• IRAN’S NUKESCodifying Support for Nuclear Inspections in Iran

    By David Albright

    The main obstacle for a new nuclear deal with Iran is Iran’s disregard of its safeguards commitments and defiance of standard International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) procedures are more problematic for a nuclear deal. Resolving those outstanding inspection issues offers a far more promising pathway to prevent Iran from building nuclear weapons in the long run.

  • ARGUMENT: IRAN’S NUKESTo Check Iran’s Missiles, JCPOA Re-Entry is a Must

    Iran’s missile program is a cause for international concern. John Krzyzaniak and Akshai Vikram write that Iran’s increasing willingness and ability to launch missiles at neighboring countries merits a coordinated, international response. If Iran were to ever acquire a nuclear weapon, its unchecked missile program could allow it to hold entire cities at risk in the Middle East and potentially beyond. “If the United States is ever going to restrict Iran’s missile program through diplomacy, re-entering the 2015 Iran nuclear deal is the best – and likely only – way to make it happen,” they write.

  • NUCLEAR SAFETYRisks of an Unfamiliar New Nuclear Age

    High-tech advances in weapons technologies and a return of ‘great power nuclear politics’, risk the world ‘sleepwalking’ into a nuclear age vastly different from the established order of the Cold War, experts warn. Stockpiles are much reduced from the peak of up to 70,000 nuclear weapons seen in the 1980s, but progress in a number of new or ‘disruptive’ technologies threatens to fundamentally change the central pillars on which nuclear order, stability and risk reduction are based.

  • ARGUMENT: RISK OF NUCLEAR WARWhy the War in Ukraine Poses a Greater Nuclear Risk than the Cuban Missile Crisis

    There has been a considerable debate of the risk of nuclear escalation growing from the current Russian war in Ukraine. Some dismiss the concern about a possible Russian first use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine, but Lawrence Korb and Stephen Cimbala write that “[d]ismissing Putin’s nuclear saber rattling as a ploy to manipulate NATO and world opinion, however, would be a mistake. The likelihood of a deliberate or miscalculated escalation to nuclear first use is now as great, or greater, than it was during the fateful Cuban missile crisis of 1962.”

  • IRAN’S NUKESEntering Dangerous, Uncharted Waters: Iran’s 60% Highly Enriched Uranium

    By David Albright and Sarah Burkhard

    As soon as mid-to-late April, Iran is expected to reach a new dangerous, destabilizing threshold, having enough highly enriched uranium (HEU) — about 40-42 kilograms (kg) of 60 percent enriched uranium (uranium mass) — to fashion a nuclear explosive.

  • DIRTY BOMBSRisks of a Dirty Bomb Attack Are Increasing

    In a new factsheet, the GAO says that the risks of a dirty bomb attack are increasing and the consequences could be devastating.

  • IRAN NUKESIran Vows to Continue Nuclear Activities

    Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has said Iran will continue nuclear development activities as talks to revive Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers remain stalled. The nuclear deal collapsed four years ago when former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement, allowing Iran to vastly expanded its nuclear work.

  • FOOD SECURITYFood Security During a Nuclear Winter

    A nuclear war would cause global blockage of the sun for several years due to injections of black carbon soot into the upper atmosphere, covering most of the planet with black clouds. This could result in less than 40 percent of normal light levels near the equator and less than 5 percent normal light levels near the poles. Research focuses on how meeting food security and nutrition in post-catastrophe conditions, which could last 15 years in some wet tropical forests.

  • NUCLEAR ESCALATIONHistory Never Ended: Ukraine and the Risk of Nuclear Escalation

    By Malcolm Davis

    Putin has issued implicit and explicit nuclear threats, and has also raised the specter of chemical weapons. Together, these threats imply that Putin may seek deliberate escalation in order to limit NATO’s options. Putin’s assumption may be that the West won’t be prepared to risk escalation to a strategic nuclear exchange and will back down even in the face of a demonstrative use of a low-yield nuclear weapon, or large-scale use of chemical weapons against urban areas in Ukraine.

  • PERSPECTIVE: NUCLEAR ESCALATIONThe Smaller Bombs That Could Turn Ukraine into a Nuclear War Zone

    The nuclear weapons in the arsenals of Russia and NATO countries have much smaller yields than the large bombs built during the Cold War. These warheads are even smaller than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. William Broad writes that it is this much lower yield which makes their use more thinkable.

  • IRAN-ISRAEL WARIsrael-Iran Stealthy War Intensifies

    Last Sunday, Iran launched a missile attack which destroyed an Israeli intelligence facility located in Irbil, in the Kurdish autonomous zone in Iraq. The Iranian attack was in retaliation for a daring, and successful, mid-February Israeli attack, using six armed drones, on an Iranian drone production facility, in which hundreds of advanced Iranian drones were destroyed. Israel operates several intelligence and military bases in the Kurdish region and in Azerbaijan.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSThe Nuclear Threat Returns

    By Andreas Noll

    Nuclear arms were a symbol of the Cold War. The recent Russian threats in the war with Ukraine have put them on the map again for many people. How does deterrence work and what kind of protection does Europe have?

  • NUCLEAR RISKSCan Ukraine Be Saved Without Triggering a Nuclear Response?

    By Brendan Nicholson

    Worries about the war in Ukraine are deepened by the prospect that if, against the odds, Russian forces are brought to the point of defeat, Putin will launch a ‘battlefield’ or ‘tactical’ nuclear weapon to destroy the forces opposing the Russian military, and, perhaps, even attack military bases inside neighboring countries – some are NATO member states – which provide supplies to the resistance.

  • NUCLEAR RISKSWill Putin Use Nuclear Weapons?

    By Rod Lyon

    Nuclear signaling is woven through the invasion of Ukraine in a way we haven’t seen since the days of the Cuban missile crisis. Naturally, it has fed a wave of speculation on social media about the potential crossing of the nuclear threshold, either deliberately or inadvertently.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSRefurbishing Nukes: Major Milestone for B61-12 Life Extension Program

    Sandia National Laboratories marked a major milestone in November 2021 when the Nuclear Security Enterprise successfully produced the first completely refurbished bomb for the B61-12 life extension program.