April 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

Less than 48 hours before the U.S. and Israeli coordinated strikes on Iran began February 28, U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, met Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in Geneva for a third round of Omani-mediated talks aimed at reaching a nuclear agreement.

Despite Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi’s assessment that the two sides had made “substantial progress” toward a nuclear deal during the February 26 talks and agreed to meet again March 2 for technical talks,¹ Trump told reporters that he was “not happy” with what had been achieved or the “way [Iran is] negotiating.”² The following day, the United States and Israel illegally attacked Iran, using Tehran’s nuclear program as one justification.

Subsequent statements from International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director- General Rafael Mariano Grossi and U.S. intelligence officials contradicted Trump’s March 4 comment that “if we didn’t hit within two weeks, [Iran] would have had a nuclear weapon.”³ Grossi said in a March 2 press conference that the IAEA saw no sign of a “structured nuclear weapons program.”⁴ Meanwhile, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to Congress March 18 that “Iran’s enrichment program was obliterated” by U.S. strikes in June 2025 and that “There has been [sic] no efforts since then to try and rebuild [Iran’s] enrichment capability.”⁵

Although Iran could technically use its uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235 to build a bomb, it is far more likely that it would enrich the material to weapons-grade levels, or 90 percent U-235, before converting it to the metallic form necessary for a nuclear warhead. The 2026 U.S. worldwide threat assessment, published in March, also does not indicate that Iran had made a decision to weaponize its nuclear program or restart activities necessary to build a bomb.⁶

Preconceived Decision

By the time the third round of talks ended in Geneva, Trump had likely already made the choice to go to war.⁷ It is unlikely that any outcome short of complete Iranian capitulation to U.S. demands at the negotiating table would have averted the military strikes.

Trump’s dissatisfaction and impatience with the negotiating process appear to have been fed, in part, by Witkoff’s and Kushner’s accounts of the U.S.-Iran talks. Comments made by Witkoff in two background briefings with reporters February 28 and March 3, as well as media appearances since the strikes began, made clear that Witkoff did not have sufficient technical expertise or diplomatic experience to engage in effective diplomacy. His lack of knowledge and mischaracterization of Iran’s positions and its nuclear program throughout the process likely informed Trump’s assessment that talks were not progressing and Iran was not negotiating seriously.

The Arms Control Association received recordings and transcripts from several participants in Witkoff’s two news briefings. The association has not seen a copy of the Iranian proposal from the February 26 talks but has heard descriptions of it from officials familiar with the contents. The description coincides with media reports: After a multiyear pause on uranium enrichment, Iran would resume an enrichment program based on fueling certain planned research reactors. Iran would not accumulate enriched uranium gas and would agree to broad IAEA oversight. The scope of the proposed enrichment program was based on what was likely an overly ambitious 10-year reactor plan and included enriching uranium up to 20 percent U-235 with up to 30 cascades of advanced IR-6 centrifuges.⁸

Araghchi later confirmed that Iran also offered to blend down its stockpile of uranium enriched to 60 percent U-235, a level near weapons-grade (90 percent U-235), to lower levels.⁹

The Iranian proposal, as presented, did not meet the maximalist terms that the White House demanded, including no enrichment, dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear facilities, and removal of enriched uranium gas from Iran. Nor did it appear to be sufficiently restrictive from a nonproliferation perspective to be an effective bulwark against weaponization. It is unclear how Iran proposed to combine or sequence the actions it presented, and there were no detailed discussions on monitoring and verification provisions, according to an official who asked the Arms Control Association not to be identified.¹⁰

Yet the proposal showed some flexibility in the Iranian position. It was also an opening offer and unlikely Iran’s bottom line. As Grossi said in an interview with the CBS show, “Face the Nation,” that aired March 22, there was “no agreement” and “no alignment” on many issues under discussion, but “maybe” a deal was possible.¹¹ Even Witkoff said in the March 3 briefing call that Iran’s draft included some interesting features. Trump, however, appeared uninterested in a drawn-out negotiating process. This suggests Iran either misread how long the window for diplomacy would remain open or Witkoff did not make clear the U.S. timeframe.

Although further negotiations may have revealed that the gulf between the White House demands and the Iranian positions was irreconcilable, Wikoff’s failure to comprehend key technical realities suggests he misunderstood the Iranian nuclear proposal and was ill-prepared to negotiate an effective nuclear agreement or advise Trump as to whether Tehran was negotiating in good faith. The following analysis examines key misstatements and misconceptions in the post-attack briefings, conducted primarily by Witkoff.

1. Witkoff perceived the Tehran Research Reactor as a threat and a ploy. It is not clear why.

Some of Witkoff’s most puzzling and factually challenged statements during the March 3 telephone briefing with reporters centered on the Tehran Research Reactor, which is used to produce medical isotopes. The reactor, supplied by the United States, became operational in 1967. Originally, it ran on 90 percent enriched U-235 fuel, which is weapons grade, but later was converted by Argentina to run on 20 percent enriched uranium fuel.

Witkoff’s emphasis on the reactor was odd because it is not engaged in proliferation-sensitive activities, and previous statements from U.S. officials, including Trump, suggested that the United States was open to Iran continuing to operate reactors for civil nuclear and research purposes. His concern appeared to be based on assumptions that Iran would use fuel production for research reactors as a justification to move back to the threshold of nuclear weapons.

During the briefing, Witkoff claimed there was “subterfuge” at the reactor and that it was being used to stockpile uranium fuel “to bring it towards a weapons-grade enrichment level.” This assessment seemed based primarily on Witkoff’s conclusion that Iran possessed an “overabundance” of fuel for the reactor. He alleged that “the seven-to-eight years’ supply of fuel that they had been retaining at [the reactor] was being stockpiled along with all the other stockpiling that had been done at Natanz, Esfahan, and Fordow. So, the claim that they were using a research reactor to do good for the Iranian people was a complete and false pretense to hide the fact that they were stockpiling there.”

The fuel that Iran has stockpiled for the reactor is not hidden, and its existence should not come as a surprise. The IAEA has tracked the reactor’s fuel and documented in its May 2025 report on Iran’s nuclear program that Iran had 45.5 kilograms of U-235 enriched to 20 percent in fuel assemblies.¹² This amount is about a seven-to-eight-year supply for the reactor, which uses roughly 5-7 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium per year.

The stockpile size was more than what was strictly necessary for continued operations, but that is neither alarming nor surprising. Fluctuations in the fuel supply were documented by the IAEA in publicly available reports. Politically, the decision to keep a multiyear supply may have been driven in part by past challenges in obtaining fuel.¹³ Iran also imported fuel for the reactor from Russia in incremental shipments, thereby contributing to the supply.

It is unclear why Wikoff appeared to view excess reactor fuel as nefarious. From a proliferation risk perspective, the 45.5 kilograms of 20 percent enriched uranium in the fuel assemblies is far less than the amount of 20 percent material that is necessary to produce a bomb’s worth of 90 percent enriched uranium and was only a small fraction of Iran’s overall stockpile. According to a September 2025 IAEA report, Iran had, in UF6 gas form, as of June 13, 2025:

• 6,024.4 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 5 percent U-235,
• 184.1 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 20 percent U-235, and
• 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched up to 60 percent U-235.¹⁴

Perhaps most importantly, enriched uranium in the form of fuel assemblies poses less of a proliferation risk than the material stockpiled in UF6 gas, the form that is necessary for further enrichment. If Iran wanted to use the 45 kilograms for weapons purposes, it would need to convert the material back to gas form before enriching it. Israel destroyed Iran’s conversion facility during the strikes last June. Presumably, Iran intended to rebuild its conversion facility as part of its February 26 proposal, but U.S. intelligence had not reported that Tehran had made any attempt to do so, as of March 2026. Thus, it is unclear why Witkoff claimed in his March 3 briefing that the stockpile of fuel meant that “the only other use it could be, would be to bring it towards a weapons-grade enrichment level.”

