Returning to Negotiations Amid Murmurs of War

August 22, 2012 | Edited by Benjamin Loehrke and Leah Fae Cochran

Dealing with enrichment - Negotiations between Iran and the P5+1 have been recessed during Ramadan, but are expected to pick up within the next few weeks. Fresh proposals will be needed, as there were big gaps between the parties’ positions on enrichment, notes David Ignatius in his column “Seeking to Cool War Fever over Iran” for The Washington Post.

--Seyed Hossein Mousavian, a former Iranian negotiator now at Princeton, has an interesting proposal: Iran would cap enrichment at 5% and export all low-enriched uranium in exchange for P5+1 recognition of Iran’s right to enrich and gradual sanctions relief. Further, a joint committee with the P5+1 would assess Iran’s uranium needs, and any enriched uranium would be made into fuel assemblies or would be exported.

--Nobody expects a diplomatic breakthrough during election season, notes Ignatius. Yet, given the all-too-real possibility of war with Iran, establishing a hotline with Tehran remains an urgent priority. http://wapo.st/NgIeFU

IAEA-Iran - The IAEA announced a new round of talks with Iran, scheduled for August 24, to discuss allegations of past research on military nuclear capabilities. Reuters has the story. http://reut.rs/NDybui

WTO - Russia was admitted as the 156th member of the World Trade Organization after 18 years of negotiations with the organization.

--”Russia’s entry into the organization, which marks the biggest step in global trade liberalization since China joined a decade ago, will add about $162 billion each year to economic output over the long term by improving market access and luring foreign investment, the World Bank said in March.” Bloomberg has the story http://bloom.bg/OQOi1R

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Black bomber - The Air Force’s new bomber program is completely classified. The Pentagon is withholding technical data and programmatic details - and budget numbers are hard to come by.

--FY13 budgets have about $300 million for the bomber, with $6.3 billion through FY17. The Air Force is hoping to buy 80 to 100 aircraft, costing around $550 a pop. “That’s all pretty optimistic, of course,” writes Dave Majumdar at The DEW Line. “With the US defense budget sure to come down over the next few years, it's not clear what the future holds for the new bomber.” http://bit.ly/RCELD3

Iron Dome - The Pentagon has expressed interest in developing a U.S. version of Israel’s short-range missile defense system, dubbed the Iron Dome. The only problem is, despite large sums of U.S. taxpayer dollars backing the system, Israel developed the system itself and has not shared the specifics of the system’s operations, writes Spencer Ackerman of Danger Room.

--The House Armed Services Committee is trying to correct that opacity by conditioning the next round of aid, slated for $680 million, on Israel sharing the details of Iron Dome. Full story here. http://bit.ly/OZpRoO

No reform - The ascension of North Korea’s young ruler Kim Jong Un in 2011 brought much speculation about an era of reform in the country. He is seen publicly with his wife, enjoys some Western goods and entertainment and studied abroad. Victor Cha warns that these “inane details” should not be misinterpreted as reform.

--”The North Korean regime will not change because Little Kim studied in Switzerland, likes Mickey Mouse, and has a hot wife. If anything, another crisis could be looming: The death of Kim Jong Il and the politics of an unstable leadership transition, a new "get-tough" attitude in Seoul, and U.S. and South Korean electoral cycles constitute a unique confluence of escalation that has not been seen on the peninsula since the 1990s. This could spell another nuclear crisis with North Korea, or even worse, military hostilities that could threaten the peace and prosperity of the region,” writes Cha. Foreign Policy has the story. http://bit.ly/OVBA7D

Fishing for uranium - Scientists have figured out how to collect dissolved uranium from seawater using nanofibers made of chemically modified shrimp shells. “It's still too early to know how efficient the process is,” notes Christopher Intagliata for Scientific American. http://bit.ly/TUFQn8

Unsubstantiated - Kingston Reif critiques Washington Times and Washington Free Beacon editor Bill Gertz, whose report of an undetected Russian nuclear-armed submarine in the Gulf of Mexico last week turned out to be unsubstantiated and wrong.

--Kingston goes on to catalogue other questionable Gertz editorial calls dealing with nuclear weapons and missile defense. Nukes of Hazard has the post. http://bit.ly/PFAKdC

”We all aged ten years” - The first atomic bombs had some safety concerns. If caught in a fiery plane crash or soaked in saltwater, they could explode with nuclear yields. This was a big worry for scientists based on Tinian island, the air base where Fat Man and Little Boy were first loaded onto bombers.

--The night before Fat Man took off, four B-29 bombers crashed in succession on the island. So when the B-29 holding the first atomic bomb took off, “We all aged ten years until the plane cleared the Island,” wrote Manhattan Project scientist Norman Ramsey. Alex Wellerstein at Restricted Data has the history of the primitive first atomic bombs and early solutions for how to make them less dangerous to the user. http://bit.ly/SnH1gF