Good evening, thank you for coming. I'm Mark Rozell, I serve as Dean
of the Schar School of Policy and Government here at
George Mason University. And we host the Hayden Center
on Intelligence policy and international security. It is one of a number of research
active centers at the Schar School. I hope those of you who have not been
to our programs in the past will keep in touch with us,
look up our programs, see many of the activities that we have
going on here at the Schar School. Distinguished speakers, forums, conferences, candidate debates
in election years, and the like. Absolutely delighted to
welcome you here tonight for this distinguished speaker program,
discussion program, I should say. And very pleased that Mike Hayden
has given his time and energy, now for nine years, right Mike,
at George Mason University. He's been on our faculty since 2009
teaching courses in security studies. And our newest graduate program, by the
way, is international security studies, and it's become quickly our fastest
growing program in academic enrollment. So I think we're becoming
a leader in this field. The Hayden Center is a very big part
of that, and I welcome you to come and join our various programs here at
the Schar School on security studies, but also in a wide variety of public policy issues where we sponsor and
hold a number of events and programs. And so with that,
I would like to introduce Larry Pfeiffer. Larry is the director of
the Hayden Center, and he will introduce Mike Hayden and
our program. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
Thank you very much, Mark. Appreciate that. Again, welcome to
the Michael V Hayden Center for Intelligence Policy in
International Security. This is just the second of
the events that we've held. We had our first event at the end of
October down at the National Press Club. Some of you I see and
recognize having attended. Those who weren't able to attend, the video of that event is available
on our website and also out on YouTube. Just search Hayden Center Inaugural Event
and you'll quickly find it, and I believe you'll enjoy it as well. The Hayden Center has just been around,
beginning really, with this semester. This is the first of what we're referring
to as our policy series of discussions. The policy series will focus in on
more topical issues of the day and we'll be bringing experts to you from
across academia, government, and industry at different events in
order to address these issues, make observations, and
perhaps make recommendations. We are having two more marquee events
that are on our schedule at the moment. There's one in early April that
will have General Hayden having a conversation with Dr. AC Grayling. He is a philosophy professor from the
United Kingdom who has written a lot and spoken a lot about democracy, the
enlightenment, war, topics such as that. Our second marquee event is
still being penciled out, but we're hoping in late April or mid April to bring you an event that
involves the television show Homeland. And the topic of discussion will
be espionage and popular culture. The Hayden Center wouldn't be an event
if we didn't hawk our social media. The Hayden Center is
available on social media. We have Twitter site,
we've got a Facebook site and we've got a very static LinkedIn site for
those who are interested in following, everybody loves followers, so if you're
not following us, I'd love you to do it. You can find us on Twitter and Facebook at
the handle mvhaydencenter, all together. And if you would like to
tweet tonight's event, I'd ask you to either tweet
it with that handle or tweet it with the hashtag #haydeniran,
H-A-Y-D-E-N-I-R-A-N. Later on, we're gonna have a questions and
answer session. When that occurs, I'd ask you all
to line up at the microphones and General Hayden will just
alternate between the sides. We figure that's better than trying to
run and pass the microphone around. We'll make you guys do
a little bit of work. At the end of the event, we're gonna
have little reception afterwards, so for those of you who can stay, we'd encourage
you to do that, give you an opportunity to maybe chat a little more informally with
General Hayden and our special guest. The event tonight is Iran. In 1973, my father, who was a Major in the United States Army,
worked in air defense issues. He came home, we were living in El Paso,
Texas, and he came home and said he got new orders and
we were going to a place called Iran. And he took the family, and
we went to the local library to find books on Iran to find in
God's name where we were going. And there were only two books in the El
Paso public library on Iran in 1973. A lot has obviously changed since then,
we did live in Iran from 73 to 76. It was a fascinating time to be there. It was obviously the time
during the reign of the Shah. Towards the end of that period,
we did have the opportunity to enjoy Iran. I will tell you Iran is a vibrant
culture with an incredible history. They have wonderful food, wonderful art,
wonderful science, wonderful technology, and their history goes back thousands
of years, as most of you here know. But even in the time we
were living in Iran, a lot of contradictions were developing. We had American military officers
assassinated while we were there, my father then was assigned a bodyguard
from the Iranian secret police. And he had to dress in a business suit
instead of his military uniform every day going to work. So it made life a little interesting for
the last year or two we were there. And then obviously, shortly after we left,
the revolution occurred. We had a lot of friends who lost all their
worldly possessions, lost pets, lost cars, and really, Iran, at that point in time, just began to dominate our foreign
policy and our national security issues. Today, there's almost no
national security topic or intelligence target that
is untouched by Iran. As you'll hear tonight, from our guests,
if you talk Iraq, if you talk Syria, Afghanistan, Yemen, Lebanon, Israel. If you talk counterproliferation,
be it nuke, be it missiles, be it chemical, biological weapons. If you talk energy,
energy security issues. If you talk hostages,
if you talk internal unrest, domestic unrest in Iran and
any of the countries surrounding Iran. And obviously, a big topic in
Washington these days is cyber, and Iran's a major player
in that area as well. Tonight we have two of the world's
greatest experts to come and discuss this with each other and with you. We have General Michael Hayden, who
really needs virtually no introduction. But for the two people in the room
that maybe don't know who he is, General Hayden was a former
director of both CIA and NSA. And more recently is a highly sought-after
commentator on issues of the day. He's a CNN national security analyst. He appears on CNN exclusively. He's the author of one book, Playing to
the Edge, that if you have not read it, it is one of the best books
out there on intelligence. And how it plays with national
security in this age we live in today. And he's in the throes of working on
a second book that will be addressing the issue of evidence based
institutions in a post-truth world, and how they can operate. So please look for
that coming in May, I believe. Norm Roule, he is a 34 year veteran of
the United States Intelligence Community. He has managed many, many programs
relating to the Middle East and Iran, most specifically. Most recently he served as
the National Intelligence Manager for Iran at the office of the Director
of National Intelligence. What does that mean? That means Norm was the guy in the intel
community for the subject of Iran. He led and oversaw all the analytic and
operational programs in the United States Intelligence
Community that had to deal with Iran. He advised three presidents and
many national security advisers and homeland security advisers on Iran. He attended meetings with the President
where the toughest decisions about Iran were being made. And only recently retired
from government in October. So with that,
I would like to welcome General Hayden and Norm Roule to the stage. Thank you. [APPLAUSE] Evening everyone, thank you for coming. Norm, there you go. And Norm we've put a couple maps up here
in case you wanna refer to them as we go through things. If I lose my way somebody
just say left or right. [LAUGH]
So, and let me add a little bit
to Larry's introduction. In the Bush administration,
