Iran and the major world powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, and Germany) have less than two weeks to come to a deal on Iran’s controversial nuclear program. As talks continue in Vienna, here’s your guide to everything you need to know about why the United States doesn’t want Iran to have nukes, whether or not a deal will be worked out, and what options remain if talks fail.

UPDATE: July 22, 2014

How long has Iran had a nuclear program?

Iran has had a nuclear program in some form since the 1950s. Oddly enough, the United States helped Iran lay the foundation for their programs with President Eisenhower’s Atoms For Peace initiative. Atoms For Peace exported nuclear materials, including highly enriched uranium. This program was merely for developing peaceful uses for nuclear energy around the globe. Eisenhower did not intend to develop a nuclear weapons system in Iran.

Iran’s nuclear energy program was supported by the United States in some capacity until the Islamic Revolution in 1979. Iran was then left without international support and continued to develop its nuclear program.

Iran has always insisted that its program is merely for energy, but the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the leaders of many Western nations have accused Iran of developing nuclear weapons.

Is Iran allowed to have nuclear weapons?

If Iran is making nuclear weapons, and most signs point to this being true, then it would be violating international law. Iran is a signatory, along with every country but North Korea, Pakistan, India, Israel, and the South Sudan, to the The Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). This treaty holds signatory nations to three main points:

1. The signatory nation must not create nuclear weapons.
2. Signatory nations must disarm themselves of all nuclear weapons.
3. All signatory nations have the right to use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

It is important to note that the NPT labels the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China as nuclear-weapons states. This means that they do not have to disarm. They only have to negotiate in good faith to work toward disarmament.

Iran often cites point three in its defense, while critics argue that the country is violating points one and two.

Here is a NATO overview of the NPT:

Why does the United States not want Iran to have nukes?

There are few reasons the United States does not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. The main reason is that the United States and Iran have not been on good terms in the past few decades.

In 1953, the CIA was involved in overthrowing Iran’s democratically elected government and replacing it with the Shah, a monarch who was friendly to the interests of the United States. The Iranian people remembered this when they overthrew this government during the Islamic Revolution. This, plus the fact that the United States took in the Shah after his exile from Iran, is why revolutionaries held diplomats hostage at the American embassy in Iran  for 444 days. Relations have been cold ever since. This video provides a more in-depth summary of U.S.-Iran relations:

There’s another big reason the United States does not want Iran to have nukes: Iran is geographically close to Israel, a close American ally. The Iranian government does not like Israel, and the Israeli government does not like Iran. For emphasis, these two countries really do not like each other. Israel’s nuclear arsenal is one of the worst kept secrets in international politics, and letting its  adversary also have nuclear weapons is a recipe for trouble.

A third concern is that Iran could spark a domino effect of sorts in the region. If Iran has nukes, then Saudi Arabia will want nukes, which will motivate another Middle Eastern country after another to get nukes until the Middle East, a rather unstable region, is covered in warheads.

How has America tried to stop Iran?

For now, the United States, and many other countries, has used economic sanctions to make Iran stop its nuclear problem. According to the State Department, these sanctions target the Iranian sectors of finance, transportation, shipping, energy, and more.

Why is Iran willing to talk now?

There are two reasons that Iran is willing to come to an agreement with the world’s powers.

First, the sanctions worked. The economic punishments vastly increased the average Iranian’s cost of living and increased Iran’s inflation rate to a staggering 40 percent. This can be mostly attributed to the American and European embargoes on Iranian oil. In 2012, when the sanction took effect in Europe, Iran’s exports dropped from 2.5 million barrels per day (bbl/d) to 1.53 bbl/d. The Rial (Iran’s currency) also collapsed, dropping by 80 percent between 2011 and 2012.

Second, Iran’s current President, Hassan Rouhani, is much more reasonable than the last one. You might remember former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the crazy guy who said he wanted to wipe Israel “off the map” and that there were no gay people in Iran. This was not a man who would be willing to negotiate with America. Rouhani, on the other hand, ran as a reformer and campaigned on working with the West to ease the sanctions that devastated Iran’s economy.

The President is not the most powerful actor in Iranian. That distinction goes to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Still, the fact that Khamenei allowed Rouhani to run and win shows that he is willing to negotiate.

What has already been agreed upon?

In November 2013, Iran and six world powers, including the United States, came to an interim agreement. Iran halted parts of its nuclear program and in return Western nations eased some of the sanctions. This was a six-month deal that halted progress at every nuclear facility in Iran, and also prevented the building additional facilities. The idea was that a more comprehensive deal would come about in six months.

