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Published Op-eds
June 13, 2025
Israel’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities on June 13 are not a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. Prior to Israel’s strike, Iran was on the threshold of nuclear weapons, but the U.S. Intelligence Community consistently assessed that Tehran was not engaged in weaponization. Israel’s strike may have pulled Iran off that technical threshold, but only slightly and likely temporarily. In the long term, Israel’s attack increases the proliferation risk and makes a nuclear armed Iran more likely for several reasons. First, Israeli strikes cannot destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Militarily,…
May 1, 2025
The fourth round of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff is about to kick off, with previous meetings injecting much-needed momentum into President Donald Trump’s push for a diplomatic resolution to the Iranian nuclear crisis. Still, with only a short window for diplomacy and factions in the United States, Iran, and Israel opposing diplomacy, there is no guarantee that the current momentum will lead to a sustained negotiating process, much less an effective agreement that verifiably reduces Iran’s proliferation risk.If the Trump…
December 23, 2024
President-elect Donald Trump is retaking office at an inflection point in Iranian nuclear policy. After long denying any interest in nuclear weapons, Iranian officials are now publicly debating the security value of a nuclear deterrent and threatening to pursue nuclear weapons if attacked. This shift in nuclear policy, along with the technical advances that have brought Iran to the threshold of nuclear weapons, poses a serious proliferation challenge that the Trump administration will need to confront immediately upon taking office.Despite the increasing risk that Iran will weaponize its…
September 19, 2024
American voters across the political spectrum are increasingly aware and, according to recent polling, deeply concerned about nuclear weapons dangers. However, so far in the unorthodox 2024 presidential race, there has been virtually no indication from Vice President Kamala Harris or former president Donald Trump on whether they have a plan—or even “the concept of a plan”—for dealing with the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons.Yet there are at least three critical sets of issues the next president will have to make decisions about within weeks—or even days—of Inauguration Day.Use of…
July 24, 2024
Yes, it’s already time to be worried — very worried. As the wars in Ukraine and Gaza have shown, the earliest drone equivalents of “killer robots” have made it onto the battlefield and proved to be devastating weapons. But at least they remain largely under human control. Imagine, for a moment, a world of war in which those aerial drones (or their ground and sea equivalents) controlled us, rather than vice-versa. Then we would be on a destructively different planet in a fashion that might seem almost unimaginable today. Sadly, though, it’s anything but unimaginable, given the work on…
July 19, 2024
The president of the United States has the sole authority and power to launch the nation’s nuclear weapons. Think about that for a moment.Donald Trump’s emotional, erratic, and unhinged behavior during his first term poses a grave threat to our national security. He has driven uncertainty to an aspect of the presidency that requires predictability: the global nuclear balance. This alone renders Trump dangerously unfit to serve as commander in chief.... But today’s Trump is not the same man he was, even just since he left office in 2021. He is more and more detached from reality. In recent…
December 22, 2023
This hasn’t exactly been a year of good news when it comes to our war-torn, beleaguered planet, but on Nov. 15, President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping took one small step back from the precipice. Until they talked in a mansion near San Francisco, it seemed as if their countries were locked in a downward spiral of taunts and provocations that might, many experts feared, result in a full-blown crisis, even a war — even, God save us all, the world’s first nuclear war. Thanks to that encounter, though, such dangers appear to have receded. Still, the looming question facing both…
September 12, 2023
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan spoke to the annual meeting of the Arms Control Association on June 2, and as organization chairman, it was my honor to introduce him. Sullivan said just what needed to be said about the continuing risk of nuclear conflict: that the Biden administration would continue the long U.S. tradition of leadership in finding ways to reduce that danger.In particular, he said the United States is ready – “without preconditions” — to discuss with the Russian Federation how the two countries together could 1) manage nuclear risks, and 2) develop a new nuclear arms…
July 29, 2023
It has been nearly 80 years since the world entered the nuclear age. But the complex story of the making of the first atomic bomb, the decisions US leaders made to use these terrible new weapons on cities, and the post-war policy missteps that opened the door to the dangerous Cold War arms race are all now starting to fade from public consciousness.The existence of nuclear weapons and the dangers they pose, while well-known and widely feared, are accepted by far too many of those living in one of the world’s nine nuclear-armed countries as part of their “normal” daily lives.A new survey …
July 3, 2023
Russia’s brutal full-scale invasion of Ukraine has killed thousands of people and displaced millions of civilians. Ukrainian cities have been leveled and villages have been turned into wastelands. U.S. and allied diplomatic, military, and intelligence support to Ukraine, including over $40 billion in security assistance since the war began, is essential to its defense and an eventual end to the conflict.However, providing some types of lethal U.S. and European military assistance to Ukraine would be escalatory, counterproductive, and only further increase the dangers to civilians caught in…