As talks resume, Iran and the signatories to the 2015 agreement face a web of sanctions to untangle
A joint commission responsible for overseeing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is looking for a way for the US to rejoin the agreement – abandoned under Donald Trump – and lift its sanctions on Tehran, and for Iran to end its retaliatory breaching of the limits placed on its nuclear programme.
Continue reading...Projectiles are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone
North Korea test fired two ballistic missiles early on Thursday, in the biggest challenge so far to Joe Biden’s attempts to engage the regime over its nuclear weapons program.
The projectiles were launched on North Korea’s east coast and are believed to have landed in the sea outside Japan’s exclusive economic zone, officials in Tokyo said.
Continue reading...Latest updates: PM says UK’s greatest ally will be US as he makes statement to MPs on defence review
In his Sky News interview Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, said the security and defence review said that the UK could use nuclear weapons to respond to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. That was a “big change” in policy, he said.
He was referring to this passage on page 77 of the document (pdf).
The UK will not use, or threaten to use, nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear weapon state party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons 1968 (NPT). This assurance does not apply to any state in material breach of those non-proliferation obligations. However, we reserve the right to review this assurance if the future threat of weapons of mass destruction, such as chemical and biological capabilities, or emerging technologies that could have a comparable impact, makes it necessary.
Here is the Scottish government’s summary of the latest plans for easing lockdown restrictions in Scotland. And here is a graphic summarising what it says.
Scotland’s indicative route out of lockdown. If we all stick with it and get the virus more under control as the vaccines do their work, there is hope for a much better summer on the horizon ☀️ pic.twitter.com/gTKHtJTNn5
Continue reading...Tehran yet to answer European invitation seeking reinstatement of 2015 agreement torn up by Donald Trump
The US has agreed to take part in multilateral talks with Iran hosted by the EU, with the aim of negotiating a return by both countries to the 2015 nuclear deal that is close to falling apart in the wake of the Trump administration.
The state department spokesman, Ned Price, said the US would accept the invitation of the EU high representative for discussions with Iran and the five other countries that agreed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), by which Iran accepted strict constraints on its nuclear programme in return for sanctions relief.
Continue reading...Confidential UN report reveals Pyongyang was acting in violation of international sanctions
North Korea maintained and developed its nuclear and ballistic missile programmes throughout 2020 in violation of international sanctions, said a UN diplomat with knowledge of a confidential report given to security council members on Monday.
The report by independent sanctions monitors said Pyongyang “produced fissile material, maintained nuclear facilities and upgraded its ballistic missile infrastructure”, and continued to seek technology for those programmes from abroad.
Continue reading...Many politicians and diplomats from the 1980s lay claim to a pivotal role in ending the cold war, but the former US secretary of state George Shultz, who has died aged 100, had a better claim than most. And he was not shy in letting people know, as he did at length in his 1,184-page account of his years at the state department, Turmoil and Triumph (1993).
When he became secretary of state in 1982 – a job he was to hold for seven years – relations between the US and the Soviet Union were at a dangerous low. The administration of US president Ronald Reagan was packed with anti-Soviet hardliners. Reagan himself in 1983 dubbed the Soviet Union “the evil empire”.
Continue reading...Obama-era diplomat Robert Malley will face task of repairing ties that worsened under Trump after withdrawal from nuclear pact
The Biden administration is expected name Robert Malley, a former top adviser in the Obama administration, as special envoy for Iran, according to multiple sources.
Malley was a key member of former Barack Obama’s team that negotiated the nuclear accord with Iran and world powers, an agreement that Donald Trump abandoned in 2018 in the face of strong opposition from Washington’s European allies.
Continue reading...Washington’s top intelligence officer warns that Pyongyang is not intending to ‘find a way out’ of weapons development
The top US intelligence officer for North Korea has warned the country sees diplomacy only as a means to advance its nuclear weapons development, even as the new Biden administration says it will look for ways to bring Pyongyang back to talks.
Joe Biden’s nominee for secretary of state, Antony Blinken, said on Tuesday the new administration planned a full review of the US approach to North Korea to look at ways to increase pressure on it to return to the negotiating table.
Continue reading...Treaty signatories include Africa’s most populous country and Europe’s least populated, but Russia and Nato on the sidelines
An international treaty banning all nuclear weapons that has been signed by 51 countries and that campaigners hope will help raise the profile of global deterrence efforts comes into force on Friday.
Although in some respects the step is largely symbolic because the world’s nuclear powers have not signed up, the treaty will be legally binding on the smaller nations that have endorsed it, and it is backed by the UN leadership.
Continue reading...A global treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons becomes international law today. But the fight to rid the world of these dismal weapons continues.
In 1995, thousands of people marched peacefully hand-in-hand through the Tahitian capital of Pape’ete. The palm-lined streets were awash with songs of protest.
