guarantees, access to military technology, and civilian nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia to sweeten the deal.¹ By September, Saudi officials announced a long-awaited step to upgrade implementation of their comprehensive nuclear safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This step, fully implementing comprehensive inspections, would be the bare minimum requirement for any significant nuclear cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United States.

The details of this deal are still murky, but press reports suggest that the United States was considering supplying the kingdom with a uranium-enrichment facility that the United States would control.² It is not clear whether the Saudis or the United States would own the facility or whether there was a plan to establish multilateral control over the plant.

The need for control in addition to monitoring the plant’s operation and output is essential because uranium-enrichment plants are inherently dual use: they can prepare uranium to fuel nuclear research and power reactors or to be used as the fissile material in an atomic bomb. In the case of Iran, its secret construction of uranium-enrichment facilities led the international community first to sanction the country, then to negotiate limits on its use of that technology. Saudi Arabia repeatedly has declared since 2011 that it would match Iran’s capabilities.

Nuclear cooperation often has been promised by the United States to allies for far fewer returns but never with such obviously high proliferation risks.³ First, the United States is offering nuclear latency to a country that basically has said “all bets are off” if a regional competitor, Iran, proliferates. Second, the United States is no closer to reining in Iran’s nuclear program, which increases the risk of a proliferation cascade. Third, a decision by the United States to build a uranium-enrichment plant in Saudi Arabia would undermine two important U.S. nonproliferation policies: a global policy not to spread uranium-enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing technology to any additional countries and a regional policy to maintain equal terms and conditions for nuclear cooperation with partners in the Middle East.

The war in Gaza has forced a postponement of the broader normalization agreement and, hopefully, the scheme of supplying Saudi Arabia with its own uranium-enrichment capabilities. It raises questions, however, about what exactly the United States is trying to achieve through its nuclear cooperation policies.

A Short History of Nuclear Cooperation

Even as radioactive fallout was settling over Nagasaki, U.S. President Harry S. Truman announced that the United States would seek the means “to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from the danger of total destruction.” In his radio address on August 9, 1945, he told Americans that he would instruct Congress “to cooperate to the end that [nuclear weapons] production and use would be controlled, and that its power be made an overwhelming influence towards world peace.”⁴

International control of nuclear weapons would never materialize, and neither would international control of peaceful nuclear energy. The 1946 Baruch Plan, proposed by the United States, allowed for the destruction of U.S. nuclear weapons only after strict control of all nuclear assets under an international Atomic Development Authority ensured there would be no other proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union and Poland, fearing a U.S. nuclear monopoly, abstained from voting on the plan in the UN Security Council, where it failed. As diplomacy faltered, nuclear weapons development continued. In just a few years, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom tested nuclear weapons.

Against this backdrop, the December 8, 1953, speech by U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower to the UN General Assembly that launched the “Atoms for Peace” program seems odd. Whether a Cold War propaganda effort or a genuine attempt to allay human fears by suggesting that peaceful uses of the atom could balance military destruction by the atom, the speech heralded a sea change in the U.S. approach. Shifting from strictly guarding all things nuclear, the United States began encouraging access to information, material, and nuclear technology for peaceful uses. Over the next four years, the United States overhauled its laws to allow nuclear cooperation, promoted a 1955 international conference in Geneva showcasing nuclear technology, and helped create the IAEA in 1957, more than 10 years before countries banded together to negotiate and sign the landmark nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that was designed to halt the nuclear arms race and the spread of nuclear weapons.⁵

For nuclear cooperation, the 1954 revision of the Atomic Energy Act was pivotal. It called for “a program of international cooperation to promote the common defense and security and to make available to cooperating nations the benefits of peaceful applications of atomic energy as widely as expanding technology and considerations of the common defense and security will permit.”⁶ The amended law allowed for both military nuclear cooperation and peaceful nuclear cooperation. On the peaceful side, the scope of activities included civilian reactor development, production of special nuclear material, and non-electricity industrial applications, as well as research and development. Within a little more than a decade, the United States signed 34 bilateral agreements, two-thirds of which were strictly for research.⁷

The United States sought to achieve specific foreign policy aims through nuclear cooperation. A 1955 National Security Council report declared that

U.S. determination to promote the peaceful uses of atomic energy, with calculated emphasis on a peaceful atomic power program abroad as well as at home, can generate free world respect and support for the constructive purposes of U.S. foreign policy. Such a program will strengthen American world leadership and disprove the communists’ propaganda charges that the U.S. is concerned solely with the destructive uses of the atom. Atomic energy, which has become the foremost symbol of man’s inventive capacities, can also become the symbol of a strong but peaceful and purposeful America.⁸

The report gave a nod to preventing the diversion of nonpeaceful uses of any fissile material provided to other countries, but required just two conditions: reprocessing in U.S. facilities or under international arrangements and “the adequate provision of production accounting, inspection, and other techniques” largely not yet devised.

