WikiLeaks Documents Detail Secret Discussions About Iran, North Korea, Nuclear Material

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

Stories we're following today, Monday, November 29, 2010:

Cables Obtained by WikiLeaks Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels - Scott Shane and Andrew W. Lehren in The New York Times [link]

• A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.
• The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States’ relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:
• Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
• American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North’s economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul.
• They show officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon — and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.

Senators Show That Politics, Not Policy, is Holding Up START Treaty - Tom Cohen for CNN [link]

• Arizona Sen. Jon Kyl told NBC's "Meet the Press" program that the Senate won't have enough time in December's "lame-duck" session to properly consider the so-called START treaty with Russia.
• According to Kyl, the problem is that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, wants to bring up too many other issues in the lame-duck session before a new Congress convenes in January with a stronger Republican presence.
• "You can't do everything," said Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the Senate. "How can Harry Reid do everything we talked about and still have time to discuss the START treaty?"
• On the same program, Kyl's Democratic counterpart, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, said Americans are tired of Washington gridlock and expect senators to work together to meet all of their responsibilities -- including ratification of the START treaty -- in the lame-duck session.

Fallout From a US Treaty Failure - James Carroll in The Boston Globe [link]

• The dread consequences of this treaty failure are described by the commentariat in relation to discrete problems with Russia (no inspections, no reset), Iran (an affronted Russia won’t help pressure Tehran), or Obama’s broader foreign policy (mortally wounded), but the true stakes are far higher — a final defeat of the hard-won international consensus that nuclear weapons are in a category apart, requiring a steady movement, however incremental, from limitation to reduction to an ultimate abolition.
• The international consensus, reflected in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, has never been fully accepted in the United States, where so-called nuclear schizophrenia has been a mark of the national attitude since 1945.
• It took Ronald Reagan to finally break through the schizophrenia and, with Mikhail Gorbachev, get sane. The Republicans were all at once the party of nuclear reduction. Under Reagan and George H.W. Bush, one arms treaty followed another, and the US nuclear arsenal was cut in half.
• Today it is said that nukes pose a lesser threat — the odd terrorist blowing up a mere city, or a brief local war, say, on the subcontinent of Asia. Armageddon no longer looms. But that is nonsense. Once nuclear weapons are accepted as normal armaments, their accumulation will skyrocket everywhere.
• Reagan would be ashamed of Senate Republicans. He would be appalled by the ignorance of men and women who regard nuclear arms as just another occasion for partisan advantage.

With the New START Treaty, Bipartisan Equals Strength - Kevin Knobloch in The Knoxville News Sentinel [link]

• When I was serving as a legislative director in the Senate in the late 1980s, a conservative, security-minded president, who happened to be a Republican, negotiated a nuclear arms reduction treaty with our primary Cold War enemy that strengthened the security of every American.
• In endorsing President Ronald Reagan's security priority so forcefully, the Senate continued an important American tradition dating back to George Washington and the Revolutionary War-era Congress - parking partisan fervor at the cloakroom door when national security is at issue.
• Make no mistake, the eight years of the Reagan presidency were a time of sharp partisan infighting in the halls of Congress. But both Democrats and Republicans understood the stakes and overwhelmingly stood by their president. That action, in turn, strengthened his hand in wrestling with Soviet General-Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev in what turned out to be the waning years of the totalitarian Soviet empire.
• The full Senate should take up and approve the treaty during the end-of-year session, now that the midterm elections have happened. That would ensure that the "lame duck" session is not lame at all, but in fact historic, patriotic and smart - and a timely demonstration of how a divided government can still address real threats.
• After 21 hearings, senators have before them an overwhelming case that the reductions made under New START would make us a more secure nation. And as I witnessed firsthand working in Congress during the height of the Cold War, they would be honoring a noble tradition that elevates national security over partisan politics, making America stronger still.

