Morning Joe: Arms Control - Where Are We Now?
Stories we're following today:
Will the Senate support new nuclear arms reductions? - Isaacs and Reif in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists [link]
- The Obama administration has moved quickly on a follow-on agreement to START, with promising negotiations already underway.
- Before it can be ratified, however, such an agreement needs two-thirds approval from the U.S. Senate--rarely a simple task.
- Yet despite Republican opposition to most of Obama's agenda, there appears to be bipartisan momentum for a new U.S.-Russian arms control agreement.
- Side Note: John Isaacs is the Executive Director of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation - a Ploughshares grantee.
Iran's Regime Will Never Be the Same - Edward Luttwak in the Wall Street Journal [link]
- What has undermined the very structure of the Islamic Republic is the fracturing of its ruling elite. It was the unity established by Ayatollah Khomeini that allowed the regime to dominate the Iranian people for almost 30 years. Now that unity has been shattered: The very people who created the institutions of priestly rule are destroying their authority.
Why Rafsanjani is Holding Back - Foreign Policy's "Passport" [link]
- "There is great apprehension among people in the supreme leader’s [camp] about what Rafsanjani may pull," said a source in Tehran who is familiar with hardliner thinking. "They [the supreme leader and his supporters] are much more concerned about Rafsanjani than the mass movement on the streets." [...]
North Korea Threatens To Wipe Out The U.S. "Once And For All" - AP [link]
- "If the U.S. imperialists start another war, the army and people of Korea will ... wipe out the aggressors on the globe once and for all," the official Korean Central News Agency said.
Obama Will Restore U.S. Ambassador To Syria - Washington Post [link]
- President Obama has decided to return a U.S. ambassador to Syria after an absence of more than four years, marking a significant step toward engaging an influential Arab nation long at odds with the United States.