 Good afternoon. Good afternoon. There we go. I know it's raining outside but we can be awake and excited and lively in here. I'm Michael Barr. I'm the Dean of the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy here at the University of Michigan. I'm delighted to welcome you all here to the Ford School to welcome our wonderful panelists. We're going to hear from four distinguished career diplomats on the topic of the U.S., Iran and security in the Persian Gulf. Not a small or uncomplicated topic. The director of the Wiser Diplomacy Center, my colleague John Chachari, will introduce our honored guests in just a minute. Before he does that I want to just say a few words of welcome and a few words about the Wiser Diplomacy Center. Today's event is the final event in our semester-long series that has officially launched the Wiser Diplomacy Center here at the Ford School. Briefly the mission of the Wiser Diplomacy Center is to provide practical training to students interested in international affairs, to inform research on topics related to diplomacy, and to serve as a hub for the University of Michigan's engagement with the foreign policy community. The Wiser Diplomacy Center launch series has brought an amazing array of visitors here to the Ford School over the course of this semester. We've hosted two former Secretaries of State, a former Assistant Secretary of State, a former Ambassador to the United Nations, former National Security Advisor, and the current U.S. Special Representative for North Korea who has recently nominated to serve as Deputy Secretary of State. So not a bad lineup even before today. We have a wonderful panel for today of course as well and as I said John will introduce the speakers more in detail. The Wiser Diplomacy Center series I've just described I think elevated the caliber of discussion about diplomacy and about foreign policy here at the University of Michigan and it frankly elevated the Ford School's profile in barred circles of policymaking and among diplomats in Washington DC and around the world. For making all of this possible I want to offer my deepest gratitude to Ambassador and Mrs. Wiser, Ambassador Ron Wiser and Mrs. Eileen Wiser who are here with us today and to their entire family for their generous gift and for their vision of this amazing program here at the Ford School. So please join me in thanking Ron and Eileen. Many of you will know that Ron served as U.S. Ambassador to Slovakia and Eileen served alongside him in their time in Bratislava and they are both passionately committed to the importance of diplomacy and to the men and women who serve our country abroad. We're grateful for their friendship and strong support of the Ford School and more broadly of the University of Michigan. Ron and Eileen the success of this launch series has I hope reflected the legacy of your work and the great gift you've given to our community and as I said we are deeply grateful. You'll note that today's event and the rest of the launch series was also hosted as part of the Ford School's conversations across difference initiative bringing people from lots of different political backgrounds and perspectives here to the Ford School to talk about foreign policy. Practicing diplomacy both abroad and here at home is essential for working through moments where differences seem insurmountable. The art of talking and of listening across political and other differences is critical for advancing public policy and diplomacy alike. With that let me turn things over to John who will introduce our panel. Hello everybody and welcome. I would like first also to add my thanks to the Weiser family as well as to the American Academy of Diplomacy with which we've been fortunate to partner to bring today's event together. The topic we're going to address is obviously timely and extremely important. We're going to talk about U.S.-Iran relations, the nuclear deal, politics and security in the Gulf more generally and of course those issues are linked to a whole range of other regional issues relevant to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East from Israel and the Palestinian territories to the conflicts in Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan and beyond. And to have a discussion on such an important and wide-ranging array of issues we have assembled a real dream team of diplomats with experience in the region. I'm going to introduce them briefly and trust me introducing them in a time-efficient manner requires a lot of distillation of their incredible accomplishments across decades in U.S. foreign service. I'm going to start on my left, your right, with Ambassador Gerald Firestein who is a 41-year career veteran in the U.S. foreign service, now retired. He was ambassador to Yemen during the Obama administration from 2010 to 13, principal deputy assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs from 2013 to 16 and has had many other crucial posts including deputy chief of mission in Pakistan as well as senior posts in the State Department's counterterrorism bureau and postings elsewhere in the region in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, Jerusalem and Tunisia. He's now senior vice president of the Middle East Institute which as many of you know is a leading think tank in Washington. Immediately to his right is Ambassador Patrick Theros who's president and executive director of the U.S. Qatar business council. He also has a 35-year