The Iran Report: Previews and Perspectives

On the radar: Update on Iran’s capabilities; the Politics of the report; Visualizing the nuclear threat; the Debate within Israel; Panetta considering nuclear cuts; Turner’s partial accounting; and Baker on zero.

November 7, 2011 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Mary Kaszynski

IAEA’s updated info on Iran - ”Documents and other records provide new details on the role played by a former Soviet weapons scientist who allegedly tutored Iranians over several years on building high-precision detonators of the kind used to trigger a nuclear chain reaction, the [IAEA] officials and experts said. Crucial technology linked to experts in Pakistan and North Korea also helped propel Iran to the threshold of nuclear capability, they added.”

--”U.S. intelligence officials maintain that Iran’s leaders have not decided whether to build nuclear weapons but are intent on gathering all the components and skills so they can quickly assemble a bomb if they choose to,” writes Joby Warrick in The Washington Post. http://owl.li/7li4v

Waiting on the report - “For its part, the Obama administration, acutely aware of how what happened in Iraq undercut American credibility, is deliberately taking a back seat, eager to make the conclusions entirely the I.A.E.A.’s, even as it continues to press for more international sanctions against Iran,” reports The New York Times. http://owl.li/7ln8x

Iran overview - In case you managed to avoid the recent years of Iran nuclear news saturation, David Sanger gives an overview of “America’s Deadly Dynamics with Iran.” http://owl.li/7li9C

Deja vu all over again - @TalkingWarheads AP: Nuke Agency says Iran can make bomb - http://owl.li/7ljPg...from September, 2009

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Nuclear Security Index - “A new report by the American Security Project uses compelling visuals and facts to depict modern nuclear security challenges to encourage debate among policy makers and the American public.”

--The report, by Janne Nolan and Eric Auner, is available (pdf) here. http://owl.li/7li7P

Israel and Iran - “The reports coming from Israel this week may be a kind of tactical noise. For at least the past five years, the Israeli leadership has made threatening sounds about absolute deadlines. It may be trying to heighten the sense of crisis in order to insure that the United States, Britain, and other Western powers will go to great lengths to intensify sanctions and exert maximum pressure on Iran in the wake of the new I.A.E.A. report,” writes David Remnick in The New Yorker.

--”A unilateral attack from Israel, however, would be a grave mistake...The Middle East today is in a state of fragile possibility, full of peril, to be sure, but also pregnant with promise. A premature unilateral attack could upend everything and one result of many would be an Israel under fire, under attack, and more deeply isolated than ever before.” http://owl.li/7lkJc

Targeting nuclear budgets - “Under orders to cut the Pentagon budget by more than $450 billion over the next decade, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta is considering reductions in spending categories once thought sacrosanct,” reports The New York Times.

--”Among other steps, Mr. Panetta said, Pentagon strategists were looking at additional cuts in the nuclear arsenal, with an eye toward determining how many warheads the military needed to deter attacks.” http://owl.li/7licc

Tweet - Redskins WR @DonteStallworth: “But I digressed...to me the most important factor is ridding the world of a SUBSTANTIAL amount of nukes...the START treaty is a ‘start’”

Counting nuclear budgets - How much do we spend on nuclear weapons? It all depends on what you count. Rep. Michael Turner (R-OH), says it’s $21.4 per year, but he seems to be counting only NNSA’s weapons activities and the Pentagon’s Major Force Program 1. Experts say related costs, like command, control, and communications, R&D, and operations and support, should be included. Kingston Reif breaks down the different estimates.

--“Congress should require the Executive Branch to prepare a full cost accounting of U.S. nuclear weapons and related program spending,” writes Reif. “No matter where you come down on the debate between Reps. Turner and Markey, it is becoming increasingly clear that the Pentagon cannot afford its current nuclear weapons spending plans.” http://owl.li/7lj5g

Baker clarifies on zero - “I support the aspiration for a nuclear-weapons-free world that President Reagan envisioned...[however] any effort to reach that goal must require reciprocal and proportional cuts so that all countries reduce their arsenals in concert,” writes former Secretary of State James Baker to The New York Times. http://owl.li/7liha