The Shadow of New START's End: Nuclear Brinkmanship and the Fragile Path to Iranian Restraint
By Victoria Chen-Hartwell | Circus of Power | February 06, 2026
As the clock struck midnight on February 5, the New START treaty—the last remaining pillar of bilateral nuclear arms control between the United States and Russia—quietly expired, lifting caps on the deployment of some 1,550 strategic warheads per side. This unheralded milestone coincides with the tentative conclusion of U.S.-Iran talks in Muscat, Oman, where negotiators agreed to continue discussions in their respective capitals. On the surface, these events might appear as parallel tracks in a crowded diplomatic calendar. In reality, they form a volatile nexus that threatens the very foundations of global stability: the risk of unchecked nuclear proliferation, fraying alliances, surging energy markets, and the erosion of the rules-based international order that has underwritten postwar prosperity.
For those of us who have spent careers navigating the corridors of Foggy Bottom, this moment evokes a sobering déjà vu. The expiration of New START leaves no formal limits on U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals for the first time since the dawn of the Cold War, echoing the perilous void following the 2019 collapse of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Back then, mutual suspicions—fueled by Russia's alleged violations and America's withdrawal under President Trump—unleashed a new arms race in Europe, with NATO deploying additional missiles and Russia testing novel hypersonic systems. Today, amid Russia's grinding war in Ukraine, the stakes are exponentially higher. Without the treaty's rigorous verification regime, which mandated 18 on-site inspections annually, opacity reigns. As the Council on Foreign Relations warned in a recent analysis, this "blind spot" could embolden miscalculations, where a single escalatory move in Eastern Europe spirals into something far worse.
Enter the Oman talks, a fragile diplomatic off-ramp amid this gathering storm. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi described the sessions as a "good start," signaling Iran's willingness to resume negotiations on curbing its uranium enrichment program in exchange for sanctions relief. The discussions, brokered under the shadow of President Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign—a redux of his 2018 withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)—focused on verifiable limits to Iran's stockpiles, which now exceed 60% enrichment levels, perilously close to weapons-grade. Bloomberg reports that global uncertainty from these talks contributed to a 2% spike in oil prices, pushing Brent crude to $78 per barrel on Friday. This isn't mere market jitteriness; it's a harbinger of how nuclear brinkmanship reverberates through the arteries of the global economy.
The interplay here is stark. Russia's suspension of New START participation in 2023, cited as retaliation for Western support of Ukraine, has already prompted the Pentagon to ramp up warhead deployments. With no treaty in place, Moscow could mirror suit, potentially flooding silos with additional thermonuclear payloads. Meanwhile, Iran's nuclear ambitions serve as a proxy flashpoint: Tehran has long viewed Russian technical assistance as a backdoor to advanced centrifuges, even as it courts Beijing for economic lifelines. Failure in Oman could accelerate this convergence, with Iran edging toward breakout capacity—estimated by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies at mere weeks away under current trajectories. Hawks like Senator Jim Risch, the Republican chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, have taken to X to decry the talks as offering Tehran "off-ramps" that enable proliferation. Yet moderates at the CFR argue that diplomacy remains the only bulwark against a Middle Eastern arms race, where Saudi Arabia and others might follow Iran's lead, unraveling the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) that has constrained atomic spread for over half a century.
These risks cascade far beyond the warhead counts. Alliances, the bedrock of the liberal international order, are at immediate peril. NATO's eastern flank, already strained by Ukraine, now faces a Russia unbound by arms limits—a scenario that could demand billions in additional defense spending from cash-strapped European partners. Recall the 1980s, when Reagan's "zero option" for INF missiles initially escalated tensions but ultimately paved the way for Gorbachev's concessions and the treaty's signing in 1987. Today's void, however, lacks that era's ideological thaw; Vladimir Putin's revanchism shows no signs of abating. In the Gulf, the Oman process tests America's credibility with Sunni allies like the UAE and Israel, who view any Iranian concessions as existential threats. If talks falter, expect a surge in covert operations and cyber skirmishes, further destabilizing the Strait of Hormuz, through which 20% of global oil flows.
Energy markets, ever the canary in the geopolitical coal mine, are already flinching. The oil price uptick isn't isolated; it ties into broader anxieties over supply chains. Gold exchange-traded funds saw record inflows of $18.7 billion last week, per Bloomberg, as investors hedge against nuclear-induced volatility. This isn't abstract: A proliferation crisis could jolt inflation back into double digits, hammering consumer confidence and central bank policies from Washington to Frankfurt. For the U.S., it undermines the very economic resilience that free trade pacts—like the freshly inked U.S.-Argentina deal announced yesterday, which slashes tariffs on $15 billion in annual goods—aim to foster. President Milei's libertarian enthusiasm for that agreement, declaring it a "triumph over socialism," highlights how bilateral wins can counter Chinese inroads in Latin America. But such progress rings hollow if nuclear shadows eclipse market predictability.
At root, this is a crisis of institutions, not personalities. President Trump's second-term playbook—leveraging tariffs and sanctions as sticks—has yielded tactical gains, from the Argentina pact to pressuring Iran back to the table. Yet his 2018 JCPOA exit, which Araghchi implicitly referenced in Muscat by stressing "discussion in capitals," sowed distrust that now hampers progress. Brookings Institution reports underscore the mixed legacy of such "America First" tactics: U.S. exports have risen modestly under selective tariff relief, but consumer prices have climbed 2%, and alliances fray when unilateralism supplants multilateralism. Populism, whether MAGA's domestic variant or Putin's abroad, thrives on policy failures like unchecked arms races, which breed insecurity and economic pain for working families—the very constituencies it purports to champion.
Pragmatic solutions demand a return to expertise over bluster. With Russia, the U.S. should pursue informal verification channels, perhaps through NATO-Russia Council remnants, to rebuild transparency without formal treaty ratification—a low-bar incrementalism that echoes the post-INF confidence-building measures of the early 1990s. On Iran, the Oman framework offers a blueprint: Tie sanctions relief to International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) monitoring, incorporating sunset clauses that evolve with compliance, much like the original JCPOA's architecture. Multilateral buy-in—from Europe to the Gulf Cooperation Council—could embed these talks in a broader non-proliferation architecture, forestalling the domino effects that doomed past efforts.
I've seen the sausage-making up close: the late-night cables from Vienna during JCPOA negotiations, the painstaking verification protocols under New START. It's messy, incremental, and often unglamorous. But it works when guided by process and precedent, not provocation. As a nation splitting time between Georgetown's policy salons and Palo Alto's innovation hubs, I confess to occasional pangs of being out of touch with the raw frustrations fueling these crises. Yet dismissing institutions as elitist theater ignores how they safeguard the prosperity—through stable markets and secure alliances—that benefits all. The expiration of New START and the Oman talks remind us: In the nuclear age, the rules-based order isn't a luxury; it's our last line of defense.
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Victoria Chen-Hartwell is a former State Department official and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, writing on international order and democratic institutions.
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