I’d forgotten about this:

Hans Blix gave a speech to CFR a little more than 5 years ago. I will write more about it, but will leave you with his use of the Pottery Barn theory in discussing a possible military invasion of Iran:

So the suspicion came there, and I don’t think that—the main objection to it on the U.S. and Western side to an attack, I think, again—I’m sorry to say—I don’t think it’s the U.N. charter. I mean, as a lawyer, I think it would be illegal. Iran has not attacked. And there’s no—there would be no authorization. I think that the main reason will be that they don’t know where it will end, that (inaudible) situation in a foreign Middle East is difficult enough anyway, so they don’t know where—it’s like a pot—Colin Powell said that, if you break the pot, you own it.

They weren’t metal and had no songs about nuclear war, AFAICT. But, according to my arbitrary rules, it would be wrong to omit Operation Ivy from any discussion about music and WMD.

Lint: “You can tell Operation Ivy, but you can’t tell ’em much.”

A number of interviews published by the UN Digital Library are relevant to the Iraq WMD issue in audio and print form.

• Charlies Duelfer
• Ewen Buchanan
• David Kay
• Hans Blix
• Kofi Annan
• Robert Gallucci
• Rolf Ekeus

I am lucky enough to have met most of these people over the years. These are worth a listen.

Two articles I have written during the past couple of years:

“Lessons Learned from Denuclearizing States” in Arms Control Today.

“The JCPOA and Safeguards: Model or Outlier?” in the Nonproliferation Review.

Ben Rhodes has a passage in his book, The World as It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House, which exemplifies a certain attitude with respect to diplomacy:

There was a final flurry of meetings in late November 2013. As Kerry negotiated in Geneva with the Iranians and the other P5+1 countries, he’d call back with different formulations on the remaining issues. One of the most contentious was an Iranian insistence that we recognize their “right to enrich uranium”—the process necessary for a civil nuclear program (and a nuclear weapons program); we didn’t want to recognize a right to enrich, and we wanted to assert that any Iranian enrichment had to be negotiated with the P5+1. We had conference call after call, arguing over the most minute language, with Susan demanding changes in wording. Kerry reached a breaking point, shouting into the phone—“Susan, this is a goddamn good deal!” I was a little worried, but Susan assured me that she was just bucking him up. “I want John to be as worried about us as the Iranians,” she said.

Not an uplifting song, but it is the title track. The cover art speaks for itself.

Here’s a bonus…We Gotta Know:

A few days ago, I noted on Twitter that the AEOI published some (relatively) new images of Iranian centrifuges. And this post has some new-ish centrifuge details.

Turns out there’s an ISNA article from November 13 which has some more details (though there is some overlap with the previous post. Not at liberty to share the whole thing, but the cite is: “What Is Going on in Hall S8 of Natanz Site?” (ISNA, published by Ensaf News on 11/13/19). Before we get to the substance, I feel compelled to point out this line:

The S8 hall was like a small farm with all sorts of products…The machines were placed in a way as if we had entered a family gathering with fat, skinny, short, tall, powerful, weak, quick, and slow children.

Anyway, we learn from this article that the IR-9 is 5.5 meters tall and has a capacity of 50 SWU. Also, the IR-6 “is capable of enriching uranium eight times more than the first generation machines”

Other SWU capacities:

• IR-6s: 6 SWU
• IR-6m: 12 SWU
• IR-6sm: 8 SWU (FWIW, Iran called this the IR-6smo in a letter to the IAEA)
• IR-s: 12 SWU (A “short and fat machine.”)
• IR-7: 20 SWU

Worth remembering that one of Iran’s major incentives negotiate the JCPOA was ending the UNSC Chapter VII treatment of Tehran’s nuclear program. President Rouhani suggested as much this last month:

Dr Rouhani noted, “Some tell us ‘you wasted time talking to the International Atomic Energy Agency, the agency is controlled by the US and the superpowers, and talking to it is futile’, while some say we can negotiate for years and reach a conclusion”.“We were able to resolve the PMD case and announce that the case was closed. This is very heavy for some to take, like a bomb being dropped on them,” said the President.The president added, “When we were negotiating with the six major powers, some would say that these talks are of no use and that we have to resist, while some were in favour of negotiation”.Dr Rouhani pointed out, “It is not easy to negotiate with the six major powers of the world and get them to repeal and retract the six Chapter-VII resolutions. In addition, no country’s right to nuclear activities has not been approved by the United Nations, while it happened only for Iran, which is included in Resolution 2231”.

In his 2019 book The Back Channel, Burns has perhaps the best succinct summary of the Libyan decision to eliminate its WMD Programs:

At that moment in early 2005, the Libyan experience proved that diplomacy could accomplish significant changes in the behavior of difficult regimes. Of course it had to be backed up by other forms of leverage—many years of U.S. and multilateral sanctions; a solid international consensus, codified in UN Security Council resolutions; and the credible threat of force. It also mattered that we set consistent and achievable benchmarks for the negotiations on Lockerbie, terrorism, and weapons of mass destruction (WMD), delivered on our end of the deal, and over a period of years built up a fair amount of trust. Regime change was never the goal, and the Libyan leadership gradually developed a self-interest in changing behavior. It saw little benefit in winding up on the wrong side of the post–9/11 divide, and we provided a difficult but navigable pathway to a form of practical redemption. (page 309).