Closing the Iran File

Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Hosseini Khamenei, is the most important player in decisions on Iran’s nuclear program. For anything that Iran’s new president-elect, Hassan Rouhani, may propose to the outside world to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis, we won’t know for a fact whether Rouhani will be acting upon specific instructions from Khamenei. But we do know that any nuclear initiative sponsored by Rouhani will have the endorsement of the Supreme Leader. So in the aftermath of Rouhani’s election, we had better pay close attention to what Khamenei says.

 

America’s missile defense system failed on Friday in a test over the Pacific, with an interceptor failing to hit an incoming ballistic missile, the Pentagon said.

 

For Indonesians the forest fires that raged across the island of Sumatra for a week should be a wake-up call because their governments want to build nuclear power plants to generate carbon-free electricity their economies will need.

 

As Iran's chief nuclear negotiator, president-elect Hasan Rouhani compared the controversy around Iran’s pursuit of nuclear technology to that surrounding Brazil’s pursuit of the same technology several decades ago. Once the Brazilians completed their nuclear fuel cycle against the wishes of the West, he said in 2004, “the world started to work with them.”

 

Japan has moved a step closer to restarting nuclear reactors, with four utility companies applying for safety inspections of 10 idled plants, the clearest sign of a return to atomic energy almost two and a half years after the Fukushima disaster. 

 

Russia's Sevmash shipyard on Friday confirmed earlier announced plans to deliver three nuclear-powered submarines to the Russian Navy by the end of this year.