we only had three topics, counter terrorism,
counter proliferation and everything else. All right, and there was nothing
in the everything else that was so prominent that I could tell
you there was a number three. And as we went further
in the administration, proliferation became a bigger and
bigger slice. You had North Korea and we had Iran. I can say, Norm,
about 70% of our energy at that time, this is 06, 07, 08, was on Iran. And we decided at the agency,
when the agency is told to focus, what it generally does is it goes
extra organizational, all right? It doesn't let the normal processes work. And in this case what you do is you
take the operator guys and gals, and you take the endless guys and
gals, and the science and tech, and
you put them all together in one team. And you task organize, for focus. And that extraordinary organization
gives you extraordinary energy, and you're off in much more success. We did that, 07 I think. And I picked Norm to be the head of
the Iranian Operations Division. So that was the task. He headed CIA before he went into
the larger community management task that Larry talked to you about, the
National Intelligence Manager for Iran. It's kind of a case
officer's case officer. There's a thing in DC for
brigadier generals, brand new brigadiers, called Capstone. I'm seeing some military veterans
kind of nodding here in the audience. It's about a six week course,
and for ten days or so the spouses come and
get some of the acclimation. And one of their visits is CIA. And my wife Janine who's here in
the front row would then host the spouses of the brand new brigadiers in the Army,
Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. And we always, as part of the CIA tour, had them
talk to an experienced case officer. And Norm was always that person. And I still remember the tale that
Norm would tell to the class, that you really work hard as a case
officer, you do what you have to do. And so what you wanna do is bring
in people you want to influence or to learn from, and bring them into
the broader family environment. And there's no better American
holiday to do that than Thanksgiving. [LAUGH]
Okay? And so Norm would tell certain people with
whom he wanted to build a relationship, Thanksgiving other than Christmas,
it's the American holiday. You must come to my home. And Americans, unusually,
on Thanksgiving eat the big meal at noon. Then he'd go to another set of
people he wanted to influence and learn from, Thanksgiving,
second only to Christmas. And Americans on this
day eat at four o'clock. [LAUGH]
And then he would go to the third group and say, he's nodding he
knows this is a true story. He would go to the third group and say this is the one meal where
Americans eat like Europeans. We start late. Come at eight. [LAUGH]
My children didn't know you only ate one big meal on a holiday. [LAUGH]
Until they were in their teens, and they were astonished that you didn't
have three turkeys on Thanksgiving. [LAUGH]
So let's just jump in and let me invite you to follow up
a little bit where Larry left off. Tell me about Iran. What do you want these folks to know about
Iran before we get into the particulars? Well when you look at Iran, we tend to characterize our view of Iran
through the 1979 hostage experience. And that's certainly a searing
experience for the American people. But, if you pulled the thread of history
just a little more, you would see that it's really an extraordinary relationship
between the United States and the Iranians. A little more than 100 years ago, the treasurer of the country of Iran
was an American, Morgan Shuster. Asked by the Iranian government to
come to Iran to fix their finances, because they thought the British and
the Russians were stealing them blind. And the answer was, yes they were, and
Morgan Shuster was thrown out after a year and a half to write a book called,
The Strangling of Persia. There is another American by
the name of Howard Baskerville who died around the same
time fighting with Azeris to defend freedom in Iran during
their Constitutional revolution. And a burst for Baskerville
still sits in the Tabriz Museum. Until 1953,
America was the good guy for Iranians. We kept Stalin from absorbing
most of the country. We kept the Russians
from taking over Tehran. And then you had the 1953
coup with the Shah. And history, as I was remarking with some
of the attendees, history is now showing that file, which I used to keep in the
safe in my office, is now becoming public. It's showing that there were Iranians who
weren't thrilled with Mosaddegh either and that revolution might not have
succeeded had it not been for that lack of popularity. But that certainly tainted America in
the eyes of the Iranians going forward. I think if you look at this right now, that means in my mother's lifetime,
we were the greatest friends with Iran. And it didn't have to do with the Shah. It makes you think we
could go back there again. But it's a great country, I've had many
Iranian friends, Persian Americans, extraordinary friends. As well as Iranians who have done
some rather heroic things for the US government and for
their own country in Iran itself. So I would say it's a great country,
extraordinary history, magnificent culture, and a nation where
we should be the best of friends, had it not been for the Islamic regime. When you came into the office and
we'd have meetings, with you, some members of your team, myself,
Steve Kappes, the Deputy Director. More than once, we would say,
at the level of people in culture, the most pro-American society between
Marrakesh and Bangladesh was Iran. Sometimes that has indeed
been the perception, yes. So you picked 53 as kind
of an inflection point? Let's go to 79, Tom Freeman writes that
there are three massive events in 79 that shaped the world we're in,
particularly the Middle East. Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the
occupation of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, and the Iranian Revolution. Was the result of that
revolution foreordained? Was it always going to end up
the way it did with the theocracy? Because there was a lot of toing and
froing there for a year or two. So let's dive into that. First, I'm not sure there's any revolution
that has an outcome that is foredained. And that means that this could have
gone in a number of directions, but you had your Iran Iraq war, which very
soon [CROSSTALK] after, very soon after. And the Iranians were certainly
the weak party, that's that began. And the victim. And the victim. Although they did prod, they did do
their best to prod Saddam Hussein, a very evil character but they did
their best to prod, prod him as well. I think about a couple of things
that happened all at once, a regime that basically
ate its own very quickly. So you had those members of the regime who
were leftists, those members of the regime who were centrists, those who had
a different view of the regime could go, they tended to disappear fairly quickly. You had a tremendous amount of violence. When you think of the Mujahideen hull,
which is now seen as the most, a vociferous of opposition for
the Iranians. They were at one time,
partners with the Iranian regime, and things broke apart very quickly. When you think of terrorism,
you think of Iran, you don't think of the amount
of terrorism that Iran endured. They lost a president due to a bomb,
to explosion. Khamenei himself, has a right arm that's in terrific pain because of
a tape recorder that exploded, right? After he was giving a speech on women's
rights in a Mosque, in a terrorist attack. So this cauldron,
this maelstrom of political heat and violence, took the regime in
a direction where the theocracy, an autocratic theocracy, became more and
more certain, but I wanna add something. There is something in Persian
history where a praetorian guard is a prominent element of its governance. And this appeared very
quickly in Iran as well, through the revolutionary Guard Corps. And indeed, I'm sure we'll get into
the Quds Force later, but the Quds Force itself develops very quickly as a way
of working against Kurds in Iraq. And then dealing with Hacibala
in very early on in 1982, as Iran started to export revolution. So I think it may not have been
foreordained in the first few months, within a year or two. Now one more thing, and not going to
overplay this, the Saudis would tell you, the Saudis told me that
