One of the big stories over the next few days, and, indeed, for the rest of this month, is going to be the (largely) Western drive to bring Iran's nuclear program to heel. Along with the war in Afghanistan, this issue could come to define Barack Obama's presidency, especially if Iran does weaponize or if the United States or Israel decides to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.

Last week, the IAEA teed up a fresh round of debate by circulating a new report outlining Iran's technical progress since June 5 and its compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and various U.N. resolutions. You can read it here, though don't ask me to explain it all...

Commenting on the report, nuke wonk Jeffrey Lewis says, "Iran is not slowing its nuclear program, ok?" He then goes on to analyze Iran's recent expansion of centrifuges, which are grouped in "cascades" to enrich uranium.

"I continue to believe that Iran will install between 3-5 cascades a month for the next five years, barring some external intervention, until Natanz houses its complete set of 54,000 centrifuges," he adds.

The big news making headlines in Israel is the report's mention of "possible military dimensions" to Iran's nuclear program, a murky subject the agency wants Tehran to clarify. This is important because to be in compliance with the NPT, Iran has to prove that its nuclear activities are peaceful. Israel's Foreign Ministry is hammering the IAEA for allegedly withholding information on the militarization issue, which presumably means that Israel has supplied the IAEA with intelligence that the agency didn't discuss in the report.

(It also sounds like the IAEA is trying to get member states to let the agency share some of the documents they've given it directly with Iran, so that the Islamic Republic can respond to whatever it is being accused of.)

Asked Friday about the report, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said, "As the IAEA's report makes clear, the recent limited and overdue steps Iran has taken fall well short of Iran's obligations and do not constitute the full and comprehensive cooperation required of Iran."

"Absent Iranian compliance with its international nuclear obligations and full transparency with the IAEA," he continued, "the international community cannot have confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of the Iran's nuclear program."

On Wednesday, the P5+1, the permanent five members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany, are going to meet to talk over the report and figure out what to do next. Then, IAEA member countries will hold their annual meeting in Vienna, where Iran will top the agenda. Meanwhile, Obama has said that unless Iran takes him up on his offer of talks ahead of the U.N. General Assembly's opening session next month, he'll push for new sanctions that his secretary of state has said should be "crippling."

Then what? Stay tuned.

Photo by the Office of the Presidency of the Islamic Republic of Iran via Getty Images

The Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun has a  long and at times contentious interview with Morris Jeppson, one of the two surviving members of the crew of the Enola Gay. 

Jeppson isn't a big fan of Barack Obama generally, particularly his views on nuclear disarmament. Interestingly, Jeppson, who was in charge of arming the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, seems to feel that the time has come for Japan to have nuclear weapons of its own:

So I've always endorsed Japan's position of let's not go for nuclear weapons. But I don't believe that anymore. [...]

The only thing that worked before now is deterrent. So if Obama gets us out of nuclear weapons, and Japan is sitting there with no nuclear weapons, Japan is at the mercy of North Korea and China, we are defenseless against North Korea and China and Iran. We already have a weapon and I trust they'll keep them under control. But Japan is heavily into the nuclear power industry, more than the biggest nuclear power in the whole world. When you generate nuclear power, I'm kind of on the fringe of that. You manufacture plutonium -- that's the Nagasaki-type bomb. So that's why North Korea wants it, Iran wants it, China has it, Pakistan has it. I think Japan with super technology could very, very quickly produce nuclear weapons and be prepared to use them if they had to.

Now that's what I am going to ask you -- that's my point of view for where Japan should go. Now I need to ask you -- how do you think Japan would be over the long range, of being a protectorate of nuclear weaponry? Would it not use it unless there is a good reason to use it? For me, I'd like to be reassured that Japan is a democracy and a world power and will protect what it has -- nuclear power and nuclear weapons if it can get nuclear weapons. Getting nuclear weapons would hold off North Korea for sure -- that would stop North Korea from ever using them -- that would involve Japan. I think it might be a deterrent to hold back China.

The whole three-part interview is fascinating reading, particularly the interaction between Jeppson and the Japanese interviewer over whether Obama should offer an apology when he visits Hiroshima in November.

