Vital Interests: Mark, thanks very much for joining us today on the Vital Interests Forum, it is a pleasure to speak with you. We are going to talk about nuclear verification and inspections.

There is much current discussion about the United States re-engaging with the JCPOA, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action between Iran and the P5+1 (China, France, Germany, Russia, the UK, and the United States). Despite the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from the agreement, the other parties kept this nuclear deal going. In any renegotiation of the JCPOA a key player will be the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the organization responsible for inspections and verification of Iran nuclear capacity.

For our readers who aren't familiar with all of the nomenclature, can you give us an overview of the IAEA - how the agency came about, how it is structured, and what their mandate has been?

Mark Hibbs: In a nutshell, the International Atomic Energy Agency was set up in the 1950s as a multilateral centerpiece for global nuclear diplomacy and cooperation. That covered the whole gamut of everything having to do with the peaceful use of nuclear technology and its diplomacy.

When the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was negotiated in the 1960s and entered into force at the end of that decade, it was logical for the IAEA to be assigned the task of serving as the treaty’s verification agency. The NPT has been joined by 191 countries, of which five are recognized as having nuclear weapons. The treaty obligates the non-nuclear weapons states not to develop or possess nuclear weapons. The NPT also aspires to nuclear disarmament by the five nuclear-armed states. 

In the early years of the IAEA, perhaps a dozen states, including the nuclear-armed countries, possessed most of the world's nuclear technology. So at the outset only a few states in the international system set the rules for the rest.  

In the course of the last fifty years the IAEA has expanded its activities to serve 172 member states. All but eight are states without nuclear weapons, and all non-nuclear-armed members of the IAEA are also parties to the NPT. Nearly all IAEA members today employ nuclear science and infrastructure for peaceful uses. As a result of the IAEA’s growth, the bifurcation between a small coterie of states with nuclear knowledge and nuclear weapons, and a big group of states with very little or no nuclear knowledge, is past history. Over time, at the IAEA a handful of nuclear-weapons powers sit at the table with increasingly more states committed to having no nuclear weapons but which are developing and acquiring more nuclear technology for peaceful use.

For most of the second half of the last century, the IAEA’s verification role for the NPT was fairly cut and dried and based on trust. The nuclear-weapons states had virtually no obligations vis-a-vis the IAEA. Non-nuclear-weapon states would provide declarations to the IAEA of their activities and materials; IAEA inspectors sent out from Vienna headquarters would verify that the accounting was correct.

VI: When you talk about countries declaring they had nuclear capabilities and materials, we're talking about nuclear power plants, but did reporting include even the use of radiation for medical treatments and the like?

Mark Hibbs: The IAEA is involved in a wide variety of nuclear activities in its member states, but regarding the NPT, the IAEA is focused on those nuclear materials and activities that could contribute to the production of nuclear weapons, chiefly uranium and plutonium. The IAEA’s access to these materials and activities in a state is governed by a so-called bilateral safeguards agreement between the state and the IAEA.  The state is responsible for providing a declaration to the agency of their activities and materials, and, especially in the early days, the IAEA would go to the state and check the boxes, and make sure that all the declared nuclear materials were where they were supposed to be and were not being used for non-peaceful purposes. 

VI: In other words, the IAEA established international guidelines for how nuclear material was stored, used, accounted for. They were providing a best practices declaration.

Mark Hibbs: The safeguards agreement provides the IAEA its legal authority in each state and assigns to the member state the legal obligation to cooperate with the agency, to provide a declaration of all its materials. The agency then verifies everything according to the text of this bilateral agreement.

The media-driven view of the IAEA is that it is a watchdog. IAEA inspectors in the field may be watchdogs, but if they find something, they don’t bite, they investigate and then notify. What happens is that the IAEA confers with a state if there are unusual findings; if discrepancies aren’t resolved then the IAEA reports what it finds to its member states. They are the ultimate decision makers in this process. Every year there is an official IAEA accounting to the member states of the status of the agency’s verification work in all countries that have these safeguards agreements. The agency routinely reports to the member states and the member states then sign off on what the agency's work shows.

Inspectors sometimes find unreported anomalies, but if something shows up that looks like a possible non-compliance with the state's obligations, then at some point action may need to be taken. After the issue is discussed internally between the agency and the member state, it may be brought to the attention of the IAEA member states in the Board of Governors, an assembly of 35 member states, including the states with the most nuclear knowledge. 

