Handling PMD Issues and the Iran Nuclear Talks

On the radar: Stopping future work should take priority over past work; Bibi at UNGA; WIPP and the complex; and Leaks, sabotage and espionage during the Manhattan Project.

September 30, 2014 | Edited by Jacob Marx

PMD disclosure - “Some of the most recent efforts to derail a nuclear agreement with Iran have been focusing on what has come to be called ‘possible military dimensions,’ a term that refers to any work Iran has performed in the past on designing nuclear weapons,” writes Paul Pillar for The National Interest. A new Congressional sign-on letter from Edward Royce and Eliot Engel asserts PMD are a baseline “to assess Iran's current and future nuclear activity. That assertion lacks logic.”

--”The government of Iran will not issue during the next couple of months a public confession about past research or design work on nuclear weapons. This simply won't happen. So for the United States or its negotiating partners to make clearing up of all questions about PMD a prerequisite to signing an agreement would be a deal-killer. Most of those pushing the PMD issue hardest probably recognize it would be a deal-killer, which is why they are pushing it.”

--“The single biggest reason, from the standpoint of preventing an Iranian nuclear weapon, for completing the agreement under negotiation is to extend and expand the inspection arrangements—already, under the preliminary agreement, unprecedented in their scope and intensity...That is what is needed to be confident that the Iranian nuclear program remains peaceful—not some fessing up about something done in the distant past.” Read the full column here. http://bit.ly/1mLmJyo

No cartoon this year - “Iran’s nuclear weapons capability must be fully dismantled,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the UN General Assembly on Monday. “To defeat ISIS and leave Iran as a threshold nuclear power is to win the battle and lose the war.”

--“Mr. Netanyahu made only passing reference to the continuing nuclear negotiations between Iran and world powers. He was clearly distancing himself from Mr. Obama’s pursuit of a negotiated settlement, which would leave Iran with some form of nuclear production capacity. Tehran says its nuclear program is solely for peaceful purposes.” Somini Sengupta and David Sanger have the full story for The New York Times. http://nyti.ms/10jSWmv

Tweet - @Cirincione: The hysterical claims about Iran's ability to sprint to a bomb in weeks are finally calming down. This is a program we can constrain.

”Staggeringly poor” - Congress continues to push nuclear expansion despite accidents at weapons labs, reports Caty Enders of The Guardian. Earlier this month, the Department of Energy released a 7,000 point checklist for reopening Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), at Los Alamos Nuclear Laboratory (LANL). According to the Congressional Research Service, the plant is “the only plausible place for the slated nuclear expansion.”

--However, LANL has “a staggeringly poor history of safeguarding war-grade nuclear materials. A federal study last month found the nuclear facility unprepared to respond to emergencies; environmental violations abound; and a former employee was recently sentenced to a year in federal prison for trying to sell nuclear secrets to the Venezuelan government.” Read the full story here.http://bit.ly/1CDJN65

Good politics, bad policy - The gap between the negotiating positions of the P5+1 and Iran “has very little to do with nonproliferation...It’s the politics back home, in Washington and Tehran, that’s making [a deal] difficult,” says Jim Walsh in an interview with MIT News.. Read the full interview here. http://bit.ly/YN7o50

Soviet espionage - “In December 1945, four months after atomic bombs brought an end to World War II, the United States Army published a secret report on security surrounding the Manhattan Project, the vast government effort that developed them. Finally declassified last month by the Department of Energy, the report concludes that the project was “more drastically guarded than any other highly secret war development.”

--“From 1943 through 1945, investigators cataloged 1,500 leaks, 200 acts of sabotage and 100 confirmed cases of espionage,” ranging from the serious to the peculiar. But the biggest problem was a “huge blind spot on the government’s part: a lack of awareness that a wartime ally, the Soviet Union, was bent on stealing Manhattan Project secrets and developing its own nuclear bombs.” Sam Roberts has the full story for The New York Times. Read the full story here. http://nyti.ms/1tdNN6o

Quick Hits:

--“U.S. & Russia Re-Arming for a New Cold War, ” writes Bill Sweetman for The Daily Beast. http://thebea.st/10kmMae

--“U.S. Nuclear Concerns Sidelined by Plutonium Plans,” reports Jonathan Tirone for Bloomberg.http://bloom.bg/1nFAtLF

--“We Should Rally Against Nuclear Weapons Like We Do Climate Change,” writes Michael Møller, Acting Director General of United Nations Office at Geneva, in the Huffington Post. http://huff.to/1rqqB9m

Events:

--“The Iranian Nuclear Talks: A View from London.” Hosted by the European and Eurasian Studies department at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. September 30, 6:00pm - 8:00pm. Located in Room 806 - The Rome Building. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/10e5gVj

--"Nuclear Stability in South Asia," Oct. 1, Noon - 2:00pm, at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Suite 1225, 1400 K St. NW, Washington. Featuring Sumit Ganguly, Indiana University; Gaurav Kampani, University of Tulsa; David Karl, Asia Strategy Initiative; Col. David Smith, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory; Stephen Schwartz, Monterey Institute of International Studies. Sponsored by the Center on American and Global Security at Indiana University Bloomington. RSVP Here. http://bit.ly/1odeg2m

-- “The UK Strategic Nuclear Deterrent and the Chevaline Program: An Overview,” featuring Matthew Jones, Professor of International History at the London School of Economics. Oct. 3, 12:00pm - 2:00pm, hosted by the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1qyEuvE

--Public meeting for the Commission to Review the Effectiveness of the National Energy Laboratories. Oct. 6, 10:00am - 3:30pm in Alexandria, VA. Details here. http://1.usa.gov/1udhOIV

--“Unmaking the Bomb: A Fissile Material Approach to Nuclear Disarmament and Nonproliferation,” featuring Zia Mian, Alexander Glaser and George Perkovich. October 7, 3:30 - 5:00pm at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Details here. http://ceip.org/1vpfWMd

--“Preventing Proliferation and Advancing Nuclear Disarmament.” Annual Meeting of the Arms Control Association. Oct. 20, 9:30am - 2:30pm at the Carnegie Endowment. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1uGHZnS