Iran has struck a historic deal with the United States and five other world powers (known as the P5+1), agreeing to temporarily halt its nuclear program for six months in exchange for limited and gradual relief of sanctions. Iran agreed to halt its uranium enrichment above 5 percent and the foreign powers agreed to give Iran access to $4.2 billion from oil sales. The six-month period will now give diplomats time to negotiate a more sweeping agreement.

We ask three Stanford scholars to weigh in on the technical and political merits of the agreement. CISAC Senior Fellow, Siegfried Hecker, has been working on Track II diplomacy with Tehran in recent years and was one of a number of Americans who met with Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his delegation of diplomats and nuclear scientists after the U.N. General Assembly meeting in New York in September. Iranian-American Abbas Milani is director of Hamid and Christina Moghadam Program in Iranian Studies at Stanford and a contributing editor at The New Republic. Ivanka Barzashka is a CISAC affiliate and a research associate at the Centre for Science and Security Studies, King’s College, London, who specializes in Iran’s nuclear capability.

Just how close did Iran come to being able to build a bomb?

Hecker: Very close, possibly weeks away from making sufficient highly enriched uranium bomb fuel, and six months or so away from building a nuclear weapon. Iran developed the nuclear weapon option under the umbrella of the pursuit of civilian reactor fuel. The technologies for developing reactor fuel and bomb fuel are the same, the difference is in the level of enrichment in Uranium-235: 3 to 5 percent for commercial reactors, as much as 20 percent for research and medical isotope production reactors, compared to roughly 90 percent for weapons. The IAEA reports that Iran has not satisfactorily explained nor given access to work and sites suspected of past nuclear weapons-related activities.

This leads me to conclude that Iran had likely previously done most of the work necessary to build nuclear weapons once it obtained the capacity to produce bomb fuel. Iran’s extensive missile development and testing program also points to Tehran pursuing the option of missile deliverable nuclear weapons.

Does the agreement make it more difficult for Iran to pursue the bomb?

Hecker: Yes, the agreement places temporary limits on the level of enrichment of nuclear material and provides for the conversion or dilution of the highest enriched material (20 percent). It will also temporarily halt Iran installing more or better centrifuges to produce enriched uranium at an increasing rate. Iran has also agreed to temporarily halt construction of the heavy-water reactor in Arak. These steps modestly increase the amount of time it would take Iran to obtain nuclear bomb fuel in a breakout scenario. In addition, increased monitoring of facilities as called for in the agreement will provide us with a better understanding of existing capabilities in known facilities and what may exist in potential covert facilities.

They were very close ... six months or so away from building a nuclear weapon."    - Hecker

Why is Iran’s heavy-water reactor in Arak of such concern?

Hecker: It provides a potential second path to the bomb. Iranian nuclear specialists recently told me in New York that they began to design that reactor 20 years ago to replace the old, small American-provided reactor in Tehran that was being used for medical isotope production and research. Construction is several years behind schedule, but I was told it is close to completion. When complete, it would allow Iran to produce badly needed medical isotopes. But concurrently, the choice of reactor design and power level also means that it will produce enough plutonium to fuel one or two bombs per year if Iran decided to extract the plutonium from the spent reactor fuel. The Iranian specialists told me that they are very keen to find a solution that provides them with the means to make medical isotopes and alleviates international concerns about plutonium production. That’s a worthy goal, but a tall order that was left for the long-term agreement.

What prevented Iran from building the bomb?

Hecker: I believe Iran’s leadership settled for developing the option for the bomb, but has not yet decided to build or demonstrate the bomb. Until recently, it is also likely that Iran did not have sufficient bomb fuel to build the bomb. I believe they now have that capacity; therefore our focus should be on convincing them not to flip the bomb production switch.

Can you envision a long-term agreement that will prevent Iran from building the bomb?

Hecker: Completely getting rid of the bomb option is not possible through military action or sanctions with political pressure. The only chance is through diplomatic means. We need to make it clear to the Iranian regime that they are better off without pursuing the bomb. This will take time. Iran Foreign Minister Zarif told me that even appearing to pursue the bomb is bad for Iran’s nuclear security. Now if we can only get the Iranian leadership to believe that. If Iran wants nuclear energy and relations with the West, I believe we need nuclear integration, not isolation, such as those peaceful programs in South Korea and Japan.

Kerry's video message about the Geneva Talks 

 

Stepping aside from the leaders and countries involved, what do you think this six-month agreement means to the Iranian people themselves?

