The blog-o-sphere is all worked up over an op-ed (in German) by Hans Rühle claiming that Iran funded Syria’s Al Kibar reactor. Central to Rühle’s stardom is the credence lent to his claims by his former position — he is the “former chief of the planning staff of the German Defense Ministry.” (He is the …
Bodman Letter to Gates on RRW
by | 2009-03-23 | 7 Comments
I came across an interesting letter (full text) from then-Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman to Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. The letter was Bodman’s parting shot — he cc’d then Energy Secretary-designate Steven Chu — on nuclear weapons modernization. (Chu was sworn in on January 21, 2009.) Bodman warns that the lack of enthusiasm for …
T-Baum on RRW
by | 2009-03-20 | 7 Comments
I’ve been working for weeks on a couple of posts, including one on FOGBANK. As a result, I’ve neglected a bunch important things including the fantastic article that Benn Tannenbaum and Francis Slakey (aka T-Baum and Slake) wrote about the aging of the stockpile in IEEE Spectrum. The bottom line is that we don’t need …
Iran's Equinox: FMP Comes Online
by | 2009-03-20 | 18 Comments
Cross-posted from TotalWonkerr.com. As visitors to the White House website know, today is the Zoroastrian new year, No Ruz (“New Day”), which is celebrated by pretty much all Iranians. It marks the vernal equinox, the transition between seasons. According to the Iranian Students News Agency, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI) plans to mark …
