Historic Iran Nuclear Deal is Still Possible

July 1, 2014 | Edited by Lauren Mladenka and Geoff Wilson

Kerry on Iran - “July 20, the deadline to negotiate a comprehensive agreement on Iran’s nuclear program, is fast approaching,” writes Secretary of State John Kerry for The Washington Post. “All along, these negotiations have been about a choice for Iran’s leaders. They can agree to the steps necessary to assure the world that their country’s nuclear program will be exclusively peaceful and not be used to build a weapon, or they can squander a historic opportunity to end Iran’s economic and diplomatic isolation and improve the lives of their people. Diplomacy and leadership are marked by tough calls. This shouldn’t be one of them.”

--“The United States and our partners have demonstrated to Iran how serious we are. During the negotiations to reach the Joint Plan of Action, we extended our hand to the Iranians and met with them directly to understand what Iran wanted from its nuclear program. Along with our international partners, we helped chart a path that would allow Iran to have a domestic program for exclusively peaceful purposes. We proved that we were flexible in offering financial relief.”

--“Our negotiators will be working constantly in Vienna between now and July 20. There may be pressure to put more time on the clock. But no extension is possible unless all sides agree, and the United States and our partners will not consent to an extension merely to drag out negotiations. Iran must show a genuine willingness to respond to the international community’s legitimate concerns in the time that remains. In this troubled world, the chance does not often arise to reach an agreement peacefully that will meet the essential and publicly expressed needs of all sides, make the world safer, ease regional tensions and enable greater prosperity. We have such an opportunity, and a historic breakthrough is possible. It’s a matter of political will and proving intentions, not of capacity. It’s a matter of choices. Let us all choose wisely.” Full piece here. http://wapo.st/1pGHBYH

Tweet - @tparsi: .@JohnKerry is right. The #Irandeal shouldnt be a tough call. Because a good deal is better than no deal. @WinWithoutWar @MoveOn @Cirincione

Search continues - “As a July 20 deadline looms for a nuclear agreement between Iran and world powers, finding a way around an impasse over the size of Iran's program for producing nuclear fuel will be key to whether an accord can be struck,” reports Oren Dorrell for USA Today. “Negotiators will meet again Wednesday to seek an agreement that would remove crippling U.S. and international sanctions designed to force Iran to stop enriching uranium for suspected weapons.”

--“Iran has spent so many billions of dollars on the program, it is loath to give up on it now. Still, safeguards and monitoring can be put in place that would ensure Iran doesn't cheat, says Kelsey Davenport, an analyst at Arms Control Association, an advocacy group… George Perkovich, an analyst at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who recently returned from a five-day trip to Tehran and met with people knowledgeable about the negotiations, proposes that Iran reduce its capacity to enrich uranium for the time being. However, he says world powers should allow it to increase its enrichment program as it builds more nuclear plants.”

--“Another recent proposal, developed by a group of experts at Princeton University including Hossein Mousavian, a former spokesman for the Iranian negotiating team, would allow Iran to update its centrifuges with more efficient ones, and allow it to continue to enrich uranium at current levels until it needs more to fuel its reactors. That proposal would rely on strict international monitoring to ensure the world that Iran sticks to its pledge to keep the program peaceful.” Full report here. http://usat.ly/TLbcSa

Tweet - @nukes_of_hazard: New on the blog: @BrennanaMarie on what turmoil in Iraq might mean for nuclear diplomacy with Iran ow.ly/yEBnw

The Closer - “U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Bill Burns is expected to attend talks between Iran and major powers in Vienna this week that aim to strike a nuclear deal by July 20,” report Louis Charbonneau and Arshad Mohammed for Reuters. “The presence of Burns, who led secret negotiations between Iran and the United States that helped yield a November interim nuclear agreement with Tehran, would open up the possibility of bilateral talks between the two long-time antagonists.” Full report here. http://reut.rs/1vs3lEX

UK retains Trident - “A three-year study into the value of renewing Britain's Trident nuclear missile programme in 2016 has come out in favour of retaining it, saying the weapons could yet prove their worth in preventing national blackmail or another security threat,” reports Ewen MacAskill for The Guardian. “The UK government is due to make a decision about renewing the programme in 2016 at a cost of billions of pounds, prompting calls for a scaled-down nuclear deterrent or even total disarmament.”

--“The report has an interesting wrinkle on the long-debated issue of how independent the UK's nuclear deterrent is. Although several British governments have insisted that it is independent of the US, the report says: ‘If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years.’” Full report here. http://bit.ly/TLkrS7

New WMD playbook - “The Defense Department on Monday released an updated policy for countering weapons of mass destruction (WMD) that focused on prevention, partnering with allies and demanding accurate intelligence before military action,” reports Richard Sisk for DOD Buzz. “The new ‘Strategy for Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction’ differs ‘from some of the prior documents to allow us an increased emphasis on prevention and reducing and mitigating threats earlier,’ a senior Defense official said at a Pentagon background briefing.”

--“One of the ‘prior documents’ referred to was the 2006 counter-WMD document endorsed by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld three years after the U.S. invaded Iraq, partly to eliminate WMD that was thought to be controlled by dictator Saddam Hussein. The WMD was never found… ‘Accordingly, this strategy emphasizes early action through pathway defeat, shaping the environment to dissuade actors from pursuing WMD, and cooperating with partners to achieve countering WMD goals,’ the new plan said… the senior official said that the policy was ‘consistent’ with the agreement that resulted in the turnover by Syria of its chemical weapons to international monitors. The last of Syria’s chemical weapons were removed last week and were to be destroyed aboard the specially-outfitted U.S. ship Cape Ray.” Full report here. http://bit.ly/1rcilJk

Non-strategic strategery- “In December 1963, a shipment of U.S. nuclear bombs arrived at Ghedi Torre Air Base in northern Italy. Today, half a century later, the U.S. Air Force still deploys nuclear bombs at the base. The U.S.-Italian nuclear collaboration was celebrated at the base in January. A placard credited the nuclear ‘NATO mission’ at Ghedi with having ‘protected the free nations of the world….’”