Witkoff also claimed that the reactor was not producing medical isotopes. The IAEA’s regular reports do not provide information about the facility’s products, but they do provide information about reactor operations, which contradict Witkoff’s claims that the reactor was a ruse. The agency noted its accountancy and monitoring of the irradiated reactor fuel assemblies, which supports the conclusion that the facility has been operating, and in several reports, such as those issued in 2023, notes when Iran has loaded new fuel assemblies into the reactor.¹⁵ Grossi did say in his March 22 interview that Iran’s use of the reactor was “limited,” which may have contributed to Witkoff’s concerns, but the reactor itself and the enriched uranium form of fuel elements do not pose a proliferation risk.

The IAEA reports do not appear to contain any recent concerns about misuse of the reactor. In 2003, Iran acknowledged conducting plutonium separation experiments at the facility that were not declared to the IAEA,¹⁶ but that does not appear to be what Witkoff is referring to, because it was more than 20 years ago and did not involve uranium enrichment.

Witkoff also made several other mistakes regarding the reactor, including saying that enrichment is going on there, which is not so. He also claimed that the IAEA “has not been able to make inspections in Iran” since Operation Midnight Hammer. Iran did suspend IAEA access to nuclear sites that were bombed in June 2025 in violation of its legally required safeguards agreement, but Iran has allowed the agency back to the Tehran Research Reactor, which was not bombed. A February 27 report from the IAEA noted that the agency inspected the hot cells at the reactor December 22, 2025.¹⁷ Inspectors did not raise concerns about the facility in that report. Grossi also confirmed to CBS March 22 that the IAEA continues to access the facility.

2. Witkoff’s suspicion of the reactor led him to prematurely dismiss the Iranian proposal.

Witkoff’s unfounded conclusion that the reactor was a nefarious ploy by Iran to stockpile 20 percent enriched fuel appeared to have negatively influenced his assessment of the proposal that Iran brought to the Geneva talks February 26. According to the March 3 backgrounder, Witkoff said Iran’s proposal for uranium enrichment was based on assessed needs for the Tehran facility and “a few other research reactors” that Iran planned to build over the next 10 years. Based on this plan, Iran determined the scope of an enrichment program, including enriching uranium up to 20 percent U-235. However, because Witkoff thought Iran was engaged in a “complete lie” about the Tehran reactor, he suggested that Iran’s proposal to enrich uranium up to 20 percent was deliberately designed to “peel off two months from the enrichment cycle.” Witkoff presumably meant Iran’s “breakout time,” or the time it takes to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for a bomb (25 kilograms of uranium enriched to 90 percent).

A limit of 20 percent enriched uranium was also unacceptable and demonstrated a lack of seriousness, Witkoff said, because it was “more than five times” what was allowed by the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which capped enrichment at 3.67 percent. Those numbers are correct, but it appears that Witkoff was overly focused on the enrichment level as an indicator of risk and made erroneous assumptions about the implications of a ceiling of 20 percent enriched uranium on proliferation risk.

It is accurate that 20 percent enriched uranium can be enriched to weapons-grade U-235 more quickly than if Iran started with natural uranium or reactor-grade enriched uranium, which is less than 5 percent U-235. As Grossi said in the March 22 interview, 20 percent U-235 “is a lot of enrichment” and the assumption in the negotiations on enrichment was “zero or something very, very limited.”

Yet, it is challenging to assess the impact of enrichment to 20 percent on proliferation risk in isolation. It is unclear how Witkoff assessed that enriching to 20 percent U-235 would take two months off the breakout time or why he fixated on that as a metric. Breakout is a technical calculation influenced by a number of factors, including enrichment capacity (the number and efficiency of centrifuges), the enrichment level of the feed, and the size of the feed stockpile.

Witkoff did not seem to take into account the implications of Iran’s offer not to accumulate enriched uranium in assessing how Iran might break out and the proliferation implications of Iran’s plan. Furthermore, accounts of the February 26 meeting suggest that the negotiators did not conduct detailed discussions on monitoring and verification provisions, which have implications for how quickly the IAEA would detect any deviations from an enrichment plan.

It would not be surprising if, in the proposal, Iran overestimated its capacity to expand its civil nuclear program and its timeframe for reactor construction. Iran has frequently announced plans to build reactors that were never constructed. Nor would it be surprising if Iran had asked for a larger enrichment program than it was willing to accept; no negotiator puts their bottom line in an initial proposal. But Wikoff appeared to dismiss the idea of engaging with Iran on the premise of a needs-based enrichment program that would become operational after a multiyear pause because he misunderstood the operation of the Tehran Research Reactor.

3. Witkoff viewed Iran’s rejection of free nuclear fuel for life as a sign that Iran was not interested in diplomacy. The rejection should not have surprised him.

Witkoff said in the March 3 briefing that, after deciding that Iran’s proposed enrichment plan was based on the Tehran Research Reactor “lie,” he offered Iran “free fuel” for its research reactors. He claimed that “if it’s really about building radioisotopes and creating medicines” Iran will take the free fuel from the United States and abandon its own enrichment program. He said Iran rejected the offer by saying that free fuel was “an assault on our dignity.” He also expressed surprise that Iran had emphasized its “right to enrich.”

Witkoff said that he “figured it out” from Araghchi’s rejection that Iran was “angry for another reason” and was trying to “divert our attention away from the fact that all they really wanted to do was enrich.” Iran’s rejection of free fuel and emphasis on fueling its reactors should not have been a surprise to Witkoff. Nor should it have been viewed as a sign that Tehran was not negotiating in good faith. On a political level, Iran views enrichment as an issue of national sovereignty, a right conferred by the peaceful uses of nuclear energy provision in Article IV of the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. It is consistent with Iran’s past position for negotiators to reject any nuclear agreement if the price was zero enrichment.

Furthermore, why would Iran trust the United States to follow through? Trump withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration—formally, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—in May 2018, despite Iran’s compliance, and participated in Israel’s strikes against Iran in June 2025 while diplomacy was ongoing. It is not surprising that Iran would have doubts about U.S. credibility.

There is also no indication that Witkoff raised or acknowledged the technical and legal hurdles to providing free nuclear reactor fuel. If the fuel were to come from the United States, for instance, that would require a negotiated nuclear cooperation agreement between Iran and the United States, a deal Congress could block. There also could be technical challenges and liability issues in fueling a reactor built in Iran.

Witkoff’s comments in the March 3 briefing suggest that he tossed the offer out to Iran without thinking through how to provide any assurance about how the United States could credibly implement such a proposal. A more experienced diplomat would not have been surprised by Iran’s reaction and would have been prepared to address questions about implementation.

4. Witkoff appeared to believe Iran had been engaged in nuclear weaponization efforts since 2003.

During the March 3 call with reporters, Witkoff was asked about something Grossi told press the previous day, that the IAEA does not see a “structured program to manufacture nuclear weapons” in Iran. Witkoff suggested that Grossi misspoke and said that Iran has “tested around weapons” since 2003. In a March 10 interview with CNBC, Witkoff made a similar statement, saying that “Everybody has known that [Iran has been] testing for weaponization since 2003.”¹⁸

Until 2003, Iran had an active nuclear weapons development effort, conducted in violation of its safeguard obligations. In a 2007 unclassified national intelligence estimate, the U.S. intelligence community assessed with high confidence that the organized nuclear weapons program ended in 2003.¹⁹ The IAEA similarly assessed in 2015 that Iran abandoned its organized weapons program in 2003, that some activities relevant to weaponization continued through 2009, but that there was no credible evidence of those activities after 2009.²⁰

In its 2025 Worldwide Threat Assessment, the U.S. intelligence community stated that, “We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that [Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so.”²¹

It does appear that Iran has, in recent years and after Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, taken steps that would enable it to weaponize more quickly, if the political decision were made to do so. However, as the IAEA and U.S. intelligence statements make clear, there has so far been no decision to develop nuclear weapons or “testing for weaponization.”

