This article examines the threat posed by Iran and North Korea, the two most serious nuclear proliferators challenging their respective regional orders, and the global nonproliferation regime. It examines two questions that have implications for assessing the ability of key international actors to confront not only Iran’s ongoing nuclear ambitions, but any future proliferator that embarks on a nuclear path in violation of its NPT commitments: how international actors choose to confront the proliferator, and their ability to cooperate...
Seven years after the onset of the upheaval in the Middle East and two years since the implementation of the nuclear deal between the world powers and Iran, the main contours of the region’s emerging reality – including the actors, rivalries, partnerships, front lines, power relations, and behavior of the major powers – are becoming clear. Now, after nearly one full year at the Washington helm, the nature of the Trump administration and its influence on the domestic arena, the Middle East, and the global stage are also coming into...
As 2017 draws to a close, the Middle East is witnessing the convergence of several important developments that will potentially have a broad impact on Israeli national security. The civil war in Syria is subsiding through a process dominated by Russia, Iran, and Turkey – which poses the danger that Israel’s interests will not be taken into account in the deliberations and steps toward an agreement to stabilize the arena. The jihadist territorial Islamic State established in Iraq and Syria has been obliterated, although the underlying...
President Trump’s visit to East Asia in early November 2017 earned conflicting grades, mainly in the United States. Did Trump achieve his objective of strengthening the alliance between the United States and its friends in East Asia, and sending a message of a continued American commitment? It appears that the leaders of countries considered allies of the US have come to terms with China’s growing power in the region, and the determined American declarations about commitment to the friends in Asia may have not persuaded...
Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Trump in New York in late September. With the events in the Korean peninsula in the background, the two leaders will almost certainly discuss the lessons for preventing nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. Indeed, the parallel between the challenges posed by North Korea’s nuclear program and the Iranian nuclear program is clear, and in this context, an ongoing, intimate dialogue between Jerusalem and Washington is necessary. Israel and the United States would do well...
The May 25, 2009 North Korean explosion sent shockwaves around the world, much stronger and more diverse than the seismological data recorded. These were the mainly political but also military implications of the apparently successful nuclear test. “Apparently,” because no outside, objective evidence was presented to confirm the characteristics and the magnitude of the explosion. If the underground test was fully contained and no radioactive particles were or will be vented to the atmosphere, no data will be available for...
