Biden's Return to Failed Policies in the Middle East | Michael Doran

everything we do at hillsdale college is guided by the founding documents of the college written in the 1840s and 1850s at a time of growing crisis in the country the founders of hillsdale college were grateful to god for the inestimable blessings of civil and religious liberty and intelligent piety in the land and they created the college to promulgate and protect those blessings today we are faced with a new crisis but we can learn from our founders example with gratitude to god for the liberty we have left we stand now firmly in opposition to the administrative state that seeks to will power all the powers of government and change human nature this regime also seeks as we have seen in the last few weeks to punish its opponents and sweep away any semblance of american republicanism or western classical thought now they say we are to move forward with historical progress be good global citizens and accept the decisions of our ruling elites at a time when our rights have been openly abrogated in the name of public health it is important to figure out what is truly dangerous and what is not hence this evening we are delighted to hear from an expert on the subject of the current administration's turn to bad foreign policy which could further endanger our rights as american citizens but expertise is not good enough as we know in fact as many of you here know expertise can be a hindrance to good education and good thinking in general he who seeks to educate his fellow citizens properly must also be prudent and wise our speaker tonight possesses such virtues michael duran is a senior fellow at the hudson institute where he specializes in middle east security issues he received his ba from stanford university and his ma and phd from princeton university i think that's the second and third best colleges behind hillsdale they're moving down on the list every day so uh he's also a senior fellow at the hudson institute where excuse me there's copied twice there he served he also served in the george w bush administration as a senior director in the national security council with responsibility for the entire middle east except iraq a former senior fellow at the brookings institution dr duran has taught at nyu princeton and the university of central florida he has written for numerous publications including the wall street journal the new york times the new york post usa today and the los angeles times he's the author of three books including pan-arabism before nasser egyptian power politics and the palestinian question and ike's gamble america's rise to dominance in the middle east please join me in welcoming dr duran well uh thanks to all of you for coming and thanks matt for that introduction i spoke uh i was like last year i guess at hillsdale and i i forgot how much i appreciated matt's ironic sense of humor but then matt also said that i think you said that i have possessed the prudence and wisdom but remember he's also very ironic so anyway it's a great pleasure to be here oh look at that it bounces do you see that it's kind of cool it's a great pleasure to be here and i'm going to talk to you about the biden administration's iran policy let me start out by just saying that we all know we live in a polarized age right now in our politics and increasingly our foreign policy debate is becoming uh part of our domestic debate in fact the national security advisor jake sullivan said uh just a few few months ago that we live in an age when domestic politics is foreign policy and foreign policy is domestic politics i think uh that's true in general but it's especially true with regard to the iran question and that's uh that's true for a lot of reasons but one reason is that the iran question is very much tied to the israel question and as we all know israel has become a very partisan issue in our uh in our politics there are now i think two pretty clear conceptions about how to deal with iran and i'm going to call them for the sake of discussion the the the democratic position and the republican position uh but that's a little bit it's a little bit crude uh because if you if you look at this closely or if you follow closely the way i have you know that there are actually um a fair number of uh republican foreign policy experts that are actually very sympathetic to the democratic what i'm calling the democratic conception and even a few democrats who are um who are more sympathetic to the re to the republican view but the the the center of gravity on either side pulls them apart so i think it's it makes sense as sort of ideal types to say democratic and republican let me let me start with the republican view uh actually before i do that let me just say there is a continuity running uh between them uh a a continuity of intention i would say uh they're they're seeking i think to uh the the two different conceptions are seeking to achieve the same goal and that goal is that to pull the united states back from the middle east three presidents have uh have been elected in a row from different parties very different conceptions who agree that we don't want to have another major war in the in the middle east we don't want large numbers of american troops uh on the ground in the middle east so we're going to pull back that's going to create something of a vacuum how do we how do we but we need to remain engaged in in the region i think if there's not a consensus there's still a sense there has been a sense among the all of the last three presidents that we have to remain engaged to some extent we don't want our enemies to completely fill the vacuum and so how do we stabilize the region and pull back at the same time and that's what these two conceptions two different conceptions are meant to uh to achieve stabilize the region while we pull back from it um the republican answer is that uh it is that iran is the primary threat to the united states