Report on the Arms Control Associaton’s Annual Meeting & U.N. High Level Meeting for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons. September, 2025

By Joseph Gerson

The Arms Control Association and the United National High-Level Meeting for the Total Elimination of Nuclear weapons were scheduled for Washington, D.C. and New York on consecutive days. The only other person I know who made it to both events was Daryl Kimball, ACA’s Executive Director. The U.N. waited until almost the last minute to confirm the approval of my credentials were approved, so with the delay I registered for the ACA conference and then with travel and hotel reservations madness made it to both meetings with the goals of listening, learning, and networking. In many ways the ACA conference was the more helpful of the two. That said, experiencing the unusually intense security at the UN as heads of state, foreign ministers and other officials arrived for the General Assembly and High Level Meeting speeches, along with the reality that almost all of the speakers at the HLM were from the Global South, combined with  intensity of the Palestine solidary demonstration outside the UN made my time in New York a valuable learning experience.

2025 Annual Meeting of the Arms Control Association

The Arms Control Association is what its name implies. While many of its members would like to see nuclear weapons abolition, they seek pragmatic means to prevent nuclear war, and reduce nuclear dangers, including reductions in the size and numbers of the world’s nuclear arsenals. It’s president, Tom Countryman, is a former US arms disarmament diplomat and its Executive Director, Daryl Kimball is a very thoughtful and self-disciplined arms controller working within the increasingly depressing Washington political environment. In his opening remarks Countryman called for the Trump administration to respond positively to President Putin offer to extend the terms of the New START Treaty, which he noted is not the Treaty itself. He stressed that we were on the verge of the “snap back” of the JCPOA Agreement for Iran, which was a major subject of the annual meeting. And he bemoaned the lack of Congressional engagement on nuclear weapons and proliferation issues.

In the course of the meeting, Countryman referenced Trump’s stated goal of reducing the nuclear dangers and said that there are qualified National Security Council staff who could follow up with such efforts. Trump wouldn’t have to worry about Congressional opposition, as Republicans would support such initiatives if Trump indicated serious commitments to them. He also noted that Gold Dome is in serious contradiction to New Start limits.

ACA’s keynote speaker was Senator Chris Van Hollen, a member of the Bicameral Nuclear Weapons and Arms Control Working Group. He recently made headlines after traveling to Israel and Gaza with the Van Hollen-Merkely Report which condemned Israeli “ethnic cleansing” of Palestinians and concluded that those responsible for the ethnic cleansing should be forced to stop and to be punished for their actions. Van Hollen’s major points were:

• Trump seeks a government shutdown in order to have an unfettered hand of the budget, with special danger posed to the U.S. medical system.
• We are at 89 seconds to midnight, and the situation is complicated by the emergence of a multi-polar world with nuclear weapons. May’s India-Pakistan war reminded us of how dangerous the situation is. The Ukraine War, now with the intrusions by Russia of NATO airspace, is increasingly dangerous.
• The arms control order is fraying, and Trump has no new proposals to revitalize it.
• Dealing with Iran is most urgent. The snapback deadline was just two days away. The dangers of the situation have increased with the president firing people for differing with him. The U.S. and Israel attacked Iran’s nuclear sites at a time when the Pentagon was reporting that Iran was NOT seeking a nuclear arsenal. There is a distinct possibility that Iran will restart its nuclear program and that Israel or the US will attack again.
• It is important for the U.S. to join Putin in extending the terms of New START. There is also the need to begin negotiations on a follow-on Treaty which could include both intermediate and long-range weapons,
• The U.S. and China need to pursue bilateral nuclear-related discussions.
• He supports “reasonable modernization” but not wasteful spending. The Sentinel program to replace, rather than to extend the lifetime of land-based Minuteman missiles is way over budget with a projected $140 billion that should be abandoned. In addition, nuclear sea-launched cruise missiles which are also destabilizing, and the Golden Dome missile defense program (which won’t work) ignores the reality that it would be relatively cheap and easy to overwhelm such a system.
• The Congressional Budget Offices reports that the price tag for 10-year spending for nuclear modernization is $946 billion, $95 billion per year.
• We need to honor the Reagan-Gorbachev statement that nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought.

Iran

Most interesting were the online talks by Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s former foreign minister and the following panel that featured Kelsey Davenport of ACA and Naysan Rafati, the senior Iran analyst at the International Crisis Group.

In Zarif’s talk, he returned a number of times to stress that, after decades of foreign bullying and the West’s imposition of the Shah’s dictatorship, central to Iran’s policies are its commitments to regaining and demonstrating its dignity. The current crisis, he maintained is not about nuclear weapons but Iran’s dignity and national resilience. The JCPOA, he said, recognized Iran’s dignity.

