Diplomacy & Crisis News

If Russia is victorious in Ukraine, the Black Sea will again be a Russian lake, with its littoral states at Moscow’s mercy. All of democratic Europe’s efforts to replace Gazprom supplies with Azerbaijani gas and other suppliers in the region will have come to naught.

But if Russia falls short of outright victory in Ukraine?

Enter Hungary, Europe’s new gas station. For the last year, Hungarian prime minister Victor Orbán has been bolstering Hungarian credentials around the Black and Caspian Seas, appearing in forums as diverse as the Organisation of Turkic States and the Eurasian Development Bank. Orbán is working overtime to establish Hungary as a key conduit for expanded gas resources coming from southern Europe. In late October 2022, Georgia and Hungary signed a strategic cooperative agreement. In January 2023, Hungary and Azerbaijan came together for their own strategic partnership. Most recently, the foreign ministers from Budapest and Tashkent reached their own accord. Serbia remains game to transit Russian energy to Hungary; a cross-border interconnection is in the works. Further southeast, Hungarian politicos were in Sofia meeting pro-Moscow officials in President Ruman Radev’s caretaker government last August.

To Hungary’s southwest, its massive MOL Group has been transporting increasing amounts of liquified natural gas from Croatia’s regasification terminal on Krk Island. An interconnector between Hungary and Slovenia is planned, as is the introduction of bidirectional capacity between Austria and Hungary. Doubling down, gas operators in Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, and Hungary penned an MOU for a bidirectional gas corridor. All roads lead to Budapest.

Taken together, Orbán is riding Europe’s collective shift away from Russian energy to make Hungary a key gas transit hub. As Hungary’s prime minister, it’s his prerogative to bolster Hungary’s economy with transit revenue, low energy prices, and a diversified supplier portfolio. But while he works to increase gas supplies from southern Europe, Orbán is locking Hungary into a long-term, energy-based client relationship with Moscow.

A case in point: the Paks II nuclear powerplant today generates nearly 50 percent of Hungarian consumers’ energy needs. This plant is exclusively serviced by Russian energy giant ROSATOM. As such, in January 2023, Orbán firmly declared that Hungary will veto any proposed EU sanctions on Russia’s nuclear energy industry. Another case: Hungary plans to eliminate its Russian gas dependence—by 2050.

The energy comes with strings. Or rather, it comes with iron chains. Budapest hosts twice the number of Moscow’s diplomatic corps than are in Bratislava, Prague, and Warsaw combined. Orbán not only adamantly refuses to send arms to the Ukrainian military, but has worked overtime to hold up EU aid packages to Kyiv.

All indicators suggest that Orbán intends to keep Russian energy sources on tap for decades to come—in exchange for seemingly selling the Kremlin a base for European mischief and a permanent veto in Brussels.

Despite all these developments, Brussels appears unalarmed. Indeed, there are elites throughout EU Member States who callously wish the war would “just go away.” And on the other side of the Atlantic, Putin’s proxy is the European darling among Trumpian Republicans. Their disconnect between the Russo-Ukrainian War, Hungary’s open support for Russia, and U.S. energy security is puzzling, especially given the interconnectivity of global energy markets. CPAC adherents and fans of Fox News’ Tucker Carlson identify with Orbán’s social conservatism, align with his anti-immigration stance, and grin approvingly at his “stick-it-to-the-EU” rhetoric. Are passing culture wars worth the price of the collective security of the United States and our allies?

Viktor Orbán is Vladimir Putin’s man in Brussels and beyond, despite the threats to NATO. As he links up with fellow authoritarian-trending travelers along these gas routes, Orbán’s multiple acts of Russian allegiance should ring alarm bells in Western capitals. Is anyone listening?

Richard Kraemer is the president of the US-Europe Alliance and a senior non-resident fellow at the European Values Center for Security Policy in Prague, Czech Republic.

Let the challenges begin. The recent decision by Mexican legislators to cut the budget and staff of the thirty-three-year-old National Electoral Institute (INE) has sparked widespread protests and garnered front-page coverage worldwide. “Plan B,” which was recently approved by the Mexican Senate, includes provisions that could undermine the independence of the INE and limit its ability to carry out its work effectively. This decision is a concerning development for Mexico’s democracy, which has long relied on the agency to promote transparency, accountability, and free and fair elections. After President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s decision to publish the electoral reform in the official gazette on March 1, the electoral reform entered into force on March 3, 2023.

Specifically, the law would give the Mexican government greater control over the INE’s budget and staffing decisions, undermining the agency’s independence. The law would also establish new social media and online campaigning regulations that some critics have argued could limit freedom of speech and the ability of opposition parties to reach voters and participate in the electoral process.

During the 2018 elections, the INE implemented several measures to promote transparency and accountability in the electoral process. For example, the agency developed a new system for tallying votes that allowed results to be reported in real-time. It also implemented new campaign financing regulations that limited the amount of money that candidates could spend on their campaigns. Additionally, the INE conducted a comprehensive voter education campaign to increase voter turnout and ensure that voters were informed about the issues and candidates in the election. 

But this progress could be at stake for the next presidential election cycle, which officially starts on September 2 of this year, and coincides with the United States’ own election cycle. Importantly, the Mexican constitution states that there can be no changes to the Mexican electoral law in the 90 days leading up to the date when the electoral season officially kicks off. Therefore, any attempts by the opposition and civil society to push back against the reform must happen in the next six months. The Mexican Supreme Court is poised to continue playing an important role in promoting the integrity and independence of the electoral process in Mexico and in ensuring that the agency can carry out its work effectively, especially as the window for challenges to the reform is purposefully short. 

It is critical for the international community—especially the United States—to continue supporting and assisting the INE and civil society organizations on the ground. One important way to do so is through financial and technical assistance—via non-profits that support free and fair elections worldwide, like the International Foundation for Electoral Systems—by working with local partners. The United States, via USAID or the Department of State, can als assist with funding for election monitoring and technical assistance to help the INE carry out its work effectively. And the U.S. Congress can earmark appropriations that tick these boxes. 

Ultimately, promoting free and fair elections in Mexico will require a sustained commitment from all stakeholders to protect the independence of the agency and other sister institutions and to ensure that the electoral process is transparent and accountable. The recent developments surrounding the electoral reform bill highlight the urgent need for continued vigilance and action to protect democracy in Mexico, especially given our shared border. By assisting, whether financial or technical, promoting the development of a robust and independent civil society, and supporting the work of the Mexican Supreme Court, we can help ensure that Mexico’s democracy remains strong and vibrant. The recent protests and front-page stories about the INE’s budget cuts and staff reductions highlight the urgency of this issue, which is now official in all but the two Mexican states with upcoming local elections, and why it matters not just to Mexico but to the entire world.

Maria Fernanda Bozmoski is deputy director for programs at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center. @MariaBozmoski

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Relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states have thrived over recent decades, deepening links in energy, trade, politics, and culture. The GCC states play a crucial role in China’s Belt and Road Initiative and westward expansion, owing to its favorable geographic position and proximity to the Red Sea. The Sino-Gulf monarchies’ economic exchange is not limited solely to energy and chemicals (although it is a central dimension in the relationship), nor operates in one direction. Instead, it has become a bidirectional process that has diversified and deepened at either end to include the development of renewable forms of energy, construction of infrastructure, and transport. In addition, it has also begun to move into other, more advanced, value-added forms of economic activity, including investments in finance, tourism, and the digital economy. At the same time, the PRC has also invested in port development and industrial parks along the coastline of the Arabian Peninsula as part of its Maritime Silk Road Initiative ambitions.

But with the Persian Gulf’s reemergence as an arena of great power competition, the United States takes a concerned view of the PRC’s entry into the region. Much of Washington’s current stress stems from efforts to curb China’s growing global economic, technological, and geopolitical influence. Intensifying full-spectrum rivalry—involving military, trade, financial, and technical power—will increase the risk that the GCC states become the focus of American and Chinese attempts to align with their respective policies and not with their rival’s.

