Imagining Iran

Like millions around the world, we are moved by the reports and images of Iranian citizens demanding effective democracy and resisting violent oppression. We are reminded of earlier instances when heroic leadership led to dramatic political change.

This vital national drama plays out against a backdrop of global significance. The Iranian Government’s refusal to fully align its nuclear behavior with its international legal commitments and the directives of the United Nations Security Council threatens international peace and security.

Today, Iran is a singular problem in terms of compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its actions threaten the global norm against the spread of nuclear weapons. New prospects for progress toward a nuclear weapon-free world are precariously balanced on a prudent and coordinated response among many states, each with its own security and political equities to service. The Iranian Government ‘s rejection of the emerging multilateral effort to move toward the global abolition of nuclear weapons and contrary national development of sensitive nuclear fuel cycle technologies are disproportionately shaping our common human future much for the worse.

But what if they weren’t? Witnessing the courage of ordinary Iranians, we recall the challenges faced by leaders including Washington, Gandhi, and Mandela and the transformational changes their heroism made possible. Today, the hope for such leadership sparks interesting possibilities for international security and world peace, as well as for the people of Iran.

Next spring, the NPT will be reviewed by its states parties. Many expect Iran to play a cynical and destructive role in the proceedings, but there is a precedent for another alternative. When the NPT was made permanent at the 1995 Review and Extension Conference, the revolutionary leaders of South Africa’s new multi-racial democracy played an important role in rallying the world behind the then-hotly contested option of indefinite extension. They had the authentic claim to leadership of a state that had renounced and destroyed its nuclear arsenal under international verification as well as President Nelson Mandela’s extraordinary moral authority and they played an important and positive global leadership role.

What sort of leadership could a transformed Iranian diplomacy offer the world at the 2010 NPT Review Conference? Full compliance and openness to verification is obviously a first step, but South Africa did not stop there and there is no reason Iran could not go further. Aligning its longtime assertiveness on Article IV and “peaceful uses” more closely with international law and global expectations through acceptance of some type of internationalization of its nuclear fuel cycle could be a second important step. A third step might be to explore how global confidence could be maximized in the compliance of NPT states parties with their Article VI disarmament obligations, for instance through cooperative efforts to develop non-nuclear energy alternatives in cooperation with other states parties, new technologies and practices for detecting nuclear materials and processes, and nonproliferation and disarmament education practices to align national pride with global leadership for peace and security rather than the development of nuclear technology. We are indebted to Professor Scott Sagan for his recent observation (in an exchange with Ambassador Lewis Dunn at an event sponsored by The Nonproliferation Review of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies) that non-nuclear weapon states parties to the NPT should all make explicit efforts to comply with the disarmament provisions of Article VI.

We realize that democratization alone will not solve the nuclear proliferation problem, as Ambassador Jack F. Matlock observes in his chapter “Regional Animosities and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation” in George P. Shultz, Steven P. Andreasen, Sidney D. Drell, and James E. Goodby’s pivotal Reykjavik Revisited: Steps Toward a World Free of Nuclear Weapons (Hoover/NTI, 2008):

“even a democratically elected government in Iran might well continue the Iranian program unless the external political environment is altered (p 406)…In Iranian eyes, since the other states seem to have accepted Pakistan’s nuclear status (even with its record of proliferation!), what valid motive could they have for denying Iran that capability other than a desire to make it vulnerable to military intervention, as the lack of nuclear weapons made both Serbia and Iraq vulnerable to military attacks even though they had not threatened the attackers? Such would be the rationale of the current Iranian leaders – and the likely rationale of any, more democratic, replacement regime faced with the same geopolitical configuration (p. 411).”

But heroic actions inspire us to imagine a future different than today, and a transformed Iran would have the capacity to exercise an important leadership role toward a world free of nuclear weapons.

Can universities respond to nuclear dangers?

eGov monitor posts a letter from David Willets, the United Kingdom’s Conservative Shadow Universities Secretary, to John Denham who sits on Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s Cabinet as Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities, and Skills concerned about Iranian students studying proliferation-sensitive subjects at British universities. A particularly important observation emerges from among Mr. Denham’s several specific concerns:

“We have a clear obligation to ensure that our own universities, even inadvertently, do not contribute to nuclear proliferation.”

This obligation is particularly relevant as humanity faces an imminent future that George P. Schultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn have called:

“a new nuclear era that will be more precarious, psychologically disorienting, and economically even more costly than was Cold War deterrence.”

These notable authors gathered last week at Stanford University to further explore these new dangers and possible solutions at Stanford University. This work is to be applauded, but as institutions engaged in seeking knowledge and truth, universities can and perhaps must do more to respond to the emerging truth of new global dangers posed by nuclear weapons. The voice of universities may be especially relevant now as the production of nuclear warheads of new designs is reportedly being considered in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Russia.

It is not immediately obvious what sort of response would be appropriate, but three ideas emerge easily that seem appropriate points of departure for how universities might best respond to this global danger:

First, universities could make a statement of policy supporting compliance with the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and related agreements, particularly including the 1995 Statement of Principles and Objectives for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament which is an integral element of the indefinite extension of the NPT. Not only would such a statement be consistent with the educational mission of these institutions, it would also be consistent with emerging university practices such as Tufts University’s April 24, 1999 commitment to “meet or beat the Kyoto [Protocol] goal of a seven percent reduction below 1990 in our carbon dioxide emissions by the year 2012.”

Second, universities could convene institutional review boards, faculty governance groups, or other deliberative bodies composed of experts from relevant disciplines to consider how the work of their institutions might be prevented from inadvertently contributing to the dangers of nuclear proliferation.

Third, universities could form a network to explore the conditions under which the NPT Article VI obligation to work toward a world free of nuclear weapons could be achieved and how they might contribute to the necessary technical and knowledge basis for meeting these conditions.

The danger nuclear weapons pose to humanity is immediate, global, and complicated, and it may be that much work remains to be done to provide uncover new knowledge and prepare today’s graduates to live with the evolving danger of nuclear weapons. Restricting access to education may prove necessary in some unfortunate cases, but it is certainly not the limit of higher education’s obligation to meet this challenge.

Okay, who is NOT building a new nuclear weapon?

Russian President Vladimir Putin answered questions today from the Kremlin for over three hours in a live television, radio and internet broadcast of “The Hot Line with the President of Russia.”

AFP reports that:

“Putin told servicemen at the Plesetsk nuclear missile base that Russia would build another nuclear submarine next year and was also planning a "completely new" atomic weapon, about which he did not elaborate.”

Additionally, the AP reports that President Putin said:

"Our plans are not simply considerable, but huge. At the same time they are absolutely realistic…I have no doubts that we will accomplish them."

Putin’s remarks come on the heels of his discussions with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran in the first visit of a Russian leader to Iran since the 1940s, and of the Russian test launch of a Topol intercontinental ballistic missile.

In the context of previous Russian tit-for-tat behavior, such as withdrawal from START II immediately following the effective date of the U.S. abrogation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and the recent announcement that Russian participation in the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty would end on December 12 of this year following U.S. missile defense facility siting decisions in Eastern Europe, this move may create an opportunity to ask the Russians if they would consider terminating the development of this new nuclear weapon of the United States forgoes the planned Reliable Replacement Warhead.

Jimmy Carter in Defense of Arms Control

In a September 12, 2007 article in the Taipei Times titled, “Nuclear Steps Undermine Peace,” former President Jimmy Carter argues “By abandoning many of the nuclear arms agreements negotiated in the last 50 years, the US has been sending mixed signals to North Korea, Iran and other states with the technical knowledge to create nuclear weapons.”