Thursday’s announcement by North Korea that it could launch a pre-emptive nuclear attack against the United States in the face of new U.N. sanctions is a predictable escalation of the isolated nation’s increasingly aggressive stance toward Washington over the past year. But experts note that Pyongyang’s recent advances in its nuclear weapons and missile programs mean that such bellicose rhetoric cannot be taken lightly.

The escalation of the North’s oratory began not long after the country’s 28-year-old leader, Kim Jong Un,  took over from his late father, Kim Jong Il, on Dec. 28, 2011. It has been accompanied by two space launches – one successful – and a third nuclear weapons test.

 It is not unusual for the North to make threats against the U.S., Japan or South Korea. And on occasion -- as in the case of the 2010 artillery barrage of Yeonpyeong Island and an earlier attack on a South Korean gunboat -- it has carried out these threats.  It has never taken any military action after threatening the United States, however.

---

Some analysts have suggested that the latest round of threats is intended to show that the young Kim will continue his father’s legacy of hostility toward the U.S.

To what end?

North Korea has long wanted the U.S. to sit down with its negotiators to hammer out an agreement to end the Korean War, which ended in 1953 not in a peace treaty but in a truce.

The North would like to gain concessions from the U.S. in such a negotiation, but its escalating threats and rhetoric have the opposite effect:  The Obama administration, like preceding administrations, has steadfastly refused to negotiate with Pyongyang.

The problem is that North Korea, which has long taken a backseat in U.S. councils to the Middle East, does have military capabilities that could at the very least threaten U.S. interests in North Asia.

According to a recent analysis, North Korea has a weapon stockpile that could threaten both Japan and South Korea and, in longer term, the United States. Some of the weapons have already been deployed, say U.S. officials, who spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity. Moreover, the North has begun research into more advanced and dangerous weapons, possibly even thermonuclear weapons, they say. 

At the high end of the stockpile range, U.S. officials and other researchers said North Korea may already have up to "a few dozen" nuclear weapons that could be fitted atop its vast fleet of ballistic missiles. Those missiles are limited to an intermediate range, capable of hitting targets in Japan, South Korea or elsewhere in the northern Pacific, including U.S. military bases as far south as Guam, the officials believe.

Related story: UN passes sanctions despite North Korea threat of 'pre-emptive nuclear attack'

The U.S. believes the space launch tests are part of a development plan for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the continental United States with a payload of several hundred kilotons — 10 to 20 times the size of the bombs that destroyed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

U.S. officials publicly express confidence that the national missile defense system based in Alaska would be able to shoot down any incoming North Korean ICBM.

“I can tell you that the United States is fully capable of defending against any North Korean ballistic missile attack,” White House spokesman Jay Carney said Thursday in response to a question about the North Korean threat.

 He also said the U.N. sanctions will make it harder for Pyongyang to continue to make progress on its weapons and missiles. 

“North Korea … will now face new barriers to developing its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs,” he said. “Resolution 2094 increases North Korea's isolation and demonstrates to North Korea's leaders the increasing costs they pay for defying the international community.” 

For the past several years, the U.S. also has been monitoring North Korean research into thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs and bombs known as boosted-fission weapons, in which plutonium and uranium are combined for a higher energy yield. (The problem is that if the North conducted a test and claimed that it was thermonuclear, the U.S. would have difficulty determining if the North was telling the truth. The test site at Kilchu is far enough inland that the U.S. would not have access to the particulate matter needed to make an accurate determination, experts say. )

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, a nonpartisan nuclear arms research group, said last year that any tests in the future may also be about ensuring the reliability of North Korea's current weapons design.

"Once you get beyond a dozen, it makes sense to test type and reliability of your weapons," he said. Albright said then that his group's estimate of North Korea's weapons stockpile is a bit less than those provided by the U.S. officials, but that ISIS, too, believes Pyongyang has "missile-deliverable weapons."

The design of the weapons is believed to be based on Chinese models (as were the first generation Pakistani nuclear weapons). The design is basic, and was developed in the 1960s with help from the Soviet Union, which used it to produce a whole line of nuclear warheads.

While some analysts suggested that the North planned its December rocket launch to gain attention ahead of the presidential election in South Korea , some in the U.S. non-proliferation community think otherwise. They expect that once the North feels comfortable with its ICBM technology, it will deploy the missiles.  They point to the Musudan intermediate range missile which was tested in middle of the last decade, then deployed — presumably with nuclear warheads — and aimed at Japan.

Once the North has confidence in the long-range missile based on the space rocket, U.S. officials believe they will deploy it as well, making North Korea the third nation to have nuclear weapons targeted at the United States, after Russia and China.

Many in the Obama administration see that as a more frightening prospect than Iran gaining nuclear weapons, believing that Tehran is a rational actor that will serve its own national interest and preserve the regime, compared to successive generations of North Korean leaders who have shown that they are unpredictable and erratic.

But would it force the U.S. to conduct face-to-face talks with the North? State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in December that the North has a better option.

Referring to Kim Jong Un, Nuland said: "He can plot a way forward that ends the isolation, that brings relief and a different way of life and progress to his people, or he can further isolate them with steps like this. He can spend his time and his money shooting off missiles, or he can feed his people, but he can't have both."

NBC News' Shawna Thomas contributed to this report; this piece is an updated version of a post originally published on Dec. 13, 2012.

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Senior Obama administration officials have agreed that the number of nuclear warheads the U.S. military deploys could be cut by at least a third without harming national security, according to sources involved in the deliberations.

They said the officials’ consensus agreement, not yet announced, opens the door to billions of dollars in military savings that might ease the federal deficit. It might also improve prospects for a new arms deal with Russia before the president leaves office, the sources said, but is likely to draw fire from conservatives, if previous debate on the issue is any guide.

The results of the internal review are reflected in a draft of a classified decision directive prepared for Obama’s signature that guides how U.S. nuclear weapons should be targeted against potential foes, according to four sources with direct knowledge of it. The sources, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to a reporter about the review, described the president as fully on board, but said he has not signed the document.

