Born and raised in New York City, Leo McMahon is a rising senior at Brown University where he studies Classics and International and Public Affairs. Academically, he focuses on U.S. foreign and defense policy, asymmetric conflict, and Greek and Roman historiography. He is currently researching Caribbean insurgencies in the early 20th century. He is especially interested in nonproliferation on the Korean Peninsula and recently played the People’s Republic of China during a class simulation of nuclear negotiations in Northeast Asia. In his free time, Leo edits the Brown Classical Journal, organizes with the Brown/RISD Young Democratic Socialists of America, and enjoys running, playing wargames, and watching films.
Final Presentation: Iranian Nuclear Hedging After the JCPOA
As successive rounds of negotiations fail to make progress, it is becoming increasingly clear that the JCPOA with Iran is a moribund agreement. Nevertheless, it is not at all clear that Iran has decided to produce a nuclear weapon. My research this summer explores one possible strategy Iran might pursue: hedging its atomic bet by enhancing non-civilian nuclear technology without attempting to build or test an actual weapon. A particularly aggressive form of this strategy would involve advancing up to the threshold of weaponization, where Iran could build a weapon within months of a leadership decision to become a nuclear weapons state. My ongoing research studies this strategy on three prongs: First, I have been researching the technical basis of Iran’s enrichment program and its abandoned attempt to build a nuclear weapon before 2003 to understand how Iran could continue technical progress without building a weapon. Second, I have been examining historical parallels to Iran’s situation to see what paths advanced hedging states have taken. And third, I have been reviewing the literature on hedging, deterrence, and proliferation to ascertain some possible consequences of an Iranian hedging strategy.
