The New START treaty expired on February 5, 2026, removing the last legally binding constraint on the American and Russian nuclear arsenals [1]. The two countries agreed informally to continue observing its limits, but informal observation is not verification, and verification was the treaty's entire purpose.

Five weeks later, the United States launched military operations against Iran. The war has not only consumed Washington's diplomatic bandwidth — it has actively undermined the conditions necessary for arms control negotiations. Russia has no incentive to constrain its arsenal while the U.S. is militarily engaged elsewhere. China, watching from Beijing, has accelerated its own nuclear modernization without joining any framework [2].

The Chatham House analysis published March 30 identified the deeper consequence: the Iran war risks triggering a new wave of nuclear proliferation [3]. The logic is brutally simple. Iran did not have nuclear weapons. Iran got attacked. States that previously relied on diplomatic commitments for security are now recalculating whether a nuclear deterrent is the only reliable guarantee.

The Arms Control Association's April report found that U.S. negotiators were "ill-prepared for serious nuclear talks" even before the war began, with positions that prioritized tactical advantage over framework stability [4]. The Atlantic Council, while more optimistic, acknowledged that "the political conditions for a successor treaty do not currently exist" [5].

The architecture that prevented nuclear war for seven decades is being dismantled by inattention, distraction, and the gravitational pull of a conflict that makes everything else secondary.

-- Katya Volkov, Moscow