Former Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim wrote a “piece”:http://www.aucegypt.edu/GAPP/CairoReview/Pages/articleDetails.aspx?aid=64 for the Cairo Review of Global Affairs a while back. It covers a range of topics, including the diplomacy which produced the May 2010 “Tehran Declaration.”:http://www.mfa.gov.tr/17_05_2010-joint-declaration-of-the-ministers-of-foreign-affairs-of-turkey_-iran-and-brazil_.en.mfa

After citing Brazil’s past work on nuclear issues, Iraq, and the CD, Amorim explains that his government also got involved because of “Brazil was also interested in developing her economic and commercial ties with a country roughly the same size as Turkey and Egypt.”

The article gives a fair amount of background on the negotiations, most/all of which you probably know. But it’s good to get it from another official source.

Perhaps the most interesting addition to the record is Amorim’s assessment of the discussions:

bq. Iran made voluntary concessions regarding three central points that she had been resisting before Brazil and Turkey joined the talks. *It is fair to ask why Brazil and Turkey succeeded where the major powers had consistently failed.* Probably the main reason consists in the fact that *Brazil and Turkey have good relations with Iran.* We talk to her government with respect and understanding. Second, *Brazil and Turkey are non-nuclear states, thus enjoying far greater legitimacy in negotiating issues related to Iran’s nuclear file.* Third, *the two countries did not prejudge that the Iranian nuclear program was necessarily for non-peaceful ends.* Giving the benefit of the doubt is both a powerful encouragement and a valuable bargaining chip in a negotiation. *Finally, Brazil and Turkey have always recognized Iran’s right to a peaceful nuclear program,* to which every member of the NPT is entitled, so long as the clauses of the treaty and the regulations of the IAEA are respected.

Well. Russia, the UK, and the US, along with UN S-G Ban Ki-moon, “announced”:http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2011/sg2180.doc.htm that Finland will host “the 2012 Conference on the establishment of a Middle East zone free of nuclear weapons and all other weapons of mass destruction.” The joint statement says that Jaakko Laajava, Under-Secretary of State, Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, will be the facilitator.

I knew that the IAEA had received information from Pakistan regarding the AQ Khan network, but Olli Heinonen recently gave an “interview”:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,790042,00.html to Der Spiegel in which he said that Khan had communicated with him:

bq.. SPIEGEL: Have you ever met Khan? Were you at least able to question him after his arrest in Islamabad in 2004?

Heinonen: I followed his trail for years, and met several of his confidantes. But I never got to speak to him. *Nevertheless, he answered some of my questions in writing through secret channels.*

p. Heinonen’s response to AQK’s “denial”:http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,770746,00.html of a nuclear black market’s existence is also amusing:

bq.. SPIEGEL: From his house arrest he now insists he had nothing to do with passing on nuclear secrets or having made lucrative private deals. Do you believe him?

Heinonen: *It brings tears to my eyes.* Of course Khan was the worst black marketeer and made millions from it. Even so, it’s quite possible that others — for instance Pakistani generals or leading secret-service officials — profited even more than Khan did. It’s more than likely that his country’s political authorities were often aware of his dealings.

I am informed that _Rolling Stone_ is having a caption contest.

“Just look.”:http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/blogs/taibblog/caption-contest-win-a-signed-copy-of-griftopia-20111008

Well. Peter Crail has a “piece”:http://www.armscontrol.org/act/2011_10/IAEA_to_Detail_Iran_Alleged_Warhead_Work in ACT which states that Iran, despite earlier claims from Iranian officials, has begun installing IR-1 centrifuges at Fordow, rather than more advanced models.

Writes Peter:

bq.. Last June, Iran announced that it would soon begin using the plant to produce uranium enriched to 20 percent uranium-235 to produce fuel for research reactors and that it would triple such production through the use of more-advanced centrifuge designs it has been developing. The Sept. 2 IAEA “report”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_2Sept2011.pdf said that as of Aug. 20, Iran had installed one of two centrifuge cascades designated for the production of 20 percent-enriched uranium.

