When some 140 Stanford students and faculty recently gathered to simulate an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council, they had some real-world data that had never been used before: satellite images of Iran’s Arak nuclear facility.

Students at the two-day simulation for CISAC’s signature class, “International Security in a Changing World,” were given this hypothetical allegation: Iran has violated the conditions of the November 2013 deal on its nuclear program by moving material between its nuclear facilities.

As the students were debating how to handle the allegation – purposely injected into the simulation in the form of a leak to heighten tensions – mock representatives of the International Atomic Energy Agency provided the delegations with satellite images that indicated no movement at the nuclear facility in question.

While the emergency was phony, the premise was very real. As were many of the documents, reports and satellite images used by the students and faculty to craft their stands and trip up their opponents as they played out their roles.

Skybox Imaging, a 5-year-old Silicon Valley firm started by four Stanford grads, provided the satellite images taken just days before the simulation in early February. The co-founders of Skybox established the information and analytics firm in 2009 using a business plan they developed as students in the class, “Technology Venture Formation.”

One of those co-founders, Dan Berkenstock, had also taken “International Security in a Changing World” as well as another popular class, “Technology and National Security,” co-taught by CISAC faculty member and former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Senior Fellow Siegfried Hecker.

Berkenstock, who was working on his Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics, became fascinated by ways technology might aid international security.

“The class became a major inspiration in starting Skybox,” Berkenstock said. “I was interested in satellites and the kind of data that they could create on the technical side, but I was really interested in much more of the analyses of those images and the stories that were locked within them.”

He said he realized that they could take the value of satellite imagery and “help people make better and safer decisions.”

Skybox, based in Mountain View, designed, built and then launched its first satellite, SkySat-1, from Russia last November. Two more satellites are scheduled to launch later this year; another six next year. The firm intends to eventually have 24 satellites in orbit to see any spot on earth multiple times a day. They also have produced the first high-resolution video from space.

“It’s about being able to monitor the ebb and flow of natural resources, the production of commodities, the activities of new construction and damage to old infrastructure and transportation,” Berkenstock said. “All those things, they define not just security; they really define our global economy. How many cars were there in the Walmart parking lot before the storm? How many tanks were there in a military base in Syria?” 

Students were given two images that showed Iran's Arak nuclear facility on two different dates.

Students were given two images that showed Iran's Arak nuclear facility on two different dates. Photo Credit: Skybox Imaging

CISAC co-director, Amy Zegart, who co-teaches “International Security in a Changing World” with CISAC’s terrorism expert, Martha Crenshaw, said the Skybox images injected a dose of reality to the simulation.

“Students could see up close and personal just what satellite imagery of one of Iran's nuclear facilities looks like, what it shows, what it can't, what questions it raises,” she said. “Typically, students in international security classes see grainy satellite images from the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. It's important history, but it's distant. Skybox gave us fresh images from Iran's Arak reactor. The imagery was real, important, immediate, and cool.”

Zegart, one of the country’s leading intelligence experts, said Skybox is at the forefront of a “tectonic shift in intelligence.”

“It used to be that all the most important sources and methods of detecting threats like nuclear weapons programs rested in the hands of governments,” she said. “Not anymore. Enterprising companies, NGOs, and even individuals are producing and assessing information like never before – using commercial satellite images, smart phones, Google, you name it.”

Policymakers don’t control information like they used to, Zegart said. They have to find creative ways to harness new tools to understand security threats.

“Real world leaders are grappling with this new information universe, and we wanted Stanford students to grapple with it, too,” she said.

Keshav Dimri, a CISAC honors student who played the role of the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, said the students did indeed grapple with the rapidly changing data they were given during the simulation.

“The use of satellite images was definitely a challenge because it forced us to back up our political rhetoric with technical data,” said Dimri, a history major. “The use of satellite imagery required many of us to leave our political science comfort zones and examine, analyze and quickly react to new data – the sort of spontaneous thinking we might need in a real negotiation.”

In the end, Dimri persuaded the class the allegations about movement at Iran’s nuclear plant were unfounded. While not resolving all of the outstanding historical issues, the students passed a resolution that allowed Tehran and the rest of the world to move forward.

Stanford Law School Professor Allen Weiner plays the UN Secretary-General.

Stanford Law School Professor Allen Weiner plays the UN Secretary-General. Photo Credit: Rod Searcey

CISAC affiliate Anja Manuel argues in this blog post that for the U.S. government, the crucial issue at the upcoming meeting of the key parties to the conflict in Syria is determining if and how to intervene and provide support in a conflict where there may no longer be real "good guys" or supporters of U.S. national interests. 

The Obama administration says there is no doubt that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was responsible for a recent chemical weapons attack near Damascus, which Syrian opposition forces and human rights groups allege killed hundreds of civilians.

