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*This event is co-sponsored with the Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies.

 

Jason Rezaian discusses his new book, Prisoner: My 544 Days in an Iranian Prison, with Brett McGurk, the former Special Envoy to Defeat ISIS. Rezaian was the Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief when he was imprisoned and McGurk led 14 months of secret negotiations with Iran that helped free him in 2016.

 

Jason Rezaian is one of the few Western journalists to have been based in Tehran in recent years. From 2009 until his arrest in 2014 he covered stories that tried to explain Iran to a general American audience, first as a freelancer for a variety of outlets and later as The Washington Post’s Tehran bureau chief.

He reported on two presidential elections, Iran’s nuclear negotiations with global powers, the effects of one of the most punitive sanctions regimes in modern times and environmental issues. In between those momentous topics he told the stories of everyday Iranians which sought to make them more accessible to readers, reporting on Iran’s small community of baseball players, the quest for the best high end hamburger in Tehran, and a clinic for female drug addicts.

In July of 2014 Rezaian and his wife were detained in their home and he went on to spend 545 in Tehran’s Evin prison, released on the same day that the historic nuclear deal between Iran and world powers was implemented. 

 

Brett McGurk is joining Stanford University’s Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies as the Frank E. and Arthur W. Payne Distinguished Lecturer.

McGurk recently served as special presidential envoy for the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS at the U.S. Department of State. He helped build and then led the coalition of seventy-five countries and four international organizations and was responsible for coordinating all aspects of U.S. policy in the campaign against the Islamic State in Iraq, Syria, and globally.

McGurk previously served in senior positions in the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, including as Special Assistant to President Bush and Senior Director for Iraq and Afghanistan, and then as Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Iraq and Iran and Special Presidential Envoy for the U.S. campaign against the Islamic State under Obama.

McGurk has led some of the most sensitive diplomatic missions in the Middle East over the last decade, including negotiations with partners and adversaries to advance U.S. interests. In 2015 and 2016, McGurk led 14 months of secret negotiations with Iran to secure the release of Washington Post reporter Jason Rezain, U.S. Marine Amir Hekmati, and Pastor Saad Abadini, as well as three other American citizens.

 

 

Hauck Auditorium, David & Joan Traitel Building, Hoover Institution

435 Lasuen Mall, Stanford University

Jason Rezaian Iranian-American journalist
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Offensive cyber operations have become increasingly important elements of U.S. national security policy. From the deployment of Stuxnet to disrupt Iranian centrifuges to the possible use of cyber methods against North Korean ballistic missile launches, the prominence of offensive cyber capabilities as instruments of national power continues to grow. Yet conceptual thinking lags behind the technical development of these new weapons. How might offensive cyber operations be used in coercion or conflict? What strategic considerations should guide their development and use? What intelligence capabilities are required for cyber weapons to be effective? How do escalation dynamics and deterrence work in cyberspace? What role does the private sector play?

In this volume, edited by Herbert Lin and Amy Zegart—co-directors of the Stanford Cyber Policy Program—leading scholars and practitioners explore these and other vital questions about the strategic uses of offensive cyber operations. The contributions to this groundbreaking volume address the key technical, political, psychological, and legal dimensions of the fast-changing strategic landscape.

 

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Dr. Herb Lin is senior research scholar for cyber policy and security at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and Hank J. Holland Fellow in Cyber Policy and Security at the Hoover Institution, both at Stanford University. He is chief scientist emeritus for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board at the National Academies. He served on President Barack Obama’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

 

Dr. Amy Zegart is the Davies Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, and professor of political science, by courtesy, at Stanford University. Her previous books include Political Risk: How Businesses and Organizations Can Anticipate Global Insecurity, with Condoleezza Rice; and Spying Blind: The CIA, the FBI, and the Origins of 9/11.

 

ABOUT THE EDITORS

Dr. Sameer Bhalotra is the Co-founder & Executive Chairman of StackRox, and is a CISAC affiliate. He is also affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), UC Berkeley’s Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity (CLTC), and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He previously worked in cybersecurity at Google and as COO at Impermium (acquired by Google). In government, he served as Senior Director for Cybersecurity on the National Security Council staff at the White House, Cybersecurity & Technology Lead for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and in various roles in the Intelligence Community.

