Nuclear Issues

In mid-July, as an attempted coup was taking place in Turkey, many in the United States wondered whether U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stored at the Turkish airbase, Incirlik, were adequately protected against theft. Congressional Research Service Nuclear Weapons Policy Specialist, Amy Woolf, recently published a short article describing some of the security systems surrounding those weapons.

Fifty-plus countries are attending the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit this week in Washington, DC. Notably missing from the guest list is Iran, whose recent negotiation and implementation of a landmark nuclear deal with the P5+1 led some experts to call for more engagement and cooperation in nuclear security.

Olli Heinonen, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, writes that despite the general lack of cooperation from Iran, the IAEA has produced a successful comprehensive report detailing Iran's nuclear activities. However he notes that Iran's noncompliance has hampered the final determinations, and so further investigation and intelligence operations should be conducted to determine the extent of Iranian nuclear activity.

The International Atomic Energy Agency released its “final assessment” yesterday of the possible military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program.

Good sense demands that policy makers not discount the possibility that ISIS might pursue unconventional weapons, given the vast resources of money and weapons ISIS has amassed during its rampage across Syria and Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel recently described the Islamic State (IS, referred to by the U.S. government as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant [ISIL] and by many others as the  Islamic State of Iraq and Syria or the Islamic State of Iraq and al Sham [ISIS]) as an “imminent threat to every interest we have,” with sophistication, funding, and military prowess “beyond anything that we’ve seen.” As yet, there is no convincing publicly available evidence that IS aspires to attain or use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons (Matthew Bunn debunked alarmist press coverage over the group’s seizure of uranium from Mosul University). But good sense demands that policy makers not discount the possibility that ISIS might pursue unconventional weapons, given the vast resources of money and weapons ISIS has amassed during its rampage across Syria and Iraq. Evaluation of the threat might be divided into two categories: the inclination to pursue CBRN weapons, and the means to manufacture or capture them, and afterwards, to plan an attack using them.

With the 2014 Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) now over, policymakers are thinking about next steps to address nuclear security. The NSS process has progressed since its first installment in 2010; yet, the Middle East, a key region where nuclear security is of tremendous importance, remains underrepresented.

Jofi Joseph, a former director for nonproliferation on the White House National Security Council staff, explains the parallel but separate negotiating tracks over Iran's nuclear program. He writes that the P5+1 negotiations, which focus on the future of Iran's nuclear program, and the IAEA's efforts to investigate the program's past are often confused. It is important to understand the difference, he argues, because the two tracks may soon intersect during the implementation of the interim agreement worked out between Iran and the P5+1 at Geneva.

The first step agreement slows down Iran’s uranium and plutonium clocks, which is needed. At the same time, it is important to recognize that the agreement addresses but does not rollback Iran’s capabilities. The most significant work and hurdles lie ahead in the contours of any end-game agreement. In the meantime, good implementation, cooperation and compliance of boundaries set on Iran’s nuclear program will be a test of its new approach.