The program promoting nuclear cooperation boldly envisioned a range of technical and financial assistance to foreign countries for research and power reactors, including the design of small reactors specifically for export, continued declassification of reactor technology, and transfer of material. In particular, it urged that cooperation agreements should “seek opportunities for maximum U.S. cooperation in those power reactor projects abroad which offer political and psychological advantages.”

It is fair to say that the United States overreached with the Atoms for Peace program. After sending more than 25 tons of highly enriched uranium overseas as fuel for research reactors, the United States spent millions of dollars and decades trying to get the material back because it belatedly realized that the material posed nuclear security risks. A few early projects, such as those in the Philippines and Brazil, were failures.⁹ The United States ceased to fund nuclear energy projects with foreign assistance funds by 1960, and although research reactors spread widely, nuclear power did not spread quickly.

For some states, however, assistance for research capabilities helped provide the initial basis of clandestine nuclear weapons programs. By the mid-1970s, it was apparent that nuclear trade needed to be restrained because several countries, including Brazil, Pakistan, and South Korea, were intent on acquiring sensitive nuclear fuel-cycle facilities from foreign suppliers. The United States and other key countries advocated for greater restraint in nuclear trade, establishing the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) and tightening national export controls.

In 1974 the Ford administration adopted the first restraint policy in the transfer of sensitive nuclear technology and facilities, prohibiting export of reprocessing and other nuclear technologies, firmly opposing reprocessing in South Korea and Taiwan, and negotiating agreements for cooperation with Egypt and Israel that contained “the strictest reprocessing provisions.”¹⁰ In his 1976 statement on nuclear policy, President Gerald Ford called on all nations to join the United States “in exercising maximum restraint in the transfer of reprocessing and enrichment technology and facilities by avoiding such sensitive exports or commitments for a period of at least three years.”¹¹

Almost 30 years later, President George W. Bush called for a similar moratorium in reaction to revelations about the black market transfers to North Korea, Iran, and Libya by Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan. A U.S. policy of restraint has endured despite the fact that the Atomic Energy Act itself does not prohibit sharing of enrichment and reprocessing technologies.

Nuclear Energy in the Middle East

Nuclear power has been slow to establish a firm footing in the Middle East. Early nuclear cooperation agreements signed by the United States with Israel, Iran, and Lebanon from 1955 to 1964 focused on nuclear research rather than nuclear power. In 1980 and 1981, the United States signed agreements with Morocco and Egypt, respectively.

Undoubtedly, Egypt’s 1979 peace treaty with Israel opened the door to other normalization steps by Egypt, including ratification of the NPT and adoption of a full-scope safeguards agreement as the treaty requires. These developments were especially timely because the passage of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act in 1978 moved the goalposts for Egypt by requiring these steps before nuclear cooperation with the United States was permissible.¹² Today, after many delays, Egypt is just beginning construction of two Russian nuclear power reactors.

The history of countries in the Middle East with clandestine nuclear activities (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Libya, and Syria) is well known, and regional rivalries amplify concerns. In 2007 the Gulf Cooperation Council states explored the possibility of a regional nuclear power effort, but by 2009, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia each decided to develop nuclear energy on their own. At the time, Iran’s nuclear activities were a significant concern. Whereas the UAE, in launching its nuclear energy program, understood the need to allay international concerns about nuclear proliferation in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia seems impervious. In contrast to the UAE’s public renunciation of uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, Saudi Arabia has declared explicitly that it would match Iran’s capabilities, including nuclear weapons.

The Saudis have been relative latecomers to nuclear energy or at least slow to implement their plans, compared especially to the UAE. After establishing the King Abdullah City for Atomic and Renewable Energy in Riyadh in 2010, Saudi officials announced their intention to construct 16 nuclear reactors to generate 20 percent of the kingdom’s electricity by 2032. In 2017, the Saudi National Atomic Energy Project declared that its civil nuclear program would feature large nuclear power plants, small modular reactors, and fuel cycle activities. Initially, Saudi fuel-cycle activities were limited to assessing uranium and thorium reserves and yellowcake production with Jordan.¹³

In January 2023, Saudi Energy Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman told a local mining conference that Riyadh wants “the entire nuclear fuel cycle, which involves the production of yellowcake, low-enriched uranium, and the manufacturing of nuclear fuel both for our national use and of course for export.”¹⁴ At the same time, the Saudis are only slowly moving ahead with small modular reactor projects and now estimate they will procure just two large nuclear power reactors. Their interest in fuel cycle capabilities seems disproportionate to a scaled-back nuclear energy program.