the Juhayman incident in 1979, the Great Mosque, that may not have
occurred without the Iranian revolution. Which is an extraordinary thing to say, that the Sunni takeover of the great-
Sunni extremists. Sunni Extremists, someone claiming to
the be the Mahdi, the successor, shows up, killing people in the Kaaba, would not have occurred had it not
been for a Shia takeover in Tehran. But it's the sense of political
extremism was okay for religion. And if you speak to senior Saudi or Gulf
leaders, to this day, they will tell you, that until you're able to get rid of this
concept of political extremism in Iran, they will have the same, they will have a difficulty of
doing that within Sunni Islam. It's all-
As long as there is the Shia example? Well, as long as there is
militant political Islam. And you now see this debate
having morphed into, to go very far off field,
these Saudi Qatar rift. Yeah. Break within the GCC. So one more cultural scene
setter before we get into some really concrete specifics. Demonstrations, violent, deaths,
late December, early January 2017, 2018. I'm in Turkey. I'm sending you notes saying,
tell me about this. Is it ethnic? Is it the North Tehrani's again? Kind of the children of privilege,
who were kind of the, one of the engines of 2009. And you said no. This is different. And I was right. [LAUGH]
Tell them why you were right. [SOUND] Now you know what it's
like being in his office, okay. The only difference is, so
I told the President this. And you really wanna come back and
say, and we were right. Okay, so what you had in December,
and what you're having today. There is unrest in Iran today
in at least six or seven cities. [COUGH]
Crowds are in the thousands not in the millions. They are rudderless. They're brought together by a common thread of unhappiness with
their standard of living. But they don't actually have
something they're running towards, they're running away from something. You've had death to the supreme leader. Death to Rouhani. Death to Qasem Soleimani. What you're seeing, and no one's
calling for the Green Path Movement. The constituents of all of
the various players of Iran are, have been tarred, or at least been
seen as being feckless, or irrelevant from proving standards of living by
the vast majority of the Iranian people. This is not unique in Iran. And in fact, if I can just
dive a little bit to the left. We talked about a country that has
an aged leader, a reformist subordinate. A sagging economy. A high unemployment among the youth. A terrific problem of
underemployment among women. Massive outbreak among
multiple cities of unrest and violence that results in
hundreds of arrests, and you have Tunisia, the same time. It's fascinating that you have
the Arab worlds most favorite country, the liberal democracy. And it's most reviled country
from the West, the autocratic theocracy of Iran enduring similar
circumstances, eerily similar. And I know you can overplay
that at the same time, and I think it tells you they're region wide
issues here that continue to bubble along. And the Arab Spring may not be so
far away, as we think. So let's talk about
problems in the relationship. And I wanna set it up this way, all right? I'm gonna say that the Iranian-American
relationship's in three baskets. One basket is the nuclear program now. The second is the nuclear program in,
pick your time, nine, 10, 12, 13, depending on what your favorite provision
of the current deal and when it ages off. So nuke now, nuke later, and
everything else, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Hezbollah,
Bashar Al-Assad, and so on. Detainees.
And, yes. Thank you. So let's start with nuke now. You went to the talks. Geneva? Vienna? So I I was part of the talks from their initiation in Oman
until the last meeting in Vienna. Don't tell anybody. [LAUGH]
I saw every discussion and participated in every major
policy deliberation on the issue, the deal where it stands right now. The Iranians, per the International Atomic
Energy Agency, have executed their JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,
obligations. Sometimes in a minimalist fashion,
but nonetheless, they have done so per nine IAEA reports. And that's a good thing. Their program has dismantled a very, very important and bad equipment. Their IR-40 reactor,
a plutonium reactor, has been dismantled in a way that cannot be repaired,
and although one of their running negotiators denied that having
been the case, that's not true. That's a great thing. We have removed capacity from
Iran they can't replace. We have also delayed the time it would
take them to develop sufficient fissile material for one weapon,
from some months to about a year. And that's all a good thing, too. In eight, nine years, eight-ish years from now,
these restrictions will start to fade. However, there will be some restrictions
that will last forever that will give us unprecedented access to
the Iranian program. And the access is such and so
wide-ranging that in order for them to cheat, they would almost
have to develop an entire mining, milling, conversion center program,
centrifuge program, scientific program industry
that the IEA could not find. And that's a big deal, that's right now. So you were there. I wanna get to some provisions,
poke at this. Could we have gotten a better deal and
so on? But you were there,
you observed the Iranians. And I just find it remarkable that
Secretary of State Kerry's counterpart is a graduate of San Francisco State and
the University of Denver. Madeleine Albright's father taught him. Taught him, yeah, Muhammad Sharif. How would you characterize Sharif? Foreign Minister Sharif, whenever he
speaks on TV, just go to the YouTube and pull it up, you will see the following,
he's a friendly avuncular smiling fellow. He only has three points
in whatever he says. He admits nothing, he denies everything,
and he makes counter-accusations. And that sounds fastidious. I want you all to go home tonight. It sounds like the CIA, actually. It actually does. [LAUGH]
But I'd like you to go home and pull up a YouTube video, and chart it. His English skills, his smoothness of
speech, his willingness to cooperate is something that can lure in those who don't
push him hard and are willing to test him. And Secretary Kerry,
Wendy Sherman, Bill Burns, Jake Sullivan, extraordinary diplomats. Anyone who tells you this did not involve
the most extraordinary diplomatic minds, as well as support from
the Department of Rnergy and National Security Council,
have it flat wrong. I saw it up close. This said, Sharif has his limits, and he is not necessarily, in my view,
a man who can say yes to much. His job is to come out and
say no, and to go back and find out what he can say yes to. In some ways, if you were to make a list
of all of the things we care about, a nuclear weapon puts forth activity,
US detainees, terrorism in the world,
his influence on that is nil. But he is the face, and
the person that is sent out, and he's an avuncular,
pleasant face who speaks great English. Did he ever play, hey, you got to
help me here, you got to give me this, I need to take this back,
otherwise I can't deliver on other things? To go that, I would have to point
to public information from pretty much every interlocutor he spoke
with since he entered office. That's not a secret. But he wasn't alone. And you have this sense that
when Rouhani came to power, that Rouhani was going
to turn things around. And this is especially beguiling for those who haven't worked Iran because
there was a time when Rafsanjani, the great shark, was seen as someone
who might turn things around. An oil deal, some outreach. There was then a time when
President Khatami was going to have a dialogue of civilizations, was going to
turn things around, there was outreach. Back channels with Iran, I've always said,
were like the Swallows of Capistrano. They come by every spring. Some are real, some are Memorex,
and some of them are just tests. But Rouhani, because of the time, was
seen as someone who might pull this off. And there was a fair amount of, if you
could only give this to help Rouhani. But I will say, and I stress this, none of that had anything to do with
the results of the nuclear deal. The nuclear deal was based off of
hardheaded diplomacy and science. And the science of JCPOA is as important
as any of the diplomacy that went into it, hence the involvement of