Secretary of State John Kerry called the attack a “moral obscenity” and the White House has vowed to respond – though the question of how is still under debate.

The Syrian government denies using nerve agents on its own people and has allowed U.N. weapons inspectors into the country to investigate.

As the U.S. weighs its options and rallies its allies for a possible military strike, Stanford scholars examine the intelligence and discuss the implications of military action against Syria. Those scholars are:

• Martha Crenshaw, one of the nation’s leading experts on terrorist organizations and a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
• Thomas Fingar, former chairman of the National Intelligence Council and currently the Oksenberg-Rohlen distinguished fellow at FSI
• Thomas Henriksen, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution specializing in U.S. foreign policy and author of the book, “America and the Rogue States”
• Anja Manuel a CISAC affiliate, co-founder and principal at RiceHadleyGates LLC, a strategic consulting firm, and lecturer in Stanford's International Policy Studies
• Allen S. Weiner, a CISAC affiliated faculty member and co-director of the Stanford Program in International Law at the Stanford Law School
• Amy Zegart, an intelligence specialist who is the CISAC co-director and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution

Does a military strike on Damascus risk further inflaming terrorists operating in Syria who hate the United States?

Crenshaw: I doubt that an American military response to the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons will make al-Qaida and affiliates hate us any more than they already do. The effect on wider public opinion in the Arab and Muslim worlds is what we should be thinking about. As the U.N. noted in a recent report, al-Qaida has a strong presence in Syria and is attracting outside recruits. The Al Nusrah Front in Syria is affiliated with the Iraqi al-Qaida branch. And Hezbollah's involvement has only intensified sectarian violence.

The three-year civil war has claimed some 100,000 lives and forced an estimated 1.9 million Syrians to flee their country, according to the U.N. Why is it taking President Obama so long to take a more assertive policy in Syria?

Manuel: There are no great policy options in Syria. The administration said several times that “stability” in Syria — even if that means a continuing, limited civil war — is more important than a decisive victory over President Bashar al-Assad.  The administration also believes that U.S. military intervention short of using ground troops is unlikely to lead to the creation of a new post-Assad regime that will be friendly to the United States.  Finally, the Obama administration is understandably hesitant to side with the rebel groups, which — in part due to U.S. unwillingness to actively assist moderate Syrian elements for the past two years — have become increasingly radicalized. Al Qaida-allied extremists now make up a growing segment of the rebel movement and some groups are reportedly creating “safe havens” within Syria and Iraq.

Listen to Manuel on public radio KQED Forum about whether U.S. should intervene. 

CISAC's Anja Manuel talks to Al Jazeera America about Syria: 

Have past U.S. intelligence failures made Obama skittish about taking a tougher stance against Syria?

Zegart: Iraq's shadow looms large over Syria. The intelligence community got the crucial WMD estimate wrong before the Iraq war and they absolutely don't want to get it wrong now. People often don't realize just how rare it is to find a smoking gun in intelligence. Information is almost always incomplete, contradictory and murky. Intentions – among governments, rebel groups, individuals – are often not known to the participants themselves and everyone is trying to deceive someone.

What is the intelligence gathering that goes into making the determination that nerve agents were used?

Fingar: The first challenge for the U.S. government is to determine whether and what kind of chemical agents were used. Chain-of-custody issues must be addressed to ensure that samples obtained are what they are claimed to be, and once samples have been obtained, what they are can be established with reasonably high confidence using standard laboratory and pathology techniques.

If it is determined that specific chemical agents were used in a specific place and time, then the next step is to determine who used the agents. Analysts would then search previously collected information to discover what is known about the agents in question, which groups were operating in the area, and whether we might have information germane to the specific incident. Policymakers must be informed about any analytical disagreements if they’re to make informed decisions about what to do in response to the incident.

Pressure on decision-makers to “do something” about Syria may influence their decisions, but it should not influence the judgments of intelligence analysts. If they are suspected of cherry-picking the facts and skewing judgments to fit pre-determined outcomes – they are worse than useless.

See Fingar's comments in The New York Times about the echoes of Iraq.

How do we know the Syrian opposition did not use nerve gas in an effort to provoke military intervention and aid their efforts to topple Assad?

Henriksen: Tracing the precise origin of gas weapons is not an exact forensic science.  It is conceivable that a rebel group staged a "black flag" operation of releasing a deadly gas to provoke a U.S. attack on the Assad regime.  But in this case, both Israeli and Jordanian intelligence reports appear to confirm U.S. identification of Assad as the perpetrator of the chemical attacks. 

If it's confirmed that Syria did use chemical weapons against it own people, is this a violation of the Geneva or Chemical Weapons Conventions?

