Strategic Stability Reconsidered: Prospects for Escalation and Nuclear War in the Middle East Proliferation Papers, No. 26, Spring 2009

Unstable dynamics surrounding Iran's nuclear program may be pushing the world closer to the use of nuclear weapons than is generally realized - perhaps closer than any time since the Cuban missile crisis. This paper proposes a number of near- and longer-term scenarios to illustrate the ways in which structural uncertainties in the regional interstate bargaining framework could result in the use of nuclear weapons.