5. Witkoff said the United States agreed that missiles were a regional issue, then described the lack of progress as an indicator Iran did not want a nuclear deal.

Following the U.S. attack in February, Trump and other senior officials, including Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, have pointed to Iran’s ballistic missiles as an “imminent threat” to the United States. (They were not.) Hegseth went further and said March 2 that Iran’s missiles and drones would enable Iran to develop a “conventional shield” to engage in “nuclear blackmail.”²²

Witkoff made clear in the March 3 call, however, that the Trump administration made a deliberate decision to leave ballistic missiles out of its negotiations with Iran and “allow the region to talk about proxies and also to talk about ballistic missiles, because it’s a regional issue.” He said the missiles are an issue for the United States as well but addressing it at the regional level would streamline the process.

Delegating the missile issue to the other states in the Persian Gulf region to negotiate with Iran seems to undermine U.S. claims regarding the missile threat. The 2026 Worldwide Threat Assessment, published March 18, directly contradicts Trump’s claim in his recent State of Union address that Iran was developing “missiles that will soon reach the United States of America.” The intelligence community, however, assessed that Iran “developed space-launch vehicles that it could use to develop a military-viable [intercontinental ballistic missile] by 2035 should Tehran decide to do so.”²³ If the Trump administration viewed Iran’s missiles as the kind of threat that warranted an illegal preventive strike, why tell Iran that negotiations over those systems should be explored on a regional basis?

Despite this, in his March 3 briefing, Witkoff accused Iran of making no effort to convene a regional discussion on missiles. This may be true, but if Iran were not expecting to talk to the United States about missiles, because Witkoff agreed it should be handled at the regional level, Iran’s failure to “talk about missiles” during the February 26 Geneva negotiations should hardly be viewed as a surprise or as an indicator of Iran’s view of the nuclear talks.

Needed: A Top-Notch Negotiating Team

Beyond these misperceptions, Witkoff’s statements are riddled with other errors that suggest that the New York real estate developer is out of his technical depth. At one point, he expressed surprise that Iran produces centrifuges (it has for decades) and referred to Iran’s IR-6 centrifuge as “probably the most advanced centrifuge in the world” (it is not). He also called Natanz, Fordow, and Esfahan “industrial reactors” (they are not).

The Trump administration’s failure to exhaust diplomacy and send a qualified team to negotiate with Iran is inexcusable, given the devastating consequences of the war that the United States and Israel have ignited. Although the attacks might set Iran’s nuclear program back, the proliferation dangers will not be eradicated through military strikes alone. At the end of this conflict, the Iranian government will retain the knowledge—and likely some of the key materials—necessary to develop and build nuclear weapons, and perhaps a greater political motivation to do so.

If there is a diplomatic opening to reach an effective nuclear deal with Iran in the future, Trump should replace Witkoff as his lead negotiator with an experienced diplomat and expert team. Witkoff’s failure to learn the nuclear file and surround himself with the technical expertise necessary to negotiate an effective deal has been a diplomatic disservice to U.S. and international nonproliferation goals.

ENDNOTES

1. Badr Albusaidi, “Full Transcript: Omani Foreign Minister Badr Albusaidi tells ‘Face the Nation’ a U.S.-Iran deal is ‘within our reach,’” Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan, CBS News, February 27, 2026.

2. Ben Johansen, “Trump says he’s unhappy with Iran negotiations,” Politico, February 27, 2026.

3. Donald Trump, “Transcript: President Trump Delivers Remarks at an Energy Ratepayer Protection Roundtable,” Senate Democrats, March 4, 2026.

4. “Press Conference with IAEA Director General Rafael Mariano Grossi,” IAEA video on YouTube, March 2, 2026.

5. Tulsi Gabbard, Opening statement in Senate committee testimony on the 2026 Annual Threat Assessment, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, March 18, 2026.

6. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” March 18, 2026.

7. Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Tyler Pager, Edward Wong, Eric Schmitt, and Ronen Bergman, “How Trump Decided to Go to War,” The New York Times, March 2, 2026.

8. Dov Lieber, Alexander Ward, and Laurence Norman, “Why the U.S. and Israel Struck When They Did: A Chance to Kill Iran’s Leaders,” The Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2026; Email exchange between Kelsey Davenport and a European official, March 4, 2026.

9. “Transcript: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on ‘Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,’” CBS News, March 15, 2026.

10. Email from a European official who asked not to be publicly identified, March 4, 2026; email from a second official who asked not to be publicly identified to the author, March 17, 2026.

11. “Transcript: International Atomic Energy Agency Director-General Rafael Grossi on ‘Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,’” CBS News, March 22, 2026.

12. International Atomic Energy Agency, “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” May 31, 2025.

13. Kelsey Davenport, “Official Proposals on the Iranian Nuclear Issue, 2003-2013,” Arms Control Association, October 2023.

14. IAEA, “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” September 3, 2025.

15. IAEA, “Verification and monitoring in the Islamic Republic of Iran in light of United Nations Security Council resolution 2231 (2015),” May 31, 2025.

16. IAEA, “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” November 10, 2003.

17. IAEA, “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran,” February 27, 2026.

18. “Transcript: U.S. Special Envoy for Peace Missions Steve Witkoff Speaks with CNBC’s ‘Money Movers’ Today,” CNBC, March 10, 2026.

19. National Intelligence Council, “Iran: Nuclear Intentions and Capabilities,” Washington, DC: Office of the Director of National Intelligence, November 2007, p. 7.

20. IAEA, “Board of Governors Final Assessment on Past and Present Outstanding Issues Regarding Iran’s Nuclear Programme Report by the Director General.” 2015. 

21. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” March 18, 2025, p. 9.

22. Pete Hegseth, “Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine Hold a Press Briefing,” U.S. Department of War, March 2, 2026.

23. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” March 18, 2026, p. 11.

April 2026

Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons: A Case Study of Deterrence and Coercive Diplomacy
By Matthew Moran, Wyn Q. Bowen, and Jeffrey W. Knopf
Oxford University Press
2025

Reviewed by Chris Quillen

Syria’s CW Challenge to the Nonproliferation Regime

The Syrian government’s extensive use of chemical weapons (CW) during the 2011-2024 civil war is the most significant challenge to the international nonproliferation regime in the 21st century. This history presents a rich case study, given that it involves dozens of CW attacks with chlorine and the nerve agent sarin, stretches across the administrations of U.S. presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, and involves disparate efforts to deter Syrian CW use and to compel Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to surrender his arsenal.

Matthew Moran, Wyn Q. Bowen, and Jeffrey W. Knopf use this era in their book Coercing Syria on Chemical Weapons to assess theories of deterrence and coercive diplomacy by focusing on three phases of the conflict. The first covers the beginning of the civil war through Obama’s “redline” statement on CW use in 2012 to the deadly 2013 sarin attack at Ghouta, in which deterrence largely failed. In the next phase, efforts to compel Assad to surrender his chemical weapons and sign the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) largely succeeded with Russia’s help. Finally, deterrence failed again when Assad returned to using chemical weapons despite the previous success of dismantling most of his arsenal, resulting in retaliatory strikes during Trump’s first term in an effort to restore deterrence.

This thoroughly researched and well-written book offers a timely and important contribution to the existing literature with several significant insights for policymakers. The authors demonstrate a number of weaknesses in the seemingly standard fallback position of threats of retaliation combined with occasional airstrikes—referred to as the “resolve plus bombs” formula—in efforts to deter CW use and compel CW renunciation. They correctly point out that deterrence efforts tend to overemphasize establishing the credibility of the coercer, which is important but not decisive. Instead, they argue for greater attention to the motivations of the coerced to determine their vulnerability to pressure, as well as the need to offer assurances of not being attacked if the target of coercion cooperates.

