 I want to introduce to you the person who will be moderating this session Dr. Shibley Telhami. He is the Anwar Sadat Professor for Peace and Development at the University of Maryland College Park and a non-resident senior fellow at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution. He is a renowned pollster in the Arab world and he is frequently publishing on polls regarding the Middle East and Arab public opinion in a variety of media outlets. His most recent book which I have a copy of here in my hand, The World Through the Arab Eyes, Arab public opinion and the reshaping of the Middle East, is a long-term analysis reflecting on the polls that Dr. Telhami has run annually but also sort of providing perspective on what that means, how we should understand Arab views of changes and taking place in the region and long-term trends. So with that I'm going to turn it over to Dr. Telhami to introduce the panelists and frame the discussion. Thanks very much and just I also didn't introduce myself I realize I'm Layla Halal, Director of the Middle East Task Force here at New America. Well thanks very much Layla. It's always a pleasure to be here and it's really a pleasure for me to moderate this panel. I think we're all fascinated with what's happening in Iran and obviously the election of Hassan Rouhani really surprised all of us. It seemed to come out of nowhere and so there's so much interest in finding out how did it happen and be what it means for Iran internally and for Iranian foreign policy. And so we have some fresh information. We have a particularly unique scholar presenting some polling data that has been done by the University, by Tehran University from the beginning of May all the way until late June after the election of Rouhani and so he has a lot of information to share with us. He is Ibrahim Masini who is from Tehran University. He's a lecturer there and also at the polling center at the University but more importantly for us he's also a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, the School of Public Policy who he's done a lot of work there and his dissertation incorporated polling data as well and he also worked at the program on international public attitudes and with its director Stephen Kul who's one of the discussant for many years and so therefore he's acquired a lot of polling experience through his role there which wasn't just focused on Iran but really the global and regional polling data so it is really a pleasure to have Ibrahim Masini present his data and his analysis of the data for us we're all interested. To for discussion we have two truly experienced scholars. The first is Steve Kul, my colleague and friend Dr. Kul is the director of the program on international policy attitudes and also a scholar at the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. Those of you I he doesn't really need any introduction and most of you have read a lot of what he's been doing he's been doing polling in the Middle East in Islamic countries globally American public opinion toward the Middle East for many years published a lot but I want to particularly mention a relevant book an excellent book that was published by the Brookings institutions a couple of years ago feeling betrayed the roots of Muslim anger at America this is based on a lot of public opinion polls in Muslim countries over a long period of time and very perceptive analysis of those attitudes and finally Dr. Trita Parsi again I think when you mention the Iranian discourse in this country it's impossible not to mention Trita Parsi he's one of the most prolific and thoughtful commentators on Iranian politics he's the founder and president of the National Iranian American Council but he really is coming out and often writes as a scholar certainly he's an advocate in that capacity but he received his PhD from from size he has written some fabulous works including two prominent books a treacherous alliance the secret dealings of Iran Israel in the United States which came out in 2007 but more recently last year he published a an influential book on on Iran policy called the single role of Dice Obama's diplomacy with Iran which was published by yearly university press in 2012 so we have really a terrific panel look forward to the presentation and I invite Ibrahim to come and give the presentation hopefully about 20 or 30 minutes okay so the topic we're going to talk about is the is Iran's latest presidential election and it's domestic and international ramifications and the questions we want to address is how did Rouhani win the 11th presidential election who voted for Rouhani and why and what do Iranians expect Rouhani to do domestically internationally and I think the topic of most interest is the the nuclear issue to address these questions I'm going to be using 13 cross-sectional national probability sample surveys that were conducted between May 10th to 2000 I'm sorry to June 23rd we did one panel basically going back after the election asking the people the same people we had interviewed asking the same kind of question to see how they maneuvered and we use the computer assisted telephone interview method and you know calling fixed landlines the margin of error of these polls basically ranged from 2.2 percent to 3.7 percent so the first part how did Rouhani win in fact Rouhani's surge began after the third debate and I'm going to explain exactly what happened in that debate and how that affected public opinion which eventually led to Rouhani's election but Khalibov was the frontrunner until two days before the election and the general belief among the public was that this was going to go into the second round with Khalibov being the fixed candidate and someone basically competing with Khalibov for presidency into the second round when you look at these this does this have a pointer yes no what's happening is there okay no pointer so basically what you see here are the numbers we had until June 13th and then we project it based on the you're gonna show me this which one oh okay so what we see what the numbers we have these are the numbers starting from May 9th these are each of them are cross-sectional polls that I talked about all the way to June 13th the night before the election and based on the numbers we had the trajectory based on the economic model that we had we were putting Rouhani around 46 percent that was our prediction but then after the election one thing we realized was that perhaps this 32 since this 32 is the average of all of the interviews that was collected throughout the day so we thought that maybe there is a time differentiation as well and this average does not correctly represent the status of public opinion at the night of June 13th and that was exactly the case when we looked at when we divided up the June 13th uh poll by time and we had morning noon afternoon and evening the numbers were going from 26 to 28 to 32 to 38 percent so had we used 38 percent instead of the um had we used 38 percent instead of the 32 percent the mathematical calculation with the I mean considering the trajectory would have placed Rouhani at 51 percent which is exactly uh the the the basically the vote that he got um we we also ran this is really important if you look at this uh the slide here we would in all of our polls we would say okay assume that this goes to round two and so on so candidate end up in round two who would you vote for and basically Rouhani and Ghalibov were one of those uh sets of candidates that would provide people going for I mean two weeks before the election it's basically 20 percent saying Rouhani 70 percent saying Ghalibov and then look at what happens I mean you would really feel bad to be Ghalibov in this situation but basically this is what happened on the 13th it was 48 percent saying Rouhani and 47 percent saying Ghalibov and if you do the trajectory on the 14th you know Rouhani would get more than Ghalibov so what are some of the reasons and I'm going to show the polling data that backs these statements as well uh one of the main issues that happened around the last uh you know four days before the election was one of them was Arif's withdrawal in favor of Rouhani and endorsement of Raf Sanjani and Khatami of Rouhani this is not because Arif as you could see in these uh polls Arif was down here his numbers never went above 7 percent uh so it's not like him pulling out you know gave Rouhani 20 30 80 I mean 20 30 percent but what what it's signified was Rouhani's capability to strike coalition you know considering the election uh situation there was basically infighting on the other side and this side was actually able to uh bring about coalition to bring about consensus and someone actually pulls out the only reformist candidate pulls out in favor of another candidate and stats send the signal that Rouhani is capable of striking those kind of deals but I think even more importantly was the infighting among the principalists and their inability to form a coalition if you would read news during I mean during those times you would hear a lot of reasons why not to vote for Ghalibov why not to vote for Jelili why not to vote for for Reza and Velayati and basically these candidates they're producing these the reasons why not to vote for the other candidate basically assuming that this is a this is a election among the conservatives forgetting that there are actually another candidate on the other side you would barely hear or read any articles indicating why not to vote for Rouhani so people getting we're getting all these reasons why not to vote for these people but very little why not to vote for Rouhani the public they the