Five months after being signed by the President, the New START treaty successfully made it out of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (SFRC). Fourteen senators voted for it and four against after a long and heated debate over issues like missile defense and nuclear modernization. Three Republicans threw their chips in favor of New START.

This is a major win for the arms control advocacy community, given that until just a few days ago, it wasn't clear how some influential GOP senators on the treaty were going to vote.  With a Democratic majority in the committee, the treaty would have been voted out regardless. But the treaty will need 67 votes on the floor (read: at least 8 Republicans) to be ratified, which is no easy task in this divided Senate.

Stephen Rademaker's recent piece in the Washington Post is the latest in a series of offensives against the New START treaty with Russia.  He falsely plants the blame for the delayed ratification schedule on the Democrats, although it is the Republicans who have spent the past few months scrambling to hold the treaty hostage to political maneuvering. On the plus side, he implicitly concedes that the debate on the content of the treaty is essentially over - he has no beef with the text or implications of New START. At a loss for substantive things to critique, he turns to an otherwise tedious and boring topic: Senate processes.

In responding to Iran's recent offer for talks concerning international nuclear non-proliferation, the State Department has said that the offer fails to deal with America's central concern: Iran's nuclear program.

This comes in the wake of news from U.S. Intelligence agencies that Iran has developed enough nuclear fuel to create a nuclear weapon, should it choose to. The country, however, has stopped short of the last few steps needed to make the bomb.