On the importance of motivations, the authors reason that the target of coercion might simply be more motivated than the coercer and thus willing to endure the threatened punishment. As a result, the credibility of the coercer matters little. In the Syria case, Assad was singularly focused on remaining in power and was willing to use CW, thus risking airstrikes by the United States in order to maintain his regime. This fact alone goes a long way to explaining many of the deterrence failures in the Assad case. According to the authors, the coercer should focus specifically on threatening the issue that motivates the target. In the Syrian case, that suggests that the United States would have had more success deterring Assad if it had threatened his hold on power.

The authors admit that this was a challenging policy to enact, given Obama’s unwillingness to directly intervene in Syria and fears of an Islamic extremist takeover in Damascus if Assad fell. Obama essentially was trapped between his political aversion to military intervention—which included U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan—and his perceived moral obligation to respond to CW use. Nevertheless, the overall argument that focusing more on the motivations of the coerced rather than the credibility of the coercer is likely to improve coercive strategies. Policymakers, however, tend to focus on enhancing their credibility, which is largely within their control, rather than determining the other side’s motivations, which are outside of their control and often inscrutable.

Regarding assurances, the authors argue for the need to reassure the coerced that adhering to the coercer’s demands will prevent any future punishment. Such a strategy will likely enhance the chances of success but is difficult to enact while balancing the need to offer credible threats. In Assad’s case, assurance meant that if he did not use CW then he would not suffer threatened airstrikes. Obama, however, was either unable or unwilling to offer Assad the assurance of staying in power—the guarantee that Assad most valued—after calling for regime change in Damascus. This failure to offer credible assurances led Assad to use CW to maintain control. He simply feared a rebel advance on Damascus more than a U.S. airstrike.

Trump, on the other hand, may have offered too much assurance by focusing on the threat from the Islamic State militant group rather than on Assad. Believing that the U.S. threat of a military response to CW use had diminished after Obama left office, Assad returned to such use until Trump established his willingness to strike. The authors argue that the only successful assurance that Assad could remain in power was due to Russian diplomacy after the sarin gas attack in Ghouta. With Russia’s backing, Assad was sufficiently confident that he could surrender his CW stocks and sign the CWC without losing power. (Although this was a significant victory for nonproliferation, it was a qualified success, given that Assad maintained some of his chemical arsenal and eventually returned to using it against his own people.) The success in compelling Assad to give up some of his chemical arsenal is a significant puzzle because compellence is generally expected to be more difficult than deterrence, but proved the more successful strategy in this case.

This inclusion of motivations and assurances alongside credibility is an important contribution from the authors but sometimes enables them to pick and choose which factor was paramount to explain any particular outcome. As a result, the real strength of this book lies in its descriptive power of the Syrian CW case more than its prescriptive power for future cases. For example, the authors point out that credibility and assurance are both on a spectrum rather than all-or-nothing propositions and can even counteract each other. The greater the credibility of the threat to attack by the coercer, the less likely the coerced will accept any assurances to avoid an attack. Thus, too much assurance can undercut deterrent threats. Although a useful conclusion, this line of argument enables seemingly credible deterrence to be dismissed due to the lack of sufficient assurance and complicates a clear understanding of which factor truly led to the failure. Undoubtedly, policymakers will continue to struggle with striking the right balance between threats and assurances to achieve their desired outcome despite the numerous insights in this analysis.

Similarly, the authors argue for a greater focus on the motivations of the target of coercion, but determining the motivations of others is notoriously difficult and it is especially challenging at the specific moment when the target of coercion feels their primary concern is under threat. In the Syria case, the authors argue persuasively that Assad’s primary motivation was maintaining his grip on power and thus anytime he felt his regime sufficiently threatened, he was willing to cross the line and use chemical weapons, including sarin, in mass-casualty attacks despite deterrent threats. Their argument sometimes appears to rest on the assumption that if Assad used sarin, then he must have felt threatened. This conclusion may be useful in explaining the times Assad crossed that line, but does not help in determining when such incidents may recur and will not enable policymakers to pre-empt such use through assurances. By analyzing three competing factors—credibility of deterrence, assurances, and motivations—the authors sometimes equivocate on which factor was most relevant to explain the outcome. Although the world is a complex place, this approach offers little in helping to understand future cases other than to remember to take all such factors into account.

To be fair, these limitations of the book reflect the challenges inherent generally in deterrence and coercive diplomacy in a dynamic situation. Multiple U.S. administrations were unclear in their approach to similar challenges due to competing demands. The United States could not ignore the use of chemical weapons on moral and nonproliferation grounds, but was unwilling to threaten invasion and feared an Islamic extremist government takeover in Damascus. Assad, meanwhile, was left wondering where the supposed redline was after his repeated use of chlorine sparked little international response. Only his use of sarin ran a serious risk of military strikes until he suffered his most significant strike from the United States, France, and the United Kingdom after his use of chlorine in Douma in 2018 killed dozens of people. These shifting international priorities seriously complicated any efforts at deterrence, coercion, or acquiescence.

Another powerful insight the authors offer involves the role of recent comparable experiences in the calculations of the key players in Russia, Syria and the United States throughout this time period. NATO’s decision to facilitate the fall of leader Muammar Qaddafi in Libya, even after he surrendered his weapons of mass destruction, raised serious questions in Assad’s mind about his future if he turned over his chemical weapons and limited the U.S. ability to offer any assurances. Russia similarly recalled regime-change experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya—all of which resulted in considerable chaos—and feared a similar fate for its ally in Damascus. Although Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin feared this track record meant that the United States was serious about possible regime change in Syria, Obama and Trump appeared to take the opposite approach. Instead, both presidents tried to avoid repeating those same mistakes and did not wish to risk the fall of Assad for fear of a humanitarian crisis or even an Islamic State takeover. Thus, Libya provided a cautionary tale for all of the key players, even if they drew somewhat different lessons.

The authors conclude their analysis in 2020, as Assad appeared to have won the civil war and, not coincidentally, stopped using his chemical weapons. Subsequent events inspired them to add a brief epilogue, however, to address Assad’s unexpected fall from power in late 2024 and his equally unexpected nonuse of CW in the end. The authors correctly argue that deterrence was probably not the cause of this CW nonuse, given the lack of deterrent threats from the United States at the time. Instead, they focus on Assad’s inability to respond due to the speed of his ouster and the weakness of his military.

Yet, this nonuse of chemical weapons fundamentally challenges the authors’ argument focusing on Assad’s commitment to regime survival as the primary reason for his CW use. If their hypothesis is true that Assad was more likely to use CW, especially sarin, when he felt most threatened, why did the Syrian leader not at least attempt to use CW again as enemy troops closed on his capital? Although beyond the scope of this book, this is an important question worthy of additional research. Hopefully, the authors will address this question in future work.

Overall, this book offers an excellent contribution to the literature with numerous insights worthy of further consideration, especially because the challenges of deterrence and coercive diplomacy will continue to bedevil policymakers in the future.

April 2026
By Kathleen Sullivan

On March 14, Shigeaki Mori, a beloved hibakusha, historian, and humanitarian, died at the age of 88. He was 8 years old August 6, 1945, when a U.S. B-29 bomber dropped the first nuclear weapon ever used in war on the city of Hiroshima. Mori was walking to school with a friend at 8:15 on that hot summer morning. A searing bright light blinded the boys, followed by hurricane-force winds from the blast that blew them off a bridge and into the creek below. When Mori regained consciousness, he climbed out of the water and found himself, as he later described the scene, in near-total darkness, inside the mushroom cloud. He eventually found his way to an air-raid shelter and would later be reunited with his family, who also survived. His school companion did not make it out alive.

