Jamie Kwong and Nicole Grajewski | War on the Rocks
Numerous developments in the ongoing Iran-Israel conflict could lead Iran to threaten to or actually withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. A direct, kinetic attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities is perhaps the most likely catalyst. Several prominent Iranian figures have said as much, declaring that if Israel targets Tehran’s nuclear sites, Iran will abandon the treaty and declare itself a nuclear state.
Andrew Roth | The Guardian
North Korea’s UN envoy has said Pyongyang will accelerate a buildup of its nuclear weapons programme just days after it test-fired an intercontinental ballistic missile for the first time this year at a moment of rising tensions with the west. Kim Song, North Korea’s ambassador to the UN, said during a security council meeting on Monday that Pyongyang would accelerate the programme to “counter any threat presented by hostile nuclear weapons states”.
Julian Borger | The Guardian
The UK was one of three countries to vote against creating a UN scientific panel on the effects of nuclear war because, the Foreign Office argued, the “devastating consequences” of such a conflict are already well known without the need for a new study. The UK, France and Russia were the only countries to vote on Friday night against a UN general assembly committee resolution drafted by Ireland and New Zealand to set up an international scientific inquiry to take a fresh look at the multifaceted impact of nuclear weapons use. Backers of the motion said the last such UN study had been carried out towards the end of the cold war and that a lot had changed since then, in geopolitics and in science.
Aurora Almendral, Amin Khodadadi and Andrew Jones | NBC News
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed “a tooth-breaking response” against Israel and the United States on Saturday “for what they are doing against Iran” and its proxies. The comments came a day after Kamal Kharrazi, an adviser to Khamenei, said Iran has the capacity to produce nuclear weapons and is prepared to change its policies on using them if faced with an existential threat, as the the country engages in a high-stakes tit for tat with Israel.
MARI YAMAGUCHI | Associated Press
A remote-controlled robot has safely returned with a tiny piece of melted fuel it collected from inside one of three damaged reactors at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant for the first time since the 2011 meltdown. The Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings, which manages the plant, said Saturday that the extendable fishing rod-like robot successfully clipped a piece of gravel of about 5 millimeters (0.2 inches), the size of a tiny bit of granola, from the top surface of a mound of molten fuel debris that sits on the bottom of the No. 2 reactor’s primary containment vessel.
Mariana Budjeryn | Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
Now that Zelensky resurrected the “NATO or nukes” proposal, he might be taking a page from an old playbook used successfully by other US allies and partners in the past by leveraging fears of nuclear proliferation in exchange for a more robust security guarantee: Ukraine’s NATO membership. West Germany during the Cold War, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea have all successfully leveraged their nuclear latency to bolster US commitment to their security.