Defence organizations are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence (AI) for achieving tactical and strategic advantages over their adversaries. The growing sophistication of AI technologies has accelerated their adoption for a number of tasks and functions, allowing different stakeholders to plan and accommodate their respective military operations.
Reading of the Week: Artificial Intelligence, Non-Proliferation and Disarmament: A Compendium on the State of the Art
Cluster for Natural and Technical Science Arms Control Research
The outcome of Iran’s massive April 13 and October 1 strikes on Israel has raised questions about the utility of its missile force and the military strategy built around it. In the April strike, Iran launched an estimated 110-130 ballistic missiles at Israel.
Can Iran Restore Its Missile Mojo?
The Washington Institute
Faced with various threats and conflicts ranging from the persistence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the danger of a wider regional war to the rise of nonstate actors that systematically use violence in internal and external conflicts, today’s Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) countries are drawing in China and Russia to compete with the United States over military presence, arms sales, energy and trade ties, and security roles.
Russia in the Middle East and North Africa: Arms, Power Projection and Nuclear Diplomacy
Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
On 29 November, the deputy foreign ministers of Iran, France, Germany and the UK (the latter three known together as the E3) are due to meet in Geneva to discuss a range of security issues in the Middle East - including, apparently, the Iranian nuclear programme.
A Window of Opportunity on the Iran Nuclear File
The Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies
The longstanding shadow conflict between Iran and Israel has entered a new, more dangerous phase of open confrontation. For decades, both nations engaged in covert operations and proxy warfare in what was known as the “campaign between wars.” Hamas’ devastating attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, upended this dynamic.
Will Iran Withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?
Texas National Security Review
During the last year and a half, Iran has reportedly reactivated and accelerated activities at two former Amad Plan sites that were key to Iran’s development of nuclear weapons during its crash nuclear weapons program in the early 2000s, according to Western intelligence officials who decided to release officially the information to the Institute on the condition of remaining anonymous. The two sites, Sanjarian and Golab Dareh, were central to the Amad Plan’s development of a sophisticated multipoint initiation (MPI) system.
Renewed activity at the Sanjarian Amad site
Institute for Science and International Security
Israel should maintain its traditional position of opposing the establishment of an independent nuclear fuel cycle in Saudi Arabia, given the negative strategic ramifications of such a move. Specifically, Israel should insist on applying the nuclear “gold standard,” as was the case with the United Arab Emirates.
The Proposal for a Regional Nuclear Fuel Bank in Saudi Arabia
The Institute for National Security Studies
On June 5, behind closed doors, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors voted overwhelmingly to demand that Iran take urgent action to resolve concerns about its nuclear work and fully cooperate with IAEA requests. The resolution was proposed by Britain, France, and Germany.
IAEA Censure Risks Iranian Escalation
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
In recent months, as Iran has approached the nuclear threshold and shortened the times for producing nuclear weapons, and as the monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency over the nuclear facilities has significantly declined, Iran could likely decide to change its policy and achieve nuclear weapons capability.
The Iranian Nuclear Strategy-Is It About to Change?
The Institute for National Security Studies
Iran’s unprecedented attack on Israel on April 13 has significantly escalated the tensions between the countries. For the first time, a declared and extensive Iranian military operation was carried out on Israeli territory. Now, the decision on how to respond rests with Israel. A direct war between the two countries now no longer seems unlikely.
The enormous risks and uncertain benefits of an Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists
In the years after the 9/11 attacks, a new threat loomed large in the minds of policymakers and the public: the dirty bomb. This term describes a radiological weapon that used an explosive to disperse radioactive material over a limited area. A dirty bomb is far less powerful than a nuclear bomb, but it is easier and cheaper to assemble and can cause tremendous panic and disruption.
Why the World Should Still Worry About Dirty Bombs
Council On Foreign Relations
While much of the world’s attention was focused on the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, the UN Security Council’s sanctions on the development and export of Iranian missiles quietly expired on October 18. The sanctions were part of UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which set the specific terms for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program in July 2015.
Expiration of UN Missile Sanctions Has Limited Effect on Irans Arms Trade
The JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION
America’s inability to rein in Tehran’s nuclear program after exiting the 2015 nuclear deal — to halt the Islamic Republic’s subsequent accumulation of fissile material and to forge a “longer and stronger” deal — should prompt Washington to reassess its Iran policy. Such a reckoning should acknowledge that the United States has never used all of the implements in its policy toolkit to rein in Iran’s nuclear ambitions, while the tools it has generally relied on — diplomacy, sanctions, and (to a much lesser extent) the threat of force — are less effective today due to a shifting geopolitical landscape.
Americas Failing Iran Nuclear Policy: Time for a Course Adjustment
War on the Rocks
In an official government statement submitted to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) General Conference on September 25, Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman wrote, “The Kingdom has decided recently to rescind the Small Quantities Protocol and implement the full Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement. The Kingdom is working, within the framework of its national ecosystem, to establish the necessary mechanisms for this full implementation, following best international practices and experiences"
Saudi Arabia Signals It Will Accept Stricter Nuclear Inspections
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
After more than a decade in which it was preoccupied with the civil war, the Syrian military, while turning increasing attention toward its old enemy, Israel, seeks to regain its former strength. How is the Syrian military fortifying itself on both the conventional and nonconventional levels, and what should Israel do?