The IAEA board may recommend further consultations. It may provide guidance and expertise to the agency in moving forward. Ultimately if there's no resolution—because a state is denying cooperation with the IAEA or because the IAEA has found that the state has significantly failed to meet its obligations—the member states on the board may approve a resolution of non-compliance. In that case, the board’s determination is reported to the United Nations Security Council and General Assembly for their consideration. 

This does not happen very often. It happened concerning Iran in 2006. It happened during the 2010s concerning Syria. When that happens, the IAEA’s verification problems move up the ladder of attention and they eventually land on the desks of important people in the capitals of member states and at the UN in New York.

VI: What happened when countries like North Korea, Pakistan, and India developed their nuclear capabilities beyond peaceful use, what did the IAEA have to say about that?

Mark Hibbs: Well, all these cases are not the same. Pakistan and India are not parties to the NPT and so the IAEA’s safeguards agreements with these countries are limited in scope; their weapons programs are not part of the IAEA’s writ. For NPT non-nuclear-weapon states, the rules are different; the safeguards agreements are aptly termed “comprehensive” agreements. All nuclear materials have to be accounted for.

If they’re not accounted for, there can be a crisis. In 1993, for example, the IAEA discovered in North Korea undeclared and hidden processing of irradiated nuclear material and separation of plutonium, a material that is used in nuclear weapons. The IAEA brought its findings to the board and the board agreed that there was non-compliance by North Korea. North Korea was a member of the NPT; it had an obligation not to develop nuclear weapons and to accordingly declare all of its nuclear activities and materials. The board’s finding of non-compliance came at the end of a long series of confrontational interactions between the IAEA and North Korea concerning the inspection of North Korea's reactors. Because there was a firm consensus among board members, the board promptly agreed that North Korea was out of compliance with its obligations. 

That’s how the process is supposed to work. The IAEA does its verification, performs its watchdog role, but has no enforcement power. Enforcement is the responsibility of the states in the system. As a rule individual states are extremely protective of their autonomy and sovereignty and that’s reflected in the fine print of the safeguards agreements. States don't like international organizations looking into their strategic activities like energy and nuclear technology and rubbernecking around at their will, without a clear legal understanding of what activities such organizations are permitted and not permitted to do.

There is a certain legal etiquette involved. The states watch carefully what the IAEA does and the agency, likewise, is mindful not to exceed its authority when it's carrying out, for example, an inspection at a nuclear site. Everything is very, very carefully fine-tuned and controlled.

VI: I imagine this control extends to the IAEA inspectors that countries let in? 

Mark Hibbs: For sure, where the IAEA’s agreements allow states subject to verification to control the designation of inspectors, the states can limit the IAEA’s freedom of action. 

VI: Not only limit it, but also manipulate?

Mark Hibbs: Well, there have been cases where IAEA personnel have been ordered to leave a country, and states will quickly object if they conclude that inspectors are overstepping their authority. There's an Office of Legal Affairs in the IAEA that spends a lot of time on questions about what the agency's authorities are, say, in country A or B.

The safeguards agreements for NPT non-nuclear-weapon states are all broadly similar, but the details, spelled out in annexes and attachments, are fussy, very specific in each case, and confidential. They precisely delineate the routine actions that the agency can undertake at every single nuclear facility in every country subject to verification.

With hindsight, today the IAEA is concerned that the limitations imposed by its agreements do not prevent the agency from understanding how a country might cheat and develop nuclear weapons. That was the lesson from the 1991 Gulf War, when the IAEA learned that Iraq, an NPT state that in 1973 had concluded a safeguards agreement with the IAEA, during the 1980s had been putting together a clandestine nuclear weapons program under the nose of the agency, in some cases in places off-limits to inspectors that were located around the corner from places where the safeguards agreement permitted the IAEA to inspect. 

VI: So inspectors could go to this room, but you can't go into that room?

Mark Hibbs: Correct. After the first Gulf War the agency was empowered by its member states to have more freedom to inspect. The states and the IAEA in the 1990s closed some loopholes and enhanced the IAEA’s authority when they created a document called the Additional Protocol. Beginning in 1997, states that volunteer to sign on to this protocol agree to provide the IAEA greater access to locations and information. Most significantly, this protocol gives the IAEA greater authority to pursue information suggesting that a state may have non-declared activities or materials.

VI: The IAEA inspections that took place were all on the ground with inspectors having to be sent in. As surveillance technologies have developed, can the IAEA use other information sources other than on-the-ground inspections? Do they have geospatial capabilities - satellite imagery?

Mark Hibbs: Yes. Findings in Iraq and North Korea generated a long discussion during the 1990s until the present about the agency's access to information that it does not itself collect. This is a sensitive matter, because clearly if third-party information comes from a government that is an adversary of the state that's inspected, then the question arises as to how the IAEA would know that the information is genuine. Most recently, this has come up in Iran, after Israel provided data to the IAEA which suggested that Iran has continued to withhold information from the IAEA about the full extent of its nuclear activities and materials. 

Basically, the Additional Protocol—including in Iran where since 2015 it is being implemented on a provisional basis—has given the IAEA more authority to do fact finding especially in pursuit of information suggesting that states’ declarations are both correct and complete.  The Protocol is also helping the IAEA develop a more holistic picture of states’ nuclear activities, and to identify all possible routes by which a state could obtain nuclear weapons on the basis of its know-how and infrastructure.

But the IAEA and its member states are still feeling their way on how implementation of the Additional Protocol can lead to nonproliferation enforcement. In both Iran and Syria since the 2000s, for example, the IAEA has collected environmental samples at installations and other locations that have figured in the IAEA’ conclusion-drawing. Personnel at a location subject to verification take a clean cloth and swipe it on a surface; the cloth is then analyzed in an IAEA laboratory. Experts may find tiny particles of nuclear material suggesting that there may be undeclared activities in the country. 

VI: In examination of these particles, can they show enrichment? 

Mark Hibbs: They can. The IAEA has found particles of enriched uranium in some cases. In 2018 in Iran, swipe samples pointed to what the agency refers to as “anthropogenic” materials that have been processed beyond their natural state. As of today the IAEA has not reported that Iran has clarified the origin of these particles. But in some cases, states have objected that the finding of the particles was due to cross-contamination of equipment or because careless sampling techniques were used. In part because of the sensitivity of the sampling science there is no hard and fast expert consensus as to whether the findings of these environmental samples suffice to prompt a board finding of non-compliance. Some IAEA officials will tell you that they doubt that in most cases a state would be cited for non-compliance solely based on such a finding. The point is that evidence relying on sensitive conclusion-drawing can challenge the member states. Once such a case gets into the IAEA boardroom, out of the hands of IAEA analysts and lab technicians, and into the hands of the diplomats, it can become extremely political.

In 2011 the IAEA, including on the basis of information that it had obtained from the United States, told the Board of Governors that it was confident that an installation in Syria, destroyed in 2007 by Israeli aircraft, was “very likely” a nuclear reactor. The IAEA’s conclusion led to a confrontation in the Board of Governors. On one side was the United States and the Western group of states, which had supported a resolution of non-compliance against Syria on the basis of the IAEA’s determination. On the other side was the Russian Federation, which deplored the IAEA’s verdict as insufficient, in support of its Syrian ally, joined by China and a number of other countries not in the Western group.

In the 1970s and 1980s when the IAEA was checking boxes, compliance was a much simpler matter. Inspectors went to a designated location and verified the state’s accounting of activities and materials. There weren’t a lot of questions asked about the nature of the state’s nuclear program, no one was routinely looking around for things that weren't declared. The system was based on trust. Today instead there are more grey areas and more information sources, and it isn’t always clear what the yardsticks are for compliance.

Then on top of that, we have seen differences of opinion expressed in recent years about the integrity of the agency's verification mission. Officials from Western countries have expressed a high level of confidence that the IAEA leadership will treat verification-relevant information in confidence and with circumspection, that they will not misuse the information, or permit themselves to be misused by third parties, including other governments, in making findings. On some occasions, Russian officials, joined by some other states, have suggested that the IAEA might be manipulated by providers of third-party information. They don’t directly claim that the US is manipulating the IAEA, but—concerning both Syria and Iran—Russia has on occasion provided political cover for these states resisting Western pressure for greater cooperation with the IAEA. For the IAEA, conflict among member states over nuclear verification issues is a problem because the grounds for conflict are gray areas resulting from the evolution of IAEA verification away from box-checking and toward more investigative approaches. A key point of departure in these discussions is events in 2002 and 2003, when the US launched a war of nonproliferation against Iraq, on the basis of claims that turned out to be false.

