It's been coming from all sides as if it's a settled fact, so it's interesting that Leon Panetta says Iran isn't developing nuclear weapons:

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta let slip on Sunday the big open secret that Washington war hawks don’t want widely known: Iran is not developing nuclear weapons.

Appearing on CBS’s Face the Nation on Sunday, Panetta admitted that despite all the rhetoric, Iran is not pursuing the ability to split atoms with weapons, saying it is instead pursuing “a nuclear capability.”

That “capability” falls in line with what Iran has said for years: that it is developing nuclear energy facilities, not nuclear weapons.

“I think the pressure of the sanctions, the diplomatic pressures from everywhere, Europe, the United States, elsewhere, it’s working to put pressure on them,” Panetta explained on Sunday. “To make them understand that they cannot continue to do what they’re doing. Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No. But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us. And our red line to Iran is, do not develop a nuclear weapon. That’s a red line for us.”

Republicans have been beating the drums of war in recent weeks as tensions in the Iranian gulf have soared. Iran has threatened to shut down the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil transport hub crucial to global industry, if U.S. warships return to monitor their activities.

Iran said it was planning to hold military exercises in the Strait of Hormuz in the coming weeks, and prior wargames saw the Iranians test missiles that are designed to sink warships.

UPDATE: "Industrial accident, not nuclear accident."

Breaking news this morning. This was a major decommissioning site for nuclear weapons:

One person has been killed and four injured, one seriously, by an explosion at the southern French nuclear plant of Marcoule.

There were no radioactive leaks after the blast, caused by a fire near a furnace in a radioactive waste storage site, a French nuclear official said.

A security perimeter has been set up because of the risk of leakage.

The plant produces MOX fuel, which recycles plutonium from nuclear weapons, but does not include reactors.

The explosion hit the plant at 1145 local time (0945 GMT).

"For the time being nothing has made it outside," said a spokesman for France's Atomic Energy Commission (CEA).

The Four Wise Men - George Schultz, Sam Nunn, Henry Kissinger, and William Perry - are in the Wall St Journal telling us how they believe we need a new doctrine for strategic deterrence in the post-Cold War era. It's a strange argument - it calls for both reducing the US and Russian nuclear stockpile while retaining nuclear weapons for deterrence against nuclear-weapon states, but everyone else needs to stand down and work out their regional issues. Or as Cartman on South Park would say, "You nah, me nah. Screw you guys, I'm going home."

Fourth, as long as nuclear weapons exist, America must retain a safe, secure and reliable nuclear stockpile primarily to deter a nuclear attack and to reassure our allies through extended deterrence. There is an inherent limit to U.S. and Russian nuclear reductions if other nuclear weapon states build up their inventories or if new nuclear powers emerge.

It is clear, however, that the U.S. and Russia—having led the nuclear buildup for decades—must continue to lead the build-down. The U.S. and its NATO allies, together with Russia, must begin moving away from threatening force postures and deployments including the retention of thousands of short-range battlefield nuclear weapons. All conventional deployments should be reviewed from the aspect of provocation. This will make America, Russia and Europe more secure. It will also set an example for the world.

Fifth, we recognize that for some nations, nuclear weapons may continue to appear relevant to their immediate security. There are certain undeniable dynamics in play—for example, the emergence of a nuclear-armed neighbor, or the perception of inferiority in conventional forces—that if not addressed could lead to the further proliferation of nuclear weapons and an increased risk they will be used. Thus, while the four of us believe that reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence is becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective, some nations will hesitate to draw or act on the same conclusion unless regional confrontations and conflicts are addressed. We must therefore redouble our efforts to resolve these issues.

It's a complicated story. I think it's a careful clarification from the Four Wise Men's perceived earlier "Global Zero" endorsements (see 2007, 2008, and 2009). At best, it's a careful retreat from "Mutual Assured Destruction" but not a commitment to give up threatening other countries with nuclear weapons under the concept of "strategic ambiguity."

It's hard to read "Beltway" rhetoric sometimes, but I'm going to call this the "Cartman strategy. We got our nukes, you got no nukes, let's reduce the chance of conflict in which nukes might be used (or where Teh Terrorists might get one) and leave it at that. You nah, me nah.

Iran's nuclear weapons, North Korea's ballistic missiles, and bioterrorism incidents will always be five years away from threatening the United States, no matter what year it is.

BTW, Happy Birthday to Ziggy Stardust, he turned 64 on Saturday.

In attempts to professionally develop myself in the ways of nuclear weapons strategy, I like to stay abreast of the many articles and discussions ongoing in this field. One of the major challenges is that the discussion on nuclear weapons strategy is often divorced from the general discussion of national strategy. That is to say, paraphrasing Colin Gray in his excellent book "Modern Strategy," the problem with nuclear weapons is that they can't be used as military tools to obtain political objectives during a state-versus-state conflict. Nuclear weapons provide a degree of deterrence against being attacked by other nations' nuclear weapons. But it's hard to develop regional strategies that include the phrase "and here's where we use nukes to win the conflict."