GCC monarchies are thus in a delicate position, where they must strive for greater autonomy by reducing their susceptibility to strategic great power competition. Nonetheless, the speed with which the U.S.-China rivalry has intensified has created an incredibly precarious situation for the GCC states’ foreign policy.

Different Approaches

The GCC governments face a new geopolitical and commercial calculus, with new pressures on managing their national security and economic development. The Biden administration has not hesitated to pressure the GCC monarchies, since it perceives certain aspects of their cooperation with China (especially in technological innovation) as damaging to American national security. The GCC states themselves are aware of increasing American concerns about China and do not want to get caught in a conflict between the two. Nevertheless, the intensifying rivalry between the United States and China pressures the GCC monarchies to side with one of the two powers. These states are trying to navigate between their most important ally and defense guarantor on the one hand, and their increasingly important economic partner and a rising regional player on the other.

While maintaining their strategic alliance with the United States, some Gulf countries also seek to hedge themselves against the threats by establishing ties with other powers, such as China, to protect themselves from the increasingly vulnerable geopolitical balance of power. This hedging policy—a fixed element in their political toolkit—aims to use China as an additional source of political, economic, and even military support, all of which can be levered to pressure the United States to adjust its policy. However, despite doubts about Washington’s commitment to their security, Gulf states recognize that there is no substitute for the U.S. military presence in the region.

Unsurprisingly, although the Gulf states share a common skepticism of Washington’s future commitment to the region, their attitudes vis-à-vis China and great power rivalry differ significantly. These views can be divided into three groups: the “hedging states” (Saudi Arabia and the UAE), the “balancing states” (Qatar and Oman), and the “cautious states” (Kuwait and Bahrain). The strategies pursued by each state will eventually test the region’s security and stability, possibly dividing the GCC.

The Biden administration’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Afghanistan and review America’s military presence in the rest of the Middle East—whether it be by cutting U.S. military support for the Saudi-led offensive against Houthi rebels in Yemen, or moving ships, forces, and weapons systems out of other Gulf countries towards the Pacific theater—has come at the expense of American presence in the region. Yet at the same time, in the age of great power rivalry, Washington cannot play the role alone of the policeman in the Persian Gulf in the way it has in the past—it has other priorities. The United States must find a way to reduce its military presence in the Persian Gulf while at that same time driving GCC states to step in and fill these gaps. This means Washington needs its Gulf partners to be capable of defending themselves, rather than remain militarily and logistic dependent on U.S. support in every regional conflict. For instance, the eight-year-long military campaign in Yemen and the fight against Iranian-backed Houthi rebels has displayed Gulf state deficiencies.

More importantly, although this approach is oriented towards encouraging the GCC states to defend themselves against foreign threats, it also allows them greater autonomy in maneuvering in the great power competition: GCC states will be free ot further develop economic and technological collaboration with China without threatening the overarching strategic-security partnership with the United States as long as those measures do not provide Beijing with an undue strategic foothold in the region.

American Options

Given all this, what are the options facing the Biden administration, and what should be the next step in relations with the GCC states?

If the GCC states want to maintain their strategic-security partnership with the United States, they must align with Washington in its rivalry with Beijing The Biden administration expects that its allies in the Gulf may have to make stark and brutal choices between the two great powers instead of attempting to play off both sides. A renewed American commitment to regional engagement might help to tip the balance. As such, a strengthening of the strategic-security partnerships will influence how the GCC monarchies’ decisionmaking.

The U.S. strategic-security partnership (arms sales and regional security guarantees) is the tiebreaker and game changer in stabilizing relations with its Gulf partners and competing with China for regional influence. This “trump card” creates a military umbilical cord that binds and aligns the GCC states with Washington. The Gulf states recognize that there is no substitute for U.S. military presence in the Gulf to block Iranian aggression. Hence, the extent to which the U.S. will remain committed to the GCC states security should be a function of the nature and degree of strategic proximity of their relationship with China. Nevertheless, it takes two to tango, and the GCC states must show they are responsible partners and loyal. In contrast, the Biden administration needs to as it seeks to reconfigure its reliability in everything related to its regional security obligations.

Dr. Mordechai Chaziza holds a Ph.D. from Bar-Ilan University and is a senior lecturer at the Department of Politics and Governance and the division of Multidisciplinary Studies in Social Science, at Ashkelon Academic College (Israel). Dr. Chaziza is the author of China and the Persian Gulf: The New Silk Road Strategy and Emerging Partnerships (2019), China’s Middle East Diplomacy: The Belt and Road Strategic Partnership (2020), and The New Silk Road Grand Strategy and the Maghreb: China and North Africa (2022).

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March 8 is celebrated around the world as International Women’s Day. It’s an especially fitting occasion to reflect on the success of a woman who is quickly becoming one of the world’s most important political figures: Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni.

Meloni's success transcends gender. Not only is she the G7’s only female leader, but according to Morning Consult’s “Global Leader Approval Ratings,” the Italian prime minister boasts the highest level of domestic approval out of all G7 political leaders. Meloni is the only leader in the group to have the support of the majority of her co-nationals, with a 54 percent approval rating that dwarfs that of her international counterparts.

President Joe Biden enjoys the support of only 42 percent of the American public, with a majority of the American people sharing a negative opinion of his presidency thus far. Further north, things are even gloomier for Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, who has a mere 39 percent approval rating and the disapproval of 55 percent of Canadians surveyed.

Things aren’t any better for German chancellor Olaf Scholz or British prime minister Rishi Sunak. The former enjoys a paltry 36 percent approval rating, with nearly 60 percent of Germans surveyed expressing a negative opinion of the Chancellor. Less than a third of Brits have a favorable opinion of Sunak. Scholz and Sunak look like superstars, however, when compared to Japanese prime minister Fumio Kishida: only 23 percent of those surveyed reported a positive opinion of the man, with more than 60 percent of the Japanese public sharing negative views.

Finally, French president Emmanuel Macron, who struts across the international stage as the self-styled leader of Europe, is the G7 leader most disliked by his own citizens, with nearly 70 percent of the French public holding an unfavorable impression of the man. Macron’s unpopularity was evident in the recent parliamentary elections, in which Macron lost the legislative majority.

Meloni’s strong popularity with Italians comes from her political tenacity and coherence as well as staying in touch with everyday concerns. She is generally recognized as a self-made person and—being herself from a storied working-class neighborhood—as a champion of the lower and middle classes. She is also very strong-minded on matters of national interest, and in foreign policy, she is taking an unusually unequivocal geopolitical stance for an Italian prime minister: firmly anchored in the Western alliance and hard-nosed on China and Russia.

Today, Meloni is not only the most popular leader in the G7; her youth, talent, and popularity suggest her stature on the international scene will continue to grow for years to come, which is something that cannot be said with confidence of her colleagues. Not bad for the “underdog”—as she referred to herself in her inauguration speech—who has relied on her own determination and ability to make a name for herself. On this International Women’s Day, therefore, let us praise the emerging leadership of this woman who has already become one of the most prominent and promising leaders in international politics.

Alexander Alden is a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former Department of State, National Security Council, and Department of Defense official.

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Hezbollah’s endorsement of Suliman Frangieh for the Lebanese presidency was a long-anticipated event, which became official during a televised speech by the group’s secretary-general, Hassan Nasrallah, on Monday evening. Nasrallah declared, “the candidate we support is Suliman Frangieh.”

There was no ambiguity among the Lebanese people about the pro-Iranian Shite movement’s preference for Frangieh as Michel Aoun’s successor, whose mandate ended in October 2022. However, it was also clear which political parties and actors would vehemently oppose this decision.