 

Herb Lin & Amy Zegart Stanford University
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About the Event: In conversation with Philip Taubman, General Hayden will discuss intelligence and cybersecurity challenges the United States faces in combatting terrorism, dealing with North Korea, Iran and Russia, and will assess President Trump’s relations with the U.S. intelligence community. 

About the Speaker: General Michael Hayden is a retired four-star general who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency when the course of world events was changing at a rapid rate. As head of the country’s premier intelligence agencies, he was on the frontline of global change, the war on terrorism and the growing cyber challenge. He understands the dangers, risks, and potential rewards of the political, economic, and security situations facing us. General Hayden dissects political situations in hot spots around the world, analyzing the tumultuous global environment and what it all means for Americans and America’s interests. He speaks on the delicate balance between liberty and security in intelligence work, as well the potential benefits and dangers associated with the cyber domain. As the former head of two multi-billion dollar enterprises, he can also address the challenges of managing complex organizations in times of stress and risk, and the need to develop effective internal and external communications.

In addition to leading CIA and NSA, General Hayden was the country’s first principal deputy director of national intelligence and the highest-ranking military intelligence officer in the country.  In all of these jobs, he worked to put a human face on American intelligence, explaining to the American people the role of espionage in protecting both American security and American liberty.  Hayden also served as commander of the Air Intelligence Agency and Director of the Joint Command and Control Warfare Center and served in senior staff positions at the Pentagon, at U.S. European Command, at the National Security Council, and the U.S. Embassy in Bulgaria. He was also the deputy chief of staff for the United Nations Command and U.S. Forces in South Korea.

Hayden has been a frequent expert and commentator on major news outlets and in top publications, valued for his expertise on intelligence matters like cyber security, government surveillance, geopolitics, and more. He was featured in the HBO documentary Manhunt, which looked at espionage through the eyes of the insiders who led the secret war against Osama bin Laden, and in Showtime’s The Spymasters, a detailed look at the directors of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Hayden is currently a principal at the Chertoff Group and a distinguished visiting professor at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. He is on the board of directors of Motorola Solutions and serves on a variety of other boards and consultancies. In 2013, the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA) awarded Hayden the 29th annual William Oliver Baker Award.  General Hayden is also the first recipient of the Helms Award presented by the CIA Officers’ Memorial Foundation.  In 2014 he was the inaugural Humanitas visiting professor in intelligence studies at Oxford University in the United Kingdom.  His recent memoir, Playing to the Edge: American Intelligence in the Age of Terror, has been a New York Times best-seller and was recently selected as one of the 100 most notable books of 2016.

Philip Taubman is Adjunct Professor at the Center for International Security and Cooperation. He is also the former Moscow and Washington Bureau Chief, and Deputy Editorial Page Editor, of The New York Times. Philip Taubman served as a reporter and editor at The New York Times for thirty years, specializing in national security coverage. He is author of Secret Empire: Eisenhower, the CIA, and the Hidden Story of America’s Space Espionage, and The Partnership: Five Cold Warriors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb. He is working on a biography of George P. Shultz, the former secretary of state.

Michael Hayden Former director, CIA, NSA
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If provoked, many Americans might well back nuclear attacks on foes like Iran and al Qaeda, according to new collaborative research from CISAC senior fellow Scott Sagan and Dartmouth professor Benjamin Valentino.

You can read more about their latest public opinion polling data, and its implications for the debate surrounding President Obama's upcoming visit to Hiroshima, in a column they co-authored for the Wall Street Journal.

 

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A shadowy terror group smuggles a crude nuclear bomb into the United States, then detonates it right in the heart of Washington D.C., setting off a 15 kiloton explosion.

Eighty thousand Americans are killed instantly, including the president, vice president and most of the members of Congress, and more than a hundred thousand more are seriously wounded.

News outlets are soon broadcasting a message they’ve all received from a group claiming responsibility.

