Middle East & North Africa

Michael Lipin interviews Project on Managing the Atom Associate Nicole Grajewski on why Iran may not benefit much from its new membership of Shanghai Cooperation Organization.

This year's G7 summit in Hiroshima sees nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation sitting high on the agenda, amid rising tensions between the nuclear states and an increasingly divided international order.  Six contributors offer their analyses, including the Belfer Center's Mayumi Fukushima.

At the 2021 Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, the bloc announced the approval of Iran's longstanding bid for membership. The Islamic Republic has viewed its involvement in the organization as a means of bolstering external legitimacy, fostering security-oriented regionalism, and promoting the transition toward the so-called multipolar world order. The SCO, led by Russia and China, has served as a regime-preservation network by providing Iran with a source of solidarity against external pressure. Tehran's commitment to the normative order, sustained by the SCO's discourse of noninterference, sovereignty, and countering the “three evils”—terrorism, extremism, and separatism—has galvanized the organization's role as a common front against the imposition of liberal norms and challenges to regime security.

Nicole Grajewski writes that assessing the real benefits—and limits—of joining the so-called "anti-NATO" can help policymakers better understand what Tehran, China, Russia, and other participants are getting out of their summits.

The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published a document from the Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs concerning nuclear problems and tensions in the time of COVID-19. The document has been co-signed by a large number of Pugwash colleagues and personalities.