other four reasons I'm going to show you some polling data on the public belief that this was going to go into the second round play the very important role I mean the role it played was that there were about 17 percent of the population voted strategically and the way it works it might be somewhat difficult for this audience to grasp I will explain it though if you are if in a in a in an election process that there's a second round basically the way it works is that if a candidate does not get more than 50 percent the top two candidates go to the second round and it doesn't matter if you're the top two candidate with 16 percent of the vote or 45 percent of the vote that doesn't matter if you're under 50 it goes to the second round so the the mind frame the way the mentality work was that if the candidate I like I would look at it and see is he gonna be certain is he certainly going to be one of the legs in the second round if the answer is yes then my choice voting for that person would be useless because he is going to be you know going into the second round and I could both form in the second round to become president the next choice would be okay who is my second candidate and instead of voting for the first candidate about 17 percent of the population voted for the second candidate assuming that their first choice was going to end up in the second round anyway so by voting for their second choice in the second round whoever wins the second round you know they could feel satisfied and I and I sure and I will show you I mean it has an had an amazing effect the two other issues the two other issues was if you had watched the third debate the Ghalibov makes two really big mistakes one of them he makes a very ineffectual attack against Velayati and when Velayati responds back he doesn't you know defend himself he basically gets it and you know stops it there but most importantly his his ineffectual attack against Rouhani he basically accuses Rouhani of not being in support of student movements and he says that when I was the police chief I was in support of these movements but you were not and basically Rouhani gets back at him I said the reason I would not support I would not allow those protests is because I knew you were going to clamp down on them so I didn't want them to get hurt and whatnot that's why I would oppose and many of these student protests and basically once that attack happens that your intention was to clamp down on the students you wanted them to come to the street so that you could you know have them all in the same place and crack down on them when he accuses Ghalibov of that he basically doesn't respond and he lets go of it in the public perception what that did that destroyed Ghalibov's the the honesty level that the public attributed to Ghalibov that his when we were gauging how on all candidates we would ask how honest do you think so and so is after the third debate Ghalibov's numbers on honesty went all the way down but I think the most important thing that that happened and I will show you in the slides is Velayatis attack against Jalili in that third debate so basically how it goes is that Rouhani and Jalili are basically debating on the intricacies of nuclear diplomacy and Rouhani is basically saying there's a smart way of pursuing nuclear program and there is basically not so smart way and they're basically going back and forth Velayatis comes up and you guys know that Velayatis is the chief counsel to the supreme leader on foreign affairs. Velayatis comes in support of Rouhani not directly but what he does he says Jalili is wrong there were all these instances where we could have reached a nuclear deal with the West but because of our inability to negotiate effectively we were not able to to achieve them and that changed public opinion on one main issue and that was is it possible to avoid sanctions without having have to suspend enrichment prior to this and I'm going to show you the numbers prior to this debate the answer was no there is no way we could avoid the sanctions if we want the nuclear program so since we want the nuclear program you know we have to burden the sanctions after the debate that changed the public opinion is that we could have it we could avoid sanctions while having the program and and that was the claim that Rouhani was making so on the issue of no one knew who was going to win and everybody thought that this was going to go into the second round when you ask people who do you think eventually going to win the election you know people are all over the place there is no consensus on who is the front runner in fact when you look at the numbers of Jalili it's almost twice the number of his voters think that he is going to win the election and what that does this is okay so this is the panel we asked people on June 13th if it was between Ghalibov and Rouhani who would you vote for and then June 17th we came back and said okay who did you vote for the people who voted for Rouhani 24 percent of them on June 13 preferred Ghalibov over Rouhani this is the dynamic that I was talking about how does this happen well the person thinks the person who preferred Ghalibov over Rouhani assume that Ghalibov is going to be going to the second round anyway he doesn't need my vote and it doesn't matter if he goes to the second round with 35 percent of the votes or 49 percent of the votes that doesn't matter so instead of voting for Ghalibov they voted for their second choice Rouhani so 24 percent of those who voted for Rouhani had in fact the day before the election said that in a in a runoff they would prefer Ghalibov over Rouhani and what is important is that you see in this election that everyone said that we contributed to Rouhani's victory and all of them are right because he won by such a you know small margin each and every single you know RF if RF supporters would not have voted for Rouhani probably he would not have won in the first round if Ghalibov supporters would not have voted for Rouhani probably he would not have won in the first round so all all of these little aspects all of them contributed to Rouhani's election but this was I think the most important issue because what it did it exonerated Rouhani of the label of being a weak negotiator a sellout some even exuse him of treason this what Velayati did in that debate basically saying that his way of negotiating was better than your way of negotiating cleared out that mentality that was widespread among the public that Rouhani is a weak negotiator he gave too much credit to the west but got nothing in return he suspended all of our program but then he got nothing in return Velayati was able to dispel that conception about Rouhani which basically opened up the way for people to go after him but most importantly was this issue before the election on May 10 when you would ask the public which of these two is closer to reality that Iran could avoid sanctions without having to suspend nuclear enrichment or Iran could only avoid sanctions if it suspends nuclear enrichment May 10th 31 percent thought only 31 percent thought that that was possible after the election so they I mean after the debate the debate happened I think on June 7th after the debate this number goes all the way up to 48 percent and this number comes down to 36 percent basically opening up this perception that it is possible to negotiate a way out of the current nuclear impasse who voted for Rouhani this is I mean this is beautiful when you look at the data both particularly after the third debate you see that he has been able to attract 50 percent of all segments of Iranian population there are some there there are some exceptions the Kurds and the Beluts the predominantly Sunni ethnicities in Iran this poor portionately voted in favor of Rouhani the lores this poor portionately voted in favor of Rezaei which hence result which hence Lord Rouhani's vote in that region and those living in smaller cities and rural areas were slightly more likely not less were slightly more likely to vote in favor of Rouhani but besides these exceptions votes for Rouhani were proportionate in all other ways so he got 50 percent of the man 50 percent of the woman 50 percent of the educated 50 percent of the uneducated 50 percent of the poor 50 percent of the rich and on all segments and we'll see in the next slide you would see the difference between the public and Rouhani voters are very slight are not that significant so why Rouhani 89 percent said that first of all those who voted for Rouhani give a wide variety of reasons some of which are often conflicting but 89 percent of them said that they picked Rouhani mainly for his own qualities six percent said we voted for Rouhani mainly to prevent another candidate from winning and when we asked which other candidate you wanted to prevent from winning majority of them were naming Jalili and five percent said both and then we from this 89 percent we asked okay what was the main reason I mean what was the quality that attracted you toward Rouhani and the list is quite long this is an open-ended question but basically people name a whole sort of things the fact that they liked his program his track record you know that he is a centrist that he is a centrist being a clergy is up here and then the list continues being a reformist his ability to mitigate sanctions and you know having the endorsement of the Sunjani having the endorsement of Khatami and the list goes on so what I want to emphasize by the list is that there is no one reason for which people voted for Rouhani and some of the things analysis we hear on this side basically making one reason quite bold in