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You don't have to be a diplomat, legislator, military strategist, or "James Bond type" to help curb the threat of a nuclear Iran, an activist told Rutgers University students looking to be the same.

About 25 students who met Feb. 24 for the opening meeting of Rutgers United Against Nuclear Iran (RUANI), the school's chapter of a nationwide campus movement, learned how they might be able to transform their opinions into action from David Ibsen, coalitions director and associate director of policy for New York-based United Against Nuclear Iran (UANI).

"What we can do, as private citizens, is extend some kind of economic pressure on the [Iranian] regime," Ibsen said.

In January, Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, in cooperation with the Israel on Campus Coalition (ICC), launched the Student Coalition Against Nuclear Iran (SCANI) to raise the sense of urgency around the Iranian threat on campuses. Avi Gilboa, one of the student organizers for RUANI, said the group is building coalitions with other campus organizations and will submit opinion pieces to the school newspaper (the Daily Targum) as well as try to get a resolution on Iran passed in the Rutgers University Senate.

Helping students grasp America's strong relationship with Israel and how Iran poses a threat to Israel's survival is a strong priority of RUANI, but the group won't initially stress that issue "outright" and will instead focus on a broader global perspective of the nuclear threat, Gilboa explained, adding that Israel is certainly part of that global picture.

Co-founded by U.S. Ambassadors Dennis Ross and Richard C. Holbrooke, UANI tries to educate individuals about the Iranian threat and then create tools they can use to take action, Ibsen said. UANI can't vote on economic sanctions like members of Congress, but instead the group raises awareness through an Iran Business Registry of more than 200 firms who reportedly work with Iran. The registry isn't intended to harm companies, but instead informs activists and investors about their decisions, Ibsen said.

It's not the images of Iranian citizens being brutalized that changes firms' behavior, but rather the potential loss of profits, Ibsen explained. If people don't even know certain firms are doing business with Iran, firms have nothing to fear, but "as soon as you kind of blow the whistle on them, shine a light," that situation changes, Ibsen said.

"We can send powerful messages to these companies and we can take direct action ourselves, as private citizens," he said.

Students, like UANI, also can't vote on economic sanctions, but grassroots movements have been effective on campus in the past for issues like South African apartheid, genocide in Darfur, and the rescuing of Soviet Jewry, Ibsen said. All of those episodes required advocacy outside of government on the part of students and other citizens, he said.

Through UANI-organized Web campaigns, billboards, and protests, the group convinced the chemical manufacturer Huntsman to stop selling polyurethane to Iran, and is currently focusing on doing the same with construction and mining equipment manufacturer Caterpillar, Ibsen said.

Last September, UANI outreach persuaded the Essex House, Helmsley Hotel, and Gotham Hall not to host Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he visited New York. That didn't stop Ahmadinejad from visiting, Ibsen said, but it did create a focal point for individuals to protest because "they knew where to find him" at InterContinental: The Barclay.

Over the last year or two, one can state with certainty that Iran will not cease its nuclear enrichment program, Ibsen said, especially considering that Iran rejected a "generous" international offer to send 75 percent of its known stockpile of low-enriched uranium to Russia and France, where it would have been processed and returned to Tehran for use in a reactor used to make medical isotopes.

The offer was not only generous but "dangerous," Ibsen said, because it would have enabled Iran to continue to enrich and only addressed the country's known nuclear material -- after all, a secret enrichment facility was later revealed at Qom.

In a question-and-answer period, one student asked Ibsen why Iran shouldn't have nuclear weapons if they feel they are entitled to them (with the student saying he asked the question "at the risk of sounding ignorant"). Ibsen said that for starters, it's a matter of international law because Iran signed on to a Non-Proliferation Treaty, but furthermore, the country's government is the world's leading sponsor of terror and has no regard for the human or political rights of its citizens.

"Are all states equal? I don't really know," Ibsen said. "Some states behave more responsibly than others."

Gilboa said he learned from Ibsen's presentation that "any individual can make a difference" when it comes to Iran.

"Every voice can be effective," Gilboa said.

Junior Tali Rasis, another organizer for RUANI, said she thought Ibsen gave students who didn't have strong background knowledge on the Iranian nuclear threat a better understanding of how serious the threat is. Now that those students are more educated on that topic, the next step for RUANI is to inspire activism, she said.

Rasis said that campus discourse on the Iranian nuclear threat was insufficient before RUANI was formed.

"As a student here, I really haven't heard about this subject at all at any other venue," she said.