December 2012

              Following the Partial Test Ban Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty, the United States, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union continued negotiating on nuclear issues. The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was drafted and opened for signing in 1968. It went into effect in 1970, recognizing US, the UK, France, China and the Soviet Union as the only officially recognized states openly possessing nuclear weapons.

           By 1963, various nuclear powers had conducted multiple tests of nuclear bombs  in the atmosphere, on the ground and under water. The United States was conducting powerful thermonuclear devices during the 1950s and the Soviet Union exploded its first thermonuclear bomb in 1961. International concern over the effects of radioactive fallout out from these tests had been growing during the 1950s.

              Iran is an ancient country known for most of its history as Persia. It has existed in one form or another for thousands of years. The original Zoroastrian religion was replaced  by Islam when Iran was conquered in 651 AD. The Iranians are predominantly members of the Shiite branch of Islam.

           Following the Korean War, the treaty ending the war on July 27, 1953 contained a clause that said that neither North Korea or South Korean would introduce new types of weapons to the peninsula. This was generally understood to mean nuclear weapons. In 1956, the U.S. military decided to deploy nuclear missiles in South Korea and announced that it would no longer be bound by that provision of the treaty that ended the war.

           Pakistan came into existence as an independent country in 1947 when the British Indian Empire was partitioned between Hindus and Muslims. The United States brought its “U.S. Atoms for Peace initiatives to Pakistan in 1953 and Pakistan’s Foreign Minister said that Pakistan did not have a policy about atomic bombs. Part of the U.S. initiative was a nuclear reactor for Pakistan. Pakistan established the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission in 1956.

           In 1947, shortly after World War II, the British partitioned their colony of India into the new Hindu nation of India and the new Muslim nation of Pakistan. The largest migration in human history followed as Muslims moved west into Pakistan and Hindus moved east into India. Kashmir was controlled by India although the majority of their citizens were Muslim. Since the partition, India and Pakistan have argued over Kashmir and occasionally fought wars.

           During World War II, two exiled German physicists wrote a paper about the possibility of constructing a “radioactive super-bomb” which was sent to appropriate agencies of the United Kingdom government. A committee was set up to explore building such a bomb and a research program was begun. Eventually, the U.K. entered into partnership with the United States and Canada in the Manhattan Project.

            At the end of World War II, the victorious Allied powers divided the Korean peninsula at the 38^th parallel. The southern portion of Korea was occupied by the United States which established a democratic government. The northern portion of Korea was occupied by Soviet troops and they established a communist government. As the Cold War took hold, hostility grew between the north and the south Korean governments.

              Soviet scientists contributed much to the development of nuclear physics during the first decades of the Twentieth Century. When nuclear fission was discovered in the late 1930s, Soviet scientists understood that theoretically, enormous amounts of energy could be released from the fission of uranium.  Work on fission research in the Soviet Union began in 1940.