Rebuilding the Syrian Military: The Threat to Israel
The Institute for National Security Studies
There are many ways in which technology could help to counter the diversion of conventional weapons. Yet despite some discussions in international meetings on conventional arms control, we see limited evidence of technologies being used to strengthen or enhance efforts to prevent, detect, and investigate the diversion of conventional arms, their ammunition, and parts and components.
Technologies to Counter the Diversion of Small Arms and Light Weapons, and Components of Conventional Weapons
UN Institute for Disarmament Research
What Washington considers de-escalation, Tehran sees as an opportunity to consolidate its nuclear gains, avoid accountability, and position itself to cross the nuclear weapons threshold at a time of its choosing.
Irans Nuclear Diplomacy: Feint and Advance
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
While security concerns and military-technical capabilities continue to play a significant role in the complex nuclear decision-making processes undertaken by governments, the interplay between these factors and select normative components found within a country’s domestic political and foreign policy environment can, in certain situations, modify the direction of a state’s nuclear program. As such, while a state’s final nuclear-related decisions may or may not diverge from security predictions in the end, it nevertheless remains useful for scholars and policymakers to consider how other factors might impact how states arrive at their decisions.
Reading of the Week: Nuclear About-Face
The Belfer Center
The military use of space is not new, yet it has developed and become more advanced today. Major powers, such as the US, China, and Russia, now have their own military units specialized in space operations, indicating that space has become a new war-fighting domain. Although more nations develop and test sophisticated space capabilities, including kinetic and non-kinetic weapons, a conventional war in space is not expected. The stakes are high as the world has grown increasingly reliant on the information and connectivity that the military, civil, and commercial space systems provide, creating new realms of vulnerability. There are several weaknesses in the existing legal framework, looking at the Outer Space Treaty adopted during the Cold War.
Increased Militarisation of Space. A New Realm of Security
Beyond the Horizon
This paper focuses on countries having extended nuclear deterrence arrangements with a nuclear-armed patron from whom they have received a nuclear security guarantee. Extended nuclear deterrence is often called a ‘nuclear umbrella’ a metaphor that hardly captures the risks inherent in nuclear deterrence practices and the non-nuclear weapon states belonging to an alliance with such arrangements are commonly referred to as ‘umbrella’ states.
The Role of Umbrella States in the Global Nuclear Order
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
The kingdom has substantial gaps in its ability to handle nonconventional attacks or incidents involving the release of hazardous materials but addressing them now could improve both its readiness at home and its interoperability with foreign forces.
Bolstering Saudi Arabias CBRN Defenses
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
The urgency of establishing a zone free of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the Middle East has never been more apparent, yet its achievement remains distant. Very little progress has been made so far despite many resolutions in international forums and the broad international and regional support for its establishment. The long-standing divisions among regional states regarding the issue of a Middle East WMD-Free Zone (ME WMDFZ) have been combined with deep-seated rivalries and a lack of trust among states. These have led to a decline in attention to, interest in and research on collaborative initiatives to mitigate proliferation challenges in the Middle East and achieve progress on a ME WMDFZ. As progress remains elusive, the escalating risks associated with known and suspected WMD programmes only heighten the likelihood of further proliferation, conflict and instability within the region and beyond its borders.
Middle East WMD-Free Zone Project
United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research
Several U.N. Security Council resolutions adopted between 2006 and 2010 required Iran to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA’s) investigation of its nuclear activities, suspend its uranium enrichment program, suspend its construction of a heavy water reactor and related projects, and ratify the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement. This report provides a brief overview of Iran’s nuclear program and describes the legal basis for the actions taken by the
IAEA board and the Security Council. It will be updated as events warrant.
Irans Nuclear Program Tehrans Compliance with International Obligations
Congressional Research Service
In the longer term, the increased flow of weapons will likely exacerbate tensions in the region, spur Arab states to enhance their own arsenals, and endanger any U.S. and partner forces that confront Tehran’s proxies.
What the Russia-Iran Arms Deals Mean for the Middle East
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Iranian drone strikes, as exemplified by the September 2019 attack against Saudi Aramco facilities, have jolted Middle East leaders and revealed Tehran’s long-range precision strike capabilities. The regime’s large and growing drone force, which can be used for reconnaissance or strike missions, now poses an existential threat to the Gulf states and a direct threat to Israel, as does its formidable missile force. Moreover, Iranian drones transferred to Russia have had a significant impact on Moscow’s war against Ukraine.