There is already growing dissent among some groups about Hezbollah’s endorsement of Suliman Frangieh, which they view as unacceptable. The opposition is not necessarily aimed at Frangieh himself, but rather the process of how he is being presented, which is perceived as a “take it or leave it” style of politics. Speaking to me, Najat Saliba, a new member of parliament, expressed her disapproval of Frangieh’s endorsement and the manner in which it is being carried out, saying, “This is using force to impose a candidate on everyone. I think the democratic process requires that the person announces his candidacy for the presidency. He has not done so. If Hezbollah wants this person as a candidate, they should let him advance his candidacy and let democracy prevail.” According to Najat, the approach being used is not the normal procedure used by democratic countries to elect presidents. “The use of force is obvious here, and the intentions are not aimed at building a country and respecting democracy. It is the opposite; it is imposing their own candidate in the form of a dictatorship.”

A spokesperson for Lebanese Forces (LF), an opposition political party, has responded to Nasrallah’s speech and clarified his party’s position on the issue of the presidency. The spokesperson stated, “It has been clear from day one that Hezbollah supports Mr. Frangieh, so the declaration came as no surprise. Therefore, we do not feel the need to respond to Nasrallah’s declaration, but we want to emphasize that it confirms our concerns and positions.” The spokesperson criticized Nasrallah for not sending his MPs to the parliament since September 29, which was the date of the first session to elect a president. Instead, he wasted eleven sessions and more than four months of blank ballots, obstructing the course of the constitution and preventing the election of a president. The spokesperson suggested that Nasrallah should have sent his MPs to vote for Mr. Frangieh earlier, rather than waiting until now to make the endorsement public.

When asked if there were any circumstances under which the LF could view Frangieh as a viable option, the party spokesperson responded by stating that “we tend not to argue about the persona of Mr. Frangieh, since we believe it is not individual who will really govern, but rather the program and the alliances he can forge. And although we have developed good relations with him, Mr. Frangieh is unfortunately aligned with Hezbollah’s program, which we totally oppose.” The spokesperson added that the majority of the Lebanese people also oppose Hezbollah’s program, as evidenced by the last elections last May.

If Frangieh wishes to become the next president, he would need the support of a major Christian bloc in parliament, which he currently lacks. It is possible that Hezbollah is banking on the situation becoming so desperate that the opposition will eventually concede, hoping to salvage some sort of victory.

Such a scenario has occurred previously: in 2016, the LF’s leader, Samir Geagea, endorsed Michel Aoun through the Maarab Agreement in exchange for a number of concessions. That endeavor ultimately failed. Since then, the LF has learned its lesson and is holding the line against making any deals with candidates that receive the blessing of Hezbollah. Geagea himself has repeatedly said his party would reject Frangieh entering office.

Like Michel Aoun, Suleiman Frangieh was an old rival of the LF from the Lebanese Civil War. However, in 2018, thanks to meditation by Lebanon’s Maronite Patriarch Beshara Boutros Rai, both individuals and their respective parties reconciled. This, however, did not mean the two have a common vision for the country: the LF is still insistent that no pro-Hezbollah president should enter the presidential palace, and stressed it will boycott such proposals.

The LF is not alone in its disapproval, albeit for different reasons. 

In response to Nasrallah’s speech, a parliamentarian from the Free Patriotic Movement (FPM), Salim Aoun (no relationship with Michel Aoun), tweeted that his party is aligned with either side.

Until recently, Hezbollah and FPM were close allies. They signed a memorandum of understanding in 2006—the Mar Mikhael Agreement. At the time, Hassan Nasrallah and then-FPM leader Michel Aoun met to forge an alliance that would bring both parties greater prestige and resources. Now, the two have unofficially separated due to Hezbollah’s endorsement of Frangieh. The current leader of FPM, Gebran Bassil, has presidential ambitions of his own, and has refused to go along with endorsing Frangieh.

In Lebanon’s sectarian system, the top posts are typically divided among the country’s different religious confessions. The presidency belongs to the Maronite Christians. In a manner of speaking, the position has become a seat for the voiceless. This time, however, there is a candidate who may become president but has no Maronite Christian backing. Of course, in the unforeseeable world of Lebanese politics, anything is possible. But as of now, the response to Frangieh is a resounding no.

Adnan Nasser is an independent foreign policy analyst and journalist with a focus on Middle East affairs. Follow him on Twitter @Adnansoutlook29.

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As the U.S. intelligence community ramps up its warnings that China is considering arming the Russian war machine in Ukraine, many the world over are worried.

They believe what Tobias Ellwood, an influential British member of parliament, and Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a retired British Army colonel and fellow at Cambridge University, have written in the British press: that this is the beginning of a new Cold War. Unequivocally, they write, this is the start of a new phase: double or quits.

The German newspaper Der Spiegel reports that China is in late-stage negotiations to supply Russia with kamikaze drones—a supplement to the Iranian Shaheed drones Russia has already made extensive use of in its war in Ukraine. The newspaper also reports that a China-affiliated cut-out firm plans to deliver the blueprints and training to allow Russia to produce Chinese drones—about 100 per month—on the equivalent of a license.

CIA Director William J. Burns has insisted that the United States has no evidence of current arms deliveries from China to Russia, nor does it know that a decision to supply Russia has been officially made. But the fact that Wang Yi, China’s top diplomat, visited Moscow on the anniversary of Russia’s invasion, many say, makes his country’s intentions very clear.

Many have seemingly forgotten that before Russia invaded Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin held a meeting with President Xi Jinping of China, where the two men declared their countries’ “friendship without limits.” That has not been repudiated at any time since Russia launched its war days after the Xi-Putin meeting.

While it might be possible to confect a story of limited Chinese patience with Russian imperialism—spinning Chinese abstention in votes at the United Nations and Chinese leaders cautioning their Russian counterparts over the possibility of nuclear use—this would be a distortion of the facts. China is in Russia’s corner in Ukraine—and has been from the very beginning.

For the past year, China has happily bought Russian commodities—both oil and gas—in defiance of international sanctions. Chinese firms have also skirted international sanctions on both financial products and high technology, building a sophisticated machine of false companies, phoney intermediaries, and jurisdictional loopholes to ensure that the Russian war machine gets its fix of Chinese technology.

What has been successfully done for North Korea over the past eighty years—immense Chinese support camouflaged and sandbagged—is now beginning to be done for Russia. This connection will only intensify as the Russian economy runs into longer-term structural problems caused by deficit financing, capital controls, the closing of foreign markets for Russian hydrocarbons, technology shortages, artificial deflationary measures, and more.

Russia is increasingly dependent on China for capital and resources, and far from seeing this as a needs-must operation, or an opportunistic example of exploiting a weaker partner, the Chinese state is effectively propping up Russia for geopolitical reasons.

All this despite what Chinese officials declare when they talk to the Western press.

There is a vital lesson to learn here: what China says, especially through media outlets based in democracies, is not identical to what it wants—or even what it does. What China says to the West is very different from what its leaders say in Chinese to their own people.

Chinese state media is resolutely behind Russia’s invasion; its correspondents embed with Russian forces, interview Russian propagandists and government officials, and spread a view of the world entirely analogous to Vladimir Putin’s most paranoid fantasies. The world of Chinese state media is one in which the state blames the United States and NATO for forcing Russia into this war—a war that must be won in order to defeat the “American way of geopolitics” and usher in the “multipolar world” of Russian and Chinese dreams.

Whatever Chinese diplomats say to the Western public, their leaders are promoting a Russian victory in Ukraine—above all else, to teach the Americans a lesson.

As Foreign Policy’s James Palmer writes, “Anti-U.S. sentiment in Chinese state media has ramped up since the spy balloon crisis began. Much of it has focused on Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Chinese outlets portray as a righteous response to NATO aggression.”

This is the true face of China’s policy towards Ukraine, in which aid to Russia is morally justified and can be used as a ratchet to punish an American ally and prove American and European geopolitical efforts worthless.

As I write in my recent book, autocracies work together to prop up their shared views of the world—to make the world safe for tyranny. China was always going to support Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by whatever means it had available. This is something policymakers should have expected from the beginning.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken has vowed that China will face tremendous consequences, including sanctions, if it does indeed directly arm Russia. It is his job to ensure that, in this likely event, he keeps his word and ensures that American policy does not wriggle out of doing what may soon be grimly necessary.

