Nicole Grajewski and Jane Darby Menton | Texas National Security Review
This article situates the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in the global nuclear order, emphasizing how the region has both challenged and spurred adaptations in international nuclear governance for decades. It then examines two pressing contemporary issues: the uncertain trajectory of Iran’s nuclear program after Israeli and US military strikes in June 2025, and the anticipated expansion of nuclear energy across MENA, which could also result in more countries with capabilities that would be conducive to pursuing the bomb.
Jon Gambrell and Amir Vahdat | AP News
Iran’s theocracy prepared Sunday for a possible confrontation with the West after the United Nations reimposed sanctions over its nuclear program, even as some pushed for continued negotiations to ease the economic pain squeezing the country. The sanctions imposed before dawn Sunday again freeze Iranian assets abroad, halt arms deals with Tehran and penalize any development of Iran’s ballistic missile program, among other measures. It came via a mechanism known as “snapback,” included in Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers.
Farnoush Amiri, Stephanie Liechtenstein, and Edith M. Lederer | AP News
The U.N. Security Council on Friday rejected a last-ditch effort to delay reimposing sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, a decision that the country’s president immediately called “unfair, unjust and illegal.” The decision on the “snapback sanctions” came a day before the deadline and after Western countries claimed weeks of meetings failed to result in a concrete agreement… Four countries — China, Russia, Pakistan and Algeria — once again supported giving Iran more time to negotiate with the European countries.
Andrew E. Kramer | The New York Times
A slow-motion crisis has been unfolding at a giant nuclear power plant in Russian-occupied southeastern Ukraine. The failure of a high-tension power line in an area of combat is raising the risk of an eventual failure of cooling systems that keep nuclear fuel from melting down in the switched-off reactors at the plant, in Zaporizhzhia… The power loss poses no immediate risk of a meltdown or an explosion. But it removes another layer of safety measures from a plant already operating on a razor-thin margin for error.
Warren P. Strobel and Jarrett Ley | The Washington Post
Iran has increased construction at a mysterious underground site in the months since the U.S. and Israel pummeled its main nuclear facilities, suggesting Tehran has not entirely ceased work on its suspected weapons program and may be cautiously rebuilding... The ongoing work is at a site known as Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, or Pickaxe Mountain, where since 2020 Iranian engineers have been tunneling deep into the Zagros mountain range — about a mile south of the nuclear complex at Natanz, which was a target of U.S. bombing strikes on June 22.
Reuters/Yahoo
North Korea will never give up its nuclear program, the country's Vice Foreign Minister Kim Son Gyong told the United Nations General Assembly on Monday, describing it as "tantamount to demanding it to surrender sovereignty and right to existence." It was the first time North Korea had dispatched an official from Pyongyang to address the annual gathering of world leaders for the General Assembly since the country's foreign minister traveled to New York in 2018.