Laboratory sickness/Infects humanity/No hope for cure/Die by technology

In a March 4 reply to the Lok Sabha, India’s Minstery of External Affairs, explained that

State ISN tweeted a link to some newly-declassified documents related to the NPT.

There is assuredly material of considerable scholarly value in the collection. But this one gives insight into the minutiae of such a diplomatic effort.

I really love this last one. I’m genuinely not taking the piss; this stuff is important.

Adding to this post, here’s Iran’s response to the 3 March IAEA DG report:

Explanatory Note On the Report of the IAEA Director General entitled “NPT Safeguards Agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran (GOV/2020/15)”

Speaks for itself.

Wicked metal

The NYT has this one, which is about the implementation of Iran’s CSA.

ISIS has this one, which is about monitoring of the JCPOA.

I know that this information lives elsewhere, but this February 11 RevCon document has a pretty good summary of the history behind the Zangger Committee.

Lt General (Retd) Khalid Kidwai: Deterrence, Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control – Keynote Address (IISS Event) 6 Feb 2020:

I can still milk this for a while.

In his lengthy 2006 interview, Tyler Drumheller discussed the role of intelligence from Iraqi emigres. Drumheller noted: “I believe there was serious consideration, at least briefly, given to the ‘Afghanistan solution’ for Iraq. Then by the summer [of 2002], it was clear we were going to war with Iraq.”

He explained further:

…a lot of it was driven by émigré reporting. Also during that spring, Dr. Rice made a speech when she said, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud,” and the vice president said, “There’s no doubt that they have [reconstituted their nuclear program].” That had to come from these émigré sources, because we weren’t reporting that. Even the Pentagon wasn’t reporting that, that I saw. 

He also weighed in on European intel services’ view of the Iraq WMD threat, as well as what the intel actually said:

They always say, “Well, all these other European services and all these other countries around the world felt the same way.” Well, no, it wasn’t exactly the same way. They were all concerned; there was a general fear that Saddam was building [weapons] because Saddam was Saddam. … It’s the way he kept his enemies inside and outside the country off balance. This general view developed that the inspectors were a bunch of clowns, which wasn’t true. The inspectors are very serious guys, and they actually did an effective job — not perfect, but they were pretty effective. But the intelligence that was coming in was saying that there aren’t any weapons, the actual hard intelligence... most of it’s coming from the inspectors — I mean, not intelligence reporting from the inspectors through the IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency], but we had other very sensitive stuff.

Lastly, this is what he had to say about political pressure on the IC:

…the Silberman-Robb [commission] report and the SSCI report would say there was no direct political pressure [on the intelligence community], and that’s true. Nobody ever came up and said, “Write this NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] in that way.” But if you’ve been around Washington long enough, you know when there’s pressure. These are bureaucracies: The CIA is a bureaucracy; the Pentagon is a bureaucracy. People want to get ahead, and the way to get ahead was to move ahead on Iraq. And there were a lot of people that were concerned. 

Performed by Sepultura. Lyrics by Jello Biafra.