particular the sanction reason I don't see any evidence of that in the polling data that we have collected and others have collected if you look at this the so this is a cross that between how painful you think the sanctions are and who who did you voted for so the people who say the sanctions have not had any negative effect on Iran's economy 46 percent of them voted for Rouhani and then those who say oh the sanctions are hurting really really bad it's destroying Iran's economy the number is up but only barely even statistically significant and politically I don't think there's much difference between these two so it's very slight effect is not a very dominant effect so why Rouhani the domestic issues if I want to wrap it up is that the public the public as a whole has become more pragmatic and more centrist both in their approach and in demands there is a public frustration I'm gonna I'm gonna show some numbers on this with factional gridlocks that you know that occurred both during the time of Khatami and Ahmadinejad presidency and Rouhani's effective campaign to first of all say that I'm not a reformist and I'm not a conservative I'm a moderate I'm a centrist moderate that I'm able to not only unite the country but I historically have been able to work across the political device to bring about consensus to solve the country's problem and is familiar with the power dynamics in Iran what both with Khatami and Ahmadinejad one of the things they both suffer from was that they sometimes overestimated their power and sometimes underestimated their power and that led to a whole sort of an often some political crisis inside the country with Rouhani he was very clear that I know where I stand I'm well familiar with the power dynamics in Iran so we are not going to suffer from the mistakes of Khatami and Ahmadinejad but on foreign policy there is a public desire for a more pragmatic foreign policy and a change this was I think critical and only variety could have achieved this a change in public a change in public belief that it is possible to avoid sanctions without having have to suspend the nuclear program and the enrichment this change occurred as a result of I mean we have numbers before and after the the the debate and the only thing we can attribute it to is basically the debate and the statement of a variety in that debate but also there's a there was a change in attitude Rouhani's track record as Iran's chief negotiator before that debate the mentality was and the poll numbers show this that the belief was that Rouhani is not a very effective negotiator he is too trusting of the West he gives in too much and you know expects very little in return but basically Velayati corroborated Rouhani's claim that there's a smart way and there's an unintelligent way and that what I did this is very important he emphasized that what I did I suspended the aspects of the program which we had already mastered so that there wouldn't be much pressure on us so that we can focus on the aspects that we had not mastered and he in fact basically labeled himself as the as the main person who made the current nuclear progress possible and you know him saying it was one thing you know people are saying obviously what else is he going to say but Velayati coming and basically endorsing that was another was another thing so what are the expectations of the public from Rouhani the first thing is fixing the economy and then uniting the country and avoiding fashionism to work within the system and this has both ideological and pragmatic aspect to it ideologically those who are in support of the Islamic Republic say well obviously has to work within the system but those who also have their differences they say not working within within the system only brings about a gridlock which results in our problems not being solved so that has both of those elements to observe you know I mean Iran is a religious society and observing religious tenets is another one of those expectations to to make enhancing Iran's security his utmost one of the things we we asked and I'm going to show one of one of the sites is that we put security along with other issues of importance and we said which one should he focus more on and on all of them even when it comes to civil liberties the security you know gets the top number to continue with the new nuclear program to mitigate sanctions and to improve Iran's relations with other countries so the numbers when we ask them what is the single most important issue facing the country that Rouhani should try to fix immediately or should try to fix after taking office you see all of the numbers 31 percent say take care of the inflation 21 percent name various economic problems 20 percent name unemployment 8 percent name the sanctions again another economic issue four percent provide poverty and another four percent say that he should improve Iran's relation with other countries so it is no wonder why his primary focus has become the economy since has since he has become elected it is said that he holds daily meetings with economists trying to figure out where Iran stands currently and how these problems could be resolved now remaining within the system was one of the expectations that I that I numerate and it comes from this question we ask which one of these two tracks should Rouhani adopt should he accept and remain in line with the grand policies of the establishment this phrase in Persian is see us at Haya Kalan and is on which basically says these are the policies that are set by by a consensus but most importantly by the supreme leader should he accept them or should he challenge him should he work within the system or should he you know challenge the system and basically what we see 81 percent of the public and 78 percent of Rouhani voters say that he should remain and work from within the system then the issue of religiosity as I said we asked to what degree do you think Rouhani should rely on religious tenants in his decisions again I mean and this is the number we have been getting for all policy and this is you know religious tenants here might sound kind of weird but this basically means for him to remain to be honest for him not to cheat for him not to lie for him to be concerned with public with the poor and you know those kind of things and this is a security issue we run this question increasing Iran security with a wide variety of different things that the priorities that the president could have so we asked which of these two course of action should so before the election should the next president and then after the election should Rouhani focus more on and whatever you run security by I mean this got the highest number enhancing civil liberties in Iran as compared to you know the 81 percent of increasing Iran security on the on the economical issue this is one of the changes we saw happening after the I mean in the course of the election between attracting more foreign investment into the country and making Iran more more self-sufficient the numbers of attracting more foreign investment went up by 10 percent but still a large majority of Iranians and similarly large majority of Rouhani voters go with making Iran more self-sufficient and this is more historic and we can talk about it you can ask if you ask me questions during the panel I could explain more why this has become the case and then going to the nuclear issue you know improving which should Rouhani focus on improving relations with Western countries and continuing fully with the nuclear program this is a high number and the number has also I mean the among the Rouhani voters this is even more important but still majorities when they have to pick between these two the nuclear program gets the majority now attitudes toward the nuclear program and I'm running out of time so I'll be somewhat fast the numbers hasn't changed that much since you know previous years and since polls conducted by other organizations so the Iranians continue to believe that it is very important for Iran to have a civilian nuclear program and while an increasing majority of Iranians think that the sanctions are hurting and while they'll expect the sanctions to increase if Iran continues with the nuclear program they would oppose any deal that would require them to suspend or to forego nuclear enrichment so these are the numbers as you can see and these are different organizations that have run done polls in Iran since 2006 the numbers is basically about 90 percent of the public either very think it is very important or somewhat important for Iran to have a civilian nuclear program on the sanctions the numbers are going up more and more people are saying that the sanctions are really having a negative effect on Iran's economy I mean from this was in October 35 percent in June this is 48 percent so this number is continuously rising and people think majorities about 78 percent think that the sanctions probably will increase as well if you continue with the program but when after asking these two questions so we say are the sanctions hurting they say yes we say okay do you expect them to increase if you don't stop the program they say yes and then we provide them with this deal I call it the American deal but it's it's far away from that is that would you favor or oppose an agreement whereby all current sanctions against what Iran would be removed and Iran would continue its nuclear energy program except that it would agree not to any so we are making it sound as if this is a small thing this is you know you give up a you're giving up a small thing in return for you know all of the sanctions being removed and we've been