I attended an interesting meeting today that Flynt Leverett hosted with two high-powered Turkish officials from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) — Ibrahim Kalin, chief foreign policy adviser to the Prime Minister, and a Suat Kiniklioglu, a Turkish MP who serves as deputy chairman of foreign affairs for the party. It was a …
Bosworth in Pyongyang
by | 2009-12-08 | 4 Comments
[Maybe you had to be there.] After a day-long stopover in Seoul, U.S. special envoy Stephen Bosworth is now in Pyongyang for the first time in his official capacity. It’s a three-day trip, so it looks pretty serious. Is there much chance that he’ll win North Korea’s reaffirmation of the denuclearization commitments it accepted in …
Command & Control in South Asia
by | 2009-12-07 | 2 Comments
The twain between my ACW posts and my day job at the Stimson Center have not met — until now. The following analysis, a trimmed-down version of which has been posted on Stimson’s website, seems way too wonkish to be confined there. On November 28, 2009 the Pakistani media reported that President Asif Ali Zardari …
Estimating SWU with Expert Opinion
by | 2009-12-06 | 23 Comments
So what is the separative power of the IR-1 centrifuge, really? We’ve touched on this question before, sometimes in connection with Natanz breakout scenarios. Lately, it’s come up in connection with the Qom facility, a.k.a. Fordow (see: Iran: Compliance in Defiance?, December 1, 2009). But simple answers are not forthcoming. If you follow this blog, …
