Arms Control Wonk

These days, the dignified art of arms control verification is both lauded and lambasted in the conference rooms of UN Headquarters. Having spent a week in New York, I feel fairly ready to tell a tale of mild schizophrenia in States’ attitudes towards confidence-building through transparency and verification. The CTBT and its verification regime has …

From the Dept. of Two Cents. With all due respect to Geoff’s take, the latest Iranian position in the endless saga of the Zombie Fuel Swap is not, properly speaking, a confidence-building measure; it’s a confidence-demolition measure. Except for one very important feature, the new Iranian stance is quite close to previous ideas discussed by …

If confidence building measures (CBM) were people, the TRR refueling deal would be a college student partying it up in Cancun, complete with all the risky behavior usually associated with that lifestyle. Why didn’t the West simply say, “Thanks, but no thanks” when Iran started to try to change the terms of the deal? Instead, …