It says there are five more bombs hidden in five different cities across the America, and one bomb will be set off each week for the next five weeks unless all American troops based overseas are ordered to immediately return to the U.S. homeland.

The nation is thrown into chaos, as millions scramble to flee the cities, clogging roads and choking telecommunications systems.

The stock market crashes, before trading is halted altogether.

Martial law is declared, amid widespread looting and violence.

That was just one of the nightmare scenarios for a potential nuclear disaster that former U.S. Secretary of Defense William J. Perry vividly described as he delivered the Center for International Security and Cooperation’s annual Drell Lecture on Wednesday.

“My bottom line is that the likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe today is greater than it was during the Cold War,” Perry said.

Most people were “blissfully unaware” of the danger that simmering conflicts in geopolitical flash points around the globe – including Russia, China, North Korea, Iran and Pakistan – could easily turn nuclear, Perry told the Stanford audience.

A new nuclear arms race with Russia

Perry said he had tried to foster closer cooperation between the U.S. and Russia when he headed the Pentagon during the mid ‘90s and helped oversee the joint dismantling of four thousand nuclear weapons.

“When I left the Pentagon, I believed we were well on the way to ending forever that Cold War enmity, but that was not to be,” he said.

 

William J. Perry shares a video depicting the threat of nuclear terrorism with a Stanford audience. William J. Perry shares a video depicting the threat of nuclear terrorism with a Stanford audience.

Since then, relations between the West and Russia have soured badly, prompting Russia to modernize its nuclear arsenal and assume a more aggressive nuclear posture.

 

“They’re well advanced in rebuilding their Cold War nuclear arsenal, and it is Putin’s stated first priority,” Perry said.

“And they have dropped their former policy of no first use of nuclear weapons, and replaced it with a policy that says nuclear weapons will be their weapon of choice if they are threatened.”

While Perry said he believed Russian president Vladimir Putin did not want to engage in a military conflict with NATO forces, he said he was concerned about the possibility of Russia making a strategic miscalculation and stumbling into a conflict where they might resort to the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

“If they did that there’s no way of predicting or controlling the escalation that would follow thereafter,” Perry said.

Chinese economic problems increasing tensions

In Asia, a slowing Chinese economy could exacerbate domestic political tensions over issues such as wealth inequality and pollution, and encourage Chinese leaders to divert attention from problems at home by focusing on enemies abroad.

“China has had more than 10 percent growth now for almost three decades, but I think there’s trouble ahead,” Perry said.

“The time-proven safety valve for any government that’s in trouble is ultra-nationalism, which in the case of China translates into anti-Americanism and anti-Japanese.”

China has seen a major growth in military expenditures over the last decade, and it has used that investment to build a blue water navy and develop effective anti-ship missiles designed to drive the U.S. Navy hundreds of miles back from the Chinese coastline.

One potential flash point for a conflict between China and the U.S. are the artificial islands that China has been building in the disputed waters of the South China Sea.

“In a sense, China is regarding the South China Sea as a domestic lake, and we regard it and most other countries regard it as international waters, so their actions have been challenged by the U.S. Navy and will continue to be challenged,” Perry said.

North Korea’s growing nuclear threat

Meanwhile, China’s neighbor North Korea has continued to defy the international community and conducted another nuclear test in January.

“North Korea is today building a nuclear arsenal, and I would say clearly it’s of the highest priority in their government, and they have adopted outrageous rhetoric about how they might use those nuclear weapons,” Perry said.

William J. Perry delivers the Drell Lecture in an address entitled "A National Security Walk Around the World." William J. Perry delivers the Drell Lecture in an address entitled "A National Security Walk Around the World."
North Korea followed up its latest nuclear test with a satellite launch earlier this month – an important step towards developing an intercontinental ballistic missile that could threaten the United States mainland.

“These missiles today have only conventional warheads that are of no significant concern, but they are developing nuclear warheads,” Perry said.

“They already have developed a nuclear bomb, and the latest test, as well as tests to come, will be designed to perfect a bomb small enough and compact enough and durable enough to fit into a warhead. If they succeed in doing that, then the bluster will become a real threat.”