Photo: Wikipedia

Apropos of John Bolton's op-ed in today's Wall Street Journal, asking "What If Israel Strikes Iran?" here's a persuasive prebuttal from CFR analyst Steven Cook:

Every three weeks or so, within a few hours of one Israeli leader or another making a statement about the threat of Iran's nuclear program, my phone starts lighting up. It's never the press, which has become inured to Israel's periodic warnings. Rather, it is nervous hedge fund managers and securities research analysts calling to find out if this is "it." Are the Israelis on the verge of attacking Iran's nuclear facilities? No doubt, should Israel launch airstrikes against the Bushehr reactor or the uranium enrichment facilities at Natanz, it would be a market-shaking event. "No," I assure the financial whiz kids on the other end of the line, explaining that "if Israel's leaders were going to strike, they would not be broadcasting it to the world." The phone will then go quiet for a few weeks until the next time Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Benjamin Netanyahu, an Israeli security consultant, or my cousin Ari warns that time is running out. 

Read the rest.

*Free subscription to ForeignPolicy.com for the reader who gets this reference.

The AP has a story, noted in this morning's Brief, that quotes Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman as saying that Israel does not "intend to bomb Iran." He adds, "nobody will solve their problems with our hands."

This comment is taken by the headline editor to mean: "Israel not going to bomb Iran: Foreign Minister."

But I don't think Lieberman said that at all. He said that Israel does not intend to bomb Iran, leaving open the possibility that Israel might find itself forced to do so by the international community's inaction.

Now, I am about 55 percent persuaded that Israel won't risk a rupture with the United States by bombing, and that Iran in any case won't go beyond a latent nuclear weapons capability, á la Japan. But I certainly don't think Israel has decided to close off the airstrikes option just yet.

Choe Sang-hun, reporting for the New York Times, speculates that North Korea's nuclear test surprised the United States and South Korea:

The test appeared to have caught South Korea and the United States off guard, and the news hit just as South Korea’s government and people were mourning the suicide of former President Roh Moo-hyun.

If officials were caught off guard, it wasn't because they weren't expecting a nuclear test. News organizations had been reporting on preparations for a possible test for weeks, citing South Korean officials. Then, of course, there is the fact that North Korea had also been warning it would do exactly this since April.

North Korea may, however, have pulled off its test earlier than expected. Experts mistakenly thought it would take weeks to make all the necessary preparations, as was the case when North Korea conducted a less-successful test in 2006.

"North Korea seems to want a speedy game," one senior South Korean official told Yonghap. "It seems to be seeking to create a condition favorable to itself as early as possible, rather than dragging its feet."

“The suddenness of the nuclear test shows North Korea following military, not diplomatic logic,” Hideshi Takesada, a Korea expert at Japan’s National Institute for Defense Studies, told Bloomberg.

Kenneth Quinones, a former North Korea director at the U.S. State Department, thinks the launch means that the generals are running this show.

"They’ve convinced Kim to bulk up their military capabilities in advance of any diplomacy,” Quinones told Bloomberg. “But they’re painting themselves into a corner."

I'm not sure what Quinones means by that, but from past experience, the North Koreans have to be thinking that their position going into any talks is going to be stronger now. Their first nuclear test in 2006 was most likely a dud, but it brought the Bush administration to the table. Imagine the goodies they'll get now that, as it appears, their device actually works?

Interestingly, South Korean presidential spokesman Lee Dong-kwan said that North Korea may have even notified the United States ahead of time, and a "diplomatic source in Beijing" told reporters that China was given a head's up as well.

Also noteworthy: North Korea fired off three surface-to-air missiles after its test, two of which were reportedly a warning to U.S. spy planes to back off, according to Yonhap.

UPDATE: One administration official tells Fox News, "They didn't give us any warning whatsoever" about the test. But Reuters reports that U.S. officials say they were given an hour's notice.

In this weekend's Washington Post, columnist George Will penned an Op-Ed on Russia's deteriorating demographics. The main target of the article was President Obama's offer to renew nuclear arms cuts -after all, why should the world's only superpower negotiate with a nation that may not even exist in fifty years? Will may or may not be right in this assertion, but he is certainly correct about Russia's population crisis.

