Nuclear Talks With Iran Begin in Geneva

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

Stories we're following today, Monday, December 6, 2010:

Nuclear Talks Start Between Iran and 6 Nations - Steven Erlanger and William Broad in The New York Times [link]

• Six world powers began two days of talks with Iran on Monday to seek reassurances that Tehran’s nuclear ambitions are peaceful.
• British Defense Secretary Liam Fox said on Saturday that the talks — the first in more than a year — needed to make a serious start toward resolving the issue, The Associated Press reported. “We want a negotiated solution, not a military one — but Iran needs to work with us to achieve that outcome,” he said. “We will not look away or back down.”
• The Obama administration has become increasingly skeptical that Iran will seriously take up an offer for wide-ranging talks about all issues but based on an agreement to stop or at least suspend nuclear enrichment.
• Iran on Sunday claimed for the first time to have used domestically mined uranium ore to make the material needed for uranium enrichment. It called the step a major advance in its atomic program, sending a defiant message before a new round of talks on Iran’s suspect nuclear activities. Western experts said the progress appeared to be more symbolic than substantive and did not bear immediately on whether Iran could accelerate its efforts at enriching uranium, which can fuel either reactors or atom bombs.
• “This is a face-saving announcement,” David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, a private group in Washington that tracks nuclear proliferation, said in an interview. “For years, they’ve been saying that they are mining. So here’s finally some proof.”

Inside the Beltway: National Security Held Hostage - The New York Times

• After NATO leaders, nuclear lab directors, military commanders and former top officials from both parties all endorsed the New Start treaty, a few Republican senators got embarrassed — but not nearly enough, nor embarrassed enough, to move ratification forward.
• Failure to ratify would seriously undercut American credibility just as President Obama is making headway with Russia and other states to try to curb Iran’s nuclear program.
• Republicans have offered a variety of spurious objections to New Start, and Mr. Obama has gone out of his way to meet them. The White House spent months talking with Senator Jon Kyl, the point man for the Republicans. At his insistence, Mr. Obama ended up promising $85 billion over 10 years to modernize the nation’s nuclear weapons complex and arsenal. That’s 20 percent above spending during the Bush years and far more than what is actually needed.
• It still wasn’t enough. Like Lucy with the football, Mr. Kyl insisted two-and-a-half weeks ago that there wasn’t enough time in the lame-duck session to debate the treaty. Then, of course, he and the Republican leadership decided there might be enough time — if they could get their tax cuts.
• Time is running out. Republicans need to declare their intention to vote for the treaty and agree to a vote. The only stand-up Republican senator on New Start is Richard Lugar, the Senate’s true expert on nuclear weapons. If the rest follow his lead — instead of Mr. Kyl’s — they will do the right thing for the nation’s security.

CBS News Poll: Obama's Approval Rating Up a Bit - CBS News [link]

•  A vast majority of those polled said they favor the idea of the U.S. and Russia coming to an agreement to limit nuclear weapons, a huge show of support for the Obama administration's push to have Congress ratify the new START treaty, which is being held up by Congressional Republicans.
• A whopping 82 percent said they were in favor of the U.S. signing a nuclear disarmament treaty with Moscow, views similar to those held more than thirty years ago, as the Cold War raged: in 1979, 77 percent favored the idea.
• Only 12 percent of those questioned in the latest CBS News Poll said they were against such a treaty.
• Majorities of liberals (91 percent), moderates (86 percent) and conservatives (74 percent) support an agreement to limit nuclear weapons.

Stop Delays, Pass ‘New START’ - The Boston Globe [link]

• On its merits, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty...ought to have been ratified by the Senate months ago.
• Sad to say, however, the ratification process appears caught up in partisan gamesmanship. Republicans have been hinting they will not vote for “New START’’ in the current lame-duck session of Congress unless they get their way on several other issues, including “don’t ask, don’t tell’’ and the Dream Act for illegal immigration. But the arms treaty has nothing to do with those issues, and all of them should be decided on their own terms.
• A failure to ratify the treaty during the lame-duck session would open up a possibility that the next Senate might allow it to wither on the vine.
• The administration should continue to give skeptical senators every possible reassurance about modernization of the nation’s nuclear deterrent, future missile defense plans, or any other reasonable security concerns.
• But now is the time, and this is the Congress, to rise above party politicking and ratify a nuclear-arms treaty that meets some of the nation’s clearest security needs.

Snowe, Collins Open to New START Treaty - Rebecca Metzler in the Morning Sentinel [link]

• Momentum is building for the U.S. Senate to ratify a new strategic nuclear arms reduction treaty, according to Vice President Joe Biden, who has been in charge of the Obama administration’s effort to shepherd its passage.
• Maine Sens. Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, both of Maine, have indicated they are open to supporting passage of what is called the New START Treaty, if their lingering concerns are satisfied.
• “Anytime that we can create more stability in the nuclear arena and the nuclear arsenal that held between the US and Russia, it's absolutely vital that we do so,” said Snowe, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence. “But that does come with certain conditions — that it’s in our national security interest, that we can verify they are actually maintaining their commitment and actually living by the provisions of the treaty.”
• Collins, a member of the Armed Services Committee, said some of her earlier concerns regarding modernization and verifications had been satisfied, but she still was communicating with the administration about one final issue.
• “The one outstanding concern is that the treaty does not deal with nuclear tactical weapons, the short range battlefield weapons, where the Russians have a 10 to 1 advantage over our arsenal,” [Collins] said. “I am writing a letter to (Secretary of State Hillary Clinton) asking what the administration's plans are for dealing with the imbalance in tactical weapons. If that concern is answered to my satisfaction by the administration, I will vote for the treaty.”

A View From The Dark Side

Don’t Rush New START - The National Review [link]

• The Obama administration is desperate to secure Senate ratification while the GOP caucus has 42 members (its current size), as opposed to 47 (its size as of January 3).
• Publicly, of course, the administration says that lame-duck approval of the treaty is necessitated by the urgency of verifying Russia’s nuclear arsenal. But this argument is unpersuasive, and wavering Republicans should not be seduced by it.
• The original START treaty expired in December 2009, meaning that a full year has elapsed since American inspection teams last visited Russian nuclear sites. In a world two decades removed from the Cold War, this twelve-month interval brought no disastrous consequences.
• Senators should thoroughly examine the treaty’s compliance provisions and seek to ensure that loopholes are closed and deficiencies amended. Such a meticulous review will take time and most likely cannot be completed within the next three weeks.
• The level of ambiguity and confusion surrounding [the issue of missile defense] is yet another reason why New START should not be bulldozed through the Senate. (We oppose its ratification at all, and have expressed reservations that go well beyond missile defense and verification.)
• NOTE: The original START treaty and the SORT treaty only needed 5 and 2 days of floor time, respectively.  The Arms Control Association estimates that New START would only require 2 or 3 days of floor time in the Senate.