Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is the most important player in decisions on Iran’s nuclear program. For anything that Iran’s new president-elect, Hassan Rouhani, may propose to the outside world to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis, we won’t know for a fact whether Rouhani will be acting upon specific instructions from Khamenei. But …
Crowdsourcing Scud Launches
by | 2013-07-03 | 5 Comments
Sonni Efron has an article online at the TheAtlantic.com detailing the efforts of a Syrian activist to crowd-source missile launches [link fixed] against civilians in Aleppo and other opposition-held areas: [Dishad] Othman’s SCUD early warning system began operating on Wednesday. It is called Aymta, which means “when” in Arabic. Users can opt to receive alerts by …
Disarmament Winners and Losers
by | 2013-07-01 | 33 Comments
Reader Chris Camp, who comments under the name Cthippo, sent me an essay last week that I wanted to share with readers. Camp asks which states would be winners (or losers) if some sorcerer used a magic wand make all the world’s nuclear weapons disappear. As I read through and found myself agreeing here, disagreeing …
Second Term Blues
by | 2013-07-01 | 9 Comments
There have been only two Democratic Presidents since FDR who have been elected to serve two full terms. On nuclear issues, Barack Obama seems to be following in the footsteps of Bill Clinton. President Clinton achieved considerable success in reducing nuclear dangers during his first term, but lost momentum during his second. In his first …