Iran a Focal Point of Documents - Laura Rozen in Politico [link]

• Sensitive diplomatic discussions on how to deal with Iran's nuclear program are among the more-than-250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables news organizations obtained from WikiLeaks and reported on Sunday.
• But while there are some surprises in the raw cables reviewed so far — U.S. anger at Armenia’s alleged weapons transfers to Iran that were implicated in the killing of U.S. forces in Iraq; the Saudi king allegedly urging the United States to deal with Iran militarily - one is struck overall that the classified diplomatic discussions on Iran revealed in the cables are not all that different from what one would expect from following the public comments senior U.S. officials have made on the Iran issue the last several months.
• Saudi King Abdullah has "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme," the Guardian cited one U.S. cable. "He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake," said Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with Gen. David Petraeus in April 2008.
• The cables also report in detail on U.S. diplomatic consultations with Turkey, including over its relations with Iran, Syria, and Israel.
• William Burns, the U.S. under-secretary of State for Political Affairs, "strongly urged [Turkish Foreign Ministry Under Secretary Feridun] Sinirlioglu to support action to convince the Iranian government it is on the wrong course," according to a February 2010 cable written by then U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Jim Jeffrey. "Burns acknowledged Turkey's exposure to the economic effects of sanctions as a neighbor to Iran, but reminded Sinirlioglu Turkish interests would suffer if Israel were to act militarily to forestall Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons or if Egypt and Saudi Arabia were to seek nuclear arsenals of their own," the Jeffrey cable continued. "’We'll keep the door open to engagement,’ [Burns] stressed.
• The New York Times, England's The Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde and Germany's Der Spiegel were the news organizations that - either directly or indirectly - got an advanced look at the cache of U.S. diplomatic correspondence, that includes State and Defense Department communications with some 270 embassies and consulates dating back to 2008.
  

Do the right thing on New START treaty - Lt. Gen. Dirk Jameson in The Bakersfield Californian [link]

• It was courageous of political leaders in those perilous times to begin talking to our heavily armed enemy, the Soviet Union, to find paths to lower numbers of nuclear weapons, lower cost burdens and greater security for our country and the world.
• Today, we have a good treaty ready to take force and continue the progress on numbers, costs and national security.
• The New START treaty that is currently before the Senate contains verification and transparency measures that will allow our inspectors inside Russian strategic nuclear facilities, as well as create stability between our forces.
• Without New START, our national security institutions will need to devote more resources to monitoring Russian strategic forces, by satellite and other means; we will also have to force-plan for scenarios we should not need to. This will involve spending money where we don't need it, and worse -- it could mean taking away money from programs and systems that our war-fighters actually do need.
• What stands in the way? An ever more vague, disingenuous and ill-advised raising of the bar for political support. The very same questions that have been asked and answered about missile defense, verification and stewardship of the nuclear enterprise are brought up again and again in the face of ironclad analysis and billions of added dollars. These "red herrings" are presented wrapped in ever more demanding commitments from future legislators that no arms-control treaty past or future could meet.
• As this treaty is pushed off with no deadline and no path to prevent an already developing cooling of U.S.-Russia relationships, Cold War nuclear realities echo in my head saying to senators, "Do the right thing."

Blast 'Kills Top Iran Nuclear Scientist,' Israel Blamed - Hiedeh Farmani in AFP [link]

• Twin blasts in Iran's capital killed a prominent nuclear scientist and wounded another on Monday, said state media reports that promptly accused Israeli agents on motorbikes of attaching the bombs to their cars.
• "Dr. Majid Shahriari was killed and his wife was injured. Dr. Fereydoon Abbasi and his wife were injured," the report said.
• Fars news agency said the scientists were targeted in two different locations by men on motorcycles who approached their vehicles and attached bombs to their cars.
• On Saturday, Iran said its first atomic power plant built by Russia in the southern city of Bushehr had begun operations, ahead of a new round of talks with Western powers over the country's controversial nuclear drive.
• The attacks also come hot on the heels of the release on Sunday of diplomatic cables by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks that revealed Saudi Arabia's king "repeatedly" urged Washington to take military action against Tehran's nuclear programme.