 Okay, good afternoon everyone. Welcome to U.S. Institute of Peace. My name is Rick Olson. I'm a senior advisor here at USIP, also a retired U.S. diplomat, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Arab Emirates. So I have in my career had a foot in both of the areas we're talking about today. The U.S. Institute of Peace was founded in 1984 by Congress as an independent national institute dedicated to the proposition that peace is possible, practical, and essential for U.S. and global security. We pursue this vision of a world without violent conflict by working on the ground with local partners. We have a particularly active program in Pakistan where we have supported programs in 35 cities and villages across the country focusing on tolerance and diversity using the arts, media, and culture to foster dialogue and peace education. We're meeting today to discuss the current state of relations between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and the other Gulf states. When I served in the Gulf I always had the impression that Pakistan loomed very large because of its military power, its nuclear weapons, and because it supplies a huge quantity of labor to the Gulf states. And historically the Gulf has loomed large in Pakistan as a source of financing and I think you might say Islamic credentialing as well. These trends seem to be accelerating as Pakistan is once again facing a potential fiscal crisis and has sought financial assistance from Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar. At the same time Pakistan has traditionally had good relations with its neighbor, Iran, although recent border clashes have heightened tensions. In the past Pakistan has been very successful at managing to have good relations with all of these countries. The overarching question for our panel today is will Pakistan continue to navigate the split between Iran and the Gulf countries and indeed the split within the Gulf countries between Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Qatar as regional tensions increase. So we're delighted to be joined today by three experts on this topic, Ankit Panda, senior editor of the Diplomat, Karen Young, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, and Alex Vatanka, senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. I'll ask each of the panelists to begin with Ankit to lay out their arguments in a few minutes and then we will break for Q&As after presentations. So Ankit. Great well thank you so much and thank you to USIP for not only bringing me here today but commissioning the special report that forms the basis of this discussion today. I began writing that report in 2017 and of course we've seen a lot happen in the region. Certainly we've seen a change of government in Pakistan. I also really want to express my gratitude to USIP's editorial staff. You know as you heard my title of senior editors I'm always sympathetic to editors that help writers look good at the end of the day so really couldn't have done this without the editorial support here at USIP. So let me talk a bit at kind of the highest level about why the relationship between these three countries is something that we should even be interested in or pay attention to. I think the place to begin there is to really understand what brings Pakistan into such an interesting position between Riyadh and Tehran. As most people in this room are likely aware Saudi Arabia and Iran are just strategic competitors not only in the Middle East but increasingly in the peripheries of that region. South Asia is certainly in that area. Afghanistan and Pakistan of course sitting right on Iran's eastern frontier and as we just heard from the ambassador border tensions there have grown recently. Now Pakistan is a obviously a hugely significant actor in the broader realm of the Islamic world as the world's second largest Muslim majority country. Second most populous member of the OIC it's a country of nearly 200 million people with nuclear weapons and it has a long and difficult history with the United States especially as a partner and ally and at times unfortunately an adversary and Pakistan is a Muslim country as I said with a Sunni majority population but a very significant Shia minority about 95% plus of Pakistan's population are Muslims and of that population give or take around 20% are Shia. So the growing sectarian nature of the geostrategic contest between Iran and Saudi Arabia well I shouldn't say growing it's had that color for a while and that's been along a concern for Pakistan and I'm not going to go too much into the history but I do hope we'll hear from Alex a little bit about that and he's done some great work that I actually relied on for for this report especially one of the periods that we we look at as one of the origin points of much of what we observe today is the late 1970s when not only do you have the Islamic Revolution in Iran but you also have the broader campaign of Islamization that begins under General Zia Ul Haq who installs a military coup in a 1977 and that's really an epical moment in in the nature of political Islam's development in Pakistan today. Meanwhile I haven't said a lot about Saudi Arabia yet but Saudi Arabia obviously is a major regional power in the Middle East an exporter of hydrocarbons the world over it has a special relationship with Pakistan dating back decades and that relationship really takes on all sorts of dimensions including a military dimension that I'll discuss a bit in the context of the two case studies that I chose to focus on for this USIP special report. So relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran have been difficult for a variety of reasons since the 1979 revolution in in Iran for a variety of structural reasons and of course the United States had played an important role in the region prior to the revolution with its twin pillars policy that sort of recognized the geopolitical reality at the time in the Middle East that that Iran and Saudi Arabia were two natural poles that needed to be balanced and after 1979 that equilibrium was sort of thrown off kilter and for we have decades of history that kind of attest to that and and today we see Iran and Saudi Arabia competing in the Middle East through a variety of means and proxies in in Syria and Yemen and what have you. So bringing us to Pakistan now I want to talk a bit about why Pakistan has chosen to balance between Iran and Saudi Arabia instead of bandwagoning and the most obvious hypothesis when I started looking at this would be that you know Pakistan naturally has a special relationship with Saudi Arabia it makes sense there are sort of apocryphal apocryphal but fairly well supported reports that even Saudi Arabia might have provided financial assistance to Pakistan in the 1980s in development of its nuclear program and when we look at those aspects of cooperation even with Iran right there on Pakistan's western border it should it should be the case that Pakistan should unequivocally side with Saudi Arabia and I think at the end of the day one of the one of the conclusions that I present is that you know if push were to come to shove that would happen that Pakistan and or the Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are our national partners in that way but Pakistan's chosen to play play things in a much more nuanced manner particularly in recent years and here I want to bring your attention to the two case studies that I chose to look into as an as examples of how Pakistan today has chosen to navigate these the difficult relationship between these two regional powers in the Middle East so the first incident that I thought was quite striking and I was actually writing about this at the time as it happened trying to understand why Pakistan was making certain decisions why the Pakistani legislator behaved in the way that it did but the first incident was when in March 2015 Saudi Arabia initiated Operation Decisive Storm which was the initial set of operations into Yemen to to support the government there and push back against the Houthis that campaign is still going as of 2019 and Pakistan at the time had been partly assumed in Riyadh to effectively be willing to lend military support to that coalition and of course that didn't happen we had a neutrality resolution at the time in April 2015 when the Pakistani legislature overwhelmingly decided that it would remain as neutral of a party as was possible at the time and for the Saudis this was a little bit of a of a setback because of the recent financial support at the time that they had provided to the Pakistanis it was sort of an understanding that in exchange for Saudi beneficence in the financial realm that Pakistan would make its substantial military capabilities available to the kingdom in circumstances like this and this isn't where the story ends the the case does change over time in 2016 after a change in Pakistan's military leadership after the retirement of chief of army staff for Hill Sharif to come or Javed Bajwa who's the incumbent chief of army staff Pakistan did decide to eventually send 5,000 troops to the kingdom strictly for border defense so these Pakistani troops were not deployed in an expeditionary capability to support coalition operations inside Yemen and that was a significant moment in particular and after that we've also seen Pakistan ramp up some of its support and this of course brings us to the current geopolitical context where Pakistan is in the middle of a balance of payments crisis in Saudi Arabia again finds itself playing that role if the important benefactor for Islamabad so we see sort of how this is both a special relationship with what sort of decades of strategic convergence but it does take on a transactional give and take nature the second case that I focused on was in January 2016 and this was a watershed moment in relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran this was when the Saudis chose to execute a Shia Sheikh in the