With Iran, Biden Can’t Let Perfect Be the Enemy of Good
James M. Acton | Foreign Policy
Last week, Iran announced that it had started enriching uranium to 20 percent at its underground Fordow facility. This step is a serious escalation in a long-running crisis—but, even more ominously, it is also a threat. Iran is apparently signaling that if the 2015 nuclear deal—formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action —is not salvaged in the weeks after U.S. President-elect Joe Biden takes office, it will further ramp up its nuclear program to strengthen its hand ahead of any future negotiations. Under these circumstances, any new agreement would likely be worse than resuscitating the current deal. In spite of the Trump administration’s best efforts, the Iran deal has not collapsed completely. In 2018, the administration ceased providing Iran with promised sanctions relief.
North Korea Ends Party Meeting With Calls for Nuclear Might
Kim Tong-Hyung | AP
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed all-out efforts to bolster his country’s nuclear deterrent during a major ruling party meeting where he earlier laid out plans to work toward salvaging the broken economy. Separately, Kim’s powerful sister criticized South Korea’s military for saying it had seen an apparent military parade taking place in Pyongyang. Kim Yo Jong, who was described last year as being in charge of inter-Korean relations, said in a statement Wednesday that such close tracking proved Seoul’s “hostile approach” toward its rival. The eight-day Workers’ Party congress that ended Tuesday came as Kim Jong Un faces what appears to be the toughest moment of his nine-year rule.
Korea to Conduct Underwater Test of Submarine-Launched Missile
Yu Yong-weon | Chosun Ilbo
South Korea completed dry tests of the country's first submarine-launched ballistic missile late last year and is now planning to conduct underwater tests. The development lags behind North Korea, which has been developing its own SLBMs with much longer ranges since 2015. A new 3,000-ton submarine that will be delivered to the Navy in March is expected to conduct the tests. “Underwater tests will be carried out this year,” a military source said Wednesday. “But the specific dates haven't been fixed yet. If North Korea fires an SLBM as a provocation, the tests will come sooner.” The missile has a range of about 500 km and is a remodeled version of the Hyunmu-2B ballistic missile.
Iran Works on Uranium Metal for Reactor Fuel in New Breach of Nuclear Deal
Francois Murphy | Reuters
Iran has started work on uranium metal-based fuel for a research reactor, the U.N. nuclear watchdog and Tehran said on Wednesday, in the latest breach of its nuclear deal with six major powers as the country presses for a lifting of U.S. sanctions. Iran has been accelerating its breaches of the deal in the past two months. Some of those steps were required by a law passed in response to the killing of its top nuclear scientist in November, which Tehran has blamed on its arch-foe Israel. They are also, however, part of a process started by Tehran in 2019 of committing breaches in response to U.S. President Donald Trump’s 2018 withdrawal from the deal and his reimposition of U.S. sanctions that the deal lifted in exchange for restrictions on Iran’s nuclear activities.
Wary of Biden Tack on Iran, Israel Revisits Military Options, Newspaper Says
Dan Williams | Reuters
Israel is revising military options for a possible clash with Iran, an Israeli newspaper reported on Thursday, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government braces for differences with the incoming U.S. administration on Iranian nuclear policy. U.S. President Donald Trump delighted Netanyahu by quitting the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and reimposing sanctions on it that had been lifted in return for limits on activities that could, potentially, produce nuclear weapons in the future. Tehran responded by breaching many of those restrictions. President-elect Joe Biden wants to rejoin the deal if Tehran - which denies seeking the bomb - returns to strict compliance. Israel, alarmed by Iranian rhetoric that it is a state that should not exist, is wary of the softer line, even though threats of U.S. military action from Trump did not curtail Iran’s nuclear moves.
Back to the Future? The New Missile Crisis
Ulrich Kühn | Leibniz Institute for Contemporary History
The 1987 INF Treaty between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Elimination of their Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles—more commonly referred to as the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty—can easily be considered a landmark arms control and disarmament treaty. It was the first bilateral agreement between the Soviet Union and the United States to effectively eliminate a whole class of missiles and missile launchers. It lifted the most imminent nuclear threat to Western Europe, served as a significant turning point in U.S.–Soviet relations, and introduced the most intrusive verification measures up to that point.