--“That might have been the case during the Cold War when NATO was faced with an imminent threat from the Soviet Union. But half of the nuclear tenure at Ghedi has been after the end of the Cold War with no imminent threat that requires forward deployment of nuclear weapons in Europe. Instead, the nuclear NATO mission now appears to be a financial and political burden to NATO that robs its armed forces of money and time better spent on non-nuclear missions, muddles NATO’s nuclear arms control message, and provides fake reassurance to eastern NATO allies.” Read the full story from Hans Kristensen for the Federation of American Scientists here. http://bit.ly/1rccOCz

Cost-saving dud - “A Pentagon plan to cut costs by reducing senior staff at Strategic Command and other military headquarters may not produce significant savings,” reports Rachel Oswald for Global Security Newswire. “Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel last year ordered across-the-board reductions of 20 percent of the budget of all military command headquarters. Congress directed its Government Accountability Office to examine the effects of those directed cuts.”

--“In findings released last Thursday, the analysts said that limiting cuts to just those personnel in management roles at the command organizations would potentially exclude from consideration more than 75 percent of the headquarters positions… The GAO officials concluded the Pentagon does not have ‘a clear or accurate accounting of the resources being devoted to management headquarters to use as a starting point to track reductions,’ in part because it relies on self-reported data from the commands, which can be inconsistent.” Full report here. http://bit.ly/1m5u5K7

Hits and misses - “President Barack Obama is about to walk into a trap of his own making,” writes Tom Collina in Foreign Policy. “His administration said last year that if a key missile defense test hit its target, the Pentagon would expand the Alaska- and California-based system. Well, that test, conducted on June 22, was apparently a success.”

--“Administration officials now say Obama will follow through with his plan to add 14 ground-based interceptors (GBIs) to the 30 already deployed. If he does, three things would happen, all of them bad: Obama would effectively take primary ownership of a system that is widely seen as deeply flawed; it would become harder for the administration to argue against deployment of a similar system on the East Coast; and Obama's goal to further reduce global nuclear stockpiles would become a more distant prospect.”

--“Obama should stick with his 2008 statement that missile defenses "must be proven to work" before adding to a system that has thus far failed -- even in highly scripted tests. Rather than expand the system, he could prioritize improving it through more rigorous testing.” Full piece here. http://atfp.co/TM3gQt

Short listed - “Poland has short-listed a consortium of France's Thales and European group MBDA, as well as U.S. firm Raytheon, in its tender for a mid-range missile defence system, the defence ministry said on Monday,” Reuters reports. “Poland has short-listed a consortium of France's Thales and European group MBDA, as well as U.S. firm Raytheon, in its tender for a mid-range missile defence system, the defence ministry said on Monday.” Full story here. http://reut.rs/1o3vO1a

Blimp ready - “Following 10 years of development, a U.S. Army blimp designed to detect cruise missile threats is ready for use -- provided someone can afford it,” Global Security Newswire reports. “The tethered blimp floats at altitudes of up to 10,000 feet and has 360-degree radar capability to search for enemy cruise missiles, jets and unmanned aerial vehicles at distances as far as 340 miles.”

--“The Raytheon-produced JLENS system has also demonstrated an ability to detect and monitor tactical ballistic missiles in their early liftoff phase.” Full article here. http://bit.ly/1rTxQ6n

Kitty litter acquittal - “U.S. laboratories failed to replicate a cat-litter reaction hypothesized to have ruptured a storage drum in an underground nuclear-waste dump,” Global Security Newswire reports.

--“Neither Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico nor any of the nation's other atomic research centers have produced the type of thermal reaction tentatively blamed for a February contamination release at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, Energy Department spokeswoman Lindsey Geisler said on Friday. The breach was theoretically caused by a cat-litter and nitrate-salt packing mix placed in hundreds of waste barrels at the Los Alamos facility.” Full report here. http://bit.ly/1sUdIFz

GAO Report - “Nuclear Security: NNSA Should Establish a Clear Vision and Path Forward for its Security Program” from the Government Accountability Office. http://1.usa.gov/1okIJgM

Quick-hits:

--“China’s Xi heads to Seoul with North Korea on his mind” by Jack Kim in Reuters. http://reut.rs/1rTspo9

--“First RS-26 to be deployed Irkutsk in 2015” by Pavel Podvig in Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces. http://bit.ly/Tzw1zv

--“Japan, N. Korea hold talks despite missile launch” by the AP. http://wapo.st/1m5vmkn

Events:

--“Iran Sanctions: What the U.S. Cedes in a Nuclear Deal.” Discussion with Suzanne Maloney, Kenneth Katzman, and Elizabeth Rosenberg; moderated by Robin Wright. July 8 from 9:30 to 11:00 at the U.S. Institute of Peace, 2301 Constitution Ave., NW. RSVP here. http://bit.ly/1lTst7K

--“Generation Prague: Innovation in International Security.” Annual Conference with Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT), Sigrid Kaag, Frank Klotz, Rose Gottemoeller, Tom Countryman, Andrew Weber, and other. July 10 at the U.S. Department of State, East Auditorium, George Marshall Conference Center. More information and RSVP here. http://1.usa.gov/1nPgROR

--“Nuclear Centers of Excellence in Asia: Next Steps.” Discussion with Kazunori Hirao, Laura Holgate, and 11 other speakers. July 18 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, 212-A/B Conference Room, 1616 Rhode Island Ave. NW. RSVP by email to Robert Kim at rkim@csis.org