It seems that nonproliferation advocates and nuclear weapons hawks talk about nuclear weapons strategy, while other military analysts and statesmen talk about general military strategy that addresses conventional and irregular warfare. The two groups don't mix. You just don't see the nuclear weapons community reviewing general military strategy or discussing current national security topics, and similarly, the general military analysts and statesmen don't talk about nuclear weapons strategy. So imagine my surprise when I found that the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments had a monograph in Foreign Affairs titled "The Dangers of a Nuclear Iran: The Limits of Containment."

This article was written by former Bush OSD undersecretary for policy Eric Edelman, CSBA president Andrew Krepinevich, and CSBA research fellow Evan Montgomery. You really have to read this to comprehend the neocon mindset, their fixation on developing military options to force Iran to comply with their manufactured reality. Now I understand Edelman coming forward with this paper, but it really does nothing for Krepinevich's reputation to be associated with this really poorly thought-through fantasy world. As for Montgomery, he appears to be the usual (and perhaps gifted) nonproliferation poly-sci analyst, so maybe he can recover from this fiasco.

I'm going to attempt to summarize the high points of this 16-page paper, not that you couldn't run through this article quickly enough. Essentially the authors argue that any strategy to contain Iran's nuclear weapons program will fail, because:

• US diplomacy sucks and nonproliferation activities are a joke; extended deterrence is a unique situation that only works with Russia
• Iran will get more aggressive once they get nukes and US allies will change allegiances to accomodate the new nuclear power
• The United States will not be able to offer assurances to US regional partners, because it's reducing the number of its nuclear weapons through New START
• Israel can't be counted on to hold back from a first-strike attack against Iran, and Israel can't admit to having nukes, because that will make Israeli-Arab relations more difficult (they could be worse?)
• Iran's nuclear program will result in Saudi Arabia asking Pakistan for nuclear weapons, while other Arab nations will use nuclear energy technology as a pretext for preparing their own nuclear weapons programs (what NPT?)
• Because Iran can't be counted on to protect their nukes from internal threats or harden them against external threats, they're going to use the nukes at the first opportunity if they are attacked

Amazingly, one of the statements they make is that any missile defense system can be overwhelmed by a response by conventional ballistic missiles, which would leave "countries vulnerable to follow-on attacks with nuclear weapons." One wonders how the neocons (or anyone else, for that matter) can support the European missile defense effort with this observation. But let me lead into their recommendations. Instead of "accepting the unacceptable," the authors want to go with Will Roger's advice of using diplomacy as a distraction while one reaches for a big rock.

• First, continue diplomatic talks and economic sanctions so that the United States can demonstrate that it wanted a non-military approach before it uses "more forceful measures"
• Second, support clandestine activities such as Stuxnet to sabotage and slow down the Iranian nuclear program, gaining more time to prepare military forces
• Third, deploy significant military assets into the region, including stealth bombers, precision-guided munitions, electronic warfare systems, guided missile submarines, sea-based missile defense platforms, and maybe a second Navy carrier strike group

Now, to end the article, the authors note that there is that nasty risk that war with Iran might actually have consequences; that containment might in fact work and allow the United States to use those military assets to "defend vital interests elsewhere." But "containment could require a far larger military presence than the United States has traditionally maintained in the Middle East," even as the authors voice their support for significantly increasing conventional forces in the Middle East under their plan.

I'm just astonished, overcome by the strawman that they've developed. There are just so many things wrong with this construct, it is hard to put words against it. Nonproliferation activities, to include sanctions, have been shown to work in retarding and in some cases, reversing offensive WMD programs. Yes, military options are another facet, if a conflict is seen as on the horizon. But the failure here to understand the basic need for a regional approach to enhance stability and advance American interests is just staggering.

This is the real danger of allowing idealists, of which neocons are a party, into positions of actual responsibility. They create worst-case scenarios that justify taking extreme measures that they believe will lead to the reality that they want, rather than dealing with the reality that actually exists. This fradulent attempt at dismissing the option of containing Iran should not stand unopposed, and I do hope that other serious defense analysts will rise up against the strawman that these authors have developed.

Matt Eckel at Foreign Policy Watch points to this NYT article discussing the Obama administration's next arms control topic - "non-strategic" or tactical nuclear weapons. From the NYT:

Today, the United States retains about 500 tactical weapons, according to the figures released this year, and experts say about 180 of them are still stationed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Turkey. Russia has between 3,000 and 5,000 of them, depending on the estimate, and American officials have said Moscow moved more of them closer to NATO allies as recently as last spring in response to the deployment of American missile defense installations closer to its territory.