eastern province he was a prominent Shia leader and that's the part of Saudi Arabia that's that's a overwhelmingly Shia and that effectively set off a firestorm into Iran where a massive mob sort of swarmed the Saudi embassy there was you know Molotov cocktails thrown the building caught fire and that led eventually to the collapse of diplomatic relations between the two sides and that's really where we see the the modern quote-unquote Cold War if we can call it that between the two sides really really take off and this is also coinciding with Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman's sort of meteoric rise within the Saudi political system and his own apprehensions about the challenge that Iran presents to Saudi Arabia in the region and how does Pakistan react to this again what it does is it it it strives to push for the appearance of neutrality so in Pakistan of course civil military relations we don't have the best history of civil military relations in Pakistan and in a unique show of unity at the time Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League government who obviously has a long history with the Pakistani military he was deposed in military coup in 1999 and was sort of inherently skeptical of the Pakistani military's designs in both foreign and security policy and domestic policy Nawaz Sharif gets on an airplane with Chief of Army Staff Raheel Sharif and the two of them actually engaged in a bit of shuttle diplomacy but they first go to Riyadh and they meet with senior leaders there including King Salman and then they head to Tehran where they meet with Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and and Foreign Minister Javed Zarif at the time and they explicitly take the position that Pakistan is willing to mediate they wanted both sides to identify focal persons and this process didn't go anywhere but I think it was really a unique show of Pakistani initiative so I've described now Pakistan's willingness to put on this air of neutrality and in the relations between these two countries but why does it do that and I think the answer lies within what I described at the beginning of these remarks which is the domestic circumstances of the sectarian buildup within Pakistan and this is particularly been important since 2014 when Pakistan decided to implement its national action plan against terrorist groups within the country that were stoking up sectarian violence primarily against the Shia minority we have groups like Lashkar-e-Jhangvi who kicked up their activity after that time and there has been a long history of course of Saudi Arabia and Iran and perhaps we'll hear about this from some of the other speakers financing and encouraging sort of I don't want to call them proxies but effectively groups within Pakistan that do end up supporting their ends so by maintaining this air of neutrality Pakistan perhaps calculates that it can disincentivize both Tehran and Saudi Arabia from turning Pakistani territory into a battlefield for the broader Cold War that's now playing out between them and and to an extent I think that approach has been successful but I think we're having this conversation at a really interesting inflection point because earlier in February on February 13th we had a major terror attack in Balochistan which is obviously there's the Pakistani province of Balochistan that borders Iran's poorest southeastern province of system Balochistan and that's a very difficult border relationship for the two countries Pakistan's military has previously even accused the Iranian government directly accused President Rouhani actually on a visit to Pakistan of actually assisting India's research and analysis wing of a conducting sort of espionage operations out of Iranian territory and that again puts this all in a complicated dimension and on top of that I think what we are seeing now is Pakistan perhaps more than it would like drift towards Saudi Arabia primarily due to the unfortunate fiscal realities today in the country so I'll stop there and I'm happy to elaborate on any of that in the Q&A. Go ahead I think I'm going to stand. I can read my notes a little bit better. Well thank you thanks for including me on this panel and thank you to USIP for the invitation. I was asked to speak about the kind of the Gulf view the Saudi perspective on the relationship with Pakistan and I have to say with full disclosure I don't work on Pakistan I work as a political economist mostly on the GCC but I think we have to frame this relationship in the context of the broader expansionist fiscal and foreign policy of Saudi Arabia under King Salman since 2015 and of course under the direction of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman who's also Minister of Defense and the leader of the Vision 2030 economic restructuring program and really social liberalization agenda if you want to call it that. So I see Pakistan excuse me as just one part of a much broader opening and what I would call an eastward orientation in economic outlook towards new political alliances this is a restructuring of the Saudi economy that's still very much centered on energy if not explicitly the export of oil. It's in the expansion of transport of logistic links through ports development the acceleration of the national oil company Aramco into a full-scale energy firm with stakes in both oil and gas production refineries as well as petrochemical products. So the eastward focus is towards an export market an emerging middle-class consumer market in Asia so I mean the framing of this event to my mind is more important looking at Saudi Arabia, China, India, Pakistan then Iran. Iran is less relevant to me the way that I see the the kind of orientation of the region. Saudi Arabia I think has tied its cart to the horse of Asia in this middle-class consumer growth expectation particularly in China but also importantly in India and if that strategy fails it's not just Saudi Arabia that suffers it's really the global economy. So the main targets of Saudi economic ties are not Pakistan but really India and China and so I would see Saudi Pakistan ties as part of that broader geoeconomic shift through the Middle East and Asia which is about the future of energy about the future of productivity in the region and who controls access to trade refining and the transport of energy products. It's about ports, pipelines and competition for different kinds of electricity generation and delivery. So Pakistan has a role to play in this eastward expansion and we certainly saw that in Muhammad bin Salman's recent visit to the region where he went to China Pakistan and India but there's also an important soft power connection of course long-standing ties between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan and these relationships in fact all of Saudi Arabia's foreign policy relationships right now can be quite fraught and 2015 was a particularly difficult year for Saudi Pakistan relations but I think we can see that these ties have been renewed perhaps because of the change in domestic leadership which is more centralized or more cohesive between the Prime Minister and the military now in Pakistan. So let me make four brief points about the Saudi Pakistani relationship. First on security ties, second on people ties especially the role of foreign workers, third on direct aid and financial support and last and I think most importantly a little bit more on this geoeconomics that are driving Saudi foreign and economic policy right now. So first on on those long-standing security ties as Ankit already mentioned there is this well-established military-to-military relationship between Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. I think the recent political shifts have made this easier. This is in a couple of appointments, very high-level appointments in the Pakistani military. It's also worth noting that the personal ties between Prime Minister Khan and Muhammad bin Salman there clearly is an affinity. It was very photogenic their rides each gave each other a ride in his personal car when Imran Khan was in Riyadh and when Muhammad bin Salman was in Pakistan the same thing. So they are able to relate to each other on a one-to-one level which I think has been beneficial to both in kind of image production for their domestic audiences. But I think that the general-to-general relationship as trusted intermediaries particularly on behalf of the Pakistani government is an improvement in those ties. One point also worth mentioning in terms of the domestic constituency's perception of these two leaders for Imran Khan my understanding is that it's very important for him to be able to present this image that's very much about anti-corruption that's about gaining financial aid and support for the people that will be delivered directly to the people. Saudi Arabia obviously has quite a different system. There is also an anti-corruption campaign under Muhammad bin Salman but the kind of tradition of gifting or kind of back office deals that were common in the past in Pakistan I think are no longer politically acceptable. So this presents kind of a new phase of that relationship. The long-standing military ties most recently the promotion of General Raheel Sharif to head the Islamic military counter-terrorism coalition the IMCTC which is a quite a long acronym for an organization which no one's quite sure what they're doing but this is was meant to be sort of a band-aid over the the lack of Pakistani military support for the Saudi campaign in Yemen but also part of a larger Saudi outreach to try to build coalitions and to build expeditioary military capacity across the region. So it's it's anti-terror in name but it's also meant to be a force potentially for domestic stability which is quite different than the security guarantee for example that the United States offers to the Gulf States. There's a long tradition of hosting Pakistani troops inside of the kingdom as has been mentioned so this is not