Here is an ABC News report on how this deal played out in Iran and the United States:

There is debate over whether or not this deal was a good idea. Watch CNN’s Crossfire discuss the issue. The introduction is obnoxious, but the rhetorical arguments are an accurate representation of both sides of the issue:

Six months will be up on July 20 of this year. That means Iran and the world powers have less than two weeks to come to a comprehensive agreement. While the option to extend the deadline is on the table, American diplomats have stated that they are unlikely to support such an extension.

What is still left to agree upon?

The main sticking point for a comprehensive deal is the number of uranium enrichment centrifuges Iran will be allowed to maintain. Iran currently has 19,000 centrifuges. Western powers would like to see that number reduced to the low thousands, while Iran would like to someday have 50,000 centrifuges.

Centrifuges are not the only problem that negotiators will face over the next two weeks, however. While Iran has accepted tougher inspection requirements and limits on production of enriched uranium, the country does not want its ballistic missile system to be on the table. It also wants more sanctions to be removed and is not interested in dismantling nuclear facilities.

Iran will resume nuclear production and the world powers will resume crippling sanctions if the two sides cannot resolve these differences.

What should the United States do if talks fail?

Continuing sanctions without any chance of an agreement would be foolish. In 2003, Iran approached the Bush administration under crippling sanctions to discuss a deal. Bush passed, believing that the sanctions would just lead to the collapse of the regime. Iran had 164 centrifuges at that time, which has increased by more than 11,000 percent to its current cache of 19,000.

Sanctions alone will not deter Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. If talks do not work, military force seems to be the only option left.

Should the United States bomb Iran?

This debate is best personified by Matthew Kroenig and Colin H. Kahl, two contributors to Foreign Affairs. Watch them debate the issue here:

For those of you who do not have an hour of free time, here is a summary of their arguments:

Advocates of a surgical strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities argue that a nuclear Iran is unacceptable for America and its allies. A nuke would give Iran too much leverage in the region. Worse, Israel and Iran would be at constant odds without the safeguards that prevented nuclear war between the United States and Soviet Union. Kroenig claims that military action in Iran could be contained to just nuclear sites, involve few civilian casualties, and inspire little retaliation. As long as America assures Iran that it is only attacking nuclear facilities, Iran will react calmly.

Kahl argues that a surgical strike would be a disaster and that the United States should merely contain Iran as a nuclear power. Even if the strike succeeds, which is not a given, Kahl envisions a massive retaliation from Iran that includes closing the Strait of Hormuz, attacking American military forces in the Gulf, and providing lethal assistance to terrorist groups that the West is currently fighting throughout the region. Closing the Strait of Hormuz alone would send a shockwave through global markets, but Iranian attacks against American troops would be devastating. Plus, given how unstable the region is, there’s no telling what kind of violence this could cause in other Middle Eastern nations.

Even worse, Kahl does not believe that a military strike would deter Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon. Such a strike would only set the program back by a few years, and has the potential to rally Iranians around rebuilding. It’s not as if America can remove the knowledge of how to build nuclear weapons from the Iranian people.

Conclusion

Iran and the West have until July 20 to come to an agreement. If diplomats fail, Iran will continue to develop its nuclear program and the Western world will continue to cripple the country’s economy with strong sanctions.

UPDATE: July 22, 2014

On July 18, negotiators in Vienna agreed to extend the deadline by four months to November 24, 2014. Negotiators also agreed to extend the terms of the stop-gap agreement. Iran will still halt its nuclear program and the United States will continue to suspend sanctions. Iran and the world powers have made some progress but they are still struggling to agree on how large the country’s nuclear program should be.

Resources

Primary

State Department: Iran Sanctions

Energy Information Administration: Energy Information Administration on the Iranian economy

Additional

Reuters: U.N. Nuclear Watchdog Rebukes Iran

Cold War: CIA Overthrows Iranian Democracy

CNN: Facts About the Iranian Hostage Crisis

NPR: Iran’s Economy Key in Nuclear Deal

Economist: A Red Line and a Reeling Rial

LA Times: U.S. Threatens to End Iran Nuclear Talks

Foreign Affairs: Not Time to Attack Iran

CNN: Final Talks Before Deadline Begin

CNN: What Critics Are Getting Wrong About the Iran Deal

Foreign Affairs: Time to Attack Iran

Eric Essagof

Eric Essagof attended The George Washington University majoring in Political Science. He writes about how decisions made in DC impact the rest of the country. He is a Twitter addict, hip-hop fan, and intramural sports referee in his spare time. Contact Eric at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Between laptops, cellphones, tablets, and iPads, students have more access to technology than ever before, and this comes with numerous benefits — but it also comes with a lot of responsibility. Apps that allow anonymous users, such as the social networking app Yik Yak, are accused of creating more harm than good. Do these anonymous apps make cyberbullying easier?