The document directs the first detailed Pentagon revisions in U.S. targeting since 2009, when the military’s nuclear war planners last took account of a substantial shrinkage -- roughly by half from 2000 to 2008 -- in the total number of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal. It makes clear that an even smaller nuclear force can still meet all defense requirements.

---

Although the document offers various options for Obama, his top advisers reached their consensus position last year, after a review that included the State Department, the Defense Department, the National Security Council, the intelligence community, the U.S. Strategic Command, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the office of Vice President Joseph Biden, according to the sources.

Several said the results were not disclosed at the time partly because of political concerns that any resulting controversy might rob Obama of popular votes in the November election. Some Republican lawmakers have said they oppose cutting the U.S. arsenal out of concern that it could diminish America’s standing in the world.

The new policy directive, which would formally implement a revised nuclear policy Obama adopted in 2010, endorses the use of a smaller U.S. arsenal to deter attacks or protect American interests by targeting fewer, but more important, military or political sites in Russia, China and several other countries. This can be accomplished by 1,000-1,100 warheads, the sources said, instead of the 1,550 allowed under an existing arms treaty.

The 2010 policy called for reducing the role of nuclear weapons, arguing that they are “poorly suited to address the challenges posed by suicidal terrorists and unfriendly regimes seeking nuclear weapons.” But many critics have charged that not much of the policy has been implemented. Obama himself even joked in a video message to the Jan. 26 annual dinner of Washington’s exclusive Alfalfa Club, that he could not recall why he won his 2009 Nobel Peace Prize [the Oslo committee attributed it partly to his stimulation of “disarmament and arms control negotiations”].

With the election behind him and a new national security team selected, Obama is finally prepared to send this new guidance to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and to open a new dialogue with Russia about corresponding reductions in deployed weapons beyond those called for in a 2011 treaty, according to two senior U.S. officials involved in the deliberations.

“It is all done,” said one. “We did so much work on it that there is no interest in going back and taking another look at it.” The second official said completion of the new directive would become public in coming weeks, when Obama may mention the issue in his State of the Union address on Feb. 12, or in another speech specifically dedicated to the subject, similar to the April 2009 Prague address in which he promised to “take concrete steps towards a world without nuclear weapons.”

Arms talks now being explored
While the draft directive opens the door to scrapping a substantial portion of the U.S. arsenal, it does not order those reductions immediately or suggest they be undertaken unilaterally, the officials said. Instead, the administration’s ambition is to negotiate an addendum of sorts to its 2010 New Start treaty with Russia, in the form of a legally binding agreement or an informal understanding. Officials said the latter path could be chosen if gaining the assent of two-thirds of the Senate to a treaty is not possible.

Preliminary discussions about this ambition occurred in Munich on Feb. 2 between Vice President Joe Biden and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, and additional talks are slated in Moscow this month with acting undersecretary of state Rose Gottemoeller and White House national security adviser Thomas Donilon. Obama “believes that there’s room to explore the potential for continued reductions, and that, of course, the best way to do so is in a discussion with Russia,” deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes said on Jan. 31.

White House spokesman Tommy Vietor declined comment on Feb. 6 on the draft directive.

The New Start treaty limits each side to deploying no more than 1,550 strategic nuclear weapons by 2018, but uses a counting rule that pretends strategic bombers carry only a single warhead, instead of up to 20. So the actual arsenals after the treaty takes effect are likely to be closer to 1,900, a number that Obama’s advisers now think is too high.

New Start also imposes no limits on nuclear weapons in each country that are held in storage or considered of “tactical” or short-range use -- a number estimated by independent experts as roughly 2,700 in the United States and 2,680 in Russia. Under the new deal envisioned by the administration, Russia and the United States would agree not only to cut deployed warhead levels below 1,550 to around 1,000 to 1,100 but also -- for the first time -- begin to constrain the size of these additional categories.

Several officials said that as a result, the total number of nuclear warheads could shrink to less than 3,500 and perhaps as low as 2,500, or a bit more than half the present U.S. arsenal, without harming security or requiring a major reconfiguration of existing missiles or bombers.

A much steeper reduction, to around 500 total warheads, was debated within the administration last year, but rejected, the officials said. Known as the “deterrence only” plan, it would have aimed U.S. warheads at a narrower range of targets related to the enemy’s economic capacity and no longer emphasized striking the enemy’s leadership and weaponry in the first wave of an attack.

Nuclear weapons experts have long considered the latter “warfighting” goal destabilizing because it arouses fears among all the combatants of a decapitating, preemptive strike that could obstruct a significant retaliation, but it has been a salient feature of the U.S. nuclear policy for half a century. China, in contrast, has adopted a “deterrence-only” strategy, keeping only a minimal arsenal of missiles aimed partly at targets in or near large cities.

Some officials at the State Department, the NSC staff, and Biden’s staff urged consideration of the smaller arsenal and new targeting policy, officials said. But “a small brake” was applied by the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, who worried that making such a major policy change was too risky at a moment of upheaval in conventional military strategy, and would create too much uncertainty among allies.

Obama, who followed the deliberations intermittently, “decided we did not need to do deterrence-only targeting now,” but did not rule it out, one of the sources with knowledge of the discussions said.

Air Force Lt. Gen. James Kowalski, who as head of the Global Strike Command oversees the operations of bombers and land-based missiles capable of carrying more than a thousand nuclear warheads to foreign targets, said at a breakfast with reporters on Feb. 6 that if asked, “can you go below 1500” treaty-accountable weapons, his response is, “Yeah, I think there is some headroom in there.” But he warned that shrinking the force to well below 1,000 would require “major structural changes in how we do this business.”

Additional cuts would save billions of dollars
The financial savings from even the modest reduction now being contemplated could be substantial, according to officials and independent experts. Already, to comply with New Start, the Pentagon has been pulling warheads from land-based missiles and making plans to decommission some of the missiles themselves; it is also planning to reduce the number of missile tubes aboard its Trident submarines.

