Iran

Posted: 19th August 2026

Today marks the last day of America’s 60-day memorandum of understanding with Iran, which featured several nuclear provisions. Among those was an Iranian pledge not to “procure or develop nuclear weapons.” The rub, of course, is how to make sure Iran lives up to this pledge. The assumption’s been that if we can control Iran’s ability to access weapons-grade uranium, we are done. That view, however, is challenged in the attached The Hill op-ed by Scott Kemp, a tenured MIT professor of nuclear engineering and a member of NPEC’s Board of Advisors, and Stephen Rademaker, former Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation during the George W. Bush administration. Scott helped devise Obama’s 2015 agreement with Iran. Steve has been a critic of that deal. They both agree, however, that Iran has an alternative path to making nuclear arms—mining the 200+ bombs’ worth of plutonium contained in the spent power reactor fuel at Bushehr. They believe the United States and other countries opposed to Iran getting a bomb need to do more to limit this possibility.

NPEC 16th Aug 2026

https://npolicy.org/https-thehill-com-opinion-national-security-6030922-iaea-real-time-monitoring/

As the US-Iran ceasefire officially expires and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, is Donald Trump considering using nuclear weapons to break the war’s stalemate? On today’s episode of Iran: The Latest, Venetia Rainey and Roland Oliphant discuss why US politician Marjorie Taylor Greene’s bizarre nuclear claim may be less crazy than it first appears and how an underground nuclear facility at Pickaxe Mountain could be the potential target. They also look at the state of the war 60 days on from the ill-fated Memorandum of Understanding peace deal and why Iran is more bullish than ever.

Telegraph 17th Aug 2026

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/08/17/trump-weighing-nuclear-attack-on-iran-as-peace-deal-expires/