foreign service career with many distinguished posts including his U.S. Ambassador to Qatar and as advisor to the commander in chief for central command which is the U.S. military command with coverage of the Middle East region. He has also been deputy chief of mission in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates as well as an economic and commercial counselor in Syria among other roles. Ambassador Ronald Newman to his right is president of the American Academy of Diplomacy and served three times as ambassador to Algeria, Bahrain and most recently to Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007. He also served just prior to that in Baghdad coordinating the political aspects of the military intervention in Iraq at the time. He was deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs during the Clinton administration and he's had other senior roles in the United Arab Emirates, Yemen, Iran, Senegal and main state. I think you get the idea. There's a tremendous amount of collective expertise on the Middle East and adjoining areas here. And last but not least closest to me to moderate today's discussion is Ambassador Debra McCarthy who served as U.S. Ambassador to Lithuania during the during the Obama second term. She was also principal deputy assistant secretary of state for economic and business affairs and served among many other important roles as deputy chief of mission in Greece and Nicaragua and as deputy assistant secretary for narcotics and law enforcement. She is going to take it from me in a moment and moderate a conversation for about 45 minutes with our expert guests before we open to all of you. And for your questions, you'll see people going around with note cards. Please pass your questions and writing to them and they'll bring them down to us where Chad and Karuna will select questions that are representative of the group to pose to our expert panel. So thank you again to our guests and we look forward to a great conversation. Well, I feel very privileged to be here and also to be directing and moderating the dream team. By the way, the dream team was the basketball team of Lithuania, but that's a separate issue. I won't go into that. As you can see with the vast experience that they have all across the Middle East, deep experience from young years in the diplomatic service to the senior years in the diplomatic service. I wanted to start and the panel as follows to talk a little bit about what's happening inside the region. Then we'll get to what's happening between the US and Iran. And then if we have time, we'll put it in the bigger geopolitical context. So to draw on your deep history knowledge of the history of the culture and obviously of our bilateral relations, I wanted to ask each of you to talk for about a couple of minutes on the power dynamics that are taking place today within the region. And specifically to talk a little bit about how Iran is perceived by its neighbors in the Gulf. So Jerry, would you like to start? Thank you, Debra, and delighted to be here with all of you today. The the basic elements of the power dynamics in the region are particularly the competition between Iran and and the major states of the of the GCC of the Gulf, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and of course between Iran and Israel as well. And so when you look at when you look at the the reach of the region, what you're looking at really is the reaction of the other states to what is broadly perceived as Iran's expansionist programs, its search for hegemony in the region and the reaction of those states to what they see as the threat from from an expansionist Iranian state. And that, of course, plays into what we're going to be talking about a little bit later on in terms of US and Iran and the other states. So three aspects of Iranian behavior very quickly. One is the ballistic missile programs. Second is Iranian interference in the internal affairs of its neighbors in the Gulf context that means particularly Yemen and Bahrain. And then third is Iranian support for terrorism, and how the region responds to those three perceived threats. Yeah. Thanks again, Debra. All those threats are real. They are so perceived on the Gulf side, but you have to take in one thing into context. This is not a new development. Gulf, I've talked to many Gulf leaders, all of whom say that was the same in the days of the Shah. We've been around in this area for the last several centuries. We've always looked at Iran as a predatory power as someone trying to control us. So this is not terribly new. In fact, if anything for the small states of the Gulf, the problem in the last century or so has gotten much more difficult because there's now two predatory powers. One is Saudi Arabia on one side, which both has a dispute with Iran and is seen as expansionist and hegemonistic by the small states, all of whom have reacted in more or less the same way for the last two centuries, which is trying to find an outside protector. Early on, it was the Ottomans. It was the British. The Gulf states were prepared to, how can I say, give up a certain amount of their independence in return for their protection. After the British left, there was a bit of a hiatus because we were seeing the United States, the remaining Western superpower was seen as supporting both Saudi Arabia and Iran against their interests until the Iranian Revolution. They saw Iraq as a valuable, not ally, but as a valuable