Events
Mark Dubowitz Participates in Intelligence Squared Debate in London
What to do about Iran?
Royal Geographical Society, London, UK
Thursday June 7th, 2012
Doors open at 6pm. The debate will begin at 6.45pm and finish at 8.30pm
It's the question that frames the security of our world: how terrified should we be at the prospect of a nuclear armed Iran? There are some who argue that too much fuss is made of it: India has the bomb; Israel has the bomb: let Iran have it too. We can live with it. But what if they're wrong? What if this new threat capacity in the hands of a malign theocracy drastically changes the power balance in the Middle East and the subcontinent? What then? Then the question becomes, what, if anything, can be done to stop Iran getting the bomb? According to Efraim Halevy, the former Mossad chief, Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is confident "that there is a viable, effective military capability that could be employed as a last resort". And even Halevy, who urges one last round of serious talks, sees a military strike as inevitable if that fails. So the new question then becomes, can anything be done to stop Netanyahu from acting unilaterally and making his own decision to attack Iran? Or is he just bluffing?
On June 7th Intelligence² gathers together a group of leading analysts – doves and hawks, Iranians, Israelis and Americans – to debate these urgent questions that deeply affect us all.
Speakers:
Mark Dubowitz
Executive director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies in Washington D.C.
Roxane Farmanfarmaian
Political analyst specialising in Iranian geo-strategic affairs, and Affiliated Lecturer on the modern Middle East at the University of Cambridge
Fawaz Gerges
Professor of Middle Eastern Politics and International Relations at the London School of Economics He also holds the Emirates Chair of the Contemporary Middle East.
Daniel Levy
Director of MENA at ECFR and Senior Research Fellow and Co-Director of the Middle East Task Force at the New America Foundation