• Further Indications of Iran’s Renewed Interest in Maraging Steel for its Nuclear Enrichment Program

    Maraging steel bellows are well known to be used in the IR-2m centrifuge, but Iran has not made any of these centrifuges in years, leading to speculation that the bottleneck was the maraging steel. A recent report has revealed Iran’s renewed interest in metal bellows in its advanced centrifuges.

  • How Nuclear War Would Affect Earth Today

    Nine nations currently control more than 13,000 nuclear weapons in the world. A new study provides stark information on the global impact of nuclear war. Nuclear firestorms would release soot and smoke into the upper atmosphere that would block out the Sun resulting in crop failure around the world. In the first month following nuclear detonation, average global temperatures would plunge by about 13 degrees Fahrenheit, cooling the oceans and resulting in sea ice expanding by more than 6 million square miles and 6 feet deep in some basins, blocking major ports.

  • North Korea’s Military Capabilities

    North Korea could have the material for more than one hundred nuclear weapons, according to analysts’ estimates. It has successfully tested missiles that could strike the United States with a nuclear warhead. North Korea has the world’s fourth-largest military, with more than 1.2 million personnel, and is believed to possess chemical and biological weapons. Despite UN Security Council sanctions and past summits involving North Korea, South Korea, and the United States on denuclearization, Pyongyang continues to test ballistic missiles.

  • Global Nuclear Arsenals Are Expected to Grow

    The nine nuclear-armed states—the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea)—continue to modernize their nuclear arsenals and although the total number of nuclear weapons declined slightly between January 2021 and January 2022, the number will probably increase in the next decade.

  • Iran's Removal of More Cameras Could Be a “Fatal Blow” to Reviving Nuclear Deal: IAEA

    Iran has started removing 27 surveillance cameras from nuclear sites across the country, further reducing the IAEA’s ability to monitor Iran’s nuclear program, the head of the UN nuclear watchdog has said. Iran’s move “poses a serious challenge to our ability to continue working there,” Rafael Grossi, IAEA director-general, said.

  • Iran Can Produce Nuclear Explosive Now, and 2 Bombs within One Month of a Breakout: IAEA

    The IAEA’s new report on Iran’s nuclear status says that Iran’s breakout timeline is now at zero. Iran has enough 60 percent enriched uranium – highly enriched uranium, or HEU — to be able to produce nuclear explosive. If it wanted to enrich the 60 percent HEU to 90 percent HEU —typically called weapon-grade uranium (WGU) — it could do so within weeks. Whether or not Iran enriches its HEU up to 90 percent, it can have enough HEU for two nuclear weapons within one month after starting breakout.

  • Threshold Reached: Iranian Nuclear Breakout Timeline Now at Zero

    Iran has crossed a new, dangerous threshold: Iran’s breakout time is now at zero. It has enough 60 percent enriched uranium, or highly enriched uranium (HEU), to be assured it could fashion a nuclear explosive. If Iran wanted to further enrich its 60 percent HEU up to weapon-grade HEU, or 90 percent, it could do so within a few weeks with only a few of its advanced centrifuge cascades.

  • Iran’s Current Nuclear-Weapons Status: The Facts

    A report published in April by the Institute for Science and International Security, and an interview with David Albright, the report’s co-author, offer startling, and disturbing, insights into the rapid, and likely irreversible, progress Iran has made toward developing a workable nuclear weapon since the Trump administration, in 2018, decided to withdraw from the 2015 nuclear deal.

  • Iran Now Has Enough Fissile Material for One Nuclear Bomb: IAEA

    Iran has enriched enough uranium for making one Hiroshima-size nuclear bomb, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said in its quarterly report. The IAEA says that Iran now has around 43 kilograms (95 pounds) of uranium enriched to 60 percent (in March, Iran had 33 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent). The 43 kg of 60 percent enriched uranium would yield about 22-25 kg of uranium enriched to 90 percent, which is weapon-grade.

  • Codifying Support for Nuclear Inspections in Iran

    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.

  • To 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.

  • Risks 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.

  • Entering Dangerous, Uncharted Waters: Iran’s 60% Highly Enriched Uranium

    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.

  • Iran 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.

  • History Never Ended: Ukraine and the Risk of Nuclear Escalation

    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.