Top issues for the next leader of the Free World

Posted: October 20th, 2020

By Walter Pincus

Pulitzer Prize Winning Journalist Walter Pincus is a contributing senior national security columnist for The Cipher Brief. He spent forty years at The Washington Post, writing on topics that ranged from nuclear weapons to politics. He is the author of Blown to Hell: America's Deadly Betrayal of the Marshall Islanders. Pincus won an Emmy in 1981 and was the recipient of the Arthur Ross Award from the American Academy for Diplomacy in 2010. He was also a team member for a Pulitzer Prize in 2002 and the George Polk Award in 1978.

OPINION – The United Nations’ decade-long embargo on the sale of arms to Iran expired on Sunday based on a provision in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) that was aimed at halting Tehran’s nuclear weapons program. So, what happens now?

Tehran says it has no plans to go on a “buying spree,” but China and Russia are the most likely countries to step forward to fill the gap. That’s mainly because Britain and members of the European Union have said they will maintain their own 2007 embargo which has prohibited both the purchase from, and sale to, Iran of conventional weapons.

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