By pushing the arsenal size even lower, it could close perhaps two of its three land-based missile wings and cut at least two of the 12 new strategic submarines it now plans to build – saving $6 billion to $8 billion for each one. Eliminating a single wing of 150 missiles would save roughly $360 million a year, or $3 billion over a decade, according to Tom Collina, research director at the Arms Control Association, a nonprofit research group in Washington. Modernization of the land-based missiles might also be deferred, bringing additional savings.

Russia, meanwhile, has been  phasing out three older missile types that loomed large during Cold War tensions – the SS-18, the SS-19, and the SS-25 – and is replacing them with a more modern missile, the SS-27, in three forms. It is also planning to build a costly, larger missile, capable of carrying multiple warheads. Pentagon officials are not alarmed by that possibility, but say that a new arms deal could give Russia reason to scale back its own spending.

“The Russian Federation … would not be able to achieve a militarily significant advantage by any plausible expansion of its strategic nuclear forces, even in a cheating or breakout scenario” because it cannot destroy U.S. missile-carrying submarines at sea, the Defense Department said in a May 2012 classified report to Congress, partially declassified and released last month to the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

Related: Hagel's nuclear abolition endorsement spurs GOP questions on deterrence

Three participants in the targeting policy review said Russia nonetheless remains the sole U.S. target that still requires potential use of a large number of nuclear warheads to achieve damage that military planners deem adequate, even though Obama famously said last September at the Democratic National Convention that “you don't call Russia our number one enemy — not al-Qaeda, Russia — (laughter) — unless you're still stuck in a Cold War mind warp.”

U.S. nuclear targets include China, North Korea, and Iran, officials have said. But the list of predictable enemies has been steadily shrinking: Iraq was once on the list – as recently as 1997, the Defense Department studied radioactive fallout distribution patterns from a potential U.S. attack there – but it now poses no threats, and Syria – another perennial listee – is in the midst of imploding and unable even to muster a response to Israel’s recent bombing of an arms factory in its capital.

Russian arms reductions taken to date make U.S. targeting revisions feasible now, according to Hans Kristensen, a nuclear arms expert at FAS. A decade ago, the U.S. military was targeting 660 Russian missile silos with multiple warheads, he said; now, the number of such silos is less than half that, and in a decade, it is unlikely to exceed 230. Several officials also pointed out that Russia currently fields a smaller and weaker conventional military force than it once did, also allowing U.S. targeting to be scaled back.

Obama’s new appointees are on board
Key members of Obama’s new national security team are on board with the reduction strategy.

“There's talk of going down to a lower number,” Secretary of State John F. Kerry said during his confirmation hearing on Jan. 24. “I think, personally, it's possible to get there if you have commensurate levels of -- of inspections, verification, guarantees about the capacity of your nuclear stockpile program, et cetera.”

Secretary of Defense nominee Chuck Hagel drew fire from Republicans at his Jan. 31 confirmation hearing for signing a report last summer that said current stockpiles “vastly exceed what is needed to satisfy reasonable requirements of deterrence” and that nuclear weapons are arguably “more a part of the problem than any solution.”  An appropriately modernized force, the Global Zero report said, would consist of just 900 total strategic weapons on each side, not 5000, and get rid of land-based missiles subject to accidental or unauthorized launch.

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) told Hagel that cuts of that magnitude would “create instability, rather than confidence and stability; create uncertainty in the world among our allies and our potential adversaries.” He said the current U.S. arsenal projects “an image of solidity and -- and steadfastness” to citizens around the globe.

Hagel responded at the hearing that the report simply provided illustrative scenarios, not recommendations. But he affirmed the report’s conclusion that “we have to look at” the value and cost of continuing to keep land-based missiles and made no promise to build all 12 new missile-carrying submarines sought by the Navy.

The United States is not the only nuclear weapons state considering a retrenchment. A senior British treasury official told the London Guardian several weeks ago that given fiscal pressures in London, the country needs a wide debate “over the approach we take to nuclear deterrence” and should consider scaling back either its purchase or deployment of costly new nuclear missile-carrying submarines. Michael Portillo, the defense minister under Conservative Prime Minister John Major in the 1990s, told the Financial Times last month that Britain maintained its arsenal “partly for industrial and employment reasons, and mainly for prestige.” He called it “a tremendous waste of money.”

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon is among those urging a major shift. In a speech last month in California, he called for all nuclear-armed states to “reconsider their national nuclear posture,” and said the United States and Russia had a special obligation to undertake deeper cuts. “Nuclear disarmament is off-track,” he said. “Delay comes with a high price tag. The longer we procrastinate, the greater the risk that these weapons will be used, will proliferate or be acquired by terrorists.”

Some senior U.S.  officials are skeptical that Russian president Vladimir Putin would agree to a new treaty, because his government claims to depend more heavily than Americans on nuclear arms for security; others worry that Republican opposition in the Senate may obstruct ratification of any new treaty.  But there remains high interest, officials said, in at least exploring a new joint, lower limit.

The Center for Public Integrity is a non-profit, independent investigative news outlet. For more of its stories on this topic go to publicintegrity.org.

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North Korea does not appear to be making preparations for a nuclear weapons test following Tuesday’s test of a space launch vehicle, which was believed to be cover for a long-range missile test, U.S. intelligence analysts told NBC News.

South Korean and Japanese officials had feared that a nuclear weapons test — its third after previous detonations in in October 2006 and May 2009 — would quickly follow the launch.

But word that the North isn’t thought to be preparing for a test is providing little solace for Seoul or Tokyo, mainly because recent intelligence suggests that the North has made significant advances in its nuclear weapons program.

---

According to a recent analysis, North Korea has a weapon stockpile that could threaten both countries and, in longer term, the United States. Some of the weapons have already been deployed, say U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Moreover, the North has begun research into more advanced and dangerous weapons, possibly even thermonuclear weapons, they say.  

