Nuclear Disarmament | featured news

Iran will present a new advance in its atomic program Wednesday by loading domestically made nuclear fuel into a research reactor in the capital Tehran, a senior Iranian official told a Russian news agency Tuesday.

A U.S. envoy will hold talks with North Korea on its nuclear program in Beijing next week, the first such negotiations since the death of the nation's longtime leader, Kim Jong Il.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad announced Saturday that the nation will reveal "several major achievements in the nuclear domain" within days, state media reported.

China said on Friday it would send a senior official to Tehran to discuss Iran's nuclear standoff with the West, and India indicated it would also weigh in, as Asia's two giants seek to head off new sanctions already playing havoc with trade.

Saudia Arabia would move quickly to acquire nuclear weapons if Iran successfully tests an atomic bomb, according to a report. Citing an unidentified Saudi Arabian source, the Times newspaper in the U.K. (which operates behind a paywall) said that the kingdom would seek to buy ready-made warheads and also begin its own program to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

After two days of rare and intensive talks in Tehran, senior U.N. nuclear officials may have felt they were finally making headway towards getting Iran to address suspicions that it is bent on developing the ability to make atom bombs.

Panetta won't dispute a report that he believes Israel may attack Iran this spring in an attempt to set back Iran's nuclear program.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that Iran is only one year away from producing a nuclear weapon. In an interview on the CBS show "60 Minutes," Panetta said that “the consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.”

North Korea says that before Kim Jong Il's death the United States offered to provide food aid if Pyongyang halted its uranium enrichment program. North Korea responded angrily to the offer Wednesday, with a Foreign Ministry spokesman accusing Washington of "politicizing" food shipments.

The Obama administration said Friday that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's upcoming visit to four Latin American countries is is a sign of desperation as the country becomes politically isolated due to sanctions and warned Latin American leaders against expanding ties with Iran.