Secretary Ernest Moniz. So as you say, so
the scientist isn't Secretary of State? It's the Secretary of Energy,
and if Ernest Moniz is not there, we don't get a deal. And he's talking across the table on
the Iranian side to another MIT, right? Correct, another graduate of
the Master's Institute Technology. It's just one of those things where
you have Secretary Moniz in the room, when you have the dean in the room,
you cannot stand in front of the dean and get that B grade without the dean saying,
look, this is a B grade. So with the Iranians-
Was he condemning Salehi science? [LAUGH]
I'll let Ernie talk about it, but I'll answer it this way. There were some times when
the Iranians would give proposals. They'd write on a board about why
they're entitled to so much of this, or so much of that, and
the math just doesn't add up. Now, I'm a political science major. My background is interwar diplomatic
history, go League of Nations. [LAUGH]
Okay, so it centrifuge spin rates, and so forth,
they don't mean a whole lot to me. But with Ernie Moniz,
he just saw the calculations go forward. He and his staff were able to say it
doesn't add up, and it's a B grade. And you can do better, you can do better. And frankly, when you had Salehi in
the room, he wanted to do better. My belief is with Salehi is that what
helped shift the deal was when you put the Iranian atomic energy head in front
of Moniz, well, he wanted to be him. He wanted to be the head of
a major institution that managed atomic nuclear energy in a peaceful,
productive way. And it had nuclear medicine, and
was invited to all the great conferences, and got to come back and speak at MIT. And wouldn't that be nice? And how do you stop that,
how do you get that? You get a nuclear deal. I really think the presence of Ernie Moniz
was one of the most significant reasons that there was a nuclear deal, as well as
I've got to go back to say Wendy Sherman, Bill Burns, Jake Sullivan, John Kerry. And the rest of that amazing team,
Rob Malley. So we're gonna get, in a minute,
to President Trump decertifying the deal, and that's a complicated thing in its
own right, and we'll try to unpack that. But before we get there,
is all happening after I leave government. So I'm on the outside looking in norm. But it seems to me that the Obama
administration was really, really tight with intelligence. That American positions were developed
along the lines of, is that good enough? Either, can you observe it,
can you detect it? Or will that slow them down enough? That the American position, was deeply ingrained with the views of
the American Intelligence Community. I think, challenge that if you will,
but if it's correct, how challenging is it for
the American intelligence community to talk to the next president,
who doesn't instinctively like the deal? Is the IC too vested in the deal itself? Okay. Number of ideas going through my head
while I'm on camera in front of audience. [LAUGH]
So fresh out of a job where if you didn't know my name,
you didn't need to know my name. [LAUGH]
They range from no comment to, look the IC is invested in anything. I suppose maybe that's something
that I personally went through. If you had, many of you have seen the
public hearings with Secretaries Nunez, Lu and Cary being pummeled by congress and the senate to answer their
handling of the deal. All right that's the open hearing. Just before that was the closed hearing,
and I sat next to them. That was the only change. I would leave the room, and they used to have three senior
administration officials. And I asked them to characterize it as
three senior administration officials and Norm. I wanted to make sure people knew, look, I'm sort of sliding away from these
guys because I will call it like it is. And I will tell a very brief anecdote. Before one particularly contentious
session, I was walking in and an adminstration official turned to me and
said, look you just left a session and
you spoke long and eloquently. And you didn't sound very
enthusiastic about the deal. In fact you sounded like there
might be some issues with the deal. I know the IC has got to say
what it's got to say, and we're not trying to shift that. But if you can at least point out some
of the benefits a little more robustly, that would be useful. Within 15 seconds As God is my witness,
a senior member of the US Congress pulled me aside and
said that he and another individual had thought that my presentation had been
far too robustly positive on the deal. And that perhaps I have lost my sense of separation and was falling in with
this crowd that's so eager, and I needed to be tougher if I
was to retain their comments. So, I went home that day to Jim Clapper,
an extraordinary Officer who gave me plenty of and
a lot of wisdom and told him that he was about to get
complaints from both sides of downtown. And his comment was I probably
had the brief just right. When it comes to what a deal would give, I think you have to go to the science
as much as anything else. When you want to say, how many
centrifuges spinning at a certain rate in a certain location,
what does this get you? And more so, if you wanted to do something
really bad, how could you do it? The Department of Energy did
extraordinary work in that regard. Now obviously, we continued upon
the efforts that you, and, by the way, I just need to point out the first
national television manager for Iran, Leslie Ireland,
who's sitting in the audience. The extraordinary-
Thank you, Leslie. Leslie Ireland, okay? So anything that I did
wrong started with her. [LAUGH]
I just did the good stuff. The intelligence community
did have an awful lot of, can you assure us that something
really bad won't happen? We don't give a lot of assurances
in the intelligence community. But I will leave it by just saying that
I have never worked with a harder, more devoted, passionate group of people than the Iran
community I've known for many years. And I stayed in the job in large part
because they were such an extraordinary group of heroes. You get them cheap, and
you get them doing great things. And I will throw one more fact, they are
incapable of politicizing their findings. I was asked that once in NPR, and
my secret desire is to have someone try to politicize an analytical and
to let me watch them ask that question. [LAUGH]
To three or four of the choice analysts who would
be there and see if they survived. I mean no offense to anyone,
but I would, in my previous job, would describe my analytic core as having
the attitude of ten year faculty, okay? [LAUGH]
So four months ago,
President Trump decertified the deal. Non-certified. Yeah, thank you. Not because of material breach but
simply because he judged it not to be in the strategic
interest of the United States. He then, not long ago, a few weeks, right,
let pass one of the 120 day clocks, in which he could have
reimposed sanctions, the nuclear sanctions,
not the other sanctions. And in passing this time swore upon the altar of God he
was never going to do that again. And so let me ask you to get estimative,
to look forward. If that happens, and I realize now
there are a lot of people in government around him who wanna slow that down. I don't think any of the power
ministries are big fans of that. But if he were to do it, this is not a
bilateral deal, there are other countries and institutions involved, the effect
on them, the effect on the Iranians. Where does that lead? Okay, so just some general comments. First, what President Trump has stated,
I heard over and over again from all of
the opponents of the deal. In fact, there's nothing new in
what the president is saying, that you didn't hear from the opponents of
the deal, and they said it on television. Watch it on CSPAN. He refers to, or others, not just
the president, referred to, I believe, the second sentence of the preamble of
the JCPOA, that talks about the parties who signed this [INAUDIBLE] anticipate
that this deal, when executed to its conclusion, will contribute to peace and
cooperation in the region. If you look at Iran's activities,
outside of the nuclear field, the region, support for terrorism, proliferation
of missile technology, detainees. It is almost off the charts. It is about as high as they
could get at this time. On anything that matters,
their poor behavior is terrible. However, and if you read that preamble, the preamble doesn't state if
