Senior Fellow Olli Heinonen discussed pyroprocessing of spent nuclear fuel, its proliferation risks, and safeguards.

During the last two decades, there have been successes but also disappointments in fighting against nuclear proliferation. On the positive side, we witnessed the dismantlement of nuclear weapons programs in South Africa, Iraq, and Libya.

Talks with Iran in Turkey next week and in Kazakhstan next month are important, but Tehran still needs to clarify the details of its controversial nuclear program.

The establishment of a WMDFZ in the Middle East is a real challenge for the international community taking into consideration the absence of favorable conditions such as the mutual states recognitions as political entities with established diplomatic relations, and stability. To start with, there is no one single model for existing Nuclear Weapons Free Zone (NWFZ). Each existing NWFZ treaty had introduced elements, including creative legal arrangements, and unique features depending on the specificities of each zone. The current treaties of the South Pacific NWFZ, the Southeast Asian NWFZ, the African NWFZ, the Latin American NWFZ, and the Central Asian NWFZ, can be studied and applied where relevant. So, too, there exist organizations responsible for the verification of these treaties (IAEA, OPCW, CTBTO). The case of the Middle East will be more complex since the treaty is envisioned to cover all weapons of mass destruction including biological and chemical as well as their delivery vehicles. A large number of political, historical, technical, and verification issues need to be factored into the Treaty. In other words, working on a WMDFZ means the necessity to deal with all WMD aspects together. Progressing the WMDFZ further means looking at a composite picture of states’ concerns and relations in the region that just counting weapons reduction alone.

In this short report Olli Heinonen addresses critical monitoring and verification issues arising from Morton Halperin’s proposal for a nuclear weapons free zone as a new approach for the security in Northeast Asia.

There is a small opening to resolve the Iranian nuclear crisis after the conclusion of the U.S. presidential election, write Mark Hibbs and Olli Heinonen. "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called this a 'window of opportunity,' and it is beginning to focus minds on identifying the necessary components of a package deal that will put Iran, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), and UN Security Council powers squarely on a path toward conflict resolution."

Much attention has focused on Iran's advancing nuclear program, on the peace and security concerns which that program has raised, and on the international policy debate over how to respond to that program. Far less attention has been paid to the various legal-sounding arguments used by Iran and a few academics to call into question the mandate of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to investigate and make determinations about actual or suspected violations of Iran’s legal obligations.

International diplomacy efforts dealing with Iran’s nuclear program continue to fill the daily news headlines. The efforts of P5+1, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) have tried, in various formats, to encourage and enforce Iran to comply with the provisions of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement (CSA) to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program is not used as a cover for the development of nuclear weapons. The challenge of discovering what has taken place as well as currently with Iran’s nuclear ambitions is difficult not only because of Tehran’s obstructionism, but also because the same nuclear technologies, particularly uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing, can be used for both civilian and military purposes.

Although both Washington and Tehran deny reports that they have agreed to bilateral nuclear negotiations, the rumors will prompt fresh debate about what concessions the United States can or should make.

The genesis of DPRK’s nuclear aspirations can be traced to the aftermath of the Korean War. To develop its own nuclear capability, North Korea initiated the building of a strong national cadre of nuclear technicians and scientists, which were trained mainly in the former Soviet Union. In 1955, North Korea founded the Atomic Energy Research Institute. The Soviets also helped the North Koreans establish a nuclear research center and built a 2 MWth IRT nuclear research reactor at Yongbyon, which began operation in 1969.