Obama: "Iran is Breaking Rules that All Nations Must Follow"

Leaders Warn Iran Over Nuclear Site - New York Times [link]

• President Obama and leaders of Britain and France accused Iran on Friday of building a secret underground plant to manufacture nuclear fuel, saying the country has hidden the covert operation from international weapons inspectors for years.
• “The level of deception by the Iranian government, and the scale of what we believe is the breach of international commitments, will shock and anger the entire international community,” Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain said, standing on the other side of Mr. Obama. “The international community has no choice today but to draw a line in the sand.”
• American officials said late Thursday that they believe the plant was designed to hold about 3,000 centrifuges, which enrich uranium for nuclear power plants — or, with additional enrichment, for bombs. That would be enough centrifuges to manufacture about one bomb’s worth of material a year, though it is unclear whether any of the centrifuges have been installed or turned on.
• Click here to read the statements delivered by President Obama, President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Brown, or watch President Obama's statement below:

Iran Admits Building Covert Enrichment Facility - Laura Rozen of Politico [link]

• The facility built in a mountain near Qom has not yet introduced nuclear material, and is made to hold 3,000 centrifuges, reports said. What is perplexing about that is that a plant to produce nuclear energy would require capacity to hold some 50,000 centrifuges, one expert said on condition of anonymity.
• "We always intended to disclose this site with the strongest possible case," the official said. "Earlier this year, there was an accumulation of evidence that gave us high confidence that this was intended to be a uranium enrichment facility. We began consulting with our partners earlier this summer to coordinate the disclosure of the site."

The Subject Was Nuclear Weapons - New York Times Editorial [link]

• With President Obama chairing the session and 13 other leaders around the table, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted a resolution on Thursday intended to strengthen the fraying rules that are supposed to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.
• We applaud Mr. Obama for highlighting the nuclear dangers out there and pressing the world to address them. He still has a tough sell at home. He is far from the votes he needs for the Senate to ratify the test ban treaty. Some 150 countries have ratified it. But the treaty cannot take effect until other major holdouts — including China, India, Pakistan and Israel — also ratify it.
• Washington’s failure gives them an all-too-convenient excuse. Mr. Obama will have to work hard to rally broader support.

Fact Sheet on UN Security Council Resolution 1887 - Council on Foreign Relations [link]

• In an historic meeting, the United Nations Security Council today convened at the head of state/government level and unanimously cosponsored and adopted a resolution committing to work toward a world without nuclear weapons and endorsing a broad framework of actions to reduce global nuclear dangers.
• [CFR offers a useful fact sheet for the content and meaning of UNSC 187]

Obama’s Nuclear Victory – Joe Cirincione in The Daily Beast [link]

• Now, as president, he has gone from a visionary speech in Prague in April to international consensus at the U.N. in September. Think about this: No nation opposed the plan to prevent terrorists and new nations from getting the bomb and to work step by step to eliminate the 23,000 weapons that exist.
• Here is the secret to Obama’s policy success: This is not really his policy. Obama’s program represents the broad consensus that has emerged over the past few years among centrist security experts in this country and abroad, among liberals and conservatives. Only the far right remains on the fringe.

A View from the Extremely Dark Side

Inside the Apocalyptic Soviet Doomsday Machine - Wired Magazine [link]

• Yarynich is talking about Russia's doomsday machine. That's right, an actual doomsday device—a real, functioning version of the ultimate weapon, always presumed to exist only as a fantasy of apocalypse-obsessed science fiction writers and paranoid über-hawks. The thing that historian Lewis Mumford called "the central symbol of this scientifically organized nightmare of mass extermination." Turns out Yarynich, a 30-year veteran of the Soviet Strategic Rocket Forces and Soviet General Staff, helped build one.
• The technical name was Perimeter, but some called it Mertvaya Ruka, or Dead Hand. It was built 25 years ago and remained a closely guarded secret.