we do all those other things. Now, when the deal was being done and
you can see this on television, the previous administration stated,
well look, we're only aiming to take the nuclear problem off the table so
we can deal with these other issues. Well, that has occurred, and
by the way by opening Iran up to the West, we will maybe perhaps
political change will occur. Well, I think we've seen in the last
couple of months that all the money that was supposedly to come from JCQA
which I never thought would come, didn't arrive and didn't do much. So perhaps it has achieved
some of its goals. So you're saying we've released
Iranian funds that were impounded. What you're saying the economic benefits
of the deal have not kicked in? Not there, not significant enough. So what do you have right now? Well, let's just ask yourselves, you can
all go back and check this, prior to the President's statements, how much
pressure did you see coming from Europe or the international community
on Iran because of detainees? Iran's presence in Yemen,
which has been talked about for months. He wants presence in Syria. Let missile engines to Lebanese Hezbollah. I'll take a show of hands, did anybody
see a UN Security Council Resolution, or anything from the Europeans, where they appeared to do
anything tough against Iran? Got it, now you see some of that movement. That might be, again, I don't know,
I'm not of government. That might be where
the White House is going. If so, it has not been without success. The question now becomes what
happens in the ensuing weeks, because the Iranians
have had a display shown of their missile technology that has
been shot from Yemen against Riyadh, where there are thousands of Americans,
and French, and Germans. We are all Saudis, I tell people,
when you're in Riyadh. And a missile is being fired
from at Riyadh Airport. Everyone is at risk. So what has happened since that display? Well, per press reports, there have
been two to three other missiles fired. Sounds like the pressure
has not been sufficient. You have the problem now that if
the President or the administration were to decide to pull out of the deal,
it has some consequences. Now, I should not that-
Let me just, not challenge, but look for clarity. Until you've got multiple Iranian
axises that we're dealing on, nuke now, nuke later, all else. And I think what you're suggesting is, we're disturbing the stability
of the nuke now deal. As a wedge to drive others to lean on
the Iranians in these other areas. That's one interpretation
of the events. I'm not involved in these meetings,
so that, I couldn't say. But that's one possible interpretation. So what would happen were
we to pull out of the deal? Well, we would have to do a snap back. It's a question of whether or
not the Europeans would support us, and there has been some robust language with
Europeans saying they probably wouldn't. And you just have to imagine
the conversation in European companies and banks where someone raises their hand and says, I think we need to put
all of our cars, our equipment, our banks in Isfahan instead of
Pittsburgh or dealing with the US banks. Now, there aren't many companies that
are gonna make that kind of a decision. And in fact, you've probably got to wonder
if right now there aren't many European companies who are asking
their chairman of the boards, who thought that it was a good
idea to invest in Iran these days? Because we're now, our equipment is
now hostage to the Iranian situation. So I think the Europeans in
the end are going to side with us. And the Iranians tend to give
people the excuse they need. With the exception I do not believe,
they will do this on nuclear issues. I think on nuclear issues, they will continue because
they can't rebuild the IR-40. They can't quickly rebuild
most of their centrifuges. Pulling their centrifuges out of stock would make them the criminal
instead of the victim. But everywhere else, I don't think
the Iranians can stop the deals. And I think for this reason,
the quiet conversations will say, we've gotta find another way to
bring pressure on the Iranians. I believe the Europeans will come around. Other than blowing up
the current [CROSSTALK]. Other than blowing up the deal. And I think if I had to, again,
take out a crystal ball, I would say that there is such a belief
that we should work with partners, which is not often seen in the press. But there is a robust engagement
with our European and Arab partners underway, that I think
that's going to produce positive results. So Henry Kissinger back to
the Iran beyond the nuclear deal. But I'm gonna invite you in a minute to
tell us who is, Quds Force, the IRGC. But Kissinger framed the problem this way, that Iran's gotta decide whether
it's a country or a cause. And it's Iran the cause,
Iran the Shiya movement that seems to be the destabilizing
element in the Middle East. Right, so I want you to imagine
a Middle East without a Quds Force. The Quds Force is the CIA,
JSOC element within Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard,
led by a formidable figure by the name of Qasem Soleimani Major General,
often called Hodgi. Workaholic, and
if you took away Lebanese Hezbollah, the Izz ad-Din Qassam Brigades,
missiles to the Houthis. All surrogates, right? All surrogates. What kind of a Middle East would you have? When people look at Iran outside of Iran,
the conversation comes down to what have the Sunnis
done and what have the Shia done. So the Sunnis, for many years, along with
the Shia, have funded a variety of groups. It's mainly money, and
called Wahhabist Islam that was exported. And that's true. That's true, and for many years, the CIA
and others, Department of Treasury, the State Department,
worked very hard to change that. There have been terrific,
trust me, terrific, magnificent, positive, God keep it going changes among
the, in the Sunni world in this regard. But Iran has not stopped propagating
surrogate elements overseas and it's led to a couple of changes within
the region, shifts in regional DNA. If I were to ask you to name a Sunni, a Saudi surrogate group,
we can't do it, doesn't exist. if I ask you to name,
all the Irani surrogate groups in one breath, well, I couldn't do it. Because you start off with
elements of the Taliban to Hamas, to the Pakistani Islamic Shihad, to the
Hoothis, the Lebanese has bless, seven or eight groups in Iraq, seven regroups in
Iraq, handful in Syria, Afghans in Syria. Where do you think they're
going after the conflict? Home? Perhaps. But perhaps not. Iran has injected into the region
this sense of surrogates that follow an Iranian lead to some to a greater or
lesser extent and it's provided them with
advanced weapons technology. This has changed the DNA of the region. Now, can the DNA be changed back? I don't know,
how are we doing with the Houthis? Now, I began working
the Lebanese Hezbollah issue not so long after Lebanese Hezbollah was formed. If I were to ask you all in the room, how do you think we've done on
Lebanese Hezbollah since 1982? So now, let me ask you this. The Iranians are believed per
statements by the Chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff in the past to
have killed hundreds of Americans in Iraq. There's no question per Ambassador Hailey,
they're helping the Houthis fire missile on multinational
populations right now in Riyadh. The Prime Minister of
Israel today is in Moscow, complaining about Iran turning
Lebanon into a missile factory. Has anyone seen pushback? The problem with Iran is they have
this capacity as Henry Kissinger would have put it to be a cause,
a revolution not a country. Because they can. If you want to enable Rouhani,
if you believe in Hassan Rouhani, the President of Iran that he is
not the little engine who can't. After 4.5 years, what exactly has he done? Really, three more years,
he's gonna do it. If we're just nice to him one more year,
maybe. But if you believe that's the case and
you want to arm him with a conversation, then your answer needs to be
an international overt program by which you promote a dialogue or
debate in Iran to say, we can have several thousand
Afghans in Syria and Houthis or we can have economic connections
with Europe and no sanctions. What's more important? That's a debate they've gotta answer. The January demonstrations seem to be
the Iranian version of America first. There was a lot of Iran first and a lot of the protests seem to be about the
