Spotlight on International Experts and Senior Fellows

IISS Manama Dialogue Spotlight on International Experts and Senior Fellows:

Mark Fitzpatrick and Dr Chung Min Lee

In preparation for the forthcoming IISS Regional Security Summit, The Manama Dialogue, spotlights on IISS Senior Fellows and Experts will be distributed bi-weekly. The Manama Dialogue will be held in Bahrain from 11 to 13 December 2009.

This week, we are pleased to feature additionally Mr Mark Fitzpatrick and Dr Chung Min Lee. Mr Fitzpatrick and Dr Chung Min Lee are available for interviews now regarding The IISS Manama Dialogue. Please see below for information on these two gentleman and also to spend ‘1 Minute’ with each of them.  To request an interview with Dr Parasiliti or Mr Inkster, or receive accreditation to attend the Manama Dialogue security summit, email dialoguepress@iiss.org.

Additional information on The Manama Dialogue can be found at: http://www.iiss.org/conferences/the-iiss-regional-security-summit/

Mark Fitzpatrick

Senior Fellow for Non-proliferation 

Expertise: Non-proliferation and disarmament, Northeast Asia, South Asia and Iran, International Atomic Energy Agency, US foreign policy, nuclear energy

1 Minute with Mark Fitzpatrick:

The Iran nuclear issue, which I follow intently, will likely be on everyone’s mind at The IISS Manama Dialogue.  We will be approaching the end-of-year deadline that President Obama had earlier suggested as a rough deadline for knowing whether his engagement strategy with Iran would start to yield significant benefits.  There was an unusual atmosphere of optimism in early October, when Iran agreed in principle on a deal to send most of its accumulated stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia, in exchange for being supplied with further enriched uranium fuel for the Tehran Research Reactor. This one-off deal would not have been a solution to the Iranian nuclear crisis, but it would have been a useful confidence-building measure to reduce tensions and establish precedents that could have led to a longer-term solution. Iran’s later de facto rejection of the deal – reflecting internal turmoil in Tehran – means that tougher sanctions and possibly even military action is more likely. These ominous developments will affect almost all aspects of the discussions in Bahrain. I will be happy to offer journalists who cover the Dialogue my analysis of the Iranian nuclear situation and its impact on the region.

Read more about Mark Fitzpatrick

Dr Chung Min Lee

Adjunct Senior Fellow for Asian Security Affairs

Expertise: East Asian security policy, Inter-Korean security, regional arms transfers, crisis management, intelligence

My core expertise is most focused on Asian security affairs with an emphasis on:

• East Asian security policy and defense

• Inter-Korean security, including North Korean politics and security

• intra-regional arms transfers, defense technologies, and military doctrine

• and, crisis management and intelligence

With Singapore, China, Australia and Japan, as well as India, sending delegations to The Manama Dialogue, these issues are likely to be discussed in both the plenary sessions and break-out groups.

Insofar as The Manama Dialogue is concerned, I think participants from the Gulf could be interested in: political risk analysis of the Northeast Asian market, but with an emphasis on the two Koreas; mid to longer term projections of defense modernization schemes, budgets, and systems; and, baseline and off-line geopolitical and geo-economic scenarios. In particular, the Third Plenary Session on ‘Regional Security in a Geo-Economic Context’ on Saturday (12 December 2009) will address this issue head-on.

Read more about Dr Chung Min Lee