By the end of September 1945, some 140,000 people, mostly noncombatants, perished from the U.S. atomic bombing. According to Tim Wright in his harrowing report, “The Impact of Nuclear Weapons on Children,” more than 38,000 children perished in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “According to surveys by the city of Hiroshima, 73,622 children under 10 years of age were exposed to the bombing, of whom 7,907 had died by the end of 1945. Among older children and adolescents, the death toll was thought to be 15,543,” Wright wrote.

As one of these 70,000-plus children who survived, Mori spent his life, in an extraordinary act of kindness, in the search for U.S. prisoners of war who perished in Hiroshima. He was driven by a desire to inform the loved ones of the fate of these 12 U.S. service members and to help them find closure and healing. After decades of research and reconciliation, Mori’s book was published: The Secret History of the American Soldiers Killed by the Atomic Bomb. His life and research is portrayed in Barry Frechette’s 2016 documentary film, “Paper Lanterns.” Perhaps due to his lifelong pursuit to identify the U.S. POWs, Mori was chosen to be one of the hibakusha who met President Barack Obama, the first sitting U.S. president to visit a city to experience an atomic bombing, in Hiroshima in May 2016. Mori was overcome with emotion by the meeting and in response, Obama embraced him.

This hug that was felt around the world did not please all hibakusha. Many were disturbed by the lesser-known fact of Obama’s visit to the Peace Park in Hiroshima, accompanied as he was by the U.S. nuclear football. Otherwise known as the “presidential emergency satchel,” this 45-pound briefcase contains communication codes and devices needed to initiate a nuclear attack. It is never far from the president’s reach and an additional device is dispatched with the U.S. vice president.

It is terrifying to think of how accessible the nuclear codes are to the current U.S. commander-in-chief, or to any human being who, as with all of us, are fallible and do not always have total control of our faculties. In any case, to bring what is essentially a leather-bound mechanism used to launch nuclear weapons into the Peace Park in Hiroshima was unforgivable to many Japanese people.

Thomas Merton referred to the atomic bomb as the “Original Child Bomb” in his 41-point prose poem, asking: What will happen and speculating that people today are “fatigued by the whole question.” Mori, who spent his adult life identifying U.S. POWs, and in some cases befriending their families, was never fatigued. With gratitude, his memory lives on in those who seek reconciliation and who work for nuclear abolition. As it is written on the cenotaph in Hiroshima: “Let all the souls here rest in peace; for we shall not repeat the evil.”

April 2026
By Daryl G. Kimball

For more than five decades, the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) has served as the essential framework and catalyst, albeit an imperfect one, for global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons, end nuclear testing, and advance disarmament diplomacy to help achieve a world free of nuclear weapons.

But now, due to years of inattention, inaction, and reckless disregard for international norms of behavior by some NPT nuclear-armed states, the nonproliferation system is facing an uncertain future. States-parties at the past two NPT review conferences, in 2015 and 2022, have failed to overcome differences that have blocked agreement on measures to advance treaty goals.

This makes it essential that diplomats at this month’s 11th NPT Review Conference join together (as they did in 2022 in paragraphs 102-148 of the final draft document) and reaffirm their governments’ support for the treaty, as well as for the principles, objectives, and action steps endorsed by consensus at the 2010 and 2000 review conferences and the pivotal 1995 Review and Extension Conference.

A successful consensus outcome document must also commit key states to concrete action steps that reduce the nuclear danger and advance the NPT’s core goals. As 2026 Conference President Du Hong Viet told Arms Control Today, without such an outcome, “We may lose the credibility of the NPT itself, and the review process.”

This NPT meeting arrives at a time of increasing nuclear danger and serious geopolitical tension. Moreover, key treaties that have served as guardrails against nuclear catastrophe have expired or are under threat.

For the first time since 1972, there are no binding limits on the size of the Russian and U.S. nuclear arsenals, the world’s largest. Both countries might soon begin increasing the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons for the first time in 35 years. China is expanding the size and diversity of its nuclear arsenal. France just announced that it will increase its arsenal.

Worse yet, there are no active arms control talks between or among the five nuclear-armed NPT states. Each is in violation of the obligation to engage in “negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament” as required by Article VI of the treaty.

The 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), a core element of the NPT bargain that has 187 signatories and near-universal support, is also under duress. U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to resume nuclear explosive testing “on an equal basis” and has accused China of conducting a nuclear test in 2020.

However, the seismic data gathered and analyzed by the Comprehensive Test-Ban-Treaty Organization and independent experts is inconclusive, and a retaliatory U.S. nuclear test would not only be technically unnecessary, but it would ignite a chain reaction of nuclear testing by other states that would blow apart the NPT system.

In recent years, threats of nuclear use have also been on the rise, and nuclear-armed states continue to engage in exercises intended to signal their willingness to use these mass terror weapons if provoked.

The illegal attacks against Iran by two nuclear-armed states—NPT nonmember Israel and the United States—have sabotaged active negotiations designed to return International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors to Iran and achieve new limits to block potential pathways to produce bomb-grade material. The ongoing war will certainly revive debate about the goal, as agreed in 1995, of a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East.

Despite these strong crosswinds, NPT states must line up together behind a set of core action steps. These include the immediate start of bilateral or multilateral disarmament negotiations. As an interim step, all nuclear-armed NPT states should agree to freeze the number of their strategic nuclear launchers. They should also reaffirm their commitment to the global moratorium on nuclear test explosions and agree to launch technical talks on new, voluntary confidence-building measures to verify compliance before the CTBT enters into force.

Furthermore, the NPT states should pledge to refrain from threatening the use of nuclear weapons, commence negotiations on legally binding negative security assurances for non-nuclear-weapon states in good standing with the NPT, and call upon all nuclear-armed states to promptly ratify the protocols to the South Pacific, African, and Central Asian nuclear-weapon-free-zone treaties. Finally, NPT states should call for universal adoption of the additional protocol to their IAEA safeguards agreements to guard against clandestine nuclear weapons efforts.

Effective leadership from the United States at this conference is, unfortunately, unlikely. For the first time, the U.S. team will not be led by a Senate-confirmed ambassador with prior NPT experience and the diplomatic standing to demonstrate strong presidential commitment to securing a successful review conference outcome.

Other states will need to tip the balance in the right direction. In particular, middle-power countries from all regions will need to band together, as they did in 1995, to push the nuclear-armed powers to respect their solemn NPT commitments and advance the treaty’s objectives. The results of the 2026 NPT Review Conference will likely have profound, long-term effects on our common future.

April 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

U.S. President Donald Trump expressed interest in negotiating a deal with Iran, nearly four weeks after the United States and Israel attacked the country, but it is unclear if Tehran is willing to negotiate or if Israel would agree to a ceasefire.

In March 24 comments to reporters, Trump said that the United States has “won” the war and that Iran wants “to make a deal so badly.”  He said that Iran agreed to “never have a nuclear weapon,” a commitment Iran had already made in the February talks preceding the Israeli and U.S. strikes. Trump also said Iran would agree to forgo uranium enrichment, a key sticking point in the negotiations that preceded the U.S. decision to strike Iran in coordination with Israel, despite presenting no evidence of an imminent threat. (See ACT, March 2026.)

Although several states, including Pakistan, have offered to mediate talks between the United States and Iran, Tehran has denied any engagement with the Trump administration. Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the speaker of the Iranian parliament, posted March 23 on the social media platform X that “No negotiations have been held” with the United States. He wrote that Trump’s announcement was designed to “manipulate the financial and oil markets and escape the quagmire in which the US and Israel are trapped.”

Oil and gas prices have increased significantly since the war started Feb. 28, due in part to an Israeli strike on an Iranian gas field and an Iranian retaliatory strike on a Qatari gas field. Iran is also limiting transit through the Strait of Hormuz, a conduit for oil tankers that carry about 25 percent of the world’s oil.