asking this question since 2009 is Steve was the first you know it was the first person to ask this question and the numbers you know majority of people oppose it yes Rohani there's a Rohani voters are slightly more likely than the public to favor this deal but only slightly but look at it on this side they're also slightly more likely to oppose it which means that the number of decays the number of people who are saying we don't know among Rohani voters are slightly lower than the rest of the of the public and this is the same finding that Gallup had so this is our founding and Gallup asked the same question a couple of I think five five months ago that given the scale of sanctions on Iran do you think Iran should continue to develop its nuclear program capabilities or not and to the Gallup poll as well 63 percent said that we should continue the program despite the despite the sanctions so what is it what is that doing one of the effects of the sanctions then and I've said this many times is that as you look at this number the favorability of us the imposer of the sanctions the country that is imposing the sanctions for a program that the people are approving of this is a key difference you know in sanctioned literature sanctions often work if you sanction the country for reasons that the public also support so if they with the apartheid the public was you know against the apartheid system sanctioning that country kind of helped the public voice their opposition well there are different ways of looking at it but that's basically the one of the main arguments but in this case you're sanctioning a country for a program that it's public support so as the Gallup poll also also showed in that in its 2013 poll when you ask Iranians who do you blame for the sanctions the Iranian government gets 10 percent us get like 48 percent you on is 17 percent so majority of people are blaming it on the outside and that obviously has an impact on their view about the United States with that I end the presentation thanks Ibrahim that was really fascinating I am before I turn to the discussants I'm just going to ask you a couple of questions and some of them principally informational the first one is if you could tell us a little bit more about more details about the polling and the panel that you've done between May and late June sort of I know you said between 700 and 2000 people and then there was one panel after the elections it would be helpful to give a flavor about the sampling and and you know the how many polls you actually conducted in that period it's basically 13 cross sectional polls before and after the election 12 of them before election one of them after the election on June about 10 days after the election the the polls were done basically on a daily basis one of the things we had learned from the previous election is that since in Iran you due to the election law what happens in US in a span of two years we are compressing it in 20 days the cycles and a public opinion changes rapidly so if you conduct a poll a week before the election its predictive power is is going to be very limited all it can tell you is basically which direction the public is moving but what's going to happen at the end of the day that's not going to predict so these were basically we were running them on a daily basis and the sample varied from the minimum was 709 which gives you a margin of error of about 3.7 percent and when we had more time like the June June 23rd poll we would run larger samples so that we could do more analysis of them just so we would run with the sample size of 2000 this was a pilot project in a sense that we wanted to show again and it's a long story because we went through the same thing back in 2009 with that election we wanted to show that actually polling does work in Iran and that it should be utilized more vigorously by those who are involved in policymaking and as well as academics one of the main problems within the university among the scholars there is that they complain about a lack of Iranian data so a lot of the analysis they have to do they use foreign data and then they use that to you know talk about things inside Iran and that really doesn't make sense so with this center what you're trying to do is first of all to prove the credibility the fact that Iran just like China just like India just like other countries you can poll in it and the polls are actually meaningful and that you should actually instead of focusing more on qualitative research which has become predominantly the way research is done in social science you know that there should be a shift to more quantitative types of research as well well thanks and I want to I have two substantive questions about the the data and then I'll turn it to Steve as the first discussant one is your interpretation of the rapid rise of Rouhani's numbers I mean that's really quite amazing if you look at it in terms of you know just it really hours you know even the last day you go from 25 to 38 percent and so it's it's an incredible ascent that was surprising too many so the the question I think is you know how do you interpret that one interpretation is what you provided which is particularly with regard to Golubov's voters people who said they were going to vote for him but you know voted for Rouhani as a second choice because I wonder if in fact there may not be an opposite dynamic of that that you you're not capturing which is that in some ways it may have been the case that people just thought Rouhani couldn't win and the more they thought he could win the more just they accelerated the support and that seems to maybe coincide with the assessment by Jolidi because Jolidi a lot of people thought he was going to win a lot more people thought he was going to win that he received in terms of numbers so as you get closer and you get results and saying wow he's getting more and more and more then you might have an accelerated rallying for him so he may have been a first choice not a second choice for a lot of people but didn't think that he could win early as soon as they realized he could they just jumped on his bandwagon what what why why is that not the more likely interpretation I would say it's not the more likely interpretation because the general public opinion was that this was going to go into the second round and if it's going to go to the second round again it doesn't matter if he goes to the second round with with 20 percent of the vote or 49 percent of the votes and the fact that he got a bare majority points to that that you know he could have well it could have well gone to the second round because what was it the tooth 250 thousand that's that's by how much he won I mean if he had 250 thousand less votes so that's about four votes per ballot box not much it would have gone to the second round but I think more importantly is that when you look at the number of people who say that he is going to win and when you look at the number of people who say the other candidates are going to win they're basically around the same range it's like 20 percent saying that Jelili is going to win 20 percent saying that Rohani is going to win 20 percent saying we don't know if you if in one of the slides I show all of them are centered around one point so it wasn't like people were saying Rohani is hopeless because as they were talking to others in the town they would see that people different people are voting for different person one of the significant things that we we hear people say when we asked them you know when did you one of the questions we asked is that when did you decide to vote for Rohani about 20 percent of his vote was was attracted to him on the day of the election so you know when we asked in the in the in the panel when this was an actual question when was when did you actually decide to vote for Rohani 20 percent say on the day of the election and we when we asked them how did that happen one of the things that people often said was that in the ballot you know as they were waiting in line to vote they were ambivalent between Ghalibov and Rohani or another candidate and Rohani and as they would ask others who are you going to vote for they would see that Rohani has more of a support than these other candidates individually so if you ask for example seven people who are you going to vote for three of them would say that they're going to vote for Rohani and all other candidates only one person would say they're going to that they are going to vote for you know the other candidates and this as they were saying behind the phone that this made them that perhaps you know I'll vote for the winner so voting for the winner dynamic was also in effect on the day of the election well final a final question is about your your assessment of the a the sanctions issue because if particularly you're polling after the election indicates that most of the Iranian people really are focused on the economy that's what the it's not really so much the international a good number still want to improvement with the international you know with the international community but but that's not the first order of business and you suggested in your polling as well that people understand that sanctions are hurting the economy people expect that there'll be even more sanctions therefore more hurt in the economy and people are prepared to live with that if that's the cost of maintaining enrichment because they're not prepared to give up enrichment okay so if I'm sitting in Washington and I'm trying to interpret that data I would say okay I understand it but in the end I'm looking at a president who needs to perform well on