Saudi Arabia signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States in 2008 as a prelude to a nuclear cooperation agreement. The text stated the Saudi “intent to rely on existing international markets for nuclear fuel services as an alternative to the pursuit of enrichment and reprocessing.”¹⁵ Since then, official negotiations with the United States have been sporadic. In 2020, U.S. officials revealed that the United States had asked specifically for Saudi Arabia to sign an additional protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, which allows for more intrusive IAEA inspections of nuclear facilities, and for restrictions on enrichment and reprocessing.

In testimony last spring, U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration Administrator Jill Hruby told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the United States has asked the Saudis “to be consistent with nonproliferation standards that we have for every other country that we work with.”¹⁶ Meanwhile, between 2011 and 2016 the Saudis signed arrangements with France, South Korea, Argentina, Russia, China, and Kazakhstan. Some of these projects have already begun training programs for Saudi nuclear workers.

Providing a U.S.-owned and likely U.S.-operated enrichment plant on Saudi soil might be politically more palatable than a national Saudi plant, especially since the size of the Saudi nuclear program does not justify domestic enrichment. NSG guidelines state that suppliers “should encourage recipients to accept, as an alternative to national plants, supplier involvement and/or other appropriate multinational participation in resulting facilities.”¹⁷ For actual transfers, NSG guidelines require the recipient to bring into force a comprehensive nuclear safeguards agreement and an additional protocol, which the United States requires as a matter of policy.

A fallback option for Saudi Arabia would be to purchase equity in a foreign enrichment company such as Orano, but this may be unattractive because of Iran’s historically negative experience investing in Eurodif. The Saudis likely would not want to risk a similar fate.

In addition to political hurdles, the technical hurdles of building a new centrifuge plant in Saudi Arabia could be considerable. The case of URENCO’s plant in Eunice, New Mexico, may be instructive. URENCO, an international fuel-cycle service supplier, did not transfer its technology to the United States and required specific procedures to guard against technology transfer. That said, the status of the United States as a nuclear-weapon state made certain processes less difficult, such as hiring U.S. workers with requisite security clearances in the construction phase.

Nonetheless, it still took 10 years between the licensing at the outset of the project and the operation of the first cascades in New Mexico. If the United States were to build a plant for the Saudis, it likely would have to use U.S. centrifuge technology. Yet, Centrus, the U.S. supplier of nuclear fuel and services for the nuclear power industry, currently is operating only a demonstration cascade in Piketon, Ohio, under a U.S. government contract and has not scaled its new technology for the commercial market.¹⁸

A plan to build a multinational facility, perhaps with the cooperation of URENCO, might overcome some of the hesitance among NSG members, but the experience of multinational fuel-cycle facilities is not entirely promising. For example, Eurochemie, the multinational reprocessing plant in Belgium, made no effort to compartmentalize knowledge among its international workforce, and URENCO allowed each country involved in the project (Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom) to develop its own technology before choosing one.

Finally, URENCO Netherlands was the source of much technology for the Khan nuclear black market network. Although there have been many proposals, including from governmental experts and the IAEA, to multilateralize fuel cycle facilities with the objective of diminishing national control of sensitive fuel-cycle capabilities, these usually assume that the benefits will outweigh the risks. The historical evidence, however, is mixed.

Possible Outcomes

The United States has been courting Saudi officials for 15 years on negotiating a nuclear cooperation agreement, with little to show for it. Few nuclear deals have taken so much time to negotiate as this one, and it is still far from finished. Some agreements, such as the first civil nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and China, were relatively quick to negotiate but then languished before Congress because of proliferation concerns. Others, such as the U.S. agreement with South Korea, were extended provisionally to provide more time to negotiate delicate details where interests diverged.