Dr. Azeem Ibrahim is a Director at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington DC and Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute U.S. Army War College.

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A new and more dangerous nuclear era has now dawned. The United States is now approaching a geostrategic environment in which not a single nuclear warhead, anywhere in the world, is covered by an arms control treaty. Indeed, new treaties are needed to strengthen strategic stability and deterrence in this new era.

As recently described by Senator Debra Fischer of Nebraska and Representative Doug Lamborn of Colorado, two top leaders in Congress on nuclear matters, five major developments promise to undermine strategic stability and credible deterrence for the United States and its allies.

These include: (1) Russia’s continued and multiple threats to use nuclear weapons in Moscow’s war against Ukraine; (2) China’s breathtaking projected increase in nuclear weapons deployments including the building of 360 new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) silos, placing China’s ICBM launcher count above that of the United States; (3) the Iranian government, which controls the largest ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East, being on the cusp of building nuclear warheads as it enriches uranium well within the range of having weapons-grade material; (4) North Korea’s massive increase in missile testing; and (5) Russia’s on and off again compliance with the New START Treaty that is set to expire in 2026 if not renewed or replaced.

Note also the connection between the current armed conflicts in the world and these four “brothers in mayhem,” as one could describe China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran. The war against Ukraine is solely Russia’s design, while the other three either send Russia armaments or financial assistance including drones and missiles.

China and Russia now routinely exercise their militaries together including in the South China Sea, the Sea of Japan, and the Arctic, working together to intimidate Japan, Australia, and the Republic of Korea, as the region also worries about the invasion or blockade threats to Taiwan.  

Similarly, the deployment and launch of hypersonic weapons by Russia or China from the Arctic, when taking into account ice shrinkage for part of the year, would bring such missile threats to within a few minutes of the continental United States.

Meanwhile, Iran makes war against Israel and U.S. interests in the Gulf, with guerilla war and hosting terrorist proxies in Lebanon, Yemen, Iraq, and Syria, while building a massive missile inventory. Now it seeks to build armament factories in Syria and Russia to avoid supply chain delays.

And North Korea, despite famine, launched more ballistic and cruise missile tests (fifty-four) in the past year than in the previous five years combined, all in the service of its continued invasion designs on the Republic of Korea and its international criminal enterprises.

In response to all four regional nuclear threats, the administration and its allies in Europe and Asia have generally joined together to propose more arms control.

Just this week, for example, the United States told Russia that it is ready to sit down and discuss New START and the future of arms control.

The United States has said the same to China, although the Chinese Communist Party has so far rejected any discussions out of hand, occasionally asserting discussions can take place only when the United States reduces its nuclear arsenal to no more than the (unknown) level of China’s deployed weapons.

The United States appears ready to continue talking with North Korea about the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, although the North continually asserts its nuclear forces are to stay to counteract the “hostile” policy of the United States toward Pyongyang.

As for Iran, the United States has made major concessions on trade and related sanctions, and continues to hope that the moribund Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action can be restored, bringing an end to Iran’s nuclear weapons ambitions.

The common thread among all of these efforts is the lack of any serious pushback against what these countries are doing. Serial violations of every nuclear arms deal have been documented by the U.S. Department of State for decades, starting as far back as the 1972 SALT nuclear arms Treaty, and yet Russia has not paid any serious price. 

It is clear that arms control has failed to constrain the nuclear capabilities of Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. When combined, formal arms control agreements apply—at best—to an estimated 33%-50% of the approximately 6,600 nuclear weapons held collectively by the four states. And that limiting function may decline to zero over the next decade, just as China’s nuclear force expands and New START expires, further eroding what transparency and predictability remain in the world’s nuclear arsenals.

Peter Huessy is the President of Geostrategic Analysis.

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The Islamic Republic of Iran has significantly progressed in its nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) recently disclosed the findings of its latest inspection, indicating that the regime had enriched uranium to a purity level of 84 percent. This level is close to the weapons-grade standard of 90 percent, implying that any accumulation of such material could be employed to manufacture an atomic bomb should the regime decide to cross that line.

The emergence of this threat sparks questions about whether the Biden administration’s current Iran policy can effectively prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. The more pressing concern is determining alternative strategies to address the threat if the policy falls short of stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear warhead.

Based on the IAEA’s report, Iran has installed advanced centrifuges at one of its fuel enrichment plants and increased the production of enriched uranium up to 84 percent. Iran’s total stockpile of enriched uranium now exceeds the allowable limit under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), and the IAEA’s capacity to efficiently monitor Iran’s nuclear facilities and verify that they are solely used for peaceful purposes is compromised. CIA director William Burns has cautioned that the Islamic Republic is moving closer to obtaining the necessary components for a nuclear weapon. During testimony to lawmakers, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Colin Kahl stated that Iran has the capability to produce enough fissile material for a single nuclear bomb in approximately twelve days.

In addition to the uranium enrichment program, Iran’s ballistic missile program has been advancing at an alarming rate. The regime has been increasing its long-range missile capabilities in recent years, which could potentially be used to deliver a nuclear warhead. This development is a cause for concern as it suggests that Iran is steadily moving toward becoming a nuclear power with the ability to threaten regional and global security. 

Intelligence reports suggest that Iran is actively developing hypersonic missiles that have the potential to travel at speeds up to 15 times the speed of sound with remarkable accuracy. These missiles could also be configured to carry a nuclear warhead, further adding to the global concern regarding Iran’s weapons capabilities. General Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., the former head of U.S. Central Command who oversaw military planning for dealing with Iran, said the country has amassed “over 3,000 ballistic missiles of varying types, some of which have the potential to reach Tel Aviv.” Many of these missiles are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. This development further underscores the growing concerns regarding Iran’s military capabilities and the potential threats they pose to regional and global security.

Moreover, Iran has likely attempted to develop the third component of a nuclear weapons program: warhead design, which involves constructing a nuclear warhead at the top of a missile. The IAEA previously reported that Iran experimented with advanced nuclear detonation technology, but regime scientists encountered technical obstacles during the experiment. It is plausible that such activities are still ongoing clandestinely, but IAEA inspectors have been unable to detect them.

Detecting a secret warhead design program is challenging because it does not require the use of nuclear materials, which are the primary focus of the IAEA’s safeguards. Warhead design can be conducted using non-nuclear means and in facilities that are not declared to the IAEA, making it harder for inspectors to detect such activities. Furthermore, accessing sensitive military-related sites is essential to detect secret warhead designs. Still, the Islamic Republic has refused to grant access to such sites to inspectors, further complicating the process.

Given the difficulty in detecting progress in this area, it is possible that the Iranian regime has continued with the project and resolved the technical challenges involved in warhead design.

Had the Biden administration taken a more robust approach toward the Islamic Republic, the regime would not have made such significant progress in its nuclear program. 

The absence of a strong and assertive response to the nuclear advancements has only served to embolden the regime and encourage it to push the administration on other matters, whether through conducting terrorist attacks within the United States or issuing threats of military aggression against the West.

According to a recent report by the Department of Justice, the regime had conspired with a transnational criminal element to assassinate American citizens, including former U.S. officials in the Trump administration. Regime officials, including the chief of the Quds Force—the foreign operations arm of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC)—and the commander of IRGC Aerospace Force, have indicated their steadfast commitment to continue their malicious activities on American soil.

Given their perception of Biden’s strategy as ineffective, the Islamic Republic felt emboldened to become involved in the conflict in Ukraine without fear of a forceful U.S. response. The regime has been supplying Russia with hundreds of Shahed-136 kamikaze drones, which were manufactured in Iran. These drones have been employed by the Russian military to strike urban areas and vital facilities in Ukraine, contributing to the destruction of almost half of the country’s electricity supply and depleting Ukrainian resources.

