13 Items

Announcement - Managing the Atom Project, Belfer Center

2016-2017 Harvard Nuclear Policy Fellowships

| December 15, 2015

The Project on Managing the Atom offers fellowships for pre-doctoral, post-doctoral, and mid-career researchers for one year, with a possibility for renewal, in the stimulating environment of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School. The online application for 2016-2017 fellowships opened December 15, 2015, and the application deadline is January 15, 2016. Recommendation letters are due by February 1, 2016.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad  during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, October 20, 2015.

Kremlin.ru

Analysis & Opinions - Moscow Times

Russia Must Abandon Assad to Fight Terrorism

| November 13, 2015

"The key to a solution to both — the quagmire that has unfolded in Syria and the threat posed by Islamic terrorism — is to deprive the terrorist groups of their main propaganda tools and to form a new Syrian government that excludes Assad (and his foreign Shiite allies) but includes representatives from all of the non-fundamentalist groups involved in the civil war."

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Announcement

Symposium on the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Nuclear Disarmament, Non-proliferation, and Energy: Fresh Ideas for the Future

Dec. 15, 2014

The ninth Review Conference of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) will be held at the UN Headquarters in New York from April 27-May 22, 2015. This is the fourth such conference since the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. Participating governments will discuss nuclear disarmament, non-proliferation, and the peaceful use of nuclear energy with a view to arriving at consensus on a number of issues.

Kurdistan Flag, Germiyan Province, Iraqi Kurdistan, 21 April 2011. The Kurdish areas in the Middle East are mainly divided between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. There are also a number of extremist groups throughout these Kurdish areas.

Wikimedia CC

Analysis & Opinions - Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Do Homework Before Supporting Groups in ISIS Fight

| August 25, 2014

"The United States and several key regional states, including Israel, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey may have very different interests, but they all have a shared interest in better understanding and working together to stop groups that dislike Americans as much as Jews, Persians, Shi’as, secular Muslims, and the Saudi monarchy. They should refrain from empowering and expressing blind support for a group or entity without fully understanding it first."

Maryam Rajavi,  president-elect of the People's Mujahideen Organisation (MEK)'s political wing, the National Council of Resistance of Iran, December 2006.

Wikimedia CC

Analysis & Opinions - The National Interest

Beware of the MEK

| August 22, 2014

"...[T]o understand the origins of anti-Americanism in pre-revolutionary Iran, look no further. The MEK was responsible for the assassination and failed attempts to kidnap and assassinate Americans in Iran in the 1970s. It was also the MEK that pressured the Islamic revolutionaries to take a stronger stance against the United States. The MEK further supported the 1979 U.S. embassy hostage crisis in Tehran."

In this 1987 file photo, mujahedeen guerrillas sit atop a captured Soviet T-55 tank. The U.S. military presence in Afghanistan surpassed the Soviet occupation of the country on Nov. 25, 2010.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - Iranian Diplomacy

The U.S. War on Terror after Bin Laden

| May 11, 2011

The United States' wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are unlikely to come to an end, even after the death of Osama Bin Laden. These wars which were initiated and continued based on the sacred and ideological aim of the complete destruction of world terrorism (Al Qaeda) will simultaneously provide the grounds for local and opposing forces to justify their resistance in the form of a sacred ideological war against foreign occupiers. In the case of a bilateral ideological war, with no possible winner, therefore the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have mostly local and regional roots, will not come to end in the near future.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, center, shakes hands with an unidentified Afghan official during a meeting with Afghan Foreign Minister Zalmai Rasoul, left, as Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, looks on, in Tehran, Iran, July 15, 2010.

AP Photo

Analysis & Opinions - Iranian Diplomacy

The U.S. Midterm Elections and Iran

| November 14, 2010

"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."