something that's unfamiliar and I would say just culturally there's this you know very broad familiarity with Pakistanis in uniform across the Gulf you know there's a large contingent of Pakistanis within the security sector in Bahrain and certainly this is a long tradition back to the crucial states. We have to talk about the nuclear issue and there is this sort of concern and anxiety that Saudi Arabia seeks to broaden its relationship with Pakistan in order to gain access to nuclear weapon technology. Other scholars more knowledgeable about this have argued that Saudi Arabia has had the missile technology to deliver warheads since the late 1980s so it's it's not necessarily the delivery system but it's the the packaging which would need to be changed. There's also reports of a solid fuel rocket manufacturing site now under construction Southwest of Riyadh but my colleague Mike Elman at the IISS Institute seems to think that that's more of a Chinese design so there's a great bit of speculation about who is involved and to what degree Saudi Arabia is serious about developing this capacity. Of course there are also negotiations with the US government in the transfer of nuclear technologies and there's kind of two paths towards this there's the one-two-three agreement which is you know what the United States has with other allies including South Korea and India and then what they call the gold standard which is a bit more restrictive which is the recent agreement that the US signed in 2010 with the United Arab Emirates. What's interesting about the the memorandum of understanding with the UAE and the United States is that the very less paragraph of that agreement gives the UAE the ability to renegotiate the terms should another country in the Middle East define broadly as the region gain a more generous one-two-three agreement in such the way that South Korea or India has which allows the enrichment of uranium uranium and reprocessing. So what we're seeing is potentially you know proliferation in the region for sure but also in legalese very different ways to structure these kinds of agreements so that I think there's still very much is open possibility between the US and Saudi Arabia to come to some sort of understanding. The other thing is that Saudi Arabia does have uranium deposits and they would like to have the right and they do have the right to develop those. All right the second point on people to people to ties there's a huge restructuring in Saudi Arabia there've been 1.3 million workers who have left the kingdom foreign workers in the last year and a half and a large many of those are are likely Pakistani they're also from Egypt from Bangladesh from from India from from all over the region and so this creates you know a big vulnerability to communities inside of Pakistan who depend on that monthly income. There is a shared interest in developing the defense manufacturing sector in Saudi Arabia with Pakistani assistance Pakistan does export a great deal of light weapons and munitions to Saudi Arabia it's an important market for Pakistan a drop in the bucket to what Saudi Arabia buys yearly in arms. MBS also made a gesture to release about 2,000 Pakistanis in Saudi jails while he when he went to visit Pakistan and that of course was a boost to Imran Khan's kind of domestic popularity but I think in the short term Pakistan is certainly a loser to the economic reforms going in Saudi Arabia right now and even you know we'll talk about the aid but even the you know generous loans and direct cash transfers are probably not sufficient to displace that long-term labor market which has been so useful to Pakistan. So the third point on direct aid and financial support it has been a big year but it's not just about Saudi Pakistan this is really Gulfwide and Ambassador Olson mentioned this so there is a six billion dollar package of Saudi assistance to Pakistan three billion dollars in a central bank deposit which of course Saudi Arabia can remove it's it's an interest bearing deposit and a three billion dollar loan to purchase Saudi oil right so this is not charity this is this is support which is meant to also enhance the balance sheet of Saudi Arabia the UAE made the same commitment a six billion dollar commitment in the same structure central bank deposit and a loan for oil and gas products but again as I've argued elsewhere I mean when we see the economic statecraft of the GCC states to the wider region it's not charity right this is for financial gain often for state-related or state-owned firms and it's done in a very technical and very careful way careful in that it's profit motivated not careful in that it is in the interest of the long-term development of the recipient state so for example adnock the national oil company of Abu Dhabi has a partnership with parko which is an energy firm in Pakistan which is 40% owned it used to be owned directly by adnock then it was transferred to ipik which was a fund in the UAE it's had some recent controversy and now part of Mubattala which is one of the sovereign wealth funds of the UAE so when these energy partnerships are made this is both basically going to be electricity generation the returns go back to the UAE which is the point that I would like to make let's discuss in the press have been negotiations with Qatar for a similar three billion dollar loan in gas support Pakistan has long-term gas contracts with Qatar Qatar supplies a pretty significant part about a billion dollars a year in long 15 year contract to Pakistan for LNG and part of Pakistan's energy mix about 26% of their local electricity generation is by natural gas and they'd like to increase that away from the dirty coal and oil fired plants so that's an important relationship as well back to the the last point which I think is the most important these kind of geoeconomic questions of energy transport and power delivery there is certainly a scramble going on for influence and we can see this from Mina, Horn of Africa, Indian Ocean, Red Sea Corridor it's it's wide and it's reach and it's over the means of energy production transport Saudi Arabia UAE and Qatar's major energy producers are on one side of what's very much a symbiotic relationship with China so they are competitors in some fields but they're also in a joint project which is really this dynamism and the expectation that where global growth will happen will be in this region and so you can be a part of it and you can capture that market and create products for that market or you can be left behind and that's that's really where Iran is not part of the equation at all given current sanctions and the withdrawal from the US of the JCPOA so Pakistan is a part of this this port scramble of course interesting that Guadalaport was until 1958 owned by Oman right so I mean the history of port development and ownership in the region I mean Aden in Yemen was the second busiest port in the world into the 1950s only second to New York so the recreation of transport logistic hubs across the region is a refocusing towards the east and a bit of a decoupling from where energy markets and growth markets are in North America and Western Europe and everything else to the east and it's not just in the transport and what these ports will create in their refineries of energy products it's also in the control of where fertilizers go where wheat goes and how it goes who transports it so this is you know the trade basket is much larger than than just energy products and of course the Chinese interest in Pakistan the Chinese Pakistan Economic Corridor the CPAC project the initial about 45 46 billion dollars of projects which have meant to be implemented those are roughly equivalent to all foreign direct investment in Pakistan since 1970 right so this is a massive influx of capital a massive reshaping of the entire region of which Pakistan is one part of that vision and a somewhat small one but very important impact in in the domestic economy as I know as I mentioned Pakistan has a kind of limited electricity generation capacity about 16% is in oil LNG about 26% coal about 9% so they're trying to shift that energy mix as lots of other places are as well including the Gulf States so this is why nuclear energy is so important to a country like the UAE and Saudi Arabia because you want to be able to monetize that asset in the ground and get it out and sell it and turn it into something else as quickly as possible Saudi Arabia I think in the future would like to also compete with Qatar and be a natural gas supplier to Pakistan so this is a bit of competition there the failure of the pipeline from Iran creates opportunity for all of the Gulf States that are gas suppliers I should also mention that Qatar and China are co-investors and a gas fired electricity plant in Pakistan so there there are a number of relationships which now within the GCC dispute for Pakistan requires some some difficult balancing as well I've put a lot out there I really look forward to more discussion and expertise of the ambassador to so thank you thank you Karen Alex over to you thanks thank you ambassador Olson it's great to be here much has already been said I'll be focusing on the Iranian angle but if I could quickly just react to two things that were said earlier about Pakistan pursuing a policy of neutral neutrality I think from Tehran's perspective you could argue that if you look at the period from 1979 onwards that first decade in relations you could talk about genuine Pakistani effort to be neutral in the rivalry that existed then because this is important point this Saudi Iranian rivalry is not something that was born yesterday on the case of Iran it goes back all the way to 1979 and the Pakistanis genuinely did perform pretty neutral role back then Ziyul Haq was asked repeatedly by the Saudis cut Iran loose so the Iranians will be defeated in Iran Iraq war what did Pakistan do instead they opened up the port of Karachi for Iranian merchandise goods the Pakistanis