Perry said he hoped China and the United States could combine forces and adopt a “carrot and stick” diplomatic approach to force North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program – with the United States offering aid and international recognition, and China threatening to cut off supplies of food and aid.

He said he expected to see “more acting out” from the North Korean regime in the coming months, in the form of further nuclear and rocket tests.

Like it or not, the Iran deal is the only deal we’ll get

The landmark deal reached last year, where Iran agree to curtail its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions, was a better resolution than Perry had expected to the negotiations, but it has met with significant resistance from groups he described as “strange bedfellows.”

“The opposition in Israel and the United States opposed the deal because they fear it will allow Iran to get a bomb,” Perry said.

“Whereas the opposition in Iran opposed the deal because they fear it will prevent Iran from getting a bomb. Both cannot be right.”

Many Republican presidential hopefuls have publicly stated on the campaign trail that they would withdraw from the deal if they got elected to the White House, but Perry said that would be a strategic mistake.

“The opposition in the United States has a simple formula – we should withdraw from the deal, we should reinstate sanctions, and we should renegotiate a better deal,” Perry said.

“Let me be as blunt as I can, this is a pure fantasy. There is not the remotest possibility that the sanction could be reapplied if the United States withdraws from this deal, because the day we withdraw from the deal, our allies are gone, the sanctions are gone, there will be no renegotiations without sanctions, so this deal, like it or not, is the only deal we will ever get.”

Another “Mumbai” attack could spark regional nuclear war

Nuclear rivals India and Pakistan have more than a hundred nuclear weapons on each side, as well as the missiles to deliver them, and a conventional military conflict between them could quickly escalate into a regional nuclear war, Perry said.

Another large-scale terror attack, like the coordinated assault in Mumbai that killed more than 163 people in 2008, could lead India to retaliate militarily against Pakistan (which India blames for encouraging the terror groups operating in Pakistani territory).

Perry said he was concerned that Pakistan would then use tactical nuclear weapons against invading Indian troops, and that India might then respond with a nuclear attack of its own on Pakistan.

“So this is the nightmare scenario of how a regional nuclear war could start,” Perry said.

“A nightmare that would involve literally tens of millions of deaths, along with the possibility of stimulating a nuclear winter that would cause widespread tragedies all over the planet.”

A ray of hope

Despite all the potential for nuclear disaster in the current geopolitical environment, Perry said he was still hopeful that nuclear catastrophe could be avoided.

"While much of my talk today has a doomsday ring to it, that truly is not who I am,” Perry said.

“I’m basically an optimist. When I see a cloud, I look for a ray to shine through that cloud.”

One important step toward reducing the nuclear threat would be improving relations between the U.S. and Russia, he said.

“My ray of sunshine, my hope, is I believe we can still reverse the slide in U.S. Russia relations, he said.

“We must begin that by restoring civil dialog. We must restore cooperation between the United States and Russia in areas where we have mutual interest…If we succeed in doing that, then we can work to stop and reverse the drift to a greater and greater dependence on nuclear weapons.”

Perry ended his speech by urging the audience to keep striving to rid the world of the threat of nuclear weapons.

“We must pursue our ideals in order to keep alive our hope – hope for a safer world for our children and for our grandchildren,” he said.

 

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Why did Iran agree to send the bulk of its low-enriched uranium out of the country and remove the core of its Arak reactor? Those actions significantly lengthen the time it would take to build up a nuclear weapon program.

Siegfried Hecker, CISAC senior fellow and former Los Alamost National Laboratory director, shares his personal view in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists: http://thebulletin.org/iran-nuclear-option-more-trouble-it-was-worth9064

 

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Can the U.S. find the right balance between cooperation and containment, so it can realize the long-term benefits of the nuclear deal with Iran? CISAC visiting fellow Nicholas Burns, who helped to negotiate sanctions against Iran for the Bush administration a decade ago, offers his opinion in this piece for The New York Times.

