Nuclear Policy News – May 28, 2019

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TOP NEWS

Zarif Says Iran Not Seeking Nuclear Weapons
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Trump Says Not Bothered By North Korea Missile Tests
Eurasia Review

New START Must Be Extended, Without or Without China
The National Interest – Daryl Kimball

Middle East

Iran slams U.S. for ‘causing tensions’ after Trump nuclear weapons comment
Japan Times5/28/2019
Iran hit out at the United States on Monday for “causing tensions” after President Donald Trump said his government was not seeking regime change and that he would welcome talks with Tehran.

Trump: U.S. Wants Iran Without Nuclear Weapons, Not Seeking Regime Change
Payvand5/27/2019
U.S. President Donald Trump, who is on a state visit to Japan, has said that the United States is not seeking regime change in Iran, amid heightened tensions between the two countries. “We’re not looking for regime change, we’re looking for no nuclear weapons,” Trump said after talks with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Tokyo, adding that he thinks “we’ll make a deal” with Tehran.

Zarif Says Iran Not Seeking Nuclear Weapons
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty5/27/2019
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has said Tehran is not seeking nuclear weapons as tensions escalate with the United States. Zarif’s remarks on May 27 came the same day that U.S. President Donald Trump said Washington was not seeking regime change in Iran but wanted to ensure Tehran did not produce nuclear arms.

Turkish Military, Defying U.S., Trains to Use Russian Missile Defense
The Wall Street Journal5/23/2019
Turkey’s armed forces have begun training to use a Russian missile-defense system that it purchased despite U.S. warnings, deepening a rift between the two NATO allies. Turkey is scheduled to receive the Russian-made S-400 system in July and its military is training to operate it, a senior Turkish government official said in Washington on Wednesday.

U.S. Nuclear News

Senate panel advances Trump’s military budget boost with tough road ahead
Defense News5/23/2019
Senate Armed Services Committee members unveiled a $750 billion budget plan for fiscal 2020, including $3.6 billion to replace construction money taken from border wall projects and what lawmakers called a “realistic” plan for a significant plus-up of military spending next year.

East Asia

Trump Says Not Bothered By North Korea Missile Tests
Eurasia Review5/28/2019
U.S. President Donald Trump and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed differing views Monday on whether recent North Korean missile tests violated a U.N. Security Council resolution, but remained united on the ultimate goal of achieving a denuclearized Korean Peninsula.

Trump finds himself increasingly alone on North Korea
Politico5/27/2019
President Donald Trump is isolating himself from allies and even his own advisers on North Korea, eager to insist that his denuclearization efforts will be successful going into a 2020 re-election bid.

South Asia

India Naval Ambitions and Strategic Stability of South Asia
Modern Diplomacy5/28/2019
The Feb-March 2019 short lived military engagement between India and Pakistan has however raised significant questions regarding India’s power projection capabilities vis-a-vis Pakistan. On 5th March 2019, Pakistan navy detected and prevented an Indian submarine from infiltrating Pakistan’s maritime borders.

Opinion/Analysis/Commentary

Not a good season for arms control
European Leadership Network – Franklin C. Miller5/22/2019
Presbyterians are familiar with “the great Ends of the Church”: those six missions which the church seeks to accomplish. The arms control/disarmament community, which has many of its own canons, could use a similar “Great Ends” statement in order that its members might remember what they should be seeking to accomplish.

New START Must Be Extended, Without or Without China
The National Interest – Daryl Kimball5/27/2019
The baffling non-answers from the senior administration officials strongly suggest that the president’s impulse for a grand U.S.-Chinese-Russian arms control bargain is not backed up with a realistic plan.

Managing nuclear risks: The emerging technologies challenge
Observer Research Foundation – Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan5/27/2019
Conversations around nuclear risks and the need for strategic stability have picked up momentum in the run up to the 2020 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference. Nuclear risks are changing for the worse because of geopolitical and technological changes, but the latter, in particular, needs to be addressed much more directly.

Special Interest

U.S. Nuclear Command and Control For The 21st Century
Nautilus Institute- John R. Harvey5/24/2019
In this essay, John Harvey asserts that the US NC3 system “must seek vastly improved senior leader conferencing capabilities to support decisions that go beyond what some of us call the Cold War’s “multiple choice test”—that is, which major attack option to execute.

Fears Grow That ‘Nuclear Coffin’ Is Leaking Waste Into The Pacific
Science5/27/2019
Today, there are growing concerns that the temporary containment of the nuclear waste resulting from those tests is leaking into the Pacific Ocean and could be cracked wide open from the next storm that rolls by. Specifically, the site is believed to be leaking one of the most toxic substances in the world, the radioactive isotope plutonium-239, a byproduct of nuclear bombs that decays with a half-life of 24,100 years.

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