counterbalance to both countries for years. Saddam Hussein's Iraq was seen as a plus for most of the Gulf states except Kuwait. And when we, in effect, took them out, we disturbed this tripod, their own balance of power. So Iran is the strongest country in the Gulf far and away and without outside protection would be the principle threat to the Gulf states. However, this is not to say that there are not other threats as well, such as Saudi Arabia. Okay, thanks. Ron? Thanks. Iran definitely threat, although perceived differently, somewhat differently in different countries. For the UAE, even when I was there 20 years ago, it looks at Iran, they've just moved up the ladder of paranoia. But remembering that even paranoia has real enemies. But there are things which are changing in the Gulf. The leadership of the states in several cases has changed and is younger and is pursuing some more dynamic courses. And in some cases, particularly in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, breaking away from the traditional, very conservative, almost passive defensive approach to power and sort of feeling their musculature and challenging much more so old dynamics. At the same time, you have a real doubling down of monarchies defending monarchical systems. And there's a tendency, particularly in the West to say, monarchies, old news, you know, trash heap of history gone. We've done that too. Back in the 60s, when Arab nationalism came in, it was all these plates, these people are done for wrong. They outlasted all the Arab national regimes. And they're, they are bidding fair to do it now. In some cases, by doubling, doubling down, they've become more repressive. They're less tolerant, particularly the UAE, Saudi Arabia of various kinds of criticism while liberalizing the social benefits. So that it's a mixture of, on one respect, very liberal regimes. You know, Christian churches are open, Jewish centers are open in various places. And at the same time, internal repression, if you get out of line, but they're all still pretty popular. I would say their chances of remaining are pretty good. You could get into various different cases and they're not, nothing is guaranteed. But the chances of them surviving in this form of government, rather, that they are not moving to democracy, and they are doubling down on not moving. And for them, the lesson of the Arab Spring is this thing is awful. Look, what happened when you pulled down these regimes? You got chaos, you got bloodshed, you got all kinds of disruption that is still going on at a lot loss of life. And that's not a really pretty picture. We don't want to go there. And the last thing I would just note in passing is without trying to bring it out is that these countries are very different from each other. There's a tendency in the US to, you know, see the smaller Gulf States as being very much, you know, they're just a little Saudi Arabia. They're all a bunch of guys running around bedsheets. But in fact, they're very different from each other. Omanis, the Gadarys have better relations with the Iranians. They have historical differences with each other. And I won't go through them except to say that the notion that they are similar in how they regard their citizens and how they work with each other and how they work with their own people, the idea that that is the same in each of them is, in fact, completely incorrect. That's a good point. Let me turn now a little bit to the relationship the United States has with Saudi Arabia as we build up to other things. We have a strong defense and security relationship. Many have criticized the US for overlooking Saudi political and human rights abuses. The US Congress attempted to pass a excuse me, a resolution to end American military involvement in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen. This was in reaction not only to the human suffering in Yemen, but also to the Khashoggi killing. Jerry, maybe I'll start with you. Can you give us an inside view of the US-Saudi relationship? How does it work? And in particularly, how does our diplomacy balance security interests with our support for human rights in this part of the world? Thanks, Deborah. And it's actually, it's a very difficult balance to strike because I think, as Ron said, I mean, we're dealing with political systems, with systems of government and society that are very different from ours, where the ability of the two sides to really understand one another and to coordinate and cooperate is limited. What we have with Saudi Arabia is a relationship that really goes back at least to the end of World War II, in some ways, even before the end of World War II, that has been built around two core pillars. One is energy and recognition of Saudi Arabia as the paramount producer of oil in the world, and therefore a major anchor for global economic security. And then the other aspect, the other pillar, is what we have done with the Saudis over the course of these past 70 years in order to promote regional security and stability. Partially in terms of building up Saudi Arabia's own defense capabilities. And the second aspect is how we work with the Saudis to promote to promote regional security in places like Afghanistan, where we work very closely together all the way through to the Gulf, to Syria, to Iran. So these have been core principles that every U.S. administration has pursued going all the way back to the Roosevelt