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Greg Thielmann

Greg Thielmann

Greg Thielmann has served more than three decades in the executive and legislative branches of government, specializing in political-military and intelligence issues. Before joining ACA in 2009, he worked for four years as a senior professional staffer of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI). He was previously a U.S. Foreign Service Officer for 25 years, last serving as Director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office in the Department of State’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research. His foreign posts include Deputy Political Counselor of the U.S. Embassy in Brasilia, Brazil; Political-Military Affairs Officer in Moscow, USSR; and Political-Military Affairs Officer in Bonn, Germany. Thielmann also served as Deputy Director of the State Department’s Office of German, Austrian and Swiss Affairs; Special Assistant to Ambassador Paul Nitze (then Special Adviser to the President and Secretary of State on Arms Control Matters); and State Department advisor to the U.S. Delegation at the Geneva INF arms control negotiations. Greg is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former member of the Board of Directors of the Arms Control Association (2003-2005). His July 2003 appearance at an ACA press briefing on faulty intelligence assessments on Iraq’s WMD capabilities <http://www.armscontrol.org/events/iraq_july03> led to a CBS News 60 Minutes II segment <http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml> titled “The Man Who Knew,” which won an Emmy Award for reporter Scott Pelley.

Greg Thielmann's primary research areas include:

Read more by Greg Thielmann:

  • The IAEA's Iran Report: Assessment and Implications
    Issue Briefs
    November 8, 2011

    Volume 2, Issue 15, November 8, 2011

    The IAEA report and annex released today provides disturbing and “credible” additional details regarding Iranian nuclear warhead development efforts that have allowed Tehran to acquire some of the expertise needed to build nuclear weapons, should it decide to do so.
  • Books of Note
    Arms Control Today
    November 2, 2011

  • Op-ed: GOP candidates, what do you say about savings in military budget?
    Press Room
    August 4, 2011

    By Greg Thielmann, Senior Fellow, Arms Control Association

    The following piece was originally posted online at The Des Moines Register on August 4, 2011.

    Washington is obsessed these days with reducing the deficit. The GOP presidential contenders crisscrossing Iowa give prominence to the issue as well. But even as they call for ever deeper budget cuts, they have been reluctant to look at trimming the $27 billion annual cost of operating and maintaining our bloated Cold War nuclear arsenal and the $125 billion planned for building new weapons in the decade ahead.
  • Iranian Missile Messages: Reading Between the Lines of "Great Prophet 6"
    Issue Briefs
    July 12, 2011

    Volume 2, Issue 10, July 12, 2011

    In light of justifiable concerns about Iran’s potential as a nuclear weapons state, the country’s latest military exercise, ending last week, provided some grounds for qualified relief. Although the official commentary was predictably defiant in tone, the overall choreography and the weapons actually fired bespoke neither the intent nor a current operational capability for Iran to strike at Israel or Europe. The absence in the exercise of systems likely to serve as nuclear weapons delivery vehicles belies contentions that Tehran is moving rapidly to achieve such a capability.
  • Opening Pandora’s Box
    Issue Briefs
    June 10, 2011

    Assessing the “Military Option” for Countering Iran’s Nuclear Program

    Volume 2, Issue 8, June 10, 2011

    Neither sanctions, cyber sabotage, nor off-and-on multilateral diplomacy has yet convinced the government of Iran to end its pursuit of activities that could give it the capability to build nuclear weapons some time in the next few years.

    Iran continues to produce and stockpile low enriched uranium in defiance of UN Security Council resolutions that have repeatedly called for a suspension of its sensitive nuclear fuel cycle activities while a diplomatic solution is pursued. Despite increasingly tougher international sanctions, Tehran is expanding its nuclear infrastructure without fully complying with its International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards obligations. On June 9, Tehran announced its intent to accelerate its enrichment of uranium at the 20% level, substantially closer to that needed for bomb material.