It's amazing to consider that despite its gargantuan size, today's Russia is only two thirds the size of the Russian empire in 1866 (which included Alaska, Finland, most of Poland, parts of China, and all of the former Soviet Union). So in reality, Russia has been shrinking for over 100 years. Still, since the destruction of the Golden Horde in the 15th century, the Russian heartland has been predominately Slavic. The immigration of workers from Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and the Caucasus will soon change this. Not only do these new immigrants have bigger and more stable families, but while the Slavic population of Russia suffers from drug and alcohol abuse, the predominately Muslim workers manage to largely avoid this scourge. FP covered this trend in 2007 and two years later there are no signs of reversal.

Equally important is what's happening in Russia's remote Far East (RFE). Since 1989 the population of the RFE, an area almost the size of all of China, declined by over 15% and now stands at 6.5 million. Meanwhile, just across the Amur river is China's Heilongjiang province with a population of 108 million. Anatoly Karlin is right in arguing that this disparity doesn't mean that conflict is inevitable, but the recent gang fights in Vladivostok, maritime disputes, and the proliferation of Chinese Triads throughout the RFE, have brought ethnic tensions to a boiling point. Rife corruption and Moscow's disregard of the region doesn't help either.

Moscow and Beijing ostensibly promote their strategic partnership, but both sides are very aware of the geopolitical situation. While Dmitry Medvedev warns of Russia losing the entire Far East, the lebensraum-esque term "Great Northern Virgin Land" has appeared in Chinese Communist Party literature.

The long-term trends are not in Moscow's favor, but it's highly unlikely that Kremlin will go down without a fight. Wouldn't it better for everyone if this fight didn't involve nukes?

Ukraine says its security service says it caught three persons attempting to sell radioactive material, which they said was plutonium-239, for $10 million. A government spokesperson said the material could possibly have been used in a "dirty-bomb" attack, and that it was of Soviet origin.

Relatedly -- Jeffrey Lewis and Meri Lugo discuss the draw-down of nuclear weaponry in an excellent FP Argument post today. 

As North Korea moves toward its planned "satellite launch" in early April, Japan isn't the only country, that looks like it wants to be prepared to shoot the missile down. Noah Schachtman writes:

In what appears to be a response, the U.S. Navy is keeping a pair of destroyers in the East Sea, following joint exercises with the South Koreans. At least one of those ships, the USS John S. McCain, is capable of shooting down ballistic missiles.

The North Korean space launch vehicle, dubbed the Unha-2, is supposedly derived from the TaepoDong 2 (TD-2) missile. Pyongyang has been developing the thing since the 90s, but has never successfully shot one off. If that's right, it means the North Korean launcher is substantially bigger than the one Iran used. Tehran's Safir-2 has a mass of 26 tons. The Union of Concerned Scientists' David Wright thinks the TD-2 is more like 80 tons, more than three times the mass. (MIT's Geoffrey Forden comes up with a similar figure.)

If those estimates are on target, it means that a successful North Korean missile test could be much more destabilizing than the Iranian launch. Forden calculates it could send a "1000 kilogram warhead over the pole a distance of almost 12,000 kilometers," or 7,200 miles. The satellite the Iranians put in orbit was only 27 kilograms. And, of course, Kim Jong-Il already has nukes; the mullahs don't, yet.

In a hush-hush deal, the British government just sold its last shares in the country's nuclear weapons plant to a U.S. company. California-based Jacobs Engineering Group paid an undisclosed amount for the government's one-third stake in the only plant in the UK that manufactures nuclear weapons, including Trident warheads. Lockheed Martin owns another third of the plant, and a British business services company the remaining third.

The sale wasn't announced to Parliament, leaving some MPs to speculate that the government sold the plant at below market rates to get some much-needed funds for the Treasury. Critically, it means that all production, design, and decommissioning of nuclear weapons in the UK is privately owned, with U.S. companies having a majority stake.

Photo: Getty Images

The International Atomic Energy Agency's probe into the alleged Syrian nuclear reactor, which Israel bombed last year, has been hobbled by a mysterious lack of satellite footage. IAEA chief Mohamed ElBaradei referred to the absence of commercial satellite footage of the site after Israel's attack last year as "baffling."

