ELLEN KNICKMEYER | Associated Press
Iran is talking more about getting a nuclear bomb and has made strides in developing a key aspect of a weapon since about April, when Israel and its allies overpowered a barrage of Iranian airstrikes targeting Israel, two top Biden administration officials said Friday.“Instead of being at least a year away from having breakout capacity to produce fissile material for a nuclear weapon, they’re probably one or two weeks away from doing that,” Blinken said, adding that “where we are now is not a good place.”
Reuters
Russian forces are conducting drills involving Yars mobile nuclear missile launchers, Russian media reported on Tuesday, in what would be the second such exercise in less than a month. Missile launcher crews in the Volga river basin, some 700 kilometres (435 miles) east of Moscow, were set to move over 100 kilometres (62 miles) and practice camouflage and deployment, the Interfax news agency reported.
John Geddie | Reuters
Foreign and defence ministers from Japan and the United States will hold security talks on July 28 that for the first time will cover "extended deterrence", a term used to describe the U.S. commitment to use its nuclear forces to deter attacks on allies. While the pair have discussed the issue at lower levels before, the talks will elevate a subject that is sensitive in Japan, which has pushed for non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and is the only country to have suffered atomic bomb attacks.
Ryan Chan | Newsweek
China has demanded that the United States make commitments on nuclear weapons by adopting a no-first-use policy and giving up its "nuclear umbrella" to allies in Europe and Asia after Beijing suspended arms control talks with Washington over Taiwan last week. The Chinese Foreign Ministry on Monday published two working papers in relation to the "no-first-use of nuclear weapons" policy and nuclear security assurances. They were first submitted on July 12 to the Preparatory Committee for the 2026 Review Conference of the Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, or NPT.
Heesu Lee and Stephen Stapczynski | Bloomberg
South Korea’s long-held ambition of exporting its nuclear power technology got a major boost this week, potentially setting it up to be the reactor provider of choice to several countries. State-owned Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power Co. was chosen to build two multibillion-dollar reactors in the Czech Republic, beating out rivals and paving the way for Korean companies to potentially score a string of deals across the continent. “Now a bridgehead has been established for us to export nuclear plants to Europe,” Korea’s Trade, Industry and Energy Minister Ahn Duk-geun declared after the win.
Changwook Ju and Joshua Byun | Foreign Policy
Many analysts have latched onto this reasoning to argue that an especially intense normative prohibition against nuclear use prevails in China and that the country “does not consider nuclear weapons to have a military use.” Beijing’s long-standing adherence to a nuclear no-first-use policy seemed to lend credence to such claims…But new evidence suggests there’s good reason to be skeptical of this hypothesis…Although respondents were widely opposed to nuclear use on a personal level, the overall findings did not support the notion of a widespread normative prohibition against the government’s decision to use nuclear weapons in war.