At 50, the Cuban Missile Crisis as guide

Abstract

In the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John Kennedy rejected the options of military attack and accepting Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, and crafted instead an imaginative alternative that avoided both war and nuclear arms in Cuba. The author argues that this “Kennedyesque third option” is an apt model to guide America’s policy towards Iran’s nuclear activities, where there is a similar need to avoid war and a nuclear-armed Iran. The path forward is a combination of agreements constraining Iran’s nuclear activities, transparency measures to encourage cooperation, unambiguous threats of regime change, and a pledge not to attack otherwise – AI-generated abstract.