Reading of the Week: Striking Back. Iran and the Rise of Asymmetric Drone Warfare in the Middle East
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy
In anticipating South Africa’s role as the 2023 BRICS chair, this paper tracks the progress on the commitments listed and engages on the expectations of South Africa. How agendas are nationalized and implemented speaks to the value that each BRICS member can bring to the partnership. Entering 2023, South Africa faces similar challenges to 2018 related to service delivery in vital sectors such as energy, security, health and education, under more difficult global circumstances
BRICS XV: Expectations for South Africas 2023 chair
The South African Institute of International Affairs
Imports of major arms by European states rose by 47 per cent between 2013–17 and 2018–22, while the global volume of international arms transfers fell by 5.1 per cent. There were decreases in arms transfers to Africa (–40 per cent), the Americas (–21 per cent), Asia and Oceania (–7.5 per cent) and the Middle East (–8.8 per cent) between the two periods. The five largest arms importers in 2018–22 were India, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Australia and China. The five largest arms exporters were the United States, Russia, France, China and Germany.
Trends in International Arms Transfers, 2022
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors recently discovered that Iran had enriched uranium to 84 percent, just short of weapons grade. The revelation, acknowledged by Tehran, has underscored that a return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the nuclear deal completed in 2015 and exited three years later by the Trump administration—is unlikely. It has also raised fears about further escalation by the Iranian regime, such as refusal to cooperate with the IAEA or even withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. But Tehran may have unwittingly done Washington and its partners a favor by dispelling the illusory notion that the nuclear issue could be “parked.” The steady expansion of Iran’s nuclear activities and the lapsing of JCPOA restrictions mean that the danger of continuing the stalemate has mounted by the day.
Irans Nuclear Endgame Warrants a Change in U.S. Strategy
The Washington Institute
American and European allies are mobilizing to thwart the rapid expansion of the Russian paramilitary group known as Wagner, run by a Putin-affiliated oligarch, as it captures key cities for Moscow in Ukraine and spreads its influence to Africa and other corners of the world. With tens of thousands of fighters, many of them now battlefield-trained, the Wagner Group’s emergence as a rogue military threat could become a serious global challenge in years to come, U.S. and European officials said.
Inside the stunning growth of Russias Wagner Group
The Geopost
This study looks at the links between cattle rustling in East Africa’s Karamoja Cluster and the flow of illicit arms into this ungoverned space. It looks at the actors involved in the illicit arms trade, the sources of the weapons, and the need for responses other than civilian disarmament exercises, which so far have been unsuccessful.
Reading of the Week: Illicit arms flows in the Karamoja Cluster
Enhancing Africa’s response to transnational organized crime
Iranian drone strikes, as exemplified by the September 2019 attack against Saudi Aramco facilities, have jolted Middle East leaders and revealed Tehran’s long-range precision strike capabilities. The regime’s large and growing drone force, which can be used for reconnaissance or strike missions, now poses an existential threat to the Gulf states and a direct threat to Israel, as does its formidable missile force.
Striking Back: Iran and the Rise of Asymmetric Drone Warfare in the Middle East
The Washington Institute
In an interview in Haaretz on January 1, 2023, Maj. Gen. (res.) Tamir Hayman, former head of Military Intelligence and currently Managing Director of the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), stated that the Israeli strategy that sought (and seeks) to fell the nuclear agreement with Iran has failed, and that the last three Prime Ministers of Israel pursued this aim without presenting an alternative program.
Is There an Alternative Strategy in Response to Irans Nuclear Progress?
The Institute for National Security Studies
In the period from 1991 to 2004 there were three challenges to the international nuclear non-proliferation community and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Three countries—South Africa, Iraq and Libya—had taken their ambitions to build nuclear weapons to a high threshold of implementation. This report provides an account and analysis of the inspection campaigns to disarm and denuclearize these three states from the perspective of a direct participant.
Verifying Nuclear Disarmament - Lessons Learned in South Africa
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
This SIPRI Policy Report synthesizes the data on small arms and light weapons (SALW) diversion from the United Nations Panel of Experts reports on the five UN arms embargoes in place in sub-Saharan Africa in 2022, on the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan (Darfur region). The report provides a typology on the sources of illicit SALW in the states and regions under embargo and discusses the challenges of enforcing arms embargoes and possible policy solutions to address the various sources of illicit SALW in order to inform and support efforts to combat the proliferation of illicit arms.
Illicit Small Arms and Light Weapons in Sub-Saharan Africa
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Despite optimism that a breakthrough was imminent in the talks to revive the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), indirect talks between Washington and Tehran have stalled again. While the parties disagree on the extent of sanctions relief and what legal and political mechanisms are necessary to ensure the revived agreement's durability, many observers consider Iran's insistence on the settlement of the International Atomic Energy Agency's (IAEA) probe into its past nuclear activities as the main roadblock to the restoration of the nuclear deal.
The Final Hurdle: How to Secure the Iran Nuclear Deal
The National Interest
Several U.N. Security Council resolutions adopted between 2006 and 2010 required Iran to cooperate fully with the International Atomic Energy Agency’s investigation of its nuclear activities, suspend its uranium enrichment program, suspend its construction of a heavy water reactor and related projects, and ratify the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement.
Irans Nuclear Program: Tehrans Compliance with International Obligations
Congressional Research Service
After a month of negotiations, the tenth review conference (RevCon) of the parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT)concluded on August 26 without a consensus final document, raising concerns about weakening efforts to promote nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy. It also marked the first time two consecutive RevCons have failed to produce such a document.
The Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament Is in Danger
Council on Foreign Relations