Paul Carroll sends along a very thoughtful note (also published on the Ploughshares website) about the perils of waiting for North Korea’s apparent leadership process to play out. Don’t get to clever, Paul suggests, because you just might miss your best chance and not even know it: Transition or Transfer in North Korea? Asia watchers …
North Korea’s Carrot and Stick
by | 2010-10-05 | 4 Comments
Last week, David Albright and Paul Brannan of ISIS published a DigitalGlobe image showing new construction in the area of the demolished cooling tower of the 5 MW(e) reactor at Yongbyon. They were circumspect in their analysis, concluding only that “the actual purpose of this excavation activity cannot be determined from the image and bears …
Cold War Secrets
by | 2010-10-05 | 13 Comments
Not all, Cold War secrets have been revealed. The time has come at last to reveal one more. During a particularly nasty chapter of the Cold War in the 1980s, an amazing couple from New Hampshire, Jim and Carol O’Rourke, took it upon themselves to set up a Track II channel for up-and-comers in the …
Over-Enrichment at Natanz
by | 2010-10-04 | 12 Comments
Deep in the last IAEA safeguards report on Iran (GOV/2010/46, para. 7) is a mention of a curious finding at the Fuel Enrichment Plant (FEP), the larger of Iran’s two centrifuge enrichment facilities at Natanz. FEP isn’t supposed to enrich uranium past 5% U-235 content, but inspectors’ routine environmental samples have for the first time …
