Russian Duma Poised to Ratify New START

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

Stories we're following today: Monday January 10, 2011.

Kosachyov: Russia Ready to Ratify US Arms Treaty - The Associated Press

• Russia will likely ratify an arms treaty with the United States by the end of the month, a key member of the country's parliament said Friday.
• Russia's lower house of parliament gave preliminary approval to the treaty before the New Year's holidays, but decided to delay a final vote to give the Russian side time to study the resolution passed by the U.S. Senate when it ratified the pact last month.
• Konstantin Kosachyov, who heads the State Duma's foreign affairs committee, said Russia is now ready to ratify the New START treaty and has written its own amendments to the ratification document "to balance the work that has been done by the Senate."
• The lower house would likely consider the ratification bill in a second reading on Jan. 14, he said, while the third and final reading would likely wait until after the Federation Council, the upper house, returned on Jan. 26. Both houses need to ratify the treaty. Both are under Kremlin control.
• "We need to have more success stories in our bilateral relations and this is why I am very much in favor of ratifying the New START treaty as soon as possible." Kosachyov said.

Clinton Says Iran Sanctions Are 'Working' - Jay Solomon for The Wall Street Journal [link]

• U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Monday that an international campaign aimed at slowing down Iran's suspected nuclear-weapons program was succeeding, the first time a senior Obama administration official has publicly made such a claim.
• "The most recent analysis is that the sanctions have been working. They have made it much more difficult for Iran to pursue its nuclear ambitions," Mrs. Clinton said during an appearance on the Emirati talk show, "Sweet Talk."  "Their program, from our best estimate, has been slowed down," she said. "So we have time. But not a lot of time."
• Mrs. Clinton, who is visiting the U.A.E., Oman and Qatar this week, has stressed that the successes against Tehran shouldn't weaken the international community's resolve. "The real question is how do we convince Iran that pursuing nuclear weapons will not make it safer and stronger, but just the opposite," Mrs. Clinton told her audience Monday. "If Iran gets a nuclear weapon, won't you believe that you'll have to have a nuclear weapon, too?"
• The five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, plus Germany, are scheduled to hold a second round of negotiations with Iran aimed at curbing its nuclear activities. The meeting has been set to begin on Jan. 20 in Istanbul, Turkey.

Israeli Ex-Spy Predicts Delay for Iran’s Nuclear Ambitions - Isabel Kershner in The New York Times [link]

• Israel’s departing intelligence chief said he believes Iran will not be able to build a nuclear weapon before 2015 at the earliest, Israeli news media reported Friday, in a revised and surprisingly upbeat assessment of Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
• The new assessment could reduce international fears of a confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program, at least temporarily. Israel has warned that it might launch airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear enrichment sites, and many fear that Tehran’s retaliation could set off a regional war.
• The assessment, which pushed back other Israeli estimates by a year or more, was based on the obstacles Iran has faced, including technical difficulties and covert action against its nuclear program by intelligence agencies, the Israeli news reports said.
• Iran’s nuclear program is believed to have suffered numerous setbacks recently, but any Israeli role in those problems is not publicly known.
• Top American military officials said last April that Iran could produce bomb-grade fuel for at least one nuclear weapon within a year, but would most likely need two to five years to manufacture a workable atomic bomb.

Exaggerated Claims About China’s Missiles - David Wright and Gregory Kulacki in “All Things Nuclear” a UCS Blog [link]

• Last Sunday’s op-ed in the Washington Post by Mark Stokes and Dan Blumenthal about the extent and consequences of China’s missile buildup is riddled with important errors.
• Their primary argument is that the development of conventionally armed Chinese missiles (short and intermediate-range missiles and anti-ship missiles) will have ripple effects on strategic stability and could fuel missile buildups elsewhere.
• Even assuming the United States felt compelled to threaten conventional missile attacks against China, it already has a very potent threat in its submarine and ship-based conventional Tomahawk land-attack missiles. These highly accurate, 2,500 km-range systems would be able to reach a lot of targets in China.
• Stokes and Blumenthal’s claim that China is “building a missile force second to none” is also an exaggeration. The Pentagon estimates China has fewer than 50 long-range missiles. The United States, by comparison, has more than 700. After three decades of development, China has deployed only 15 of its new mobile strategic missiles, and none of them can carry multiple warheads (i.e., MIRVs). That’s because China’s smallest tested nuclear warhead is too heavy for the missiles to accommodate more than one.
• We would support the United States and Russia working to get China (and other countries) to agree to missile limits like those in the INF Treaty, as the authors suggest. But if China does not, U.S. policymakers should not be deluded into believing U.S. responses are limited to pulling out of the INF treaty or building systems that decrease strategic stability.

U.S. to Offer More Support to Pakistan - Karen DeYoung for The Washington Post [link]

• The Obama administration has decided to offer Pakistan more military, intelligence and economic support, and to intensify U.S. efforts to forge a regional peace, despite ongoing frustration that Pakistani officials are not doing enough to combat terrorist groups in the country's tribal areas, officials said.
• The decision to double down on Pakistan represents the administration's attempt to call the bluff of Pakistani officials who have long complained that the United States has failed to understand their security priorities or provide adequate support. That message will be delivered by Vice President Biden, who plans to travel to Pakistan next week for meetings with its military chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, and top government leaders.
• President Obama and his top national security aides rejected proposals, made by some military commanders and intelligence officials who have lost patience with Pakistan, to allow U.S. ground forces to conduct targeted raids against insurgent safe havens, officials said. They concluded that the United States can ill afford to threaten or further alienate a precarious, nuclear-armed country whose cooperation is essential to the administration on several fronts.
• "In the long run," said a senior administration official, "our objectives have to do with the defeat of al-Qaeda and the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons."