Nuclear Issues

Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian recounts his 544 days in an Iranian prison during a talk with R. Nicholas Burns of the Harvard Kennedy School.

Many energy consumers, and even analysts and policymakers, confront and frame energy and climate risks in a moral vacuum, rarely incorporating broader social justice concerns. Here, to remedy this gap, we investigate how concepts from justice and ethics can inform energy decision-making by reframing five energy problems — nuclear waste, involuntary resettlement, energy pollution, energy poverty and climate change — as pressing justice concerns.

Professor Meghan O'Sullivan was interviewed on November 15th, 2015 for a Wall Street Journal special section on energy, discussing the rapid transformation of the American energy sector in light of low fuel prices, new climate policies and other factors.

Iran’s top nuclear negotiator was heading back to Tehran on Sunday to consult with his nation’s leadership, as negotiators remained divided over how to limit and monitor Tehran’s nuclear program and even on how to interpret the preliminary agreement they reached two months ago.

Research Fellow Kayhan Barzegar describes the four candidates for the Iranian presidency (Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mir Hossein Mousavi, Mehdi Karroubi, and Mohsen Rezai) in terms of their credentials, power base, and stances on domestic politics and foreign policy—including the Iranian nuclear program.

BEIRUT -- This week’s sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attack on the United States sees the top American military and diplomatic officials in Iraq speaking to the US Congress about American strategy in Iraq. The juxtaposition is noteworthy: Six years ago, a small band of Al-Qaeda militants attacked the United States and killed some 3000 people. Today, an army of over 160,000 American troops wages a war in Iraq that has seen tens of thousands of people killed since 2003. Neither policy makes much sense to anyone in the world, other than to those fanatics on both sides who decided to pursue these actions.

The United Nations should thoroughly review its optimum role in a transforming world, because its existing contradictory policies risk damaging its credibility and efficacy for years to come.

Dr. Elizabeth D. Sherwood-Randall's article in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas.

On the evening of October 7, 2004, three trucks laden with explosives were driven to resorts in the northern Sinai where they were detonated, killing more than 30 people and wounding hundreds more. The targets were Israelis vacationing during their High Holidays at the usually tranquil desert oases of Taba, Ras al-Sultan and Tarabeen. At least three previously unknown terrorist organizations claimed responsibility for the terrorist incident; however, the leading suspect and group named by the Egyptian government was al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad ("Monotheism and Struggle"), comprised of Bedouin tribesmen from the Sinai Peninsula (al-Ahram Weekly, September 14-20, 2006). The Taba attacks marked the first time that Bedouins from the Sinai were implicated in acts of terrorism on Egyptian soil. This trend continued with the bombings at Sharm el-Sheikh, as well as various shootings of police and other security forces (Daily Star [Egypt], May 10, 2006). Analysts attribute this development to the fact that northern Bedouin tribesmen have not benefited economically as much as their southern brethren by the high level of tourism available in that part of the peninsula. Deep-seeded ideological, political and cultural differences between the Bedouin and the Egyptian government also explain the rise in terrorist activity.