to the u.s order on the ground in in the region and iran is working if not necessarily in an alliance at least in an alignment with china and russia with the intention of weakening weakening the american order expelling the united states eventually from the region and weakening america's uh america's allies so the republican answer is we we build up a coalition of uh of allies on the ground as we pull back we build up our allies and we and we create a coalition designed to achieve two major goals first to prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon and number two to uh to contain iran on the ground especially in places like iraq syria lebanon and and and yemen so multilateral containment and then we saw in the trump administration combined with massive economic sanctions designed to contain weaken and then also prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon the democratic conception is based on a radically different understanding of iran these are these are two different concepts of what iran is and they are they are basically irreconcilable the the republican assumption is that iran is a hegemon it has hegemonic aspirations yes it's weak yes it's weak i think everyone every expert on iran now recognizes that the regime has less support inside iran than ever than ever before its basis support is very narrow uh yet it still has in the republican conception an aspiration to expel the united states if not from the persian if not from the entire middle east at least from the uh from the persian gulf and to weaken its allies and it has developed techniques i call it the hezbollah model of building up uh building up proxies on the ground and distributing to it precision guided weaponry techniques that are very effective at undermining america and its allies in a in an asymmetric uh in an asymmetric fashion uh it is inveterately hostile to the united states uh and to its and to its order the democratic conception of iran is radically different iran in the democratic view is a defensive power it the the regime wants to stand wants to stay in power in iran yes and it's sitting on a volcano it knows it's sitting on a volcano it feels threatened by the united states and and its allies because of the aggressive actions that the united states and its allies are habitually taking toward it if the u.s and and and its allies would offer a hand in not necessarily friendship but at least in uh in an effort to seek a diplomatic solution to the major conflicts between them between us it would find a potential partner on the other side of uh if not a partner a an actor with whom it could reach accommodations that would serve the the american interest there is in this view a significant overlap in uh in interests between the united states and and the iranians for example this is this is the democratic view not mine not my view uh the united states and iran share an interest in stabilizing iraq the iranians are not especially interested in projecting power into yemen they have been they have been drawn into into yemen because of unwise policies by especially america's ally saudi arabia they're not necessarily seeking to in to entrench themselves in syria we could find an accommodation with the um with them if we work together with the russians uh you know in if we negotiate with the russians and with the iranians about the to limit the uh most threatening aspects of iranian behavior in syria um and and and so on and so forth basically diplomatic engagement if carried out um you know in a way that does not threaten the regime in tehran could lead to all kinds of benefits they we we share a hostility to radical supposedly to uh radical sunni extremism groups like isis and and and uh and al-qaeda so all of this can be unlocked if we will engage iran diplomatically now the the the the the democratic view then says well what's the biggest impediment to unlocking this these this the benefits of these shared interests the conflict over the iranian nuclear program so if we can first come to an agreement on the nuclear program and put that off to one side then we can unlock this larger potential for strategic accommodation with the iranians and of course when it comes to the nuclear program the republican view says that iran is iran is hell bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon the evidence is overwhelming that this is what they want look at the price they have paid to keep a hold of this of this program we can't actually solve that we can't actually solve that problem until we rest the nuclear program from the talons of the of the regime so those are the uh those are the those are the two conceptions and uh uh i think it's very obvious um if you've followed what what the biden administration has done since it came in that it is a complete believer in what i'm calling the democratic view the democratic view was developed by barack obama and his team joe biden has this the same team and he is seeking to complete what obama started and when when when you hear that phrase complete what obama started the first thing you think is the jcpoa the nuclear deal he's seeking to go back to the nuclear deal but actually the concept is much larger it's what i described to you a a strategic accommodation with iran across the board the goal the goal is to solve the the the goal is to stabilize the middle east so the united states can pull back from it and the problem is in the in the democratic view that america's allies in particular the israelis and the saudis are acting like a catapult that is throwing the united states at iran so what the a inappropriate strategy is to pull the united states away from its allies first cut a deal with the iran on the nuclear question and then work with iran to stabilize to yemen iraq syria and and lebanon now let me go through some components of this i i think our title hasn't hidden from anyone the fact that uh i am a complete believer in the republican uh