administration. Republican, Democrat, it hasn't really mattered. We have a stressful situation right now where we do have some significant differences, and those differences reflect particularly our different views about the rights of citizens, the interaction between citizen and state, the rights particularly for women, for other human rights, civil liberties, where this has created real tension and friction between our bilateral relationship. And so the question is, how do you address that? How do you how do you balance between the partnership that we have preserved for all of these years against what has been this kind of fractious period in our relationship? And in my own view, and in the view of the Obama administration and now of the Trump administration, we need to look at what the core U.S. interests are in the region, which are primarily the stability and energy pillars, and to what extent or the other do you then press on these human rights? My own view is that we have not pressed as much on the human right side as we should recently. We should take the Khashoggi murder more seriously than we have. We need to correct that balance. But I also believe that at the end of the day, we do need to recognize that preserving a good, strong Saudi U.S. relationship is important for us to achieve our broader objectives in the region. I just wanted to add a note perspective. I got in Bahrain when I was out there last because we tend to be very certain of our moral rectitude as we look at something like the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. But when I was in Bahrain, what I got from a mixed group, Sinai and Shia, was, hey, wait a minute, we absolutely depend for our security on Saudi Arabia. This crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, is undertaking absolutely critical reforms that are essential for the stability of the place. By the way, you know, you guys go on having your relations with Russia, even though Putin goes around murdering dissidents in various different countries. So why are you so hung up and in danger of destroying this relationship and bringing us into danger as well over one killing here when you tolerate multiple killings over there? I don't necessarily say that's the view you should take. I just lay it out for you to understand that there are different senses and different views of ways of looking at this thing. Well, I want to turn now to the US relationship with Iran. It's been 40 years since the US hostage taking in Iran since then we've had no official diplomatic relations and no embassy in Iran. Our interests there are represented by Switzerland. While there was extensive contact during the long negotiations for the JCPOA, most communication today is done via press statements and announcements. Ron, you lived in Iran as a younger officer and also were the director of the Iran-Iraq office. You're one of the few who actually lived inside the country. Can you talk a little bit about how, from that perspective, with such limited contacts, how can we manage our relations? Badly. We can to the point. Okay, next question though. Now, it's true. We tend to look at it very superficially. As they tend to look at us, too, I mean, it's a very long period. There is the debility that from the Iranian side, leaving a Saudi American perspective, that there are great splits in view within Iran. And there are people for whom the revolution, a key piece of the revolution is death to America, is maintaining the ideological friction. So it creates, there are lots of things, by the way, I had a great time in Iran. I really enjoyed the people and people who continue to go and visit Iran tell me that they find Iranians as a whole far more welcoming to Americans passing through than many of the Arab states, although our relations with the Arab governments are much better. So if you pay your money, it takes your choice. But one of the problems in our relations with Iran is, in Iran, as in America, you have a deep division of people as to whether you ought to have relations, as whether you ought to improve the relations, whether that's a good thing. So when you get into negotiations, you have there, as you have here, a need to show that you're really doing something that works well in order to, in order to pacify your domestic critics. Of course, since the same situation exists here, that sets up a situation in which for each side, a successful negotiation is one in which they have to show that they've done really well, which usually means the things that the other side really can't afford to have you show in order to pacify their critics. So that's not an impossible situation, as the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement showed. But it is a very fraught situation in which to hold out negotiations, making it particularly fraught when you have an approach that says, you know, we'll tell you what we want, and then we really don't need to talk to you again. Well, we'll also, afterwards, you can ask some questions about what it was like to live there. The US pulled out of the JCPOA and other parties have remained in, although the EU has warned that they may start with throwing from the deal. This past fall, there was a report that President Rouhani and President Trump, with the support of the French president Macron, were moving to an agreement which reportedly included lifting of the reimposed US sanctions in exchange for Iran's agreement to remain a non-nuclear weapons