On a nearby shorefront, Cook Islanders had just arrived by traditional voyaging canoe: a vaka. They were there to deliver a message of solidarity with their island neighbours, en route to the nuclear test site of Moruroa.
Continue reading...Physical transfer of brief case containing nuclear attack plans has become part of inauguration ritual
It is a responsibility that has passed to every president since John F Kennedy – the custody of the so called “nuclear football” – the hardened brief case that is handed over on the day of the inauguration of new presidents by their predecessor.
The question being asked, given Trump’s almost unprecedented decision not to meet Joe Biden or attend his swearing in, is what will happen to the nuclear football?
Continue reading...Analysis: new president will face threats on multiple fronts, including from Russia and Iran, and must decide future of US arsenal
Joe Biden will have to make critical decisions on arms control in his first days in the White House that could determine whether a new nuclear arms race can be averted, and possibly reversed.
When the new president takes the oath of office on 20 January, there will be 16 days left before the 2010 New Start treaty with Russia expires, and with it the last binding limit on the world’s two biggest nuclear arsenals left standing in the wake of the Trump era.
Continue reading...Move comes as Iran resumes enriching uranium to up to 20% purity in significant breach of 2015 nuclear accord
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have seized a South Korean vessel “for polluting the Persian Gulf with chemicals” amid rising tensions between Iran and the US during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Iranian news agencies published photos showing Revolutionary Guards speedboats escorting the tanker MT Hankuk Chemi and said the vessel’s crewmembers, including nationals of South Korea, Indonesia, Vietnam and Myanmar, had been detained. The tanker is being held at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port city.
Continue reading...As Tehran moves on uranium enrichment, Washington braces for retaliation a year after the Quds Force commander’s assassination
Iran has announced plans to enrich uranium up to 20% purity, just a step away from weapons-grade levels, as tensions with the US ratchet up during the final days of Donald Trump’s presidency.
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirmed it had been notified of Iran’s decision to increase enrichment at the Fordow facility, buried in a mountainside to protect it from military strikes, although Tehran did not say when the process would begin.
Continue reading...Latest move was flagged in law passed last month after the assassination of country’s top nuclear scientist
Iran has told the United Nations nuclear watchdog it plans to enrich uranium to up to 20% purity, a level it achieved before its 2015 accord, at its Fordow site buried inside a mountain, the agency has said.
The move is the latest of several recent announcements by Iran to the International Atomic Energy Agency that it plans to further breach the deal, which it started violating in 2019 in retaliation for Washington’s withdrawal from the agreement and the reimposition of US sanctions against Tehran.
Continue reading...The cover-up has to stop – and with it, the huge sums in aid for a country with oppressive policies towards Palestinians
Every recent US administration has performed a perverse ritual as it has come into office. All have agreed to undermine US law by signing secret letters stipulating they will not acknowledge something everyone knows: that Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal.
Part of the reason for this is to stop people focusing on Israel’s capacity to turn dozens of cities to dust. This failure to face up to the threat posed by Israel’s horrific arsenal gives its prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, a sense of power and impunity, allowing Israel to dictate terms to others.
Continue reading...President-elect’s formative years of going toe-to-toe with the USSR on arms control hint at how he may deal with Putin
It was 1988, near the end of the cold war, when then-senator Joe Biden made yet another visit to the Soviet Union for talks on arms control. By that time, he felt comfortable enough in Moscow to bring a guest into the room: his teenage son.
“Would you mind my son, Hunter Biden, sitting in and listening? The gentleman is interested in international affairs and diplomacy,” he said, according to Victor Prokofiev, the Soviet foreign ministry interpreter at the meeting.
Continue reading...Newspaper publishes comment urging retaliation with strike on Haifa that ‘causes heavy human casualties’
The body of Iran’s most senior nuclear scientist has been prepared for burial as anger at Israel and the US boiled over in the country following his assassination last week.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh’s coffin, draped in the Iranian flag and topped with flowers, was transported to a Muslim shrine for prayers and last tributes, the country’s state news reported.
Continue reading...Ayatollah threatens retaliation after president blames Israel for assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh
Iran’s supreme leader has called for the “definitive punishment” of those behind the killing of one of the country’s most senior scientists, who was identified by Israel as having headed a secret nuclear weapons programme.
Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the architect of Tehran’s nuclear strategy, was killed on Friday on a highway near the capital in a carefully planned assassination that has led to a serious escalation of tensions in the Middle East.
Continue reading...Analysis: shooting of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh will do more harm to diplomacy than it does to Iran’s nuclear programme
The assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh may not much have impact on the Iranian nuclear programme he helped build, but it will certainly make it harder to salvage the deal intended to restrict that programme, and that is – so far - the most plausible motive.
Israel is widely agreed to be the most likely perpetrator. Mossad is reported to have been behind a string of assassinations of other Iranian nuclear scientists – reports Israeli officials have occasionally hinted were true.
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