concept of how to do this and a um and a total disbeliever in all of the assumptions of the uh um uh of the of the democratic view uh let me start with the uh with the jcpoa and some misconceptions about it now it's politically uh indefensible in american in the american domestic arena outside of the progressives it's indefensible to say the united states and iran share a lot of interests we should be working to reach an accommodation with iran and our allies israel and saudi arabia are the problem now the this is this is said in progressive circles and i can uh point you to articles by senior officials in the uh in the biden administration that either say it outright or make it clear that that's what they think without actually saying it but you can't stand up in congress and say that and joe biden won't ever give a speech a speech saying that so they have developed the blind demonstration has developed a rhetoric that says that the goal of their policy is to contain iran but when you actually follow what they're doing on the ground or in in particular as you see that to contain iran and to prevent it from getting a nuclear weapon but when you actually see what they're doing their their their policies cannot possibly achieve the goals that they are claiming they are claiming to to hold so you either have to conclude that they are deluded and confused or they're dishonest uh or perhaps disingenuous is a is a better word um and i think these are very smart people uh who are uh running the administration uh tony blinken jake sullivan and so forth this national security adviser jake sullivan anthony blinken the secretary of state they know exactly what they're doing and they know why they're saying the things that they're saying and the first thing that they know is that the jcpoa will not stop iran from getting a nuclear weapon uh it's it's simply not possible we don't need to go through all the all the reasons why um why that's the case there are many but the simplest way to make the point is that the jcpoa contains within it what we call the sunset clauses the restrictions that the the restrictions that the agreement places on the iranian nuclear program they evaporate over time by 2031 they're all gone all meaningful um all meaningful restrictions on the nuclear program end by 2031. many of them end even before 20 2031. some of them have already uh some of them have already ended um you cannot possibly lift all the sanctions by 2031 and prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon by 2031 iran will have an uh nuclear enrichment and reprocessing program of an industrial scale and it will have an international [Music] legal stamp of approval for that for that program so as i say i could go through many other aspects of the of the program which show you of the jcpoa which show you that it cannot possibly prevent them from having a nuclear weapon but what it can do is what i suggested before it can park it can park the nuclear program the or it can park the controversy over the nuclear program off to one side while also creating diplomatic channels with iran in order to start this process of uh of coming to a strategic accommodation with the iranians over other parts of the the region which is the goal the goal is to turn iran into a partner of sorts for for the united states based on this understanding that there are these shared interests which which the experts know exists but we can't talk about publicly because it's politically unacceptable uh in in the u.s the other the other thing that the that this program that this policy will not do is it will not contain iran on the ground it won't contain the militias that iran is arming training and equipping and equipping with precision guided weaponry that is becoming ever more sophisticated and the proof of that is again in the jcpoa because the jcpoa and the administration is openly dishonest about this and i'll say dishonest and not disingenuous the jcpoa lifts all sanctions on iran all meaningful sanctions on on on iran and so it gives iran the financial resources the economic resources in order to build up its uh its militias and the and the uh the administration wants to reduce the american military footprint further in the region and it wants to do so in in its open about this in with diplomatic engagement of of iran so the policy ends up being a legitimation of iran's positions the militia positions it has built up in iraq yemen and so forth again you see this very clearly in the way the united the united states the biden administration treated saudi arabia when it came into office it immediately launched a launched a campaign against uh a moral campaign against saudi arabia in general but specifically with respect to yemen lifting the sanctions on the houthis who are the proxy of the iranians and uh in yemen and claiming that by doing so we were going to create conditions that would allow us to to solve the conflict in uh in yemen uh and putting enormous pressure on saudi arabia to to pull out of uh of yemen so it the policy amounts to a de facto recognition of the iranian position in yemen while delegitimating the saudi uh the the the saudi position in yemen and blaming the war and the humanitarian and the humanitarian problems in in yemen entirely on the saudis without ever mentioning the iranian role whatsoever the the administration has developed the whole rhetoric that avoids discussing iran at all in in the context of of yemen and always talking in absolute moral terms about yemen how we need to stop the war uh in the killing and and so forth while while blaming the the the saudis so what this amounts to what this ends up being then is uh is a very significant realignment of the united states away from traditional allies and toward the iranians so we're kind of occupying a middle position now no longer the united states is no longer a under the mine demonstration is no longer the leader of a coalition designed to contain