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North Korea Expanding Key Missile Site

IN THIS ISSUE: North Korea Expanding Key Missile Site, North Korea Expands Key Missile-Manufacturing Plant, As Bolton Says North Korea Could Disarm in a Year, Reality Lags Promises, Iran, World Powers in Nuclear Accord to Meet in Vienna on Friday: IRNA, Senate Spending Bill Could Slow Sub-Launched Nuke, China’s Attitudes Toward Missile Defense and Its Limitation

Published on July 3, 2018

North Korea Expanding Key Missile Site

Jeffrey Lewis and Dave Schmerler | Arms Control Wonk

Despite the April 27 Panmunjom Declaration, in which North and South Korea “confirmed the common goal of realizing, through complete denuclearization, a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula,” North Korea is completing a major expansion of an important factory for producing solid rocket motors for North Korea’s nuclear-armed missiles.

North Korea Expands Key Missile-Manufacturing Plant

Jonathan Cheng | Wall Street Journal

North Korea is completing a major expansion of a key missile-manufacturing plant, said researchers who have examined new satellite imagery of the site, the latest sign Pyongyang is pushing ahead with weapons programs even as the U.S. pressures it to abandon them.

As Bolton Says North Korea Could Disarm in a Year, Reality Lags Promises

David E. Sanger and William J. Broad | New York Times

President Trump’s national security adviser said on Sunday that North Korea could dismantle all of its nuclear weapons, threatening missiles and biological weapons “in a year,” a far more aggressive schedule than the one Secretary of State Mike Pompeo outlined for Congress recently, reflecting a strain inside the administration over how to match promises with realism.

Iran, World Powers in Nuclear Accord to Meet in Vienna on Friday: IRNA

Reuters

Foreign ministers of Iran and the five world powers still party to its nuclear accord will meet in Vienna on Friday to discuss ways of maintaining the deal after the withdrawal of the United States, Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Tuesday.

Senate Spending Bill Could Slow Sub-Launched Nuke

Joe Gould | Defense News

The Senate Appropriations Committee approved a Pentagon spending bill Thursday that would order more study before the Trump administration can get a new low-yield, tactical nuclear weapon that it wants.

China’s Attitudes Toward Missile Defense and Its Limitation

Li Bin | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists

If there were to be a new international agreement to limit certain aspects of missile defense, it could reduce suspicion and competition among the United States, Russia, China and other relevant parties But the types of missile defense limitations that might be of interest to China—including agreements on numbers of missile interceptors, on the non-weaponization of space, and on elimination of ground-based midcourse defenses—involve policy changes that the United States has opposed in recent years.

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