The International Panel on Fissile Materials, a MacArthur-supported international group of scientists that has been promoting a treaty to terminate production of explosive material for nuclear weapons, has learned from the Indian government that it will not be allowed to hold a meeting it planned for December in Delhi. According to a news report that […]
Seeking to limit fallout from the latest North Korean uranium enrichment disclosures, Obama officials have been implying they kind of knew about it all along, which is kind of true inasmuch as concern about the subject reached well back into the previous administration. But Siegfried Hecker, hands-down the leading authority on North Korean nuclear activities, […]
We can be pretty sure Stuxnet targeted Iran’s Natanz uranium enrichment plant, and we know, because of its enormous complexity and sophistication, that large resources went into its development. But did those who built and launched it achieve their objective? The New York Times concluded one of two recent articles on stuxnet with a skeptical […]
Symantec, a top cyber security firm based in Cupertino, Calif., has released a report that shows convincingly (in my opinion) that the stuxnet worm was designed specifically to disrupt uranium enrichment operations at Iran’s Natanz plant. An earlier analysis by a leading German cyber security expert, which I described in detail in an earlier post […]
Avner Cohen proposes in the current issue of Foreign Affairs that Israel should come out of the closet and openly declare its nuclear status, so as to “legitimize” its arsenal. though I have the highest regard for Cohen’s work, I disagree with that conclusion, as stated here in an earlier post. In this connection, I […]
I am grateful to Alexander Glaser, a young German physicist associated with Princeton University’s engineering and public policy schools, for alerting me to an exceptionally authoritative analysis of the stuxnet computer worm that reputedly infiltrated and crippled industrial control systems in Iran. The article, by Frank Rieger, appeared in Germany’s Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, on Sept. […]
As noted here in my last post, Avner Cohen has drawn an important contrast between Israel’s strategic position with respect to Iran today and its position when it first confronted the danger of an Iraqi bomb, thirty years ago. In 1979-80, Cohen correctly observed, Israel stood essentially alone: Though Saddam had started to mess with […]
In a recent post I expressed dismay about Jeffrey Goldberg’s “Point of No Return” article: its implicit suggestion that the United States should attack Iran’s nuclear facilities so as to save Israel the trouble of doing something so senseless and self-defeating, and the decision by The Atlantic to publish a piece of work that is […]
Having already said so pretty clearly already, I saw few if any redeeming features in Jeffrey Goldberg’s treatment in The Atlantic of whether Israel might attack Iran. I’m not going to recant, but I do have to concede that the article had at least one redeeming feature after all: It got Fidel Castro’s attention and […]
With the U.S.-Russian strategic arms limitation treaty heading for Senate debate at a time of political troubles for Obama, it’s time to be absolutely clear: The New START treaty deserves to be ratified promptly, both for its own sake and so as to clear the way for more significant arms control diplomacy. A modest agreement […]
Reacting to popular dismay over the light sentences meted out to the corporate perpetrators of the Bhopal tragedy–slaps on the wrist, really–India’s parliament has voted to hold foreign suppliers of nuclear components liable for damages from a reactor accident. Normally, only the operator of a nuclear power plant is held liable, and in virtually all […]
Jeffrey Goldberg’s article in the September Atlantic, in which he argues that Israel almost inevitably will attack Iran’s nuclear facilities before next summer unless the United States does so first, has attracted excessive attention. Devoid of new information and lacking in any kind of serious military analysis, it’s a far cry from meeting the Atlantic […]
What’s been striking is not so much the content of what he’s said but the fact he can say it at all The semi-retired Cuban leader got some attention and aroused a good deal of surprise in recent weeks with intemperate remarks about Iran and Korea, suggesting that the United States was pushing the crises […]
Lest my last post left the misimpression that I consider the issue of South Korean nuclear fuel reprocessing to be unimportant, let me emphasize this: I don’t consider it unimportant, merely unpromising as a path for furthering the cause of arms control and disarmament. To elaborate, as I see it, the case against South Korean […]
If you’ve been closely following the best daily press or tuning into debates among professional arms controllers, you will have noticed some concern about China’s intention to supply additional nuclear power to Pakistan and South Korea’s growing determination to reprocess nuclear fuels. Just how concerned should we be? To be honest, though I recognize that […]