The escalating worldwide tensions over Iran's nuclear program and reports of that country’s enhanced capabilities to produce a nuclear weapon will be the topic of a Woodrow Wilson School "Up to the Minute" discussion on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 at 4:30 p.m., in Dodds Auditorium, Robertson Hall on the Princeton University campus. A public reception will follow the discussion in Shultz Dining Room.

The talk will feature Frank von Hippel, professor of public and international affairs and co-director of the Woodrow Wilson School’s Program on Science and Global Security; Iran’s former lead nuclear negotiator, Seyed Hossein Mousavian, who is currently a visiting research scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School’s Program on Science and Global Security; and R. Scott Kemp, who served as the State Department’s technical adviser on the Iran nuclear issue from 2010-2011, and is currently a research scholar at the Program on Science and Global Security at the Wilson School.  

Frank von Hippel is a former assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology. His areas of policy research include nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, energy, and checks and balances in policymaking for technology. Prior to coming to Princeton, he worked for ten years in the field of elementary-particle theoretical physics. He has written extensively on the technical basis for nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament initiatives, the future of nuclear energy, and improved automobile fuel economy.

Seyed Hossein Mousavian is a former Iranian diplomat who served as ambassador to Germany (1990-1997), head of the Foreign Relations Committee of Iran’s National Security Council (1997-2005), and as Iran’s nuclear negotiator (2003-2005). He has taught at Islamic Azad University and was vice president of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research.  He recently authored an op-ed titled,

“How the U.S.-Iran Standoff Looks from Iran” and has been cited in many recent articles on this topic: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-02-17/how-the-u-s-iran-standoff-looks-from-iran-hossein-mousavian.html;
http://www.npr.org/2012/02/23/147277389/meet-irans-decider-supreme-leader-khamenei http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2107329,00.html
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/02/2012226892751941.html

R. Scott Kemp specializes in the technology and history of nuclear proliferation by uranium enrichment. He has also worked on environmental sampling, remote sensing for detecting covert nuclear programs, and space security. From 2010-2011, Kemp served as science adviser at the State Department office of the special adviser for nonproliferation and arms control where he was the lead developer of technical negotiation positions for resolving the nuclear crisis with Iran and the Department's top gas-centrifuge expert.

The event will be webcast live and archived online for later viewing on the Woodrow Wilson School’s Webmedia site – http://wws.princeton.edu/webmedia   http://hulk03.princeton.edu:8080/WebMedia/channels/