Today, Abbas Milani and Siegfried Hecker call on Iran’s leadership to abandon nuclear enrichment and to focus instead on furthering their civilian nuclear power program; H.R. McMaster debunks the resurgent myth that Iran’s 1953 coup was primarily the result of American intelligence agencies, suggesting that a “superficial understanding of history is often more misleading than complete ignorance”; and the Stanford Report profiles the recently launched Technology Policy Accelerator, a Hoover effort to offer informed perspectives on technological innovation to leaders in business and government as well as the public.
Conflict in the Middle East
Writing at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists website, Research Fellow Abbas Milani and Stanford emeritus professor of management science and engineering Siegfried S. Hecker argue that, “following the extensive Israeli bombing of Iran’s nuclear complex, supplemented by American attacks on the better-protected Iranian sites, the time has come for Iran’s leaders to reconsider their past intransigent, deceptive posture and instead pursue a nuclear power program that will benefit the Iranian people.” Milani, a leading authority on Iranian politics, and Hecker, a former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, review key historical moments that led to the current standoff over Iran’s nuclear program. Turning to the role of US policy, the authors conclude, “It is now important for President Trump to get Israel to stop the bombing and follow through with Iran to consummate a deal that will benefit the people of Iran and take a big step toward peace in the region.” Read more here.
In a post for his Substack History We Don’t Know, Senior Fellow H.R. McMaster notes how “US air strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities and President Donald Trump’s June 22 Truth Social post suggesting ‘regime change’ in Tehran revived the myth that the United States was primarily responsible for the 1953 coup that toppled Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq.” Examining the history by quoting a passage from his book Battlegrounds, McMaster shows that the role of western intelligence agencies in the coup has been exaggerated, and how the downfall of Mosaddeq depended primarily on domestic discontent. He suggests that “Iranian leaders’ hostility toward the United States, Israel, and their Arab neighbors is not the result of the 1953 coup,” but is rather “foundational to the regime’s revolutionary ideology.” McMaster concludes that today, like in 1953 and 1979, “any change in the nature of the Iranian government will come from Iranians.” Read more here.
Technology Policy Accelerator
The Stanford Report recently highlighted the Hoover Institution Technology Policy Accelerator (TPA), a bold initiative aimed at helping US government and business leaders navigate the rapidly evolving landscape of emerging technologies and their implications for national security, economic growth, and global leadership. The TPA’s mission is to support more informed policymaking by producing insights that clarify how emerging technologies are reshaping geopolitics, society, and the economy. It operates as a collaborative hub—connecting Silicon Valley and Washington, academia and industry, and science and strategy—to foster dialogue and advance understanding across sectors. Stanford’s location in Silicon Valley “gives us a unique ability to bring together the scientific community, the private sector, and the public sector to address the most pressing technological challenges and opportunities of our time,” said Condoleezza Rice, director of the Hoover Institution, at the TPA launch event on Monday, June 16. Read more here.
Answering Challenges to Advanced Economies
Did the opioid epidemic drive a political realignment from Democrats to Republicans? Yes, according to two economics professors, and they have evidence to support the claim. On the latest episode of Economics, Applied, Senior Fellow and Director of Research Steven J. Davis speaks with Carolina Arteaga (assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto) and Victoria Barone (assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame) about the US opioid epidemic. They discuss Purdue Pharma’s marketing strategy, its influence on physicians, and policy factors as drivers of the epidemic. Next, they consider economic consequences, the odd character of how the media covered the epidemic, the (slow) response of most politicians to a mounting tragedy, and how—over time—the opioid epidemic and its fallout drove a major political realignment in the United States. Watch or listen here.
Reforming K–12 Education
At Education Next, in a reprint of a piece published last month at The Washington Post Opinion page, Distinguished Research Fellow Macke Raymond and Senior Fellow Eric Hanushek raise “the disquieting fact” that in many school districts across the country, teacher salaries are “virtually unrelated to effectiveness in the classroom.” After highlighting successful performance-based pay reforms in Washington, DC, and Dallas, Raymond and Hanushek consider why more districts have not adopted similar changes. They suggest that the American school system “is both compliance-based and a fierce defender of existing personnel and operational structures.” More spending alone has not improved outcomes, so the authors call for “extensive changes” requiring “new thinking by the states, which already have considerable flexibility that has gone largely unused.” Above all, the piece argues for a reexamination and removal of “the constraints on performance that have grown to envelop our schools.” Read more here.
Related Commentary