did not want to fight the war of the Arabs if you will against Iran and this is a theme I will come back to you again and again because simply their biggest goal in life if you will certainly in terms of national security interest is the relationship and power parity with Indians and I want to keep that eastern border with Iran to the extent that I understand the relationship quiet they don't want to have it to be troubled that the way they have their Afghan border being troubled or certainly their troubled relations with India and another thing I think Karen mentioned this on the issue of what is this latest Saudi initiative all about what's the visit all about to Muhammad bin Salman another senior Saudi officials again I'm giving you the Iranian perspective they don't look at this in terms of Saudi Arabia only looking for a greater market share in Asia because people are gonna have more monies in their pockets in years to come and Saudi Arabia when he wants to sort of capitalize on that I think the Iranians look at the enmity of Saudi Arabia towards Tehran as a key component of these Saudi overtures to countries like Pakistan to give you an example Iranian media are full of you know reports about how third-party companies from countries like South Korea and so on China and others are oftentimes told quietly by the Saudis if you do invest in that project in Iran we're gonna cut you loose you know and that I think from from an Iranian perspective to be expected is part of the rivalry with the Saudis but they don't look at Saudi Arabia's efforts in South Asia simply because of commercial calculations I want to make a couple of quick points if I may I'm gonna talk about should Iran really care about what's going on between Pakistan and the GCC States what's in the way of Iran Pakistan relations why is there so much promising on the part of Tehran and Islam Islamabad and so little delivery in fact and then I have a couple of wild cards at the end just to hopefully get us to discuss those at the end but look if you're sitting in Tehran and you just saw the Saudi officials visit Islamabad you ask yourself the question why is this any different from the last time we had senior Saudi officials in Islamabad if you remember in January of 2016 Foreign Minister Jubeir was shortly followed by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman there was talk of closer ties then they even had those meetings with Nawaz Sharif a man that from an Iranian perspective is very close to the Saudis I mean if you're sitting in Tehran no Pakistani leader arguably is as close to the Saudis as Nawaz Sharif and yet Nawaz Sharif didn't really deliver much to the to the Saudis we heard earlier how the Pakistanis had turned the Saudis down on the question of deploying troops to Yemen and they continued to do that and have continued to do that ever since not only Yemen I would also make the point because this didn't come up but it should come up Pakistan has overwhelmingly stayed out of what Iran does in the rest of the region there is no really Pakistani voice of criticism against Iran in terms of what Tehran is doing in Iraq in Syria and elsewhere and in fact you could take that argument further Pakistan doesn't even really publicly make much of noise when thousands of Pakistanis are recruited by the Islamic Republic as militiamen and sent to Syria and Iraq and I think for my position of looking at the situation Pakistan thinks that's that's not worth fighting over thousands of Pakistanis have over the last five six years been recruited by the Islamic Revolution guard score and deployed in battlefields of Iraq and Syria that's not an issue of diplomatic concern for the Pakistanis I think that right there tells you a lot about what role Pakistan genuinely can play for Saudi Arabia in the so-called Sunni world against Shia Iran I don't think the Pakistanis want to be part of that fight you heard some of the arguments there's a sectarian dimension within Pakistan 20% Shia sounds like a perhaps a small minority but at a country of 210 15 million people you can just imagine if it goes out of control what the consequences could be we heard the name of progenitor Rahal Sharif before he did become the Islamic military counterterrorism coalition head but as I said before I've seen no evidence that they've actually done anything on the ground and I think that's how the Iranians look at it that this is a lot of noise a lot of show a lot of ceremonies but in reality nobody's coming after Iran right now certainly not the Pakistanis in places like Iraq and Syria where the real fight for the future of the region right now is taking place so what's in the way of Iran-Pakistan relations look there's much in common there's the geography proximity there's historic proximity there's a lot more that you can talk about in terms of the two countries being closer and I would probably argue if you look at it the totality of history Pakistan and Iran a lot closer than Pakistan is with the Gulf Arab states obviously you know much has changed in recent decades but if you look at the totality of relations going back to the creation of Pakistan there's a lot more there between Iran and Pakistan and say Pakistan and the Gulf states but even before 1979 even before the days of the Shah which is very curious everything is security-centric it's about personalities in the case of Iran the Shah who liked Pakistan who believed Pakistan was a big player in containing the Soviet Union and in many ways he turned out to be right because the Soviet Union did invade Afghanistan December 1979 and the Shah has in in the shape of people like Benazir buto like-minded folks who also are anti Soviet and I think that relationship stays alive all the way up in my view as part of my research up until 1971 and basically the Shah one day wakes up and realizes you know what my buddies in Pakistan are engaged in a war they will never win they're never gonna win against India and if I Iran wants to play a bigger role in Asia or certainly in West Asia it's it's short-sighted of me to put all my eggs in the basket of the Pakistanis so the Shah turns around and goes from the mode where he supports militarily financially diplomatically he was Pakistan's man in many ways in Washington during the days of Henry Kissinger who speak on behalf of the Pakistanis he goes from that mode to listen you guys can't win this war against the Indians I'm not going to help you have another war and he doesn't he's toppled himself in 1979 and I would argue when people discuss Iranian-Pakistani relations oftentimes a starting point in 1979 Khomeini taken over that is the wrong way of looking at it relations really have a turning point in the late 60s and in 1971 two things happened in late 1960s Ayub Khan the leader of Pakistan then is basically very attracted to these new emerging Gulf states and all the monies that they have he sees that as the way Pakistan can build up its armed forces against the Indians we can get into that if people are interested buto makes it even worse in the sense that he kind of almost puts his good friend the Shah aside in favor of the Gulf Arab and the monies that they could bring to the table and I think this is the moment where the Shah of Iran realizes that he had to really pursue in a policy of neutrality between in the war between Pakistan and India 1979 certainly doesn't make relations better Khomeini coming in and in his first day in office literally calling the Pakistani leader the fake one doesn't help relations and I think relations really stutter of badly and the Pakistanis have never come over that I never forget reading the cables about description of Pakistanis of Iranian officials so just taken over after the Shah calling them amateurs and you know what the Pakistanis were very right they were amateurs in Tehran in 1979 they made all sorts of foreign policy mistakes and I think their attitude towards Pakistan was certainly one of them so I will just say a few more words here I don't want to speak too much the reality today is this if you're sitting in Islamabad what can Iran bring to the table for you money they don't have any arms they don't have any diplomatic cloud for you on the international stage they're struggling themselves what are they gonna do for you so really if you're sitting in Pakistan you would love the day where Iran becomes another normal state but as of today the Iranians really can do much for you and particularly not if your mission in life is as I said party with India and that's where the Pakistanis are I don't think this is any different today with him around Khan and it was on the Nawaz Sharif and I say the same thing though which is a big question they have been able to be neutral for all these years the question going forward is depending on what happens between Iran and Saudi Arabia can Pakistan maintain the neutrality that it has been able to keep so if you have another case of another Yemen situation where the Saudis will once again come and knock on the door of the Pakistanis and ask for help can the Pakistanis continue turning down I'm not a Pakistani hand but I think that's a question for the Iranians to also to worry about I give you one example by the way because one of the things if you really want to understand where we are in terms of over promising and little action on the ground between Iran and Pakistan is this political lack of trust in one another for 25 years Iran and Pakistan have been talking about one gas pipeline one gas pipeline Marvin Weinbaum here is written on this issue for so long knows what I'm talking about and do as do others Fatima man and others which I'm delighted to see in the crowd why has it taken Iran and Pakistan 25 years and still that pipeline goes from the Persian Gulf and stops at the Iran Pakistan border because the Pakistanis having to build their side of the pipeline instead they've gone to Qatar and now talking to the Gulf Arab states for energy cooperation the only