Following the recent US–Israeli strikes on Iran and the subsequent regional escalation, Europe’s response has been mixed. As the conflict widens, we ask members of the ELN Network how they assess Europe’s approach so far and what role European governments should be playing.
Nuclear weapons aren’t going anywhere, and the way we manage them can and must keep evolving. Today’s security environment is more complex than during the Cold War: more nuclear-armed states, faster decision-making technologies, and fewer treaties providing guardrails. The good news? Proven tools exist to reduce risk, from fail-safe mechanisms to dialogue between adversaries, and they don’t all require perfect trust or total agreement. This animation explains both the challenges and the credible paths forward.
This report by Ganna Pogrebna and ELN Senior Policy Fellow Rishi Paul presents findings from an ELN workshop that examined the ‘human’ and ‘machine’ components of bias and their points of interaction. The report highlights how human judgment and AI systems can interact in ways that reinforce, rather than reduce, risk.
In May, States Parties to the NPT will meet for the 11th Review Conference under difficult circumstances. In the second of our commentary series exploring different European perspectives, Ciarán Doyle, a diplomat from Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, reflects on Ireland’s perspective on the Treaty and its approach to the 2026 Review Conference. He writes about the importance Ireland places on the Treaty as a small, militarily neutral country, and calls for a commitment to enhanced transparency and accountability from the nuclear weapon states.
The first in our series exploring P5 perspectives on the forthcoming 2026 NPT Review Conference, Emmanuelle Maitre writes that for France, constructive participation in the RevCon will require delicate balancing. At the P5 level, preserving dialogue despite strong opposition remains a priority, but must not prevent calling out behaviours of concern related to the NPT.
On 4th February, the New START Treaty – the last treaty constraining the nuclear weapons of the United States and Russia – expired. We now face the prospect that the half-century process of reducing the number of nuclear weapons in the world is about to be reversed. Although this situation appears bleak, Edward Ifft writes that there are constructive measures nuclear weapons states can take to reinforce global stability.
Gender perspectives are integral to credible, effective, and inclusive disarmament and arms control. This policy brief by ELN Policy Fellow Jana Baldus examines the gender backlash in multilateral disarmament and arms control, and its implications. It suggests two approaches to preserve progress on gender equality and intersectional gender perspectives and calls on states, international organisations, and civil society to act collectively to defend and further advance gender perspectives.
President Trump’s recent statement about the US resumption of nuclear testing has heightened concerns over a renewed arms race and the erosion of the global norm against nuclear testing enshrined in the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). This new policy brief from the ELN’s Protecting the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty project argues that the CTBT reinforces the NPT by bolstering the nuclear non-proliferation norm and constraining the development of new nuclear warhead types: sustaining it is a strategic imperative. States Parties to the NPT must work together to strengthen the CTBT’s credibility and relevance to international security and prioritise collective multilateral action over short-term security gains.
Any monitoring mission deployed to observe an end to the hostilities in Ukraine is likely to incorporate a range of remote-sensing technologies to support its verification activities. Drawing on insights from the Norwegian research institute NORSAR’s real-time monitoring of the 2022 Ukraine conflict, this policy brief by Ben D.E. Dando, Kjølv Egeland, and Sebastian Schutte, finds that scientific advances and a growing availability of relevant data have made ‘seismo-acoustic’ analysis a cost-effective means of complementing, backing up, and in some cases replacing other ceasefire monitoring technologies.
Iran is at a boiling point. In January, mass protests broke out across the country, and many thousands of people were wounded and killed. Meanwhile, the US has moved an aircraft carrier and a number of destroyers close to Iran in a military threat which remains unclear in its aims. To untangle these and many other threads, ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El welcomes back Iran specialist Roxane Farmanfarmaian, her co-Senior Associate Fellow at the ELN, for a deep and fascinating examination of Iran at a crossroads.
The second Trump administration has strained democracy, alliances, and the postwar order. Allies feel abandoned, betrayed, and disrespected, and the US retreat from the Global South has allowed Russian and Chinese influence to grow in its place. Europe confronts a painful reckoning, questioning trust, values, and its future role in an era of accelerating geopolitical change. To break this down, ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El is joined by Almut Möller, Director for European and Global Affairs at the European Policy Centre (EPC), and former senior Danish diplomat Signe Biering.
2026 started with President Trump’s astonishing show of force in Venezuela, culminating in the seizure of President Maduro to face drug charges in the US. Whilst Venezuela’s future may be unclear, one thing that is now more than apparent is President Trump’s willingness to use might and ignore norms and laws to advance what he views as America’s foreign policy interests. To understand this better, Rachel Ellehuus, Director General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), joins ELN Senior Associate Fellow Ilana Bet-El.
Former and serving senior officials, military leaders, and experts from across the Euro-Atlantic region call for strengthened fail-safe measures to prevent accidental nuclear use.
Former and serving senior officials, military leaders, and experts from across the Euro-Atlantic region call for support for space security and stability.
Former and serving senior officials, military leaders, and experts from across the Euro-Atlantic region put forward three urgent steps for nuclear-armed states to take to build on the essential principle that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