Iranian Foreign Minister spokesman Esmail Baghaei told the state news agency IRNA that Iran has received messages from other countries “regarding the U.S.’s request for negotiations to end the war,” but also said there were no contacts with the United States.

It is unclear if Israel would be willing to stop striking Iran as part of any deal. In a March 23 video statement, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Trump “believes there is an opportunity to leverage” Israeli and U.S. military accomplishments for a deal. But he noted that Israel will continue to strike Iran and “safeguard our vital interests under all circumstances.”

Days before he said that the United States and Iran were making progress toward ending the war, Trump threatened to “obliterate” Iran’s power plants if it did not agree to open the Strait of Hormuz within 48 hours.

On March 23, he announced on his social media site, Truth Social, that the United States would “POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES” on Iran’s energy infrastructure for five days due to “VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST.”

Media outlets later reported that the United States sent a 15-point ceasefire plan to Iran via intermediaries. These reports suggest that the 15 points largely echo previous U.S. demands, including dismantlement of the uranium enrichment program, zero enrichment in the future, suspension of ballistic missile activities, and reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.

Iran’s state-run Press TV quoted an official March 25 as saying Iran rejected the U.S. terms and said the Iranian government will not allow Trump to end the war on its own timeline.

The Wall Street Journal reported March 24 that Iran has its own demands for any negotiation, including allowing Iran to collect fees from ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, guarantees that strikes against Iran will stop, lifting all sanctions, and allowing Iran to retain its missile program. Iran said it would also seek reparations from the United States and closure of U.S. bases in the Persian Gulf. These demands exceed what Iran had asked for in talks with the United States before the war, suggesting that Iran’s positions have hardened and that the new leadership believes it has leverage.

Despite Trump’s claim that the United States has won the war, several goals that he laid out as justification for the conflict remain unmet. Although Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed on the first day of the strikes, the regime remains intact, with his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, the new supreme leader.

Iran also retains nuclear material, including a stockpile of uranium enriched to near-weapons-grade levels. Trump suggested sending in U.S. troops to retrieve the material at one point, but any such mission would be dangerous and challenging, given that some of the material may be difficult to locate.

U.S. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard testified to the House Intelligence Committee March 17 that the intelligence community has high confidence that it knows where Iran’s nuclear materials are located. However, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi told CBS News March 22 that Iran could be using decoy cannisters, presumably to make it more challenging to anyone who might try to find and remove Iran’s enriched uranium. He also said that Iran would retain capabilities and knowledge that cannot be destroyed by military strikes.

In the first four weeks of the strikes, there has been little military focus on Iran’s remaining nuclear infrastructure. Neither the United States nor Israel has struck Pickaxe Mountain, a deeply buried site near Natanz that Iran claims is for centrifuge assembly, or attempted to target areas of Esfahan, where Grossi confirmed that Iran is likely storing more than 200 kilograms of 60 percent enriched uranium-235. The decision not to strike Esfahan could be because the material is stored too deeply underground to destroy.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine told members of Congress in June 2025 that the United States focused on collapsing the tunnel entrances at Esfahan rather than destroying the underground areas when it struck nuclear facilities June 21 because the site is too deeply buried. Satellite imagery and statements from the IAEA suggest that the United States and Israel have not attempted to do further damage to those tunnel entrances. Israel, however, does seem to have struck the entrances into the Natanz uranium enrichment facility, possibly to impede access. The IAEA confirmed damage to Natanz March 2.

Israel also struck a site known as Taleghan 2, where Iran was burying a chamber that could have been intended for testing the high explosives necessary for a nuclear weapon.

The 2026 U.S. worldwide threat assessment, released on March 18, however, does not indicate that Iran has taken any steps to weaponize or to resume nuclear activities such as enrichment that were halted to due to damage from the brief U.S.-Israeli war against Iran last June. The assessment noted only that Iran “was intending to try to recover from the devastation of its nuclear infrastructure sustained during the 12-Day War.”

April 2026
By Kelsey Davenport

North Korea is ready for peace or war with the United States, leader Kim Jong Un said, but he emphasized that any bilateral talks would require that the United States recognizes North Korea as a nuclear-armed state.

Kim’s Feb. 26 remarks were made on the last day of the week-long Ninth Party Congress, which is held every five years and sets national priorities. His remarks and the proceedings were covered extensively by the state-run Korean Central News Agency and Rodong Sinmun, the official paper of the Workers’ Party. Kim was re-elected as general secretary during the congress.

In his speech, Kim ruled out any negotiations with South Korea. He emphasized that ties with Seoul are “completely eliminated” and “nothing remains” in the relationship. He ordered North Korea to further fortify its border with South Korea.

Kim said North Korea’s relationship with the United States “depends entirely on the attitude of the U.S. side” and that Pyongyang is prepared for “peaceful coexistence or eternal confrontation.”

Although Kim suggested that North Korea is open to diplomacy with the United States, he made clear that any change in the relationship is dependent on a change in U.S. policy, which Washington has suggested it is not ready to make.

Kim said that “there is no reason why we cannot get on well with the U.S.” if Washington “respects the present position of our state specified in the constitution” and “withdraws its hostile policy.” North Korea modified its constitution in 2023 to refer to its nuclear weapons status.

Kim said that North Korea’s position as a nuclear-weapon state is “permanently fixed” and that its “enemies clearly realize that the dismantlement of [North Korea’s] nukes can never happen unless the whole world changes.”

Kim also laid out new priorities to “further expand and strengthen” the country’s nuclear weapons program. He described nuclear weapons as the “backbone” of North Korea’s deterrence and war strategies.

Specifically, he said that North Korea will deploy more advanced intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and suggested the country will launch more advanced satellites. Rodong Shimbun said in a Feb. 26 report that the party congress has a “long-term plan” to strengthen the nuclear program and will concentrate on “increasing the number of nuclear weapons and expanding the means and space for nuclear operation.”

The report said that North Korea will continue to conduct drills “to have confidence in the effectiveness of the operation” of the nuclear arsenal. The report also mentioned that North Korea will activate and do a test run of its integrated nuclear crisis response system.

It said that the “nuclear weaponization of naval surface and underwater forces” will be a main component of North Korea’s plans to upgrade its navy. The emphasis on nuclear-capable systems at sea is a continuation of previous plans for expanding the nuclear weapons program.

During the previous party congress in 2021, Kim set several specific goals for nuclear-capable systems, including development of tactical nuclear weapons, a solid-fueled ICBM, a nuclear-powered submarine, and sea-based ICBMs and strategic weapons. North Korea has made progress on most of those goals, including testing a solid-fueled ICBM and likely deploying tactical nuclear weapons, while others, such as the sea-based strategic systems, were revealed or tested but are unlikely to be deployed. North Korea also revealed what is likely a nuclear-powered submarine under construction.

The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Director-General Rafael Mariano Grossi said in a March 2 statement to the agency’s Board of Governors that North Korea’s 5-megawatt reactor at Yongbyon, which produces plutonium for nuclear warheads, “likely continues to operate” and that activity at the radiochemical laboratory suggests North Korea reprocessed spent fuel from the reactor’s previous cycle. Grossi also said the IAEA is monitoring a new building at Yongbyon, which is of similar size to a known enrichment facility at Kangson. Grossi said the building is “externally complete and internal fitting is likely underway.”

In its 2026 unclassified worldwide threat assessment, the U.S. intelligence community said North Korea is investing “in nuclear-capable systems to deter the U.S., challenge regional missile defenses, and hold targets in South Korea at risk.” It noted that North Korea is likely to deploy missiles with longer ranges and increased accuracy.

The 2025 report suggested that the United States may not be willing to accept North Korea as a nuclear-armed state. It noted that Kim “seeks to intimidate the United States and its allies into abandoning opposition to North Korea’s nuclear weapons.” That language was not included in the 2026 report.

