At the end of December, the Senate ratified the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) Treaty by a vote of 71-26. Many Senators who voiced concerns regarding the treaty’s provisions and implications were persuaded to vote for it after receiving assurances from the Obama Administration that our nuclear weapons would receive much needed modernization. Although I trust these promises were made in good faith, we must ensure they will be kept through the passage of binding legislation. On May 5th, with the support of House Armed Services Chairman (HASC) …
Iran is getting dangerously close to developing a nuclear weapon, according to Richard Weitz’s recent article, which is informed by the documents and reports of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The IAEA believes that Iran could acquire nuclear weapons within one to five years. Iran has continuously ignored IAEA’s requests for information about its nuclear facilities and heavy water projects, and it refuses to provide information about its Fordow Enrichment Site near Qom. In addition, the IR-40 reactor that it is building in Arak is very similar to reactors …
Iran is one of the most dangerous and evil regimes in the world. The protests in Egypt and Tunisia have distracted U.S. attention from its nuclear programs. This makes recent Iranian protests all the more important, reminding us yet again of the oppressive nature of the Iranian regime, a regime that poses even more dangers if regional instability expands its sphere of influence and emboldens it to press ahead even more rapidly with its development of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. The U.S. needs to refocus the international spotlight on …
HERZLIYA, ISRAEL. Emergence of a nuclear Iran; turmoil in Egypt and destabilization of secular, pro-Western Middle Eastern states; blurring of the lines between unconventional, conventional, and low-intensity conflicts; explosion of information challenges in and around the battlefields—all of these concerns will increasingly challenge U.S. and regional policymakers and military commanders in the Middle East and beyond. These were conclusions at Israel’s flagship national security event, the Herzliya Conference, which ended February 9. The prestigious conference, organized by Interdisciplinary College Herzliya, attracted NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen; U.K. Defense Minister …
Before the State of the Union address, Heritage Foundation scholars laid out five foreign policy and national security commitments that needed to be in the speech. The President scored about 1 out of 5. The speech did nothing to dispel concerns that the Obama Doctrine just does not make the grade. A Commitment to Peace and Prosperity Through Strength. Grade: “0.” The President’s call for a federal spending freeze did not include “security.” The problem is that the White House’s five-year budget forecast already calls for cuts (in constant dollars) …
As Presidents Hu Jintao and Barack Obama meet in Washington, DC, it is important to note that this is different from Cold War era summits, as the United States and China share far more common interests, including economic concerns, than the US and the USSR ever did. At the same time, however, it is also important to recognize that there are major security areas that remain of concern, and nuclear weapons is one of those areas. China fields a far smaller nuclear arsenal than the USSR did, but it is …
The impact of U.S. sanctions against Iran and other state sponsors of terrorism have been undermined by loopholes that allow exemptions for humanitarian, agricultural and medical exports, according to a report in The New York Times. Most of the loopholes were created by a 2000 law that created exemptions for agricultural and medical exports for humanitarian purposes and resulted in $1.7 billion of U.S. exports to Iran in the last ten years. Although these exports have not directly aided Iran’s military buildup, some of the exemptions have benefited Iranian companies …
The sudden firing of Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki while he was abroad on a diplomatic mission lying for his country is a sign of growing political tension within Iran’s increasingly isolated government. The abrupt sacking of Mottaki, who has served as Iran’s top diplomat since the installation of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government in 2005, is another indication of growing schisms in the ruling establishment, which is under increasing international pressure due to its continued defiance on the nuclear issue. Mottaki has been replaced on an interim basis by the head of …
Why is the Obama administration frantically trying to push New START, a strategic arms-control agreement with Russia, through the “lame duck” session of Congress? Because of the president’s deep commitment to U.S. nuclear disarmament. He fears that New START may not garner the necessary votes in the new Congress. He also realizes that a failure to approve the treaty in the departing Senate could undermine his broader policy to curb nuclear weapons and eventually eliminate them. But these concerns shouldn’t trump the newly elected senators’ opportunity to review a significant …
Today, representatives of Iran and the P5 + 1 (the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council plus Germany) convened for talks on Iran’s nuclear program in Geneva. These are the first face-to-face talks on that subject for 14 months. Iran’s unpredictable regime broke off talks last year after initially accepting “in principle” a nuclear deal that would have sent much of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium out of the country in exchange for more highly enriched uranium to fuel the Tehran research reactor. This time around, Western diplomats …
