News & Analysis

As troops amassed on his border near the start of the Persian Gulf War, Iraqi President Saddam Hussein weighed the purchase of a $150 million nuclear “package” deal that included not only weapons designs but also production plants and foreign experts to supervise the building of a nuclear bomb, according to documents uncovered by a former UN weapons inspector.  The story is revealed in a new book by  David Albright, president of the Ploughshares-funded Institute for Science and In Read more >>

Kevin Martin, executive director of the  Peace Action and Lisa Putkey, Peace Action's  Scoville Fellow, coauthor this analysis of the coming year in nuclear disarmament. The United States enters 2010 with approximately 9,400 nuclear weapons.  Of these, 4,200 are retired and awaiting dismantlement. 2,500 are in reserve, and 2,700 nuclear weapons are deployed and operational around the world on U.S. Read more >>

Syria in 2007 received approximately 45 tons of raw uranium from North Korea for use in producing fuel for a secret nuclear reactor, informed military and diplomatic sources told Kyodo News on Saturday (see GSN, Feb. 26). An Israeli air assault destroyed the undeclared reactor not long after Syria received shipment of the material and the "yellowcake" uranium is thought to have been sent to Iran in summer 2009, a Western diplomatic source said. Read more >>