 

At the high end of the stockpile range, U.S. officials and other researchers said North Korea may already have up to "a few dozen" nuclear weapons that could be fitted atop its vast fleet of ballistic missiles. Those missiles are limited to an intermediate range, capable of hitting targets in Japan, South Korea or elsewhere in the northern Pacific, including U.S. military bases as far south as Guam, the officials believe.

'Highly provocative'
The U.S. believes the space launch test is part of a development plan for an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the continental United States with a payload of several hundred kilotons — 10 to 20 times the size of the bombs that destroyed the Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

State Department spokesperson Victoria Nuland hinted about that Wednesday, calling the launch "highly provocative" and a "threat" to regional security. The U.S. is "concerned that all of this launching is about a weapons program and is not about peaceful uses of space," she added.

More North Korea coverage from NBC News

For the past several years, the U.S. also has been monitoring North Korean research into thermonuclear weapons — hydrogen bombs and bombs known as boosted fission weapons, in which plutonium and uranium are combined for a higher energy yield. (The problem is that if the North conducted a test and claimed that it was thermonuclear, the U.S. would have difficulty determining if the North was telling the truth. The test site at Kilchu is far enough inland that the U.S. would not have access to the particulate matter needed to make an accurate determination, experts say. )

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, a nonpartisan nuclear arms research group, said earlier this year that any tests in the future may also be about ensuring the reliability of North Korea's current weapons design.

"Once you get beyond a dozen, it makes sense to test type and reliability of your weapons," he said. Albright said then that his group's estimate of North Korea's weapons stockpile is a bit less than those provided by the U.S. officials, but that ISIS, too, believes Pyongyang has "missile-deliverable weapons."

The design of the weapons is believed to be based on Chinese models (as were the first generation Pakistani nuclear weapons). The design is basic, and was developed in the 1960s with help from the Soviet Union, which used it to produce a whole line of nuclear warheads.

ANALYSIS: 'Spoiled child' North Korea snubs key ally China with rocket test

While some analysts suggest that the North is using its space rocket launch to gain attention ahead of next week’s presidential election in South Korea -- and possibly to force talks with the U.S. — some in the U.S. non-proliferation community think otherwise. They expect that once the North feels comfortable with its ICBM technology, it will deploy the missiles.  They point to the Musudan intermediate range missile which was tested in middle of the last decade, then deployed — presumably with nuclear warheads — and aimed at Japan. 

Once the North has confidence in the long-range missile based on the space rocket, U.S. officials believe they will deploy it as well, making North Korea the third nation to have nuclear weapons targeted at the United States, after Russia and China.

Many in the Obama administration see that as a more frightening prospect than Iran gaining nuclear weapons, believing that Tehran is a rational actor that will serve its own national interest and preserve the regime, compared to successive generations of North Korean leaders who have shown that they are unpredictable and erratic.

But would it force the U.S. turn to conduct face-to-face talks with the North? Nuland said Wednesday that the North has a better option.

Speaking of the North’s 27-year-old leader Kim Jong Un, Nuland said: "He can plot a way forward that ends the isolation, that brings relief and a different way of life and progress to his people, or he can further isolate them with steps like this. He can spend his time and his money shooting off missiles, or he can feed his people, but he can't have both."

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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Are economic sanctions successful if the Iranian economy crashes but the regime continues developing its nuclear program? That is the dichotomy now playing out inside the Islamic state, according to new data on the Iranian economy and its nuclear program.

The latest data on the quantitative success of the sanctions comes from an economics research firm, the Rhodium Group of New York. In a paper published last week, Rhodium said that customs data from around the world show both Iranian oil exports and revenues have dropped precipitously.

“As customs data for the month of July rolls in, we’re getting a clearer picture of Iranian exports the first month after new U.S. and EU sanctions formally took effect,” states the report. “And it’s not a pretty one for Tehran.”

---

Specifically, the report states that the “best guess” on Iranian oil exports in July is no greater than 940,000 barrels per day, down from 1.7 million barrels per day  in June and 2.8 million barrels a day a year ago. Oil revenue dropped even more sharply, from $9.8 billion in July 2011 to $2.9 billion a year later. The disparity between the drop in oil sales and the decline in revenues was partly attributable to tumbling oil prices; even the value China’s oil imports dropped 28 percent from June to July. 

But Trevor Houser, the author of the report and a former senior adviser to the Obama State Department, says the success of the sanctions is surprising even to those who thought them up. “The July decline in Iranian oil exports and revenue is greater than anyone imagined would occur when U.S. sanctions were signed into law at the beginning of the year,” said Houser, a partner at Rhodium Group.  

Iran's currency hits fresh low against dollar as sanctions bite

U.S. and international sanctions -- mainly imposed by the European Union -- constrain a broad range commerce with Iran. They encompass the oil embargo, restrictions on the Iranian banking sector and its ability to carry out international transactions, the importation of industrial and construction equipment, and even luxury goods.

One of the most crippling has been a ban by SWIFT, the international financial clearinghouse, on Iranian funds transfers. Officials say the SWIFT sanctions have been particularly effective in limiting Iranian imports of all sorts of goods, even food supplies. The sanctions are so broad that the U.S. Treasury Department has exhaustive documentation on what is permitted, what is not, as well as licensing requirements.

At the same time, the International Atomic Energy Agency’s quarterly report on Iran’s nuclear program shows while Iranian oil revenue was declining, there was a simultaneous and dramatic increase in the number of centrifuges at Iran’s once-secret Fordow nuclear site. Iran in fact more than doubled the number of installed centrifuges -- from 1,064 to 2,140 -- in May, the IAEA reported.

Iran test-fires missile with new guidance system

The centrifuges, which are not the latest models that Iran possesses, have not been turned on, but U.S. officials call the speedup “troubling” if not a “game changer.” The Iranians also have increased their stockpile of highly enriched uranium, indicating that they have been getting better at the enrichment process.

Finally, at a military nuclear site named Parchin, which the IAEA wants to inspect, crucial buildings had been demolished and earth removed, the IAEA reported. Western diplomats see this as part of a cover-up by Iran of illicit nuclear-linked tests.

