Americans woke up on November 9 with a collective sigh of relief: the election was finally over. Now, we get to the hard part: filling appointments in the executive branch, passing legislation, and getting the federal government to work again. The period between Election Day and January 20 is a great time for a refresher… Keep reading →

Former National Security Council cyber security director Richard Clarke says the military hasn’t done enough to secure today’s networked weapons systems against hacking and is likely to find out what they’ve missed the hard way once a conflict with a sophisticated adversary begins. “The nightmare scenario that I hear a lot of flag officers worrying about is,… Keep reading →

The July nuclear deal concedes far too much to Iran and will increase its capacity to terrorize the Middle East and American interests and allies there. There are at least two diplomatic alternatives to the July deal on Iranian nuclear activity. We can stick with the interim agreement — just extend it — which is… Keep reading →

Supporters of the Obama administration Iran deal have had a rough couple weeks. The bipartisan passage of the Corker-Mendez bill (the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act of 2015) out of the Foreign Relations Committee, conveyed in no uncertain terms that Congress is concerned enough about this deal to insist it have a voice. It also raises the question: how… Keep reading →

VIENNA: Iran has not significantly accelerated its nuclear program in recent months, UN nuclear chief Yukiya Amano told Breaking Defense. This could be a sign that Iran hopes to create favorable conditions for a deal with the United States, which wants the Islamic Republic to freeze its program at its current level and not add to its… Keep reading →

GENEVA: The Iranian plan to resolve their nuclear crisis proposes a framework for talks but still needs a lot of work, a source close to the talks here told Breaking Defense. Iran’s plan presented today to the United States and five other world powers was designed to show Iran’s good will and to lay the… Keep reading →

GENEVA: The central riddle as we head to new talks here on Iran’s suspect nuclear program is that everything has changed, yet nothing has changed. Hopes have never been higher, but a deal is far from being done. September brought us a surprising “Iranian spring” in the crisis over fears Tehran seeks the bomb. The… Keep reading →

Iran has significantly increased the amount of uranium it is enriching at a level close to weapon-grade and is sanitizing a site where it is suspected of doing bomb-related experiments, according to a classified UN nuclear watchdog report released Thursday and obtained by Breaking Defense. Iran continues to block inspectors from the International Atomic Energy… Keep reading →

Talks with Iran on its nuclear work have continued but little progress has been made. A diplomat close to the lower-level meeting of technical experts in Istanbul last Tuesday told me “a large gap” remains between the positions of Iran and the six nations negotiating with it – the United States, Russia, China, Britain, Germany… Keep reading →

A full monty of sanctions has gone into effect against Iran, the toughest regime of punitive measures since the Iranian nuclear crisis began a decade ago. The goal is to pressure the Islamic Republic to give the international community guarantees it will not make atomic weapons. A European Union embargo on buying Iranian oil became… Keep reading →