New START Ratification Hinges on Nod from One Senator

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

Stories we're following today: Thursday October 28, 2010.

Path for vote on New START this year goes through Kyl - Josh Rogin of "The Cable" [link]

• There's still no word on how the administration plans to woo the votes of Senate Republicans, especially Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl (R-AZ), who stands as the single main obstacle to the administration's goal of securing the 67 votes needed for New START ratification because so many GOP senators have said they will follow his lead.
• "I think we can get to 67 votes, but not until Kyl and the administration come to an agreement," said John Isaacs, executive director of the Council for a Livable World and a strong supporter of the treaty [a Ploughshares grantee]. "If there's a deal with Kyl, the 67 votes will materialize."
• Kyl communicated his latest set of concerns with the treaty in a secret letter last month, but his perspective on the treaty is well understood. He wants the administration's assurance that it will support huge increases for nuclear stockpile management and nuclear modernization, extending 10 years into the future.
• Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the nuclear stockpile, explained exactly how and why the administration thinks it has done enough to satisfy Kyl.
• "Taken together, this clearly shows our commitment to providing the resources, clearly required to modernize the infrastructure, reinvest in science, and restore the human capital that we need," D'Agostino said.
• So will the vote happen in the lame duck session or not? "Anyone who says they know, don't know. It may not happen, but it may happen," said Isaacs. "Of course it's frustrating, but everything happens slowly in the Senate."

Obama Set to Offer Stricter Nuclear Deal to Iran - David E. Sanger for The New York Times [link]

• The Obama administration and its European allies are preparing a new offer for negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program, senior administration officials say, but the conditions on Tehran would be even more onerous than a deal that the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, rejected last year.
• The new offer would require Iran to send more than 4,400 pounds of low-enriched uranium out of the country, an increase of more than two-thirds from the amount required under a tentative deal struck in Vienna a year ago.
• The increase reflects the fact that Iran has steadily produced more uranium over the past year, and the American goal is to make sure that Iran has less than one bomb’s worth of uranium on hand.
• Iran’s reaction, officials say, will be the first test of whether a new and surprisingly broad set of economic sanctions is changing Iran’s nuclear calculus. 
• The failed 2009 accord was scuttled by hard-liners in Tehran. A later analysis by intelligence analysts concluded that Ayatollah Khamenei personally rejected the deal, reversing the judgment of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For that reason, many officials suspect that this latest initiative is likely to fail. But they say that it fulfills President Obama’s promise to keep negotiating even while the pressure of sanctions increases.

Luger: Fallout From Election Could Derail Vote on START Treaty - J. Taylor Rushing and Roxana Tiron for The Hill [link]

• Sen. Richard Lugar of Indiana, ranking member of the chamber’s Foreign Relations Committee, indicated in remarks Wednesday at the Council on Foreign Relations that the outcome of the midterm elections could threaten the treaty’s chances for ratification this year.
• Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has been pressing the Senate to ratify the treaty during the lame-duck session. Obama administration officials have been working the phones to make the case that the Senate should ratify the treaty in the coming weeks.
• Lugar said many current GOP senators are relatively new and haven’t served in the Senate during past debates over treaties. He also said there is a general sense that the treaty is not a priority, noting that the issue has barely surfaced during the congressional races.
• Lugar said he has already made the case to Kyl and Senate Republican Conference Chairman Lamar Alexander (Tenn.) about the treaty, but that he won’t bring up the issue until the Senate comes back mid-November.
• “When we return, we’ll have more conversations. … I’m hopeful that many members of the Republican Party will vote ‘Aye,’ but the facts are that we’ve not come to that point yet,” said Lugar.

Missile Mishap Revives Alarm Over Nuclear Arsenal - Joseph Schuman for AOL News [link]

• Saturday's brief malfunction at F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, disconnecting 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles of the 450-ICBM-strong U.S. arsenal from their human controllers, has raised concerns just two years after a Defense Department panel said there had been "an atrophy of the Air Force's nuclear mission."
• "It is yet another indication of the risk associated with having these types of weapons around," said Stephen Young, a senior analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists [a Ploughshares grantee], which advocates a reduction in the atomic arsenals of the U.S. and other nuclear-armed states.
• In August 2007, the crew of a B-52 bomber unknowingly carried six air-launched cruise missiles loaded with live nuclear warheads across the country from Minot to Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana. The warheads weren't supposed to be on board, but they weren't reported missing for more than a day.
• Less than a year before that, in October and November 2006, four forward-section assemblies for Minuteman III ICBMs were inadvertently sent to Taiwan instead of the helicopter batteries that had been approved for sale to the Taiwanese.
• As investigators work to determine the cause of the ICBM system malfunction over the weekend, the one clear lesson is that the "zero-defects" standard still isn't being met.

The Governator On New START - From Nukes of Hazard [link]

• In remarks to the U.S.-Russian Business Council last week in Cal"e"fornia, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger was asked to opine on the New START treaty. Arnold has been saying smart things about nuclear weapons for some time now, but this appears to be the first time he's explicitly riffed on the treaty.  
• Gov. Schwarzenegger said:
• "Because there are those in America that are trying to flex their muscles and pretend they're ballsy by saying, 'we've got to keep those nuclear weapons.' That's very rugged, when you say that. (Laughter) It's not rugged at all; it's an idiot that says that. It's stupid to say that."
• "So, therefore, I think that what President Medvedev has done and President Obama has done and what Secretary George Shultz under Ronald Reagan has been promoting for decades now, is to reduce the nuclear weapons. And you've got to start somewhere and I think that they have done an extraordinary job in doing that."
• "Now Congress has to go and agree with that and verify it and -- ratify it, I should say -- and they haven't done that because there is a paralysis in Washington, which is the sad story when you live here, that you see that an election like this that's coming up on November 2nd has literally paralyzed Congress and they're not capable of doing anything. And it's a major complaint that I have. It is really a shame and it is such a disservice to the taxpayers, to the voters, to the American people."