To conclude a nuclear cooperation agreement, the United States almost certainly will need Saudi Arabia to sign an additional protocol to its comprehensive safeguards agreement. The kingdom may chafe at this because Iran does not have an additional protocol in force. Other past requests of Riyadh by Washington, such as forswearing enrichment, may be particularly difficult to achieve in the current environment if press reports are accurate. It also carries a risk: If Saudi Arabia forswears enrichment in an agreement with the United States and then procures the capability from other states, the U.S. agreement likely would be terminated. Sanctions likely would follow.

A decision to allow Saudi Arabia to go forward with uranium enrichment, on the other hand, would overturn decades of U.S. policy. The United States has never sold uranium-enrichment or spent fuel reprocessing plants to any country and has led the campaign within the nuclear nonproliferation regime for almost 50 years to prevent such sales globally. Moreover, the United States rarely grants other countries its consent to enrich or reprocess U.S.-origin nuclear material even if they use their own capabilities.

The United States has been adamant about seeking assurances from partners, particularly in the Middle East, that they will not enrich or reprocess, notably in a 1981 nuclear cooperation agreement with Egypt and a 2009 agreement with the UAE. In return, Washington promised in those agreements that it would not grant more favorable terms to other partners in the region. If the United States provided such capabilities to Saudi Arabia, it would face pressure from the UAE and, in the future, Jordan and likely South Korea to provide the same.

Some may argue that if the United States does not supply Saudi Arabia with enrichment capabilities, China or Russia might be willing to supply them. This ignores the fact that NSG guidelines state a preference for avoiding the spread of national capabilities and that the NSG operates by consensus. Russia, which supplies Iran with nuclear fuel, may not desire to supply Saudi Arabia with enrichment capabilities.

Even without a uranium-enrichment plant on offer, approval of a nuclear cooperation agreement with Saudi Arabia could be contentious in the United States, given the kingdom’s poor human rights record and its frequent statements regarding its intentions to pursue nuclear weapons. It will likely be tough for members of Congress to ignore the brutal dismemberment in 2018 of U.S. journalist Jamal Khashoggi, which the CIA blamed on Riyadh. Although the bar is set rather high for Congress to disapprove a nuclear cooperation agreement that has been finalized by a U.S. president, there are still ways for determined lawmakers to delay, derail, and block implementation of the deal until policy goals are satisfied.

Nuclear cooperation agreements, like nuclear energy, carry inherent risks. As vehicles for transferring technology, material, and equipment that can serve peaceful and military uses, such agreements must balance the competing objectives of facilitating engagement without increasing proliferation risk. Their use in cementing strategic relationships often can come into conflict with their basic purpose of delineating the substance and methods of collaboration. The more important the relationship is in terms of commercial, political, and security needs, the greater the pressure there is to adjust the balance of obligations toward engagement. The U.S. government at times has used nuclear cooperation agreements to create strategic alliances, as with India, or to bolster existing alliances, as with Japan and South Korea. With Saudi Arabia, nuclear cooperation seems oriented toward fending off rising competition from China and Russia.

Risks tend to rise when special deals for special allies undermine principled stands. In the last 20 years, two major U.S. principles have been breached: a ban on nuclear trade with countries that had not signed the NPT and a refusal to share nuclear-fueled submarines beyond cooperation with the UK. The United States rationalized both of these exceptions—nuclear cooperation with India and the sale of U.S. nuclear-powered submarines to Australia—by arguing the need to compete strategically with China.

It may be that China’s role in brokering an agreement between Saudi Arabia and Iran on the war in Yemen helped push Israel and the United States to concoct this trilateral peace-for-arms-and-nuclear-latency deal with Saudi Arabia. It is no secret that China already has provided nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia and Iran in uranium processing in the form of uranium conversion and uranium hexafluoride production, respectively. More recently, China has proposed building nuclear power reactors for Saudi Arabia.¹⁹ The United States was able to dissuade China in the 1990s from making such sales, but since then, China has made nuclear exports a foreign policy objective, much as Russia has done.

What stands out especially about the Saudi nuclear deal is the willful refusal of U.S. officials to acknowledge the kingdom’s overt proliferation intentions. Saudi officials have insisted since 2011 that they will acquire whatever capabilities Iran has. This should be a red flag for any country providing nuclear technology purely for peaceful purposes. No deal should move forward until Saudi Arabia commits to using nuclear technology solely for peaceful purposes regardless of what Iran does.

The Camp David Accords led the way to a peace treaty between Israel and Egypt in 1979. The United States began negotiating with Egypt in 1979, but only after Egypt signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement in 1981 could the United States complete a nuclear cooperation agreement. Although Egypt had plans to reprocess spent fuel and had been courting Russia, it agreed to put those ambitions on hold and consented to language that specified it would not conduct reprocessing on its soil.

