The overarching question imparting urgency to this exploration is: Can U.S.-Russian contention in cyberspace cause the two nuclear superpowers to stumble into war? In considering this question we were constantly reminded of recent comments by a prominent U.S. arms control expert: At least as dangerous as the risk of an actual cyberattack, he observed, is cyber operations’ “blurring of the line between peace and war.” Or, as Nye wrote, “in the cyber realm, the difference between a weapon and a non-weapon may come down to a single line of code, or simply the intent of a computer program’s user.”
A seminar with Hussein Banai, Assistant Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College.
What accounts for the intensity and persistence of enmity between the Islamic Republic of Iran and the United States government? This talk will explore the strategic sources of enmity in US-Iran relations at the domestic and regional levels.
About Hussein Banai:
Hussein Banai is an Assistant Professor of Diplomacy and World Affairs at Occidental College, where he teaches courses on democratic theory and diplomatic history. He is also a Research Affiliate at the Center for International Studies at MIT. He was born and raised until the age of 15 in Tehran, Iran. He earned his BA from York University in Canada, his MSc in International Relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the UK, and his PhD in Political Science from Brown University in Providence, RI. He is co-author of Becoming Enemies: US-Iran Relations and the Iran-Iraq War, and is currently working on a book manuscript on the tortured history of liberalism in modern Iran, provisionally titled, Democratic Consciousness: Pluralism and the Pursuit of Coexistence in Modern Iran.