Writing on ACW 2008–2025 · 162 posts
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The Iran-IAEA LEU-for-TRR-fuel deal is running out of time, President Obama says. And as the LEU–TRR deal goes, it’s pretty safe to say, so goes the West’s preferred strategy of engagement and de-escalation of tensions. This is just the latest…
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Thomas Fingar, the former Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, had some rather interesting things to say recently about the (in)famous November 2007 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. You might remember that the NIE, whose Key Judgments were released to…
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Lost in the hubbub over North Korea’s claim to have completed reprocessing of its remaining spent fuel rods is one small point: this isn’t news. It’s a reminder only. Here’s what the KCNA news service has just stated: In this…
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Secretary of State Clinton’s remarks from Morocco yesterday seemed to represent a harder line on the LEU–TRR deal than the United States had taken previously: “Acceptance fully of this proposal which we have put forth and which we are unified…
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From the 2010 wall calendar, “Scenic Missile Tests of Iran.” (Just kidding.) Confusion surrounds the names used for ballistic missiles in Iran, where designators seem to come and go unpredictably. But a just smidgen of linguistic information may clarify the…
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It can be surprising just how strongly people tend to feel about nuclear weapons declaratory policy. The entire idea of declaratory policy, after all, comes down to words. It controls no instruments, makes no irrevocable commitments, and lacks the binding…
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It’s been little remarked upon, but the United States appears to have a technical role, and not just a political one, in the agreement with Iran reached “in principle” in Geneva on October 1. There’s no text in open circulation,…
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I do hope I won’t have to eat these words in a few hours, but here goes: Don’t be distracted by the Sturm und Drang from Vienna. Despite Tuesday’s events — which converted multilateral negotiations into some combination of bilaterals…
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It’s a red-letter day: David Ignatius of the Washington Post has been reading Mark Hibbs in Nucleonics Week. He [i.e., Ignatius] concludes that molybdenum impurities could prevent Iran from enriching its LEU far beyond present levels. No further enrichment, no…
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A close-up view of the decommissioned Tokai Power Station — Japan’s first power reactor The usual answer to that question is the one that the North Koreans have supplied: gas-cooled, graphite-moderated reactors can be operated without enriched uranium or heavy…
