Missing Iranian Scientist Surfaces in D.C.

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

Stories we're following today, Tuesday, July 13, 2010:

Iranian Scientist Surfaces at Pakistani Embassy in D.C.; Iran Says U.S. Kidnapped Him - The Washington Post [link]

• A nuclear scientist, who Tehran says was kidnapped by the United States, has surfaced at the Iranian interest section of the Pakistani embassy in Washington, Iranian state media reported Tuesday.
• It is unclear whether he sought refuge by himself at the mission or was handed over by U.S. officials.
• News services reported that the scientist, Shahram Amiri, is asking to return to Iran.
• Amiri, 32, disappeared in June 2009 during a pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia. Around the same time, U.S. officials spoke of an "intelligence coup" after what they called a high-profile defection of an Iranian nuclear scientist with a presumed trove of secrets.
• President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had hinted that he would be interested freeing three American hikers being held in Iran in exchange for the return of Amiri and other Iranians who he believed were in U.S. custody. The hikers were captured by Iran last summer after they allegedly crossed into the Islamic republic from Iraq.
  
  

The New START Treaty Deserves to be Ratified - Jacob Heilbrunn in The Los Angeles Times [link]

• In a reprise of Cold War debates, hard-liners are seeking to block Senate ratification of the [New START] treaty, where it needs a two-thirds majority, by depicting the deal as a dangerous sellout to Moscow.
• The treaty is not a mistake. The treaty would not eviscerate American national security. It would enhance it, which is why it enjoys the bipartisan support of the Foreign Relations Committee leaders, Sens. John F. Kerry of Massachusetts and Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.
• Advancing a weltering of objections, critics raise objections related to missile defense, bombers, multiple warheads and other details, contorting the text and the weapons totals in order to reach the most alarming conclusions.
• What's at the bottom of conservative objections has far less to do with the New START treaty's provisions than its spirit.
• Senate Minority Whip Jon Kyl and his brethren are living in the past. Russia is no longer an implacable Cold War foe, although treating it as one could reverse that. In furthering arms reductions, Obama is wisely improving relations with Russia and helping to fulfill Reagan's vision of a nuclear-free world.
• Instead of dithering over the New START treaty, the Senate should approve it.

Analysis Triples U.S. Plutonium Waste Figures - The New York Times [link]

• The amount of plutonium buried at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in Washington State is nearly three times what the federal government previously reported, a new analysis indicates, suggesting that a cleanup to protect future generations will be far more challenging than planners had assumed.
• Plutonium waste is much more prevalent around nuclear weapons sites nationwide than the Energy Department’s official accounting indicates, said Robert Alvarez, a former department official who in recent months reanalyzed studies conducted by the department in the last 15 years for Hanford; the Idaho National Engineering Laboratory; the Savannah River Site, near Aiken, S.C.; and elsewhere.
• The finding on the extent of plutonium waste signals that the cleanup, still in its early stages, will be more complex, perhaps requiring technologies that do not yet exist.
• “What is reasonably foreseeable is that there are people who will be drinking the water in the ground at Hanford at some point in the next few hundred years,” said Gerry Pollet, executive director of the environmental group Heart of America Northwest. “We’re going to be killing people, pure and simple.”

Nuclear Plan Shows Cuts and Massive Investments - Hans Kristensen in the Federation of American Scientists Strategic Security blog [link]

• The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has sent Congress the FY 2011 Stockpile Stewardship and Management Plan (SSMP) with new information about what the administration plans to spend on maintaining and modernizing nuclear weapons and facilities over the next 15-20 years.
• The good news is that plan shows that the United States intends to reduce the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile by 30 to 40 percent from today’s total of approximately 5,000 weapons to 3,000-3,500 weapons at least by 2022.
• To support the stockpile, the NNSA intends to spend more than $175 billion (in then-year dollars) over the next two decades on building new nuclear weapons factories, testing and simulation facilities, and modernizing and extending the life of the nuclear weapons in the stockpile.
• The nuclear investments forecast by the NNSA plan – combined with DOD modernization plans – should help undercut claims by (ultra)conservatives and uninformed that the New START treaty with Russia will somehow put the United States at a disadvantage.
• Striking a balance between disarmament and deterrence – a balance that conveys an clear transition towards disarmament – will be delicate and the administration must work to ensure that the goodwill of Prague is not undercut by nuclear modernizations.

A View from the Dark Side

Beyond the Obama Nuke Policy - John Bolton in the Wall Street Journal [link]

• As Tehran and Pyongyang can plainly see, President Obama's nonproliferation strategy is intellectually and politically exhausted.
• But U.S. exhaustion will not lead to stasis. North Korea and Iran will continue their nuclear and ballistic missile programs in the face of our feeble policy.
• So are we consigned to two more years of growing danger? Not if Congress and opinion leaders take steps without White House leadership.
• One step is to increase political support for an Israeli strike against Iranian nuclear and ballistic missile facilities. Slowly, but now with increasing certainty, analysts have come to understand that Iran is going to become a nuclear-weapons state sooner rather than later.
• With White House proliferation policy comatose, we must search elsewhere for second-best alternatives. Until 2012, second best is all we have.