Important red lines have not been crossed, a senior expert told AFP, despite the fact that Vladimir Putin has threatened to use Russia’s weapons and that North Korea and Iran are moving forward with their nuclear programs.
“The nuclear order might be assailed, shaken and contested, but its foundations are still solid and its most essential elements are still there,” French nuclear expert Bruno Tertrais said in an interview.
“North Korea, China, India and Pakistan remain determined to establish themselves as mature nuclear powers, and don’t care about entreaties to moderate, let alone disarm,” said Tertrais, deputy director of the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS), a French think-tank.
Iran is getting closer to achieving the 90 percent uranium enrichment required to create an atomic weapon by continuing to enrich uranium to levels significantly higher than 3.67 percent, in violation of a now-dissolved agreement with Western countries in 2015.
In the meantime, North Korea defied UN resolutions last year by staking out its nuclear powerhouse status in its constitution and going on to launch multiple intercontinental ballistic missiles.
In reaction to combined naval drills by Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo that featured a US nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, Pyongyang announced on Friday that it had tested a “underwater nuclear weapon system”.
