Laurence Norman | The Wall Street Journal
Iran has agreed to give the U.N. atomic agency access to its main nuclear facilities, opening the possibility for international inspectors to assess the damage done by U.S. and Israeli airstrikes in June and check on Tehran’s stockpile of near weapons-grade enriched uranium, the agency’s chief said. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and the International Atomic Energy Agency chief Rafael Grossi reached the deal late Tuesday in Cairo after weeks of back and forth.
Park Chan-kyong | South China Morning Post
A new era in North Korea’s missile programme may be dawning, as analysts warn of an imminent test launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple warheads to the US mainland. Fresh from his appearance at China’s Victory Day parade in Beijing last week, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un personally oversaw the trial of a lighter, more robust solid-fuel ICBM engine, state media reported on Tuesday, touting the achievement as a “strategic” breakthrough.
Jesse Johnson and Gabriel Dominguez | The Japan Times
The U.S. military is for the first time bringing some of its most advanced missile systems for keeping Chinese forces at bay to joint training with the Self-Defense Forces, part of a gradual shift in policy that will also see Tokyo deploy its own longer-range weapons… Under Japan’s “exclusively defense-oriented policy,” Tokyo had long appeared resistant to positioning such weapons in the country, even for joint drills. But a gradual shift emerged in recent years, especially following the release of the country’s 2022 National Security Strategy.
Nectar Gan and YoonJung Seo | CNN
Of the more than two dozen foreign leaders invited to Xi Jinping’s massive military parade in Beijing last week, no one reaped a bigger diplomatic windfall than Kim Jong Un… Yet his most consequential victory may not have been what was staged for the cameras, but what was left unsaid… “With the denuclearization goal now formally removed from the official readout of the Xi-Kim meeting, a significant shift in China’s long-term policy is confirmed,” said Tong Zhao, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Anthony Capaccio | Bloomberg
Air Force officials have told congressional auditors it’s feasible to extend, until 2050, Boeing Co.’s aging Minuteman III nuclear missiles that have been the ground-based leg of the US-nuclear triad arsenal for more than half a century… If delays lengthen and costs increase on the new Northrop Grumman Corp. Sentinel ICBM, Air Force officials said, then a fallback plan to extend the Boeing missiles could be executed — but with increasing parts, supply chain and personnel challenges, according to a declassified Government Accountability Office assessment released Wednesday.
Jon Wolfsthal, Toby Dalton, Fumihiko Yoshida, Michiru Nishida | Federation of American Scientists
Unless the policies and activities of all nuclear-armed states and their allies change in Northeast Asia, the probability of a nuclear crisis will continue to grow. This reality should be alarming to all states in the region, as all will suffer should the region (or the world) witness the use of nuclear weapons in combat or even during peacetime as tools for coercion. What is needed is both a recognition of the dynamics driving the potential for crisis by national leaders, coupled with deliberate actions to reduce the risks of accident, escalation, and, where possible, reliance on nuclear weapons for anything other than core nuclear deterrence.