Milani: I think in the short run, it has brought them a double sense of joy and relief: joy that war might be averted, and relief that dire days of economic hardships might begin to end and that maybe the country will no longer be a pariah and join the community of nations. But I think there is also some trepidation: Will the interim agreements turn into an enduring policy or will the radicals use the interim sanction relief to get out of the current jam and then resume their policies?

Are you hopeful this is a significant step forward or is it too early to tell?

Milani: I think it is too early to be definitive but my sense is that momentum is building for the successful continuation of the thaw. Policies of the regime in the last years brought the country to the verge of the abyss. One could put a bit of Biblical touch to what President Rouhani himself says: men and women do not live by centrifuges alone. They need bread and freedom.

This is a win for Obama but it also appears to be a huge win for Iranian President Hassan Rouhani. Do you believe he is sincere in his commitment to negotiate and keep the talks on track?

Milani: I think Rouhani is one of the cleverest, most cunning and brutality pragmatic leaders the Islamic Republic has seen. He understands that the status quo is untenable and fashions himself as its potential reforming savior. He needs to make this deal work – one that is acceptable to the West, and the international community and sellable domestically as at least a win-win agreement – if he is to politically accomplish his goals as a disciplined man of great ambitions.

The Israelis are up in arms and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the deal “a historic mistake” that gives too much to the Iranians. But shouldn’t they be pleased that Iran has stepped back?

Milani: Many in Israel are up in arms, yet others are confident that the U.S. and EU will pursue their interests while never making a deal that threatens Israel's security. In time I think the second narrative might even dominate Israeli discourse.

Is the deal nothing more than a successful confidence-building exercise?

Barzashka (As told to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists on Nov. 25): The agreement, the first in nearly a decade of confrontation over Iran’s nuclear program, is a win for diplomacy and proof that Obama’s strategy of direct engagement with Iran works. Enabled by high-level, face-to-face meetings between Tehran and Washington, the deal was struck despite significant opposition by hardliners in the United States, Iran and Israel.

The P5+1 and Iran adopted tangible, though modest, confidence-building measures that demonstrate both sides are serious about negotiations. The deal reflects reasonable compromises. For example, the P5+1 initially demanded that stockpiled, 20 percent-enriched uranium be shipped out of Iran, but exporting uranium was unacceptable for Tehran. Instead, the two sides agreed that Iran would convert 20-percent enriched uranium hexafluoride to uranium oxide or downblend it to below 5 percent—measures that still buy threat reduction without crossing Iran’s red line.

Finally, the agreement succeeds in building trust by leaving out the hard questions, such as Iran’s right to enrichment, which would be addressed during the next phase of negotiations.

By Rustin Crandall

Tech City in East London is the fastest growing tech cluster in Europe, beginning with 15 tech companies in 2008 and now boasting now more than 1300 startups as well as leading global firms including Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Intel.

On October 30, 2013, the Silicon Valley Project of Stanford Graduate School of Business hosted a seminar on London as a hub of innovation featuring Eze Vidra, Head of Campus London and Google for Entrepreneurs European Outreach, and Samantha Evans, Vice Consul for Software of UK Trade and Investment (UKTI).

Vidra spoke about London from the perspective of Campus London, Google's first physical startup hub worldwide, which launched in March of 2012 with the mission statement “let’s fill this town with startups!” Campus London sees itself as an “open source” building, working with many partners, and offering the benefits that come with a dedicated working space to as many potential entrepreneurs as possible. Since its opening, over 1,000 startups have benefited from programs and more than 200,000 people have attended over 1,500 events. Perhaps the most unexpected statistic offered by Vidra was the number of cups of coffee sold in the basement of Campus London, which is a co-working space that anyone can register to use. “I believe there’s a correlation between innovation and coffee, and we have pretty damn good coffee,” Vidra exclaimed. They sold more than 90,000 cups of coffee in their first year of operation.

Speaking from the vantage point of a national government trade and investment organization, Evans offered insights into how government policy can impact the growth of Tech City as a development hub, identifying key policy changes such as reducing the corporate tax rate and creating new R&D tax credits. Evans emphasized that the UK government’s support of Tech City isn’t about creating a new innovation hub from scratch through top-down dictates. The government, she said, recognized a naturally occurring and organically growing cluster of technology companies in East London and made a conscious decision to “help businesses evolve and grow” in a “long-lasting” manner.

Vidra said that Google also “noticed that there was an organic cluster forming in East London.” The company, he said, is trying to provide some of the necessary infrastructure and helping to foster growth and to build up the community. “What we’re trying to do is not to build a new Silicon Valley or try to create something artificially,” said Vidra, “we should build bridges, not valleys.”