Adding to the intrigue, the Associated Press quotes unnamed diplomats as claiming that IAEA officials are considering the possibility that Syria, or another country with an interest in a coverup, bought the rights to all the commercial satellite photos. Others have proposed more mundane explanations for the lack of satellite imagery, pointing out that the countries involved gave out very few details after the attack, making it difficult for companies to find the site immediately after the bombing.

Coupled with last month's IAEA report, which stated that the building that was bombed shared similarities with a type of nuclear reactor design and that inspectors had found trace amounts of uranium particles there, the site in northern Syria continues to raise more questions than answers. Certainly, there are already enough doubts to delay Syria's request for U.N. aid in planning a commercial nuclear reactor. And if definitive proof emerges that Syria was covertly building a nuclear plant, it could derail the much-anticipated American-Syrian rapprochement.

Photo: SAMUEL KUBANI/AFP/Getty Images

President-elect Obama's plans to engage the Syrian regime may have just hit an early snag. Diplomats have revealed that samples taken from the site in Syria which Israel bombed in September 2007 contained traces of processed uranium. This evidence, along with uranium traces found by the International Atomic Energy Agency in oil or air samples, lends credence to the hypothesis that a covert nuclear reactor was being constructed in northern Syria, a thesis that some analysts had been skeptical of after the Israeli attack.

Syria's diplomats are going to have a hard time convincing the Obama administration that Syria can be a force for stability in the Middle East if conclusive proof emerges that they were developing a nuclear program on the sly. The regime seems to have already been spooked by the latest revelations. Syrian Ambassador Mohammad Badi Khattab, his country's chief delegate to the IAEA, allegedly suggested that Syria will not allow further IAEA visits "under any circumstances," citing concerns that an IAEA probe could pass on Syria's military secrets to Israel.

The IAEA is annoyed that diplomats leaked its findings before the release of its formal report. Given the timing of the leak, the diplomats may have been specifically aiming to disrupt any rapprochement between Syria and the new Obama administration. But of course, just because they may have ulterior political motives doesn't mean they are wrong about Syria's nuclear ambitions.

HR 7801 – approving the U.S.-India peaceful nuclear cooperation agreement

·        H.R. 7801 was approved by the House of Representatives on September 27 by a vote of 298-117, with one member voting present.  The Senate Committee on Foreign Relations approved identical legislation (S. 3548) on September 23 by a vote of 19-2.

·        The bill gives final approval to the agreement with India on peaceful nuclear cooperation.  In the “Hyde Act” (P.L. 109-401), Congress set certain terms and conditions for the agreement, in order to permit the President to submit the agreement under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954. 

·        The Senate approved the Hyde Act by a vote of 85-12 on November 16, 2006 (the conference report was approved by voice vote on December 9, 2006).  Under the Hyde Act and the Atomic Energy Act, the agreement cannot enter into force unless Congress approves the agreement.

·        The Hyde Act required the President to make several determinations to Congress in submitting the agreement.  These included –

o       that India has provided the United States and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) a credible plan to separate its civil and military nuclear facilities;

o       that India and the IAEA have concluded all legal steps required prior to signature of an IAEA safeguards agreement;

o       that India and the IAEA are making substantial progress toward concluding an Additional Protocol to the safeguards agreement, based on the Model Additional Protocol; and

o       that the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), an informal organization consisting of 44 countries, has decided by consensus to permit supply to India of nuclear items covered by the NSG guidelines.

·        The President made the required determinations on September 10, 2008, a few days after the NSG, meeting in Vienna, gave approval to nuclear commerce with India.

·        H.R. 7081 was developed on a bipartisan basis by the House Committee on Foreign Affairs and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and in consultation with the Department of State.  The Bush Administration supports H.R. 7081.

·        The bill waives the 30-day consultation requirement in the Atomic Energy Act of 1954, because this 30 day clock is not expected to elapse until mid-October.

·        The bill also improves congressional oversight, and sets forth markers regarding implementation of the agreement and U.S. non-proliferation policy, specifically:

1.      It makes clear that all aspects of the Atomic Energy Act and the Hyde Act other than those relating to how the agreement is approved will continue to apply to the U.S.-India agreement.

