Nuclear Issues in the Middle East and North Africa
Event Summary
This three-day, international conference, which developed from conversations about regional nonproliferation policy, takes a wide view of Nuclear Issues in the Middle East and North Africa. It examines nuclear energy alongside nuclear weapons, and investigates the conceptual and material processes that enforce this divide. It broadens the regional scope to connect the Maghreb, the Levant, and further East, while also expanding the disciplinary purview to consider possible futures and trace historical roots. It explores ongoing changes in great power attitudes toward the region and the role of nuclear technologies in these shifts. At the same time, it takes seriously the perspectives of smaller states and non-state actors, featuring not only regional experts but also experts from the region itself. The first conference aiming to consider all aspects of the atomic age in the Middle East and North Africa, it incorporates a wide range of historical, political, diplomatic, cultural, and technological approaches to the question — reflecting the insights of scholars, policymakers, and practitioners alike.
Schedule of Events
1:15pm – 2:00pm: Registration & Coffee
2:00pm – 2:30pm: Welcome, Harun Küçük
Introduction, Austin Cooper
2:30pm – 4:00pm: The View From Iran
Ata Heshmati: Iran’s Forgotten Denuclearization Period: Why Khomeini Abandoned the Shah’s Nuclear Ambitions After 1979
Ali Fathollah-Nejad: Nuclear Diplomacy: Iran’s “Nuclear Escalation” Strategy in the Face of Escalating Sanctions
Jacopo Scita: Bring Back the Agency of Sanctioned States: The Case of Iran’s Nuclear program (2006-2015)
Moderated by John Ghazvinian
4:30pm – 6:00pm: Keynote Address, Nabil Fahmy
Foreign Minister of Egypt (2013-2014)
Ambassador of Egypt to the United States (1999-2008)
Moderated by John Ghazvinian
6:15pm – 7:15pm: Reception
7:30pm – 9:30pm: Dinner for Conference Participants
8:30am – 9:00am: Registration & Breakfast
9:00am – 10:30am: The Israel Exception
Isabella Ginor & Gideon Remez: Military Intervention to Prevent an Adversary’s Attainment of Nuclear Weapons: The USSR’s Misadventure Against Israel in 1967 and its Lessons in Respect of Iran
Ian Lustick: Absence is Presence: An Oxymoronic Analysis of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal
Ludovica Castelli: The ‘Villa in the Jungle’ Paradigm: An Analysis of Israel’s Nuclear Orientalist Discourse
Philipp Bleek: Why No Nukes on the Nile? Lessons from Egypt’s Response to Israeli Proliferation
Moderated by Tomisha Bino
10:30am – 10:45am: Coffee Break
10:45am – 12:00pm: Lecture: John Ghazvinian
12:00pm – 1:00pm: Lunch
1:00pm – 2:30pm: Great Power Politics
Roland Popp: Imaginative Suggestions: The United States and the Nuclear Defense of Middle Eastern Allies During the Cold War
Amir Mohammad Esmaeili: China, Middle Eastern Nuclear Strategy, and Iran’s Nuclear Program
Shruti Punia: Shifting Geopolitics in MENA and Threats to US Status Quo
Moderated by Joe Cirincione
2:30pm – 2:45pm:Coffee Break
2:45pm – 4:15pm: Fallout in North Africa
Austin Cooper: Underground Negotiations: French Weapons Testing After Algerian Independence and Ahmed Ben Bella’s Nuclear Policy
Sarah Demott: Atomic Solidarities and Nuclear Reparations: France’s Nuclear Laboratories in North Africa and the South Pacific, c. 1960-Present
Brahim El Guabli: Saharan Gothic: Nuclear Experiments and Desert Necrofiction
Moderated by Megan Brown
4:30pm – 5:45pm: Lecture: Joe Cirincione
6:00pm – 8:30pm: Participant Excursion and Dinner
8:30am – 9:00am: Breakfast & Registration
9:00am – 10:30am:Globalizing the Cold War
Giordana Pulcini & Leopoldo Nuti: Playing with (Nuclear) Fire? Italian-Iraqi Nuclear Relations (1973-1981)
Sertac Sec: Nuclear Occidentalism and the Cold War in Turkish Thrace
Hassan Elbahtimy: Nasser’s Nuclear Politics
Moderated by Robert Vitalis
10:30am – 10:45am: Coffee Break
10:45am – 12:00pm: Lecture: Tomisha Bino
12:00pm – 1:00pm: Lunch
1:00pm – 2:30pm: Atoms for Peace?
Li-Chen Sim & Mohamed Al Mansoori: Nuclear Energy in the United Arab Emirates: An Assessment of the Policy Process, Norm Adoption, and Stakeholders
Elizabeth Bishop: “Atoms for Peace” in Hashemite Iraq (1953-1958)
Heba Taha: The Beginning of a New Life: Reactors, Borders, and US Nuclear Diplomacy in the Arab-Israeli Conflict
Moderated by Susan Lindee
2:45pm – 3:00pm: Coffee Break
3:00pm – 4:15pm: Lecture: Farah Jan
4:15pm – 4:30pm: Concluding Remarks, Austin Cooper & Ibrahim Bakri