way I can explain that is lack of political trust and pressure from outside is including the United States but not to mention the Saudis you know Iran decided less than five years ago to supply gas to Iraq today Iraq gets about 20% of its electricity through Iranian gas when there's political wielders action 25 years Iran and Pakistan haven't really moved the ball forward and I don't see it going forward anytime soon one other point to because this was also mentioned how many more times can the Iranians sit there and take these attacks happening on their border which Iran claims are being conducted by groups that are based in Pakistan Jaisal Adl is based in Pakistan and the Iranians are keep keep asking the Pakistanis to do more nothing's happening that this might seem ominous that Iran might decide to take action unilateral action and one is a nuclear armed country the other one's a nuclear treasurer country this could get ugly and yet I have to take a step back as an analyst and say actually periodic attacks like we saw in the 13th of February have been going on as early as 2004 the Iranians and the Pakistanis don't like what's happening but they seem to be okay to live with it at least for now all right I'll stop in by just pointing out three issues that I think anybody who watches Iran Pakistan relations in there in a short term should should be looking at look at the port of Chabahar what happens to it this is a strategic port not just for Iran but also for India this could be a big game changer for India's way of getting to Central Asia how will Delhi continue to push for this project from what I understand the Indians really pushed hard the Trump administration to get an exemption so they can continue investing in Chabahar despite the Trump administration's maximum pressure on Iran and yet the Indians got an exemption for Chabahar how do we explain that how much the Indians have to fight for that and and that tells you how much how keen they are on the future the port of Chabahar what will Pakistan do to undermine that port could we see moments where the port the projects that are tied to the port will come on the military attack by some of these groups that the Iranians claim Pakistan is behind again that could become a flashpoint that might go in a new direction and make the situation worse than it is future of US and Afghanistan that is a big one I mean from everything I can tell the US is about to get out of Afghanistan last time the US got out if you will or no superpower was present that's when Iran and Pakistan really came to blows on Afghan soil you literally have the only moment where Iran and Pakistan are going nearly to war with another 98 is it because of events in Afghanistan and I think power vacuum in Afghanistan will make the situation riskier in Iranian Pakistani relations and then final point I make and this is something that has already been mentioned Karen mentioning as well the role of China in the 60s and 70s the United States played the role of bringing Iran and Pakistan together as part of the sort of Western efforts the anti-Soviet efforts if you will against the Soviet Union that in many ways worked to some extent I mean you had organizations like Cento and so forth those cooperation the United States to date isn't really that actor in West Asia China could be that player and the Chinese probably will have going forward because of the situation with US and Iran have more or less a free hand in terms of what they can get the Iranians to do so I am very curious to see how far China is willing to go to push Pakistan and Iran towards one another I don't know what Chinese calculations are but to me it seems like open space for China and perhaps they can they can push Iran and Pakistan in ways that no one has been able to push them towards each other since 1979 let me stop there and thank you thank you Alex so we'll shortly go to two questions and answers but I thought I might kick off the discussion by asking the panelists each one question which is I think we heard from all of them that whatever the historic roots of the conflict between Iran and the Gulf countries it does seem to be intensifying of late and I think we are also heard from all the panelists that Pakistan has been successful in if not neutrality at least straddling that particular conflict and I guess the question I would ask is how long will Pakistan be able to continue to straddle that particular conflict will they be successful and to complicate the question I want to throw in a little factoid because there has been an illusion to Pakistan's ethnic makeup and 20 percent Shia which of course is you know a kind of a notional figure it's more acute than that because of the I think the particular concern is the army which is clearly the most powerful institution in Pakistan has always worried about the fact that it has Shia soldiers Shia officers as well as Sunni and hasn't really had any problem managing that particular conflict I'm not aware that there's been any conflict within the army itself and so it has a large stake in preventing that kind of conflict developing so against all of that backdrop I'd like to ask each of those each of the panelists what they think is Pakistan going to be forced to choose sides in the intensifying conflict in the Middle East in a way that it hasn't had to before okay sure yeah happy to happy to pick up on that question I think I think you know the first thing I'll say is that in the process of studying the relationships between these three countries and particularly how Pakistan's approach them you know I walk away with the observation that the military is obviously a central institution in driving these relationships and that conversely that makes it really difficult to have strong views on what exactly is driving Pakistan because it's so difficult to sometimes get a sense of you know what the ISI and the military are really thinking about these things right we have very little kind of open source evidence this is maybe something that also comes up with the you know Islamic military counterterrorism coalition you know Raheel Sharif has given kind of public statements about that what's actually going on behind the scenes I think what you said is actually an unanswered question to which the answer I think matters deeply because I think as we heard correctly earlier Pakistan you know the Pakistani army is kind of risen deaths are an overarching strategic goal is to continue to resist India seek parity with India and if Saudi Arabia and Iran can assist in that endeavor or at least not inhibit it then I think that's what they're looking for and I think we see that more within Iran on the inhibition side where we have kind of direct Pakistani concerns about the nature of what Iran might be doing in Balochistan Chabahar something I didn't really speak about but I think that's absolutely a new and relevant dynamic and I think US withdrawal from the JCPOA coupled with the Trump administrations I guess sort of maximum pressure approach to Pakistan now really is throwing everything out of equilibrium and in the short term I think there's actually gonna be a very it's gonna be a very difficult task for Pakistan to to find first of all value in a deeper relationship with Iran and resist what the Saudis have to offer right the one thing that Iran has going for it though is that it's right there on the border that it is an unchanging feature of Pakistan strategic environment Pakistan can't wish for a different neighbor on its on its Western front so it has to live with Iran but the question is you know what happens what happens if you know let's say a success of US administration reenters the JCPOA and the relationship with Iran in the United States begins to change again Iran sees sanctions relief Chabahar either you know Chabahar still I think maybe does get overstated a little bit it still has the potential to entirely fizzle as an as an Indian strategic initiative and I think a lot of that depends because the you know the big bet the Indians are making in Chabahar is that Afghanistan will have a successful kind of economic future and that the Chabahar route will be a ever-growing sort of source of trade activity that the Indians will primarily benefit from on a personal level but also will pay dividends for the stability of Afghanistan and what happens after American withdrawal if those assumptions don't hold so I mean I guess my my overall takeaway is that I have a pretty pessimistic view on Pakistan's ability to actually maintain neutrality I mean you'll you'll notice that my original remarks I want to say that Pakistan sort of projects neutrality but I don't think it's actually been successful in convincing strategic elites in Tehran especially that it is a neutral player thanks Karen I'd like to get your take and maybe you can help us understand to what extent there is pressure from the Saudis and the other Gulfies to choose and to and to sharpen the choice I don't I mean I think as Alex said Iran has very little to offer right now I mean things could change but for the near term I mean the the investment opportunity the ability to create stability domestically in Pakistan is is looking for Gulf and Chinese support and Iran's not part of that Chabahar is not it's has like six births it's like a tiny port it's nothing so I just don't think that's that interesting the Indians are fully operating it the gas pipeline now Iran and Pakistan are have a legal dispute so there may be some actually the Pakistanis may have to pay Iran for the failure to construct their part so I mean there's there's nothing good to to wait and hope for things to change in Iran and if they do great but that's a long long way away. Thanks Alex. Sure I I just wanted to put out one statistic just on the economic side which I always find fascinating. Pakistan is one of Iran's 15 immediate neighbors arguably the smallest of Iran's immediate neighbors country of Armenia Christian Armenia Iran and