Avatar photoIraq Nuclear Scientist Publishes Memoir

Jafar Dia Jafar (right), a high ranking former Iraqi nuclear scientist, has written a Norwegian-language memoir, Oppdraget (The Assignment) about his years in the Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Jafar confirms something that other Iraqi nuclear weapons scientists have suggested: “the quest for nuclear weapons began with Israeli warplanes bombing the legal Iraqi nuclear reactor at …

Avatar photoDinner from Hell

We scholars of international relations often emphasize the role that large, impersonal forces play in driving policy. The habit is as old as recorded history, running all the way back to Thucydides, who said of the Peloponnesian War: The real cause I consider to be the one which was formally most kept out of sight. …

Avatar photoQDR May Examine Nuclear Missions, Strike Options Against China

The 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. Inside Defense reports that the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) may, for the first time, evaluate nuclear as well as conventional forces. Ryan Henry, principal deputy under secretary of defense for policy, would not confirm that strategic forces would be included, noting that the terms of reference (ToR) memo that …

Avatar photoMore on the EU-Iran Negotiation Summary

AP describes one paragraph of a confidential summary of EU-Iran negotions this way: But the summary of the last meeting on the issue involving representatives of France, Britain, Germany and Iran says Tehran acknowledged what Washington and its allies have argued all along that the oil-rich country has no need for nuclear energy. Here is …