iran and its great power supporters china and and russia it's now taking up a middle position between its allies on the one hand and the iranians on the other recognizing the iranian position in a number of key areas while say while redefining the role of the u.s support for allies as support for their sovereign territory so we will give you resources to defend yourself against uh iranian and proxies when they attack you directly but we will not support you in your when you go beyond the the your borders into places like yemen or or syria to fight the uh the iranians in the case of the saudis the mind administration came down on them hard right at the beginning and now you've already seen the the ship in saudi policy there was a a couple of months ago a very well publicized interview on saudi television by muhammad bin salman the crown prince of saudi arabia the de facto ruler where he said i'm starting a dialogue with iran i want to see a successful iran we want we have friendly feelings toward iran and so forth these are not the deep seated feelings that mohammed bin salman has in his heart toward iran this is a capitulation to the biden administration by uh by by the saudis there's something similar going on in israel today israel is in an analogous situation to saudi arabia but its position is somewhat different because the united states cannot cannot come directly at the israelis with the kind of moral critique that it has come that is directed at the saudis because israel's popular among key constituencies even within the democratic party uh israel is popular and so the the my demonstration has to come at israel with more of a bank shot but the change of government in israel has made it easier for them to do that and the uh the new the lapid or bennett lapid i say lapid because i don't know how closely you're following all this but former prime minister netanyahu calls it the lapid government because the prime minister has been it but bennett is in in the eyes of netanyahu he's a right-wing traitor who's moved he's now legitimate he's now um uh helped the left wing and israel to come to power and he's given the the the the government a right-wing face uh and so uh netanyahu calls it the laped government instead of the bennett government so i find it funny it's real it's really funny it's a really funny joke anyway the uh uh the the i i fall into habit of calling it the lapid government myself the the the bennett the bennett government is saying that now um that the netanyahu government got too close to the republicans in washington made israel a political football in american politics and was unable to influence the american policy toward iran because it had so identified with the republicans but now lepid who's the foreign minister and and bennett they're going to be able to have more influence on the biden administration because they're not going to be as hostile to the to the administration to the administration's iran policy and they're going to find those areas of overlap between the israeli interest and the and the american interests and very much taking at face value the statements of the biden administration when it says it's going to prevent iran from getting a nuclear weapon and it's going to uh and it's going to contain iran on the uh on the ground uh but the the administration is never going to prevent um iran from getting a nuclear weapon for the reasons i said because of the sunset agreements the biden administration says no we're going to get a longer and stronger agreement so first we're going to go back to the jcpoa and then we're going to negotiate with the iranians for a longer and stronger agreement that's like me telling you you put your house up for sale for at 500 000 and i i i buy your house and we close the deal and then i say now i want to negotiate with you further um no i'm saying i did it wrong didn't i uh you uh you come and buy my house for 500 000 and you you buy it we end the sale and then i come to you and i say no actually i want to i want to negotiate some more and i want you to pay me another 500 000 and you'll say no i've already done the deal why should i do that that's basically what longer and stronger means because the the jcpoa hands the iranians everything they want and gives it to them with an international seal of approval ends all sanctions permanently there's no way to go to the iranians after you've done that and say okay let's negotiate a longer and stronger agreement well you will accept new restrictions on your on your nuclear program it's simply a slogan the biden administration is flashing in the eyes of people who either are not following closely or or who are not willing to admit what they're really what they're really up to unfortunately in the case of muhammad bin salman in saudi arabia i think he understands this perfectly and he's saying uh that you know we we we love iran we want to see a successful iran and so on because it's the price of maintaining decent relations with washington but he knows it's a lot of bunk in the case of the in in the case of the israeli left that's taken over i'm not actually convinced that they understand that the nonsense that they're speaking um and that's because they as happened in our politics where uh where uh everything became about donald trump so every problem you know your position on everything had to do with your position on trump the same kind of thing happened in israel over netanyahu uh and so if there if there's a problem in u.s iran u.s israeli relations a disagreement well then it's because of netanyahu so now that netanyahu's gone we can get over this problem with the americans but the israeli position and the amer and the biden position there's an inherent friction contradiction between them and i don't think that they ultimately are going to be able to settle this they may they may think they have for a while but that this is going to be a recurring problem because the iranians