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.
Please join Hudson Institute for a fireside chat with Senior Fellow and Keystone Defense Initiative Director Rebeccah Heinrichs and John Spencer, chair of Urban Warfare Studies at the Modern War Institute at West Point and co-director of the Urban Warfare Project.
Join Hudson Institute and the Ben Franklin Fellowship for a two-panel discussion examining US policy as it confronts the crisis of terror in Nigeria.
Join Hudson Institute's Center for the Economics of the Internet for a keynote address given by Tricia Paoletta on the Trump administration's progress in managing and reallocating the electromagnetic radio frequency spectrum from the federal domain.
Join Hudson Institute for a discussion with Federal Trade Commission Chairman Andrew Ferguson and Senior Fellow Harold Furchtgott-Roth.
