The U.S.-Iranian Relationship and the Future of International Order

This symposium will assess the nature of current U.S.-Iranian relations and explore how the two state’s strategic choices will affect the international order in the future. The launch point for the symposium will be the forthcoming publication of Going to Tehran by Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett, from which a number of related issues may be examined, including how current interpretations of the NPT will impact its future viability as well as U.S. policy on threshold states, and the effect that an Israeli or U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear targets, absent Security Council authorization, will have on the way other rising non-Western powers perceive the current institutional and legal frameworks governing the use of force.

This program will feature Vice Admiral James Houck, Professors Richard Butler, Daniel Joyner, Flynt Leverett, Hillary Mann Leverett, Mary Ellen O’Connell, and other distinguished scholars discussing the following:

• The Iranian Nuclear Issue, the End of the American Century, and the Future of International Order
• Panel I: Iran and the Future of Nuclear Nonproliferation
• Panel II: The Iranian Case and the Use of Force as a Constraint on State Behavior
• How Precipitous a Decline? U.S.-Iranian Relations and the Transition from American Primacy

The symposium is sponsored by the Penn State Journal of Law and International Affairs. 

This program has been approved by the Pennsylvania Continuing Legal Education Board for 4.5 hours of substantive law, practice, and procedure CLE credit and 0 hours of ethics, professionalism, and substance abuse CLE credit. (CLE credit is not available for the webcast.) Lunch will be provided.