Air Force Mistakenly Sent Nuke Triggers To Taiwan

By Cernig

Back in 2006 the Air Force mistakenly shipped "four electrical fuses for nose cone assemblies for ICBMs" intended for Minuteman missiles to Taiwan thinking they were helicopter batteries. They had originally been mis-labelled in 2005 during a transfer between two USAF bases, then sent on to Taiwan the following year. The items have now been returned to the U.S. but the breach of nuclear security and threat to non-proliferation was deemed serious enough that SecDef Gate's number two - Ryan Henry - described it as "intolerable" and said Bush had been personally briefed. The Pentagon are stressing that no nuclear materials were involved rather than that top-secret technology was sent to another nation and that the U.S. still wouldn't have known if the Taiwanese hadn't sent the damn things back!

"Pale Rider" and Blue Girl" at the Blue Girl, Red State blog have done a great job tracking down this story and have all the details. Blue Girl writes:

Without saying anything that I shouldn't - my husband spent his career working on electronics systems of ICBMs, so please believe me when I tell you this...it isn't about the nuclear material, and stressing that fissibles were not compromised, move along, nothing to see here...is a headfake.

These fuses are not what civilians think of when they hear the word "fuse." They are top-secret components in the electrical systems of ICBMs. The warhead is the easy part of a missile system. The hard part is the delivery vehicle - you don't deliver a nuclear payload by oxcart, you know. Compromising the electronics is possibly providing the final piece of information to a rogue state like North Korea that is openly developing missile technology to allow them to finally have a weapon that will reach the west coast. This is a big god-damned deal, and careers need to end over it.

So which careers are ending? None, so far, although the Pentagon are investigating. Congress might be too, after Blue Girl spoke to Senator Levin's staff on the Armed Services committee and got them to understand the seriousness of this security breach - especially after revelations a few months back about the Air Force blithely flying nuclear weapons around the country without knowing it. The SASC staffer said "I can assure you something will come of this."

The Source Of Bush's Delusion

By Cernig

Both the WaPo and McClatchy have noticed that Dubya erroneously claimed that Iran had said that it wants "to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people” (Dubya's words).

The claim came in an interview with Radio Farda in which Bush also acknowledged Iran's right to have a peaceful nuclear program, but said he wanted Iran to entirely outsource its enrichment to Russia. Iran has rejected this approach mainly because of Russia's track record in using energy supplies to hold customer nations hostage on political matters.

Bush cited his "belief that the Iranians should have a civilian nuclear-power program. It's in their right to have it." But he added: "The problem is that the [Iranian] government cannot be trusted to enrich uranium because, one, they've hidden programs in the past and they may be hiding one now -- who knows? And secondly, they've declared they want to have a nuclear weapon to destroy people -- some -- in the Middle East."

Iran has consistently said that its uranium-enrichment program is aimed only at producing energy, but the United States and some allies fear Iran is seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons.

"There's a chance that the U.S. and Iran can reconcile their differences, but the government is going to have to make different choices," Bush said. "And one [such choice] is to verifiably suspend the enrichment of uranium, at which time there is a way forward."

The UN Security Council has passed three rounds of sanctions against Iran in an effort to pressure Tehran to halt its enrichment activities.

"What is acceptable to me is to work with a nation like Russia to provide the fuel so that the plant can go forward, which therefore shows that the Iranian government doesn't need to learn to enrich [uranium]," Bush said.

So where is Bush getting this delusion that Iran has said it wants a nuke? Look no further than the influential neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, which has constantly banged the drum for war with Iran. Over at National Review's "Corner" blog today, Michael Rubin - a resident scholar in foreign and defense policy studies at AEI - cites....Michael Rubin...as a source for such claims.

On examination, too, one of Rubin's key sources in his self-referenced article for the AIE turns out to be an Iranian Hezboullah hardliner arguing against then-President Rafsanjani, telling him what he should be doing but isn't. Another is by the Daily Telegraph's neocon serial fabulist Phil Sherwell and although Rubin says the cleric involved later "backtracked", what actually happened is that the cleric said he'd been outrageously misquoted and denied ever making the statement Sherwell claimed.

Self-reference and the misuse of sources can be bad blogging - but coming from a highly influential warmonger like Rubin who's scholarship has been questioned in the past - for not revealing his involvement in Bush administration propaganda efforts in Iraq - they are positively dangerous. With such organisations as the AIE and the Heritage Foundation feeding him their highly-spun version of events and issues, Bush is living in a reality of their making. Thus comes the source of his delusion.

The "Absence Of Evidence" Logic Trap

By Cernig

Did Dick Cheney ever do Logic 101 in college? He keeps banging the "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" drum over Iran's nuclear program.

Vice President Dick Cheney retained his tough stance against Iran on Wednesday and said the U.S. is uncertain if Tehran has restarted the nuclear weaponization program that a U.S. intelligence report says it halted in 2003.

..."What it (the NIE) says is that they have definitely had in the past a program to develop a nuclear warhead; that it would appear that they stopped that weaponization process in 2003. We don't know whether or not they've restarted," he said.

"What we do know is that they had then, and have now, a process by which they're trying to enrich uranium, which is the key obstacle they've got to overcome in order to have a nuclear weapon," he added. "They've been working at it for years."

It's also a key obstacle to having an indeginous nuclear power industry that the great powers can't turn off or on at will by controlling fuel supplies, Dick. Sometime a cigar is just a cigar.

Cheney must surely know by now - if he was paying any attention at all in the last five years of Iraqi invasion and occupation - that one cannot prove a negative. One can show it to be highly likely, sure, but there are still wingnuts who insist that Saddam sent all his WMD by FedEx to a postal box in Damascus and it's this little logical law that lets them do so. Cheney's probably one of them. And so he continues his push to waste yet more hundreds of thousands of lives, along with another $3 trillion and more, on yet another idiotic snark hunt.

Let's be clear - the "Cheney 1% Doctrine" is not logical or good foreign policy - it is paranoid sociopathy at its worse. In personal terms it's as if I decided to wade into my neighbour's house with gun blazing because he can't prove he has no anthrax and I've seen him using white powder (to make bread). My insanity plea in defense of murder charges would probably be accepted by the court.

So Much For That NIE Fearmongering

By Cernig

The UN Security Council voted 14-0 to extend and increase sanctions on Iran over it's nuclear program, based largely on emerging tidbits from the Laptop Of Doom provided to U.S. intelligence by the MeK terror group.

But as Eric Martin points out, no matter how one may feel about that UN decision, it's worth noting that the last NIE on Iran, the one that deflated the warhype to the point where an attack seemed out of the question and therefore according to the neocons was going to make it impossible to get the UNSC to back further sanctions...well...seems to have had the opposite effect.

Score one for the rapier instead of the sabre. And the neocons were wrong again.