state. Gemma, what do you think of the prospects of the US and Iran getting back to the table? And if you disagree, all the better we'll get. I don't think we can do it on our own. I don't believe that the American government or the Iranian government have any formulas whereby the two of us can get there. It's got to be what Macron is trying to do, but I suspect very strongly it has to be on a grander level than just France, despite its glory. I mean, the P5 plus 1 is probably the only vehicle around. All the principal members of the UN Security Council and the EU in effect trying to gang up on both sides, gang up maybe the wrong term, but providing cover for both sides to come to the table and start talking to each other because frankly, I don't believe that given the dynamics that Ron was describing, that there is any leeway on each side to make the necessary even cosmetic concessions that would permit us to come together and have a serious conversation. And what would be worse would be coming together with each side having expectations of the other and not having them met. And frankly, without going into too much detail, I think we're heading for a train wreck with Iran, which could be very damaging to the world's economy should that in the Gulf, because what it would do to what the Iranians demonstrated it could do at Abqaq in Spades. So I think it is behooves us and perhaps the Iranians to try and get more international, I can say intervention make something work. I'll take a little bit of issue with Pat and take a slightly more optimistic view. And that is if you look at the Obama policy on Iran and if you look at the Trump policy on Iran, what you would see are two policies that were pretty much diametrically opposed. The Obama theory of the case that was affected in the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, was basically that if you addressed what was the key international concern about Iranian behavior, and that was its pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability, if you put in place an agreement to address that, then over time by bringing Iran into closer relationship with the international community addressing their economic concerns, doing other things, you could then set up the possibility of getting the Iranians to address these other issues that I mentioned earlier that were also a broad concern about the missiles, about the interference, about support for terrorism. The Trump administration took a very the basically the opposite view, which was we can't wait, we're not going to wait for the Iranians to come around on their own, they won't do it, and therefore the only way to get them to move on those issues is to basically beat them with a stick until they cry uncle. Where we are right now is that we never really had the opportunity to see whether the Obama approach would work, the Trump approach clearly has not worked, and what we saw with the Macron initiative was an effort to basically begin the dialogue again and to bring the US and Iran together at a table where they could begin to work through some of these issues. I actually think that they can do that and it's very clear from both the position of Donald Trump himself and from what the Iranians have said that both sides gingerly are interested in finding a way to get back to the table. Neither of them wants the train wreck that Pat is concerned about because both sides recognize that a train wreck kills a lot of people, including the engineers. So both sides would like to get back to the table and the period that we're in right now is the maneuvering between these two sides to figure out who is going to be the stronger party when they sit down at the table. But I do believe that they will sit down at the table probably sometime before our presidential election next year. Well, optimism is free, so one might as well indulge. But having said that, I'm not quite as optimistic as Jerry. I would just note two things. One is the legacy of suspicion and distrust. It's not only an American legacy, it's a huge Iranian legacy. Going well back into the 50s when we overthrew an Iranian government there, something which they never forget. In fact, I remember my friend John Lindbergh talking who was one of the hostages but who has been a real advocate of the two countries working together. He has a favorite story of talking to an Iranian who said, but you Americans have to get over that hostage stuff, you know, and he said, yes, I agree, we should, but you have to get over most of the deck. Never was the answer. And in fact, from the Iranian point of view, they have had several initiatives of reaching out to the United States, both in the first Bush administration and later and feeling that in each case we walked away and betrayed things. So I do not think we are going, you know, we will see. We got risky for anybody to make predictions at a time short enough that you could remember. But you could see this. I think what is more likely, what I'm seeing is there is a flinching. There is a recognition of what Pat was talking about, train wreck possibility. And that's not just the Iranians. That's also the Saudis, the UAE. And so they're tentative reaching out on various sides. How do we talk about this? How do we de-conflict? So I think it is knock on wood possible that we may avoid the ultimate stupidity war because there is a recognition of just how dangerous that is. And so there's this kind of tentative