'Economic warfare'
So while the shipping data show the sanctions are a quantitative success – causing a rapid deterioration of Iran’s oil-driven economy – the IAEA data suggest no qualitative success. Iran continues to install new centrifuges and enrich more uranium, while refusing to permit IAEA inspections of Parchin.

“The challenge is it (the embargo) doesn’t seem to have much of an impact,” on Iran’s behavior, Houser admits.

CNBC: Iran oil revenue shrinks as sanctions sting

That doesn’t mean sanctions should be abandoned, says Mark Wallace, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations who runs an activist group, United Against Nuclear Iran, that’s engaged in shaming Western companies into abandoning business in Iran.

"Sanctions are clearly having an impact, but we can do much more and must,” said Wallace, who advocates “economic warfare” against Iran. “Importantly, the most robust sanctions in history can only prevent Iran from going nuclear if they are part of a larger strategy that includes thoughtful military planning and rigorous diplomatic activity."

Iranians feel the pain of sanctions: 'Everything has doubled in price'

Wallace points to victories big and small. He notes that in the last few days, a Russian firm decided to stop verifying safety and environmental standards for one of Iran's biggest shipping groups, making it more difficult for it to operate internationally.

It’s not surprising that economic sanctions don’t produce an immediate effect, says David Albright, founder and president of the Institute for Science and International Security (ISIS), which monitors nuclear proliferation. They take time.

“It’s a sticky thing with sanctions,” said Albright. “Nothing happens and then suddenly something big happens. It’s hard to predict what's going to happen over next six months as the sanctions tighten.

“The other part of the story (that Iran continues to make progress on its nuclear program) is true, which is why it’s all immensely frustrating to countries. It argues that ways have to be found to delay Iran from making progress on its nuclear program, because in a sense you need more time for sanctions and that means more covert actions,” like the Stuxnet virus and attacks on Iranian scientists. The former is believed to have been a joint U.S.-Israeli sabotage operation, while the latter is said to be an Israeli secret service initiative.

Israel tells US time is running out for peaceful end to Iran nuclear dispute

Albright also says that the sanctions have to be accompanied by a threat of military action if Iran continues on what the U.S., Israel and other Western nations believe is a path to nuclear weapons.

“The part of it is that it has to be clear in Iran's mind is that the United States will strike militarily to stop them,” he said.  

Iran: 'We can manage this'
Iran’s response has been that it will never give up its “legitimate” right to develop nuclear energy, while steadfastly denying it is working on a nuclear weapons program.

Privately, Iranian officials dismiss the effect sanctions have on Iran’s nuclear policies. They say the effects of the Iran-Iraq War that ravaged the country for eight years in the 1980s -- a war in which the United States covertly supported Saddam Hussein’s regime – were far worse.

 “If we could manage that, we can manage this,” said one official, speaking with NBC News on condition of anonymity.

Asked to estimate the chances that sanctions will lead to Iran ending its uranium program, the official replied, “Zero.”

Other Iranian officials say the sanctions are part of a “secret war” led by the U.S. and Israel that also includes the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists, infections of Iranian computer networks, drone overflights and even U.S. Special Forces insertions within Iran’s borders.

Iran: We can destroy US bases 'minutes after an attack'

In the face of such provocations, one suggested, how long can Iran decline to respond?

Reprisals could already be under way. Israel has accused Iran of planning or carrying out recent attacks on its diplomatic personnel in Azerbaijan, India and Thailand, as well as orchestrating a bombing that killed four Israeli students on vacation in Bulgaria.

The Iranians strongly deny any role in those plots.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.

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ODAKA, Japan -- The main street is deserted and quiet except for the eerie echoes of music being played somewhere in the distance. Pieces of shattered glass lie scattered along sidewalks outside collapsed buildings, some with their second-story roofs smashed flat on the pavement. Yards and driveways are overgrown with weeds, and schools and playgrounds are silent and forlorn.

Welcome to Odaka, a Japanese town of about 13,000 residents before a triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that began on March 11, 2011, turned the once-charming coastal village into a ghost town.

While many other Japanese towns and cities suffered the first two calamities, Odaka, which is in the southern district of the larger city Minami Soma, is unusual because of its proximity to the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant -- just 6 miles from the southeastern edge of town. The plant, which suffered meltdowns in three of its four nuclear reactors and breaches of its containment walls after the quake, emitted a plume of radioactive smoke that at times drifted over – and through – Odaka’s streets over several months.

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As a result, the town was frozen in time for more than a year after the disaster, abandoned in the so-called “exclusion zone” established by Japanese authorities around the Fukushima plant. Aside from a hurried search for bodies and a few perfunctory cleanup efforts, it remained untouched until April 16, when authorities narrowed the exclusion zone from 20 kilometers to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to the north of the plant and allowed residents to return to begin picking through the moldy, shattered and irradiated pieces of their lives.

As the town slowly begins stirring, it offers a preview of the challenges and travails that await other communities even closer to the plant – if and when they are reopened.

Among the first wave of returnees was Tomoko Kobayashi, the owner of a small hotel, who has begun cleaning up her business despite the fact that no customers are likely to be ringing the bell at the front desk anytime soon.

Kobayashi, a petite and energetic woman in her 60s, is a third-generation hotelier who took over the family business 10 years ago and had expected it to provide a steady income after her husband’s retirement later this year. But now, between drives of 40 miles each day to and from the couple’s cramped temporary housing unit in Haramachi, she worries that Odaka will never recover, as many business owners and young people elect to start new lives elsewhere.

Without such residents, she said, Odaka will become “a town of the elderly and restoration workers.”

Distrust of government
While Minami Soma city has begun decontamination and reconstruction efforts, Odaka remains under the direct authority of the Japanese government. That means residents must wait for evacuation orders issued shortly after the quake to be rescinded before they can return full-time. For now the town is open 24 hours a day, but no one is allowed to sleep there.