Perles Of Omitted Wisdom

By Cernig

Richard N. Perle, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and Reagan's SDI honcho (and incidentally, the guy who brought in Ahmed Chalibi to meet the Bush administration) has an op-ed for the Washington Post today. He argues that talk of a new arms race with Russia is nonsense and the U.S. can safely ignore Russian rhetoric - putting him very much at odds with Bob Gates, who has consistently proven himself the only adult in the room when it comes to this administration and national security and who has clearly said the U.S. must beware of poking the bear too much.

But I wanted to specifically address the following gem of misdirection in Perle's piece:

As for Lavrov's "hundreds of thousands" of missile interceptors, dividing by a thousand would be a reassuring start. U.S. plans call for a modest number of interceptors, dozens at first, a hundred or so later, maybe 200 or 300 after that. The program is limited because the threat is measured in tens of missiles, not hundreds and certainly not thousands. With North Korea and Iran building ballistic missiles with significant and increasing range, a modest defense is a prudent first step toward countering a known threat.

How is it possible for Perle to write this and yet omit the relevant news that various neocon think tanks orbiting around the AEI mothership are actively campaigning for a resurrection of the "Brilliant Pebbles" interceptors in space program?

It changes the entire debate from one of a difference in degree to a difference in kind - and a change that really is likely to trigger a new arms race since it undermines not just Russia's deterrent but also important arms-control treaties. To leave out this tidbit is lying by misdirection, yet Perle will get away with it because the mainstream's stenographers simply don't pay attention.

The Spin Cycle Of Doom (Updated With A New Rinse)

By Cernig

I said yesterday we'd be hearing more about the dreaded Laptop Of Doom and its alleged evidence of Iran's nuke plans, as provided by the MeK terror group to US intelligence. And lo and behold, today the WaPo has a report on exactly that, saying details contained on the laptop prove Iran hasn't been entirely honest about it's weapon activities. It's one of those "when did you stop beating your wife?" situations. But the WaPo report isn't being entirely honest either, it seems.

Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the Arms Control Wonk, writes:

today, Warrick and Lynch have a story based on notes from Heinonen’s briefing — a good bit of reporting — suggesting that the IAEA had collected “corroborating evidence” from the intelligence agencies of several countries (echo chamber warning) and presenting some new information.

Unfortuantely, the example of “new” information that Warrick and Lynch provide, pertains to documents “described studies on modifying Iran’s Shahab missile to allow it to accommodate a large warhead, which would detonate 600 meters above its target.”

This is not new. Those details were first reported in March 2005 by Carla Anne Robbins and later recycled by Robbins in July 2005 and then David Sanger and Bill Broad in the New York Times.

Indeed, that information, as Robbins reported in 2005, was briefed to the IAEA by Bob Joseph.

So, two questions: What was in the 2008 briefing that wasn’t in the 2005 briefing? And, what else is in those notes?

I'm not sure where Dr. Lewis gets the impression that presenting old news as new and scarier news is "a good bit of reporting". Absent answers to Dr Lewis' two questions - and even more importantly, prehaps, knowing the identity of their source who supposedly took these notes at an IAEA briefing - it looks very much to me like yet another case of press stenographers catapulting the propaganda by a process of rinse and repeat.

Update I see the NYT's Sanger and Broad have their version of the story out too. Like the WaPo version, it concentrates on the warhead details that, as Dr. Lewis points out, were last recycled by Sanger and Broad in 2005.

At this point, the really big question is "who is this un-named diplomat who has so kindly let both WaPo and NYT use his notes -- and what's his agenda?"

Update 2 Siddharth, in comments at Dr. Lewis' blog, puts his finger on the real story:

And wonderful timing too, for all those “notes” being made available to NYT, WaPo and Reuters, just in time for Monday’s big UNSC sanctions vote. In my book – and I speak as a journalist – being handed over notes/documents etc (esp. by a party with a patent interest in the contents being reported) is not “good reporting”. What makes it even worse is that Schulte hands over shady documents to IAEA, gets old Oli to brief everyone, takes notes of said briefing, and hands over said notes to gullible hacks. Much more effective than directly plugging a line to the media.

Go on, someone in the press - ask Schulte if he was indeed the Masked Diplomat.

The Laptop Of Doom

By Cernig

For the first time, Iran has openly said it believes the infamous "smoking laptop" to be full of MeK terror group propaganda. Gareth Porter does sterling work tracking the laptop's provenance - which is to say US intel just about got it from a guy in a bar.

those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.

In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce "green salt", technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.

Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyse, but the United States had refused to do so.

The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident group".

A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. "I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organisation," the source said.

The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear programme. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, U.S. officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.

The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organisation, the MEK was a favourite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilise Iran.

You're going to be hearing a lot more about this laptop's alleged revelations, as it's the single biggest remaining item of "evidence" in the neocon war-hyper's arsenal. But it looks very like any real information contained on it relates to iran's now-defunct pre-2003 weapons program and that data has been spiced up by the inclusion of propaganda planted by one of the links in the provenance chain.

Experts - IAEA Successfully Disarming Iran

By Cernig

Nuclear non-proliferation experts Ray Takeyh and Joseph Cirincione have penned an op-ed for Britain's Financial Times which says that the recent IAEA report shows that the Agency has been successful in ensuring that iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program going forward.

The investigation and inspections – even the limited ones the IAEA is currently able to conduct – have, in effect, shut down direct weapons work and resolved many of the outstanding historical questions.

...the IAEA investigations have produced enough circumstantial evidence to support the view that Iran probably conducted nuclear weapons research in the past. But the evidence to date also indicates, as the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded last November, that Iran stopped this direct weapons work. The path now is to recognise this success, deepen it, find a way for Iran to come clean safely on its past work and to prevent Iran from developing capabilities that could allow it to produce weapon material in the next decade.

Mr ElBaradei has disproved the notion that Iran’s nuclear strategy is immutable. Despite its apparent solidarity, there are divisions within the theocratic regime on the urgency of the nuclear programme. It is true that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad and his militant allies’ calculations are susceptible to neither offers of incentives nor threats of force. However, for the more tempered members of the ruling elite, the nuclear issue is considered within the context of international relations. Indeed, the fact that Iran has suspended the weapon design component of its programme since 2003 and is largely complying with the IAEA “work plan” reflects the propensity of the state to adhere to certain limits.

The best means of diminishing the hardliners is for the US and its European allies to offer Iran a chance for a resumed relationship...the west should appreciate that a nuanced diplomacy of reconciliation could both regulate Iran’s nuclear programme and help stabilise the Middle East. It is the much maligned Mr ElBaradei that has paved the way for success.

Others, including Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, had already come to the same conclusions about what is actually in the "smoking laptop" - that the data therein relate to that earlier and now cancelled phase of experimentation that never actually got as far as using nuclear materials and was, in many ways, deeply flawed in any case. That is, the Iranian designs as contained in the laptop wouldn't have worked. But this view stands in stark contrast to the opinions from the neocon mothership, the American Enterprise Institute, where they called the IAEA report a "whitewash"...mainly, it must be said, for not insisting on war with Iran right now.