the economy and whether or not his public sees it what I do on sanctions is going to affect the economy so I am I have the lever to determine whether he's going to succeed or fail and that's my lever with him regardless of what the public opinion wants that is if the public opinion doesn't see this connection I see it and therefore I can use it as a lever to influence his behavior well there are a couple of things to be said on that one of them is that Rohanis would see that as well and if he sees that he is stuck between a hard place a rock in a hard place he will go to the public and say look I tried as Ahmadinejad has done many times it is the sanctions that is doing this to the economy you guys don't want me to back down on it there's nothing I can do on that front all that I can do is to basically help the domestic economy with whatever tools I have available in fact that turns into a scapegoat for Rohani to blame his if he is ineffective on in fixing the economy to just blame it on the sanctions it's not something that Rohani would actually fear much particularly again is because the sanctions are being placed for an issue that the public feels so strongly about it's an issue of national sovereignty and national pride and to tell the public that do you want bread or do you want honor you know the choice is often clear in the Middle East at least in what they present I don't know in reality what happens at the end of the day but if you put them between these two choices the choice is often or pride or dignity or sovereignty as opposed to our economy and another thing is that another historical experience is the Iran-Iraq war I mean that war that brought I was reading a report that Iran's GDP basically got half of what it was at the end of the war as as compared to what it was in the early days of the war but that did not result in people saying that we should surrender you know when it comes to those issues I think that there are tough choices to make and people often go with the national sovereignty and pride thanks choice so let me turn to our discussants I will ask we'll go with Steve first and then follow Twitter and please try to limit your remarks to about 10% so we can 10 minutes so that we can have about I talk in percentages you know the polling thing so we can have 20 minutes for public intervention so Steve please okay um naturally whenever somebody hears about polls from Iran they might ask the question of could these possibly be valid is it possible to do polls there and so on and we've been looking at data from the University of Tehran for the for the last election as well as the current election and last time we conducted a call in poll from the outside and compared the results our results from the to the results in and from the University of Tehran and they were quite consistent even getting down to low levels of granularity it's also important to note that there was a poll done by some organization not very well known called IPOS that did tracking polls calling and they say from from the United States and their numbers they did six polls and their numbers track quite closely also with the University of Tehran polls now the there is of course this extraordinary change that happened and you just don't really see this kind of thing in most polls there's this sudden swing toward toward one candidate it is important to note of course that their election time is is very short of a matter of weeks unlike ours which are increasingly becoming four years but so that's a very important to remember that this is a very intense time of public deliberation that occurs in in Iran and issues are very are very foregrounded debated in a very intense way now from sitting on over here the question is also you know does this signify some change relative to the regime is this a some kind of challenge to the regime there were commentators that were saying in advance if Rohani wins it will be a mortal blow to the to the regime and so on and I think that the evidence is quite clearly that that this is not that it is a move more toward a centrist position he is a centrist he's sort of a consensus candidate more than he is a on one side of some polarized equation now he is not by any means a challenge to the islamist principles of the regime he's not strictly a modernist Galabath will be more of a more of a modernist so and the polling all suggests that they don't expect him to any any way depart from from the islamic principles however there is a movement the the numbers do suggest that it's a movement away from what Ahmadinejad represents and and one of the key things is that is well what then what what really does Rohani represent in that sense and as was mentioned economics was very foreground and in people's thinking and there is a movement and Rohani was quite critical of Ahmadinejad's policies particularly in regard to the heavy emphasis on subsidies and pulling more toward a more liberal approach a more efficient approach to the economy and there was considerable deliberation on that issue as well and there were movements on that issue away during the during this period away from endorsement of the the subsidy emphasis that Ahmadinejad had toward a more efficient liberal approach to the to the economy but equally important though though the economy was was really foreground still the question is what were the critical changes that happened over the course of the election and and the relation to the west and the relation to the nuclear program was all was also prominent and you saw some really dramatic changes there as Ahmadinejad pointed out what did Rohani represent going in he represented this this person who had been a negotiator who had taken who had tried very hard to negotiate with the west who had made some accommodation who had stopped in Richmond and so on so he represented not not going along with the west's position but supporting the idea that negotiation was possible and and there was a narrative around him that he had done this and it hadn't worked out that he had been weak that he had been taken advantage of and that narrative was retold that was recreated that was well it didn't work out when Valiety and the in the debate in a sense redeemed him and Valiety who's is is quite conservative said no he he was it was not he did not make this this was not fundamentally a mistake that Jalili made mistakes and so on that and and also this has to be put in the context of what who Ahmadinejad was that he was very confrontational and so the question is is there a way to in some way deal with the sanctions to mitigate the sanctions without abandoning enrichment and so this was a kind of shift in the in the in the public deliberation toward maybe it's possible and Rohani is the kind of guy to do that and so the redemption of his of his narrative was in a sense a move a representative move toward a greater openness to that to that to the possibility of negotiation that it is important to remember that there are questions that have been asked showing that the public will support some greater intrusiveness for inspections limitations on the level of enrichment and so on as part of of making a deal with the West the possibility of stopping enrichment entirely is is is rejected but there is support in as much as two-thirds for some kind of deal so that's always in the back there of the mind and is it is it possible the debate then is is it possible to really have a deal to have negotiations and this so Rohani's election does signify some movement toward an openness and an interest in the in in the possibility of negotiation let me first start off by saying how fascinating I think this poll is and what it reminds us of which is that even for those of us who try our best to follow Iran as closely as we can from this very long distance a job that has become increasingly difficult mindful of the fact that during the past eight years even simple interaction travel to Iran had become much more difficult which ultimately is a decision made by the Iranian government that clearly also worked against their own interests because the less people understand them the more they miscalculate or project intentions onto them but I think this poll shows how little we really know about the Iranian electorate how little we know about their calculations etc and I find it fascinating and extremely informative at the same time it raises significant question marks some of the things may be a bit difficult to to grasp at first but I think one of the big big favors that this poll has done is to show what the calculation of a voter is of an informed voter is in a system that has essentially combined the general and the primary elections and at the same time has a two-tier system which means that strategic voting is a possibility in a way that rarely happens in the United States and and I think here in Washington we've completely missed that and I think that adds a completely different complexity and nuance to the analysis that is needed on how to interpret and understand what happened in Iran but there's a there's a couple of things I would like to ask you about Ebrahim that I'm very curious about I think in your presentation when almost gets the impression that Rouhani was some sort of an accidental winner in this election clearly the the margins were pretty small and law changed in the last days if not in the last hours but piggybacking on what Shibley also pointed out I'm wondering if we're may not be giving him a little bit too little credit because at the end of the day this was part of a deliberate strategy that his campaign had they had a strategy of not surging in fact not