In the 21st century, there is no plausible military, political or deterrent justification for the Russian government to deploy several thousand such weapons,” said Frank Miller, a former national security aide to President George W. Bush and now now at the Scowcroft Group in Washington.

Baker Spring of the Heritage Foundation believes that any deal to withdraw tactical nukes from Europe would ultimately benefit Russia in the Great Game that is war. And of course, neither belief here is entirely true. Given that Russia has a rather weak conventional military force, it relies on tactical nuclear weapons as a defensive measure to discourage any ideas of invasion or border challenges.  As Matt notes, it's all in the context of general military operations and strategy.

Without getting into the specifics of where tactical nuclear weapons are deployed, or the minutae of their operation, I'd simply point out that, for all the well-intentioned efforts to depict nuclear war as its own ballgame with its own rules, war is war. People are killed just as dead by conventional weapons as by nuclear ones. Thus, the balance of conventional forces needs to be considered when assessing the wisdom of a given nuclear deal. In other words, NATO presumably relies less on tactical nukes than the Russians because NATO's conventional forces are more capable than those of Russia. Even if a deal with Russia allowed Russian tactical nukes to be more readily deployable than American ones, that would not ipso facto give Russia an overall strategic advantage. It may be that, even with Russian tactical nukes more easily deployed, NATO forces would still prevail in a ground war. And in the meantime, there would be far fewer tactical nukes overall, reducing the (far more plausible) likelihood of theft or unauthorized use.

We don't need US tactical nukes in Europe, nor do we really need US military forces in terms of Army brigades and Air Force fighter/bomber wings in Europe. Both are there for "security assurance" reasons, so European nations can continue to underfund their defense programs and not worry about the Russian bear coming across the border. It's so indicative of a twen-cen mindset. And what will become an ironic satire of the New START talks, all the Republicans who were moaning about how tac nukes weren't addressed in the treaty will be sure to argue vehemently that we cannot afford to take any out of Europe in the near future.

It's official now - all living Secretary of States, including six Republicans and two Democrats, are in favor of ratifying New START. The one hold out was, until this week, Condoleezza Rice.  Laura Rozen spilled the beans. Rice's statement of support - with caveats - is behind the WSJ subscription wall, but reprinted in part here.

First, smaller forces make the modernization of our nuclear infrastructure even more urgent. Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona has led a valiant effort in this regard. Thanks to his efforts, roughly $84 billion is being allocated to the Department of Energy's nuclear weapons complex. Ratifying the treaty will help cement these commitments, and Congress should fully fund the president's program. Congress should also support the Defense Department in modernizing our launchers as suggested in the recent defense strategy study coauthored by former Secretary of Defense Bill Perry and former National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

Second, the Senate must make absolutely clear that in ratifying this treaty, the U.S. is not re-establishing the Cold War link between offensive forces and missile defenses. New Start's preamble is worrying in this regard, as it recognizes the "interrelationship" of the two. Administration officials have testified that there is no link, and that the treaty will not limit U.S. missile defenses. But Congress should ensure that future Defense Department budgets reflect this.

Moscow contends that only current U.S. missile-defense plans are acceptable under the treaty. But the U.S. must remain fully free to explore and then deploy the best defenses—not just those imagined today. That includes pursuing both potential qualitative breakthroughs and quantitative increases.

Now Sen. Kyl isn't going to budge just because GWB's main squeeze says the treaty's good, but now she can sleep easier at night, knowing she's (finally) joined the greybeards of her party in doing the right thing. It's interesting that she draws this artificial condition, that US missile defense should be protected from any treaty agreements. For one, it's already been established by numerous civilian and military experts that US missile defense isn't constrained by this treaty. For another, you may remember her testimony in the summer of 2001 was that the Bush administration's top priority was the national missile defense program, not terrorism.

So how did eight years of spending $7-10 billion a year on missile defense turn out?  Not so good by 2005, not good in 2008, and still not so good today. I guess the US missile defense program needs all the breaks it can get. Way to go, Condi! You've really nailed the important issue here.

In today's Washington Post, the senior Republican statesmen appeal (again) for their colleagues in the Senate to ratify New START.

Republican presidents have long led the crucial fight to protect the United States against nuclear dangers. That is why Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush negotiated the SALT I, START I and START II agreements. It is why President George W. Bush negotiated the Moscow Treaty. All four recognized that reducing the number of nuclear arms in an open, verifiable manner would reduce the risk of nuclear catastrophe and increase the stability of America's relationship with the Soviet Union and, later, the Russian Federation. The world is safer today because of the decades-long effort to reduce its supply of nuclear weapons.