Armenia trade the same amount that Iran trades with Pakistan country so Armenia's population is about hundred times smaller than Pakistan I mean just to give you perspective into how how you have to look at the relationship how low you're starting but ambassador also to a point about where could sectarianism go in terms of Iran and Pakistan I took a quick note here first point that comes to my mind is the only time Iran really played a assertive aggressive concerning game of pursuing his sectarian agenda is the 1980s where the Iranians really do focus on on trying to recruit as many of the Pakistani she is as they can those days are long gone I don't see the Iranians having the will to do anything like that because that was a wild days of Iranian foreign policy that's when they were all around in the region doing all sorts of things some of them were successful from their perspective I mean that's when they created his Bala in Lebanon and it's stuck it stayed but I don't see how the Iranians will today 2019 look at those 20% sheer population of Pakistan a majority of whom I'm sure are much more secular leaning than believers in the village of Farid the supreme leadership concept that the Iranian system is all about which is that man-made concept that is only 40 years old most she is in the world do not subscribe to it at all Iranian people are by and large not interested in any pursuit of sectarian agendas in the region if you look at the protest in Iran whenever Iranians are out up in arms and angry their government it's because of foreign policy adventurism on the banners of proxies in in Syria and Iraq and so forth so I don't see the Tehran having the confidence to want to go after a sectarian agenda in Pakistan particularly as strong I mean this we should remember from Iran's perspective it's a neighboring state with whatever it is 200 nuclear warheads it's it's that that has to be remembered it's a nuclear powered state now those missiles with the nuclear warheads aren't aimed at Iran but still is a nuclear armed state but one final point I'll stop the modus operandi of the Iranian regime from day one when it comes to spreading the sectarian or the ideological message has always been the same fine vacuum if there is vacuum Iran has usually been pretty good at filling that vacuum in the Middle East so if the Pakistani state becomes weaker and there's vacuum for outsiders to come in and play a role I'm sure Iran would be among those outsiders trying to find a way to come in but that requires vacuum because I don't think the Iranians have attractive blueprint that appeals to Shia Pakistan is today where Iran could say you know what let me pursue a sectarian agenda I don't think I don't think we're there right now I'd love to hear your assessment actually Ambassador I mean we've talked about the risk to Pakistan of the outside but I think we should flip it what's the risk to the outside states of Pakistan we had to bring you in yeah well yeah okay thank you Karen I think that the case has been made pretty compellingly today that the advantages to Pakistan lie primarily with the with more alignment with the Gulf countries but I think this this question of sectarianism continues to loom large and perhaps not exactly for the reason that you suggested Alex I mean I would I would accept your judgment that maybe Iran doesn't or Tehran doesn't want to play an activist role in fomenting problems inside of Pakistan today and the way that they may have in the past but the concern I think is a different one from the perspective of at least the Pakistani army which is that to the extent Pakistan becomes explicitly aligned with a the Sunni powers of the Gulf that the Shia officers and soldiers will feel disenfranchised and they will create a sectarian conflict on its own without regardless of outside influence inside the Pakistan military so I think you know I guess my my sense on this is that Pakistan will continue to try to straddle and in fact some of the things that have been done already it seems to me that the the appointment of Raheel Sharif was in a in a way a very clever attempt at straddling because he was appointed after he retired and the thing I would be watching for in Saudi Arabia right now and in particular in the conflict of Yemen or anything else that's odd conflict is not the presence of Pakistani troops but rather retired Pakistani soldiers because there's an extensive network of retiree organizations in Pakistan that recruit ex-jawans all the way up to generals and and ship them off into other conflicts and so I think to the extent that becomes more prevalent and becomes more visible which I think Pakistan will make every effort to make sure it is not that's that's when the sectarian challenge will potentially arise so I see it as all kind of hard choices for Pakistan frankly yes there's one more note on the Raheel Sharif at the Islamic military counterterrorism coalition when that announcement was made it actually caught the Pakistani civilian leadership off guard Pakistani foreign secretary I believe was interviewed by dawn newspaper about about Pakistan's participation in the in the coalition and he was just befuddled he was like I don't we'll have to get back to you there's some kind of the quotes in the report but it's you know he was just caught off guard and and that to me actually suggested that this was something that you know Raheel Sharif in his capacity as chief of army staff he had just been to Saudi Arabia I believe this was something that was sort of handled by the military through the channels that exist with Saudi Arabia and of course then you know his retirement there was sort of a pall hanging over whether he was going to extend his term or actually retire after his three-year term expired and then he had that out into the Saudi coalition so I think that was the Pakistani military sort of stepping in and doing what had to be done so to speak it was a revenge for Nawaz having surprised the military when he went to Riyadh in 2015 and made a commitment so anyway why don't we open it up to the audience delighted to take your questions please identify yourself by name and affiliation please yeah we have mics coming Donna Takawi embassy of Bahrain my question is regarding Mesa the Middle East strategic alliance do you think that'll deepen the rift between the Gulf countries and Iran and will that have an effect on Pakistan and whether they will you know maintain their neutrality will that even be possible so yeah I'd love to hear your take on that thank you take several questions yeah okay we'll take we'll take two or three okay I think there was a question here my question was about the CPAC and how these role over there would that be comfortable for India at the same point in time if we look into the Java on one side and the Gawadar on the side though Java is tiny enough to to make any difference or any impact it for the time being and how exactly Iranians are taking it when we are seeing like Iran is asking for some more details on what exactly we can call it insurgency within within the borders on that thank you the gentleman in the best here hi Phil Schrafer former active duty Marine and a retired international health care consultant have a question on weaponry about Iran and Saudi Arabia and Pakistan Bob Graham the former senator from Florida wrote a novel once where Saudi Arabia tries to get atomic bomb does Saudi Arabia have any arrangements with Pakistan to get a bomb second question hypersonic missiles the Chinese and the Russians have developed these the only possible country in this much will be Iran possibly has that missile technology is there any possibility they would acquire hypersonic missile okay so we have three questions first on the question of whether Pakistan will be able to maintain its neutrality one on CPAC and third on weapons any volunteers I'll take the Mesa question well I mean Pakistan's not part of it but it this this like other kind of regional attempts at security architecture has not been very successful there as many hesitancies from the Egyptians and the Jordanians of what it means to be a part of this this group and so I think for a lot of countries it's creating some discomfort because clearly it does have an initiative which is anti-Iran or confronting Iran at its core whether we spell that out directly at the US State Department or not but that's clearly its intention in my view so I think it yeah it makes it makes it difficult for lots of countries which would that do have good relationships with each other to more or less two sides yeah add to to that if I may I mean I think there's 41 states in that coalition and they miss a no not a miss I'm talking about the anti-terrorism I see MTC thank you for that I can I forget that one I think it's 41 states in that coalition depends really what the mission is if the mission becomes as Karen said another anti-Iran you will see countries fall off I don't think a country like Oman which is technically part of it which lives to balance Saudi Arabian Iran would want to be part of that coalition so it all comes down to when we talk about extremism are we just talking about Iran and Shia proxies that Iran is known to support or we talk about all forms of extremism because I think that's where you know but by definition you will always have a problem but who who's defining the extremists right I will also say on on the military to military ties if I may be I don't have any specifics for you I what I do know is throughout the 1980s Pakistan did support Iran militarily to the extent that the Iranians could pay for it there were you know Pakistani because so much of what Pakistan and Iran had was basically from the same source the United States and a lot of these Pakistani Iranian military folks knew each other from the days where Iran and Pakistan were both on good terms United States so if you went to air for to Shiraz Air Force Base the Pakistanis in the 80s were training Iranian pilots