Iranian Officials Split on Nuclear Program

Today's top nuclear policy stories, with excerpts in bullet form.

Stories we're following today: Thursday February 17, 2011

U.S. Spies: Iran Split on Nuclear Program - Adam Entous for The Wall Street Journal [link]

• A new classified U.S. intelligence assessment concludes that Iran's leaders are locked in an increasingly heated debate over whether to move further toward developing nuclear weapons.
• The new national intelligence estimate, or NIE, says Tehran likely has resumed work on nuclear-weapons research in addition to expanding its program to enrich uranium—updating a contested 2007 estimate that concluded the arms program had all but halted in 2003.  But it doesn't conclude that Iran has relaunched a full-blown program to try to build bombs. According to the assessment, Iran's debate over whether to do so suggests international sanctions may be causing divisions in Tehran, U.S. officials said.
• "The bottom line is that the intelligence community has concluded that there's an intense debate inside the Iranian regime on the question of whether or not to move toward a nuclear bomb," a U.S. official said. "There's a strong sense that a number of Iranian regime officials know that the sanctions are having a serious effect."

Budget Battle Over Funding for Nuclear Weapons - Jen Dimascio for Politico [link]

• Near the end of the last Congress in December, many Senate Republicans dug in against the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russia, holding out on a number of issues, including a promise from the administration to spend more than $80 billion over the next 10 years to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons program. They succeeded in landing an $84 billion commitment.
• Now, Republicans in the House, eager to trim the skyrocketing federal deficit, propose to scale back funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s modernization accounts in the continuing spending resolution being debated in the House.
• Arms-control advocates are drubbing Republicans for being soft on terrorism because the spending bill proposes a 22 percent cut in programs that aim to keep nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists. John Isaacs, president of the Council for a Livable World, who tracks nuclear modernization and proliferation programs from an arms-control perspective, raised a cautionary note.
• Adding the $300 million for NNSA funding this fiscal year or adding back $602 million for nuclear nonproliferation programs that also were cut in the continuing resolution stands a better chance when the CR comes to the Senate in March than it does this week in the House, Isaacs said. On national security, he said, Republicans worked to shield many defense and security programs from budget cuts — but not the nuclear nonproliferation program. And that, he said, is “a grave error and dangerous for American security.”

Strengthening the International Framework to Prevent the Spread and Use of Nuclear Weapons - Ellen Tauscher's Remarks as Delivered at The Third Nuclear Deterrence Summit [link]

• This past year we showed that we can reduce the role and number of nuclear weapons and enhance our security. We ratified the New START Treaty with Russia, restoring stability, predictability and transparency to the strategic forces of both sides.
• We succeeded in conducting a new Nuclear Posture Review. We helped reach a consensus action plan at the NPT Review Conference. We sponsored the first-ever Nuclear Security Summit. And we established an international fuel bank. These steps show that we can halt proliferation, we can prevent acts of nuclear terrorism, and we can promote safe civil nuclear power.
• And at the NPT Review Conference, Secretary Clinton made the number of nuclear weapons in our own arsenal public for the first time, sending a very clear signal to the rest of the world that security and transparency can go together. I urge other countries to join us in this effort.
• We can seek deeper nuclear reductions and we are committed to seeking deeper nuclear reductions with Russia, including in strategic, non-strategic, and non-deployed weapons. We can ban nuclear testing and we can prohibit the production of more fissile material for nuclear weapons. There has been enough nuclear testing in the past and the world has all the fissile material for weapons that it needs.
• We have set in motion policies so that we are no longer clinging to excessive nuclear weapons. We have set in motion policies that reduce mistrust and the risk of miscalculation. This year, we plan to follow up on what we have accomplished and to move forward on the unfinished work that President Obama set forth in Prague.
  

A Second Sighting of Russian Tactical Nukes in Kaliningrad - Nikolai Sokov for The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies [link]

• Judging by press reports, tactical nuclear weapons appear to have a curious propensity to surface with some regularity in Kaliningrad oblast, a Russian exclave squeezed between Lithuania and Poland. The Associated Press and other U.S. media organizations have recently reported Eastern European concerns about "an arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons believed to be at their doorstop in Russia's Kaliningrad exclave."
• At a different time few would have paid close attention to these statements, but things are different today. Several Western European countries are seriously discussing the possibility of completely withdrawing the small arsenal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons that still remains in Europe...At the same time, as several recent statements by high-level Russian officials indicate, Moscow has decided to temporize and will not provide a positive response to the anticipated U.S. proposal to discuss TNW.
• In a more general sense, tactical nuclear weapons do not have a viable mission contrary to the common perception that Russian short-range nuclear assets are intended to balance NATO's conventional superiority. The Russian military believes that the key danger from U.S. and NATO military forces involves conventional strikes at long distances; short-range nuclear weapons simply are incapable of balancing that particular threat.
• The issue of tactical nuclear weapons is difficult and highly controversial. Their psychological significance and visibility far outweighs their political and military value, and this seems true for both East and West. No one really knows how to deal with them: negotiations are highly desirable, but since they have never been a subject of negotiations, there is no precedent.

North Korea has Completed Missile Facility, Satellite Imagery Shows - Chico Harlan for The Washington Post [link]

• The latest satellite imagery indicates that North Korea has completed construction of a second - and more modern - missile launch facility, a vital step in its efforts to successfully launch intercontinental ballistic missiles.
• The images, first obtained by VOA News, indicate an expansive launch pad positioned next to a launch tower that stands more than 100 feet tall. Though analysts have known about the facility's construction for at least two years, the site's apparent completion - in spite of scarce domestic resources and international sanctions - suggests that long-range missile development remains a top priority in Pyongyang.
• "This is more like a real facility," said Dan Pinkston, a Seoul-based security expert who has studied the satellite images. "The other one, it had dirt roads; it was pretty primitive. This one looks to be more of a serious site with support facilities that are needed to sustain a program - what you'd want to do if you are serious about testing long-range missiles."
• North Korea has not acknowledged the construction of this latest missile facility. News of its completion emerged at the same time that a major South Korean newspaper reported that Kim's youngest son, heir apparent Kim Jong Eun, has received a key position on the powerful National Defense Commission.