However, Russia is now indicating that it may support further sanctions on Iran because it is worried about Iran's heavy water plant. Heavy water reactors can be used to breed plutonium (from uranium-238) or uranium-233 (from thorium-232) and actually make it easier to extract weapons-grade material than conventional uranium enrichment techniques, so they are seen as major non-proliferation risks. But they also enable natural, un-enriched, uranium to be used in reactors - making them ideal for a small nation with limited resources to spend which is worried about being forced into dependency on other states for fuel. It may be that Iran's heavy water plant is a worrying risk - or it may just be that Russia is keen to see Iran locked in to a very profitable dependency on the larger nation for nuclear purposes. As usual with Iran's nuclear plans, there's a best-case and a worst-case scenario and which one you believe will depend on your own opinion of Iran's motivations.

Marching In Lockstep

By Cernig

When the IAEA issued its latest report on Iran's nuclear program on Friday, there wasn't much noise about it from the right side of the blogosphere. They were too busy worrying about Obama's patriotism and McCain's "Cheney".

But now that the neocon mothership - the American Enterprise Institute - have spoken via the WSJ, they're all falling over themselves to get in lockstep and call it a "whitewash".

The truth, however, is that the IAEA's new report is a carefully parsed compromise between what the IAEA knows, what it's being told but cannot itself verify and political pressure from these very same neocons. It included an urgent call to Iran to agree implementation of a new Additional Protocol and gave the UNSC good cause to proceed with new sanction should it wish to. It repeated the good news that Iran's current centrifuges and their low-enriched product cannot be diverted to produce highly-enriched uranium useable for a weapon without IAEA knowledge.

It also connected the infamous "smoking taptop" to the Iranian nuclear program which ended in 2003 according to the last American NIE.

What the neocons are unhappy about is that it didn't contain a call for war. If any report on Iran's nuclear program doesn't contain that, it's a whitewash that makes the producing agency "irrelevant" according to them.

Could they be more transparent?

IAEA Iran Report Released Today (Updated)

By Cernig

There's no doubt about it - scary stories about Iran's nuclear program sell newspapers and encourage internet click-throughs. But the bubble of scary stories in advance of today's IAEA report has been unusually lurid.

Several hawkish blogs today are referencing an article from Der Spiegel magazine's science correspondent which purports to discuss a European study saying iran could have a nuclear weapon far more quickly than suggested by the recent American NIE or by the IAEA. In fact, Der Spiegel claims the study shows Iran could have a nuke by the end of the year. The key graphs:

As part of a project to improve control of nuclear materials, the European Commission Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy set up a detailed simulation of the centrifuges currently used by Iran in the Natanz nuclear facility to enrich uranium. The results look nothing like those reached by the US intelligence community.

For one scenario, the JRC scientists assumed the centrifuges in Natanz were operating at 100 percent efficiency. Were that the case, Iran could already have the 25 kilograms of highly enriched uranium necessary for an atomic device by the end of this year. Another scenario assumed a much lower efficiency — just 25 percent. But even then, Iran would have produced enough uranium by the end of 2010.

For the purposes of the simulation, the JRC modelled each of the centrifuges individually and then hooked them together to form the kind of cascade necessary to enrich uranium. A number of variables were taken into account, including the assumption by most experts that Iran isn’t even close to operating its centrifuges at 100 percent efficiency. What is known, however, is that the Iranians are operating 18 cascades, each made up of 164 centrifuges. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad himself said last April that the country had 3,000 centrifuges in operation. At the time, most Western observers discounted the claim as mere propaganda. But the International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed Ahmadinejad’s assertion in November.

But there are a couple of problems with Der Spiegel's account.

Firstly, it sidesteps entirely the IAEA surveillance and seal on Iran’s centrifuges and LEU product. The IAEA guarantees those cannot be redirected to HEU production without its knowledge. It also says that the study produces a worst case estimate based on 100% efficient centrifuges when we know from IAEA reports that Iran has never managed better than 20% efficiency. You cannot get there (enough HEU for a bomb in the timeline the study suggests) from here, so any such estimates are working from null data.

But secondly, there are reasons at the moment to doubt Der Spiegel's characterisation of this study. The JRC is committed to a promise that reports are meant "to be accessible to interested non-specialists and the media," yet I cannot find any such study on their website.

The only "project to improve control of nuclear materials" currently ongoing is one run from their Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (IPSC), which is indeed based in Ipsa, Italy. The webpage for that program - the 4th ESARDA Nuclear Safeguards and Non Proliferation course - doesn't mention any such program either. It's described as "a chance to all students to learn more about the general background of safguards legislation, nuclear fuel cycle, verification technologies and the evolution of safguards." That doesn't exactly sound like something such a major study would be prepared for, but it's the only current program which fits Der Spiegel's description.

The nearest I can find to any study like the one Der Spiegel describes is is a reference to study papers referencing an imaginary state and based on various actual nations’ nuclear programs - intended as an exercise for students of non-proliferation techniques in preparing an inspection regime to prevent said hypothetical nation from producing a weapon. Could Der Spiegel, in a zeal to print "news" have so mischaracterised a fairly innocuous study? I've emailled the JRC asking them if they can identify and provide a copy of the study the Spiegel article referenced. If they reply, I'll let you know.

In the meantime, I noted the other day that there's been other lurid accusations over Iran's nuclear program in the past week. At the UNSC, unaligned nations want to take the IAEA report into consideration before drafting the UNSC's next resolution on Iran's program, but the US and European nations have already drafted the resolution they want voted on before seeing the IAEA's report. It may well be that this rash of accusations is part of a PR program to gain US and European public acceptance for such a move.

The IAEA's report itself is pretty much as expected. It says that Iran has been co-operating more fully but not fully enough and that questions still remain. However, it also says - yet again - that no smoking gun or even damp squib has been found. The report doesn't seem to be available online just yet but El Baradei's statement is.

"Our task in Iran is to make sure that the Iranian nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes. We are at it for the last five years. In the last four months, in particular, we have made quite good progress in clarifying the outstanding issues that had to do with Iran´s past nuclear activities, with the exception of one issue, and that is the alleged weaponization studies that supposedly Iran has conducted in the past. We have managed to clarify all the remaining outstanding issues, including the most important issue, which is the scope and nature of Iran´s enrichment programme. We have made good progress, with still one issue on our agenda and I call on Iran to act as actively as possible, as fast as possible, for me to be able (to ensure) that all issues, that have to do with Iran´s past nuclear activities, have been clarified.

