Combating Nuclear Theft in Iranian and American (Federal) Laws

Nowadays, theft of nuclear material and devices to commit terrorist acts constitutes the most important nightmare for the international community. In this way, the activists of the international law system criminalized nuclear theft, to combat offenses related to nuclear technology, in the 1979 Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material. Considering the aforementioned instrument and the Convention on Nuclear Terrorism 2005, the terrorist and non-terrorist aspects of nuclear theft have been taken into account. the findings of this paper show that the Iranian legislature, despite the appropriate measures, such as the criminalization of not declaring the theft of radiation sources, has not still established a strong criminal policy, especially for nuclear theft in its terrorist aspect. nevertheless, the Federal legislature of the United States of America has criminalized nuclear theft in both terrorist and non-terrorist aspects. In this way, the accurate and narrow explanation of nuclear theft, establishing the proportion of criminal punishments, and recognizing the universal jurisdiction is an important framework that builds the United States criminal policy to combat nuclear theft. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the legal policy of Iran and the Federal of the United States of America tackling nuclear theft and also to introduce a deterrent criminal policy against nuclear theft.