in one form or another the Pakistanis did supply some arms to the Iranians in the 1980s including seized American weaponry that sees is not the word that American weaponry that had been given to the Afghan Mujahideen that somehow ended up in the hands of the Iranians during the Iran-Iraq war and Pakistan would have played a role in that I'm sure but in the big picture of things despite what you hear if you read the news the Pakistani Navy often visits and they have joined drills with the Iranian Navy in the Arabian sea and so on what does it amount to I think it's token gestures to prove that we're neutral we're friendly but really deep down want to go back to a point I made before there is a total lack of political trust between Pakistan and Iran and I think that is the case as of today I'll say a little bit on the nuclear weapons question specifically so yes there is this idea out there that Saudi Arabia has inherently made a down payment on quote unquote an Islamic bomb I want to push back against that a little bit I think there are a lot of reasons why Pakistan would not want to transfer nuclear material we have heard from Karen about Saudi Arabia's investments since the 1980s in ballistic missiles and the DF3 which is the Chinese ballistic missile it's a medium-range ballistic missile about the same range capability that the Iranians possess it's not a very precise missile and if you're using conventional munitions with inaccurate missiles they're militarily not very useful especially at those long ranges so that has sort of long been seen as an evidence that the Saudis have left the door open to put nuclear packages on top of those ballistic missiles but why wouldn't the Pakistanis want to proliferate to Saudi Arabia well the first thing is if we go back to that Indian question there are some very interesting trends in recent years in South Asia with the nuclear balance in South Asia specifically that I think have left the Pakistanis very concerned about the size of their nuclear arsenal India's been investing in missile defense technologies better intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance I think that leaves the Pakistanis feeling like the number of nuclear weapons that they have is actually either insufficient or at the bare level of sufficiency for their deterrence so shipping off a bomb or shipping off fissile material to Saudi Arabia would be a very very significant cost for the Pakistani military to bear and you know some of the other evidence that's on the public record there's one famous set of testimonies from a Saudi diplomat in the United States who defected and he publicly testified to American officials that there were all sorts of arrangements but generally his testimony isn't taken to be the most credible source of information about what arrangements might exist between the two countries so I'd say on the on the nuclear proliferation front it's best to be cautious of course there are lower levels of proliferation so the Pakistanis could offer assistance to Saudi Arabia with with the designs even if they don't actually send any material over and I think that's been one of the concerns on the other side of a one two three agreement with Saudi Arabia which is why that agreement needs to be negotiated with the highest non-proliferation standards today as that's as that process is occurring on hypersonic missiles I don't really see a role for those I mean the primary reason you want those is to deal with a ballistic missile defense and Indian capabilities and regional capabilities more generally remain pretty rudimentary even the Patriot systems that the Saudis have can be overcome and have been overcome actually by the very rudimentary scud-derived missiles that the Houthis use so I think I think you know none of these countries are probably going to be best off putting their money in the hypersonics basket for now did anyone want to touch on the CPAC question I think we still had a question on the rule of China and how India China India and how Iran was likely to react I mean all I can tell you from from Iranian perspective Chabahar today the biggest companies registered in Chabahar are Afghans Afghan companies are most registered but out of 300 companies registered operating out of Chabahar about 107 or so Afghans the second largest are not Indians are Pakistani companies and the most cargo from Chabahar today goes to Karachi and people forget that so it's not and I would say the Iranians it might be small I agree but the Iranians look at Chabahar as a potential rival to Jebel Ali in UAE this is Iran's only deep port sea which the Shah of Iran in the 70s started fixing so the US Navy could come docked there but that was before Khomeini took over so this this is a this is a half a century old project it's not a new idea it's been going on there's a lot of logic behind it and if you're India and again you also want to watch Russian relations because part of Chabahar's attractiveness for for India is it's going to be connected to South North Corridor so which means links India all the way to Germany and you know Europe and the Iranians this last week finished the last 165 kilometers of rail network that connects Iranian Astara the city of Astara to Azerbaijan which was the missing link so we talk about infrastructure and we haven't really talked about One Belt One Road but look at the map the Chinese the Chinese a trillion dollar allegedly commitment to infrastructure projects across Eurasia Iran is at the heart of it Iran is a heart of it both in terms of maritime and land route so I would be saying to you Chabahar right now is still punching way below its you know potential but it could go places because it has a lot of logic to it that goes back to as I said early 70s thanks huh I mean there's there's a lot to go around right so I think you know these are such massive investments and they can be partnered with with national firms right and there's so many in the scale of production there there's so many ways to enter exactly but but much beyond that as well it's in a lot of the firms like I mentioned Parko is one firm you know adnok investment which now mobile investment inside of Pakistan that's one way to model and I if if the if the Indians got a little smarter about their own kind of state initiatives they would start doing some of that as well yeah I would just say on CPAC it is difficult CPAC is not very transparent and not very easy to find out what's going on and to actually participate in at various points the US has expressed interest not under the current administration in sort of at least aligning some of its assistance with CPAC and it was very difficult to do in practice because of those the non transparency I suspect it will be difficult for Saudi and Gulf investors for the same reasons to align too much with CPAC they'll probably wind up doing things that are adjacent to rather than actually part of that part of the quarter although in theory the economic zones under CPAC are open to anyone okay another question I think with the gentleman in the back yeah hello my name is Khalid Burr I'm Deputy Chief of Mission of the Arab League here in Washington and I'd like to thank you for your interventions and I would just like to maybe derail a bit from the title of the of how Pakistan can navigate the Saudi Arabian and Iranian a relationship and just try to maybe get you to tell me what you feel about China's role maybe in the next 10 years in terms of playing an impact in this kind of relationship I know China is very invested now economically in the region I know because I worked in the energy department 10 years ago and I know that they're working very aggressively on renewable energy and that's something that the Arab states have started giving attention to recently so I'm just wondering can they navigate from economy to politics and can they play a role in conflicts that have perpetuated for a long time thank you I mean I'll be very brief I think so much will depend on the future of Chinese-American relations you know right now for our last many years and Ambassador also love to hear your thoughts on this the Chinese were happy to have the United States take care of security they were getting whatever it is 30 40% of their oil you know from from the region and US was providing security for free good deal a good deal if you China right and the Chinese are now I am pretty safe in saying Karen please correct me on this the biggest trading partner for the region as a whole certainly the biggest trading partner of Iran that I know one third of Iran's overall trade is with one country called China right one test to look out for is what China might do in Syria if the Chinese are interested to kind of give the US a bloody nose if you will and they want to go with the likes of Iran and Russia in consolidating Assad's rule in Syria at some point somebody has to do some reconstruction work and that requires money they range don't have it the Russians probably don't have much of it either the Chinese do I think that might be a bit of a test for how China comes in because that's not theory that's not in the abstract that's when you suddenly are hitting the ground you are bringing those Chinese engineers and whatever it is you you need to rebuild and I think that in itself will make a big statement but as I said we have to wait and see what happens there yeah I would say that it clearly the question is right that China is you know the emerging factor and a huge emerging factor and I think will ultimately help to frame how the United States for its policy thinks about Pakistan I think in five years for the last 20 years we have tended to frame our approach the US approach to Pakistan through Afghanistan and I think as we enter whatever endgame is in the endgame is in Afghanistan we will increasingly be looking to Pakistan in terms of whether it's competition or cooperation of its relationship with with China and I would suggest in terms of Chinese