Google, with all its resources, couldn’t create something out of nothing, Vidra recognized. He pointed out that “in London everything is encapsulated in one city … every brand, every bank, every organization you can think of.” Vidra argued that London represents an ideal confluence of talent, capital, and ideas, so Google is attempting to act in an enabling role. “We don’t replace universities, we don’t replace accelerators. We actually work with all of these partners and set up a discussion and the environment for them to be active and help entrepreneurs.”

Vidra admits that London still has a ways to go in terms of competing with other innovation hubs like Silicon Valley, New York, and Israel, particularly when it comes to liquidity and exits, but is optimistic about London’s future. He says that London is an “underserved market by startups,” with lower costs, less competition for talent, and much less competition between startups.

The government’s involvement in promoting Tech City has met with some positive feedback on policy measures. “There’s two policies that have really changed the game in London,” Vidra said about the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) and Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS). These government programs have “unlocked unprecedented amounts of capital” for early stage startups. He also praised the government’s Tech City Investment Organization (TCIO) for championing the tech sector through offering grants, bringing in investments from international companies, helping international VCs to set up offices, promoting startups, and assisting companies in going public.

“You can debate what’s the role of government to create entrepreneurship or foster innovation, but we need all the help we can get.” These government policies don’t result in “fake growth,” insists Vidra, “it’s not going to make or break their businesses … but if there’s actually something there it’s going to be much easier for them to grow.”

The Program on Human Rights at Stanford's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, in partnership with the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society, is offering up to three summer fellowships to talented Stanford undergraduates interested in gaining practical experience at human rights organizations around the world. The fellowship will award grants of up to $5,000 for students undertaking a human rights project for a minimum of eight weeks during the summer. The deadline to apply is Dec. 9, 2013. 

Students have the opportunity to focus on issues that include freedom of speech; discrimination against women; the rights of children, elderly and minorities; and access to food, health, education and housing. Past fellows have identified and worked with a number of different organizations based in the U.S. and abroad that promote, monitor, evaluate, or advance human rights work.

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Photo Credit: Adrian Bonifacio

Former Human Rights Fellows include computer science major Firas Abuzaid (’14), who spent the summer of 2013 in Amman, Jordan working with Visualizing Justice, an organization that is dedicated to empowering people worldwide to create visual stories for social justice and human rights. In 2011, Adrian Bonifacio (’13) worked with the Asian Pacific Mission for Migrants, a non-governmental organization based in Hong Kong, China that promotes and defends the rights of migrant workers. Garima Sharma (’15), an economics major, spent this past summer working with Apne Aap: Women Worldwide, an anti-trafficking NGO based in Forbesganj, India.

In order to apply to the fellowship, students must submit a proposal that identifies a partner organization, a project that would contribute towards the organization’s mission and a tentative budget. The application period for the summer fellowship is now open to Stanford undergraduates through Dec. 9. To view profiles of the four 2013 fellows please click here. Additional information about the fellowship - including the application - is available here.

For more information, please contact Joan Berry, the executive director at the McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society at joanberry@stanford.edu or Ana Bracic, the fellowship mentor at the Program on Human Rights at bracic@stanford.edu. 

The China 2.0 initiative at Stanford Graduate School of Business hosted its 4th annual conference on October 3, 2013 at Stanford University.

Martin Lau, President of Tencent, opened the conference with a keynote discussing Tencent's business model, international partnership strategies, and the social impact of internet on Chinese society.

In the second keynote address by Gary Locke, the U.S. Ambassador to the People's Republic of China, he shared his insights into China's recent advances in the technology sector, the Chinese government’s approach to managing the internet, and the risks and opportunities U.S. companies should consider before entering the Chinese market.

Charles Chao, CEO and Chairman of the Board of SINA, closed the conference with a keynote on how Weibo, one of SINA's most popular services, has made an unprecedented impact on Chinese society.

Growth and Innovation in Firms

Tencent started out in 1998 when China had four million internet users. Since then the market has grown 150 times to today’s 600 million users. Tencent’s equity market capitalization recently surpassed the $100 billion mark, and the company generates significantly more revenues than its higher-valued peer Facebook. In his speech, Lau modestly described the company’s “secret sauce number one” as “luck.”

We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.

Martin Lau
President, Tencent

Lau also elaborated how Tencent has created a supportive environment for startups to grow and develop. “…[O]ur approach is actually to back the founders, to say the founders will be the driving force of the company, so unlike Jack [Ma], who said ‘Yahoo is in my pocket,’ we don’t put any company in our pocket. We support the companies to make them successful, and in that process, we try to benefit from the know-how, we try to benefit from the growth, and we also contribute our know-how to these companies.”

