Energy

On February 16, 2015, Professor of Practice Matthew Bunn presented "The Iranian Nuclear Crisis: Next Steps" for the Harvard Project for Asian and International Relations.

"Regime sustainability despite different internal crises and foreign threats underlines the fact that Iran enjoys a relatively rational decision-making process. The central slogan of the Iranian Revolution was "Independence, Freedom, and Islamic Republic." Today, Iran is an independent state, as it does not belong to an Eastern or a Western bloc. Although the country has not realized its ambition of economic independence, the revolution has provided economic welfare. Rural development has improved people's lives by providing villages with water, electricity, and infrastructure. The essence of independence also
referred to the specific relations between the Iranian monarchy and the United States. The US-sponsored 1953 coup against the popular Muhammad Mosaddeq government made Iran an American client state, leading to Iranian dependence in all aspects."

The Belfer Center's Matthew Bunn has been appointed associate professor of public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. Bunn, co-principal investigator for the Belfer Center's Project on Managing the Atom and lead author of the Securing the Bomb series of reports, brings extensive experience and research on nuclear issues to the position.

Article in The Nonproliferation Review

Research Associate Matthew Bunn presented at the Institute for Nuclear Materials Management Annual Meeting on the importance of incentives in promoting and improving nuclear security.

"CSIA's research on cooperative denuclearization began during the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. To those of us familiar with nuclear weapons, their construction, and command and control, and with the looming revolution about to sweep the then–Soviet Union, it was plain that a new and unprecedented danger to international security was emerging. An appropriate policy response to this new form of nuclear threat could not be fashioned from traditional Cold War tools of deterrence, arms control, and military preparedness alone. Safety could only be sought through new policies emphasizing cooperative engagement with the new states, new leaders, and military and industrial heirs of the former Soviet Union...."

Book by Ashton B. Carter, Kurt M. Campbell, Steven E. Miller, and Charles Zraket

This article was prepared for the Symposium on A Nuclear Iran: The Legal Implications of a Preemptive National Security Strategy held at the Syracuse University School of Law, Syracuse, New York, 26-27 October 2006.