intentions I agreed that on Syria it but there's one that's much closer to home which is Afghanistan the home we're talking about today because China has been from the US perspective of free rider especially in Afghanistan it has been able to make investments in Afghanistan haven't really come to fruition but it's been able to make at least you know in principle the investment in mess I knock and has not played an active role in the provision of security in Afghanistan that may be changing I mean China has greater interest now in Afghanistan and Pakistan with regard to two security matters but I think the question will be whether and again depending on how the Afghan endgame goes but let us assume that there is a political settlement and and some measure of peace and prosperity returns to Afghanistan however a heroic an assumption that is would China be prepared to extend the Belt and Road initiative to Afghanistan currently Afghanistan is not a part of the Belt and Road initiative and it all like Iran sits in the heart of Asia and it's kind of hard to imagine connectivity without Afghanistan so these are these are very important questions I'll just plug a recent paper I wrote called the Gulf's eastward turn on this exact question of the Gulf Arab states and relations with China and I would also point to Mohammed bin Salman's visit to China in which when he met with President Xi he said very explicitly that the Chinese domestic terrorism problem and the treatment of a million Muslims inside of detention facilities was a was a Chinese issue and so it's not just that Chinese policy towards the Middle East is is shifting and I there's a 2016 air policy paper which is explicitly puts out their policy but also that the the Gulf states in particular are willing to be more accommodative towards China and an understanding between authoritarian regimes that what you do inside your borders is your business but we have shared interest and we can pursue those goals together which is a very different approach than what is a part of us foreign policy to the region one final thing to add one thing to watch I guess over the next like 10 to 15 years with regard to the Belt and Road and continental Asia the heart of Asia region especially is that we were starting to see China acknowledge more of an appetite for overseas basing for a variety of reasons we're seeing China play more of a role in at least what it says is a role in protecting the global commons with anti piracy patrols in the Gulf of Aden it has a base now in Djibouti the Washington Post just physically reported on another base in Tajikistan and I think when we look at the region we may see certain outcroppings of that nature pop up and it'll be very interesting to see where China decides to put those resources down and if it will steer clear of you know the Saudi Iranian tensions which I think will probably also persist over that same period of time okay I think we're approaching the end game of this session so why don't we take a round of questions I'll collect however many are left Marvin Marvin why about the Middle East Institute if by design or accident there is a serious altercation between the United States and Iran military what would be the disposition of Pakistan in that event and should we automatically assume that Saudi Arabia will be cheering on United States and conceivably Israel in the match hi I'm Bilal from the Middle East Institute so I wanted to come back to this issue of political mistrust between Pakistan and Iran we already mentioned this recently a militant organization from Pakistan known as the J.H. Aladlul carried out an attack in Iran and this came just a few hours within another attack that was carried out in Indian Administrative Kashmir by another organization based in Pakistan and both India and Iran immediately accused Pakistan the Pakistani state of supporting these militant groups what do you think is the extent of the Pakistani states for the Pakistani states support for these groups especially with respect to Iran what objectives do you think the state would want to achieve in supporting militant organizations in the Sistan, Balochistan province in Iran and how do you think this is going to change the dynamics between Iran India and Pakistan in the future. Thank you. Any other questions if not I think we'll go one last here quickly please. Matt up here. Thank you. My question is sort of turning inward more to Pakistan. Oh Kaylee Garwood with the Cindy American Political Action Committee. So with all of what's going on with Pakistan with the countries and stuff we're concerned more about the effect that this has on groups inside of Pakistan such as the Cindy and Balochis and I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit on that. Okay we have three questions. Take your pick. Sure I'll focus on the two first if I may and I know we're short of time so Marvin forgive me for just speculating out loud here but a U.S. attack on Iran by choice or accidental what would Pakistan do. You know I think on a governmental level, state level the Pakistan is probably just going to have to sit and watch. I don't think I can expect them really free focusing because India is still India and that's what they care about. That's the thing that was what I wanted to get how the popular reaction because I mean Iran whether we like it or not among Pakistan is from my visit to Pakistan it's pretty popular. It's a pretty popular country with about average Pakistanis. I mean there is a connection definitely. So I don't know that's the unknown Rumsfeldian unknown unknown. I don't know what and whether that's going to force Pakistan to actually have to do anything but under proxies you know it's interesting that both Iran and Pakistan basically have today the use of proxies obviously without acknowledging it and definitely in the case of Pakistan proxies is part of the foreign policy approach. So Iran's use of proxies in Syria and Iraq and so on is proudly declared and advertised. They don't even hide from it. Pakistan is hiding more but I think the consensus is and I'd love to hear what others have to say about it. That is also part of their foreign policy. The question is what if their proxies which so far have looked different directions turn on each other and could you imagine a situation where you know Iran could start supporting groups inside Pakistan to carry out attacks the way they kind of did in the 1980s right? Could we see a resurgence of that? I don't know. As I said I want to go back to my answer about Iran's willingness to go down the path of sectarianism one more time but I just think it's very curious, interesting to see both Iran and Pakistan one way or another are using proxies today different arenas not against each other. The question is could it turn and become a monster in their own relationship? I see my time to you. I want to know you. Good one. So Marvin I think you asked a very interesting question in part which is what will the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia do in case of war with Iran? I'll put on my golf hat and I started being involved in the Gulf on July 27, 1990 when I arrived at the Embassy in Riyadh which was five days before Saddam marched on Kuwait if you'll recall and I think that the answer would have been in the old days amongst Gulf hands that you know that the Gulf states and especially the smaller states would quietly cheer you know a confrontation with Iran but perhaps not be out front. I think that has changed. I mean I think that what you have seen for a variety of reasons including to be candid the decline of the Pax Americana and the Gulf and not just under this administration that the Gulf states are increasingly looking to provide their own security and I think that's especially true for Saudi Arabia and for for the UAE very active in Yemen militarily very active in a wide variety of other areas quietly as well. I'd welcome Karen's thoughts on that. Just to touch on the question of the Sindhis and the Baluchis. I don't have much to say on Sindhis but I do think the question of Baluchistan is very interesting. You have now a convergence of the question of Iran's relations with Pakistan. You know they center obviously geographically on the province of Baluchistan on the on both sides and and you have CPAC running through Baluchistan. It seems to me that Baluchistan is an area that is going to be we're going to hear more about in the news and there is going to be more more developments coming out of Baluchistan and more outer power competition in Baluchistan. That's my I agree with you and I think we're moving towards a more readiness for confrontation with Iran towards from the Gulf Arab states. I don't think we're there yet and if it were not of their choosing if the timing were not of their choosing I think there would be more hesitance I hope. One closing thought on the hypothetical with an Iran conflict I think for the Pakistani military that would actually be an opportunity to rediscover the kind of patronage that appears to be slipping out now with the United States right a sort of a similar dynamic to the post 1998 post Kargil relationship with the United States that gets transformed after the invasion of Afghanistan when Pakistan's military intelligence services become indispensable to sustain that project right I'm not saying in Iran contingency would involve American logistics operating out of Baluchistan or anything like that but you have to think that you know the the Pakistani military in the ISI would would find themselves becoming more of a useful partner for the United States and that in turn might help Pakistan restore some of that lost lost value so again it's a hypothetical it really depends on the specifics whether it's intentional accidental with the popular pressures are on the military at the time but that's one sort of dynamic that I think is probably worth thinking about. Okay thank you very much please join me in thanking the panel for