Nuclear Issues

If President Trump is to be believed, the United States just came within 10 minutes of launching war against Iran. Make no mistake, these would not have been pinprick strikes that Iran simply swallowed. They would have marked the beginning of a costly war that put tens of thousands of American service members in the Gulf, our regional partners and Israel directly at risk, while shocking the global economy by choking off shipping through the vital Strait of Hormuz.

Belfer Center Senior Fellow Wendy R. Sherman, director of the Center for Public Leadership and a former State Department ambassador, speaks with The New Yorker about President Trump's approach to Iran and North Korea.

Right now, everything both sides do to strengthen their defenses looks to the other side like preparation for attack.

Trump's “maximum pressure” campaign seems to have collided head on with Khamenei’s maximum resistance, David Ignatius notes. But what exactly are the dynamics driving the two ever closer to confrontation?

Stephen Walt describes what a commonsense U.S. foreign policy would look like.

Although Trump did not outline his legal basis for imposing the tariffs, several analysts anticipated that he was seeking to use the authorities granted him under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act—the legal basis that presidents rely on to impose financial and economic sanctions against WMD proliferators, terrorist organizations, narco-traffickers, and human rights abusers. Mixing trade and immigration policy under the guise of a national security threat, however, may end up deflating Trump’s “maximum pressure” sanctions campaigns against Iran and North Korea.

Despite the continuing debate in Tehran, the principle of “no negotiation under pressure” with the United States remains a consensual principle among all members of the current regime. The Supreme Leader has expressed this position by stating that the negotiations with the Trump administration are “double poison”. While Iran’s regional enemies are pushing for confrontation, the international community remains supportive of Tehran’s political position, as long as it stays committed to the nuclear deal. Existing indicators do not point at any willingness for confrontation from either side – at least at the moment. And although some regional actors have attempted to pacify the tension, the prospects for a truce remain unlikely within the current context.

The Belfer Center’s Korea Project convened the inaugural Harvard Korean Security Summit at Harvard Kennedy School in early April. The Summit featured a prominent gathering of Korean security scholars and practitioners and increased attention to the field of Korean security studies within the Harvard community. Built on the vision of the late Ambassador Stephen Bosworth, who first launched Korean security initiatives at the Belfer Center, the event reflected the two traditions that drive the Belfer Center’s work: bringing together leading scholars and senior practitioners to jointly diagnose policy puzzles; and mentoring the next generation of scholars and practitioners.

During their tenth annual meeting in Reykjavík in March, the U.S.-Russian Elbe Group of retired senior military and intelligence officials discussed a range of issues and agreed on specific recommendations to help improve U.S.-Russian bilateral relations.

While Iranians are suffering from the economic crisis, the US "maximum pressure" strategy is compelling them to rally around the flag, rather than try to "take down the regime". This is not only because the cultural value of resistance is relatively high, but also because the more the Iranian leadership resists foreign pressure, the more legitimacy it gains.