2.      It reaffirms that approval of the agreement is based on U.S. interpretations of its terms.  This relates to several issues, including the U.S. view that fuel assurances provided by President Bush are a political, rather than legally binding, commitment.

3.      It requires the President to certify that approving the agreement is consistent with the U.S. obligation under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty not to assist or encourage India to produce nuclear weapons. 

4.      Before any licenses can be issued by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission under the agreement, the bill requires that India’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA enter into force, and that India file a declaration of civilian nuclear facilities under the safeguards agreement that is not “materially inconsistent” with the separation plan that India issued in 2006. 

5.      The bill requires prompt notification to Congress if India diverges from its separation plan in implementing its safeguards agreement.

6.      The bill establishes a procedure for congressional review of any subsequent arrangement under the agreement that would allow India to reprocess spent nuclear fuel that was derived from U.S.-supplied reactor fuel or produced with U.S.-supplied equipment.  Under current law (Section 131 of the Atomic Energy Act of 1954), such arrangements take effect 15 days after notice thereof is published in the Federal Register. 

7.      The bill enhances general oversight of nuclear cooperation agreements by requiring that the President keep the Foreign Relations Committee “fully and currently informed” of any initiative or negotiations on new or amended civilian nuclear cooperation agreements.

8.      The bill requires the President to certify that it is U.S. policy to work in the Nuclear Suppliers Group to achieve further restrictions on transfers of enrichment and reprocessing equipment or technology.

9.      The bill also directs the President to seek international agreement on procedures to guard against the diversion of heavy water from civilian to military programs, and requires the President to keep Congress regularly apprised of how that effort is proceeding. 

Pakistan: just the kind of stable, responsible country we'd like to see expanding its ability to produce nuclear weapons. The Institute for Science and International Security reports:

 ISIS has obtained commercial satellite imagery from DigitalGlobe taken on September 3, 2008, May 18, 2008 and February 9, 2008 of the Khushab plutonium production reactor site in Pakistan. The imagery shows further construction of the second and third plutonium production reactors at Khushab (Figure 1), and that construction of the second reactor may be nearing completion. The images show a clearly visible row of cooling towers, typically built in the later phase of reactor construction (Figure 3). Given this state of construction, the second reactor could start in a year.

Once completed, these reactors will increase several-fold Pakistan’s ability to make weapon-grade plutonium for nuclear weapons. The wider implication of Pakistan increasing its plutonium production capacity must not be overlooked—there is a real risk that it will exacerbate an India-Pakistan nuclear arms race and increase tensions more broadly between the two.

Minot Air Force Base is not having a good news year. Last year, cruise missiles armed with nuclear weapons left the base by accident; this March, the Air Force discovered it had inadvertently shipped fuse components for nuclear weapons to Taiwan in 2006; and in May, Minot's 5th Bomb Wing failed a security test. Now we have news of another mishap, this time involving classified material at Minot.

In a story that more properly belongs in the beginning of a bad made-for-TV drama, a missile crew in possession of a nuclear launch code "component," while waiting for transport in a crew rest area, fell asleep.

An initial report simply said that "a nuclear launch code was lost or misplaced," but the Air Force later clarified that the codes in possession of the sleeping crewmembers had been superseded by a new set and were no longer usable. In addition, according to the press release, the codes were locked up with a combination known only to the crew and the entire facility was secured throughout the incident by Air Force Security Forces.

Now, it is true that the codes were probably never in danger of being compromised. It would also be understandable in almost any other circumstance that the crew would fall asleep while waiting for transport; generally, missile crews consist of three people who rotate watches over a three-day period. These rotations are likely tiring, and indeed the crews have been complaining about the length of the new rotations (for more about life as a "missileer," check out this fascinating article in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists). And the punishment for the people at fault looks to be swift.

More worrisome, though, is the pattern incidents like these are beginning to reveal. The "loose nukes" incident last year resulted from a whole cascade of minor security slip-ups just like this one, and where one such incident is reported many more are likely present. The prestige of working with U.S. nuclear forces continues to drop -- how do we make sure the ultimate weapons stay secure if things continue to get worse?