Nukes: UN, Iranian & Russian Rumblings

A New York Times front-pager explores an emerging debate over Iran's nuclear status.  The disclosure cam on the same day the Security Council voted 14-0-1 (Indonesia abstaining) to adopt a third round of sanctions on Iran, including a ban on importing dual-use items ("dual-use" means an item can be used for civilian and military purposes), plus additional asset freezes and travel bans on designated individuals.  Meanwhile, the (nuclear) clock is ticking.  America's UN Ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, points out how Iran has failed to meet its obligations to the IAEA, failing to disclose relevant information.  But Caspar Weinberger, Jr. writes (likely correctly) in Human Events that President Bush's mild reaction to Iran's support for jihadists inside Iraq, and staying within the UN to implement sanctions,  means that the next President will have Iran's nuclear program to deal with.

Meanwhile, former senior Reagan administration defense official Richard Perle debunks Russia's threat of a "new arms race" if Poland adopts missile defense aimed at Iran.  Perle argues that the old arms race was less of a race than widely thought, citing work by my late uncle, Albert Wohlstetter, that conclusively showed the arms race to have been one-sided: As even Jimmy Carter's SecDef , nuclear physicist Harold Brown, came to concede, the Russians built new nuclear weapons regardless of whatever we did; their effort was massive and continuous, ours merely episodic.  But myths, if sufficiently cherished, live on.