October 02, 2009

IPS piece on global power shifts and Iran

It's here. Also archived here. One bottom line is here: In 2003, Russia and China were unable (both in strictly military terms, and in terms of global power equations) to...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:21 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

August 18, 2009

Iran: Ready or not to talk? Washington: Ready or not?

In an amazing display of very late-night-- or very early-morning-- blogging, Laura Rozen put a post up this morning showcasing a Reuters report that Iran's ambassador to the IAEA in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:37 AM | Fulltext link (6 comments)

May 09, 2009

Obama and Israel's nukes

My IPS news analysis piece yesterday was on the Obama administration's intriguing injection of Israel's nuclear weapons into the global and regional diplomacy. It's here (and here.) The piece attempts...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 07:10 AM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

April 13, 2009

Five+One... +One => Seven

A LOT has been happening the past two weeks relating to US-Iran relations, much of it catalyzed by President Obama's NowRuz Address to Iran. Scott Peterson summarizes major developments in...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:51 PM | Fulltext link (3 comments)

April 01, 2009

Netanyahu, Iran, and the US MSM's shameful silence

Aluf Benn writes in Haaretz today that, In political circles the view is that yes, Netanyahu as prime minister brings Israel closer to war with Iran. Politicians in touch with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:22 AM | Fulltext link (9 comments)

February 06, 2009

Panetta vs. the Intelligence Community?

(Hat tip to Eric H) CIA Director nominee Leon Panetta, the self-described "creature of congress," appears to have brushed aside the collective findings of the intelligence community regarding Iran's nuclear...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 01:50 AM | Fulltext link (38 comments)

December 11, 2008

Getting to Global Zero (Nuclear Weapons)

I went to a great press event today, for the new worldwide movement 'Global Zero', which has rolled out what looks like a quite achievable plan to verifiably rid the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:28 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

August 05, 2008

Lest we forget: Hiroshima Day

August 6 is the anniversary of the first ever use of the atomic bomb against "enemy" targets. This action was committed, as we know, by the United States government in...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:58 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

July 27, 2008

Unwinnability and war: Nuclear weapons division

Attentive JWN readers will know that recently I've been doing some thinking about the proposition that over recent years, foreign wars may well have become unwinnable. Of course, once enough...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:33 PM | Fulltext link (16 comments)

July 18, 2008

Benny Morris's nuclear blackmail scenario

For the Israeli government, using its very robust nuclear-weapons capability for purposes of blackmailing other parties-- including, certainly, the US-- is nothing new. (See my 1988 World Policy Journal article--...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:38 AM | Fulltext link (28 comments)

November 29, 2007

Kissinger on the Israeli nukes

U.S. government archives from 1969 currently being declassified and made available to the public show that back in 1969 Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, (1) knew that Israeli had...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:24 AM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

August 03, 2007

More on the US's nuclear-use posture

This is additional info on whether the US has or doesn't have a meaningful "no-first-use" posture regarding the use of nuclear weapons, a topic I wrote about briefly here, earlier...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:59 PM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

Hillary Clinton's irresponsible hawkishness on nukes

Hillary Clinton yesterday outdid herself in trying to appear "tough" on foreign affairs when she refused to rule out the use of nuclear weapons against Osama Bin Laden or other...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:02 AM | Fulltext link (54 comments)

July 28, 2007

Nuclear disarmament, as well as nonproliferation

Late in June, on the last day that Tony Blair was in office in Britain, his Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett made a notable speech at the Carnegie Endowment in Washington...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:07 PM | Fulltext link (8 comments)

May 09, 2007

Swiss-American prof urges attack on Iran

Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:25 PM | Fulltext link (24 comments)

December 13, 2006

Depends what the meaning of "introduce" is...

Ever since 1963, the official Israeli policy regarding the possibility (!) that it has nuclear weapons has been-- as Shimon Peres first said that year-- that "we shall not be...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:09 PM | Fulltext link (13 comments)

December 11, 2006

Olmert on Israel's nukes: a slip or not?

In an interview broadcast by Germany's N24 broadcast station today Israeli PM Olmert very clearly implied that Israel has nuclear weapons. I heard a re-broadcast of his words on a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:36 PM | Fulltext link (32 comments)

October 11, 2006

North Korea, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear disarmament

I've been thinking about North Korea's explosion of an (apparently fairly unsuccessful, but still worrying) nuclear device. ("Device" is what you call it before it's been recognizably made into a...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 04:42 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

October 09, 2006

North Korea's nuclear test

Oops. Yet another step toward global instability, taken while the US has been quite distracted by its self-created quagmire in Iraq: "The field of scientific research in the DPRK successfully...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 03:25 PM | Fulltext link (10 comments)

July 19, 2006

Chinese Commentary on Iran Nuclear Case

If you've only been briefed by American MSM sources about the latest page in the saga over Iran's nuclear program, you might be thinking that finally, the great powers, including...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:55 AM | Fulltext link (4 comments)

June 27, 2006

Graham Allison on Taqiyya?