Other points Zarif made, a number of which are contested, were:

• Netanyahu has been campaigning against Iran since the 1990s. There have been 30 years of standoff with the West. If Iran wanted a nuclear weapon, it would have it.
• Iran’s nuclear program has been legal, not a pursuit of nuclear weapons.
• With the years of sanctions Iran’s resolve has hardened, resulting in its increasing enrichment capacity. Before Trump pulled out of the JCPOA in his first term, Iran had 5,000 centrifuges. Over time it deployed 130,000 centrifuges with enrichment reaching 60%
• After Israel assassinated Iran’s senior nuclear physicist, Iran withdrew from the IAEA.
• A few days ago, Ayatollah Khamenei again stated that Iran does not seek to weaponize its nuclear program.
• In the wake of the Israeli-US attack on Iran’s nuclear program there is popular demand for a nuclear weapon, but the government is seeking capacity not a bomb.
• Britain, France and Germany, who initiated the snap back want war. Note Mertz’ statement that with its attack Israel did the West’s dirty work.
• Israel is the world’s most dangerous nation and has nuclear weapons. It sits outside the NPT and seeks to create a Middle East quagmire.
• The snapback is folly which destroys diplomacy. Iran seeks regional cooperation, including a nuclear enrichment consortium, with Iran’s dignity requiring that some of the enrichment be done in Iran. Such a system could be monitored along the lines of the Brazil-Argentina nuclear agreement (which was discussed during our TPNW forum at the U.N.)

Kelsey Davenport of ACA stressed that the US-Israel attacks did not totally destroy Iran’s nuclear program. Other points were:

• The U.S. now says it will take Iran one to two years to restore its nuclear program.
• Trump no longer sees Iran as a priority, a mistake that ignores the possibility of a possible quick return by Iran to the nuclear threshold.
• Trump’s doubling down on his demands that Iran have zero enrichment capabilities violates Iran’s dignity.
• While Trump threatens to resume bombing Iran’s nuclear sites, Iran can harden its sites and reestablish secrecy.
• In the face of the snapback, Iran wants to negotiate with and via Rafael Grossi of the IAEA
• All of this points to the need to reinforce the ceasefire agreement to recognize Iran’s rights under the NPT, to incentivize Iran’s return to the IAEA, and to build on the possibility of a new regional consortium to follow the IAEA.

Naysan Rafati began by saying that in 400 days Iran’s national strategy was destroyed by Israel and the U.S. (This referenced the devastation of Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, the overthrow of Assad in Syria, and the loss of senior Iranian military, scientific and other figures.

• 71 members of Iran’s parliament support building a bomb.
•  They believe that the U.S. can’t be trusted and that Europe no longer counts.
• It is unclear if Iran still has the intellectual capacity to build a nuclear weapon.
• Iran is suffering 40% inflation. Russia and China offered it little meaningful support.
• Iran does export two million barrels of oil to China a day, but it is not clear how much profit they are making on this.
• Iran insists on the creation of a regional consortium with some enrichment taking place in Iran.
• All of this leads moderates, like Iran’s president to seek a diplomatic path.

The third panel was titled “Off-Ramps from a Three-Way Nuclear Arms Race. It featured Mallory Stewart, former Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance, Steve Fetter of the University of Maryland, and Kingston Reif, formerly of ACA, and for several years a senior researcher at RAND. Countryman introduced the session saying, among other things, that he has yet to find a single U.S. physicist who believes that the Golden Dome will work, and that Russia and China also have physicists.

Reif’s approach was harder line than one would expect from ACA, understandable now that he is at RAND.

•  He has written an article that urges an interim U.S.-Russian agreement to address New START’s scheduled February 2026 expiration. A follow-on agreement could include higher weapons limits to address China’s growing arsenal. Knowing what the numerical goal would be helpful.
• Three-way limits won’t work, but the U.S. should pursue discussions with China for risk reduction.

Steve Fetter pointed to the possibility of the U.S. and Russia uploading additional warheads onto their missiles should New START elapse. The Heritage Foundation says that talking with Russia is dangerous, and that more warheads should be uploaded. Possible goals could be as many as 2,200 to 3,000. The increased number would allow for a counter force doctrine targeting all of China’s 350 new missile silos.

• China’s nuclear buildup is designed to demonstrate that the U.S. can’t coerce them.
• Damage limitation is not possible, therefore the drive for a counterforce doctrine.
• In the past deterrence was thought to be possible with 1,000, not 1,550 warheads deployed.
• An increase in US warhead deployments will drive a spiraling U.S.-Chinese arms race.
• U.S. missile defenses, which threaten Russian and Chinese deterrence are driving their modernization programs.
• The ability for the U.S. to create and deploy more warheads is limited, especially with the delay in creating new warhead pits.
• Putin wants strategic stability, which could include ballistic missile defense agreements.

Mallory Stewart’s presentation was very detailed. Among her points were:

• Golden Dome increases Chinese and Russian fears of a U.S. first strike. It therefore will fuel arms races, would cost trillions of dollars, and offense is much cheaper than defense in this regard, meaning that committing to Golden Dome leads to national bankruptcy.
• The US and China should engage in risk reduction talks. Military-to-military discussions, including notification of scheduled missile launches are important Threat perception talks are also urgently needed.
• She repeatedly decried the false belief in Washington and beyond that engaging in discussion signals weakness. She urged discussions to go forward, including Track II.