"In addition to our work, to clarify Iran´s past nuclear activities, we have to make sure, naturally, that Iran´s current activities are also exclusively for peace purposes and for that we have been asking Iran to conclude the so called Additional Protocol, which gives us the additional authority to visit places, additional authority to have additional documents, to be able to provide assurance, not only that Iran´s declared activities are for peaceful purposes but that there are no undeclared nuclear activities. On that score, Iran in the last few months has provided us with visits to many places, that enable us to have a clearer picture of Iran´s current programme. However, that is not, in my view, sufficient. We need Iran to implement the Additional Protocol. We need to have that authority as a matter of law.

Those alleged weaponization activities are the ones contained on the dodgy laptop US intelligence gained when an Iranian walked in with it, after supposedly getting it from a burglar. That, according to El Baradei, is pretty much all that's left available to those who continue to demonise Iran.

David "Judy In Drag" Sanger at the NYT describes that information as having "strongly suggested the country had experimented with technology to make a nuclear weapon". But other reports are more sceptical.

The newest U.S nuclear information, including some intelligence declassified for sharing with the agency, was handed over to IAEA Deputy Director Oli Heinonen last Friday, just a few weeks after a first batch of material was forwarded by the U.S., said the diplomats.

But much of it shed little new light on what the U.S. says have been attempts by Iran to develop nuclear weapons. "It's not the amount but the quality that counts," said one of the diplomats who was dismissive of the new U.S. file.

Another diplomat said senior agency officials also had dismissed the information as relatively insignificant and coming too late.

Several of the diplomats suggested the U.S. was disingenuous in providing such a large amount of what they described as questionable information just days before ElBaradei was to complete his report. But a diplomat familiar with the U.S. position said Washington was acting in good faith and trying to help the agency.

For its part, Iran did not respond to an invitation issued by Heinonen to its experts to look at some of the information the U.S. approved for sharing with Tehran, despite earlier pledges to do so.

One has to wonder whether that Iranian refusal points to skullduggery or just to Iranian hardliners being stupidly hardline. I'd suggest the latter simply on the basis of Occam's Razor.

Update Andy Grotto at The Arms Control Wonk has kindly provided a link to a PDF copy of the IAEA report. Andy's take is worth a read, as are the comments to his post.

I want to flag up what for me were key graphs in the report, though.

54. The one major remaining issue relevant to the nature of Iran’s nuclear programme is the alleged studies on the green salt project, high explosives testing and the missile re-entry vehicle. This is a matter of serious concern and critical to an assessment of a possible military dimension to Iran’s nuclear programme. The Agency was able to show some relevant documentation to Iran on 3–5 February 2008 and is still examining the allegations made and the statements provided by Iran in response. Iran has maintained that these allegations are baseless and that the data have been fabricated. The Agency’s overall assessment requires, inter alia, an understanding of the role of the uranium metal document, and clarifications concerning the procurement activities of some military related institutions still not provided by Iran. The Agency only received authorization to show some further material to Iran on 15 February 2008. Iran has not yet responded to the Agency’s request of that same date for Iran to view this additional documentation on the alleged studies. In light of the above, the Agency is not yet in a position to determine the full nature of Iran’s nuclear programme. However, it should be noted that the Agency has not detected the use of nuclear material in connection with the alleged studies, nor does it have credible information in this regard. The Director General has urged Iran to engage actively with the Agency in a more detailed examination of the documents available about the alleged studies which the Agency has been authorized to show to Iran. [Emphasis Mine - C]

I'm going to suggest something a bit off the wall here - the infamous smoking laptop contains details of Iran's old weapons program, the one the NIE said had been shut down in 2003. It's been doctored by those who "donated" it to US intelligence to make it appear more contemporary and relevant. The pre-2003 program never got further than the beginnings of on-paper studies (for instance, the re-entry vehicle wouldn't actually work), which is why the IAEA have found no use of nuclear material which could be associated with these allegations. The Iranians, knowing all this, are now willing to play hardball because they know there are no new damaging revelations going to come out of investigations of the laptop data, even by accident - and so the hardliners have decided to be hardliners and cock a snook at the US. It's a theory that seems to fit the data and squares the circle between US and Iranian allegation and denial cycles.

If so, then at this point the hardliners in both camps need to climb down out of their trees. As Andy Grotto writes:

I can’t imagine Iran ever coming fully clean—or adopting the kinds of transparency measures needed to verify the peaceful nature of its program, such as the IAEA Additional Protocol—unless it is given a face-saving way out of this mess. Such a pathway cannot emerge until the United States gets serious about meaningful multilateral diplomacy with Iran that includes credible incentives to accompany the sanctions.

I'd only add that both camps need a face-saving way out of the corners they've painted themselves into - US hawks are just as unlikely to ever come clean about the ways they've spun the anti-Iran narrative or back off their insistence that Iran's program isn't now peaceful without one. That's probably going to take someone high up with the courage to change the game.

Next IAEA Report On Iran Due

By Cernig

According to IAEA officials, the next report on Iran is due out this weekend, either tomorrow or Monday. It's expected to say, yet again, that Iran has been cagy but co-operating and that the IAEA still haven't found a smoking gun or even a waterpistol.

So it must be time for those who would prefer the words "Iran" and "nuclear threat" to be conjoined in the public's mind to set out a new range of accusations. That way, they can point at the IAEA's report and say "but it doesn't answer these questions!"

Oh look, whaddaya know.

The MeK says Iran has a secret nuke plant in Tehran's suburbs. This, presumably, is different from all the other Iranian secret nuke plants the MeK have "revealed" since 2003 and passed to the U.S. - thence to the IAEA - but which turned out to be entirely non-existant when investigated.

And the Bush administration is pushing the laptop the MeK was given by some guy again.

So The U.S. Has An ASAT Weapon

By Cernig

So, the U.S. has an anti-satellite weapon. It's a modification of the well-tried SM3 naval missile rather than one of the fancier and far more expensive per unit specially-developed anti-missile interceptors the military are keeping up in Alaska and plan to install in Europe. It might work under all weather conditions - but the military erred on the side of caution.

The neocons are jubilant - Michael Goldfarb calling it the "greatest PR boost the program could have gotten short of actually striking down a North Korean missile inbound to Hollywood". That's a bit hyperbolic - but then again he also headlines his piece "Missile Defense Works" when hitting a satellite the size of a bus in a predictable orbit doesn't actually say a damn thing about ability to hit a dodging, far smaller re-entry vehicle which might have onboard jammers or decoys deployed.

The rest of us? Well, there isn't a single expert in the field who believes the "hydrazine threat" story. The consensus is that the Bush administration just rattled a sabre the U.S. already proved it had the capability for back in 1985 to no good outcome other than heightened international arms control tensions, at a time when the neocon lobby is calling for a walkback by the U.S. on various arms treaties to allow missile defense systems which will include the permanent stationing of weapons in space. The shootdown was a short-sighted act of marginal utility but incalculable diplomatic/foreign policy effects. Welcome to the new arms race with both China and Russia - and India, Japan, Israel...