VI: High-strength aluminum tubing, yellow cake uranium from Africa, and Condolezza Rice’s statement “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”

Mark Hibbs: The U.S. used unsubstantiated and incorrect intelligence claims to back its assertion that Iran had resurrected its nuclear weapons program. There was no new nuclear weapons program in Iraq. The IAEA, however, had not been fooled. The Director-General of the IAEA at that time, Muhammad ElBaradei, was very firm in telling the United States that he didn't believe that their intelligence was accurate, that his inspections and investigations into Saddam Hussein's nuclear program between 1991 and 1999 satisfied the IAEA that Iraq’s nuclear weapons program had not been restarted.

This affair had a decidedly negative impact on nonproliferation. As a result of it, international confidence about official concerns with the spread of nuclear weapons expressed by the US—a state that has led nonproliferation efforts for many years especially during the formative years of the IAEA and the NPT—was on margin reduced. It isn’t a coincidence that in 2004, in the wake of the second US invasion of Iraq, Iran successfully urged the Non-Aligned Movement of mostly developing countries to set up a chapter in Vienna to press their “nuclear rights.” In any event, exposure of the US’s misuse of information in Iraq meant that from that point onwards it would be more difficult for the United States to convince others that the IAEA has found a smoking gun somewhere else. 

VI: At this point was China part of the non-Western block that was developing in the IAEA or was this primarily a Russian initiative?

Mark Hibbs: Until recently China has been for many years a quiet and discreet participant in IAEA diplomacy. Russia has long been far more active at the IAEA. During the entire period from the early years of the NPT and the IAEA inspection regime until shortly after the Cold War, one of the reasons that the system functioned as smoothly as it did is because there was an understanding between the Soviet Union and the United States. The two most powerful countries on Earth, both endowed with thousands of nuclear weapons, which divided the world into blocs, mutually and probably tacitly agreed that they would police the nuclear activities of their allies and their satellites.

That's what happened. The Soviet Union organized nuclear cooperation inside of the Comecon system, the economic cooperation system of the Soviet bloc, to make sure that none of the countries in its orbit that were getting nuclear power technology would use this technology for manufacturing nuclear weapons. On the other side of the iron curtain the United States did the same. It in fact intervened in its global neighborhood when it discovered that there were clandestine nuclear activities getting underway. In Taiwan and in South Korea the US directly intervened with governments. West Germany and Japan were discreetly aware that the United States would be prepared to use its security umbrella as a tool to enforce non-proliferation in allied countries.

When verification issues found their way into the IAEA boardroom, the Russians and the Americans were usually on the same page: Iraq in 1990, North Korea and South Africa in the early 1990s. Beginning in the 2000s, when the scope and extent of Iran’s nuclear activities were revealed, the US and Russia were beginning to drift apart. During the last few years, China’s boardroom diplomacy in Iran has come to resemble Russia’s, and is more critical of Western positions. 

The 1990s was a different era compared to today. I can recall an IAEA closed meeting in 1994 where the United States brought CIA satellite information into the room to underscore the IAEA’s allegations that North Korea had been clandestinely reprocessing and moving nuclear waste from that reprocessing program to other locations. There was no internal bickering. The United States showed its information, it was discussed, and it was widely accepted that North Korea was violating its legal obligations.

Let's fast forward to 2020. A different picture. Two years after Israel provided the IAEA information that appeared to show that nuclear materials in Iran may not have been declared to the IAEA, the matter was still unresolved and subject to debate in the IAEA board. The US and other Western states encouraged the IAEA to pursue the case in real time because Iran had tried to intimidate an IAEA inspector and failed to explain IAEA findings suggesting that not all nuclear materials were declared. Russia, China, Syria, and Iran all objected. Russia asserted that Iran’s lack of cooperation with the IAEA was not a proliferation threat but was the response to US pressure. In 2021, the matter escalated further when Iran announced it would unilaterally restrict the scope of IAEA verification, prompting the IAEA Director General to negotiate with Iran an emergency data collection arrangement that, absent any forthcoming agreement between the US and Iran on sanctions relief, in coming months might damage the IAEA’s technical verification position in Iran. 