even creating too much enthusiasm amongst the electorate too early because if they created it too early they knew exactly what would happen the bickering amongst the conservatives would end and they would start looking seriously at the threat of a reformist or a centrist candidate instead they kept a relatively low profile and then they went out really really hard in the last three to four days of the elections and that's when the videos of Khatami and I think Rafsanjani as well coming out really encouraging people the endorsement the withdrawal from RF etc this was a deliberate strategy it worked quite well the they knew that the only way to win was to win by surprise if they had soared in the polls too early the bickering amongst the conservative would have come to an end and a different strategy and the miscalculation that the conservatives did would not have happened and as a result the the calculation that people started to come to Rohani side at the end because suddenly they saw that there was a chance for him winning exactly as Shibli pointed out and again the data may show something differently but perhaps there are other questions that need to be asked as well I still would think is a factor that should not be underestimated because at the end of the day even though the margin was low one has to give credit that they actually run a pretty clever campaign they had a clever strategy and they had understood they even set it out I mean Rohani said himself this will not be 2009 and they were very much aware of what happened then and and how to play the game in such a way that that would be avoided so I would like you to comment on that but before we go there I would like to ask a couple of questions in addition to that the first question is and I think you touched upon it a little bit the question of doing polls in Iran is for some reason a question here in this town and there's a tremendous amount of skepticism some of it perhaps warranted some of it seems to be a bit unique as if Iran is a completely different universe and there simply polls cannot work all the different types of tools of triangulation and things like that that you can do you can do polls to measure in fact asking businesses in South American countries about exactly how much criminal activity they were involved in and you actually can get a pretty accurate response to that but apparently you can't do polls in Iran asking people who are they going to vote for because some way somehow that is very different in this town analysis based on absolutely no facts at times get more attention and seen as more validity than actually scientific both if you could give an explanation an answer perhaps why is it that what are the different measures that are taken to make sure that polls in Iran actually are not particularly different from polls in other countries and why they are why they should be viewed as reliable I would appreciate that and the last question is a bit of a more of a political nature I think you pointed out correctly almost everyone can take credit for Rohani's victory in the sense that the margin was so low that votes from this candidate or that candidate could have made a difference now what does that mean for the political strength and ability for Rohani to deliver does it make him a strong unifying president who essentially is responsible to everyone and everyone feels that they have a stake in him or that does that make him a paralyzed president that cannot actually move at all because everyone wants a piece of him would like to hear your predictions as well if there is any data that shows or any of the behavior that he shows so far that would give us an indication on that thank you so I'm going to go with the last question first the fact that the expectations from Rohani or so I mean there there's such a wide variety of expectations as well as reasons for which people voted for Rohani this makes it actually quite difficult for him to deliver because which whoever expectation he satisfies there is going to be someone's expectations that he is not going to be able to satisfy however one of the issues where all people are basically united on that this needs to be solved is the economy that's an expectation which you know from the very very you know conservative all the way to the radical liberals all of them this is an expectation that all of them have from Rohani and I think he is going to make this issue the unifying issue that he would bring about consensus among various factions and political parties to work on he would basically say that for the sake of the economy let's put our differences aside and let's look at this in a more pragmatic way I think that's one of the issues but also what it does is that it forces him to be a very centrist president I would not expect Rohani's cabinet to include controversial figures I would not expect Rohani to adopt any controversial stances on most issues of importance and that also means that I do not expect him to take any bold measures as well he is going to be very centrist he unless unless he wants to build you know a voting base for him for himself and he wants to say okay yeah you guys voted for me but I actually need a power base to work on so I'm going to start focusing on this sounds a bit like Obama a bit like him right you know I'll end it up right not too well but but it could but there is an issue that at times of crisis Iranians we have seen during the past times that there is a tender and this is not only with Iranians this is the same case wherever you look at there it creates a tendency for people to say okay we need to put some of our differences aside and fix this you know this very important issue so that also I think would come to his help regarding you know how did Rohani when the last minute one of the numbers which I did not show up here for the sake of time we would collect two other data on all of the candidates one of them was how much do you like this spot this guy so the favorability rankings of each of the candidates the other one is that if he comes if he becomes a president how effective of a president do you think he will be okay Rohani's numbers on favorability and this is very important May 10th was always people who very very much liked him was five percent okay not that the rest really hated him the rest didn't know him much they had no opinion of him in fact a majority of people May 10th did not have much of an opinion about Rohani and those who knew Rohani tend to have this kind of a negative you know would view him with a slight suspicion that this guy you know did he engage in some even accuse him of treason that he was you know a sellout basically so when you look at those numbers and that number now is 60 percent all the way from five percent May 10th after the election what about did you measure that in June just before the election during the election what we see is that this number is coming up but it's not reaching a majority of people who are very favorable and his numbers the individuals who people very much liked I mean his numbers were quite similar to the other people and the reason I picked a very much the very favorable number is because what we have experience in Iran and this is going to do to the third question is that there are some you know intricacies of polling in Iran and then then the results you get you have to analyze it in a specific way one of them is that when you give a four-point question very favorable somewhat favorable somewhat unfavorable very unfavorable when it comes to issues that deal with with matters that there is a social desirability there is a right answer the top button we take it that this is a full support the somewhat favorable is more like a politeness yeah somewhat favorable okay it's not a full support is not a somewhat favorable answer and then those people will say somewhat unfavorable or very unfavorable you could combine those two and say these people have unfavorable views so basically we collapse a four point into a three one the top somewhat favorable and then the bottom two this is usually how we look at it and when you look at Rohani his number is not very different from that of Kalibov in fact what is interesting that Kalibov is well known from early on in the poll and there is a lot of favorable feeling toward him and and you know what a lot of the conservatives were saying that were claiming that Kalibov is not a good candidate for conservative the reason was that he had support from all sides in fact his biggest support came from Tehran and if you look at the poll results right now from Tehran you see that Tehran is one of those cities where Rohani actually gets a lower percentage of people voting for him and Kalibov has a higher percentage as compared to the rest of the country one more point on why poll works you know as a social scientist I have no other you know instrument in my hand if I want to talk about the public you know it's either census data or it's survey data other than that there is no other reliable way of talking about the public now it could be that the polls from Iran might be less or more reliable but it's basically the best option that is available I sometimes get baffled when people both here and in Iran give themselves the right to talk about the public and what the public thinks and when you would ask them okay were you I mean what is that based on they have nothing to present if you don't have survey data if you don't have census data I don't think you should give yourself the right anyone to say that the Iranian public is this or the American public is this you need to have the as a social scientist I've