Making the situation even more alarming, the IRGC has escalated its hostile language and threats toward Europe, claiming that it has the capability to strike Europe by expanding the range of its missiles. According to Hossein Salami, the commander-in-chief of the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guards has the ability to increase the range of its missiles and “strike them seriously,” although it has refrained from doing so thus far. While providing weaponry to Russia is indeed an act of hostility against Europe, the IRGC’s explicit threats and declarations of their ability to target European nations represent a more explicit threat and a clear indication of their willingness to engage in a military confrontation with Europe.

The regime’s ruinous involvement in Ukraine and the IRGC’s hostile language and threats toward the United States and Europe, as well as plotting terror attacks on American soil, ought to have solidified Western opinion and Biden’s stance that the present strategy toward Iran is inadequate and necessitates a dramatic change.

In light of the circumstances, the essential issue is what steps the United States and its European partners can take to stop Iran’s hostile actions and pursuit of nuclear weapons.

It is imperative to admit in the first place that the Islamic Republic has no intention of relinquishing its nuclear program, ending its support for the conflict in Ukraine, or halting its terrorist operations in the West and the United States. In the event of a lack of diplomatic efforts, it is crucial for Europe and the U.S. government to establish a potent and credible deterrence capable of forcing the regime to stop its nuclear pursuits. Even from the non-proliferation perspective, restoring the JCPOA at the present stage wouldn’t impede the regime’s capability to build the bomb but accelerate it. 

Additionally, the Islamic Republic is confronted with multiple crises that span social, economic, political, and environmental domains. Given the deteriorating economic conditions and the lack of hope for significant reforms in Iran, it is highly likely that a fresh wave of protests could emerge in the not-too-distant future. It is of utmost importance for the U.S. government and Europe to publicly express their support for Iranian protestors and undertake concrete actions to aid Iranians in their pursuit of democracy. 

Moreover, the IRGC is a terrorist group that is actively attempting to execute terrorist attacks in both the United States and Europe. Given that it has already been recognized as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the United States, the Biden administration should use its diplomatic influence to persuade European allies to also label the IRGC as such.

Finally, to exert additional pressure on the regime, it is necessary for the United States and Europe to transfer the nuclear file to the United Nations Security Council and activate the snapback provision of the JCPOA, thereby reinstating UN sanctions on Iran that were lifted after the accord’s implementation. Such a move would not only financially strain the regime but also hinder its ability to finance its repressive machinery that suppresses civilian protestors.

Any approach that falls short of implementing these measures would allow the Islamic Republic to persist with its malevolent activities. 

Farhad Rezaei is a senior fellow at Philos Project.

Image: Shutterstock.

Last summer, the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center (NPEC) held a three-move space war game that focused on North Korea’s potential use of nuclear weapons in low-earth orbit or near-space to knock out low-Earth orbit satellites. Initially, the game’s participants found this possibility a bit fantastic. Mid-way through the game, though, they warmed to the idea. Some even suggested that China might exercise the option.

That was prescient. Twelve weeks after NPEC completed its simulation, the South China Morning Post reported that the People’s Liberation Army’s Northwest Institute of Nuclear Technology was simulating nuclear weapons strikes designed to knockout dual-use satellite constellations, such as Starlink. The stated aim of the computer-simulated attacks was to prevent Taiwan from exploiting such militarily useful commercial systems. The article noted that the Limited Test Ban Treaty prohibits the detonation of nuclear weapons in space and the atmosphere. It failed, however, to point out that neither China nor North Korea are parties to the treaty. Similarly, neither the United States nor China have yet ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

Since the publication of the South China Morning Post article, Beijing’s efforts to game operations in near-space with lighter-than-air vehicles has strained relations with Washington and raised concerns about China’s offensive strategy for near-space operations generally.

What unfolded in NPEC’s war game last summer, then, is not all that far-fetched. By the end of the decade (when this simulation’s war takes place), tens of thousands of small, commercial, networked satellite systems will be flying in low-Earth orbit. These satellites will complement the U.S. Defense Department’s own space architecture, which includes national security systems flying in low, medium, and geosynchronous orbits. Hostile states, like North Korea, will want to hold them at risk.

What’s the worst they might do? They could wipe out nearly all the satellites in low-Earth orbit. Why bother with such an extreme prospect? It’s a prerequisite for sound planning: to hedge against the worst and to deal with lesser included threats, military planners and policymakers often focus on dire hypotheticals—e.g., massive nuclear wars, global warming catastrophes, pandemics, and so on. U.S. space policymakers arguably don’t yet have such an organizing disaster.

What the War Game Covered

The war game NPEC designed and played begins in the spring of 2029. The DPRK tests an inter-continental ballistic missile that inadvertently flies further than intended, triggering U.S. missile defenses in Alaska. No interception is made, but the United States demands North Korea show a good-faith effort to avoid further provocations by garrisoning its mobile missile force. Washington orders reconnaissance flights near North Korea and subsequently asks the United Nations to approve a selective blockade of North Korea while placing U.S. strategic forces on Defcon 3.

North Korea refuses America’s demands, begins to mobilize, and warns Washington that if the United States fails to end its alert and refuses to schedule the removal of its troops from South Korea (ROK), war will ensue. Tensions continue to build. Then early in June, North Korea launches a satellite into orbit and warns of a possible nuclear explosion in space unless the U.S. and ROK stand down. Washington contacts Beijing in hopes of getting China to pressure the North Koreans to relent. Chinese officials counsel Washington to negotiate with Pyongyang directly, noting that North Korea has not yet violated any treaty. The United States goes to the UN Security Council with a sanctions resolution against Pyongyang. Russia and China block its approval.

Throughout this crisis, U.S. officials try to determine if North Korea’s satellite is carrying a nuclear payload but are unable to do so. In mid-June of 2029, North Korea launches another payload into space, this time over the North Pacific. Well before it enters full orbit, the payload detonates, releasing 10–20 kilotons of nuclear energy into low-Earth orbit. All satellites in line of sight of the explosion are immediately disabled. U.S. space experts predict that the rest of the world’s satellites in lower low-Earth orbit will be disabled in a matter of days to several weeks. Shortly after the detonation, North Korea invades South Korea.

At each move, the game focused on what the United States and its closest space-faring allies would do to deal with each of these crises. This produced four takeaways:

1. Popular notions that space warfare will stay in space and that international limits can prevent hostile actions from occurring there are both strong and wrong.

Diplomats hope that with enough rules of the road, norms, and diplomatic signaling, the worst in space—military combat—can be avoided. Yet the strong belief that diplomatic limits might prevent hostile military actions in space is betrayed by deep ambiguities in the space laws and regulations we have. In this regard, the U.S. team insisted North Korea’s nuclear detonation violated the Outer Space Treaty (OST). China, however, disagreed, as did U.S. Department of Defense legal experts: unless it can be proven that a nuclear device detonated while it was clearly in orbit or “on station,” there may be no foul play. Indeed, under the OST a state may legally inject a nuclear weapon into space with a missile and detonate it so long as the warhead does not fly at least one, complete Earth orbit.

Unfortunately, there is nearly no easy way to verify if an orbiting spacecraft is carrying a nuclear warhead nor is there any simple way to enforce the OST’s ban on “stationing” or detonating nuclear weapons in space until the treaty itself is violated with a detonation. It also is unclear in the game if the detonation occurs when North Korea is in a clear state of war, in which case, the OST’s stipulations may not apply. This suggests that space diplomacy’s first task regarding these issues is to clarify what disagreements we are likely to have with hostile states rather than to insist that they will not arise or to “fix” them by treaty negotiations.

For decades, the United States and its allies have sought to establish clear rules whose violation has consequences. Although desirable, this in many key instances is still unattained. NPEC’s previous China space game struggled with this as well and concluded that only rules that could be self-enforced would likely be of any utility. Unfortunately, nothing in this game suggested otherwise. As for the plausible hawkish hope that with enough investments in military space capabilities, combat there can be deterred or, at least, be prevented from leading to conflict on Earth, the game itself was inconclusive.  At the same time, the hope that avoiding “combat” operations in space will somehow protect us, was discredited.