Worse, if the neocons are successful in riding this PR victory into a Brilliant Pebbles deployment, the next time an SM3 is launched into orbit it may be targeted at a rogue satellite containing a half-dozen interceptor missiles of its own (or even a nuke-pumped X-Ray laser if one of the more nightamrish plans from Ronnie's old Star Wars comix makes a re-appearance). Wouldn't that make a nice firework video for the nightime news?

Don't Poke The Bear

By Cernig

SecDef Bob Gates told reporters today that he believes Russia wants to resolve sensitive security disputes with the United States, including proposed missile defenses in central Europe.

``I think that regardless of what's said in public, I think there is still an interest (in Moscow) in pursuing the dialogue, and we are doing that,'' he said.

And you know what? He's right.

Western media outlets have been full of how Russia is "ditching Cold War pacts" like the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE) from 1992 and threatening to stop adhering to the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987. Bad Russkis, bad!

But Vlad Putin, whatever one may think of his authoritarian streak, is plain right when he says that ""It is already clear that a new phase in the arms race is unfolding in the world...It is not our fault, because we did not start it." Undermentioned or ignored by Western media are the following:

- it all started because Bush withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty so he could build his missile shield. Of course the Russians are worried about this. For one thing, Russian Foreign minister Sergey Lavrov is correct when he says that this expansion of the US missile defense system from American territory to northeast Asia and to European nations close to Russia's borders looks very like an attempt to encircle Russia and reduce it's own deterrent ability. It doesn't look good that influential neocon think-tanks are pushing for the Bush administration to overturn treaties against weaponry in space either.

- Bush has said he won't renew the INF treaty either, which is partly why the Russians won't. The Russians say they are happy to renew the treaty if the US will re-ratify the ABM treaty and this one.

- NATO nations never ratified the CFE treaty and Russia has only said it will pull out until NATO does ratify it. The eastern bloc nations which include Russia been keeping to it unilaterally since 1999.

Despite it being the Bush administration and NATO nations who began all the recent tension, if Gates pulls of any deal at all he'll get the credit for taming the Bear and have have won the easiest PR victory in history. All because the media didn't remember Putin's admonishment: "Let's not talk as if on one side we are dealing with pure, white and fluffy partners and on the other side with a monster that has just left the forest."

Update Who's the adult in the room here?

Russia and the United States must take leadership in discussions on a new international arms regime, Russia's First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said on Sunday.

Speaking at a security conference in Munich, Ivanov referred to the control and reduction of nuclear weapons, adding it was time to replace an existing SALT 1 arms limitation treaty with a new regime:

"As I see it, this is precisely an area of international relations where Russia and the United States not merely could, but are directly obliged to show leadership.

"Sooner or later, we will have to start working in a multilateral format since none of us here, I am sure, has any doubts about the importance of multilateral barriers to WMD (weapons of mass destruction) proliferation," he said.

Bolton Still Whining For NIE Do-Over

By Cernig

Via Memeorandum, I see that John Bolton is still whining because the last National Intelligence Estimate on Iran didn't produce the excuses for war he wanted. Today, the WSJ gives Bolton a platform to call for the wahmbulance - John wants a do-over. Nevermind that administration officials from Cheney on down have said they're just fine with the NIE. Bolton also wants the intelligence community purged of all those who won't toe the neocon party line. He says he wants the intelligence community to just shut up about policy: "Mr. McConnell should commit the intelligence community to stick to its knitting -- intelligence -- and return its policy enthusiasts to agencies where policy is made." But does anyone seriously think, in an administration that has made politicizing federal agencies into high art, that the neocon policymakers in the IC would be ousted along with those who might oppose them? Naaaah - not even Old Walrus-face beieves that crock of s**t - after all, politicizing intelligence is something he's had long experience at.

Faithfully, other neocons are jumping on Bolton's Bandwagon yet again. One has even spotted the obvious - that any reversal on the NIE now would mean McConnell's resignation or firing as DNI - and has a replacement in mind. If you guessed John Bolton then it wasn't exactly rocket science to figure out.

But I've a better idea. If the Bush administration, in lame-duck mode, really thinks it needs a new DNI then I suggest Zalmay Khalilzhad. He's a neocon of long standing. He knows the enemies of America well - in some cases he's had dinner with them and escorted them to parties. And he has the massive advantage of not being named John Bolton.

Update Via Think Progress comes news that DNI McConnell but back at Bolton for attempting to get the DNI fired.

Today during a Senate threat assessment hearing, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) asked Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell about Bolton’s assertions. McConnell replied:

MCCONNELL: Sir, I’ll start by saying that the integrity and the professionalism in this NIE is probably the highest in our history in terms of objectivity and quality of the analysis and challenging the assumptions and conducting red teams on the process, conducting a counter intelligence assessment about “were we being misled” and so on. So I would start by saying that the article you refer to is a gross misrepresentation of the professionalism of this community.

Stick that in your moustache, John.

What Was Bombed In Syria Matters Less Than Why

By Cernig

It being Super-Tuesday, Sy Hersh's latest article on what exactly the Israelis bombed in the Syrian desert last September is likely to be mostly overlooked. Which is a great pity because it's the most in-depth investigation I've seen of what went on and why. It even has - gasp - named sources. Both Smintheus at DKos and Ken at Bonehead Compendium wrote to flag this one up for me and I heartily recommend giving it a full read.

The short version - reports that the site was a nuclear reactor are almost certainly israeli or neocon spin. It was far more likely to be either a missile factory, a chemical weapons factory or a combination of both. (This was the conclusion I came to some months ago after reading as much as I could grab on the subject, so I'm predisposed to a favorable reading of Hersh on this). But what it actually was no longer matters. Two messages have come out loud and clear from the large amount of speculation surrounding the raid.

The first is that Israel, following its questionable success against Hezboullah, needed to restore a perception of its military competence.

“I hesitate to answer any journalist’s questions about it,” Faruq al-Shara, the Syrian Vice-President, told me. “Israel bombed to restore its credibility, and their objective is for us to keep talking about it. And by answering your questions I serve their objective. Why should I volunteer to do that?” Shara denied that his nation has a nuclear-weapons program. “The volume of articles about the bombing is incredible, and it’s not important that it’s a lie,” he said.

...That notion was echoed by the ambassador of an Israeli ally who is posted in Tel Aviv. “The truth is not important,” the ambassador told me. “Israel was able to restore its credibility as a deterrent. That is the whole thing. No one will know what the real story is.”

The second is that America may be wagging the Israeli tail but it doesn't have complete control over Israel's actions.

Shortly after the bombing, a Chinese envoy and one of the Bush Administration’s senior national-security officials met in Washington. The Chinese envoy had just returned from a visit to Tehran, a person familiar with the discussion told me, and he wanted the White House to know that there were moderates there who were interested in talks. The national-security official rejected that possibility and told the envoy, as the person familiar with the discussion recalled, “‘You are aware of the recent Israeli statements about Syria. The Israelis are extremely serious about Iran and its nuclear program, and I believe that, if the United States government is unsuccessful in its diplomatic dealings with Iran, the Israelis will take it out militarily.’ He then told the envoy that he wanted him to convey this to his government—that the Israelis were serious.

