CND Press Roundup - 5 January

Iran tensions

• South Korean tanker
• The IRGC yesterday seized a South Korean tanker—travelling from Saudi Arabia to the UAE—-in the Persian Gulf, accusing it of polluting the sea with chemicals. The South Korean tanker is being held at Iran’s Bandar Abbas port city, and the incident came just before South Korea’s deputy foreign minister was due to visit Tehran, the Guardian reports.
• In response, South Korean forces arrived last night in the Strait of Hormuz. The country’s foreign ministry spokesperson said that the Choi Young destroyer was not there to carry out military operations but to “ensure the safety of our nationals”. The IRGC said in a statement that the South Korean tanker was “headed from Saudi Arabia’s Al Jubail port and was seized due to the repeated infringement of maritime environmental laws.”
• Reaction 
• Barbara Slavin of the Atlantic Council argues that Iran’s moves to 20% uranium enrichment could put pressure on Biden to speedily return to the nuclear deal: “The longer Biden waits, the more 20 percent-enriched uranium Iran will have and the closer it will be to ‘breakout’—possession of sufficient fissile material to make nuclear weapons.”
• Ellie Geranmayeh, Iran expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told the FT: “The biggest message the Iranians want to signal [to] the Biden administration and the European capitals [is] that Iran isn’t just going to sit on its hands while they deliberate when to kick-start diplomacy.” 
• Trita Parsi, vice president of the Quincy Institute, said to CNN that he believed Iranian politics “compelled the government to respond to all of these threats that the Trump administration has made in the last couple of weeks in a way that would allow them to claim they have pushed back, but not do it in a way that would provide Trump with a pretext to attack, which would have been the case if something had happened in Iraq.”

Nuclear power 

• Sizewell C campaign 
• A report on the campaign against Sizewell C in Yorkshire Bylines points out the many flaws that the proposed project to build a new nuclear power station has, and the strength of the TASC coalition: “Whether the government backs SZC or not, there is the small matter of a yearlong planning inquiry to carry out first, at which the incontrovertible case against SZC will be played out. Even this government has to abide by some norms and protocols. TASC is actively fundraising to pay for lawyers and experts to represent it at this critical examination stage.”
• Nuclear industry outlook
• Green Tech Media reports that the “nuclear industry is heading into 2021 with increased optimism around small modular reactors (SMRs) after a series of policy initiatives that were announced worldwide in recent weeks.” As well as support for SMRs in Boris Johnson’s ‘ten point plan’, Canada recently launched a 27-point national action plan for the development and deployment of SMR technology, while the US Department of Energy is investing in the development of the technology through its Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program (ARDP).
• New China plant
• Construction on a new Chinese nuclear power plant has begun in Zhejiang province. Recent approvals by China’s State Council for new nuclear units follows “a slowdown in conventional large-scale nuclear power project approvals in recent years”, World Nuclear News reports. 

China 

• Beijing-Brussels investment treaty 
• Commenting on the EU’s investment agreement with Beijing, the FT’s chief foreign affairs columnist Gideon Rachman has argued that ‘Europe has handed China a strategic victory’. Rachman points out that Biden’s incoming national security advisor issued a plea to the EU to hold off on signing the deal, but was ignored. He concludes: “By deepening their economic reliance on China — without co-ordinating their policy with fellow democracies — European nations are increasing their vulnerability to pressure from Beijing.” 
• US debate
• A senior editor at The American Conservative has argued against a hawkish China policy in Washington, writing that any realistic assessment of America’s ‘vital interests’ would lead to a recognition that “China poses much less of a threat to the U.S. than China hawks claim” and “that increasing hostility towards China is not in the interests of our country or the interests of our major allies.”