Nuclear Issues

The decision of the University of Massachusetts Amherst to categorically ban Iranians was not only gross discrimination, but also a violation of academic freedom. A similar policy was adopted in the Netherlands a few years ago and later rebuked by the Dutch Supreme Court. Universities must remain open to people from all races, religions, and nationalities.

This seminar considered how the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has reacted to nuclear crises. The IAEA often appears not just to have weathered such crises, but to have successfully leaped through windows of opportunity presented by them. This has resulted in periodic expansions of its mandate, capabilities, and resources. The 2011 Fukushima disaster appears to be a puzzling exception, raising the question of what concatenation of factors needs to be present for the IAEA to take advantage of nuclear crises.

"The WikiLeaks cables reveal an episode in which officials in Yemen — home of al Qaeda's most active regional branch — warned that a deadly radioactive source was sitting in building whose only guard had left and whose sole security camera had long been broken. These programs provide the practical means to deal with such threats."

"Following the parliamentary elections of Iraq in March 2010 and the long-time deadlock which had stalled formation of the coalition government for nearly 8 months and the West's disappointing efforts to talk with the Taliban, it is now crystal-clear that the United States cannot tackle these crises single-handedly and needs Iran's cooperation as the main regional actor in settling the crises in Iraq and Afghanistan, either during the presence and even after the withdrawal of American troops from both countries. The importance of this issue becomes manifest as one realizes that curbing terrorist activities in this region is directly connected to the establishment of security and stability in the region after the withdrawal of foreign troops. In such circumstances, Iran's role for the establishment and preservation of stability becomes crucial."

"...Germany has an opportunity at the Washington summit — and thereafter — to step up and lend non-American leadership to the problem. Recognizing that in many of the world's capitals the threat of nuclear terrorism is not yet being taken seriously, and when in some of them the very notion is even considered an American pretext for an entirely different, potentially hostile political agenda, non-American leadership is most urgently needed."

"EVEN as Russia and Georgia continue their on-again, off-again struggle over South Ossetia and Abkhazia, a frenzied tea-leaf reading about the war's global political ramifications has broken out across airwaves and think-tank forums. But as the situation on the ground recedes inevitably to some new form of the pernicious "frozen conflict" that has plagued the region since Georgia's civil wars of the early 1990s, few are paying attention to a less portentous but equally critical international threat: an increase in the longstanding, rampant criminality in the conflict zones that is likely to further destabilize the entire Caucasus region and at worst provide terrorist groups with the nuclear material they have long craved."