reaching out looking for ways to lower the temperature to de-conflict. But I am personally very pessimistic, particularly given the long history. And also this sense, finally the Iranians had this sense of, hey, we made an agreement and you walked away from it. So what's the point because you can't trust the Americans to hold to an agreement they make anyway? And then of course accelerated when you look at Syria and some other things with this administration of, you can't even trust them to keep their own policy straight. So why get into this? So I'm very pessimistic that you will get to negotiations now. Someday I think it has to happen, but not in the last year before an election I don't believe. If I can just add, to defend myself, not being overly optimistic, I don't want to be polyanus. But the one obstacle, the one obstacle to a Rouhani Trump phone conversation in New York in September was the simple issue that they were not able to decide whether or not U.S. reduction in sanctions would come before the call or after the call. But the two had agreed fundamentally to make the call. And again, you're absolutely right, I don't think that it will be an easy negotiation. We know it wasn't an easy negotiation in 2015 either. But the reality is whether you like it or not, the one thing that maximum pressure has done is it has inflicted real economic pain on Iran. And therefore they have a strong incentive to try to figure out how to deal with us in a way to get sanctions reduction. And I don't think that they're going to do it because they love us. I don't think they're going to do it because they really want to get back in our good books. But I think that both sides will make the decision to go back to negotiating table because both sides recognize that it's in their interest to do it. I prefer to have you be right. I'm going to add one thing which is I ran the sanctions team at the State Department and the last time when we squeezed Iran we also got very, very, very, very good at sanctions. So we have capabilities today that we didn't have last time and they were pretty good. If I could, well then off that as well. One is we are very good at sanctions. Now the Iranians jokingly say that they are offering graduate courses on how to evade American sanctions but they have more limited capacity to do that. We have dug ourselves, we collectively, we and the Iranians have however both dug ourselves into a public position. Pompeo's ultimatum to the Iranians resembles very much the Austrian ultimatum to the Serbians in August of 1914. It is surrender everything and then have the leadership commit suicide before we'll talk to you. And I don't see this administration easily backing off it is my problem and I don't see the Iranians trusting us that if we have the conversation that it will happen. I remember when we did have the first reformist Iranian president Khatami in which collectively in our wisdom we decided that if we were nice to him it wouldn't work and we might help the hardliners. I mean this is partly the mindset that the Iranians are working from that they see on our side. We're going to come back here a year from today and we'll see who is right. Actually if I it's a year from today and I'm right we're not going to be able to win the game. We may have to meet in a bunker but the United States has a strong military presence in the region. We obviously have troops in Iraq the fifth fleet is in Bahrain and I know several of you have served in the Gulf. UAE hosting 5,000 military personnel 10,000 in Qatar on two bases. The role of the Kuwait International Airport. We have announced we're sending or have sent more personnel to Saudi Arabia and we've also launched a new maritime security initiative construct in the region to protect shipping. But many of the Gulf countries are increasing their own capabilities as well. How does this affect power dynamics in the region and our U.S. interests? Can I take? Yeah just one quick one. Partly there are this rush to become the owners not necessarily the users but the owners of the biggest arsenals in the world is meant to buttress their ability to deal with the Iranians but I think even more importantly it is a bit of a power play between the Gulf states. They don't trust each other. The recent when Qatar was blockaded by its neighbors the Qataris felt I don't know how much justification but they convinced themselves that the only reason the Saudis weren't coming across the borders the Saudis hadn't wanted to telegraph their intent by massing on the border and they credit Tillerson with stopping a Saudi ground attack. Saudi Arabia leaving aside the quality of the military forces simply what's on what's on the books Saudi Arabia is a much larger more powerful country than Qatar and for the time being so is the UAE. The Qataris I think see their military as having two real functions one is deterring an attack by their neighbors long enough for the Americans to get there and secondly dealing with the potential of a breakdown in order for example they talk a lot about breaking the breakdown of order in Saudi Arabia. Their nightmare would be civil war in Saudi Arabia if something happened which is something they talk about a lot. I think the UAE's buildup of military force is aimed at Iran and building up the UAE's weight in the Gulf Cooperation Council and my experience is the UAE has the same sort of dark look at Saudi Arabia's own pretension the Saudis have been