Egypt’s welcome into the nuclear fold took a few years and contained more restrictions than it perhaps desired. In the case of Saudi Arabia, the United States apparently was prepared to put the kingdom on the fast track toward a latent nuclear capability, matching or perhaps exceeding Iran’s enrichment capabilities. Even if the United States owned and operated the enrichment plant, there would be no guarantees against Saudi nationalization in a time of crisis.

Saudi Arabia faces no legal barriers to building a uranium-enrichment facility on its soil if it is prepared to accept full-scope safeguards, but it does face policy barriers. No matter what, the kingdom will have to adopt an additional protocol to its comprehensive safeguards agreement if it would like to receive enrichment technology and equipment from a country that is an NSG member. Outside the NSG, North Korea and Pakistan are potential suppliers, but this scenario is unlikely. Clandestine help likely would be detected, and transparent help would place Pakistani and North Korean technology under monitoring, something that neither supplier would welcome.

It might be possible for Saudi Arabia to receive enrichment technology from other NSG suppliers, but Saudi Arabia, like the UAE, probably has judged that U.S. approval is helpful to allay proliferation concerns, effectively conferring a “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval. The kingdom does not particularly desire U.S. nuclear reactor sales. In fact, because U.S. dominance in nuclear technology exports has been on the decline for a very long time, U.S. influence is now largely sought as a means of enlisting the cooperation of other states that can build nuclear power plants abroad quickly and cheaply, such as South Korea.

U.S. officials should keep in mind, however, that the United States still is a leader in promoting nonproliferation, nuclear safety, and nuclear security standards and that deviating from key principles, such as opposing the spread of sensitive fuel-cycle capabilities, will only reduce its influence.

More broadly, the United States should embrace the possibility that normalization of relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia is possible without nuclearization and look to bestow other key benefits on the kingdom in exchange for a regional peace that would truly reflect democratic and sustainable development goals.

ENDNOTES

1. Dion Nissenbaum, “Saudis Agree With U.S. on Path to Normalize Kingdom’s Ties With Israel,” The Wall Street Journal, August 9, 2023.

2. Dion Nissenbaum and Dov Lieber, “Israel Mulls Accepting Saudi Nuclear Enrichment,” The Wall Street Journal, September 21, 2023.

3. It could be argued that the U.S. nuclear cooperation agreements with Russia, China, and India contain security risks, but because these are all states with nuclear weapons, they would not strictly constitute proliferation risks.

4. “August 9, 1945: Radio Report to the American People on the Potsdam Conference; Transcript,” Miller Center, n.d., https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-speeches/august-9-1945-radio-report-american-people-potsdam-conference (accessed November 21, 2023).

5. For an excellent description of the origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency, see Bertrand Goldschmidt, “The Origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” IAEA Bulletin, Vol. 19, No. 4 (August 1977).

6. 42 U.S.C. § 2013(e).

7. Ellen C. Collier, “United States Foreign Policy on Nuclear Energy,” Library of Congress Legislative Reference Service, May 6, 1968, p. LRS-7.

8. Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955-1957, Regulation of Armaments; Atomic Energy, Volume XX, ed. David S. Patterson (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1990), doc. 14 (NSC report no. 5507/2, dated March 12, 1955, on peaceful uses of atomic energy).

9. Maria Drogan, “The Atoms for Peace Program and the Third World,” Cahiers du monde russe, Vol. 60, Nos. 2-3 (2019): 441-460.

10. Nuclear Proliferation Factbook, S. Prt. 103-111, December 1994, pp. 48-62 (containing President Gerald Ford’s statement on nuclear policy, dated October 28, 1976).

11. Ibid., p. 54.

12. Sharon Squassoni, “Looking Back: The 1978 Nuclear Nonproliferation Act,” Arms Control Today, December 2008.

13. See Rashad Abuaish, “Saudi National Atomic Energy Project,” n.d., https://gnssn.iaea.org/NSNI/SMRP/Shared%20Documents/Workshop%2012-15%20December%202017/Saudi%20National%20Atomic%20Energy%20Project.pdf (presentation).

14. Simon Henderson and David Schenker, “Saudi Arabia’s Nuclear ‘Asks’: What Do They Want, What Might They Get?” PolicyWatch,
No. 3771 (August 15, 2023), https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/policy-analysis/saudi-arabias-nuclear-asks-what-do-they-want-what-might-they-get.