What is Yik Yak?

Yik Yak was founded by two Kappa Alpha fraternity brothers, Brooks Buffington and Tyler Droll, at Furman University. The app was first released November 7, 2013. Yik Yak allows users to anonymously post to a community bulletin board, much like an anonymous college Twitter feed. Posts are text only and limited to 200 characters. The catch is that posts can only be read by those within a 1.5-mile radius of the person who posted. Users can reply to posts and then vote — an upvote expresses approval and a downvote conveys the opposite. Eventually posts with enough downvotes will disappear from the feed altogether.

Yik Yak is the first app to allow hyperlocal communication while retaining user privacy. The app claims the only information they will ever require is a user’s location. Yik Yak is used for telling jokes, sharing events, providing commentary, and relaying funny sightings. It initially gained popularity on Southern campuses and has spread by word of mouth to 250 campuses nationwide. According to Business Insider, the app is used by nearly 80 percent of the student body at smaller schools. The founders’ goal is to create a local community that keeps everyone, rather than just a select few, informed. In an interview with the Boston Globe, Droll said:

“We saw on our college campus that only a few people really had a voice. They’re the people with big Twitter accounts, maybe student athletes, who had thousands of followers. My thought was why can’t everyone have this power?”

While founders liken it to a campus bulletin board, critics contend that the app is more like a bathroom stall door where vicious rumors are spread. On June 30, 2014, Yik Yak got a huge boost in the form of a $10 million investment from DCM, Azure Capital Partners, and others. The funding will be used to hire new employees, improve the app on Android and iOS, and increase marketing efforts. Other investors have been wary due to concerns that the app does more harm than good.

So what’s the problem with Yik Yak?

The majority of messages on the site are positive; however, the ones that are hurtful can be horrific. Cruel comments spread quickly, even if the post is eventually removed. While the app was intended for college students, it has naturally spread to younger teens who use it to bully and spread rumors. Yik Yak does not require any potentially identifying information to sign up, including any pseudonym or avatar, and there is no way for users to see a thread of someone’s past yaks. Many users simply think what they post on the app is untraceable. Other similar apps, such as “Whisper” and “Secret” share anonymous posts with other users and have the potential for abuse. However, Yik Yak has more downloads than both of these apps combined and typically hits schools like a hurricane — even after one day of popularity, the app’s damage is done.

Yik Yak posts community guidelines, but the nature of the site makes it difficult to consistently and immediately enforce these rules. Following abuse of the app by younger teens, Yik Yak moved to ensure the app is only used by those 17 years and older. According to Yik Yak, users agree not to:

• “Transmit any pornographic, obscene, offensive, threatening, harassing, libelous, hate-oriented, harmful, defamatory, racist, illegal, or otherwise objectionable material or content;”
• “Transmit or encourage the transmission of unlawful, harassing, libelous, abusive, threatening, harmful, vulgar, obscene, or otherwise objectionable material of any kind or nature”

Ultimately, it is users who are left to police the app. Users can flag negative posts that they deem offensive. If two or more users flag a post, it is removed from the site. Alternately, users can send a picture of an offensive post to Yik Yak, and it will immediately be removed. Posts which contain names or phone numbers are removed. Yik Yak can terminate accounts of those who violate the terms and conditions, but not before the damage is done. Watch some of the controversy surrounding the app below:

How has the app been abused?

Most abuse of the app has come from high school students, but college students are guilty too.

Rumors

New York Magazine chronicled the rapid spread of Yik Yak at Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut. Nasty comments forced many students to leave school in tears. No one was safe from the anonymous racist, homophobic, sexist messages that spread through the school in hours.  A sampling of the tamer posts includes comments like the following: “The fact that O.P has diabetes makes me happy;” “Nobody is taking H. to prom because nobody has a forklift;” “S.D. + 10 years = trailer park;” and “J.N. is a fag.”

Criminal Activity

The disruption at Staples High School was not an isolated incident. Marblehead High School in Massachusetts was twice evacuated due to bomb threats posted on Yik Yak. Students in California and Alabama have already been charged for making terroristic threats via Yik Yak. Users think they are completely anonymous.; however, authorities can track the address of the user and obtain their cell phone number from Yik Yak when necessary. While criminal posts are investigated, the everyday, hurtful posts are not. Watch some of the issues with Yik Yak below:

Offensive Jokes

Most recently, the app has been used by Wall Street interns to bash Goldman Sachs. Some of the posts are funny and innocent, “Goldman interns wear sandals with socks” and “GS interns eat lunchables.” However, other posts are more offensive: “God hates fags and GS interns.”

