Throughout the nuclear age – from the Manhattan Project to our own challenge of assessing with Iran’s nuclear program – the history of nuclear proliferation intelligence has been largely an history of failures. No doubt, intelligence about nuclear proliferation is a tricky business. And yet policy makers do need intelligence to make decisions on proliferation matters.

The seminar is both a study of one generis problem, and also a story of a history of that problem. Understanding the complexity of the problem defines our historical survey, while history will be also an aid to appreciate better the problem. In a way, the seminar’s overall interest is to narrate and revisit the history of nuclear proliferation from the perspective of problem of intelligence.

The course examines the problem of nuclear intelligence by revisiting key cases in the history of nuclear proliferation: Germany in World War II, the Soviet Union in the mid-late 1940s, the early NIEs on proliferation, Israel in the late 50s and the 1960s, India in 1974, Pakistan in the 1980s, South Africa in the late 1970s and 1980s, Iraq (twice) in the 1980s, India (second time) in 1998, and Iran today.