Years · 2009

November 2009

30 posts

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Sy Hersh and Pakistan’s Nukes

Seymour Hersh deserves every one of many awards for investigative journalism he has received, but not for his reporting on Pakistan, where his sourcing is weak and his conclusions are suspect. Hersh’s latest, Defending the Arsenal, Can Pakistan’s nuclear weapons…

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Modified Limited Hangout @ Qom, MNSR

Now that the IAEA’s latest Iran and Syria reports have leaked out, the fun begins. The conversations last September in Tehran about the enrichment site at Qom must have been really something. Perhaps they went something like this: PRESIDENT: You…

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IAEA BoG Reports

Here they are: Iran and Syria. The Iran report has lots of details on Qom site (also known as Fordow Fuel Enrichment Plant), which the IAEA places at 20 km north of Qom.

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The Blue and Yellow Bomb (Part 1)

Jeffrey and I have something in common. I’m Swedish. In his youth, Jeffrey went to some Swedish school (Augustana College in Rock Island, Illinois). And we’ve both developed an interest in nuclear weapons issues. But what do Madonna and nuclear…

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Fuel Swaps v Escrow: Compromise Possible?

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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Votkinsk Portal Monitoring Facility

Credit: Otto Stokes Within the community, we have been going back and forth on whether the United States is still present at Russia’s Votkinsk Machine Building Plant. As far as I can tell, the US still staffs the Votkinsk Portal…

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When Arms Control Gets Way Too Personal

What has been the worst display of wounded egotism, dressed up as a difference over arms control policy? On my scorecard, it’s a tie between Teller vs. Oppenheimer and Nitze vs. Warnke. J. Robert Oppenheimer always had qualms about nuclear…

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More on the BUP

I am giving a talk today at AAAS on the Bandar Abbas Uranium Production (BUP) Center, which was the subject of Jonathan Tirone’s story last week. The talk is by invitation, but I simply plan to walk through the images…

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Fingar on the 2007 Iran NIE

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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ISODARCO XXIII

Andalo. Not only a beautiful ski resort in the Italian Alps but home to the ISODARCO Winter School. This year’s school is on ‘The Road to Nuclear Zero and Arms Control’. It’ll be an opportunity for an informal but in-depth…