investment in these foreign activities. There was some information on that,
but I tend to be, I'm a big believer in social media. It's the great nth that
we should always invest, can't invest too much in social media. It's wonderful, but social media is
also like a strobe light in a party. It comes on. You see these things and I'm old,
so tweets are new to me. I'm on Twitter now, but please be gentle. But you get just the snapshot
in these little videos. So I want you to imagine
a two-hour demonstration and you have four-second snapshot
from someone pointing in front. You don't get around, side, left,
what happened, when it ended. You also don't see where
demonstrations end. You see some people don't report hey,
there's nothing happening in this square. They report people are in front of you. So there were instances of that, but you didn't see the whole
country go up in turmoil. There were thousands of people at these
demonstrations not millions as in 2009. The security services remained for
the most part with the exception of some folk who burned their [INAUDIBLE],
their militia cards strong and straight and loyal and
actually weren't pulled out. We saw no evidence these guys were sent
into the streets in mass to include today. That could change, but not today. I say this,
because I'm not sure that's the case. I think that maybe some people
feel that way just as some people according to the social media said,
return to Shah. Most Iranians were born after
the Iranian Revolution. Most Iranians were born
in the earliest days or the last days of the Iran-Iraq War. And therefore,
don't remember the Iran-Iraq War. But there were people who said,
bring back the Shah. There were some people in
the crowd who also said, the Arabs in the Gulf
are living better than we are. Which by the way, also leads to
the possibility that event Saudi Arabia, that events in the Emerites,
the progress in Bahrain stands as in opposition to what the Iranians
themselves have been able to achieve. Despite 3,000 years of
an extraordinary culture, a population of 80
million amazing souls and an amazing amount of resources and small
Arab states live better than they do. So get your questions ready in four or
five minutes, we'll have you line up as Larry
suggested at the microphones. Norm, I hate to end, but
there's one macro question I wanna ask. So President Obama gave
an interview to Jeffrey Goldberg in the Atlantic about his
broad policy in the Gulf. I characterize it as the post-game
interview given in the third quarter, because he was still governing. But in it, I mean, it's nakedly clear. He says, the Saudis are gonna have to get
used to sharing the neighborhood with the Iranians and there is whole
bunch of sub text beneath that. Immediately upon assuming office, President Trump jumps all
the way back to the other side. Iran is the source of destabilization
rather than being an off shore balancer between Arabs and
Persians, between Sunnis and Shias. We're all in with the Sunni-Arabs. So when you look at Iran in the region,
Iran has a right to first, pick its own government. Just not pick anyone else's government. We all agree, but Iran has an interest
in regional refugee issues, environmental issues,
seismological issues. It's got reason to fear ISIS. It's got reason to want to cooperate
counterterrorism, counternarcotics. It has a terrible narcotics
problem in its country. So in a sense, we want Iran to
be integrated in the region and as a population per its
last census is 79,970,270. That entitles it to a role,
a significant role. But they've got to earn that
through responsible behavior. Now at the same time,
when that presentation was given, there was the common line of and
Gulf Arabs have their own policies. Fight their own battles with the Iranians. We can't fight those
battles with the Iranians. No more wars in the Middle East. Well, the Saudis and the Amorites and their coalition are fighting their
own battles in the Middle East. I'm not good at it. Now I'll pull the thread on that and
say, vice hour fast exit from Afghanistan or success in Iraq or
that quick battle against ISIS. The Middle East tends to consume armies. Middle East tends to pull people
in without self-control and keep them stuck in conflicts. You need to approach conflict in
the Middle East very clear headedly and the Iranians have done this. The Iranians send very
few of their people out. They let other people die for
them in bulk in multiple nationalities. We would never do that. The Egyptians who sent 70,000
personnel into Yemen in the 60s. Catastrophic for Egypt, catastrophic. So, I think we have to basically say,
if we're gonna look at the Middle East, we have to be part of these solutions. They've got to fight their own battles,
they've got to fund their own problems. But if we're not engaged,
we're gonna pay for it here. That's an interesting formulation, boy,
I've got follow-up questions left and right, but it's your turn. So folks to the microphones, please. Go for it. Hi, thank you for coming. I have two questions but
they're kind of related. The first is with the spread of
Iranian protests, what do you think the chances of regime change
are in the next 10 or 20 years? And the second one is, if there is
regime change what is the hope of Iran to cooperate with other
middle eastern countries? Given that the Sunni-Shia conflict
will probably still exist. Okay, so
a couple of things are occurring. There are different ways of handling it. So let me sort of work backwards. Right now we have a sectarian
battle in the Middle East. It's not really the case. It's not Sunni versus Shia. This is geopolitical cold
war tactics in the region. Led by the Saudis and the Emiratis and
others who are defending their interests. And the Bahrainis, by the way, there is not enough attention paid I think
to the violence of Iran against Bahrain. Where there are many thousands of Americans being protected
by the Bahrainian government. They have their own issues domestically, but the Bahrainis story is not
told often enough in my view. So right now what you have
is a great power play, you asked the right way about the unrest. I don't believe the unrest is going to
cause the running government to collapse in the near future. He said saying the Titanic wouldn't
sink and the shawl would not fall. But I'm only doing it on
camera in front of the crowd. People with waving phones in the air. But
it just happened you can come back and explain its inevitability to us, right? Exactly, exactly. Explain it's inevitability. But the Irani regime is
in it's final stages, revolutions tend to go three various
stages, this is Craine Briton. But if you're looking for a great book on
this Antomy of Revolution by Craine Briton is where you should start. They're young and they're angry and
they're feisty and they're brutal. And they've got hard goals and they're
blaming everything on the guy before them. And then middle age tends
to be a little paunchy. And the suddenly they didn't quite get
there but they're gonna get there. And they've got a bureaucracy and they got
a security service to keep everyone in line and keep the paperwork going. And we're gonna get there one day,
it's harder and the enemy's against us, counterrevolutionaries. And then finally at the end, old bitter
grumpy well resourced security forces. People don't know how hard
we fought to get here. These problems were a lot tougher
than people thought, et cetera, and our enemies are many, et cetera et cetera. And then the revolution ends and
turns in to something else. Now it can turn in to a theocracy,
China, right? Or can turn into something
completely different and collapse. I think we want to be careful about
an immediate collapse in Iran. If it happens today, what's the
institution that's left in Iran that is intact, resourced, funded, fed,
motivated, ideologically tested? The IRGC, the military. Country with a strong history of
Praetorian guards in their DNA, who do you think is gonna
run the place the next day? The military. Sign this kid up, thank you. All right, thank you. Hi, I've got a question
about the next ayatollah, which I think is a good segue
from your previous answer. So given Khamenei's age, who do you
foresee becoming the next ayatollah and how will this influence both
Iran's domestic scene and also Iranian-American relations? Okay, so for those who had worked with