are right on the ira the israeli border in syria they're building their militias there they're transferring to the malicious precision guided weaponry which the israelis understand is directed at them they're going to take actions to do something about that that there's no way the biden administration can make that go away simply by making saying nice things about iran similarly i think the israeli elite security establishment understands what a threat to israel the iranian nuclear program is and over time it's going to see clearly that there is no longer and stronger agreement so that friction between israel and the biden administration is going to re-emerge and it's going to be significant it's something for us to to watch um a couple i'll just say a couple more words about the the um us uh iranian relations specifically and then we can open it up for for wider discussion i think that we are similarly going to see increased friction between the biden administer the biden administration and iran over time simply because i believe as i said at the outset that my view that is the republican view of iran is the correct view i do think it is hell-bent on on domination of the entire middle east i think it is hell-bent on a nuclear weapon and i think it is hell-bent on undermining america's allies in the region now we may see moments when it appears that that's not the case for example you might say to me right now well why why is it why is it that we haven't seen greater friction between the united states and uh and the iranian proxies in in in in iraq there's been some friction yes but how come how come there isn't greater friction and i would say that it's just a question of the moment uh right now with the negotiations over the the nuclear question the the the u.s and iran may come to an agreement about the uh about the jcpoa or they may or they may not they may come to an interim agreement and there'll be a little bit of good feeling for a few months but then some of these old some of these old tensions are going to uh are going to re-emerge i just don't think this accommodation that they believe is out there is going to is going to is going to actually manifest itself and the administration is going to have to come up with answers to the problems to the problems that arise it's going to have to come up with answers to the problems that the threat to the direct threat to saudi arabia that that iran represents from yemen and from other areas and it's going to have to come up with the answers to the growing cooperation between between china and iran and between russia and iran this is another area where i think that they have completely uh misread the map secretary of state blinken said when he was in anchorage meeting with his chinese counterpart that chinese interests in iran and american interests in iran are virtually the same i think this is completely false i think iran china is surreptitiously working to help build up iran in order in order to support it against the united states and also in order to exploit the tensions that the united states has created with its ally saudi arabia increasingly if you're saudi arabia and you see iran growing in strength you realize that the only party who can help you on the world stage is china or one of the major parties who can help you is china and not the united states the chinese understand this they build up iran over here and they push saudi arabia toward them in this direction these problems whether whether the administration has the proper conception in which to analyze these problems or not the problems are not going to go away and there's going to be friction with iran directly there's going to be friction between the united states and its uh and and its allies the administration may not ever come around to a complete understanding of why that is the case but it will not be it will not be able to sort of move on to this new stage of of um uh accommodation with iran and uh that would that would accommodate with iran that would allow it to pull back from the middle east as it as it wants to um one last point here and that is to what matt uh alluded at the in the in the introduction even as it sees even as it sees that its concepts don't fit reality i don't think the administration can adjust the concepts because the concepts are as much domestic politics domestic political concepts as they are foreign policy concepts and this is one of the things i think we need to focus on much more intently the story the administration is telling itself and telling its per especially its progressive base about the problems of the middle east is one that is tailor-made to appeal to progressives it says that it says that the conflict that we're having with iran is the result of our ally israel our ally israel's aggressive attitude toward iran is propelling us into a conflict that is against our against our own interests this plays extremely well in a in a progressive to a progressive base which doesn't like israel and which has always resented the close relationship between the united states and israel but not just israel also saudi arabia so those actors on the stage in the middle east that's benjamin netanyahu and mohammed bin salman who are actors whom the progressives are already predisposed to hate are are um to the progressives with their this policy gives the progressives new reasons to hate the people they hated already and and it turns america and oh not just not just the people on the international stage but also the domestic constituents for the republican foreign policy whom the progressives revile they are also seen as part of the problem so evangelicals uh neoconservative republicans are just republicans who want a muscular foreign policy or republicans in general their warmongering in concert with the warmongering of netanyahu and mohammed bin salman they're the ones that have caused the problems in the middle east and not the iranians so it