What is being done to address cyberbullying on Yik Yak?

Bullies once used the playground. Now, cell phones can taunt from afar, and apps are the new breeding ground for bullying. Cyberbullying is defined as harassing or making fun of someone online or while using a cell phone or other electronic device. According to the Cyberbullying Research Center, roughly 25 percent of high school and middle school students report being cyberbullied at some point. Seventy percent of students report frequently seeing bullying online. Bullying can have extreme consequences, including low self-esteem, suicidal thoughts, anger, frustration, withdrawal, and antisocial behavior. And It does not end at high school — almost 20 percent of college students report being cyberbullied in their college careers. The disguise of anonymity on online apps makes it significantly easier for bullies to feel free to say anything they want without repercussions. Listen below to some of the bullying on Yik Yak at Boston College:

Yik Yak’s founders claim they did not expect the app to be so popular with younger users who are more likely to cyberbully. The pair do not believe high schoolers are psychologically ready for the app and have taken measures to limit use by younger teens. Technically, users must be 17 and over, but most teens ignore the restriction. School districts in Chicago faced significant problems with the app, leading Yik Yak to remove it from the Chicago area for a short time. Some Chicago school districts even sent letters home to parents about the growing problem.

Yik Yak now geo-fences high school and middle schools through a third party. The app uses GPS to detect when a user is inside a school building and will prevent anyone from posting from that location. Restricted service is in place at approximately 130,000 schools across the country.  While access may be prevented at school, students can still go home and post on Yik Yak.

What more can be done?

The anonymity of apps like Yik Yak make it extremely difficult for schools or anyone else to crack down on inappropriate use. Schools may be able to monitor social media accounts and discipline harmful behavior, but Yik Yak allows users to remain completely anonymous. When used responsibly, Yik Yak maintains that “anonymity is a beautiful thing.” There are no repercussions for mean posts, but vicious rumors spread faster than they can be taken down.

The App’s Responsibility

At some level, the app must take appropriate measures to ensure it is not being used in a harmful manner. Yik Yak declares it is not responsible for offensive or objectionable content. Further, Yik Yak relies on its users to monitor content. The app could take more responsibility by using a filter and automatically flagging certain offensive words that would require further approval from administrators. The Yik Yak site declares it reserves the right to monitor disputes and disable accounts. Critics contend that Yik Yak should have the obligation rather than right to fulfill those roles. Many also argue for greater repercussions for the app’s rule violators.

Role of Parents

It is also unreasonable to expect an app to constantly monitor user-generated content. Parental involvement is necessary to monitor minors’ access to technology. Parents should strive to set guidelines, implement controls, and be knowledgeable about the technology their children are using. It is nearly impossible to monitor all of a child’s technology and social media activity. Instead, experts argue parents should have honest conversations about expectations and responsible behavior even on anonymous apps. By the time a child is in college, there is little more a parent can do to try to prevent bullying. Watch what parents need to know below:

Conclusion

Ultimately an app like Yik Yak is only part of the problem. Dozens of apps like Whisper, Snapchat, Vine, ask.fm, and JuicyCampus have the potential for abuse and bullying. The elimination of Yik Yak would not stop cyberbullying altogether. Students must be educated about the effects of cyberbullying and make the decision to behave responsibly despite the lure of anonymity.

Resources

Primary

Yik Yak: App

Cyberbullying Research Center: Home

Sage: Cyberbullying in College

Additional

Business Insider: Yik Yak, a 7-Month-Old School Gossip App

Wall Street Journal: Yik Yak Raises $10 Million

New York Magazine: A Gossip App Brought My High School to a Halt

Venture Beat: Anonymous Messaging App Yik Yak Grabs $10M

Fox News: Psychiatrist’s View: Yik Yak is the Most Dangerous App I’ve Ever Seen

Huffington Post: Yik Yak Makers do the Right Thing

The Breeze JMU: Yik Yak is an Invasion of Privacy

Chicago Now: The Real Problems With Yik Yak

NY Daily News: Student Monitoring: Cyberbullying Leads LA-area School District to Spy

Business Insider: Here’s What You Need to Know About Yik Yak

ACLU: Social Networking, Your Privacy Rights Explained

DISTIMO: Anonymous Sharing Apps

Chicago Tribune: Students Urged to Delete Controversial Social App

New York Magazine: NYU Students are Mocking Goldman Sachs Interns on Yik Yak

Alexandra Stembaugh

Alexandra Stembaugh graduated from the University of Notre Dame studying Economics and English. She plans to go on to law school in the future. Her interests include economic policy, criminal justice, and political dramas. Contact Alexandra at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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