Nuclear Issues

Professor Nicholas Burns appeared on CNN to speak about the week's chaos in the White House, as well as recent events in North Korea, Russia, and Venezuela. 

Dr. Ian Bremmer, expert in political risk and founder of the Eurasia Group, gave a seminar sponsored by the the Future of Diplomacy Project on Thursday, November 9 at the Harvard Kennedy School, titled “Managing Risk in an Unstable World."

"Netanyahu's actions are unprecedented in U.S. history. A foreign leader — from a country considered to be a close U.S. ally — has placed himself, frontally, between a U.S. president and a major presidential foreign policy initiative. Not diplomatic reservations, along with discrete behind the scenes efforts to improve the agreement. Not a polite request to amend the agreement, but total public opposition, designed to torpedo the agreement, along with unrealistic demands...."

Is the IAEA a strong enough institution to successfully act as a monitor of this deal?

Yes, but the problem is going to be financing. This is a really resource-intensive project. This is two decades of monitoring a number of facilities, and it's going to need a number of people and equipment. It's going to be a resource-intensive process, but that's something that world powers are signing up for, as they'll need to.

"The never-ending negotiations about the pending fiscal cliff sometimes amount to nothing more than a dizzying array of numbers. Who can count that high? The negotiations also make us think that the only stastistics that mattered in 2012, or will matter in 2013, involve dollar signs. A year in pictures may be compelling and beautiful, but the year in numbers gives a strong hint of what to anticipate in the year ahead."

This report marks the culmination of a two-year research project that examined all aspects of the mandate and operations of the International Atomic Energy Agency, from major programs on safeguards, safety, security, and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy to governance, management, and finance.

"When the nuclear swap proposal was initially presented by the IAEA and the West in October 2009, it was broached by the disparate political organs of Iran's power structure. The embodiment of Iran’s strategic decision was the acceptance of the Tehran Nuclear Deal in May 2010. Although Washington has rejected the Tehran Deal on the basis of its own narrow reasons i.e., Iran has increased its enriched uranium stockpile within the last few months rendering the swap deal useless, one should accept that Tehran needed some time to weigh up the Geneva Deal on the domestic political scene."