CND Press Roundup - 17 December

• Vatican opposition to deterrence
• Speaking in a webinar co-hosted by the Vatican, Georgetown University, and the University of Notre Dame, the Vatican’s foreign minister Paul Gallagher ‘reaffirmed the Catholic Church’s recent shift away from accepting the Cold War-era global system of nuclear deterrence’. “International peace and security cannot be founded on the threat of mutual destruction or total annihilation, or maintaining a balance of power”, said Gallagher. Source: National Catholic Reporter. 
• New START 
• At the same video conference, Russia’s Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov said that Moscow’s proposal to extend New START for five years, without preconditions and without delay, remains effective. “”In December 2019, Russia offered the US to extend the agreement for five years without preconditions… This proposal is still in effect”, he said. Source: TASS. 

Iran nuclear deal 

• Call for Tehran to return to compliance 
• Remaining members of the JCPOA including Germany, France, and the UK have called on Iran to roll back violations and return to full compliance during a virtual meeting of the signatories, according to a German official. Despite Iranian non-compliance, the IAEA has recently reported that the country is still allowing inspectors full access to its nuclear sites—this is a key reason the European powers say that the agreement is worth saving. Further ‘informal’ ministerial-level talks were agreed by JCPOA delegates for 21 December. Source: ABC. 
• Iran stance
• Iran’s deputy foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said following the meeting that Tehran will recognise actions, not words: “Iran has always expressed its stance transparently and is ready to restart its JCPOA commitments that were halted based on sections 26 and 36 of the JCPOA after the US returns to its commitments and returns conditions to how they were in January 2017”. Europe, Araghchi added, expects Iran to show restraint in the face of “illegal and hostile” acts from the US and its allies. Source: Al Jazeera. 
• In a statement, yesterday Ayatollah Khamenei through his support behind efforts to revive the nuclear deal. In a signal to ‘hardliners’ in Iran to stand aside and enabled talks with the Biden administration to proceed unimpeded, Khamenei said: “If sanctions can be removed, we shouldn’t delay, not even for an hour.. I support the country’s officials as long as they are committed to the nation’s goals.” Source: Bloomberg.

US-China

• Future of the Quad
• Analysis by two US-China foreign policy experts suggests that the Quad grouping (US, Japan, Australia, India), while effective, “isn’t likely to become a formal security alliance, mainly because its members have different interests in the Indo-Pacific”, with the US and Japan mainly concerned with the South and East China Seas, Australia with the South and Western Pacific, and India with the Himalayas and the Indian Ocean. Source: The Strategist.
• US challenge
• A former US ambassador to Russia has pointed to the scale of the challenge Biden faces in seeking to restore American influence, pointing out that while Washington pulled back from the international system under Trump, “China has exercised a growing role in multilateral institutions while expanding and creating new ones, such as the Belt and Road Initiative, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization” and so on. Source: NBC. 

Scottish Independence 

• Record support
• A new poll conducted by Savanta ComRes has found record support for Scottish independence, with 58% support reached for only the second time. The poll also finds that 40% of voters believe a second independence referendum should take place within the next two years. Source: The Scotsman. 

Ed McNally