2. Developing satellite hardening and constellation reconstitution options to respond to a nuclear detonation in space are obvious hedges; far less obvious is what should be done to secure such options.

All of the game’s players agreed that, after a high-altitude nuclear explosion, there would likely be a race to reconstitute one’s satellite constellations. There also was significant agreement about what should be reconstituted—satellites and launchers—and how—by stockpiling certain materials, satellites, launchers, and other items, as well as ramping up manufacturing and mobilization base, etc. There was far less agreement or consideration, however, about when to reconstitute early, when satellite lifetimes would be limited, or later, after the radiation levels in the Van Allen Belts had declined, allowing newly inserted satellites to  survive longer. Nor was there agreement about where to focus the reconstitution efforts—in upper low-Earth orbit, medium-Earth orbit, in geosynchronous-Earth orbit, or on alternative, non-space-based, terrestrial and near terrestrial systems (high-altitude drones and balloons, undersea communications cables, ground-based navigational systems, etc.).

It also was unclear who might win in such a reconstitution race—China or the United States—and why. Some believed that the United States and its allies had a launch, satellite infrastructure, and technology lead as well as a larger mobilization base than China. Others believed China would steal a march on the race given its much quicker acquisition times. The game also stumbled across another reconstitution problem. Most players supposed that the Russian Soyuz capsule would be available on the U.S. space station in 2029. It might not. Developing U.S. or allied escape capsules would be desirable for both government and commercial space stations and operations on the moon.

Finally, there was disagreement about how much hardening should be required of commercial satellite operators. Some said it was pointless to demand this of commercial space firms, that if the U.S. government did, these firms would simply go overseas. Others said hardening should be proportionate to the risk being run—is the satellite in low-Earth orbit, near debris, able to cope with strong solar storms, radiation etc. Others insisted that if the commercial satellite provided government services, their government contracts could be conditioned upon meeting certain hardening requirements. Yet others said the government should help pay for such hardening. Some took the position that low-Earth orbit satellites ultimately were not that important to U.S. and allied security and prosperity. Others disagreed.

What is clear is our government should do more to resolve these disagreements before any crisis approaching anything like what unfolded during the game might occur.

3. To hedge against possible nuclear attacks against low-Earth orbiting systems, the United States and its space-faring allies should develop alternatives both in other space orbits and on and near Earth.

Devising space systems that can operate in several different orbits without major modifications and without dramatically increasing costs would be extremely useful to cope with the threats posed in the game. Such systems could afford the United States and its allies much greater levels of space system resiliency against both nuclear and nonnuclear threats. Such systems would also allow much greater operational flexibility in determining what an “optimal” constellation might be. Finally, it would make any reconstitution efforts much quicker and, possibly cheaper.

Meanwhile, on and near Earth, it would be useful to fortify land and sea cable communication systems, ground-based navigational aids, and the development of alternative imagery systems mated to high-altitude balloons, drones, or other non-space platforms. These land and air-based systems could be useful as stop gaps if low-Earth orbit space systems are disabled. In developing these alternative systems, it would be useful to develop ways to defend them both passively and actively.

4. Two large unknowns worth cracking are how feasible it might be to verify the presence of nuclear weapons in space and what proportionate military action might be to a nuclear detonation there and in near-space.

There was considerable debate about America’s ability to verify a nuclear payload in space. Some thought it would be possible eventually; others were skeptical. Several questioned even with a large fleet of such inspection systems constantly in orbit along with space systems to neutralize such payloads, if one could ever get close enough soon enough to make any difference.

Whatever the truth may be, it is critical to determine what’s possible so that reasonable expectations can be set before a crisis might occur. It is always tempting to spend significant amounts of time and money to try to secure a technical fix to such a challenging detection mission. But in this case, it may make more sense, however, to design technically and militarily around the probability that such a fix is unlikely.

Yet another mistaken assumption the game revealed was that effective, proportionate military counterstrike options to a nuclear detonation in space are readily on tap. In the game, they were not; in reality, they probably aren’t either. Again, it is unclear if such options ever will be.  This “hunch,” however, needs to be assessed.

Satellites as Hostages?

Again, some might dismiss this game and its findings as outliers. To do so though—as America and its allies rely ever more on low-Earth orbiting satellites to accomplish military and commercial missions—would be a mistake. Indeed, it could prove fatal, as our adversaries develop new ways to hold these satellites at risk.

Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, served as deputy for nonproliferation in the Defense Department and is the author of Underestimated: Our Not So Peaceful Nuclear Future (2019).

Image: Maxal Tamor/Shutterstock.

From the Hungarian-Serbian border to the Polish-Belorussian one, last year demonstrated that without fences it is almost impossible to mitigate the flow of irregular mass migration and implement effective border control.

After the illegal arrival into Europe of 330,000 people in 2022—64 percent more than in 2021—some politicians and experts sounded the alarm again, arguing for stronger border protection, including the erection of more physical barriers. Yet the conclusion of the recent special meeting of the European Council showed that the European Union and some member states are still strictly against fences, and they did not support the deployment of common funding for the construction of physical barriers.

The European resistance to border walls has strong historical and symbolic roots. The haunting memory of the Iron Curtain which divided Europe for almost fifty years and created a conservation area for authoritarian socialist regimes is still very strong among the generation that is currently leading the continent, as is the idea of an open and inclusive European Union. It is obvious if we read the words of Dutch prime minister Mark Rutte, who said during the Council meeting that the debate looks like “we want to build a great Berlin Wall around the European Union.” According to Politico, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz followed a similar argument when he tried to calm the mood, and asked whether the EU wanted to turn itself into a fortress, stated that “walls, simply put, do not work.”

Nevertheless, other member countries have different opinions—and, interestingly, they are mainly the front-line states on the EU’s external borders which have already experienced the effectiveness of physical barriers and who demand common EU-funding for their border protection. Their attempt was not new: in 2021, twelve member states—Austria, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Greece, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia—called for an update to the EU’s Schengen Border Code to allow “physical barriers” as border protection measures—without success. Before the recent European Council meeting, eight EU countries again demanded more effective border control, while others, like Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán and Austrian chancellor Karl Nehammer, explicitly argued for the financing of fences to “protect all of Europe.” Before the meeting of the Council, the president of the European People’s Party of the European Parliament, Manfred Weber—changing his previous opinion—also argued in an op-ed that “if we want to maintain free movement inside the EU, then people must know that the external borders are protected. In our view, this also means building fences wherever this may be necessary.” He later posted on Twitter that “fences, in exceptional cases, are not taboo for us. We must restore order at Europe’s external borders. As seen in Spain, Greece & Bulgaria, technical measures & law enforcement can be necessary.” 

Ye, because of the resistance of some member states, the potential breakthrough did not happen. Instead, Europe has decided upon half-measures. In their conclusions, the member states called on the European Commission to “immediately mobilize substantial EU funds and means to support Member States in reinforcing border protection capabilities and infrastructure, means of surveillance, including aerial surveillance, and equipment.” In other words, no fences. 

Listening to the arguments, it is hard to imagine why aerial surveillance is somehow considered a better border protection method. The only reasonable explanation is that some member states are still insisting on symbolism rather than pragmatic protection. Of course, posing with an unarmed drone is fancier than with barbed wire, and politicians do not like bad reputations. That is one explanation for why decisionmakers opposed to fences clothe their arguments in humanitarianism, sometimes with remarkable successes: the president of the jury awarding the UNESCO peace prize to former German chancellor Angela Merkel, who let at least 1.2 million migrants and refugees into her country in 2015, commended her at the ceremony for “your humanity, your spirit of solidarity and your keen sense of ethics and your inspiring leadership.” There is far less attention to the uncomfortable fact that only 49 percent of refugees that came to Germany since 2013 were able to find steady employment within five years of arriving, placing significant burden on the welfare system.

