The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (E.T.)
For decades the world has sought to understand Iran's nuclear ambitions, the nature of its program, and why its state elites persist in this effort despite sanctions, international isolation, attacks and wars launched by Israel and the United States. This presentation will argue the answer is complex and reflects a longstanding national project that includes the monarchy and the postrevolutionary regime and is driven by a sense of strategic loneliness, a quest for independence and security amid shifting geopolitics and threat perceptions, and technological modernity. It draws on the new book Iran and the Bomb which uses political memoirs and interviews with Iranian officials and nuclear scientists to tell a story of how Iran became nuclear and why.
About the speaker: Sina Azodi is an Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics and the Program Director for the Middle East Studies Program at George Washington University, Washington DC. His research focuses on international security, nuclear nonproliferation, Iranian politics and U.S.-Iranian relations. He teaches undergraduate and graduate level courses in nuclear weapons, international security, Iranian foreign policy and national security strategy. He previously was a research assistant at Princeton University's Program on Science and Global Security, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and at the National Security Archive, George Washington University. He received his PhD (2023) in Government and International Politics from the University of South Florida.