About the Event: What are the domestic drivers of Iran’s nuclear strategy? Since the U.S. withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran has adopted an incrementally more assertive approach in expanding various aspects of its nuclear program and limiting the IAEA’s monitoring and verification activities. Although Iran has not made the political decision to obtain a nuclear weapon, according to U.S. officials, Iran could produce enough fissile material for one bomb in less than two weeks. Experts argue that Iran’s nuclear advances are a bargaining tactic to extract economic concessions from Washington. However, as Iran approaches threshold status, its political calculations are also shifting, signaling more risk tolerance than before. The failure of the JCPOA has undermined bottom-up pressure in the form of elections and civil society movements, which had previously moderated Iran’s foreign policy. The ascendance of a hawkish government in Tehran in 2021 combined with Iran’s growing military capability within the emerging multipolar world order has hardened the Islamic Republic’s bargaining position, inching it toward the weaponization option.

About the Speaker: Mohammad Ayatollahi Tabaar is an associate professor in the Department of International Affairs at the Bush School. His research areas include international security and Middle East politics. He is the author of Religious Statecraft: The Politics of Islam in Iran (Columbia University Press, 2018). Dr. Tabaar has been a fellow or a visiting scholar at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy, Harvard University's Center for the Middle East, Cambridge University's Centre of Islamic Studies, and George Washington University's Institute for Middle East Studies. His articles have appeared in Security Studies, PS: Political Science & Politics, Journal of Strategic Studies, and Political Science Quarterly. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Dr. Tabaar is currently working on two research projects: nuclear statecraft in hybrid regimes, and Marxist armed organizations in Iran.

He teaches courses on US foreign policy in the Persian Gulf, religion and politics in Iran, and Middle East politics. He is the recipient of the 2019 Faculty Excellence Award.

Dr. Tabaar has a BA in social sciences from the University of Tehran, an MA in sociology from the New School for Social Research, an MA in international relations from the University of Chicago, and a PhD in government from Georgetown University.