At the end of the day, effective border protection is not a matter of symbolism, but rather a practical thing: neither fancy photos, humanitarian symbolism, nor prizes will stop anybody from risking their life and coming to an open Europe. A drone will neither stop anybody from crossing between official ports of entry, nor will it slow down the movement of irregularly arriving migrants. Surveillance, of course, is an integral part of border protection and management, but only if the other pillars are implemented, including manpower, legal barriers, and, sometimes, fences. Neither in the North African Spanish enclave of Ceuta, nor at the Polish-Belarussian border, nor at the Hungarian-Serbian one, was it the cameras and drones alone that mitigated the flow of illegal mass migration, but also well-protected fences. Without walls, border control would be impossible, as was demonstrated during the European migration crisis in 2015. 

Europe is under pressure, and it must keep and protect its values. But values are not equal to the empty symbolism of avoiding the word “fence.”

Viktor Marsai, Ph.D., is the Director of the Budapest-based Migration Research Institute, an associate professor at the University of Public Service, and an Andrássy Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies in Washington, DC.

Image: Hieronymus Ukkel/Shutterstock.

“Dear mothers, I’m a mother and my child is in a hospital bed…don’t send your children to school,” one parent in the Iranian city of Qom pleads.

Iranian schoolgirls by the hundreds are falling ill from poisonings. The exact perpetrators of the attacks are unclear, but human rights groups suspect that extremist religious groups that have found fertile ground in the Islamic Republic of Iran are behind it. Analysts speculate one motive behind the poisoning is to instill fear so the girls won’t attend school and will refrain from participating in the mass protests that have spread throughout Iran since September 2022.

The Biden administration, along with its allies, should raise this deeply troubling development at the forthcoming Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) Executive Council meeting, which begins on March 14.

March is Women’s History Month. President Joe Biden commemorated it with a call to “create a nation where every woman and girl knows her possibilities know no bounds in America.” The opposite is happening in Iran.

Since November, toxic poisonings, perhaps chemical compounds, in over fifty schools have poisoned more than 1,000 Iranian schoolgirls. Students experienced nausea, numbness in their limbs, difficulty breathing, and heart palpitations, according to the New York Times. The string of attacks has deterred girls from attending school. One teacher told Iranian media that “of the 250 students in our school, only 50 attended classes.” Yet Iran’s interior minister blamed some of the girls’ symptoms on “stress” and condemned foreign news outlets for causing alarm.

The students’ families protested the poisonings, chanting, “we don’t want unsafe schools.” A leaked video shows the arrest of one mother for her solidarity with the schoolgirls.

The poisonings come amid the nationwide protests that broke out in September when twenty-two-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody after Tehran’s morality police arrested her for allegedly wearing her hijab incorrectly. The protests condemn the clerical regime’s brutality and call for the end of its reign.

Iran’s intelligence ministry and security forces said they are investigating the incidents, but Iran does not have a record of credible investigations. For example, its officials deny that rapes are occurring in prisons, that Tehran has arrested thousands of protestors, and that security forces have killed hundreds of peaceful demonstrators.

After being poisoned twice, a student described the contradictory answers. They told her “All is good, we’ve done our investigation.” However, separately, the school told her father that the closed-circuit television surveillance “has been down for a week and we can’t investigate this.” The school wrongly claimed the student had a heart condition that was to blame for the painful symptoms.

Denial is part of Tehran’s modus operandi. In February, a leaked Iranian government document revealed the Islamic Republic deliberately concealed that Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) agents raped female protesters. It cited “the possibility of this information being leaked to social media and its misrepresentation by enemy groups” as reasons to keep it secret.

In a TV interview, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour asked Iranian foreign minister Amir-Abdollahian about regime agents reportedly raping a protestor at an IRGC facility. Brushing off the accusation, Abdollahian said CNN’s reports “are targeted and false … I cannot confirm it. There have been so many such baseless claims made on social media.” Amanpour asserted, “These are not baseless and they weren’t on the internet. CNN spoke to a cleric, a religious person, inside your country and got this story.”

At a recent press briefing, State Department spokesman Ned Price said, “We expect Iranian authorities to fully investigate these reported poisonings.”

This is not enough.

The United States should call attention to the issue at the OPCW’s March Executive Council meeting. Ambassador Joseph Manso, the U.S. representative to the OPCW, should raise the matter now with a view toward recommending a full investigation by the OPCW at subsequent meetings. Iran should but likely won’t agree to such an investigation.

In 2018, OPCW established an Investigation and Identification Team (IIT) to probe Assad’s chemical weapons use in Syria. OPCW found that the Syrian Arab Air Forces had likely conducted a chemical weapons attack that killed 43 individuals and affected many others.

There is more the international community can do to hold Iran accountable. As part of the UN Human Rights Council’s fact-finding mission into Iran’s human rights abuses related to the protests, it should now consider the poisonings as part of its investigation.

The Islamic Republic’s history of hiding the truth makes a third-party investigation into the poisoning attacks necessary. The international community must have a credible investigation to ascertain culpability. A pattern of human rights abuses is why Iran was removed from the UN Commission on the Status of Women last December.

While the Islamic Republic continues to undermine women’s rights, the resilience of women in Iran will not fade. In observing Women’s History Month, Biden and the international community must act. Let’s actively support the women of Iran this March—and every other month.

Toby Dershowitz is senior vice president for government relations and strategy at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). Katie Romaine is a government relations associate at FDD. Follow the authors on Twitter @TobyDersh and @Katie_Romaine.

Image: Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock.

Since President Joe Biden assumed office in January 2021, North Korea has ended its provocation pause and test-launched more missiles than ever, aiming to perfect its means of attacking the United States and its allies with nuclear weapons. The United States and its partners have strived to parry these threats through enhanced diplomacy, sanctions, deterrence, and a combination of offensive and defensive military capabilities.

Reaching New Heights

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has resumed testing its intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), which are designed to deliver a nuclear warhead against the United States. On February 18, the DPRK simulated a short-notice launch of its Hwasong-15 ICBM, rehearsing how to initiate nuclear strikes before the United States and its allies fully mobilize their defenses. The missile flew deep into outer space, more than a dozen times higher than the International Space Station. It could have landed anywhere in the United States if launched on a flatter trajectory.

This test is further evidence that the DPRK missile arsenal is increasing in quantity and improving in quality. Since it began its “turbocharged testing spree” last year, the North launched more nuclear-capable missiles than in any previous year. Many of these launches displayed innovative techniques and technologies intended to negate existing U.S. and allied defenses, such as using many missiles concurrently to overwhelm defenders, launching missiles from rail-mobile and submarine-based platforms, and employing hypersonic glide technologies that enable the warhead’s reentry vehicle to maneuver while descending on a target.

At the same time, the DPRK’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has declared his country’s nuclear status to be “irreversible.” Furthermore, the DPRK adopted a new law that may authorize DPRK field commanders to launch preemptive nuclear strikes and automatic retaliatory attacks if Kim is de-capitated. Additional enhancements to the DPRK missile arsenal are coming. In December 2022, Kim called for an “exponential” augmentation in the country’s weaponry, including serial manufacture of tactical nuclear weapons, reconnaissance satellites to assist with long-range missile strikes, and ICBMs intended for rapid counterstrikes against U.S. targets. Having resumed fissile material production, the DPRK might have several hundred nuclear-armed missiles by the end of this decade. 

Missile Motives

Pyongyang pursues nuclear-armed missiles for power, prestige, and profits. The missiles aim to deter and, if necessary, defeat the United States and its allies, boost the North’s status and global attention, distract foreign and domestic observers from the DPRK’s economic and political flaws, and enhance the North’s leverage for extracting money and other Western concessions. 