15. Christopher M. Blanchard and Paul K. Kerr, “Prospects for U.S.-Saudi Nuclear Energy Cooperation,” CRS In Focus, IF10799, September 28, 2023, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF10799.

16. Ibid.

17. International Atomic Energy Agency, “Communication Received From the Permanent Mission of Kazakhstan to the International Atomic Energy Agency Regarding Certain Member States’ Guidelines for the Export of Nuclear Material, Equipment and Technology,” INFCIRC/254/Rev14/Part 1, October 18, 2019 (containing “Guidelines for Nuclear Transfers”).

18. Office of Nuclear Energy, U.S. Department of Energy, “HALEU Demonstration Project
Starts Enrichment Operations in Ohio,”
October 11, 2023, https://www.energy.gov/ne/articles/haleu-demonstration-project-starts-enrichment-operations-ohio.

19. Summer Said, “Saudi Arabia Eyes Chinese Bid for Nuclear Plant,” The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2023.

Sharon Squassoni is a research professor at The George Washington University who previously held positions at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the State Department, and the Congressional Research Service.

December 2023
By Shizuka Kuramitsu

The U.S. Energy Department is expected to begin work in the coming months on a civilian research project that relies on weapons-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU), a fuel type that the United States and other countries have long sought to phase out for such energy uses.

The project has raised concerns among nuclear nonproliferation experts, who say it conflicts with long-standing U.S. nonproliferation efforts to minimize the civilian use of HEU, which can be converted more easily than low-enriched uranium (LEU) for use in nuclear weapons.

A group of 20 experts, including university professors, heads of think tanks, and former U.S. government officials, urged the Energy Department to reconsider alternatives to HEU. But department officials rejected such appeals in September and said the project is consistent with U.S. policy.

The U.S. plan is to have government-funded civilian research reactors use more than 600 kilograms of HEU in a six-month experiment to prepare the design of a new type of reactor. Critics say the fuel to be used would be enough for dozens of nuclear weapons.

The project got underway in December 2020, when the Energy Department selected a civilian energy company, Southern Co., to conduct the new research reactor experiment, called the Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment, at the Idaho National Laboratory. The experiment is aimed at advancing the new TerraPower LLC Molten Chloride Fast Reactor technology.

Specific project details were revealed in March. On Aug. 1, the Energy Department issued a draft assessment that analyzed the potential environmental impacts associated with the project and concluded there would be “no significant impact.”

A 30-day public comment period in August generated expressions of opposition to the use of HEU fuel, concern about the project’s “potential effects on the U.S. nuclear nonproliferation efforts,” and laments about “lack of consideration of environmental concerns.”

But after the Energy Department’s Office of Nuclear Energy considered the comments, it affirmed its original support for the project, according to a department document released on Oct. 19.

The 20 nuclear proliferation experts who wrote to the department on May 30, including Alan Kuperman, an associate professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Frank von Hippel, a Princeton University physicist, urged the department to suspend work on the project until it considers an alternative design and prepares an assessment of the nonproliferation impact.

If the department “were to proceed with an HEU-fueled [Molten Chloride Reactor Experiment], the damage to national security could exceed any potential benefit from this highly speculative energy technology,” the experts wrote.

They argued that using HEU “would be a convenience rather than a necessity” and that the “reactor does not require HEU fuel.” Converting the project design to LEU fuel would “increase significantly the size of the facility and the amount of fuel, thereby incurring a delay and increasing some costs. However…other costs for security could be reduced,” they added.

In a written response on Sept. 5, the department said this experiment “requires the use of higher enrichment fuel to keep the size of the experimental reactor small.”

It reaffirmed the U.S. policy “to refrain from the use of weapons-usable nuclear material in new civil reactors or for other civil purposes unless that use supports vital U.S. national purposes.” But it also argued that using HEU is fully consistent with this policy because “the experiment will provide vital data to the U.S. national interests assuring the safety and security of this advanced nuclear energy technology” and emphasized that the later commercial operation of the new reactor would not use HEU.

“This experiment does not pose a security or nonproliferation risk akin to the use of HEU in a civilian reactor that operates for decades, continually refuels, and requires production or transport of HEU across distances,” the department letter stated.

Since the 1970s, the United States has led international collaboration to reduce and minimize the use of HEU for civilian purposes. It has converted a total of 71 reactors domestically and abroad from use of HEU fuel to LEU fuel. Over five decades, such diplomatic and financial efforts have contributed to the nonproliferation regime by strengthening HEU minimization norms.