Because many residents were forced to relocate far from Odaka, relatively few return on a regular basis to sort through their belongings and begin cleaning the tsunami mud and debris from homes and businesses. In their absence, police and volunteer patrols circle the streets, politely questioning anyone who stops and sometimes searching vehicles if they suspect theft. The occasional work crew repairs telephone and power lines or fills potholes with gravel.

Farms and fishing – once the lifeblood of Odaka – are not going to contribute to a recovery for a long time. Massive swathes of farmland are contaminated by tsunami salt or radiation and the fishing industry has been obliterated.

But while damage from the quake and tsunami were substantial, radiation remains the main cause of concern both for the government and Odaka residents.

Tatsuo Miyamoto of the Minami Soma City Reconstruction Department said the reopening of Odaka is “a move to start cleanup in preparation for residents (to) return” once electricity, water and sewage service are restored, he said.

In the meantime, he said, the government believes that radiation levels in the town are safe for “extended exposure,” which it defines as up to 20 millisieverts per year – the same level that the International Commission on Radiological Protection has established for nuclear workers. But it is conducting a thorough survey of the town in 30-meter increments to measure levels in individual plots, which will then be classified as “prepared for return,” “problematic for return” or "prohibited for residency for an extended period.” That survey will determine where decontamination work – such as soil removal, high-pressure spraying and other measures – is required and which parts of the city – if any – will remain off-limits.  

But decontamination efforts, which were scheduled  to start this month and continue at least through the end of 2013, already have been delayed because sites for disposal of Odaka’s radioactive waste have not yet been approved.

That leaves early returnees like Kobayashi in a bind. Bags of radioactive tsunami mud collected by volunteer workers remain piled along the sidewalk outside her hotel in a tidy line. “I keep telling them to take it away, but they won’t,” she said, referring to government workers who drive past each day.

The fallout from the radioactive cloud is not evenly distributed, and the radiation levels remain high in some pockets, especially on foothills around the town, said two volunteer citizen patrolmen, Morio Matsumoto, 65, and Yasumi Murohara, 71, who are taking part in the survey. “Our dosimeter only goes up to 20 microsieverts per hour and it was at maximum,” said Matsumoto, discussing one foray into the hills.

Questions also are being raised on the efficacy of decontamination efforts.

The Fukushima Prefecture government said that its work in the field indicates that overall radiation levels decline by 37 percent with decontamination work, which may not be sufficient to make highly contaminated areas suitable for habitation. And areas that are cleaned can be recontaminated by radioactive materials carried by wind or water.

Despite the radiation already in the city, many Odaka residents and some nuclear energy experts are more concerned about the safety of the battered Fukushima Daichi plant.

The Japanese government and the plant operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Co., or TEPCO, have assured the public that the plant is stable and that safety systems are being restored.

But Takahashi Kei, a former cooling system worker at the plant now working as a radiation survey volunteer, said the utility company’s executives are portraying the situation in the best possible light.

“There are leaks everywhere, wreckage too. It’s not as simple as they portray,” he said.

Kobayashi also is highly suspicious of the assurances of the Japanese government and TEPCO about the Fukushima Daichi plant’s status.

“If there is no radiation exposure danger here, then the only danger remaining is the reactors. I think that is why we are not being allowed to return,” she said. “We just want to know the truth, no matter how bad it is. If they hide one thing from us, how can we believe anything they say?”

'I wouldn't ask younger people to return'
TEPCO acknowledges that three reactors at the plant remain full of melted and re-solidified fuel that must be removed and that spent fuel pools elsewhere on the grounds must be kept cool to prevent them from releasing radiation again. It estimates it will take about 40 years to completely decommission the site.

Tetsuo Sawada, a nuclear engineer and assistant professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, describes the cleanup as a “difficult and major undertaking.”

Others see the situation as more dire.

“The state of the reactors is still deteriorating … the incident is still progressing,” said Hiroaki Koide, a nuclear reactor specialist and an assistant professor at Kyoto University. “The current issues we are faced with is how to remove the radioactive material without releasing it. … All we can presently do is pray that there is not a large earthquake (that could further damage the plant). The possibility of Fukushima releasing more radioactive material than Chernobyl is still a reality.”

Ultimately, financial pressures may be the deciding factor in whether evacuees return to Odaka. Under current government standards, residents are eligible for property compensation only if evacuation orders stay in place. If the orders are rescinded, they must decide whether to shoulder the loss and walk away from their homes and businesses or return face possible radiation exposure and the danger posed by the damaged nuclear plant.

Such agonizing mental calculus is evident in the repopulated Haramachi district north of Odaka, where many parents restrict their children to playing indoors, or in school yards or gymnasiums that have been decontaminated. And despite widespread availability of health tests and full-body scanning, many residents are concerned about food contamination, as well as airborne dust and sand that they fear may contain radioactive material.

Nearer the epicenter of the nuclear nightmare, in Odaka, such fears are bound to be amplified. And in a town where 28 percent of the population was older than 65 before the disaster, that has Kobayashi questioning whether her hometown can survive.

“I only have another 20 years or so to live, (so) it won’t be an issue for me,” she said. “… (But) I wouldn’t ask the younger people to return.”

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North Korea could carry out an underground test of a nuclear weapon as early as Tuesday night as the North's reclusive leadership dramatically tries to up the stakes with the U.S. and the West, U.S. officials told NBC News.

U.S. officials say North Korea may already have an arsenal between 12 and a "few dozen" far more advanced weapons, many more than generally believed.

The officials couldn't be specific on a date for the test, but they told NBC News they were "100 percent" certain there would be a nuclear test within the next two weeks or "at any time."

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Tensions between North and South Korea increased this week when Pyongyang threatened to turn Seoul into "ashes." While the North regularly issues such threats, the South seemed to be taking this round of threats more seriously by increasing its security.

U.S. and South Korean intelligence agencies have been monitoring test preparations at P'unggye-yok, the North Korean test site near the Chinese border, for the past several weeks. As new evidence of tunneling emerged, officials began to see Army Day celebrations scheduled for Wednesday (Tuesday night in the U.S.) as a possible date for the test.