been trained to question such generalizations about the public but when we compare our polling data to both the census data two election results two issues on which we have hard data on we see that there is a very close association between the numbers that we are collecting and the numbers for which there is hard data for and that gives us confidence that this method just like in South America just like in China just like in everywhere else this method is the you know is the most reliable method to gauge public opinion in Iran and for that matter anywhere else in the world well thanks so much I would like to open it for questions at the moment and we have about 15 minutes let's start here and then I'll go to Fatima please thank you and please identify yourself when you Nicholas Barry Nicholas Barry of foreign policy forum very good terrific presentation my question is two premises the first one is on that economic slide you had inflation first and I think sanctions were third fifth well down I propose that they're highly correlated the inflation comes from too few goods chasing too much money the sanctions of both financial and trade would provide more goods and therefore affect inflation the second is that it's quite clear at least to me and a lot of others that the United States government is willing to accept enrichment for both energy and medicine in recent in return for the intrusive inspections about the nuclear weapon program and also to have a radical and hefty reduction in sanctions as part of that agreement my question is what impediments are there preventing the United States from making an offer the Iranians can't refuse sure that's a very good question and you know that has been the question that is being asked in Tehran more than it is being asked on this side because in Tehran if you read Dr. Rohani's article in the Time magazine back in 2006 it's a must read I mean that's where he is going to start from anyone who hasn't read it I recommend you guys reading it basically in that article he says that we are willing to provide any sort of a safeguard and inspection related you know compromise with the west anything they want we're willing to give it on our side what we expect from them is a recognition of our right to enrich I think this recognition is the key issue that is preventing us from offering them something that they cannot refuse if you if we provide and this has been one of the and I think Trita can talk more about this this has been one of the issues that has prevented all of these negotiations from actually achieving the end goal the Iranians coming to it before anything we need you guys to come up and say we recognize your right to enrich uranium that is not something that we have been willing to provide the Iranians we have not been willing to even utter it as a possibility even I mean that has been in the discourses and I think that's what is preventing a negotiation from actually I think if we give them that if we come to terms with ourselves that they do have a right to enrichment there are millions of different ways that we can you know work out a deal that would be both respectful of Iranian rights and it would also mitigate our concern that there would be a diversion of nuclear activity towards weapons activity I should just say one thing obviously this is not the panel on the nuclear issue per se because it's about Iranian public opinion but one of the things that obviously isn't quite present here and obviously I know there are other data on it is there was never of course a question about do you feel do you think the government is really seeking to develop nuclear weapons what happens is the Iranian public is absolutely supportive of the right to enrichment and of a peaceful nuclear program and they assume that their program is a peaceful program at least that's what we assume now what happens if we were to ask that question directly do you believe that your government is clandestinely trying to acquire nuclear weapons or would you support if you ask them directly about whether they support the country acquiring nuclear weapons of course they get a probably not I know I don't remember if there's any polls and that maybe Steve would know from the past but obviously the government says it's not developing nuclear weapons but the issue here pertaining to what I'm pointing out I'm not really sure how to get answers specifically on this but that this particular question is just not going to be answered by the data it's a whole debate and we don't have people representing the international community or the US government on this issue for for a debate but I just wanted to put that on as a background or Professor Keshavars has a question behind thank you this was a wonderful presentation and panel I think the point that I very much agree with the point that Shevly made that probably the voters began to believe that Rohani could do better and they you know came to came forward with that but for those of us who are not pollsters but are following events and headlines one thing that is missing from this discussion is a rather large elephant in the room is civil liberties Rohani from the beginning presented himself as a defender of civil liberties in fact from the very beginning when he spoke in Jamaran the problem was that his supporters did things that one worried the security and the attack of Ghalibov on him about their students was concerning that too if you are a defender of civil liberties why did you not allow allow the students to demonstrate for which he had a good answer so and the point that was did not come up also was that actually there was a serious debate of a second disqualification of Rohani which was reflected in the major media in Iran and RFT did not step down until that threat was eliminated and the Shorayna Gahban the council announced that there will not going there was not going to be a second process of qualification so in fact I think that he did play on that serious public demand for civil liberty quite effectively but that seems to be very much missing from the polls that makes me wonder if asking that kind of a question on the phone could be something just as the nuclear issue could be something that the people would not feel completely secure to answer very quickly we did ask a lot of questions on the civil liberties and the public is overwhelmingly in support of more democracy well when it comes to their evaluation of the current situation there is a divide of whether you know people say we want democracy and a lot a big chunk of population say that we do have democracy as well but there is also another segment of the publisher who say we need improvements in those fields but the economic situation has so overtaken the the dynamics in Iran has become a primary concern of people from the whole I mean both you know in from Northern Tehran to Khash of Sistan Baluchistan that is something that they're dealing with on a daily basis civil liberty is not is not that kind of a concern is not a concern in that level and one of the things that I showed I compared when you put people between for example security and civil liberties you know security takes over in that sense that I know Steve doesn't like those that kind of question but what we were doing with with the security matter we were comparing with everything we were saying security and economics security got it security and civil liberties security got it why because they're looking at you know the region around them and they're saying when there is no security there is nothing so we won't have a democracy if you don't have security we won't have civil liberties if you don't have security and the threats from the United States actually amplifies that it doesn't mitigate that so there is a move and that provides room for the government that provides room for those people who may want to limit civil liberties to pull up the security court and save your under security threats and so the more threat the project into Iran the more we talk about war the more we talk about more sanctions you know crippling sanctions and what not there is a tendency for you know a more securitized environment in the interest of time I'd like to take three questions together and then ask everybody to comment to make the lost comments so I have one uh two and three uh so why don't we start right there we'll agree from the dancrop international to follow up on the last question uh Ibrahim how did you uh check for uh social desirability bias and fear of the government and uh and sort of a subset of that is what did the people you call think who did they think was asking a question who was paying for it were they really confident of anonymity yes uh but you know that back behind behind right there uh carthage by the inauthentic department of state I was wondering the panels have touched on this already but I was wondering if you directly asked in your polls have you seen in other polls uh is a nuclear weapon important do you think your government has the capacity to create one now or in the near future and relatedly on the concessions even though you've asked about total enrichment have you asked about you know are you willing to accept a lesser amount of enrichment from five percent to two percent or something like that concessions on the inspections if you've seen that in your polls or other polls if you could comment on that that would be great and the final question right there Greg Tillman arms control association my question relates a little bit to the last one I thought Stephen uh Cole said something very important at the end of his presentation about polls indicate the