• Iran could test-fly ICBMs capable of striking U.S. within three years: Pentagon

    A Pentagon report submitted to Congress on 29 June says Iran continues to make large strides in virtually all conventional, unconventional, and nuclear categories; the report focused most extensively on Iran’s inventory of ballistic missiles, and warned that Iran may be able to test-fly an inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM), capable of striking American soil, within three years’ time; Iran also continues to supply men, money, training, and even sophisticated weapons systems to some of the world’s best-known terror groups

  • Training the nuclear forensics experts of the future

    Ten percent of the U.S. experts in nuclear and radiochemistry are at or nearing retirement age, according to a recent report from the National Academies of Science; meanwhile, not enough students are being trained to take their places; undergraduate summer programs in nuclear forensics and nuclear chemistry aim to replenish the ranks

  • New book confirms Israel behind killing of Iran nuclear scientists

    A book to be published today offers details about, Israel’s campaign to take out Iranian nuclear scientists, a campaign which is part of the Israel’s broader effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons; the book also says that the cyber campaign against Iran’s nuclear program was an Israeli innovation, not an American one as recently reported; it was the brainchild of Israel’s military intelligence agency (AMAN) and Unit 8-200 — Israel’s equivalent of the eavesdropping, code-breaking National Security Agency (NSA) — and endorsed by the White House at Israel’s suggestion

  • Even a limited India-Pakistan nuclear war would substantially reduce global crop yields

    Worries about nuclear winter have faded since the end of the cold war, but existing stockpiles of nuclear weapons still hold the potential for devastating global impacts; researchers have found that the climate effects of a hypothetical nuclear war between India and Pakistan would greatly reduce yields of staple crops, even in distant countries

  • Nuremberg lives: Should Iran’s leaders be charged with incitement to genocide?

    Earlier this week, at a UN forum on the global drug trade, Iran’s vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi delivered a speech which the New York Times described as “baldly anti-Semitic”; Rahmini charged that the Jews, among other things, are responsible for, and are in firm control of, the global drug trade, and that gynecologists are killing black babies on the orders of Jews; law professors Alan Dershowitz and Irwin Cotler argue that the openly anti-Semitic pronouncements by Iran’s leaders, and the repeated threats they make against the Jewish people, merit bringing Iran’s leaders before the International Criminal Court to face charges of incitement to genocide

  • Countdown begins to attack on Iran

    On Tuesday in Moscow, the third round of talks between the P5+1 (the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany) and Iran over Iran’s nuclear program ended with the gap between the two sides as wide as ever; there are no plans for more  meetings; this means that on 1 July, a new, crippling round of sanctions will be imposed on Iran; the previous round of sanctions de-linked Iranian banks and companies from the international banking system; the coming round of sanctions – which includes, among other things, the removal of insurance from tankers carrying Iranian oil – will bring an end to nearly all of Iran’s oil sales, sales which account for nearly 80 percent of Iran foreign revenues; planning, in both Israel and the United States, for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities has now shifted to a higher gear; Congress holds hearings on Israel’s Iran-specific military equipment needs

  • Security increases around Pennsylvania nuclear disposal site

    Security around a nuclear waste site in western Pennsylvania has been upgraded, with DHS armed security guards replacing private guards around the site; the reason for the elevated security is the finding, by the Army Corps of Engineers, of more “complex” nuclear materials on the site; it was originally believed that the site contains only low-level nuclear material

  • Crisis deepens as third round of nuclear talks with Iran begins today in Moscow

    As the delegations of the six Western powers and Iran get set to open the third round of nuclear talks in Moscow today, diplomats involved in the talks say that the coming two days of talks are not quite the last chance for a diplomatic solution to the gathering crisis, but that we are getting uncomfortably close; Western diplomats insist “that there can be no repeat of Baghdad, where [the head of the Iranian delegation, Saeed] Jalili showed readiness to orate but not to bargain, and that they are not interested in continuing ‘talks for the sake of talks’”

  • Experts: stronger regulation of military, civilian nuclear programs required

    All nuclear energy and weapons programs should be independently regulated and subject to rigorous peer review, according to three experts on nuclear policy who held high office in different U.S. administrations; they note that despite international diplomatic efforts to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons and ensure that nuclear material is protected against theft, there is growing apprehension about terrorists acquiring weapons or nuclear material

  • Near economic collapse, Iran tries to buy time for its nuclear weapons program

    From the Iranian perspective, talks and negotiation are meant to achieve only one goal: buy the Iranian nuclear weapons program more time – time that can be used to enrich more uranium, enrich uranium to a higher level, conduct more ballistic missile tests, and refine nuclear war-head designs; this Persian bazaar-like approach to negotiations increasingly runs up against the ever-more-dire economic reality in which Iran finds itself in as a result of the tightening sanctions imposed on the country because of its recalcitrance

  • Nuclear weapon simulations show performance in molecular detail

    U.S. researchers are perfecting simulations that show a nuclear weapon’s performance in precise molecular detail, tools that are becoming critical for national defense because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons

  • Talks with Iran: window for peaceful resolution closing

    The second round of talks between the five permanent members of the Security Council plus Germany and Iran over the military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program opened yesterday in Baghdad; the time frame for the talks between the six powers and Iran is tacitly accepted by all sides: if the current round of talks fails, and the harsher sanctions on Iran, which go into effect on 1 July, do not persuade Iran, by the end of the year, to cease and desist its nuclear weapons activities, then the path will be clear for a military attack on Iran – by Israel, the United States, or both – sometime during the first three or four months of 2013

  • Detecting a North Korea nuclear test

    The monitoring tools that scientists have available to them to detect a nuclear test have improved in quality and quantity since North Korea last tested a nuclear weapon in 2009; the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO) has a total of 287 detection facilities available, consisting of 157 seismic monitoring stations, forty-five infrasound stations, sixty-five radionuclide stations, and ten hydroacoustic stations

  • Study looks at an unexamined component of the nuclear age: nuclear engineers

    On the twenty-sixth anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, a new study of nuclear engineers has shown how they were shaped by secrecy and the shifting goals of nuclear research; first defined by the Second World War’s Manhattan Project, these engineers marked out a new field

  • Threat of imminent Israeli, U.S. attack on Iran appears to recede

    The New York Times reports today that analysts inside and outside the Obama administration believe that there is less likelihood now – relative to how things looked in the winter — that either Israel or the United States would launch a military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities. The reasons: the economic sanctions on Iran are slowing the Iranian economy, with more draconian sanctions coming in July; the mood in the first round of talks between Iranian and Western representative, who met in Ankara two weeks ago, was positive, and there is some optimism that the next round, to be held in Baghdad in a month time, may yield Iranian concessions on the issue of uranium enrichment; also, there is a growing schism in Israel between, on one side, political leaders – namely, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defense Minister Ehud Barak – and, on the other side, both former and current military and intelligence officials about the wisdom of attacking Iran now, before diplomacy and tough sanctions have been given a chance.