Weiner:  A chemical weapons attack of the kind that's been described in the media certainly violates the laws of war. Syria, as it happens, is one of only a few countries in the world that is not a party to the Chemical Weapons Convention. Nevertheless, the prohibition on the use of chemical weapons in warfare is a longstanding rule. It is reflected in both the 1907 Hague Convention regulating the conduct of war and the 1925 Protocol for the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or Other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare. (Syria is a party to the 1925 Convention.) The use of a weapon like this also violates the prohibition in the 1977 Geneva Protocols and customary international law on indiscriminate attacks that are incapable of distinguishing between permissible military targets, on the one hand, and the prohibited targeting of civilians and civilian objects, on the other.

If Damascus has violated the conventions, are there non-military actions that can be taken?

Weiner: The illegal use of chemical weapons is a violation of a jus cogens norm, i.e., a duty owed to all states, which means states would have the right to respond to the breach. Such an attack would presumably be a basis for the unilateral imposition of sanctions or severance of relations with Syria. There's an open question under international law whether states not directly injured by Syria's actions could take "countermeasures" that would otherwise be illegal as a way of responding to Syria's illegal action. Under a traditional reading of international law, a violation like this does not give rise to the right by other states to use force against Syria absent an authorization under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter by the Security Council.

Are there legal means for Washington to bypass the Security Council, knowing that Russia and China would veto any call to action against Syria? 

Weiner: Under the U.N. Charter, a state may use force against another state without Security Council authorization only if it is the victim of an armed attack. Most commentators believe this has been expanded to include the right to use force against an imminent threat of attack. But under the prevailing reading of the U.N. Charter, a mere "threat" to U.S. national security would not provide a justification for the use of force.

But the Obama administration is arguing that Assad's actions pose a direct threat to U.S. national security?

Weiner: Some international lawyers – but not very many – argue that there is a right of humanitarian intervention under international law that would permit states to use force even without Security Council approval to stop widespread atrocities against its own population. But this remains a contested position, and most states, including the United States, have not to date embraced a legal right of humanitarian intervention.

What are some recent precedents in which the U.S. intervened militarily?

Weiner: The situation in Syria is not unlike the one faced in Kosovo in 1999, when a U.S.-led coalition did use force to stop atrocities that the Milosevic regime was committing against Kosovar Albanians. As part of its justification for the use of force, the United States cited the ongoing humanitarian crisis and the growing security threat to the region. What's interesting is that the U.S. was careful to characterize its use of force in Kosovo as "legitimate," rather than "legal."  I am among those observers who think that choice of words was intentional, and that the U.S. during the Kosovo campaign advanced a moral and political justification for a use of force that it recognized was technically unlawful.

How does one know when diplomacy has reached a dead-end and military intervention remains the only course of action?

Henriksen: It has become nearly reflexive in U.S. diplomacy that force is the last resort after painstaking applications of diplomacy. The Obama administration followed that arc dutifully with appeals and hoped that U.N. envoys could persuade Assad to step aside. In retrospect, it seems that U.S. intervention soon after the outbreak of widespread violence in the spring of 2011 would have been a better course of action. Now, Russia, China and Iran have entrenched their support of Damascus. And, importantly, Hezbollah has joined the fight.

Now, with Washington's "red line" crossed by Syria's use of chemical arms, America almost has to strike or lose all credibility in the Middle East and beyond.

Should we be concerned about getting pulled into another long and costly war? Or is there a way to get in, make our point, and get out?

Henriksen: The worry about stepping on a slippery slope into another war in the Middle East is of genuine concern.  Obama's intervention into Libya in early 2011 does provide a model for the use of limited American power. President Bill Clinton's handling of the 77-day air campaign during the Kosovo crisis in early 1999 provides an example of limited interventions. Both these interventions can be analyzed for their pluses and minuses to aid the White House in striking a balance.  But no two conflicts are ever exactly the same.

What is the endgame here?

Henriksen: American interest in the Syrian imbroglio are to check Iran, the most threatening power in the Middle East, and to curtail the conditions lending themselves to spawning further jihadists who will prey on Americans and their allies. At this juncture, it appears that the fragmentation of Syria will become permanent. It's fracturing like that of Yugoslavia in the 1990s and will result in several small states. One or more of these mini-states might possibly align with the United States; others could become Sunni countries with Salafist governments, and the rump state of Assad will stay tight with Iran. The fighting could subside, leaving a cold peace or the tiny countries could continue to destabilize the region. Any efforts that undercut al-Qaida franchises or aspirants are in American interests.

This conference focuses on empowering political activism in the Arab world, and features scholars and activists discussing the achievements of and challenges facing political activists in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia.