Nuclear Issues

Aaron Arnold, Associate with the Project on Managing the Atom at the Belfer Center, and Nikos Passas, Professor of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University, argue in The Conversation that Iran's reintegration into the global financial system may in fact make it easier, not more difficult, to monitor Iranian financial activities for illicit transactions. They point to the fact that banks can monitor transactions for entities designated as involved in terrorist or weapons of mass destruction activities by the U.S. Treasury. They also suggest that Iran may adopt stricter money laundering standards in order to increase economic integration. While challenges remain, they suggest that building a public-private partnership between banks and regulators will ensure that Iran will be caught in any illicit financial actions after the nuclear deal.

Henry Rome reviews new legislation drafted by Sen. Ben Cardin (D, Maryland), which aims to expand Congressional oversight of the nuclear deal’s implementation and its power to impose new sanctions.

Ephraim Asculai, Senior Research Fellow at the the Institute for National Security Studies, and Emily Landau, Senior Research Associate at INSS, argue that while the Iran nuclear agreement is being implemented, there are still significant flaws that need to be remedied in the implementation phase to ensure the agreement functions. They suggest meticulous verification mechanisms to monitor Iranian compliance, transparency in the verification regime, professional oversight and analysis of the IAEA's verification techniques, timely reporting, and verifying and checking information provided by member states to the IAEA as ways to ensure that Iran does not cheat on the agreement and is held to its commitments. 

In prisons as in nuclear facilities, employees are tasked with guarding something highly dangerous in high-stress environments. Both face high costs in the event of failure, and both are especially vulnerable to complacency and insider threats. Given these parallels, two inmates’ dramatic break-out from a New York prison in early June offers nuclear security practitioners valuable insights into how to avert an equally dramatic (and potentially much more consequential) breech.

Dennis Ross, International Council Member of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and David Petraeus, Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center, write in The Washington Post that it is necessary for the United States to continue to project a strong deterrent to Iran in order to insure that it does not develop nuclear weapons after the expiration of the most stringent controls of the nuclear deal. Specifically, they argue that the United States should provide Israel with the Massive Ordinance Penetrator bomb, capable of destroying the most heavily defending Iranian nuclear sites, in order to strengthen the deterrent against trying to break out and built a nuclear weapon.

Graham Allison, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, highlights important analysis pieces discussing the recent Iran nuclear deal. Specifically, he focuses on pieces by Richard Haass, Sandy Berger, Efraim Halevy, Amos Yadlin, Shai Feldman, and Ariel Levite which analyze the important pros and cons of the nuclear deal, its repercussions for US and Israeli policy in the region, and how the United States should move forward in responding to the Iranian nuclear challenge.

Six years ago, Ambassador Linton Brooks offered some remarkably prescient thoughts on what the U.S.-Russian relationship might look like in 2015, and the implications for nuclear security cooperation — though, of course, he could not have anticipated the conflict in Ukraine. Brooks’ 2009 assessment is reproduced below, followed by his reflections on the topic today.

James Walsh, Research Associate at the Security Studies Program at MIT and former Research Fellow at the Belfer Center, gave testimony to members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee concerning the diplomatic and strategic ties between Iran and North Korea. He argued that while it is still possible for North Korea to assist Iran on cheating on its commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, he argued that the combination of existing safeguards and deterrents and incentives and verification measures put in place under the JCPOA make this outcome unlikely.

Are nuclear sites secure?  There are some who might assume the answer is yes and that we should not worry about the possibility of nuclear bomb material being stolen. Yet, recent history has repeatedly demonstrated that high security facilities thought to be secure were actually vulnerable. Two such incidents last month illustrated this idea.

Jim Walsh, Research Associate at MIT's Security Studies Program, testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on methods of assessing the emerging nuclear accord with Iran. He argued that on balance, the agreement is likely to be a boon for both nonproliferation and for U.S. national security. He cautioned against using a standard of perfection for an agreement, noting that almost every nuclear arms control agreement was criticized and despite this have been overwhelmingly successful. He also suggested limits that would be necessary to make the agreement a success, that the IAEA will be able to determine if Iran is willing to hand over the necessary information on its program in order for an agreement to go forward, and that the agreement is unlikely to trigger proliferation across the region and may in fact help prompt further discussion of a nuclear free zone in the Middle East.