Reacting to last week’s Qom revelation, Andreas Persbo wrote that National technical means combined with human intelligence, however, seems to have averted the worst outcome, the establishment of a parallel fuel cycle. (See: Parallel Fuel Cycles, September 25, 2009.) So was the Qom facility was intended as part of a larger system, isolated from the …
The Kataev Archive
by | 2009-09-30 | 3 Comments
Holy cow. When I read Pavel Podvig’s excellent “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s,” I was struck at his sourcing: The main source of these data is the archival collection of Vitalii Kataev at the Hoover Institution Archive at Stanford University: Vitalii Leonidovich Kataev, papers, 10 boxes. The collection …
Cut and Cover
by | 2009-09-30 | 19 Comments
On the left, a GoogleEarth image dating from March 2005 showing the uncovered facilities existing at that time (before being buried); on the right, the probable main centrifuge hall as it appeared in late September 2009, also before being buried. At the risk of stating the obvious, there are no tunnels at the Qom site; …
Rethinking US Nuclear Posture
by | 2009-09-29 | 1 Comment
Mike Gerson (the one from CNA, not the Bush speechwriter) and I are giving talks on the Nuclear Posture Review at the Carnegie Endowment today — he on declaratory posture; me on extended deterrence. James Acton is moderating. It will be nice to take a break from attempting to moderate the comment trolls. Here are …