sets up this cosmology where america and its allies are the party of war or the republicans i should say pardon me the republicans and their and america's traditional allies are the party of war and iran is the party not so much of peace but the object of diplomacy so it's in the diplomacy camp and that america's traditional allies are in the war camp and this is tailor-made for a progressive a progressive audience and it it's that it's that domestic political context the progressive context of this policy that's going to make it very hard for the administration to actually develop more healthy concepts that will allow it to read what's actually going on on the ground so i think we're in for a lot of friction and it's our job i say our job because i'm just assuming perhaps incorrectly that you're all largely in agreement with me i don't know but for those of you who are agreement in agreement with me it's our job to watch as these frictions develop and continue and to point out to the american electorate in general what's going on and why the administration isn't handling it correctly thank you [Applause] should should i field the questions then we've got some time for questions but you have to wait for the microphone because we're recording it so two microphones roaming around here just raise your hand in between questions having read your book on ike it seems like in some ways i did not plant this it seems like in some ways we're just repeating history as a sort of a long-term unreliable and inept ally so this gentleman i have no idea who he is but he is now one of my favorite people uh i i wrote i wrote a book on eisenhower which is available at bookstores everywhere on amazon and it told the story i actually uh i wrote it during the obama administration and i started writing it really just as a as a history and but as i was writing it i realized that that it was a historical argument that resonated with the contemporary events i tried not to push that too hard actually because i thought if i turned it into a uh you know into a policy a contemporary policy argument i would do damage to what i thought was a serious historical argument so i kind of just hinted at it at the end but i do think it's the same thing the the the story i told there without boring all of you well it won't bore you it's a scintillating read actually i so i don't so that i don't ruin the book for you i'll just say very uh uh very quickly eisenhower tried to stabilize the middle east in the 1950s by distancing the united states from israel and britain at the time and tried to turn nasser of egypt who was the soviet union's ally into the partner of the united states eisenhower uh who was an extremely intelligent and experienced guy in foreign policy unlike barack obama he was handed this he was handed this um strategy by the ex by the middle east experts he tried it he recognized it didn't work and he shifted his concepts that's what i argue in the uh in the book he wasn't saddled by any of the eisenhower was a realist through and through and he tried things when they didn't work he went on to new to new ideas he wasn't an ideologue which is what i think the people ruling this country now are and i think they have slotted the iran question into their into their ideology but they're drawing on they are drawing on undercurrents in our culture which have been there for a long time there there is a um i won't i won't uh i won't go on and on about this but the the key issue is israel and there has been a current in our culture for the last 100 150 years if not longer where part of our some people in our culture see um israel and the jews as uh if not natural allies i mean actually kind of extensions of america uh and then there are the people who see them as the opposite and so uh if i could um and that that has the the political groupings that have associated themselves with the israel is an asset to america as opposed to there's a there's a group that sees israel as a liability the political groupings have shifted over time when in eisenhower's day it was a it was a rockefeller republicans who saw israel as the great liability um and republicans in general were much more were much more wary of of israel than were were democrats over time that cultural current has shifted and it's now it's now associated with the progressives more than any other group although you still have some establishment republican types that that especially um some of the older uh people who who who kind of grew up in that eisenhower and that rockefeller republicanism who have that who have that view that's why it's not clearly the republican or the the democratic view um i i think this is a fascinating subject and i've actually written some other things about it i'll if you don't mind me being self-referential there's an article i wrote in first things magazine called um i don't remember what it's called if you own first things and you put duran in there the field something like the theology of american foreign policy that this is this is a i discuss this in there thank you for raising that uh yes sir my name is kami but i'm with the pakistani spectator and my question is would you call obama and trump both successful in their foreign policies toward middle east because despite uh bibinahu's best effort to push america against iran and start some kind of trouble with iran both of them were very successful not to have serious armed conflict with iran and about your republican versus democrat being a sunni muslim i shouldn't say this but this is fact historical fact that while so many muslims have been crazy they've been fighting war from the beginning the jews with christian you know right and left but given that iran never attacked any country don't you think that both again trump and obama were realistic that instead of fighting with iran and attacking them we should try to bring closer to america because it's given that iranians are a lot more cultured