When the JCPOA was concluded in 2015, the Obama administration still was counting on having a cordial working relationship in Vienna with both China and Russia. In 2021 and beyond, that's by no means a foregone conclusion. The US unilaterally walked out of the JCPOA under President Trump. As we know, in addition to getting back into the agreement, the United States under President Biden and the Western group in the JCPOA now want to see the agreement enhanced through future negotiations to make it more sustainable and in the interest of non-proliferation, in part by extending the time horizons under which Iran would commit itself to exercising restraint over its nuclear deployments, particularly in sensitive nuclear technologies such as uranium enrichment.

For that to happen through JCPOA diplomacy, some cooperation with both China and Russia would be necessary. That may be possible, but US relations with China and Russia have deteriorated since 2015, and the prospects for all parties to agree to expand the scope of the JCPOA understanding don’t look very encouraging. Ultimately, Iran may not consent.

VI: Primarily because of the lack of goodwill and cooperation from Russia and China?

Mark Hibbs: Iran will decide for itself what will best serve its interests. We’re seeing what looks like efforts to cement stronger bilateral relationships between Iran and China, on the one hand, and Iran and Russia on the other hand.  Iran Foreign Minister Zarif last month said that Russia in 2015 opposed Iran resolving differences with the US. If Russian and Chinese influence grows, including at the IAEA, if their bilateral ties with Iran expand into strategic areas, Russia and China could become non-proliferation arbiters in the Persian Gulf to a level that the United States did not foresee when Obama began negotiating the JCPOA back in the early 2010s. 

A colleague at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Karim Sadjadpour, has recently suggested that one of the things that is different now than in 2015 is that while Obama firmly believed that the JCPOA in 2015 would empower more moderate voices in the Iranian regime like President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Zarif to turn Iran away from nuclear escalation, President Biden, six years later, is apparently under no illusions. The Western camp on balance is more concerned than it was in 2015 that the Iranian regime is dominated by hardliners and is fundamentally wedded to an anti-Western agenda which would deter Iran from fully cooperating with the IAEA. That’s also what I take away from Zarif’s recently leaked remarks.

VI: In the spirit of the NPT and the terms of any kind of renegotiated JCPOA, inspection and verification by the IAEA of countries with nuclear programs is crucial. Without confidence in the ability of the agency to impartially monitor compliance, what would that mean for controlling nuclear weapons proliferation?

Mark Hibbs: It’s clear that the ongoing evolution of the IAEA verification system in principle would facilitate discovery of clandestine activities in states, but there are gray areas concerning how the IAEA’s investigative results will be translated into conclusions about safeguards, including for non-compliance. In their critique of new developments, Russian officials point out that the original safeguards system had set up technical criteria to determine whether inspection goals in states are met. There are in fact fewer such criteria for the new and evolving system; if not addressed, that state of affairs could encourage suspected violators to defy verification and seek political allies on the board to defeat legitimate challenges to their lack of transparency or deception. If that happens, the IAEA verification system could fail.  

Nearly twenty years after the scope of Iran’s hidden nuclear program was revealed, Iran is still the litmus test of how the safeguards system will evolve, both technically and politically. I think it is well understood that President Trump’s decision making needlessly provoked Iran to respond in ways that complicate returning to routine implementation of the JCPOA. At the same time, Iran’s response to the Israeli information and its renewed escalation of its enrichment program are a warning that unless the JCPOA is provided greater sustainability, the 2015 agreement could go down in history as a complex ceasefire arrangement that ground to a halt at the end of the 2020s at which point Iran resumed forced nuclear technology deployment under a peaceful use cover. To protect the agreement against that outcome the JCPOA parties need to raise their game.

The nonproliferation challenge goes beyond the credibility of the IAEA, which is a verification agency. It goes to the effectiveness of the enforcement regime which is a matter for the member states. The template for IAEA verification in NPT states is a document which is referred to as INFCIRC/153. That's the basis for the safeguards agreements between each of these states without nuclear weapons and the IAEA. 

If you look at paragraph 28 of that model agreement it says that IAEA verification provides deterrence against a diversion of nuclear material by a state through “the risk of early detection.” The key here is the risk. Paragraph 28 implies that if a country cheats and is detected, there will be negative consequences for that action. The assumption is that detected violation would have consequences and that concern about the risk of that would deter countries from cheating.

VI: That's the deterrent?