I had to leave before the final panel on reducing the nuclear danger to catch my evening train to New York. It will be posted on ACA’s website and well worth watching.

United Nations High Level Meeting for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapns   

I thought it would be useful to listen in on the U.N. High Level Meeting for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons and to do some networking. This UN Day, to be observed annually on September 26, coinciding with the opening days of the new General Assembly session, was declared in 2013. Some years ago, my files will tell me when, I was one of two civil society speakers to address the High Level gathering of heads of state, foreign ministers and other officials. Truth to tell there was more vitality to honor the Day beyond the United Nations than within it. Just over 1,500 organizations, including CPDCS signed the Joint Appeal Joint Letter | Nuclear Abolition Day which was presented to the High Level Meeting as its session closed.

With heads of state, including Netanyahu of Israel, foreign ministers and other senior government officials speaking in the General Assembly (and some in the High-Level Meeting) security at the U.N. was far more intense that I have ever seen. We had to pick up our U.N. credentials in a small park on the corner of 2^nd Ave and 46^th streets, rather than in a U.N. office. To walk down 46^th Street to the U.N. we had to have our passports and credentials screened by police. That was the first of SIX credentials check points before entering the building. I did get a smile from the U.N. guard, a man of color from which country I have no idea, at the exit from the temporary airport-like screening tent as he handed me back my passport. I said “Where is ICE when we need it? That foreign Israeli war criminal is in town, and no one is arresting him.” I enjoyed his smile.

As I entered the U.N. grounds, I could see and hear a raucous flag waving Zionist rally across the street in Dag Hammarskjold Plaza. But come noontime, when I left the U.N. thousands – including ultra-orthodox rabbis who have long opposed Israel’s existence on religious grounds, Palestinians with flags and posters, U.S. Vets for Peace, many others – sent a powerful message reported in the New York Times the next day.

I sat through the morning High Level session in the Trusteeship Council. Most notable was that every one of the morning’s speakers were from the Global South which illuminated the unmentionable nuclear apartheid. Representatives of the nuclear weapons states were missing. Each speaker, including presidents and dictators, were limited to 3-minute talks, after which their mics were shut off.  Most government seats were empty. It was in many ways a formalist kabuki play in which a few proposals like the call for a 4^th U.N. Special Session on Disarmament, and the return of serious negotiations in the U.N.’s Committee on Nuclear Disarmament. But, almost nothing new said, and there was lots of repetition.

Most moving for me was the first government speech by the President Hilda Heine of the Marshall Islands which followed the “we can’t wait” President of the General Assembly and General Secretary’s speeches which were read by their representatives.  The General Secretary did rightly warn that we are “sleepwalking” into a more dangerous nuclear arms race. Referencing the 67 U.S. nuclear weapons tests in the Marshall Islands, most disastrously the 1954 Castle Bravo H-Bomb test, all of which were authorized by the U.N. Trusteeship Council (we were meeting in the Trusteeship Council!) carried a sense of authenticity missing in most other speeches.

Speeches by Pacific Islands leaders, all of whom spoke of the deadly consequences of weapons tests’ nuclear fallout and the poisoning of the pristine Pacific Ocean, were also on the mark. Along that way we could also hear affirmations of the importance of international law, Fiji’s contributions to U.N. Peacekeeping Operations, Indonesia’s condemnation of growing reliance on nuclear weapons and new technologies increasing the nuclear danger, repeated affirmations of the importance of the TPNW and nuclear weapons free zones.  The representative of the Maldives (in the Indian Ocean) broke ranks by condemning Israel’s Gaza genocide and saying that Gaza must sharpen our resolve to eliminate nuclear weapons.

Listening to African speakers was in many cases more difficult because they included representatives of repressive dictatorships, for example Egypt and Uganda, they underlined the importance of the Treaty of Pelindaba, the continent’s nuclear weapons free zone treaty.  Libya is hardly a beacon of justice and democracy, but its foreign minister did stress the importance of the U.N. Charter and the reality that international security depends on international cooperation. The Egyptian foreign minister decried nuclear threats (read Israel’s,) Egypt’s long pursuit of the Middle East Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone, and the importance of universalizing the TPNW. Tunisia’s spokesperson followed with a call to prevent nuclear blackmail.

Bangladesh’s foreign minister reminded us that the country is surrounded by nuclear weapons states, a related call for countries outside the NPT to join the Treaty order, and the need for a South Asian nuclear weapons-free zone. And Mongolia’s foreign minister, an impressive younger woman noted her country’s nuclear weapons-free zone and stressed the need for “tangible outcomes” in next year’s NPT Review Conference. The repetition of the speeches and lack of energy on the Trusteeship Council floor, as well as the approaching lunchtime, got to me. Making my way out of the U.N. was far easier than getting in. And I briefly joined and photographed the Palestine solidarity rally.