What do we Actually Know About Iran's Nuclear Program?

May 31, 2011

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Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Tuesday, May 31, 2011.

Iran and the Bomb - By Seymour Hersh in The New Yorker [link]

How real is the nuclear threat?
Obama has been prudent in his public warnings about the consequences of an Iranian bomb, but he and others in his Administration have often overstated the available intelligence about Iranian intentions.
There’s a large body of evidence, including some of America’s most highly classified intelligence assessments, suggesting that the U.S. could be in danger of repeating a mistake similar to the one made with Saddam Hussein’s Iraq eight years ago—allowing anxieties about the policies of a tyrannical regime to distort our estimates of the state’s military capacities and intentions.

Obama to Name McFaul as Ambassador to Russia - By Joby Warrick in The Washington Post

President Obama’s pick for the next U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul, is a trusted adviser who helped engineer the “reset” in U.S.-Russia relations three years ago, while also frequently chiding Kremlin leaders for backsliding on democratic reforms.
“He is one of the leading lights guiding nuclear policy with Russia and someone who could drive the bureaucracy in the direction the president wanted,” said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund.

Defense Authorization and New START - By Lawrence Korb and Alex Rothman in The Huffington Post [link]

The NDAA would waste billions, undermine our national security and limit the ability of the president and military to ensure that our nation's scarce resources are being distributed where they can be most effective.
In a historically unprecedented move, the NDAA attempts to bar the president from unilaterally reducing the U.S. nuclear stockpile below New START levels or amending U.S. nuclear targeting strategy without congressional approval.
House Republicans' attempts to strip President Obama of this authority may be unconstitutional. But they are also a remarkable demonstration of extent to which the modern Republican party has defined itself primarily around an unrelenting opposition to the president's agenda, even when this agenda is moderate and supported by the country's top military leadership.

Syria to End Nuclear Secrecy - Associated Press

In a major turnaround, Syria is pledging full cooperation with U.N. attempts to probe strong evidence that it secretly built a reactor that could have been used to make nuclear arms.
If Syria fulfills its promise, the move would end three years of stonewalling by Damascus of the International Atomic Energy.
Syria's sudden readiness to cooperate seems to be an attempt at derailing U.S.-led attempts to have Damascus referred to the U.N. Security Council amid already strong international pressure on the Syrian leadership to end its crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators.

The Military Option for Countering Iran's Nuclear Program [link]

The Greening of Germany: Abandoning Nuclear Power - By Jacob Heilbrunn in The National Interest [link]

Chancellor Angela Merkel has made the call to jettison nuclear power by 2022.
This decision will have implications for America as well which continues to have nuclear weapons stationed on German soil
(you can bet your last Euro that the pressure will increase for a withdrawal of atomic weapons, an issue that the Free Democrats raised in the last general election).

Inspectors Pierce Iran's Cloak of Nuclear Secrecy - By William Broad in The New York Times [link]

The nine-page [IAEA] report [released last week] raised questions about whether Iran has sought to investigate seven different kinds of technology ranging from atomic triggers and detonators to uranium fuel.
MJ note: Below is an graphic that accompanied the story which explains the technical information in the report.