“He was telling the Chinese leadership that they’d better warn Iran that we can’t hold back Israel, and that the Iranians should look at Syria and see what’s coming next if diplomacy fails,” the person familiar with the discussion said. “His message was that the Syrian attack was in part aimed at Iran.”

Which puts Bush's recent pronouncements that America must not be seen as a "paper tiger" in the region into a whole new perspective, especially when his own ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad is freely admitting that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have strengthened Iran's hand in the Middle East. Is Bush more worried about Iran's perception of America's toothlessness, or of Israel's perception of America's value in the region?

What about Khalilzhad? It seems to me that he might finally have parted company with the pro-Israel lobby within the neocon circles he has always been a part of. But from Cheney on down they must be aware that he knows where all the bodies are buried - he was integral, for instance, in the Taliban's original lionising as heroes against Russia (even inviting Taliban leaders to dinner in Texas) and was intimate of the process whereby they and Al Qaeda became enemy number one after getting US aid for so long. They'll be wary of alienating him to the point where his resignation is followed by a tell-all memoir.

Poland Agrees Missile Defense Sites In Principle

By Cernig

The Polish government has agreed in principle to allowing US missile interceptors to be based in their country - and Russia has threatened an "atomated response" to any launch.

Under the agreement, announced by Poland's foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, America will help bolster Polish air defences in return for permission to place 10 interceptor missiles on the country's Baltic seaboard.

"There is still a great deal of work for our experts," said Mr Sikorski on his first trip to Washington since Poland's centre-right government came to power in November. "But yes, I am satisfied that the principles that we have argued for have been accepted."

I'm guessing that the Poles are gambling that the Iranian threat is nothing like a real one, and in return for hosting US paranoia they will receive all kinds of military largesse. It's probably a good bet - but the bear on the horizon isn't happy. Russia sees the US anti-missile program as a threat to their own nuclear deterrent.

Russia's ambassador to Belgium said last week the programme could trigger an inadvertent nuclear holocaust.

"The trajectory of any American missile from Poland would be south-south-east and the speed would be very high," Vadim Lukov said at a seminar in Brussels. "In this situation any notion of an early warning evaporates. Poland is just six and a half minutes from Moscow and in this situation the Russians would rely on an automated response. I am sure you may all well imagine the unfortunate consequences."

Whoops, Apocalypse! Of course, to the religious nuts haunting the GOP and the White House, this might be a feature rather than a bug.

As for Condi Rice, she's in "flat-out lying" mode:

US officials have tried to soothe Russian fears, saying the system would be impotent against Russia's huge nuclear arsenal. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice later played down its links to the programme known as Star Wars, originally conceived under Ronald Reagan, which was intended to deflect missiles fired by the Soviet Union.

"This is not that programme," she said. "This is not the son of that programme. This is not the grandson of that programme."

There isn't a single person who knows how much the neoconservative lobby has influenced this administration, and who reads neocon position papers on their think-tank websites, who believes that. The neocons want space-based interceptors next, the old "Brilliant Pebbles" program resurected. The Russians certainly read these reports and their reaction to Condi's lying can be easily guessed at.

So here's the calculus - is it worth tempting mutally assured destruction when, even if the Iranians do lob a missile at Europe, the instant an interceptor launches the Russians will join in with an "automated" launch of their own? I think the answer is an obvious no. Either the Bushies and neocons are still living in their own reality where the rules of blowback don't apply to them or they know this is all window dressing for extending US instead of Russian influence in Eastern Europe.

(H/t Kat)

Iran Opens Space Center

By Cernig

Iran has joined the space race.

TEHRAN (AFP) - Iran on Monday fired a rocket into space to mark the opening of its first space centre, triggering swift condemnation from the United States amid continued tensions over the Iranian nuclear drive.

The space centre, located in the remote desert of western Iran, will be used to launch Iran's first home-produced satellite "Omid" (Hope) in May or June this year, officials said.

...The rocket launch is believed to be the second time Iran has tried to put an object into space after it claimed to have successfully fired a missile outside the atmosphere in February 2007.

State television broadcast pictures of the launch of the rocket, which is dubbed Kavoshgar-1 but bore a close resemblance to Iran's longer-range missile Shahab-3.

The Shahab-3 has a range of 1,300 to 1,600 kilometres (800 to 1,000 miles), enough to put Tehran's arch regional foe Israel and US bases in the Gulf within reach.

The new space centre includes an underground control centre and launchpad which will be used to fire Omid into space, followed by other planned satellites in the future, state media said.

...Iran has been pursuing a space programme for several years, and in October 2005 a Russian-made Iranian satellite was put into orbit by a Russian rocket.

But Omid would be Iran's first domestically manufactured probe and the first to be launched from Iranian territory.

The rocket blasted off after a countdown to cries of "Allahu Akbar!" (God is Greatest), from the space centre in a desert region in the northern Semnan province, state television showed.

The pictures showed the rocket heading towards space but no information was given on what height it reached. A small probe was seen falling back to earth under a parachute but it was not clear what this contained.

State media said the rocket was a sounding probe sent to conduct experiments to pave the way for the launch of the Omid satellite.

Defence Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najjar was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency that the satellite would be launched in the Iranian month of Khordad, which begins on May 21.

The Russian-launched satellite Sina-1 was Iran's first -- and so far only -- probe to be launched into space, and was described by the Iranian press at the time as being for research and telecommunications.

Iran has said it plans to construct and launch several more satellites over the next three years.

White House spokeswoman Dana Perino put a decidedly negative cast on the launch: ""I saw this morning that Iran, again, tested a ballistic missile. It's unfortunate that they continue to do that because it further isolates the country from the rest of the world," she said.

Which really is the problem with such dual-use technology. Whether satellite launching systems and uranium enrichment facilities represent actual threats or not depends entirely on the intent of the users and Iran has been consistently demonised as not having the best of intent. Yet the IAEA has said that there is no way that the current Iranian enrichment plant or its product can be diverted to military use without their knowledge. The IAEA has said that Iran's answers to their questions bear out the recent American NIE that said Iran no longer has a nuclear weapons program.

And it seems as if this Space Center is another peaceful use for what was originally tagged as a military missile testing site. Jeffrey Lewis a few days ago posted a satellite picture of a facility near Tabriz, in NorthWestern Iran which may well be the Space Center.



This facility was originally tagged as a military site by the neoconservatives favorite terrorists, the MEK.

Can you imagine if every satellite launch by the US, Japan or Europe was similarly described as a ballistic missile launch? Technically, they are. But intent doesn't lie in the mind of the beholder.

