Morning Joe: Back to the Table with Iran

Stories we're following today:

Iran Drafts Plans for Nuclear Talks - Wall Street Journal [link]

• Saturday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki said that Tehran had begun work on new proposals that Iran will offer as a basis of discussion with the West, according to state media. He didn't detail the proposals. He also didn't say whether any part of the package would deal specifically with Iran's nuclear program, but state-controlled media suggested the package was aimed at resolving the nuclear standoff.

Iran Offers G8 New Issues to Debate - Al Jazeera [link]

• A joint declaration by the G8 nations called for a negotiated resolution to the standoff over Tehran's nuclear programme.

Missile Pact Based on Old Plan - Walter Pincus in the Washington Post [link]

• The new proposal is more ambitious, though. Originally conceived a decade ago as a facility that would monitor launches by the United States and Russia and any missiles aimed at the two countries by others nations, the new facility would attempt to monitor missile launches around the globe.
• But first, it has to be finalized. And last time, the proposal -- for a facility to be known as the Joint Data Exchange Center -- lost momentum and fizzled

N. Korea’s Leader May Have Cancer, Report Says - New York Times [link]

• The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke last August, was also found to have “life-threatening” pancreatic cancer around the same time, a South Korean cable television network reported on Monday.

U.S. Air War All-But-Over in Iraq - Danger Room [link]

• This is how far the U.S. war effort in Iraq has wound down: There wasn’t a single American airstrike in Iraq last month, according statistics from the U.S. Air Force. And insurgent improvised bombs, the country’s deadliest threat, are down 90 percent.

A View from the Dark Side

Why We Don't Want a Nuclear-Free World - Melanie Kirkpatrick in the Wall Street Journal [link]

• In other words: Go ahead and wish for a nuclear-free world, but pray that you don't get what you wish for. A world without nukes would be even more dangerous than a world with them, Mr. Schlesinger argues.
• But in the U.S., Congress won't even so much as fund R&D for the Reliable Replacement Warhead. "The RRW has become a toxic term on Capitol Hill," Mr. Schlesinger says. Give it a new name, he seems to be suggesting, and try again to get Congress to fund it. "We need to be much more vigorous about life-extension programs" for the weapons.