Carnegie Moscow Center
The upcoming Seoul summit aims to reach consensus on securing nuclear materials against their use by militants. However, despite some progress in 2010, agreement may be harder to find this time.
The cumulative impact of the nuclear developments that occurred in 2012, from the disaster in Fukushima to Iran's continuing nuclear program, will make the world's nuclear future more uncertain.
An international commitment to keep weapons of mass destruction out of Saddam Hussein’s hands could have worked and led to a WMD enforcement mechanism for use not only in Iraq, but also in North Korea, Libya, Syria, Iran, and elsewhere.
On its twentieth anniversary, the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program remains an important tool for international cooperation to reduce nuclear dangers, but there remain some tough questions about the continued viability of the model.
In the coming months, Washington will need to walk a fine line to maintain pressure on Iran while trying to prevent the nuclear crisis from escalating out of control.
While new allegations call the peaceful intentions of Iran’s nuclear program into greater question, China and Russia are unlikely to agree to sanctions they view as crippling.
The International Atomic Energy Agency says Iran has worked on developing nuclear weapon designs and on testing components. It comes amid rumors that Israel is preparing to attack Iran's nuclear facilities.
The International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran stops short of saying Tehran masterminded a secret program to possess atomic arms and it made the outlook for a negotiated solution to the Iran crisis less likely.
While theoretically terrorists could use missiles stolen from armed forces to target space satellites, the risk of such space terrorism remains small because terrorists don’t have enough resources to carry out such attacks.
On the twentieth anniversary of the closure of Kazakhstan's nuclear site Semipalatinsk, it is important to recognize the role the former weapons testing facility plays in strengthening the verification regime of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.