than middle eastern uh you know even though they are muslim but their muslim identity is not as strong as their iranian or personal identity so to me it's best for america to reconcile their difference with iran rather than you know going to bibinating policy and attacking iran so what do you think about this approach making some peace with iran rather than you know attacking them so you and i are in different schools of thought on this uh uh i i think that um obama's policy toward iran was very unsuccessful uh because i think he basically handed iran a very a pathway to a nuclear weapon and i think that iran i don't agree with you when you say iran has never attacked another country that's a that's a iranian line of uh it's a line of iranian propaganda which has a kind of surface truth to it because iran has a very weak regular army but iran has the revolutionary guards and it reaches into uh it reaches into neighboring countries and it builds up these militias um hezbollah in lebanon um and any number of different militias in in in iraq and syria and the houthis in in yemen and i would put you know in syria 500 000 people have been killed over 10 million have been driven from their homes could be even larger numbers than that i would blame iran uh first and foremost for that i mean the iranian method uh of the iranian method of uh of fighting the adversaries of the assad regime is the iranian russian method of fighting adversaries of the assad regime is to drop barrel bombs on civilians who are going to bakeries and to drop barrel bombs on um on on hospitals so i think that the the amount of just horrendous killing that has been done in syria is largely the result of the iranians so when i hear you say they have never attacked anyone i just don't i don't see it as true at all um uh i think trump's policy toward uh toward iran was not completely successful but i think it pointed the direction towards success maximum pressure that is massive economic sanctions combined with uh combined with clandestine covert efforts to sabotage the nuclear program carried out primarily by the israelis i suspect it may be the americans that hand in it too who knows combined with efforts to support allies to stop iran iranian forces on the ground uh was a was not completely successful but it was only in place in that form in all of those things combined for about 18 months so if we had another i mean we shut down we the united states we shut basically shut down the iranian economy and the obama administration told us that if we did that if we took such actions there would be war and not just war it would be war like george w bush's invasion of iraq that was totally disproved by uh by uh by donald trump so i agree with you trump was successful in that he avoided war with iran and at the same time he degraded iranian capabilities significantly i wish he'd had four more years to degrade them even more the iranians are very good the iran the islamic republic of iran is like a puffer fish it is it's not that dangerous but but it's able to make itself look very fearsome and it has developed certain techniques like with the revolutionary guard of building up these militias and so forth um that that make it look stronger than than it is uh you know donald trump killed cosmani that's the number two guy in the iranian regime on the org chart he's not number two but he was actually the second most powerful person in in iran iran couldn't do anything about it yes they made a show of fighting back against us but they but really they were deterred militarily uh donald trump shut down their oil exports basically brought the country to the country's economy to a grinding halt they couldn't do a thing about it because donald trump understood it's actually a a relatively weak third world country it's not in middle eastern terms it's a very significant country 80 million people it's it's stable and so on but the united states is a superpower and so he understood the basic power differential and he set up a policy that allowed us to uh to put pressure uh to put pressure on it a policy that disproved all of the claims of the obama administration about it so i think that was the that was the way to go the the obama the obama administration the biden's administration has come back and it's repeating all of the claims that the obama administration made in 2015 as if we didn't have this example in front of us and i've already gone on a rant here i'll just add one more thing he also trump also added another element here which was the abraham accords and he showed that you could move forward in um israeli arab peace in ways other than the power than going through the palestinian-israeli bilateral negotiations um and and that was a step toward saudi israeli uh if not peace at least understanding that's very valuable for relations between the united states and the muslim world jews in the muslim world the united states the muslim world the west and the muslim world and dubai demonstration has turned its back on that and it's building up iran which is rapacious abroad the iranian regime which is a patience abroad and completely illegitimate at home except the legitimacy it gets through threatening people with death so it makes no sense to me whatsoever [Applause] uh eric bordenkirche ucla mike what is the or what do you think the play for the bright administration should be if this these negotiations in vienna fall apart or the iranians decide they don't want to get back into the agreement and and just another thing too and i've been very surprised about this and the body administration has been rather mum about it is this issue of nuclear proliferation in the region and that the saudis are quite intent on pursuing those pursuing that agenda if the iranians do get the bomb which i think would further destabilize the region so uh thanks hello eric i know eric from twitter i've never met him in person uh the um with regard to your your second uh question or your or your comment the u.s policy before obama was to deny uh countries the complete fuel cycle uh that was our non-proliferation policy um and and it was just assumed by the entire non-proliferation community that that if iran got the complete fuel cycle which the jcpoa hands it that that would lead to a cascade of proliferation in the region i see no reason to i see no reason to doubt that thinking that was just the assumption of everyone prior to obama it's widely assumed correctly or incorrectly i don't know but widely assumed that saudi arabia has a nuclear weapon in escrow and pakistan and the minute that it has played a role in financing the pakistani nuclear program and that the minute iran gets a bomb saudi arabia will will import one from pakistan the turks are similar to japan and that they have a modern industrial economy and all of the capability they need you're sort of a one turn of the key away from developing their own nuclear weapon i don't know i'm not an expert on these questions i don't know how true that is are the turks are the turks once they make the decision are they one year from a nuclear bomb or is it five years whatever it is given the nature of their uh of their economy and their scientific community and uh and their their national capabilities i'm sure it's not very long and so the minute the iranian's going to bomb that the saudis will get one the turks will get one the egyptians will want one and then we'll have a multilateral nuclear standoff in the middle east which is a very ugly thought to think to think about um eric i forgot what your first question was what's the party administration's plan oh what they're gonna do they they may not get they may not get a jcp a return to the jcpoa they thought that when they came into power and they turned to the iranians and said let's go back to the jcpoa they thought the jcp the iranians would be crazy not to do it and that we'd be there in a flash uh but the iranians being iranians they're they're very good at negotiating and they they they they sensed the deep desire of the uh biden administration to return to the jcpoa so they said no no no no like you know a blushing bride no i don't know whether whether it's just pure theater and or negotiation to see how much concessions they can rent from the americans or whether they have made a strategic decision not to go back to the jcpoa i don't i do not know uh the bite and play what it what its play should be would be to go to trump maximum pressure it won't do that for all the reasons i said what it will do is it will uh it will develop a jcpoa process like like the like the israeli-palestinian peace process the the democrats are very good at this whenever there's an intractable attract intractable problem a problem that can't be solved you set up a process and you have lots of discussions about it so they'll what they'll do is they'll come to some kind of some kind of shaky arrangement with the iranians where okay we recognize that you're going to keep the iranians are insisting to keep certain advanced centrifuges that are not permitted by the jcpoa so the the by administration will say with a wink and a knot okay you can continue to run those advanced centrifuges but keep your stock piles at this level and then we will lift sanctions sort of kind of on these entities you know and it'll be this hazy understanding that none of us can quite uh that that is understood among the people who are doing the negotiations and those of us outside don't really understand and when we do understand and we say aha this is what you've done they'll say no we're not doing that what are you talking about you know we're we're trying to contain them and and they'll turn the fact that they have not gotten an agreement with the iranians into a sign that they're actually being really tough with the iranians but they're not okay for one about two years ago i keep on seeing a flip-flop strategy from the american administration sabotage just be covered oh i keep on seeing a good fox strategy from the american administration towards the syrian situation and the people that are paying the price for this are the formula people are now living intent to stay awake until the morning so they just take spiders off their children before they get bitten and i keep on seeing iran expanding and moving forward and making influences and making plans to stay in syria whereas it's supposed to be leaving syria and russia is supposed to be reserved and what i'm seeing is that white administration is using us the syrian people as a negotiation so in the name of my people what should we do oh uh well i sympathize i don't know that i can answer for you in the name of your people i i do think it is um it is a sad fact that the united states in general has never really had a syria policy and i i i would say that that was true even when i was irresponsible for syria in the white house i hate to admit that um it's always been a our syria policy has always been a function of our iran policy so we're we're we're more inclined but there's always a hesitancy to get involved in syria even even before even when it wasn't military involvement like when i was in the white house uh which was 2005-7 but we're more inclined to contain assad and to contain the iranians and the russians in syria when we're when we have a strong iran containment policy and when we when we don't uh when we have an iran accommodation policy then it's accommodate them in um in syria i mean i i assume you know this really quite well and i don't have a good answer for you except that we should have a strong containment policy sorry i can't solve the problem for you [Applause]

Channel: Hillsdale College

Views: 18,902

Keywords: hillsdale, politics, constitution, equality, liberty, freedom, free speech, lecture, learn, america

Id: 5aq8pZ_dZbw

Length: 59min 53sec (3593 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 27 2021