CND Press Roundup - 18 January

• Executive orders
• The Guardian reports that Joe Biden is planning to begin his presidency with a wide range of of executive orders, including returning to both the Paris climate accords and the Iran nuclear deal, overturning Trump’s Muslim ban, and more.
• Ron Klain, Biden’s incoming chief of staff, told CNN yesterday: “It’s a message of getting things done… He’s gonna come back to thee White House after giving that speech at the Capitol and take some immediate actions to move this country forward.” 
• Iran nuclear deal 
• Israel’s Channel 12 News reported at the weekend that Biden officials ‘have already begun holding quiet talks with Iran on a return to the 2015 nuclear deal, and have updated Israel on those conversations’, The Times of Israel writes. 
• Last week, Netanyahu said: “If we just go back to the JCPOA, what will happen and may already be happening is that many other countries in the Middle East will rush to arm themselves with nuclear weapons. That is a nightmare and that is folly. It should not happen”. 
• This came as Britain, France and Germany ‘voiced deep concerns over Iran’s plans to produce uranium metal’, saying in a joint statement at the weekend (reported by the Guardian) that “the production of uranium metal has potentially grave military implications.” It continues: “We strongly urge Iran to halt this activity, and return to compliance with its JCPOA commitments without further delay if it is serious about preserving the deal.”
• Arguing that revival of the nuclear deal is urgent, France’s foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in an interview with Journal du Dimanche this weekend: “The Trump administration chose what it called the maximum pressure campaign on Iran. The result was that this strategy only increased the risk and the threat… This has to stop because Iran and – I say this clearly – is in the process of acquiring nuclear [weapons] capacity.” 
• Biden’s nominee for the second most senior position at the US state department (deputy secretary of state), Wendy Sherman, was a key negotiator of the 2015 nuclear deal. Sherman, a professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School, was under-secretary of state for political affairs in the Obama administration, Al Jazeera reports.

• Houthis
• ‘Dozens of civil society and faith-based groups in the United States are urging President-elect Joe Biden to overturn the Trump administration’s decision to label Yemen’s Houthis a “terrorist” organisation’, Al Jazeera reports. The designation of the Houthis, the organisations said, is a “recipe for more conflict and famine”, preventing “the delivery of critical humanitarian assistance to millions of innocent people”, while damaging the prospects of a negotiated solution and undermining “U.S. national security interests in the region.” 
• Pompeo parting shots
• Analysis from the Financial Times’ Washington correspondent suggests that Mike Pompeo’s blitz of last-ditch foreign policy measures ‘will complicate the next administration’s efforts to reset global relations.’ Katrina Manson argues that some of the moves made by Pompeo and Trump in recent weeks may not be reversed. Among them: the designation of Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, the establishment of formal diplomatic contact with Taiwanese officials. Biden is also thought unlikely to reverse the recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over the Western Sahara. 

Nuclear power

• Wylfa hybrid plant
• Shearwater Energy has announced plans for a hybrid energy plant at Wylfa and Anglesey, combining small nuclear reactors with a wind farm. SE said it could build the plant for “less than £8bn”, with it starting to generate carbon-neutral power by the end of 2027, the BBC reports. 
• US regulator questions SMRs
• CBC reports, meanwhile, that the former chair of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Allison Macfarlane, has questioned the viability of small nuclear reactors. 

To read: 

• Biden’s China Problem: Resisting a New Cold War in Asia (Jeet Heer, The Nation)

Ed McNally