The 2026 threat assessment did note that, despite North Korea’s military advances and the knowledge gained from supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, “North Korea is likely to remain deterred by U.S. and allied forces.”

The United States held air and missile defense drills in South Korea following the North Korea party congress. The March 11 exercises included responding to incursions that include missiles and drones.

Three days later, North Korea launched a volley of short-range ballistic missiles at an island between the Korean peninsula and Japan. The Korean Central News Agency said the missiles “battered the island target” with “100-percent accuracy.”

April 2026
By Daryl G. Kimball and Libby Flatoff

Representatives from most of the 191 states-parties to the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) will assemble in New York for a month-long conference to assess implementation of the treaty and seek agreement on a final document that outlines action steps to advance its core principles and objectives.

The April 27-May 22 meeting will be held amid multiple challenges to the treaty, which is the foundation of global efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, to further the goals of nuclear disarmament, and to promote cooperation in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy under effective international safeguards.

The conference president, Do Hung Viet, who is also Vietnam’s ambassador to the United Nations, said in an interview with Arms Control Today that the treaty “is facing a lot of strain, but it is still extremely important that we work to … rebuild the credibility that the NPT has and the trust that the international community has in the NPT and in a multilateral rules-based framework in general.”

The tensions and divisions among certain NPT members were on full display at last year’s NPT preparatory conference, which set the stage for the review conference. These included disagreements over the ongoing Russian war on Ukraine and its effect on the Ukrainian nuclear energy infrastructure; concern from the United States and some allies about China’s buildup of strategic nuclear forces; criticism of the forward deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe and Russia’s decision to deploy some of its nuclear weapons in Belarus; and the failure of the five NPT nuclear-armed states to engage in negotiations on disarmament as required under Article VI of the treaty. (See ACT, June 2025.)

Since then, new problems have emerged, and new crises have erupted. In October, U.S. President Donald Trump threated to resume nuclear testing “on an equal basis” and in February, senior State Department officials accused China of conducting a nuclear test in 2020. In February, the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty expired, which could allow the United States and Russia to increase the number and diversity of their strategic nuclear arsenals for the first time in decades. In response to concerns about Russian aggression and U.S. support for European security, France announced that it will increase the size of its nuclear arsenal and work closely with certain European states to increase cooperation on nuclear deterrence. (See ACT, March 2026.)

The U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iranian nuclear sites in June 2025 and their full-scale attack on Iran launched Feb. 28 have complicated the task of resuming international inspections of Iran’s sensitive nuclear activities while the widening regional conflict raises new concerns and tensions for NPT states-parties.

Weeks before the 2022 NPT Review Conference, Russia invaded Ukraine. Speaking days before the February Israeli-U.S. attack on Iran, Viet told Arms Control Today that “the NPT and the NPT review conference are not in a vacuum. They are impacted significantly by externalities of what’s going on around the world.”

Despite the growing geopolitical conflicts and tension, Viet and other NPT states-parties continue to prepare for the high-stakes review conference with four regional consultations and other engagements.

On Feb. 17, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control and Nonproliferation Christopher Yeaw declared that “the NPT RevCon is high-priority for this administration.”

Yet, unlike the past several review conferences, the U.S. delegation will not be led by a Senate-confirmed, ambassador-level diplomat. The head of the U.S. delegation will be John Zadrozny, who was recently appointed to be the new chief of staff for Undersecretary of State for International Security and Arms Control Thomas DiNanno.

For their part, the Chinese Foreign Ministry convened a March 23-24 event on “promoting multilateralism and advancing arms control diplomacy” in Beijing involving roughly 20 ambassadors and diplomats from a variety of NPT states-parties. Viet, as well as the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Mariano Grossi, and the UN High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, Izumi Nakamitzu, also participated.

A week earlier, Grossi, Viet, and Robert Floyd, executive secretary of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization attended the semiannual Moscow Nonproliferation Conference, organized by the nongovernmental Center for Energy and Security Studies, which provided opportunities for engagement with senior Russian officials.

Pressure on NPT diplomats to deliver a successful outcome at the review conference is high but expectations are low. The 2010 NPT Review Conference was the last one that successfully adopted a consensus outcome document. In 2015, consensus on the final document was blocked by the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada over language on how to advance a Middle East WMD-Free Zone. (See ACT, June 2015.)

In 2022, states agreed on a final outcome document covering a wide range of difficult issues, only to see Russia block consensus over language relating to nuclear safety issues at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant following Russia’s invasion earlier that year. (See ACT, September 2022.) The dynamics among the NPT’s five nuclear-armed states are a significant variable in every review conference, but any one state or bloc of states can raise concerns that can significantly affect conference.

Viet told Arms Control Today that in order to improve the chances for diplomatic progress, “I intend to … be a bit innovative without being disruptive … so as to allow all delegations, no matter how big or small, to be able to participate in all of the meetings, in all of the discussions.”

He added: “I intend to prepare a draft to be presented to state-parties earlier on, maybe in the middle of the second week of the conference. That will allow the main committees to start discussions surrounding the draft outcome document, and allow, basically, a bit more than two weeks for the negotiations of such outcome document.”

“An outcome document will show to the world, our constituencies, our people, that they can still rely on the NPT for their security, and that they can be confident that governments are still working towards ensuring better security for all through these dialogues and discussions and sticking to the commitments that they have,” Viet said. Without such an outcome, “We may lose the credibility of the NPT itself, and the review process.”

April 2026
By Daryl G. Kimball

The Syrian government, with technical support from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) and financial support from seven partner states, has launched an initiative to assess and demilitarize residual elements of the chemical weapons program developed by the deposed government of Bashar al-Assad.

Syria’s UN ambassador, Ibrahim Olabi, announced the effort following a March 10 UN Security Council meeting on the Syrian political and humanitarian situation.

Assad was overthrown in December 2024 after nearly 15 years of civil war. The new government led by Ahmad al-Sharaa has begun to allow international inspectors access to key sites and documents to help eradicate the remainder of Syria’s once-formidable chemical arsenal. Since 2025, the new Syrian government has facilitated access to additional suspected chemical weapons sites and provided more than 10,0000 documents on the former chemical weapons program for OPCW review.

In 2013, following a sarin gas attack by Assad’s military against anti-regime forces and civilians outside Damascus that killed more than 1,400 people, a U.S.-and-Russia-brokered plan was imposed by the UN Security Council that required Syria to join the Chemical Weapons Convention, provide a full declaration of its stockpile, and allow for the demilitarization its chemical weapons stockpile.

This led to a complex, international effort to remove and safely dispose of the vast majority of the chemical arsenal, including 1,308 metric tons of chemical agents, as well as associated production equipment. Subsequent OPCW and UN investigations revealed, however, that the Assad regime still retained and used the nerve agent sarin, chlorine, and sulfur mustard gas through the course of the civil war and failed to reveal the full extent of its clandestine program.

Adedeji Ebo, director and deputy to the UN high representative for disarmament affairs, told the Security Council March 10 that the OPCW Technical Secretariat reports that in addition to 26 newly revealed former chemical weapons-related sites in Syria, “information made available to the OPCW suggests that there are more than 100 other sites that may have been involved in the previous government’s chemical-weapons-related activities.”

Ebo said the OPCW also has conducted interviews with former chemical weapons experts, collected 19 samples, and more than 6,000 documents from the visited locations. He added that “the new Syrian government handed over 34 sealed cardboard boxes containing documents to the OPCW Technical Secretariat, which have been documented and scanned, and will be processed for translation and analysis.”

The OPCW Technical Secretariat continues to conduct interviews and review documents, and it plans to visit all these locations when the security situation in the region improves, he added.