Update Ok, here's interesting. Regular reader Amir who runs the Nuclear Iran blog says in comments that the missile was launched from "a point near Semnan, in central Iran" rather than Western Iran. Did the Western press get the location wrong? In which case the picturted facility above is definitely of another probable silo-launched missile facility. We're back to wondering about intent. Is the pictured facility military or part of Iran's space race?

An Unhelpful Double Standard

By Cernig

Just a couple of weeks ago, the general in charge of the Bush adminsitration's missile shield program was in Europe telling Czechs that Iran's ballistic missile testing program proved they were a threat to world stability. It was mostly hype. This week Pakistan tested a ballistic missile able to carry one of the nuclear warheads that nation is known - not suspected - to possess. The Bush administration's reaction showed their double standards - demonizing Iran while giving several free passes to other nations with provably worse records on proliferation and secret nuke building who just happen to be allies.

The United States has said that there’s nothing alarming about Pakistan’s latest missile test but urged all countries in the region to observe their international obligations.

“We’ve seen those reports that the Pakistanis have tested a missile. This I understand is a system as reported that has been tested previously,” State Department Deputy Spokesman Tom Casey said.

“Certainly, again, we want all countries to comply with their international obligations and would not want to see anything done that would destabilise the region,” he said.

Mr Casey maintained that the missile test was “not unique and has, in fact, happened before”.

While the US continues to fail to hold itself and its allies - especially those with highly questionable histories - to a different standard on issues like proliferation, democracy, human rights, backing for terrorism and foreign meddling - it cannot hold any high ground in the world forum. That's an utterly counterproductive obstruction to successful foreign policy and must change.

Nuke Policy Blog Tank - Getting The Word Out

By Cernig

Recently I and more than a dozen other bloggers who write about foreign policy and arms control issues participated in a "blog-tank" experiment led by Cheryl Rofer of WhirledView.

I'll let Cheryl explain:

Congress has specified that it is time for a new nuclear policy, before they will grant funding for new nuclear weapons. What is their purpose? What would they be used for? How does this make the United States more secure?

A blue-ribbon panel of nuclear scientists and strategists asked some of the same questions. The presidential candidates haven’t contributed much to the discussion.

So, in the tradition of Thomas Paine, I decided to ask my fellow citizen-bloggers to help the country out.

I invited some by e-mail and posted a general challenge. Fifteen bloggers responded, some with multiple posts. Their political views ranged around the center, including both Republicans and Democrats, moderately hawkish to moderately dovish.

My point was not merely to develop a reasonable nuclear weapons policy, one that would improve safety for Americans, our relations with other countries, and prospects for nonproliferation. I also wanted to show that people with a range of views could come to a consensus. So I specified in the challenge that I would pull the views together and develop a consensus.

Well the bloggers wrote - several of them actual experts and others just well informed individuals with much of it really excellent stuff from all points on the political spectrum. Cheryl duly pulled together our consensus, which I hope she doesn't mind if I republish here in full.

Overview
The bloggers who have contributed to this blog-tank range in views across the center of the political and hawkishness spectra. Nonetheless, we have achieved a fair degree of consensus.

Nuclear weapons strategy is part of a broader US military and international relations strategy, but it can be discussed by itself. To some degree, development of all these levels of strategy is iterative.

We need to identify short-term and long-term goals and give each its appropriate place. While abolition of nuclear weapons may be a long-term goal, making it too immediate can be counterproductive.

Nuclear weapons have a paradoxical relationship to power. They cannot be used, but their threat is potent. If a nation is tied too closely to a requirement to retaliate, its options may in fact be limited.

Nations that have nuclear weapons want to preserve their exclusivity, but that desire may increase the valuation of nuclear weapons by other nations.

The Threat
The threat of mutually assured destruction (MAD) via the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union is no more. But the United States must consider the nuclear arsenals of Russia, China and others. It cannot unilaterally disarm. The greatest nuclear threats now are accidents from, for instance, the thousands of missiles in the United States and Russia still on Cold-War alert status or from poor handling of nuclear weapons, as in the recent inadvertent transport of nuclear-armed cruise missiles from North Dakota to Louisiana.

The other current threat is from terrorist acquisition of nuclear weapons. This is most likely to come from theft from current stockpiles.

Deterrence
With the Soviet Union gone, MAD is no longer operative. Whether it can be applied to today’s world is not clear. Pakistan and India have achieved a nuclear standoff that resembles MAD. Even a single nuclear explosion is a serious threat to the economic and social stability of larger nations like the United States, Russia and China. A hundred strikes would be devastating; fewer would destroy most nations.

Overwhelming conventional military power, particularly air power, may deter as effectively as nuclear firepower; perhaps more effectively because of the conventional-psychological barrier to the use of nuclear weapons.

Multipolar nuclear deterrence may result in the valuing of nuclear weapons by smaller states; possession of nuclear weapons may seem to them a way to counter the overwhelming conventional military power of larger states.

Nuclear weapons are no stronger a deterrent than conventional weapons to stateless groups like al-Qaeda that have no land or population to protect. Neither is persuasive.

For any deterrent to work, the tripwires and penalties must be clear. That is not now the case with US nuclear weapons policy.

First Use and Transparency
Nuclear weapons are different from all other weapons, including those that are sometimes called “weapons of mass destruction.” Therefore, there is no such thing as a tactical nuclear weapon, to be deployed into the field along with other weapons. Any first use will evoke strong international reaction, particularly if that first use is by the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war.

Thus, it should be the policy of the US that nuclear weapons are intended solely to deter and respond to a nuclear attack. They should not be a response to a chemical or biological attack by non nuclear weapon states, but to a nuclear attack only. In the event of a terrorist nuclear attack, nuclear retaliation may be exactly what the terrorists hope to provoke.

US responses to a nuclear attack should be clear. Further, our nuclear ally, Israel, needs to be more forthright about its nuclear possession and policies.

Dissuasion
The pursuit of nuclear weapons can be discouraged by increasing the costs (economic and otherwise) of their development, the hazards of their development, and the value of developing them. Governments and international organizations must continue to maintain the position that nuclear weapons are not part of ordinary military planning. Attempting to ‘domesticate’ them or produce low-yield ‘usable nukes’ will tend to undermine the marginalization of nuclear weapons that is essential to maintaining nonproliferation.

Immunizing non-nuclear states against nuclear attack under all circumstances gives them a strong positive reason to avoid pursuing nuclear weapons and to cooperate fully with the IAEA.

Negotiations
Negotiations to decrease the numbers of nuclear weapons from the present 26,000 or so down to the low thousands or less should continue between the United States and Russia. Verification is important and should be a part of any agreements coming out of these negotiations. It is also important to bring the other states having nuclear weapons into these talks to decrease their stockpiles as well.

