• NUCLEAR DETERRENCESandia Accelerates AI Innovation for Nuclear Deterrence

    By Kenny Vigil

    Not taking a risk is a risk. That’s one message from a two-day summit at Sandia focused on artificial intelligence that emphasized its value for nuclear deterrence.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSThe Unravelling of the Global Nuclear Order

    While the NPT is experiencing a credibility crisis, the future of the CTBT hangs in the balance. The expiry of the New START on 5 February 2026 marked the end of the arms control era. The nuclear taboo regarding the non-use of nuclear weapons is fast diminishing due to explicit nuclear threats by world leaders. The infusion of AI into nuclear decision-making, meanwhile, is likely to affect strategic stability.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSThe U.S. Is Pushing Southeast Asia Toward China. The Iran War Made It Worse.

    By Joshua Kurlantzick

    There is a growing anxiety among U.S. allies in Southeast Asia about inconsistencies in U.S. policy and the credibility of long-term commitments under Trump’s leadership. A new survey of Southeast Asian opinion leaders shows they prefer China to the United States as a partner, while the region’s biggest geopolitical concern is U.S. global leadership.

  • IRAN NUKESAssessment of Blue Barrels Moved into Esfahan Mountain in Days Before June 2025 War

    By David Albright, Sarah Burkhard, Spencer Faragasso, and the Good ISIS Team

    Le Monde brought to our attention a June 9, 2025, a commercial satellite image taken just four days before the start of the June War. Given the overall appearance of the activity in the image, it appears to us that, of the options considered, the best match is that the blue barrels or casks contain 60 percent enriched uranium enroute to protective storage within the tunnel complex, irrespective of Iranian intent regarding its overhead observation.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSGoing Nuclear? Why a Growing Number of Washington’s Allies Are Eyeing an Alternative to U.S. Umbrella

    By Amy McAuliffe

    Until just a few years ago, few would have predicted that Canada, Japan, Saudi Arabia, and other nations – all allies of Washington – might one day join the nuclear club. The U.S. nuclear umbrella has, for decades, offered U.S. allies an easy way of declining to pursue nuclear weapons. But the policies of the first and second Trump administrations damaged U.S. credibility as a reliable, steadfast ally, leading these nations to consider developing domestic nuclear weapons programs.

  • IRAN WARIran’s Nuclear Materials and Equipment Remain a Danger in an Active War Zone

    By Matthew Bunn

    Before launching his war on Iran, President Donald Trump said his most important goal was that Iran would “never have a nuclear weapon.” Yet it is not clear what, if anything, his administration has planned for dealing with Iran’s stock of enriched uranium that could be used to make nuclear bombs – or its remaining deeply buried nuclear facilities and the nuclear equipment that might be in them, or hidden elsewhere.

  • IRAN WARThe Fantasy of the Iran “Commando Option”

    By Brandan P. Buck

    Special Operations Forces cannot do everything. They are a scalpel that policymakers in Washington, DC, have tended to use as a multitool. Their proposed use in Iran for seizing the regime’s stockpile of enriched uranium is but the latest idea in this trend. It is also the most reckless—an idea closer to fantasy than to feasibility.

  • NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROLNew START to Expire: Nuclear Arms Control Goes Up in Smoke

    By Ajey Lele

    On 5 February 2026, the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) will expire. This is the last remaining major treaty between the United States (US) and Russia limiting their deployed strategic nuclear warheads.

  • NUCLEAR ARMS CONTROLWeakening Nuclear Arms Control Increases Risks of Crisis Escalation

    By Michael Roach

    The expiration of the New START agreement between the United States and Russia on 5 February marks the near-complete collapse of an arms control system that once made nuclear competition predictable, verifiable and contained. The risk is not merely enlargement of nuclear arsenals, but the diminishment of safeguards against escalation, with increasing instability and shorter warning times.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSBookshelf: Why the U.S. Failed to Contain North Korea’s Nuclear Threat

    Joel Wit’s new book details the failure of the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations to contain and limit North Korea’s nuclear weapons program. Wit writes that Trump had an opportunity to roll back the North Korean program, but Trump’s personal characteristics and governing style doomed the effort. Wit credits Trump’s unorthodox approach for setting the stage for the unprecedented Hanoi summit withKim Jong Un, but blames his short attention span – John Bolton said that Trump “has the attention span of a fruit fly” — for its breakdown. “The president couldn’t sit still long enough to close the deal,” Wit writes.

  • NUCLEAR RISKSSmall Modular Reactors and the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty

    By Abhishek Verma

    Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) are widely heralded as the next major leap in civilian nuclear energy. Beneath this optimism, however, lies a growing unease within the nuclear policy community relating to the nuclear weapons proliferation and safeguards challenges that SMRs pose to the existing global nuclear governance system.

  • NUCLEAR WEAPONSLabs Director “Absolutely Confident in the Stockpile”

    By Kenny Vigil

    The annual certification of the nuclear weapons stockpile is Sandia’s most important responsibility, according to Labs Director Laura McGill. As part of the certification, at least one of each weapon system in the stockpile is brought through the Pantex Plant in Amarillo, Texas, to be tested and examined.

  • EXPORT CONTROLCanadian-Based Company Fined by U.S. Commerce Department for Hiding U.S. Exports to Iran

    On October 2, 2025, a Canada-headquartered biotechnology company, Luminultra, agreed to pay the Bureau of Industry and Security $685,051 after admitting to illegally exporting water quality testing and analytical instruments to Iran by means of the United Arab Emirates.

  • IRAN’S THREATIsrael Secretly Recruited Iranian Dissidents to Attack Their Country from Within

    By Yossi Melman and Dan Raviv for ProPublica

    The Mossad made Iran its top priority in 1993 after Israelis and Palestinians signed the Oslo Accords on the White House lawn, seemingly ending decades of conflict. The main goal of Israel’s focus on Iran: To protect Israel’s nuclear monopoly in the region.

  • IRAN’S NUKES Significance of the Targeted Nuclear Scientists in the 12-Day War

    By Institute for Science and International Security

    The June 2025 war between Israel and Iran, called the 12-Day War, saw the killing y the Israeli military of many Iranian nuclear scientists who participated in or are linked to Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  the elimination of these nuclear scientists deprived Iran’s nuclear weapons program of its most capable and experienced personnel.  This act weakened Iran’s base for building nuclear weapons, eliminating needed expertise and hard-to-get management experience.