As a result, we urge the Senate to ratify the New START treaty signed by President Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It is a modest and appropriate continuation of the START I treaty that expired almost a year ago. It reduces the number of nuclear weapons that each side deploys while enabling the United States to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent and preserving the flexibility to deploy those forces as we see fit. Along with our obligation to protect the homeland, the United States has responsibilities to allies around the world. The commander of our nuclear forces has testified that the 1,550 warheads allowed under this treaty are sufficient for all our missions - and seven former nuclear commanders agree. The defense secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the head of the Missile Defense Agency - all originally appointed by a Republican president - argue that New START is essential for our national defense.

Yeah. Even though three-quarters of the American public and more than 40 newspaper editorial shops agree, good luck with that argument, gentlemen. All the moderate Republicans have left the Congress. But I'm sure Godot is coming any minute now.

SHORTER David Broder: "If President Obama wants New START badly enough, he'll give Sen. Kyl everything he wants."

Yeah... except Kyl was already offered a robustly funded nuclear weapons budget and promises that the treaty wouldn't hurt the US national missile defense program, everything he asked for. Kyl just doesn't like arms control treaties, which I can understand better than the false acts of these so-called moderate Republicans pretending that they don't know which side to take.

Consider Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME). She thinks that it would help to get either Bush 41 or Bush 43 to publicly support the treaty, while ignoring the existing support from Republican statesmen James Baker III, Henry Kissinger, Brent Scowcraft, George Schultz, Kenneth Duberstein, Howard Baker, and Collen Powell. And then of course there's the numerous military four-stars, active and retired, who have all come out for this treaty. The "moderate" Senate Repubs can't cross the Borg Republican mind-hive, but they also know the New START treaty is good enough to ratify by anyone's measures. It does make one wonder who the real adversary is.

The investigative team at Truthout has a stunning story raising serious questions about the information that was thought to reveal a nuclear arms program in Iran -- and Israel's Mossad appears to have provided the false intelligence.

Are we about to be tricked into yet another war under false pretenses? Why isn't the mainstream media asking these questions?

The Obama administration says there can be no diplomatic negotiations with Iran unless Iran satisfies the IAEA fully in regard to the allegations derived from the documents that it had covert nuclear weapons program.

That position is based on the premise that the intelligence documents that Iran has been asked to explain are genuine. The evidence now available, however, indicates that they are fabrications.

The drawings of the Iranian missile warhead that were said by the IAEA to show an intent to accommodate a nuclear weapon actually depict a missile design that Iran is now known to have already abandoned in favor of an improved model by the time the technical drawings were allegedly made. And one of the major components of the purported Iranian military research program allegedly included a project labeled with a number that turns out to have been assigned by Iran's civilian nuclear authority years before the covert program is said to have been initiated.

The former head of the agency's safeguards department, Olli Heinonen, who shaped its approach to the issue of the intelligence documents from 2005 and 2010, has offered no real explanation for these anomalies in recent interviews with Truthout.

These telltale indicators of fraud bring into question the central pillar of the case against Iran and raise more fundamental questions about the handling of the Iranian nuclear issue by the IAEA, the United States and its key European allies.

[...] The origin of the laptop documents may never be proven conclusively, but the accumulated evidence points to Israel as the source. As early as 1995, the head of the Israel Defense Forces' military intelligence research and assessment division, Yaakov Amidror, tried unsuccessfully to persuade his American counterparts that Iran was planning to "go nuclear." By 2003-2004, Mossad's reporting on the Iranian nuclear program was viewed by high-ranking CIA officials as an effort to pressure the Bush administration into considering military action against Iran's nuclear sites, according to Israeli sources cited by a pro-Israeli news service.

In the summer of 2003, Israel's international intelligence agency, Mossad, had established an aggressive program aimed at exerting influence on the Iran nuclear issue by leaking alleged intelligence to governments and the news media, as Israeli officials acknowledged to journalists Douglas Frantz and Catherine Collins. According to the book, "The Nuclear Jihadist," as part of the program, Mossad sometimes passed on purported Iranian documents supposedly obtained by Israeli spies inside Iran.

German sources have suggested that the intelligence documents were conveyed to the US government, directly or indirectly, by a group that had been collaborating closely with Mossad. Soon after Secretary of State Colin Powell made the existence of the laptop documents public in November 2004, Karsten Voight, the coordinator of German-American cooperation in the German Foreign Ministry, was quoted in The Wall Street Journal as saying that they had been transferred by an Iranian "dissident group." A second German source familiar with the case was even more explicit. "I can assure you," the source told me in 2007, "that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organization." That was a reference to the Mujahideen-E-Khalq (MEK), also known as the People's Mujahideen of Iran, the armed Iranian exile group designated as a terrorist organization by the US State Department.

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