In peacetime, the North can leverage its missiles to coerce concessions from the United States and its allies. In a conflict, they provide the DPRK with a shield behind which to wage aggressive regional wars. Following the Russian playbook in Ukraine, Pyongyang’s policymakers might aspire to attack another country and then brandish its nuclear arsenal to deter a U.S. military response. American officials have acknowledged that possibility could weaken Washington’s extended deterrence guarantees to protect its Asian allies like Japan and South Korea. The DPRK wants these countries to doubt U.S. pledges to protect them—inducing them to appease rather than resist the North’s demands.

Fruitlessly Unconstrained

Three decades of negotiations, sanctions, and military countermeasures have failed to induce North Korea to relinquish its nuclear weapons aspirations. Past efforts to convince North Koreans that they would be more secure without nuclear weapons, offering the DPRK security assurances and confidence-building measures, or dangling visions of wealth and international acceptance have all proved insufficiently enticing. The DPRK has dismissed the Biden administration’s offers to resume direct talks despite proposals for “calibrated” diplomatic measures to decrease tensions with the North, dispel misperceptions that the United States threatens the DPRK, and facilitate North Korea’s return to compliance with its nuclear obligations.

The many sanctions adopted by the international community have restricted DPRK imports and exports, contributed to the isolation of the DPRK leadership, and constrained the North’s financial resources, but they have not halted the North’s missile development programs. Beijing and Moscow no longer enforce many existing sanctions and refuse to adopt new ones. Chinese and Russian leaders see DPRK provocations as mischievously helpful for distracting the United States from focusing on Beijing and Moscow.

Spurring Proliferation

The credibility of U.S. pledges to defend South Korea and Japan with all possible means, including U.S. nuclear weapons, was weakening even before the DPRK’s recent provocations. For several years, opinion polls indicate that most South Koreans want to acquire their own nuclear weapons or induce Washington to return U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korea. Some Japanese leaders have also more openly discussed their country’s nuclear weapons options in recent years. These views plausibly reflect the belief that the North will never abandon its nuclear weapons while the United States might prove unwilling to use its nuclear forces against North Korea if the DPRK could retaliate with nuclear strikes against U.S. territory. 

U.S. officials and analysts have discouraged allies from pursuing nuclear weapons for fears of legitimizing the DPRK’s nuclear arsenal, spurring further nuclear proliferation, promoting regional arms races, and decreasing crisis stability. By seeking nuclear weapons, Japan and South Korea would antagonize the United States and other governments, demean their countries’ lofty international reputations, expose themselves to economic sanctions, and intensify first-strike incentives in a crisis. Instead, the United States has assisted its allies to enhance their missile defenses, damage limitation, and other non-nuclear capabilities.     

Furthermore, the Biden administration made bolstering the credibility of U.S. extended security guarantees to these Asian partners one of the highest priorities of the recently completed U.S. Nuclear Posture and Missile Defense Reviews. The first review explicitly warns that the United States will destroy the DPRK regime should it use nuclear weapons: “Any nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its Allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime.” The need to reassure allies like South Korea and Japan, which rely on U.S. nuclear weapons for defense against major non-nuclear as well as nuclear attacks, was a major factor leading the Biden administration to reject proposals to adopt a “sole-purpose” or “no-first-use” declaratory doctrine. Such a declaration would have committed the administration to employ nuclear weapons only after an aggressor country had used them against the United States.

Opportunities for Defense

Yet, there is no attractive offensive military option available to the United States. Even with U.S. nuclear forces, a limited preemptive strike may not destroy all DPRK weapons of mass destruction, which are widely dispersed in concealed and hardened facilities. A U.S. first strike could easily precipitate a conventional war on the Korean Peninsula even more destructive than the one seen in Ukraine. The United States and other defenders will attempt to disrupt North Korea’s missiles through cyber attacks, electronic warfare, and other non-kinetic means, but DPRK designers have enhanced their missiles from such vulnerabilities.

The Biden administration’s Missile Defense Review, therefore, insists that “the United States will also continue to stay ahead of North Korean missile threats to the homeland through a comprehensive missile defeat approach, complemented by the credible threat of direct cost imposition through nuclear and non-nuclear means.” These words echo those of the Trump administration’s Missile Defense Review, which affirmed that the United States would “continually improve [U.S.] defensive capabilities as needed to stay ahead of North Korean missile threats if they continue to grow, while also taking steps to preclude an arms race with China or Russia.” Following the most recent DPRK missile test, U.S. Representative Mike Rogers, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, released a statement affirming that “Protecting the U.S. homeland must be paramount as we develop our 2024 budget, and this includes fully-funding homeland missile defense assets.” Even imperfect missile defenses can help deter and defeat attacks by complicating a potential missile aggressor’s certainty of success. They can also reassure allies that they do not need nuclear weapons or to appease those who are threatening them.

The foundation of the U.S. homeland defense against DPRK missiles is the fleet of Ground-Based Interceptors (GBIs) in Alaska and California that underpin the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense architecture over North America. These multi-stage solid-fueled rocket boosters are equipped with an unarmed Exo-Atmospheric Kill Vehicle, that collides with a target in outer space, obliterating it with kinetic energy. Presently only a few dozen interceptors protect the continental United States from incoming ICBMs. Unfortunately, the United States rushed these GBIs into service in the early 2000s and has not yet comprehensively renewed them. Instead, they have received only patched upgrades and infrequent tests. At this point, the potential for further upgrading the original GBIs is limited given their decades-old technology, calling into question their efficacy of dealing with the North’s rapidly expanding capabilities. 

The United States is, therefore, developing a Next Generation Interceptor (NGI) to provide a more reliable kill vehicle to address the expanding North Korean missile threat. Though an entirely new system built from the ground up, the NGI technology maturation plan aims for an evolutionary rather than revolutionary increase in capabilities. Its improved command, control, communications, and sensor capabilities will increase the system’s reliability. The NGI’s larger payload can carry more than one kill vehicle on each interceptor. Its greater propulsion than the GBI will bring the kill vehicles faster to their interception points, giving warfighters makers more time to make decisions, more opportunities to address complex threats, and more assured means of discriminating between decoys and genuine targets. With planned deployment by 2028, the NGI’s modularity and preplanned upgrades will enable the United States to address subsequent threats more rapidly and confidently.

The Missile Defense Agency, responsible for overseeing the systems requirements and design review for the interceptors, has admirably promoted competition between two contracting teams to accelerate the delivery timeline, drive down costs, and limit technical risk. Meeting this performance metric will require testing the GBI frequently in demanding scenarios, independently and in combination with other elements to enhance performance. For some of these enablers, it might be prudent for the Agency to accept more risks with technology development programs, such as those intended to thwart emerging threats like hypersonic missiles. The planned upgrades to the existing network of sensors, command-and-control nodes, cyber defenses, and other critical support systems will also make the current GBI fleet more effective, pending the eventual deployment of the NGI. Extending the NGI competition through a prototype fly-off would further ensure the fielding of the most capable interceptor.

To construct a multi-layered defense architecture against the DPRK’s ICBM-class targets that protects Hawaii and Guam as well as the Continental United States, the Pentagon will need to integrate the NGIs with regional missile defenses. In the Indo-Pacific region, these include the Aegis-equipped Standard Missile interceptors deployed on ships along with the land-based Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems. Besides protecting U.S. deployed forces and allies, these regional missile defenses can provide important warning and tracking data of ICBMs launched from North Korea toward the United States. The potential effectiveness of such local systems has been evident in Ukraine, where even less advanced regional missile defenses have worked well in blunting the Russian missile onslaught. A comprehensive global defense architecture could also help protect the United States and its allies and forces from missiles launched by other countries. 

The long-term solution to the Korean crisis is internal regime change and reunification under a government that resembles present-day South Korea. Yet, no one knows how long this process could take given the ruthless effectiveness of the DPRK’s totalitarian regime. In the interim, having a robust spectrum of defense capabilities, suitable for a range of scenarios, is critical given the rapidly evolving threat environment.

Richard Weitz is the director of the Center for Political-Military Analysis and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.

Image: Wikimedia Commons.