15 September 2026

The United States, Iran and the Nuclear Question
A Conversation with Dr. Sina Azodi

Date: Monday, September 15, 2026
Time: 12:00–1:30 PM
Location: Gelman Library
NCLC
National Churchill Leadership Center
Room 104

Lunch: Andy’s Pizza lunch provided

RSVP: Non-GWU attendees: RSVP to events@winstonchurchill.org

Iran’s nuclear program remains one of the central challenges in contemporary international politics. In his new book, Dr. Sina Azodi, Assistant Professor of Middle East Politics and Director of the Middle East Studies MA Program at the Elliott School of International Affairs at GWU, traces the program’s evolution from early U.S. support in the 1950s through the rupture of the 1979 revolution and into today’s nuclear‑threshold reality. Drawing on newly declassified American records and rare Iranian sources, he reconstructs the debates and strategic choices that shaped Iran’s pursuit of nuclear capability and places this history within a longer arc that includes British involvement in Iran’s oil sector, Winston Churchill’s role in shaping early twentieth‑century policy, and the Anglo‑American participation in the 1953 Mossadegh coup. Azodi follows the major turning points from Iran’s initial enrichment efforts to the negotiation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the U.S. withdrawal, and current attempts to revive the agreement, concluding that the strategic logic behind Iran’s nuclear ambitions has remained consistent across regimes and that the long‑term challenge for the United States is managing a nuclear‑threshold Iran and keeping its capabilities as far from weaponization as possible.