me in my previous job, they would know that I had an occasional tendency to maybe
levy it an occasional tasking, okay? So I'd like to levy a tasking on this, because she's touched on the big
issue of the Middle East. If you went to the Middle East,
I'm going to [INAUDIBLE] big and come in a little bit. If you went to the Middle East, the number
of elderly leaders in the Middle East, President of Tunis, he's 90. Only Queen Elizabeth is older. Ayatollah Sistani, what's going
to happen when he dies in Najaf? The supreme leader,
the King of Saudi Arabia. The Emir of Kuwait. The Deputy Emir of Kuwait. Abbas in the PLO. He's 83 with no successor. We're on the cusp of many changes. I could go through about by eight or
nine people. [INAUDIBLE] In Algeria. Eight or
nine people who are about to change and they're going to bring a new generation. And the world will be very different, and I don't think we're thinking enough on
what that will mean and where it will go. Mohammed [INAUDIBLE] to
[INAUDIBLE] in Qatar. So somebody could write on that and
have it on my desk by Monday. [LAUGH]
But this said, on the election, I think there are some
problems in Tehran right now. Were I the supreme leader,
I would be worried. I would say what's my legacy? What happens? If I keel over, he's 78, reportedly
in poor health, who replaces him? Trust me, there'll be a lot of people
saying I wanna be the guy in charge. For many years, it was Rafsanjani, who
said, maybe wouldn't replace him per se, there would be a council, a fatwa council. Of course, he would lead the fatwa
council, because if all power corrupts, it better start here first. Now you've got a number of ayatollahs who
are of the Supreme Leader's generation, who are all tainted in one way or another. Rouhani ran for president against
one of these individuals, fellow by the name of Ebrahim Raisi. But he lost. Make him seem very infallible
although you're not really as infallible as the grand ayatollah
until you're the ayatollah yourself. Before that you can be fallible I guess. So we found why he lost. But if you don't control that,
what happens to the revolution? So the IRGC,
you can imagine where their head is. You can imagine where
the Supreme Leader's head is. You can imagine the staff of
the Supreme Leader's office. His son, Mojtaba. You can imagine what
the Quds Force is thinking. How do we make this happen? How do we keep [INAUDIBLE],
the Supreme Leader, how do we keep him alive a little longer
until we can solve these problems? And of course, there's Rouhani. Who I'm sure is saying, look I bet I
could sit in that chair very nicely and we would do some interesting things. I think whoever would replace the supreme
leader will have to be someone who will have to do two things simultaneously and
it'll be tough. One, avoid upsetting the military and
the hardliners. At the same time, trying to build
his stature with the Iranian people. There's a video that's appeared
on the Internet, I tweeted it. But it came out a few years ago and
it shows [FOREIGN] being nominated for the supreme leaderhood and
Rafsanjani sitting behind him. You must watch this. You must watch this because are there
any Shakespearean fans in the crowd? Raise your hand please. There's gotta be someone educated here. Great, thank you. Richard III. [LAUGH]
If you read Richard III, how he's wearing the sack cloth praying,
saying I don't want to be. I'm not good enough, and the crowd
comes forward with one of his men. No, you've got to do this. You've got to do this, or
we're gonna fall apart. We're gonna make you well if you must
if it's for the people, etc., etc. You watch a scene from Richard the III and
then watch that video and tell me if the same thing didn't happen. So someone who replaces them has gotta
figure out how to build those two constituencies, loyalties simultaneously. So I think if there's a benefit for us. I think that likely means no dramatic
decisions that would risk pressures on the regime so if the supreme
leader were to pass away today, and he has a successor tomorrow. Probably, the first decision is not going
to be let's build a nuclear weapon and invite international sanctions
to undercut the economy. Thank you. Thank you. Hi there. Thank you both very much,
this has been fantastic, very interesting. So I'm a grad student at GW, and
I focus on security policies studies. And when we talk about Iran,
what we mostly talk about, at least, in my experiences, it's been Iran and
Persian Gulf security, the ability of Iran to potentially shut down the Strait of
Hormuz and what that would look like. So I'm just wondering if you
can give us an assessment of both Iran's capabilities shut down
the straight, and or interdict shipping, Administrator Hormuz, and what situation
would cause Iran to make that decision? And can I expand that just slightly? Surrogates for the Bab-el-Mandeb? So first,
the strait of Hormuz is relatively small, 21 miles but if you take the sea lanes
in the middle, it's only about six, two miles this way, two miles that way,
two miles in the middle. That's very easy for someone to shut down. That's not what I worry about. Iran's missile program that
has gone unconstrained, thousands of missiles can
reach pretty much anything. That's gonna make it hard. If I were driving a flat top of some sort,
I think I would get my hair mussed. And that's a problem that's
gotta be worked through. But in 2011,
if you look at a map in my mind, you would see all the areas
of pressure going into Iran. If you look now, you'll see all the areas
of Iran being able to pressure the world in various different places. So the Strait of Hormuz, the Arabian Sea,
the Gulf of Oman, certainly, they have capacity there. They have submarines,
mini submarines, a weak blue navy. Probably, the cheapest targets
the Navy will ever find for most of those things as I put it. But the Bab-el-Mandeb, the Bab-el-Mandeb, you have about 30% of the world's oil
going through the Strait of Hormuz. You have about 10% of the world's
oil going through the Bab-el-Mandeb as you have the Red Sea, and at the bottom
Aden, Yemen here, Perim Island, and you have this little ten mile strait, ten
miles, narrower than the Strait of Hormuz. Okay look it up, but you're talking about
more than 10% of the globe's trade goes through the Bab-el-Mandeb. The Iranians have supplied
their surrogates with what is appears per press reports,
missiles and explosive boats. You now have a capacity on
about 40% of the worlds oil. Okay, we're energy, increasingly
energy dependent but oil is fungible. Oil prices it goes up here
we pay more over here. You'll pay more. This is the problem here. When we look at why it's so important to
get Iran out of Yemen, it's actually your financial and your economic
security as well as anything else. For the Saudis,
if they wish to develop the Red Sea, do you think they could
develop the Red Sea and have the Iranians control a ten
mile choke point in the south? Does anyone think that is acceptable,
that your adversary do this? So as people then ask,
how easy is it to have the Saudis or the Emiratis with draw from the Yemen
conflict, that's part of your answer. So the Iranian capacity to undertake this
robust activity has grown significantly. Iran has gone from a relatively
constrained bud still not insignificant security
threat in 2011 to a security threat today that can touch
therefore some global interest. Thank you. >> We've got one over here. Hello.
My name's and I'm a graduate student in
the international program. I also happen to be of
the Kurdish American background. The reason I ask that is because
with all respect I heard a lot of what the Iran Malan
influences in the region. But not a lot of what
the US ought to be doing. I'll give you a couple of examples
where I grew up in the northern Iraq Kurdish region. We always thought the US,
the big brother, would be, if we had fought the war against ISIL
that the US would be there to back us up. We just saw Iran come and crushing with our initiative to hold
the referendum for independence. But also not only that, we're not seeing
this broader US leadership in the region. If you look at Turkey, what Turkey's
doing in Western Syria today and if I could also bring in the big elephant,
Russia. Iran is having its way to create
the corridor from Tehran all the way to Lebanon. Where is the US leadership? Where is the US policy? Where is it going, moving forward? Lot of great questions. Okay.