Tammy Bruce, the deputy U.S. ambassador to the UN, said in a statement to the Security Council that, “Finding, securing, declaring, and verifiably destroying any remnants of the Assad regime’s chemical weapons program is no easy task and is therefore costly.” The United States “echoes the calls by the OPCW director-general and the Technical Secretariat for voluntary monetary and in-kind contributions to its Syria mission,” she added.

Bruce said: “The United States is proud to be working alongside Syria, and six other partner nations, in the Syria-led Destruction Planning Group. This group was established to support Syria’s chemical weapons destruction effort, strengthen Syrian national capacities, and mobilize technical and operational support for this mission.” The six other states are Canada, France, Germany, Turkey, Qatar, and the United Kingdom.

April 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

Los Alamos National Laboratories will produce 60 plutonium pits per year by the end of 2028 if the site can meet new objectives set out by a leading official at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) in a Feb. 11 memo.

The lab’s plutonium facility also should have the capability to "enable production of 100 pits" by the end of 2028, according to the objective-setting document, which was obtained and published by the Los Alamos Study Group, a locally-based advocacy organization.

The memo, authored by David Beck, the NNSA deputy administrator for defense programs, sets ambitious targets for increasing nuclear weapons production across the agency. The “transformation objectives” represent what Beck’s office “believes are achievable by the end of calendar year 2028.”

The memo instructs the NNSA to also deliver the W80-4 warhead for the Long-Range Standoff Weapon, the new Air Force nuclear cruise missile, “ahead of [Defense Department] required need dates,” accelerate development and delivery of the warhead for the sea-launched cruise missile, and “Demonstrate and transition to Stockpile Management at least two novel Rapid Capability nuclear weapons systems.”

Since 2018, the NNSA has planned to produce 30 plutonium pits per year at Los Alamos, New Mexico, with another 50 to be produced annually at the under-construction Savannah River Plutonium Processing Facility in South Carolina. The Savannah River facility is now expected to be completed by September 2035, at a cost of over $22 billion, according to a Feb. 26 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO).

The GAO also noted that work to install pit production equipment at Los Alamos to meet the existing 30-pits-per-year target had suffered delays attributable to “prioritizing resources to achieve the first production unit for [the] W87-1 [warhead] through late 2024,” as well as difficulties procuring gloveboxes for handling radioactive items.

The NNSA is shifting its strategy for procuring and installing equipment at Los Alamos through a reprioritization of items and programs. According to the GAO, new estimates for the cost and schedule of the Los Alamos effort will be available in early 2026.

The agency published Mar. 25 its final site-wide environmental impact statement studying alternatives for the future of nuclear weapons work and other activities at the Los Alamos site over the next 15 years. The statement was accompanied by the agency’s decision to choose the most expansive option among the three considered, implying the construction of new facilities for capabilities that currently do not exist at the lab.

The New Mexico Environment Department issued an administrative compliance order Feb. 11 to the U.S. Department of Energy, the NNSA, and the contractors that operate Los Alamos instructing them to take steps to clean up toxic waste at Material Disposal Area C, a legacy unlined dump on laboratory grounds. (See ACT, September 2025.)

The GAO report, based on a review of the Energy Department’s project assessment database through June 2025, indicates that other major NNSA projects are experiencing schedule delays.

Two projects associated with the Uranium Processing Facility being built at the Y-12 National Security Complex in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, will see extended delays. The main process building is roughly six years behind schedule and will cost $7.45 billion dollars, compared with an earlier estimate of $4.73 billion.

The new Lithium Processing Facility at Y-12 will also be completed late by about six years, at a cost of $6 billion. Previous estimates put the cost of the facility at between $871 million and $1.5 billion, the GAO reported.

The Feb. 11 NNSA memo also directs staff to “Execute the President’s directive with respect to the testing of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.” President Donald Trump announced last October that the United States would resume testing on an “equal basis” with nuclear peers. (See ACT, November 2025.)

The administration has yet to elaborate how this order will be implemented by the NNSA, and the memo indicates that next-step activities related to testing remain “TBD”—yet to be decided.

Correction: In the April 2026 issue of Arms Control Today, the story "NNSA Charts Buildup as Delays Mount" on p. 28 misinterpreted a line in a document by David Beck, deputy administrator for defense programs at the National Nuclear Security Administration. The document called for Los Alamos to have the capability to "enable production of 100 pits" by the end of 2028.

April 2026
By Xiaodon Liang

The U.S. Department of Defense is conducting a “nuclear strategy review” to assess strategic force requirements and potential additional theater nuclear weapons programs in lieu of a full nuclear posture review, a top department official said March 17 at a congressional hearing.

The review will be conducted by the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy and U.S. Strategic Command, according to Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary of defense for nuclear deterrence, chemical, and biological defense, policy and programs.

Kadlec, speaking before the House Armed Services Committee’s Subcommittee on Strategic Forces, said the review would assess “very specific issues as it relates to the two-peer problem”—as U.S. experts regularly describe China and Russia—and “the pace of modernization and sufficiency of what we have already in the programs of record.”

“People have asked about numbers,” Kadlec said, “and I think this is the first opportunity to really evaluate the threat in a way that is real and tangible.”

In a November 2024 report on the nuclear employment strategy, the Defense Department indicated that it had received guidance from the Biden administration to “continuously evaluate whether adjustments should be made” to the U.S. nuclear force.

Kadlec said that ongoing work to assess additional theater nuclear weapons options would focus on “using the existing stockpile and existing platforms,” in response to a question from the subcommittee chair, Rep. Scott DesJarlais (R-Tenn.), about “tailored supplemental capabilities” to the existing nuclear force.

Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of defense for policy, previously told the Senate Armed Services Committee March 3 that the Trump administration would not be conducting a formal nuclear posture review. “I think the declaratory policy and so forth from the first Trump term was very good,” Colby said.

The 2018 Nuclear Posture Review produced by the first Trump administration differed from its predecessor, the 2010 review conducted by the Obama administration, in declaring that the “extreme circumstances” under which the United States might contemplate nuclear use could include “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” (See ACT, March 2018.)

The Biden administration did not fully reject this change but indicated that this set of contingencies consisted of a “narrow range of other high consequence, strategic-level attacks.”

The Biden review also noted that “a near-simultaneous conflict with two nuclear-armed states would constitute an extreme circumstance.”

In his prepared statement for the March 17 hearing, Kadlec wrote that U.S. nuclear forces must be “robust enough to deter both peers simultaneously, even if we were to be engaged in a major conventional conflict with one.”

“The role of our nuclear arsenal in this context is not to fight and win a nuclear war, but to deter China from escalating to the nuclear level in the first place, or from believing it can use its nuclear arsenal to coerce us into accepting a fait accompli,” Kadlec wrote.

Testifying alongside Kadlec, the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Adm. Richard Correll, expressed concern about the potential vulnerabilities exposed by Ukraine’s successful drone strike against Russian strategic forces last June. Correll indicated in his prepared statement that a Pentagon council had endorsed his command’s new requirements for addressing this threat. (See ACT, July/August 2025.)

Drones controlled by unidentified remote operators were sighted intruding into the airspace of Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, between March 9 and 15, ABC News reported March 20, citing a confidential internal briefing document on the incidents.

Barksdale is home to three squadrons of B-52H strategic bombers. A nuclear weapons storage site is under construction at the base, according to satellite imagery analysis by the Federation of American Scientists.

Multiple waves of drones flew over sensitive portions of the base for more than a week. The aircraft displayed “non-commercial signal characteristics, long-range control links and resistance to jamming,” according to the document cited by ABC News.

Correll also said that, as part of the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense program, his command was “assessing strategic missile threats and prioritizing locations for defense against attacks by nuclear-armed adversaries.”

The admiral’s statement included an estimate of total Russian nuclear forces that counted 2,600 strategic warheads and up to 2,000 warheads for theater nuclear weapons.

This marks the first disclosure by Strategic Command of an internal estimate of the size of Russia’s nuclear force, according to Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists, in a social media post.