In partnership with Innovation Works, Tencent invested another $1 million in August 2013 in a San Francisco startup Kamcord, which allows users to record and share mobile gameplays. While Tencent has been investing in startups in Silicon Valley, Chao gave an example of SINA Weibo’s recent experimental collaboration with a local home appliance manufacturer in China, Hisense. Weibo users can link their accounts to the Hisense air-conditioner, which can then be switched on and off remotely.

“We also send a lot of our devices to our users so each will measure the temperature outside their house constantly, and send it back to Weibo every hour so we will accurately predict or calculate the exact temperature of this location through this kind of collaboration,” Chao noted. “...[E]verybody’s talking about the Internet of Things ..... but nobody knows how to do it. So we are doing a lot of experiments to see whether by collecting data and by connecting people to objects, by connecting objects to objects, whether we can create data, and create opportunities in these areas,” he added.

Charles predicted that internet companies will continue to disrupt other areas, including finance (with micro-loans) and commerce. SINA’s valuation was boosted earlier in 2013 by Alibaba’s acquisition of an 18% stake in SINA Weibo. Today SINA is valued at over $6 billion.

Social Impact of Internet

It [Weibo] basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better.

Charles Chao
CEO, SINA

SINA Weibo, launched in 2009, has over 500 million registered users, and over 56 million unique daily active users. It continues to dominate the market as China’s leading micro-blogging platform. It would be no exaggeration to say that Weibo has transformed social interaction in China by bringing the public square to everyone’s smartphone. “[Weibo] allows every user in China to report, to publish, to share the content, the information directly, and also not only create content but also distribute content themselves through social relations and through the follower relationship… It basically serves as a check and balance in society and makes Chinese society much better,” Chao argued.

The message was echoed by Lau in his keynote. “...[A]ll these internet companies, a lot of them are making an impact on society in an incredible way, bringing people closer together, changing businesses, and also making society more transparent… I think together we are really making a lot of changes and impact on Chinese society and I think we are ready to make more,” Lau said.

Ambassador Locke also emphasized the importance of a free and open internet to China’s economy and society in his address. “Attempts to unleash the economic power of the internet while controlling the political and cultural content are ultimately counterproductive, and indeed at odds with each other,” commented Locke. “Restrictions on communications that limit the free flow of ideas, whether political, economic, or personal, will only serve to prevent countries from moving forward. Frankly speaking, the United States and China’s government have different views on these issues but we are constantly, consistently, and candidly discussing them.”

Sino-U.S. Links

During a recent meeting between U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi at the White House, Biden said that he believed China’s development was not only in the interest of the United States, but for the rest of the world as well.

Ambassador Locke also highlighted the importance of how the two countries handle global issues. “Whether it’s finding a cure to some of the most dreaded diseases of the world, or ending the proliferation of nuclear weapons, whether in North Korea or Iran and elsewhere, China and the United States have to be involved together. Indeed, the world is looking for leadership from both the United States and China to solve some of the toughest challenges and problems facing the universe.”

Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.

Gary Locke
U.S. Ambassador to China

Despite finding agreement on some issues, China and United States still hold many differing views. The intellectual property (IP) challenge is one of them. "Expecting the Chinese system to work on American terms is a recipe for failure.” Locke added that some companies conclude that “the best way to avoid being ripped off in China it is to stay out of China—but besides missing a tremendous opportunity, companies that never set foot in China are not immune from having their IP infringed upon in China, and may later find infringing products making their way back to the United States or to third-world markets.”

Lau illustrated another example of difference between the countries in terms of the internet business sector. In China, online gaming is generating over $6 million in revenue. “To put it in perspective, that is actually more than display ads and search ads added together in China. Of course over time this will change, but it also tells you the kind of business mix in China, the opportunities and challenges that companies face in China, are actually very different from that in the US,” noted Lau.

The annual China 2.0 conference, now in its fourth year, attracted over 600 Stanford students and faculty along with current and rising leaders from China and Silicon Valley's tech, entrepreneur, and investor communities.

The panel and interactive discussions were focused on topics including Big Data, venture capital’s outlook on internet and digital media, China’s role in the global innovation network, cross-border venture finance, and Chinese mobile firms going global. These sessions brought together 20 founders, senior executives and leaders from: Asia Society, Baidu, Bertelsmann, DCM, Foursquare, Foxconn Interconnect Technology, FunPlus Game, GGV Capital, GSR Ventures, LinkedIn, Queen's Road Capital, Riverwood Capital, Silicon Valley Bank, Stanford Graduate School of Business, and WestSummit Capital.