Word: nuclearization
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...beating of the war drums over Iran may get the most attention, but there are growing signs of progress toward a possible diplomatic solution to the nuclear standoff. This week, the top foreign policy adviser to Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, declared that Iran could respond favorably to the latest deal offered by Western negotiators, which he described as acceptable "in principle." It remains unclear whether the unusual declaration by Ali Akbar Velayati, who served as Iran's foreign minister from 1981 to 1997, will translate into government policy. But in New York City on Tuesday, Iran...
...might not look that way at first. North Korea's 60-page declaration of its nuclear capabilities is probably only mildly helpful. It may contain new information on how much plutonium it has produced for its weapons arsenal, or shed light on other aspects of its program. But unpacking North Korea's lies from any strands of truth is a lifetime's work...
...What the U.S. did get, though, was real progress on a long-standing aim - the destruction of the Yongbyon nuclear facility, where North Korea's plutonium has been produced. The 1994 deal agreed by the Clinton Administration required that nuclear work at Yongbyon be verifiably frozen, but the new deal requires that the plant be incapacitated. On Friday the North Koreans blew up the facility's cooling tower and they have also committed to destroying, under international monitoring, the other functioning parts of the plant...
...that could qualify as a sponsorship of terrorism by North Korea was its involvement in the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987, and diplomats have been dangling removal from the list for the better part of ten years as an inducement to give up some of their nuclear capabilities and information...
...None of which means the overall deal gets the U.S. free and clear of the North Korean nuclear threat. On the contrary, that threat is as bad as it has ever been, practically speaking. For starters, the North still has, by most estimates, between six and ten weapons' worth of plutonium, obtained since the Bush Administration in 2001 abandoned negotiation in favor of confrontation. The U.S. has a long and hard road to negotiate that plutonium out of Pyongyang's hands. Just as bad, the North very likely has an equally threatening uranium-enrichment program separate from the plutonium program...