Digests and Blog

Last Saturday, Oct. 24, Honduras became the 50th state to ratify the 2017 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which will trigger the treaty’s entry into force ninety days later, on January 22. Coming at a time when nuclear weapons risks are rising, the TPNW marks a new hopeful phase in the long-running struggle to prevent nuclear war and eliminate nuclear weapons. For the first time since the invention of the atomic bomb, nuclear weapons development, production, possession, use, the threat of use, and stationing of another country’s nuclear weapons on a state party's…

UN Defies United States on Sanctions Snapback The United States threatened to penalize any country that fails to enforce UN sanctions on Iran that the Trump administration claims were reimposed Sept. 19, but UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told the Security Council that he would not take steps to implement the UN measures, which were lifted as a result of the 2015 nuclear deal. In a letter to the Security Council reported on by Reuters, Guterres said there is “uncertainty” over the status of the sanctions and that “pending clarification,” he will not take any action. Despite…

U.S. Shifts Arms Control Strategy with Russia The Trump administration has softened its demand that China immediately participate in trilateral nuclear arms control talks with the United States and Russia and says it is now seeking an interim step of a politically binding framework with Moscow. But the administration continues to reject Russia’s offer of a clean five-year extension of the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and has said that President Trump will not consider an extension until several conditions are met. According to Trump administration officials, the…

Donald Trump came into the presidency without a clear plan for reducing the nuclear danger. In one breath, he would threaten to “win” a new nuclear arms race; in the next, he would declare hope for arms control deals to constrain adversaries.Under Trump, no new nuclear deals have been struck and key agreements to reduce nuclear dangers have been abandoned or, like New START, are in jeopardy. The U.S. nuclear weapons budget is growing. New, more “usable” types of nuclear warheads have been deployed and there has been talk of resuming nuclear weapons test explosions.Worse yet, U.S. arms sales,…

A Sept. 4 report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) confirms that Iran continues to exceed limits on its uranium enrichment program imposed by the 2015 nuclear deal (JCPOA) and is incrementally expanding its stockpile of uranium enriched up to 4.5 percent. While Iran’s persistent violations of the deal are troublesome, its rate of enriched uranium production has not increased over the course of 2020, indicating that Tehran is not actively dashing toward a bomb nor accelerating its production of fuel. This carefully calibrated approach supports assertions by Iranian leaders…

The most recent International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report on Iran’s safeguards confirmed that inspectors have already accessed one undeclared site in Iran and will visit a second location in September. This is an unsurprising, but positive, confirmation that Iran and the IAEA are following through on the terms of an Aug. 26 agreement to finally allow agency inspectors access to follow up on evidence of possible undeclared nuclear materials and activities. While it is unfortunate that the dispute over access between the IAEA and Iran took nine months to resolve and that the IAEA’s…

A new report published Aug. 25 by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) further strengthens the already no-brainer of a case for extending the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and eviscerates the irresponsible claim by the Trump administration’s top arms control official that the United States can spend Russia and China “into oblivion” in a new arms race. The report demonstrates that the already excessive, surging, and unsustainable financial costs to maintain and modernize the U.S. nuclear arsenal could soar even higher if the treaty expires in five months and…

The Security Council decisively rejected a U.S. resolution to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran, which is set to expire in October. Despite the humiliating vote on Aug. 14—with 11 abstentions, 2 states voting against, and only the Dominican Republic voting with the United States in favor of the resolution—the Trump administration has signaled that it will try to prevent the embargo from expiring by using what is known as the “snapback” provision in Security Council Resolution 2231. Resolution 2231, which endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA…

Security Council Rejects Iran Arms Embargo Extension The Security Council decisively rejected a U.S. resolution to extend the UN arms embargo on Iran that is set to expire in October according to the terms of Resolution 2231, which endorses the 2015 nuclear deal and modifies UN sanctions on Iran. Despite the defeat, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Kelly Craft said Aug. 14 that the Trump administration intends to try and use a mechanism in Resolution 2231 that allows for participants of the nuclear deal to snapback UN sanctions on Iran in order to prevent expiry of the arms embargo. Craft said the…

Today, the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, threatens the lives and livelihoods of millions worldwide, has laid bare the terrible human cost of misaligned security policies. It underscores that global challenges, like the threat of nuclear war and the global trade in conventional arms, require global solutions. In response, a network of more than 250 organizations, have issued an open letter with advice built from decades of success using the humanitarian disarmament (HD) approach. That approach, which takes human security, rather than state security, as the organizing principle has…