chipping away at the UAE border for generations. So I think a very large portion of that is part of the jockeying for power between the Gulf States. You asked particularly about the military balance and how the buildup of Gulf States changes that. The short answer is very little. These are fundamentally weak states who are very aware of their weakness although Saudi's got a little carried away but the UAE has made a real effort to expand the quality of its military and to some extent I think has succeeded in showing a certain ability for power projection effectively. The Saudi military has shown very poorly. It went into Yemen and it has really done badly. They reminded me when they went in of something my father said to me years ago when the Russians went, the Soviets went into Afghanistan so that every country is entitled to the Vietnam of its choice. I think the Saudis found theirs but first of all they are economically powerful and militarily weak and we often tend to exaggerate and they wanted exaggerate. A lot of the buildup of supplies is so they don't have to use it. I remember reading once that there was a Bedouin technique of riding your camels in a circle to stir up the dust so that the enemy would be frightened by the size of your force and you wouldn't have to fight them and there is some part of that still going on I think but because you look at them they have enormous dependence on their desalinization facilities, on their oil refineries. These things are all extraordinarily vulnerable to missile attack as the Iranians have just shown. The ability to have these societies really crippled very quickly in a war is very clear and they have very small populations. They cannot have a large military, they can have a lot of equipment, they can hire a certain number of mercenaries to help them run it but they do not have the population base to have a strong military and in several cases they've gotten used to foreigners doing this stuff so the Saudis have had several military experiences including the first Gulf War and in none of them have they shown any particular military and droidness. UAE is the one exception that has a certain power projection. We are talking about less than two million people in the whole country. So these are fundamentally weak states. The bottom line is they can get more powerful to some extent for their own protection not to the extent that we can use that as a change in our relationship. I would say that there are two critical developments over the last 10 years that have driven these decisions particularly again by Saudi Arabia and the UAE to build their own internal security capabilities. One was the perception rightly or wrongly the perception that U.S. commitment, U.S. interest, U.S. willingness to carry through on our long-standing defense and security umbrella for the Gulf is fading and that you can go back to the Obama administration you can even go back to the George W. Bush administration and see a declining level of interest and commitment to the Gulf states that has played out. The second issue is the collapse of the traditional Sunni Arab leadership and particularly the internal focus that Egypt has had since 2010, 2011, the collapse of course of Syria, of Iraq as pillars of the Sunni Arab world and therefore what you've seen are two things. One, the rise of the Gulf states and their view that they are now responsible for leadership in the Sunni world and that is exacerbated or compounded by the younger leadership, the more ambitious, aggressive leadership that we have Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Zayed in the UAE and so therefore as a result of these two things we've seen we've seen two developments. One is that they are no longer relying on the United States. You see that in both their turn towards a more positive, more focused relations with Russia, with China but you also see it in terms of their decisions that they are going to take on greater responsibility for their own security, their own protection than they did before. They're not going to wait for the 7th Cavalry to come over the horizon anymore. They're going to take that on themselves. Now we can talk about whether they're good at it or not so good at it, it doesn't matter. The reality is that that's a decision that they're making and they're going to pursue it and that has strong implications in terms of our own role and responsibilities in the region going forward. I could add just one quick point to this. The number of times I have heard semi-informed American commentators say we don't need the Gulf because we are now an oil exporting country. It merely reinforces this perception that when the balloon goes up we're not going to come for it. And it's complete nonsense. It is absolute nonsense, yeah. Well I want to wrap up asking about putting this in a larger context before we get to the questions. What relevance does the Gulf region have in the broader geopolitical competition between the U.S. and China and between the U.S. and Russia? I'll take a swing at China is I don't think it has to be part of the competition. China is very, very dependent on the Gulf. I forget the numbers, 60% of their energy comes from the Gulf. If there is one country for whom a major war in the Gulf would be catastrophic to their economy it's China and I am simply speechless at the Chinese refusal to get involved. The Chinese are simply, maybe their whole political history in modern times, they