R. Scott Kemp

Norman C. Rasmussen Assistant Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering
Laboratory for Nuclear Security and Policy

This talk will describe the evolution of the technical negotiating strategy behind the Iran nuclear deal, the trade-offs that were made during the negotiations, and calculations on the ultimate ability of Iran to make nuclear weapons given the constraints of the deal. It concludes that while the deal has several loopholes that might allow Iran to get closer to a weapon than negotiators had hoped, the deal nonetheless creates a stable technical barrier against proliferation for the next eleven years; after which point the politics of the region must become the sole source of nonproliferation stability.

Note: This talk is part of the MIT Physics Colloqia