It will be the first time the country's 29-year-old leader, Kim Jong Un, will get a chance to address the Korean People's Army as commander.

At the high end of the range, U.S. officials and other researchers said, North Korea may already have up to "a few dozen" nuclear weapons that could be fitted atop its vast fleet of ballistic missiles. Currently, North Korean missiles are limited to an intermediate range, capable of hitting cities in Japan or South Korea but not the United States. What the new test could reveal is an improvement in the type of weapons North Korea has.

For the past several years, the U.S. has been monitoring North Korean research into thermonuclear weapons, hydrogen bombs and bombs known as boosted fission weapons, in which plutonium and uranium are combined.

David Albright, president of the Institute for Science and International Security, or ISIS, a nonpartisan nuclear arms research group, said Tuesday that the tests may also be about ensuring the reliability of North Korea's current weapons design.

"Once you get beyond a dozen, it makes sense to test type and reliability of your weapons," he said.

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Albright said that his group's estimate of North Korea's weapons stockpile is a bit less than those provided by the U.S. officials but that ISIS, too, believes Pyongyang has "missile-deliverable weapons."

North Korea successfully tested nuclear weapons in 2006 and 2009. In both cases, the first word came in statements from the North Korean Foreign Ministry hours before the tests were carried out. No such statement has been issued yet, but a U.S. official said it's possible that this time North Korea wouldn't follow the same protocol.

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Ten days ago, North Korea failed in its attempt to launch an observation satellite, a test the U.S. believed was a cover for test of intercontinental missile technology. In response, the U.S. canceled an agreement that would have provided 241,000 tons of nutritional aid, while the U.N. Security Council voted unanimously to "strongly condemn" the failed launch and said it would tighten sanctions against Pyongyang's government.

Albright added that North Korea might not want to test its weapons to their full yield in order to avoid another embarrassment, noting that the geology around the test site is fragile and that a large test could aggravate that issue.

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With tensions between Israel and Iran running sky high over the latter's nuclear program, U.S. officials and military analysts are growing increasingly concerned that Israel will launch a multi-phase air and missile attack that could trigger waves of retaliatory missile strikes from Tehran.

Such a shootout could quickly spiral into a regional conflict that would potentially force the U.S. to intervene to protect its interests.

The emerging consensus among current and former U.S. officials and other experts interviewed by NBC News is that that an Israeli attack would be a multi-faceted assault on key Iranian nuclear installations, involving strikes by both warplanes and missiles. It could also include targeted attacks by Israeli special operations forces and possibly even the use of massive explosives-laden drones, they say.

The Iranian response to such an attack is uncertain, but many experts and officials believe it is likely to include retaliatory missile strikes. Iran has more missiles in its arsenal than Israel, according to some estimates, and has the capability of striking targets in most Israeli population centers.

"I think that it would strike Iran as a reasonable response, an eye for an eye," said Christopher J Ferrero, a professor of diplomacy at Seton Hall University in New Jersey and an expert on Middle East missile forces.

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He also said Iran would likely attack major cities with its Shahab 3 missiles, which he said are not as accurate as the Israeli missiles, but would be an effective "instrument of terror … that could certainly cause significant damage to heavily populated suburban and urban areas.

 

 

Israel possesses advanced anti-missile defenses, but those systems could be overwhelmed if Tehran launched large numbers of missiles, as Ferrero expects.

Given the immense difficulties in carrying out successful air strikes on the four key Iranian installations using its warplanes alone -- as laid out last week by the New York Times, U.S. officials say Israel would be likely to coordinate such airstrikes with waves of missiles. This would greatly increase the chances of penetrating fortifications that Iran has built to protect some of its key installations and overwhelm Iran's air defenses, said the former and current U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Two words:  Jericho missiles," said one former White House and Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity, when asked how Israel would attack Iranian targets at great distances. "They are conventionally armed, have a very small CEP (circular error of probability, meaning they are highly accurate) and can be used in conjunction with a strike fighter operation."

Israel has as many as 100 Jericho ballistic missiles – both short- and medium-range – as well as submarine-launched cruise missiles, though the officials say they believe the latter are unlikely to be used. The short-range Jericho I missiles would be of no use in an attack on Iran, because the targets are far beyond its 300-mile range. However, the  medium-range Jericho II's are capable of  hitting targets as far as 900 miles away – or as far east as Tehran. Israel also tested a Jericho III intercontinental ballistic missile in 2008 and Israeli media have reported that it may have deployed one or more of the weapons, which would put all of Iran within reach.

The missiles would most likely be launched from the Hirbat Zekharyah missile range, midway between Israel and the Mediterranean Coast, according to "Critical Mass: the Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World," by William E. Burrows and Robert Windrem, and various Israeli press reports.

Although designed to be part of Israel's nuclear deterrent force, the Jerichos can be equipped with high explosives as well as nuclear warheads. U.S. officials have said that an Israeli attack, if it happens, would be intended to surgically take out the nuclear facilities, not inflict the mass casualties that would result from a nuclear attack.

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Iran has no capability to defend against a missile strike, said Ferrero, the expert on Middle East missile arsenals.

"If the Jerichos are accurate enough to get to their targets, they will get to their targets," he said.

What Iran does have is hundreds of Shahab 3 medium range ballistic missiles, according to U.S. estimates. The Shahab 3 also has a range of roughly 900 miles.

Israel, possibly supplemented by U.S. shipborne anti-missile systems – the Aegis Standard Missile-2 -- could intercept and destroy some of the incoming Iranian missiles, said Ferrero. But the numbers favor Iran, he said.

"I believe that (the Iranians) have a sufficient inventory that they could overwhelm those missile defenses and still get enough missiles through to cause damage," he said.

The critical factor may be the number of  missile launchers in Iran's inventory, Ferrero said, because penetrating Israel's defenses would require numerous  missiles, but also enough launchers to be able to fire them off simultaneously. That number is a closely guarded secret, he said.

