

1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005
Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East
Michael Doran is a senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at Hudson Institute. He specializes in Middle East security issues.
Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Senior Fellow and Director, Center on Islam, Democracy and the Future of the Muslim World
Hillel Fradkin is a senior fellow and director of the Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World at Hudson Institute.
The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed earlier this month in Vienna is the culmination of a longstanding Obama administration effort to resolve the international community’s nuclear standoff with Iran through diplomatic means. A host of serious questions surround the agreement, including the complexities of international law and politics necessary to enact its provisions, and the strategic calculations that Iran’s regional rivals will make in its aftermath. But the key question remains the most practical one: Will the JCPOA, advanced by its proponents as a far-reaching and robust arms agreement, actually prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon?
Can the JCPOA’s inspection and verification regime, which allows Iran a 24-day window to prepare – or “sanitize”—any suspected site for on-site review, provide an effective guarantee against violations? What will it mean when the JCPOA expires in 15 years under the “sunset clause” and Iran becomes a “normal” nuclear power? And how, in the meantime, will the deal’s removal of existing sanctions against currently designated terrorists and terror-connected entities – like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and Qassem Suleimani, commander of IRGC’s expeditionary unit, the Quds Force – complicate efforts to constrain Sunni Arab states from pursuing nuclear arms programs of their own?
On July 28, Hudson Institute hosted a timely conversation on the Iran nuclear deal with Senator Tom Cotton and a panel of leading experts including William Tobey of Harvard University’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Hudson Senior Fellows Michael Doran, Hillel Fradkin, and Lee Smith.
An update on the war in Ukraine with Žygimantas Pavilionis, Radoslaw Fogiel, and Oleksandr Merezhko, chairs of the Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committees of Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine, respectively.
Join Hudson Institute and International Republican Institute experts in welcoming award-winning Angolan investigative journalist Rafael Marques as he presents new information about the malign influence of Chinese aid.
Hudson Distinguished Fellow and former US Attorney General Bill Barr and Hudson Media Fellow Jeremy Hunt discuss how policymakers can restore the rule of law to America's southern border.
Hudson Institute will host Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Dr. Ely Rattner and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for South and Southeast Asia Lindsey W. Ford for a conversation on the Department of Defense’s vision for building a more resilient security architecture in Southeast Asia.