Additional subjects for which negotiation is essential is the safety and security of nuclear stockpiles and nuclear materials; delivery vehicles, which are easier to see and count than nuclear warheads; and the current alert status of missiles. All of these negotiations should be multilateral. Cooperation between the United States and Russia on securing nuclear materials should continue and be expanded.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and Beyond
The NPT is an important part of keeping nuclear weapons under control. The IAEA has been successful and will need to be expanded as additional facilities are opened up to inspection and as restrictions on the numbers of nuclear weapons are increased. Additional duties may also be given to the IAEA or other international organizations, including buying up black market nuclear materials and the development of an international fuel bank.

The Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty should be ratified by the Senate.

Infrastructure
The infrastructure of nuclear weapons laboratories and production facilities is an important part of the US’s deterrent. As numbers of nuclear weapons in the stockpile decreases, the ability to rebuild becomes more important. However, immediate development of the Robust Replacement Warhead (RRW) will send the wrong message to the world about the US’s commitment to the NPT. The nuclear weapons complex must be sized in accordance with strategic needs in this area.

At the same time, defense-industry lobbying, profiteering, and the privatization of conflict need to be reined in.

Missile Defense
Along with infrastructure, missile defense is part of the “New Triad.” We have come to no consensus on missile defense. It is a large enough subject that perhaps another blog-tank on the subject is in order.

Regional Security
Regional security should be pursued through agreements of protection under the US nuclear ‘umbrella’, sponsorship of regional military/economic agreements, and expansion of programs such as the Cooperative Threat Reduction effort beyond the former Soviet Union. All of this requires the US government engage both allies and potential adversaries on an international, not unilateral, stage.

Cheryl then emailed the various presidential campaigns for their comments and feedback. The result was:

No response: zip, zilch, nada. What I learned in that exercise is that the candidates are eager to get their ideas out to us and our contributions in to them. Forget about anything else.

I'd go further and say that the American Idol campaign we're experiencing means candidates and the mainstream media aren't as interested in serious policy discussions as they should be, since sound-bites and snarking at their opponents garner more coverage. And nuclear weapons policy just isn't on the list of hot topics, despite the race to become Commander in Chief of a nuclear superpower with no policy on how best to use it's nuclear arsenal. That's insane. Let's change it - let's put this issue out there to the point where it's a major topic for discussion.

The Dangerous Hawks Of Space

By Cernig

Two long-term neoconservative hawks who belong to the Bolton "diplomacy has failed" school of nonproliferation thinking and have been influential in Republican policymaking on nuclear matters since Reagan's halcyon Star Wars days have penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal extolling the virtues of missile defense.

J.D. Crouch III and Robert Joseph, both former Bush administration officials intimately involved with nuclear weapons and nonproliferation policy until the Bolton school fell out of favor, spend several paragraphs extolling Bush's courage on matters such as invading Iraq, pushing for the Surge and expanding the surveillance state then write:

Mr. Bush has faced so many tough choices over the last seven years that his decision to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty has been at least partially forgotten. Yet this decision, announced in December 2001, was no less consequential. It also defied the critics who argued that it would lead to a new arms race, increase nuclear proliferation and ruin cooperation with Russia on nuclear arms control and terrorism.

None of these things have happened as a result of the ABM Treaty withdrawal. But the decision will enable us to counter a still-growing 21st century threat.

They hope no-one notices that all of these things happened as a result of the ABM treaty withdrawal. Russia has begun development and production of new missiles designed to circumvent future US missile defenses, withdrawn from key treaties including one which limits conventional forces in Europe and stated clearly that it does not regard Iran, for one, as a nuclear threat to the world. Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev are in accord that the withdrawal from the ABM treaty was a major contributory influence on Russias positions and that U.S. withdrawal from that treaty was a major mistake that signalled the Bush adminsitration's status as a loose cannon.

But, undeterred, they now want the U.S. to withdraw unilaterally from another crucial treaty - the one on space-based weaponry.

Finally, we must look again at space as a place to deploy interceptors.

There is no question that space provides the highest leverage against the missile threat: Targets are more visible, more accessible and more vulnerable when attacked from space. While there are concerns about "weaponizing space," these pale in comparison to the increasing vulnerability of U.S. space-based satellites by weapons from the ground traversing space. The recent Chinese anti-satellite test was a wake-up call.

Space-based interceptors, like those proposed by former President George H. W. Bush in 1991, have the potential to strengthen missile defense, and to provide protection for key intelligence and communications assets in space that are now vulnerable from ground-based attack.

Yet again, Crouch and Joseph want to ignore facts to get to further their agenda. As Dr. Jeffrey Lewis wrote of the Chines ASAT test at the time:

If China has conducted an ASAT test, this is extremely bad. I had been hoping that the Bush Administration would push for a ban on anti-satellite testing, either in the form of a code of conduct or some rules of road. The Bush folks, however, have been fond of saying that wasn’t necessary, because “there is no arms race in space.”

The Bush folks in question here include Crouch and Joseph - but now they want to use the arms race in space they say isn't happening to further their argument for more of an arms race in space, instead of pursuing an international treaty ban on ASAT weaponry. Huh?

So who are these people exactly? Well, J.D. Crouch III is the man who in a 1999 letter to the Washington Times, blamed the Columbine High School massacre on "30 years of liberal social policy that has put our children in day care, taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of the house, and banished Dad as an authority figure from the family altogether". Robert Joseph is the one who insisted on the inclusion of the famous 16 words in Bush's 2003 State of the Union Address regarding Iraq's alleged nuclear weapons development and efforts to buy uranium from Niger. Both they and their think-tank (which is lavishly funded by arms manufacturers and hawkish rightwing foundations) have been intimately involved in every hawkish attempt to walk away from international arms control accords and foster a policy of war instead of diplomacy since the Reagan administration. They simply aren't credible advocates for their cause.

Which doesn't stop Murdoch's WSJ from giving them room to do so, in furtherance of a policy of lying to the public and lawmakers so as to militarise space - a policy which has also been proposed by the likes of the neoconservative Heritage Institute. It's most obvious current symptom is the way in which the Bush administration has hyped and spun the threat from nations like Iran to further the missile shield program. The arguments against it are no different now that when it was first proposed in the wake of Rumsfield's 1998 Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States (which said that nations like Iran would have missile-mounted nukes within five years - an eventuality which still hasn't come about):

Melvin Goodman, a noted expert on proliferation issues at the National War College, said: "Should the system work or, more likely, should the international community perceive that the United States can make it work, a series of national security problems will ensue. Ties between Russia and China will improve; the angry reaction of our European allies will weaken our leadership of NATO; we will weaken our counterproliferation and disarmament policies; and we will lose our limited leverage on the nuclear policies of India and Pakistan. Thus, any U.S. decision to pursue [national missile defense] will have negative consequences for most aspects of U.S. national security" (see "Pro and Con: 'The Case For National Missile Defense' and 'The Case Against National Missile Defense,'" Safe Foundation).

These people are scarily dangerous to U.S. and world security and shouldn't be ignored or allowed free rein. The costs are potentially too high to calculate.