Science, Technology, and Public Policy

All the world's nuclear-armed states (except for North Korea) have begun modernizing and upgrading their arsenals, leading many observers to predict that the world is entering a new nuclear arms race. While that outcome is not yet inevitable, it is likely, and if it happens, the new nuclear arms race will be different and more dangerous than the one we remember. More nuclear-armed countries in total, and three competing great powers rather than two, will make the competition more complex. Meanwhile, new non-nuclear weapon technologies — such as ballistic missile defense, anti-satellite weapons, and precision-strike missile technology — will make nuclear deterrence relationships that were once somewhat stable less so.

Mahsa Rouhi compares and contrasts the situations with Iran and North Korea and warns of the consequences.

"Belfer Center Newsmakers" highlights members of the Belfer Center community who have been featured recently in the news.

In this op-ed for The Conversation, Kalman Robertson writes that Iran agreed never to develop nuclear weapons when it signed the NPT in 1968. There's no ironclad method to prevent Iran from breaking its promise and developing nuclear weapons, but this new agreement builds in a number of strong protections. In conjunction with U.S. and allied intelligence capabilities, these rules mean even a sophisticated and carefully executed secret plan would carry a high risk of detection.

Just one week after “implementation day,” when Iran completed its nuclear commitments and the nuclear-related sanctions were lifted, Martin B. Malin, Executive Director of the Project to Manage the Atom at Harvard University’s Belfer Center, spoke about the current state of non-proliferation affairs in the Middle East with Michael Moran, Visiting Media Fellow on Peace and Security at Carnegie Corporation of New York.

"At a press conference in Vienna this week, Yukiya Amano, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, delivered the agency’s final assessment on Iran’s nuclear program. The result of a 12-year investigation, the report concludes that Iran undertook a range of activities prior to the end of 2003 relevant to the development of nuclear weapons and some activities after 2003. The agency also concludes that there are no “credible indications of activities in Iran relevant to the development of a Nuclear explosive device after 2009.” This is hardly unexpected news, especially considering the U.S. intelligence community came to the same conclusion in its 2010 National Intelligence Estimate on Iran. Probably more important than the findings, however, is that the conclusion of the IAEA’s investigation is an important first step to Iran re-establishing financial relations with the rest of the world..."

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.

"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."

In this new report, Trevor Findlay provides the first comprehensive study of the IAEA's handling of states not complying with their non-proliferation obligations. The report finds that none of the cases have followed the non-compliance process outlined in the Agency's Statute and safeguards agreements. Rather, each case has posed unique challenges to the non-proliferation regime. The report concludes that creativity and deft statecraft are key to the handling of complex non-compliance cases.

Intelligent men and women of good will are lining up on both sides of the fateful choice Congress faces in September: whether to approve or reject the nuclear deal with Iran. Part of what’s going on is an unfortunate mixing together of two quite different questions, one looking backward and one looking forward.  First, should the Obama administration and other major powers have gotten a better deal?  Second, given the deal the negotiators did produce, whatever its warts, is it better for U.S. and world security to accept it or reject it and try to force Iran to agree to a better one?

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