 

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Abstract: Iran under Shah Mohammad-Reza Pahlavi undertook one of the most ambitious nuclear programs of any non-nuclear weapon state in the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in the 1970s. Despite the Shah’s Cold War alliance with the United States, the emerging global nonproliferation order became a zone of contestation in U.S.-Iran relations. This paper is a condensed version of chapter two of this dissertation, covering U.S.-Iran nuclear cooperation agreements under the Nixon and Ford administrations, which explores the Shah's struggle to obtain Western nuclear technology, the ultimately unsuccessful U.S.-Iran nuclear negotiations, and the United States' efforts to use these negotiations to redefine the Nonproliferation Treaty. 

About the Speaker: Farzan Sabet is Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and holds a Swiss National Science Foundation Doctoral Mobility Fellowship for the 2015-2016 academic year. He is a doctoral candidate in international history at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, researching the Iranian nuclear program under Mohammad-Reza Shah Pahlavi and its evolving relationship with the global nonproliferation regime during the 1970s. His dissertation is based on multi-archival research in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Canada and combines diplomatic history with nonproliferation studies. He is affiliated with the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Nuclear Proliferation International History Project (NPIHP)

Farzan is also a co-founder and managing editor at IranPolitik.com, which focuses on key issues in Iranian foreign policy and domestic politics today. His work on Iranian politics has appeared in The Washington Post's "Monkey Cage" blog, The Atlantic, and War on the Rocks, among other outlets. 
Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow CISAC, Stanford University
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Abstract: Numerous polls show that U.S. public approval of Truman’s decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki has declined significantly since 1945. Scholars and pundits have suggested that this is a sign of the emergence of a “nuclear taboo.”  Such polls, however, do not force respondents to contemplate the tradeoff the U.S. government believed it faced in 1945: choosing between the use of nuclear weapons and a ground invasion of Japan to end the Pacific War. This paper reports on survey experiments recreating that kind of a tradeoff in a hypothetical war with Iran. In order to avoid a ground assault on Tehran that was predicted to kill 20,000 American soldiers, 60% of the U.S. public approved of an atomic attack on an Iranian city that would kill 100,000 civilians and 60% approved of an atomic attack that would kill 2,000,000 civilians. Sixty-seven percent preferred a conventional bombing attack that was estimated to kill 100,000 Iranian civilians. Moreover, the prospect of killing more noncombatants appeared to trigger beliefs in retribution and complicity, as a way of justifying the decisions. Our findings suggest that U.S. public support for the principle of noncombatant immunity is shallow. 

About the Speaker: Scott D. Sagan is the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, the Mimi and Peter Haas University Fellow in Undergraduate Education, and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford University. He also serves as Project Chair for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Initiative on New Dilemmas in Ethics, Technology, and War and as Senior Advisor for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Global Nuclear Future Initiative. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University. From 1984 to 1985, he served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon. Sagan has also served as a consultant to the office of the Secretary of Defense and at the Sandia National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. 

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Planning the Unthinkable (Cornell University Press, 2000) with Peter R. Lavoy and James L. Wirtz; the editor of Inside Nuclear South Asia (Stanford University Press, 2009); and co-editor of a two-volume special issue of Daedalus, On the Global Nuclear Future (Fall 2009 and Winter 2010), with Steven E. Miller. Sagan’s recent publications include “A Call for Global Nuclear Disarmament” in Nature (July 2012); “Atomic Aversion: Experimental Evidence on Taboos, Traditions, and the Non-Use of Nuclear Weapons” with Daryl G. Press and Benjamin A. Valentino in the American Political Science Review (February 2013); and, with Matthew Bunn, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences occasional paper, “A Worst Practices Guide to Insider Threats: Lessons from Past Mistakes” (2014).

Sagan was the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015 and the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award in 2013. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009. 

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E202
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

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The Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science
The Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education  
Senior Fellow, Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
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PhD

Scott D. Sagan is Co-Director and Senior Fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Caroline S.G. Munro Professor of Political Science, and the Bass University Fellow in Undergraduate Education at Stanford University. He also serves as Co-Chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Committee on International Security Studies. Before joining the Stanford faculty, Sagan was a lecturer in the Department of Government at Harvard University and served as special assistant to the director of the Organization of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the Pentagon.

