ABC

Since the dawn of the nuclear age, proliferation has represented the defining threat to humanity. An enormous literature on factors that drive proliferation has emerged over the decades. Given this massive volume of studies, it is surprising that academic research on nuclear intelligence, also known as counterproliferation intelligence, is quite limited. Even the failure to find Saddam...

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On its face, Mohammed Khatami’s reelection in June 2001 looked like a resounding mandate. Khatami received 77.1 percent of the vote, to the 15.6 percent garnered by his nearest rival. But the popular vote masked the reality of his much-diminished power. By utilizing the negotiated political order, the Supreme Leader and the Revolutionary...

The election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in June 2005 jolted the Western pundits and the Iranian political establishment alike. The 49-year-old Ahmadinejad was a veteran of the Revolutionary Guards and a minor apparatchik who served a one-term appointment as governor of the Ardebil province. Helped by the Abadgaran faction in the Tehran City Council, he became the mayor of Tehran in May 2003....

Facing an election on June 12, 2009, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad found it increasingly difficult to defend the cost of nuclear Principalism. As the punishing sanctions degraded the Iranian economy, the ballot promised to turn into a referendum on the nuclear program. To influence the public opinion, the government ordered the media to highlight...

Much as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad tried to put a heroic spin on the suffering caused by sanctions, by the early 2013, the statistics looked grim. Collectively, the smart and supersmart sanctions dramatically affected Iran’s economy. Oil sales, which...

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Ofira Seliktar (Professor Emerita at Gratz College) specializes in the analysis of predictive failure in strategic intelligence in the Middle East, and served as a consultant on intelligence issues. She is the author of seven books and scores of articles in refereed journals and chapters. She is currently working on issues of nuclear intelligence within the framework of...