Additionally, U.S. intelligence estimates say Iran has supplied Hezbollah with more than 40,000 short-range rockets and missiles since 2006. However, U.S. officials are uncertain whether Hezbollah would follow Iranian orders, and risk Israeli retaliation or, if they did, how many they would fire.  The majority of the rockets and missiles are unguided.  Israel and the U.S. have worked on a short-range missile defense system called Iron Dome, but there are concerns that waves of attacks could overwhelm the system.

Also open to question in U.S. and Israeli military circles is whether an Israeli attack would meet its objective: setting back the Iranian nuclear program anywhere from two to five years.

U.S. officials say Israel would be likely to concentrate its attacks on four key Iranian nuclear complexes. Key facilities within those complexes – the Natanz and Fordo centrifuge facilities, both south of Tehran; the Arak research reactor, southwest of Tehran; and a uranium hexafloride production and research facility near the city of Isfahan – are protected by heavy fortifications, they said.

The Jerichos are stored in tunnels in limestone formations around Hirbat Zekharyah and rolled out for firing. They would likely be used as part of a one-two punch, the officials say. The first attack would be carried out by Israeli strike fighters and would be intended to breach the heavily fortified outer ceilings of the facilities. The second (and possibly even third) wave would be missile attacks aimed at destroying the facilities within, the officials said. 

Asked if Jerichos would have the accuracy and the explosive power to take out hardened bunkers or fortifications believed to be protecting Iran's most-sensitive underground nuclear facilities, a current U.S. official replied, "You would be surprised at their accuracy." The official added that the missiles' warheads would contain a special mix of explosives that could penetrate the Iranian defenses.

U.S. officials also say Israel may have learned the location of facilities that fabricate centrifuge components. These, too, could be targeted.

A 2010 book on the possibility of an Israeli attack laid out the difficulties Israel would face if it attempted to use only its strike fighters on those targets.

 "Attacks against the sites at Natanz, Isfahan and Arak alone would stretch Israel's capability and planners might be reluctant to enlarge the raid further," wrote authors Steven Simon and Dana H. Allin, in "The Sixth Crisis – Iran, Israel and the Rumors of War." Simon, then a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, now heads the Middle East Desk at the National Security Council.

The biggest problem is the fortification of the two centrifuge facilities. Simon and Allin describe the challenge using aircraft only.

"Natanz is the only one of the … likely targets that is largely underground, sheltered by up to 23 meters (75 feet) of soil and concrete," they wrote. "… Bombs used in a ‘burrowing' mode, however, could penetrate deeply enough to fragment the inner surface of the ceiling structures above the highly fragile centrifuge arrays and even precipitate the collapse of the entire structure."

But for the attack to have high odds of success, they argue, aircraft would have to drop additional bombs into the cavities created by the first bombs. That would require "time on target" -- a luxury that the Israeli jets at the outermost limits of their 1,100-mile range would likely not have. While they estimate the success rate of such a plan at "better than 70 percent," they call it "complicated and highly risky."

Another difficulty for attacking Israeli aircraft would be finding a route to the targets that could be flown covertly or with the tacit approval of Sunni Arab states, who are at least as frightened of an Iranian nuclear capability as the Israelis.

Simon and Allin (and others) have written that there are three "plausible routes" that Israeli warplanes would take to attack Iran: a northern approach, likely along the Syrian-Turkish border; a central path that would take them over Jordan and Iraq; and a southern route that would transit the lower end of Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The southern route is the most likely, U.S. officials suggest, because the Saudis and other Sunni-dominated Gulf states are eager for someone to take out the Iranian threat. They prefer the U.S. do it, but have reportedly shared intelligence on the Iranian program with the Israelis, if only on a limited basis, according to the U.S. officials.

No matter what route the fighter bombers take, they would use what one U.S. official described as "high-low, low-high" flight paths – flying high first to increase fuel efficiency, then low for most of the trip to evade radar, then climbing high again as the bombs are released in what is known as a "flip toss" from as far as 10 miles from the target.

The Israelis would be prepared to lose aircraft if necessary, the officials said.

Although Simon and Allin do not discuss adding a missile component, other experts, including many current and former U.S. officials, believe the Israelis already have made a decision to have them in the attack menu.

Missile attacks would be coordinated with fighter-bomber attacks (presumably, the Israelis' F-16, F-18 and extended-range F-15I Strike Eagle). The missiles would have to be launched so that warheads strike targets following the strike fighter attacks.  Because of the short flight time, minutes rather than hours in the case of the aircraft, the missile launch would almost certainly take place at the last possible moment to ensure the secrecy of the overall attack.

The Israelis are not planning to use their submarine-launched cruise missile force -- "not enough of them," one official said of the subs. (The Israelis have long had nuclear tipped sub-launched cruise missiles as part of their deterrent force.) 

Beyond the strike fighters and the missile force, U.S. officials suggest the Israelis could use two other "weapons" against Iran.

The first is special operations forces that would be secretly inserted into the country. At the least, they could be employed to illuminate aim points for laser-guided bunker-busting bombs. At the most, they could launch their own attacks on facilities, particularly those believed to contain enriched uranium.

The other is a new generation of large drones with wingspans approaching those of a Boeing 777  (almost 200 feet). Costing $30 million each, the Heron drones are capable of remaining airborne for 40 hours at a time and have a range of 4,600 miles. While they can be equipped with surveillance and electronic warfare equipment, some officials call them "strike drones," meaning they could be loaded with explosives and used to attack Iranian targets.

While the initial days of an Israeli-Iranian conflict would probably be bloody, most experts say that the open warfare would be expected to wind down within days or weeks, since neither side has the ability to occupy the other's territory or enough missiles to sustain attacks.

But that would bring with it its own set of problems, as the conflict would be likely to continue on a lower level, involving covert operations and terrorism.

"You could have a very nasty covert war emerge," said Ferrero.

Robert Windrem is a senior investigative producer for NBC News.