Nuclear Issues

Fmr. Amb. Nicholas Burns joins Morning Joe to discuss the naming of John Bolton as the new national security adviser. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., also joins the conversation.

Professor Nicholas Burns and Future of Diplomacy Project Senior Fellow, David Ignatius, in conversation with Charlie Rose about the Trump administration on the national security stage.

Can an American president make big, historic changes in the country’s direction with a relatively narrow base of political support? That was the challenge President Obama faced when he pushed health-care reform through Congress, and it’s the same problem he faces now in trying to win support for a breakthrough nuclear deal with Iran.

Obama was confident and combative as he made his case this week on Iran. He delivered a powerful speech enumerating the virtues of the agreement. But he included some partisan lines that riled opponents (and some fence-sitters, too), and it’s questionable whether the speech, masterful as it was in analysis, will add any votes of support.

With a speed few predicted, Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, has signaled his interest in negotiations this autumn on Iran’s controversial nuclear program," writes Nicholas Burns. "This could produce the first extensive contact between Washington and Tehran since diplomatic relations ruptured during the Jimmy Carter administration."

"As Israel and Iran entered this summer of confrontation over Tehran’s nuclear program, the Iranians were also conducting talks with the United States and other leading nations to seek a diplomatic alternative to war," writes David Ignatius, a columnist with the Washington Post and 2012-2013 Fischer Family Fellow at the Belfer Center, "since then, the rumors of an impending Israeli military strike have grown almost daily, but whatever happened to the negotiations?"

The answer is that the “P5+1” talks with Iran have been in recess during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, but contact is expected to resume soon between the top negotiators. Talking with Iranian and U.S. experts, I don’t hear any hint of a breakthrough that would ease the war fever, although some useful new ideas have been floated.

"The Nobel Peace Prize Committee cited Obama's dedication to arms control and nonproliferation when announcing last Friday his selection as this year's laureate. If he creates a positive, mutually reinforcing dynamic in the way he presents and sequences the two treaties [NPT and CTBT], it will give momentum and coherence to follow-on negotiations and the agreements that they produce."

Less than a month before talks between the United States, Iran and other world powers begin, three distinguished experts met on September 16, 2009 at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum to discuss how the western world should handle such a controversial regime.