CND Press Roundup - 10 December

Iran nuclear deal 

• IAEA warning 
• The UN’s nuclear watchdog has warned against any escalation following the assassination of Mohsen Fakrizadeh. IAEA head Rafael Mariano Grossi warned Iran against diverging further from compliance with the JCPOA. Source: Sky News. 
• Rouhani: no negotiations needed
• Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said that the nuclear deal can be restored without negotiations. “The next person can put up a nice piece of paper and sign it and it just needs a signature, we’ll be back where we were. It takes no time and needs no negotiations”, he said, in remarks at odds with suggestions by Joe Biden and European leaders that the agreement needs to be renegotiated and extended. Source: Al Jazeera.
• Europe imperilling deal?  
• Eldar Mamedov, a foreign policy advisor to the S&D group (PES) in the European Parliament, has argued that Germany, France, and the UK are harming chances of the deal’s revival by suggesting that the JCPOA must become a “nuclear agreement plus”, including limits on Iran’s ballistic missiles program, and changes to its Middle East policies. Mamedov writes that Europe should focus on “encouraging Biden to rejoin the JCPOA swiftly and unconditionally. That would be in Europe’s genuine security interest.” Source: Quincy Institute.
• Iran nuclear facilities 
• The legislation passed by Iran’s parliament last week that demanded the government boost uranium enrichment and expel weapons inspectors also mandated the development of new nuclear facilities: ‘a lab for working with uranium in metal form—a vital skill if Iran were to make nuclear weapons—and a heavy water reactor that could accumulate plutonium in its spent fuel.’ Javad Zarif said that the legislation will be shelved if the US returns to the JCPOA. Source: Science. 
• Assassination fallout 
• Mohsen Rezaei, secretary-general of the Expediency and Discernment Council that advises Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, has said that the weapon that killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist last month came from a NATO member state. No evidence was given for the claim, but the link to NATO was made in a report submitted by the Iranian armed forces’ chief of staff. Source: Bloomberg. 

Nuclear weapons 

• Israel nuclear weapons
• The UNGA voted earlier this week to call on Israel to “renounce possession of nuclear weapons”. The resolution, ‘The Risk of Nuclear Proliferation in the Middle East’, was supported by 153 states, with 6 votes against and 25 abstentions. It called on Israel “Not to develop, produce, test or otherwise acquire nuclear weapons”. The Assembly also voted 174-2, with one abstention, calling for a nuclear free zone in the Middle East: the two votes against were the US and Israel. Source: Middle East Monitor. 

Nuclear power

• UK  
• In its sixth carbon budget, outlining the UK’s path to net zero, the CCC has put the share of nuclear in the UK’s electricity mix at between 5 GW and 10 GW by 2050. Hinkley Point C and Sizewell C together would have a capacity of 6.4 GW. The report recommends that the UK should build enough new nuclear by 2035 to replace its current fleet. Source: World Nuclear News. 
• US
• Amy C. Roma, a founding member of the Atlantic Council’s Nuclear Energy and National Security Coalition, has argued that the American Nuclear Infrastructure Act provides bipartisan support for the expansion of American nuclear power: “With ANIA’s key provisions that support the current nuclear fleet and advanced nuclear technology, this forward-looking legislation is an encouraging step towards greater US nuclear competitiveness.” Source: Atlantic Council.