House Panel Would Bar Low-Yield Nuke Deployment, Open Skies Treaty Withdrawal
Joe Gould | Defense News
The Democratic-led House Armed Services Committee on Monday released its draft defense policy bill that moves to stop the deployment of a new low-yield nuclear warhead, teeing up a partisan fight over America’s nuclear arsenal. The Trump administration proposed the low-yield warhead, a modified Trident II D5 ballistic missile, or W76-2. The weapon was expected to be shipped to the Navy this fall. Before the GOP lost control of the House last year, it won a party-line vote that would have restricted funding for the W76-2’s development; $65 million in 2019. The move comes as Trump administration officials suggest Russia has restarted very low-yield nuclear tests. A skeptic of the arsenal’s size and cost, committee Chairman Adam Smith, D-Wash., is expected to offer still more restrictive language in the days ahead. Meanwhile, the top Republican on the committee, Rep. Mac Thornberry, and Strategic Forces Subcommittee ranking member Rep. Mike Turner ripped into the draft language.
Iran Edges Toward Nuclear Stockpile Limits
Laurence Norman | Wall Street Journal
Iran increased its stockpile of nuclear-related materials by only a small amount in the last three months, but Western diplomats said they have little doubt that Tehran has scaled up production of enriched uranium in recent days. Iran has warned that it would disregard some limits agreed to under the 2015 nuclear agreement, but the International Atomic Energy Agency, in a quarterly report seen by The Wall Street Journal on Friday, said Iran still remained in compliance with its main commitments. The report comes amid mounting tensions between Iran and the U.S. Washington has accused Tehran of threatening U.S. interest in the Middle East and has warned it would react if Iran scales up its nuclear work.
Iran’s Khamenei: Tehran Will Not Abandon Its Missile Program
Reuters
Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Tuesday that Tehran would not be “deceived” by U.S. President Donald Trump’s offer of negotiations and would not give up its missile program. Iran and the United States have been drawn into starker confrontation in the past month, a year after Washington pulled out of a deal between Iran and global powers to curb Tehran’s nuclear program in return for lifting international sanctions. Trump has condemned the nuclear deal, signed by his predecessor Barack Obama, as flawed for not being permanent and for not covering Iran’s ballistic missile program and its role in conflicts around the Middle East. He has called on Iran to come to negotiating table to reach a new deal.
‘Purged’ North Korean Diplomat Kim Yong Chol Appears in State Media, Shooting Down ‘Plausible Rumor’
Joshua Berlinger | CNN
High-ranking North Korean diplomat Kim Yong Chol was identified attending an art performance alongside leader Kim Jong Un in the country's state media on Sunday -- two days after one of South Korea's biggest newspapers said he had been banished and sentenced to hard labor and his deputy executed. If true, it would have been one of the most stunning stories to come out of North Korea in some time. Kim Yong Chol, in particular, sat in the White House across from US President Donald Trump for talks little more than a year ago. Analysts have speculated that some of the North Korean diplomats charged with US negotiations were in hot water after the latest round of talks between the two countries ended abruptly in Hanoi without an agreement.
Don’t Try Our Patience, North Korea Tells U.S. a Year After Accord
David Brunnstrom | Reuters
North Korea warned the United States that agreements made between the two countries’ leaders in Singapore last year could be at risk, blaming the United States for undue pressure to denuclearize, state news agency KCNA said on Tuesday. The statement comes as media reports indicated North Korea punished some members of its team that steered negotiations with the United States before a failed summit between North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and U.S. President Donald Trump in Hanoi in February. Nearly a year after Trump and Kim first met in Singapore and signed a four-point joint statement pledging to work toward a new relationship, that agreement could be at risk if the United States does not drop its policy of “only insisting on our unilateral surrender of nuclear weapons”, an unnamed foreign ministry spokesman said in the statement. North Korea warned that if the United States does not come up with something new “before it is too late”, the joint statement would just turn out to be a “mere blank sheet of paper”.
China Conducts Probable Test Launch of JL-3 SLBM
Andrew Tate | Jane’s Defence Weekly
Photographs posted on Chinese social media sites appear to show that China conducted a missile launch on 2 June, which online sources suggest was a test firing of the country’s next-generation submarine-launched ballistic missile (SLBM), the JL-3. The event took place during the time an area in the Bohai Sea was closed for a “military mission” as notified by the Liaoning office of the Maritime Safety Administration (MSA). The MSA had issued two closure notices – from 07:00-1300 h (local time) on 1 June and from 02:30-12:00 h on 2 June – for naval activities in the Bohai Strait, southwest of the naval bases around Lushun and Dalian, at the entrance to the largely enclosed Bohai Sea. State-owned Global Times newspaper reported that on 2 June at about 04:00 h “residents across multiple provinces in China” had seen “an unidentified flying object (UFO) with a glowing fiery tail streak across the sky”, photographs and video clips of which were posted on many Chinese social media sites.