28
July 2015
Past Event
Can the P5+1's Vienna Deal Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Breakout?

Can the P5+1's Vienna Deal Prevent an Iranian Nuclear Breakout?

Past Event
Hudson Institute, Washington, D.C. Headquarters
July 28, 2015
Default Event Image
28
July 2015
Past Event

1015 15th Street, N.W., 6th Floor
Washington, DC 20005

Speakers:
Cotton
Tom Cotton

United States Senator, Arkansas

michael_doran
Michael Doran

Senior Fellow and Director, Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East

William Tobey

Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs

Hillel Fradkin

Senior Fellow and Director, Center on Islam, Democracy, and the Future of the Muslim World

Lee Smith

Former Senior Fellow

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.

Click here to read Sen. Cotton's remarks.

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