All policy questions. All policy related, and as I would
sometimes put it the number of electoral votes, I received was a disappointment
to my mother predicted. [LAUGH]
So for the most part of that, that's someone else's call, but I think I
can describe this in the following ways. First, Iran has a very unusual
relationship with the Kurds who are a heroic and ancient people. A heroic and
ancient people who have done much to, against Saddam, that should never be
forgotten, and much against ISIS. I have known Kurdish
leadership with pride. This said, the Iranians, like many of the states, fear
the creation of an independent Kurdistan. And this sometimes puts them in
a dance with the Turks, sometimes, they're friends, sometimes,
they're less friends. Likewise the Iranians aren't very
excited to see the Turks move south because everyone in the region
remembers the Ottoman empire. And when you look at the gulf states, many of them are unhappy that you
see Turkish troops in Qatar, and the Turks now rehabilitating
an island off the coast of Sudan. What the heck is going on with
that you'll hear people say. But when it comes to what should be
done on Iran and its path through Syria, the corridor, as you put it,
that requires a lot of focus. And I think,
based on my read of the press, Secretary Madison's decision
to retain troops in. Syria, presence in Syria, a very tough complicated area as
we see from the press today, and it doesn't come without consequences,
maybe the best he can do at present. There is no such thing
as an easy correct or workable answer to many of these problems. And that's kind of how the world
works in the middle east, you just have the best answer
you can get through today, and I'm not sure what I would
propose to solve this. I would say that it is imperative
that we do two things. One, be very public working with partners
to push Iran back in the region. This should not be
something that is covert. This is not be something we deny. We should be open about it. Iran is no place. In Iraq, no place in Yemen,
no place in Syria, no place in Lebanon. [FOREIGN] That's that. Okay? Now, they want to have diplomats,
aid groups, dancers, etc, etc. Everyone should have whatever they've got. But once they develop this capacity
to put a land route through, you have the possibility of what are you going to
do with the Afghans regarding Jordan? What are you gonna do with the surrogates
in Syria regarding not just Israel, but transforming Lebanon in
a different direction. What do you do with Iranian weapons
that can then be shipped, perhaps into the the Eastern Mediterranean,
with an Iranian military vessel? Anybody in favor of shooting
Iranian formal military vessel? Active war, all in favor? Got it, better stop it now. And the Kurdish people
are in the middle of this. I don't know the solution
to the Kurdish issue. I can just tell you that we owe
the Kurdish people gratitude and tremendous respect. I second that motion
with my own experience. Sir? Thanks for
an enlightening presentation. You had mentioned that Iran
seemed to be going about its wars in the smart
way by using surrogates. And I wondered from the perspective
of the Iranian economy as a whole, how much money are we talking about? And the narratives around that. So is it sustainable to say, well, if Iran
stopped funding all of these surrogates, it would make a difference in
the economy versus we're providing security smartly and
cheaply through these surrogates. Question. Based off of public information? You see routine reports that
hundreds of millions of dollars go to Lebanese Hezbollah. And that's certainly hundreds of millions
of dollars that could be going to pay for education and employment programs for
Iranian students. That's that. Likewise, you have to ask yourself,
what would happen to Lebanese Hezbollah if you took away hundreds
of millions of dollars? Would it be able to be
the group that it is? Okay. So, the rest of the material
that's provided, you get the sense that it's off the shelf. For Iran to work in an area,
my view has been it requires four things. Chaos, beleaguered Shia that
no one will stand up for, which is another thing we can on US
policy, we should be standing up for the Shia the reach,
it is not just Iran that should do that. You need a logistics pipeline. Bigger the pipeline, more they bring in. Smaller the pipeline, the harder it is. That's why there's so little in Yemen
compared to Lebanese Hezbollah. And the final thing is,
you should need no adult to stop them. But the logistics pipeline
is something that, they've gotta bring the stuff in somehow. So if you look at Syria or Beirut, there is a tunnel going from
Tehran to Beirut, that's a joke. [LAUGH]
Okay, there isn't, that's not intelligence secret, okay? Just letting you know,
it's not a Jules Verne movie out there. Or they are going to drive it in
the land route people talked about or they are flying it in. So now let's go to the policy call, okay. Everybody here not in favor of stopping
Iranian weapons to the Middle East? Okay, got it. Anyone here in the room think that
airplanes are probably a good way to deliver weapons to the Middle East? All right, all in favor. Anyone in the room think we can get a UN
Security Council resolution stopping every Iranian plane from flying
over Iraq into Syria and Beirut and
any other country on the sides of Yemen? Anybody think we can get that? You got all three answers right, hm. This is why it's a great school. [LAUGH]
Thank you. Okay, last two questions, sir? Yeah during the, like,
now that we see how the Trump administration is noncertified the deal, was it ever brought up on
the diplomatic team, and the negotiation team that
this could possibly happen? And that the P5 plus one, speculated this, or if the Iranians during the time of the actual summit ever foresaw and
had a snap back or some kind of provision to-
That's a great question. Okay.
[LAUGH] Is someone non-certified? Not just the Americans, if a European
country did it or if the Iranians. The answer is yes. Okay. Because everyone involved wants to
know what happens if there's a new administration. And that's a great question. And the Obama team could not get
it with the full force of treaty. Had to do with executive units. Correct.
And executive change. And we all saw what was
going on with Congress. So if you're Europeans and
you're thinking about investments, what happens to your investments,
this is an important deal. The answer is yes, it came up and the
answer as I understand it could be wrong and therefore corrected by people who
are actually there cuz I was so I can't. Was along the lines of my
crystal ball's as good as yours. This is the best we can get right now. That's a great question. Thank you. And here we are. Shmail. Well thank you very much. [FOREIGN] [LAUGH]. I was just in Kuwait, in the UAE, and
Oman, with 14 George Mason students. We were there for three weeks. Wonderful countries. In January. Yes, very much so. In Oman, we were told many times
at meetings of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that they are the
Switzerland of the Middle East, and that they play a role as being neutral,
as being mediators, and so forth. So, I was wondering if you'd like to
comment on Oman's role in terms of, vis a vis Iran, have they played such
a role and have they done it well? They want to definitely broadcast
that sort of mission of peace and conciliation and so forth. And also,
have you looked at the Iranian slash Persian communities that are on
that side of the Arabian Gulf, if I may, in terms in Bahrain, in the Emirates, even in Kuwait,
there are significant communities and they've been there-
I've heard that. Many, many years. I mean,
we're talking even before the '70s. So, and a full disclaimer,
I do teach at the Shar school. So Middle East politics, and
everything you're afraid to ask. So Oman is an extraordinary country
if you haven't had a chance to visit. It is.
Oman do it, it's delightful people,
extraordinary terrain. It was my students' favorite,
by the way. It's just great, and magnificent music
and food, the food is great and so forth. I have too many Omani friends. Oman has played,
as an unusual relationship with Iran. In the 1970's troops from
the Sha's government and aircraft, freighter aircraft
helped save the sultan in his battle against those who
wished to overthrow him. Several thousand Irani troops
were sent to Oman under the Sha. Now all forgotten in the. The Omanis played a role in obtaining
the release of four American hikers and we owe them our gratitude for that. And as has been discussed in the press. The Omani's obviously took
the diplomatic risk and were kind and generous enough to allow for American
representatives to meet with Iranians for the initiation of the talks that
led to the joint plan of action, the precursor to the joint conference plan
of action which was of great, great risk. They are also in an unusual neighborhood. They are very close to Iran. The devil is across
the very narrow strait. Yemen is next door. There have been claims that Oman could do more to stop Iran's weapons
from reaching Yemen. I believe that to be the case, but I think
you were an Omani official right now, you would say, well,
tell me exactly what to do. And my answer is,
I'm not in the government anymore, I'm just speaking outside,
but you should do more. And the Omanis will continue to
play this role of their history and their DNA, give them. And important point about Omanis is they
have an unemployment problem with their youth. I think unemployment problem
with their youth is about, I could be wrong, but I think it's 17.8%. They need to develop resources,
they don't have a large oil program. They've had some great success with
their gas programs along with a number of other regional states. And therefore, they're looking for
economic stability in the region. I think it would be great if they could
somehow get closer to the Saudis, who are not sometimes seem traditionally as
close to their friends as they should be. Simply because anything that causes
the GCC economic plan under the Saudis to succeed is indeed water that will lift all
boats, whereas the success or the failure of that program could cause problems for
everyone to include the Omanis. Thank you. Thank you.
Norm, I miss our conversations. I miss them as well. But I'm happy that we had
an opportunity to share one with the George Mason Community. Thank you very much. Thank you. [APPLAUSE]