Mark Hibbs: INFCIRC/153 was written in the early 1970s. Thereafter deterrence didn’t prevent cheating—not in Iraq, not in North Korea, and not in Iran. Iraq came first. There was no “early detection.” The hidden program was discovered only after allied forces defeated and occupied the country. Shortly thereafter, in North Korea, the IAEA discovered the cheating. As in Iraq shortly before, the international community acted with unity. But unlike in defeated Iraq, it had no such leverage to compel North Korea to desist. Ultimately, the regime in Pyongyang made a strategic decision to continue with its nuclear weapons program and it expelled IAEA inspectors. China’s support took some of the sting out of North Korea’s diplomatic isolation—a lesson that Iran learned by the early 2000s when it appeared as if the United States would persuade allies and others in the IAEA board to react to Iran’s nuclear challenge as it did in the case of North Korea a decade before.  

VI: In other words, Iran can find a way to move forward by building on their relations with China and Russia?

Mark Hibbs: Both China and Russia are investing in the future of their bilateral relationships with Iran, at a time when the West’s relationships with Beijing and Moscow are deteriorating. Concerning the JCPOA, that looks like a potential Iranian opportunity. Ultimately, whether the US and Western states can count on support from China and Russia may depend on how much Beijing and Moscow are concerned about the emergence of new nuclear-armed states on their periphery. So far, the Russians have provided public diplomacy support for Iran in the IAEA board, but you will also hear that Russia has helped the IAEA by discreetly warning Iran not to defy the IAEA. So the future of big power diplomacy in Iran isn’t clear.

Negotiation and implementation of the JCPOA have been overshadowed by a paralyzing polarization in the West and especially in the US about the nature of the Iranian regime. Bitter opponents of Iran in and around the US Congress opposed the JCPOA tooth and nail. On the other side of the ledger were those who hoped and believed in 2015 that a nuclear deal would empower moderates in Iran to arrest Iran’s nuclear deployments. There was not a lot of middle ground. 

From IAEA headquarters in Vienna things looked different in 2015 and 2016. Expectations of seasoned inspectors were more realistic. Some people were concerned that JCPOA parties and the IAEA’s Director General might not pursue fact-finding to the extent required for the IAEA to conclude that all of Iran’s nuclear activities were peaceful and accounted for. Because the JCPOA was designed to prevent Iran from cheating its way to nuclear weapons in a hurry and especially in the near term, little thought was given to what would happen by the end of the 2020s when the JCPOA’s voluntary restraints on Iran’s nuclear activities expired. Architects of the agreement had foreseen that, as implementation progressed over time, growing confidence-building would provide the IAEA greater access to more sensitive activities. To that end, in 2015 the parties assured the world that there would be flanking diplomacy to continue to engage Iran. That didn’t materialize.   

The re-emergence of global strategic rivalries involving JCPOA parties will challenge efforts to strengthen the agreement. The record is that Iran has chosen to cooperate with the IAEA when that suited its interests and has withheld cooperation when Iran concluded that stalling  would reap more benefits and buy time. Perhaps the Iranian leadership feels that ultimately the international community will grow weary of pressing Iran on technical details about its nuclear program that most diplomats and non-experts don't understand. Fatigue might magnify in the 2020s because, at a time when Iran already accounts for a very large share of the IAEA’s verification resources, the IAEA will be pressed to obtain money, inspectors, and political support from member states for verification. There will also be other global crises. At some point, the international community may lose interest in this issue. That may be part of proliferators’ current or future calculation. We don't really know.

VI: Mark, thanks very much for this engaging conversation. We have learned about the origins and purpose of the IAEA as a vital corollary to the NPT. It is important to understand that the NPT has succeeded for the past thirty years on the basis of trust and if that trust is being compromised due to current international tensions, then we are certainly in perilous times.

Mark Hibbs: It has been my pleasure to discuss the important challenges that nuclear proliferation in general and Iran in particular present to the world community.  

Mark Hibbs is a nonresident senior fellow in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Nuclear Policy Program, based in  Germany.  His research is focused on international nuclear trade and nonproliferation governance in four main areas: the international nuclear trade regime, decision making at the International Atomic Energy Agency, nuclear safeguards and verification, and bilateral nuclear cooperation arrangements. Hibbs’ publications include policy research for the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), the world’s leading nuclear trade control organization, and in 2018 the book The Future of Nuclear Power in China.