Harvard Professor Graham Allison is one of the better known political scientists in America. His classic text, "The Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis" remains widely inflicted on...
Posted by Scott Harrop at 10:34 PM | Fulltext link (15 comments)

April 26, 2006

Death of world's foremost nuclear proliferator

Yuval Ne'eman, the nuclear physicist who was the theoretical father of the Israel nuclear weapons program, died in Tel Aviv on Wednesday, aged 81. (Its political father was none other...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:32 PM | Fulltext link (26 comments)

April 13, 2006

Is the NPT useful?

Almost immediately after my column in today's CSM on nuclear-weapons issues went up onto their website, I received an interesting email from Rajat Talwar of Rolla, Missouri. The column dealt...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:30 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

April 12, 2006

CSM column on Iranian nuclear program and the NPT

The column I wrote yesterday about the Iranian nuclear program, western concerns about that, and the urgent need to preserve the NPT is now up on the Christian Science Monitor...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:40 PM | Fulltext link (46 comments)

April 06, 2006

Iran, the nuclear issue, the NPT

Javad Zarif, the Iranian ambassador to the UN, has a significant op-ed piece on the nuclear issue in todays NYT. Titled "We Do Not Have a Nuclear Weapons Program", the...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:11 AM | Fulltext link (37 comments)

March 10, 2006

Pathetic threats from Bolton

What a contrast between the bellicose rhetoric and actions that the Bush administration deployed against Saddam Hussein's regime three years ago and the pathetic bleats it is issuing against Iran...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 02:54 AM | Fulltext link (29 comments)

January 22, 2006

Nuclear proliferation developments

I think it's very important to get onto the record this short and sensible position paper on the threat of Iranian nuclear proliferation, written by Pierre Goldschmidt, the former Deputy...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:11 PM | Fulltext link (11 comments)

October 07, 2005

Congratulations to ElBaradei!

Heartiest congratulations to Mohamed El-Baradei, the talented, judicious Egyptian national who, as head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, has just been named along with the IAEA as the winner...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:57 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

September 19, 2005

North Korea; Iran

Also, the North Koreans seem to have gotten a workable deal from their negotiations-- including, centrally, a security guarantee from the US. Why don't the Bushies give a similar guarantee...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 05:30 AM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

August 05, 2005

Another naughty nuclear proliferator

Interesting piece on BBC Wednesday night relating how, back in 1958, British officials sold Israel some of the "heavy water" that was a vital part of Israel's clandestine nuclear-weapons production....
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:40 PM | Fulltext link (5 comments)

July 26, 2005

Hiroshima + 60 , meet Teheran??

Philip Giraldi is a former CIA officer who has spilled some good beans on the plans and goings-on within the Bush administration. In the next-to-last (July 18) issue of The...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:55 AM | Fulltext link (34 comments)

July 14, 2005

Hiroshima + 60, part 3

This afternoon, I watched the DVD of the 3-hour Canadian-Japanese movie, Hiroshima. I was previewing it to see if our local peace group, the Charlottesville Center for Peace and Justice,...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:00 PM | Fulltext link (2 comments)

June 10, 2005

Hiroshima + 60, part 2

I took part in our town's peace vigil yesterday again, as I always try to do if I'm in town on a Thursday afternoon. The honking response from the drivers...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:47 AM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

May 17, 2005

Hiroshima + 60

Talking of wise elders, 97-year-old Nobel Peace Laureate Joe Rotblat has a good, serious op-ed in today's NYT to mark the upcoming 50th anniversary of the signing of the Russell-Einstein...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 11:39 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

September 01, 2004

Iranian nukes: are we scared yet?

Hands up anyone who is not terrified that "Iran might be on the brink of acquiring nuclear weapons". [She looks around her.] Am I the only person sitting here with...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:43 PM | Fulltext link (33 comments)

February 08, 2003

Burden of Proof

I guess it's Sunday in Japan already... Sun quite high in the sky already over that magnificent semicircle of hills that surrounds Hiroshima... So Ramesh Thakur, a wise Indian scholar...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:55 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

U.S. encourages other nations to act on 'self-defense' claim

I've been thinking more about whether the pitch Powell was trying to make Feb. 5 at the U.N. was aimed more at a domestic or an international audience. Yesterday evening...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 10:33 AM | Fulltext link (0 comments)

February 07, 2003

Like Peres, Like Powell?

Colin Powell's big oral presentation Feb 5 was aimed mostly at other governments-- right? Well, put it this way, not wholly right. In fact, a large part of the speech...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 06:11 PM | Fulltext link (1 comments)

February 06, 2003

Powell's Poor U.N. Presentation

I listened to Colin Powell's presentation at the U.N. yesterday, read the text carefully. I was sad for so many reasons. Let me count the ways: (1) Sad to see...
Posted by Helena Cobban at 09:13 PM | Fulltext link (0 comments)