Sagan is the author of Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton University Press, 1989); The Limits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University Press, 1993); and, with co-author Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate (W.W. Norton, 2012). He is the co-editor of Insider Threats (Cornell University Press, 2017) with Matthew Bunn; and co-editor of The Fragile Balance of Terror (Cornell University Press, 2022) with Vipin Narang. Sagan was also the guest editor of a two-volume special issue of DaedalusEthics, Technology, and War (Fall 2016) and The Changing Rules of War (Winter 2017).

Recent publications include “Kettles of Hawks: Public Opinion on the Nuclear Taboo and Noncombatant Immunity in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and Israel”, with Janina Dill and Benjamin A. Valentino in Security Studies (February 2022); “The Rule of Law and the Role of Strategy in U.S. Nuclear Doctrine” with Allen S. Weiner in International Security (Spring 2021); “Does the Noncombatant Immunity Norm Have Stopping Power?” with Benjamin A. Valentino in International Security (Fall 2020); and “Just War and Unjust Soldiers: American Public Opinion on the Moral Equality of Combatants” and “On Reciprocity, Revenge, and Replication: A Rejoinder to Walzer, McMahan, and Keohane” with Benjamin A. Valentino in Ethics & International Affairs (Winter 2019).

In 2022, Sagan was awarded Thérèse Delpech Memorial Award from the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at their International Nuclear Policy Conference. In 2017, he received the International Studies Association’s Susan Strange Award which recognizes the scholar whose “singular intellect, assertiveness, and insight most challenge conventional wisdom and intellectual and organizational complacency" in the international studies community. Sagan was also the recipient of the National Academy of Sciences William and Katherine Estes Award in 2015, for his work addressing the risks of nuclear weapons and the causes of nuclear proliferation. The award, which is granted triennially, recognizes “research in any field of cognitive or behavioral science that advances understanding of issues relating to the risk of nuclear war.” In 2013, Sagan received the International Studies Association's International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award. He has also won four teaching awards: Stanford’s 1998-99 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching; Stanford's 1996 Hoagland Prize for Undergraduate Teaching; the International Studies Association’s 2008 Innovative Teaching Award; and the Monterey Institute for International Studies’ Nonproliferation Education Award in 2009.     

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Professor of Political Science, FSI Senior Fellow; Faculty Member CISAC CISAC, Stanford University
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Abstract: President Obama’s Prague Agenda – moving toward a world without nuclear weapons – has been stalled for several years, due to the downturn in U.S.-Russian relations, Congressional opposition to arms control, and stalemate and division within the multilateral disarmament community. Will the Iran nuclear agreement provide an impetus for reviving elements of the Prague Agenda, such as efforts to advance regional arms control in the Middle East and strengthen the non-proliferation regime, or – as some critics contend - will the Iran deal increase long term pressures for further nuclear proliferation in the Middle East? Dr. Samore will address these and other questions concerning the implications of the Iran nuclear agreement for broader nonproliferation and disarmament efforts. 

About the Speaker: As of February 2013, Dr. Gary Samore is the Executive Director for Research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.  He is also a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution and member of the advisory board for United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI), a non-profit organization that seeks to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.  He served for four years as President Obama’s White House Coordinator for Arms Control and Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD), including as U.S. Sherpa for the 2010 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C. and the 2012 Nuclear Security Summit in Seoul, Korea.  As WMD Coordinator, he served as the principal advisor to the President on all matters relating to arms control and the prevention of weapons of mass destruction proliferation and WMD terrorism, and coordinated United States government activities, initiatives, and programs to prevent proliferation and WMD terrorism and promote international arms control efforts.

Dr. Samore was a National Science Foundation Fellow at Harvard University, where he received his MA and PhD in government in 1984.  While at Harvard, he was a pre-doctoral fellow at what was then the Harvard Center for Science and International Affairs, later to become the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Gary Samore Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs Harvard University
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