Among the State Department cables leaked on WikiLeaks and analyzed in The New York Times were messages from the U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan about the country's nuclear fuel resources. In a cable dating May 27, 2009, Amb. Anne W. Pateron reported her concern over a stockpile of highly enriched uranium, which had been sitting for years near an aging research nuclear reactor in Pakistan. There was enough to build several “dirty bombs” or, in skilled hands, possibly enough for an actual nuclear bomb.

The cables show that underneath public assurances lie deep clashes over strategic goals on issues like Pakistan’s support for the Afghan Taliban and tolerance of Al Qaida.

Secret diplomatic cables obtained by whistle-blower organization WikiLeaks shed new light on the global nuclear standoff with Iran. The documents reveal for the first time that the U.S. believes Iran has obtained nineteen powerful, Russian-designed missiles from North Korea. Their range is long enough to strike Western Europe. Will this change the way the country is seen and dealt with by its neighbors?  

President Obama declared the end of combat operations in Iraq last night. David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, analyzes President Obama's address from the Oval Office last night, and explains what it reveals about the future of the U.S. in the Middle East. Sanger says that Obama's speech was interesting for its message that the commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan are not open-ended, and that there are bigger priorities at home, including the economy and job creation.

It's a simple question with an infinitely complicated answer: what happens if Iran is able to build a nuclear weapon?

Russia is expected to deliver low-enriched uranium to Tehran to bring the Bushehr reactor, Iran's first nuclear power station, online. And the U.S., Israel and other nations are reportedly on alert, as hawks are calling for the bombing the reactor before the fuel is loaded into it.

General Stanley McChrystal's fate was sealed with the publication of a bombshell Rolling Stone magazine profile on Tuesday. In less than forty-eight hours after the article surfaced on the internet, the U.S.'s top commander in the Afghanistan war found himself summoned to Washington, D.C. to hand his resignation to President Obama.

In a press conference announcing his decision to accept McChrystal's resignation, President Obama emphasized that "this is a change in personnel, but it is not a change in policy." Centcom commander General David Petraeus will take over for McChrystal. Though Petraeus is a familiar face with an arguably proven track record, some observers are dubious of the president's claim that U.S. strategy in Afghanistan is staying the same.

No one can deny that President Obama’s current “to do” list has grown dramatically of late, with each new item seemingly demanding higher precedence than the item before it. With two wars, unemployment, the Middle East Crisis and the oil spill, how does one person manage this kind of agenda?

The Obama administration is set to release its National Security Strategy today. It is expected to take a sharp turn away from the doctrines President George W. Bush, which focused security on fighting terrorism, even if that meant acting unilaterality. According to The New York Times, the strategy says that "preserving American leadership in the world hinges on learning to accept and manage the rise of many competitors." 

Senior members of the Obama administration confirmed yesterday that Faisal Shahzad, the suspected Times Square bomber, was directly helped by the Taliban in Pakistan.

President Obama's nuclear security summit, held in Washington, D.C. and hosting 46 world leaders, wrapped up last night with a request from the president. He called on all the nations present to cooperate in keeping nuclear material out of the hands of terrorists.

President Obama is in Prague today, where he signed the START Treaty along with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. The treaty will reduce the number of nuclear warheads between the two countries by almost 40 percent, from 2,700 to 1,550.

President Obama proposed a new nuclear strategy that is essentially a "no first use" approach to nuclear weapons. The conditions under which the president would use a nuclear weapon are extremely narrow. If the U.S. was attacked with a biological or chemical weapon by a non-nuclear state, the Obama administration would not respond with a nuclear weapon. David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times brings details from the plan.

Yesterday the Obama administration proposed a nearly $4 trillion budget for 2011. A front page analysis in today's New York Times points out that the projected deficit in the coming year is nearly 11 percent of the country’s entire economic output and may not change any time soon.

The announcement that President Barack Obama would be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize this year came as a surprise to many – including the president, apparently – and inspired criticism that his record thus far hasn't justified such an award. How can President Obama show from this point forward that he deserves the Peace Prize?  To help answer that is David Sanger, The New York Times chief Washington correspondent; and James Fallows, former presidential speechwriter and a contributor for the Atlantic.

Iran announced yesterday it wouldn't comply with a demand by the United Nations' nuclear agency to stop work on a once-secret nuclear fuel enrichment plant, and said it would construct 10 more such nuclear plants.

The New York Times chief Washington correspondent, David Sanger, joins us to talk about the latest move by Iran in its nuclear manuevering, and how the international community might respond.

President Barack Obama announced yesterday that he will soon announce his decision on our strategy in Afghanistan. When he says he intends to “finish the job,” what does he mean? Here to help us answer that is David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for our partner, The New York Times. And to help us see what the consequences of finishing the job will be are Charlie Sennott, executive editor and vice president of GlobalPost, and Nadir Atash, former Afghan government official and author of “Turbulence: The Tumultuous Journey of One Man's Quest for Change in Afghanistan”

As America marks Veterans Day, President Obama is reportedly considering four options for increasing troop levels in Afghanistan, which he will review during a meeting with his national security team today.  David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, writes in today's paper that three of the options before the president range from the deployment of 20,000 troops to the 40,000 recommended by General Stanley McChrystal.  The White House declined to specify an exact troop level associated with the fourth option, which has reportedly been added in the last couple of days.

The director of the U.N. nuclear agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, says that Iran has set a date for inspectors to visit that country's newly revealed uranium enrichment plant, outside the city of Qom. That news comes as a relief to some analysts.

But a leaked report by the agency says that Iran possesses the data to make a nuclear weapon. Is Iran finally playing ball with the U.N., or is it just telling them what it wants to hear? We ask David Sanger, chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, for answers.

Iran continued its recent run of provocative acts by testing its longest-range missiles on Monday. That came only one day after it tested short-range missiles, and a few days after it came clean about a second uranium enrichment facility it has been secretly building. We look at what America’s priorities should be in light of these events with The New York Times chief Washington correspondent David Sanger and three Iranian-Americans: Iraj Mirshahi, Sunshine Royanian Ludder and Rudi Bakhtiar.

Pakistani Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud has been killed in a U.S. drone attack. While it's not the first time reports of his death have surfaced, the Taliban has confirmed his death. Mehsud is known as Pakistan's most wanted man and has been suspected in the killing of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. Does his death mean that the U.S. is closer to success in its mission to rout the Taliban out of Afghanistan and Pakistan? As the American military comes to full strength in the Afghan surge, the Obama administration’s national security team is struggling to come up with specific measurements of progress. David Sanger is the chief Washington correspondent for The New York Times, and he's writing about the administration attempt to set benchmarks for success in Afghanistan.

Also joining the conversation is Andrew Exum, a fellow with the Center for a New American Security. He served two tours as an Infantry Officer in the U.S. Army in Afghanistan. He is just back from Afghanistan where he was part of a team of independent analysts whose report is expected to help define the U.S. mission in Afghanistan going forward.

We also speak with retired Colonel Paul Hughes, who is senior program officer at the U.S. Institute of Peace. In 2003 he served as the director of the Strategic Policy Office for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. He believes that the fates of the missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are completely intertwined and must be closely coordinated.

Yesterday former President Bill Clinton embarked on a surprise mission to North Korea to negotiate the release of two American journalists imprisoned there. Less than 24 hours later he is returning victorious, with the two women safely aboard his plane. How did he do it? Was the deal pre-cooked? Why did Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, specifically state that Clinton did not carry a private message to Kim il Jong from President Obama? To help us unravel the mystery, The Takeaway talks to New York Times reporter David Sanger.