*snip*

Although the report did not specify the type of machine being installed, *diplomatic sources confirmed that the centrifuges are IR-1 machines, a crash-prone design Iran currently uses at its commercial-scale Natanz enrichment plant.* The improved designs Iran has been developing, called the IR-2m and IR-4, are believed to enrich uranium three times faster than the IR-1.

p. ISIS analysts David Albright, Paul Brannan, Andrea Stricker, and Christina Walrond “confirmed”:http://isis-online.org/uploads/isis-reports/documents/IAEA_Iran_Report_ISIS_analysis_2Sept2011.pdf the IR-1 installation with their own sources:

bq.. The IAEA reports that Iran has installed one cascade of centrifuges at the Fordow site to be designated for production of 19.75 percent enriched uranium. *ISIS has learned that these machines are new IR-1 centrifuges, not existing ones transferred from Natanz.*

Earlier this summer, the Vice President of Iran and head of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization of Iran (AEOI), Fereydoun Abbasi-Davani, implied that Iran would soon deploy advanced centrifuges at Fordow, stating that these machines would be installed in 164-machine cascades.

There’s an icon over to the left, if you wanna follow.

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Unsurprisingly, Stimson has published another “report”:http://www.stimson.org/images/uploads/research-pdfs/Crises_Complete.pdf about South Asia. I’ve only skimmed it so far, but the report, co-edited by Michael Krepon and Nate Cohn and titled “Crises in South Asia: Trends and Potential Consequences,” has a bunch of good material about the role of nuclear weapons in the region.

As one who’s always looking for primary source material about India and Pakistan, I was struck by the footnote to a paragraph which cites the well-known _New Yorker_ “piece”:http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1993/03/29/1993_03_29_056_TNY_CARDS_000363214 about the 1990 India-Pakistan crisis:

bq. The US intelligence community appears to have been more alarmed by the potential for nuclear weapons’ use. Richard J. Kerr, the deputy director of the C.I.A. during this crisis, was quoted by Seymour Hersh as saying, “It was the most dangerous nuclear situation we have ever faced since I’ve been in the US government. It may be as close as we’ve come to a nuclear exchange. It was far more frightening than the Cuban missile crisis.”

We have heard this before, but check out the footnote:

bq. The author [M Krepon], attended an event with Kerr after Hersh’s article appeared and asked whether he was quoted properly. Kerr answered affirmatively. When asked whether he really believed that that 1990 crisis was second only to the Cuban missile crisis in terms of nuclear danger, Kerr allowed as how *he might have exaggerated this point.*

Doesn’t quite put paid to the metaphor, but a useful addition to the record.

I recently learned that Amb Ali Asghar Soltanieh was involved in Iran’s implementation of the CWC.

As it happens, his “cv”:www.g77.org/vienna/CV%20Ambassador%20Soltanieh.pdf confirms that he was “Secretary of the National Authority of the Chemical Weapons Convention” from 1997-99. Incidentally, he was also “Chief Negotiator, Additional Protocol to Biological Weapons Convention” from 1999-2002 – something else I didn’t know.

Not sure why I find this interesting, but there it is.

I’m uninspired and it’s a weekend, so here’s a video.

Sharper than the edge of Occam’s Razor.

I heard Thomas Schelling discuss nuclear terrorism at a New America Foundation event last October, but haven’t been able to find a transcript of the event. So I was happy to discover “this piece”:http://cpost.uchicago.edu/blog/2011/09/06/thomas-c-schelling-whatever-happened-to-nuclear-terrorism/ by Dr. Schelling on that subject.

As he explains:

bq.. In 1982 I published an “article”:http://www.jstor.org/pss/2538678 that began, “Sometime in the 1980’s an organization that is not a national government may acquire a few nuclear weapons. If not in the 1980’s, then in the 1990’s.”

I hedged about the 80’s but sounded pretty firm about the 90’s. It’s now the 2010’s, twenty-nine years later, and there has been no nuclear terrorism nor any acquisition of such weapons by any terrorist organization that we know of; and I think we’d know by now. I don’t know of anyone—and I knew many colleagues knowledgeable on the subject—who thought my expectations outlandish. Something needs to be explained!

p. His explanation is an interesting one; a PhD student to whom I described it replied, “So he’s saying it’s a market failure.”

That, for me, is the most striking part of the argument. Schelling writes:

bq. Imagine that you have succeeded in stealing a Picasso insured for many millions of dollars, and you know that there are people willing to pay several millions for it: *how do you find your customer?* You cannot put a want ad in the New York Times.

Read the whole thing…I especially like this paragraph:

bq. a “supplier” and a “customer” representing the terrorist organization may meet in a public place, each with a few unrecognizable body guards, to consummate the deal. At that point *I fantasize that the seller and the buyer recognize each other, one is from the CIA and the other from the Israeli Mossad. Each is engaged in a “sting” operation, and they shake hands and go back to work.*