A Nuclear Middle East: Strategic Balance or Annihilation?

Can a nuclear Iran be deterred? Can nuclear conflict in a future poly-nuclear Middle East be avoided? If so, how? Optimists often point to the purported success of Cold War era security and political arrangements as a model of how nuclear conflict could be avoided. But this reasoning can be dangerously misleading as it fails to account for the importance of strategic culture in escalatory situations.

Hudson Institute hosted a critically important seminar to examine how the strategic cultures of Middle Eastern states will likely shape the command and control of the region's future nuclear arsenals. It explored what this might mean for Middle Eastern politics, for the prospects of deterrence, and for the conduct of nuclear states in escalatory situations.