two-thirds of the Iranians would accept uh greater transparency and uh further uh and some kind of limits on enrichment as long as there is the right of enrichment and so I guess my question to Ibrahim Mosani is do do you agree with that and to what extent it does transparency or limits on enrichment uh get interpreted as a dishonorable outcome and does Rouhani have running room there to deal with that kind of proposal which to me is inevitable if there's any kind of viable p five plus one offer it's of course going to grant a right to enrichment it's going to be around what kind of limits on and what kind of transparency I apologize to the rest I know there were other questions I think the speaker may be here right after and please feel free to come and ask that question because I'd like to end on time so I will give not only our speaker the opportunity to respond but also Stephen and treat it to say final words and please make the make the responses brief okay so on the anonymity issue first of all when we would call we would save your calling from universe of Tehran and the number from which you call if they would call back it would be you know that institution so that provide them with that ease of mind but what is important is that when you listen in on these interviews because these are telephone uh interviews you can listen in on them you don't get a sense that there are sense right there you don't get a sense that they are fearing something why because when they would most people when they would give a response they provide their justification for the response that they just given it's not like they say a b you know response option d they say no I'm gonna do this because this and I think that and then at the end they would ask you what do you think you know it's a discussion uh it's not like uh it's not like uh you know a heart survey that they have to pick responses and the way they talk and the way they interact it you know it gives you the sense that there are you know they are being honest they're giving their honest opinion obviously if the questions become too sensitive there might be a different story but on the questions we were asking we did not get a sense that they were feeling uh that it was being too sensitive we actually ran a project this is fascinating on this issue and what we realize is that if you so we it was basically on a if you tell them the closer you get to the government so when you tell them that we are calling from ministry of interior or we are calling from uh you know an institution which is close to the government they don't become less critical they become more critical they push the top button they say the economy is you know is is going down the hell you know we we have this problem here we have that problem there and what is happening in that situation they want the government to come and fix the problem so they're pushing the top button in hopes that somebody actually hears them on the other hand when you you know savior from an academic institution they answer is become more moderate and more centrist trying you know gearing toward the plightness factor and and those issues on the nuclear weapons we we have uh back in october 2012 i came here and presented data on this issue what we are seeing is that as we are increasing the pressure the uh the percentage of people who want to nuclear weapons is also going up in fact when you do the correlations the people who fear most that there is going to be an attack on iran those are the people who are most likely to want iran to develop nuclear weapons in hopes that that would prevent that attack from occurring it's not the other way around but still it's in the minorities we haven't run that question on nuclear weapons uh this time around but if the 2012 october 2012 data if we assume them to be accurate uh the the desire for nuclear weapons there is a you know there's a strong minority i would say i think it's around 35 percent uh who would want iran to have nuclear weapons they do a majority about 67 percent think that if iran decides to build a nuclear weapon it can that it does have to take not the capability to build a nuclear weapon but they don't think their government is doing it okay so on your point the majority of people don't think their government is doing it but on the inspections uh what we see is uh uh the the polling the number the latest polling the numbers that i've seen and they're not very recent by the way uh suggests that they are open uh the public is open to a wide variety of inspections and safeguard agreements uh whether it's going to be perceived as being respectful of their you know of their identity and of of their of their nationality depends on whether it is part of an international system or we are picking out iran and saying you specifically permanently have to do these steps they're willing to they're probably willing to accept accept them temporarily uh as a measure of uh you know creating more trust and more confidence but permanently it has to be a part of an international system where other countries also a member of of that agreement and um the of of those uh safeguard regimes well thanks so much uh any final thoughts steve just just quickly on the question of the public's attitudes about basically the npt regime nonproliferation treaty they support that that regime they support that treaty and they want to be in good standing and they get very very intense about we we we have the right we have the right when they when they emphasize that and they want that to be affirmed that's within the con context of the npt treaty and in the context of international law so that and and they they want to be in good standing in it and they and and they see that it is in some way being used against them um there so i i do think there is very strong all the the polling that we've done suggests that the numbers that want to basically basically break out of it and have new nuclear weapons and so on are are quite small so we do have this uh um potential and the and the these are these proposals that have been put forward by tom pickering bill lures um and walsh all those those uh are are viable there are some sticking points that ibrahim pointed to that still need to be negotiated out about um are these intrusive inspections going to uh exist uh permanently and or and and iran insists that it shouldn't have any kind of special status and but it does have a special status of vis-a-vis the i in the un security council and so there are the the these these problems i don't know that that this is something that is is in play in in the iranian public but it can't probably could be uh rohani could be portrayed as somehow humiliating the the iranian people irrespective of their of their of their ultimate goals of the of the negotiation so it's a delicate dance and how we play it um is is is really key i think that this really is a real moment of opportunity and that there's a there's a readiness and we should should be you know uh step lightly as as as we go along here and not not try to upset the this uh this this possibility thanks to you two quick points first on the question of the polling i'm not a pollster i'm not expert but i just wanted to convey something that i heard from another person who does polls in iran he pointed out that the response rate when they do polls in the us tends to be somewhere around 14 percent for average americans and then when you go to actually some of the middle eastern communities here in the united states is actually lower the response rate in iran according to this person was around 74 percent which is comparable to the arab world yeah which is um interesting if if fear was a huge factor then you would probably guess that the response rate would have been much lower rather than so much higher um and similar to whatever he said this was not at all um um just you know a b or c instead people were very keen to share their views because perhaps to view this as one legitimate and relatively secure way of being able to vent because they are very dissatisfied and this is something that they do then and this i think should be factored in when we are having the conversation as to whether polls in iran are reliable or not on the other issue that i thought was very interesting everyone you pointed a lot of emphasis on it that um velayate in one of those debates in some ways exonerated um rohani by pointing out that there is a way to be able to proceed with the nuclear program without paying this very high cost that had come during the ahmedina jahdeers which then was transferred as to be blamed on um jelili it's a very critical question because he also shows that there was a break in the narrative in iran a break in the narrative in the sense that there is a belief that perhaps there is a different way that the west is not automatically just going to pile up more sanctions regardless of what iran does a very strongly held view that had existed i personally think that is still probably to a certain extent but there was a pause from it perhaps it can be a break from it but for it to be a break it requires a lot to happen on this side as well and just today or tomorrow there will be a new vote in congress for new sanctions to be imposed in iran which will be the first us government response to the iranian elections and i wonder will there be a break in that narrative if the first thing we do from our end as a result of so many million people going out there and voting for the most moderate candidate that we actually pile on more sanctions well thank you very much please join me in thanking our panelists for a very wonderful conversation