simply don't want to get involved. They have sort of bent, not completely but they've sort of bent to our sanctions, our blockade of Iranian oil exports. They are the country that has the most to lose and they're not doing anything. So I don't think they are looking for any sort of confrontation. I honestly do not believe that the Chinese see themselves in the new hegemon moving into the Gulf. Vladimir Putin is a guy who has played a weak hand very, very well. Russia does not have either the economic or the military or the diplomatic capacity to really challenge the United States in the region but he is a past master at identifying vacuums and figuring out how Russia can move in. And he is somebody who has a vision of Russia as a great power who believes that Russia by dint of its great power status should have a seat at the table when all of these security and political issues are debated in the Middle East. So he's going to do that but at the end of the day he really is not our competition. The competition that the U.S. has in terms of the great powers is China. China is eating our lunch economically. They are becoming increasingly the number one economic partner for the Gulf states. That's going to continue. I agree with Pat that the Chinese are perfectly willing to let us take on the hard issues of security and stability in the region while they focus on building their economic relations and prospering through their relationships with the Gulf states. But I think that that's also changing. I don't think it's an accident that the only two naval facilities that China has outside of mainland China are Guadar in Pakistan which guards the Strait of Hormuz and Djibouti in the Horn of Africa that sits on top of the Babel-Mendem because they understand that their security and their economic survival depends on access through those waterways to the energy and also to the export markets. Can I say there are no Chinese military forces there? There are in Djibouti. Djibouti are? There are in Djibouti. And Guadar has the capability. There's nothing stationed there but they certainly have the capability of using Guadar for military. So they are gingerly moving into some of these more aggressive positions. But you're absolutely right that what they want to do is they want us to take the headaches and let them take the money. I do think what you're seeing though is overall a less stable world because I agree with my colleagues that the Gulf states are less secure in their relationship with us and they are therefore looking elsewhere and particularly the Russians. The problem is they're looking to their own defenses and building them. These are policies which they feel they are forced to because they can't rely on the relationship they had with us. But they're not able to supplant that relationship. The Russians will sell them arms but the Russians are not going to come to their defense. Their own defense capabilities for all the equipment remain weak. So what you have is a relationship where we're not quite backing away. We've got a lot of troops there still but we're they're unsure of us and it's not very clear what we're actually prepared to do where they're making better relationships with countries with which we're uneasy but which in the end won't solve their dilemma and building up their arsenals but without the real capacity to deter the people they're most worried about. When you add that all together what you have is a less secure region and a more dangerous one because when you had when you had the solid U.S. relationship clumsy as it might often have been everybody kind of knew where you were and therefore you didn't mess with it. Now you have one that's very shaky and uncertain and that has room for mistakes. Okay well we will now turn to questions. Ambassadors thanks so much for being here. My name is Chad Dowding. I'm a first year MPP student interested in international policy. I'll be giving you your first question. How do you see the increased wave of protests impacting the future of the Iranian regime? These are the current ones. Yeah I am. Gasoline subsidy. Well you know it's you want to predict the future. This is your predict the past. I know this is really tough. They are posing threats. The regime is incredibly aware of the danger of these riots. You're seeing the fact that there are social cracks after these years since the Iranian revolution. I personally doubt that this period of riot will lead to that much change because I think if there is one lesson that the older leaders of the revolution really learned from the revolution itself it was how they gained strength as the Shah vacillated. And you had this period in the revolution where every the Shah had put down a whole series of revolts before but in the period of the revolution he vacillated. He used force and 40 days later at the end of the first morning period you'd have bigger demonstrations and then he wouldn't always and he moved back and forth and as he vacillated the demonstrations got bigger and bigger. And if there's any lesson which I think the older revolutionary leaders have carried away it is not to make the mistake of the Shah. And so I believe that they will put these riots down and they have the problem they have a lot of force but they don't have leadership. The revolution had a leadership in the wings ready to come forth and take hold. I don't think they have it. So I think you have something here that's analytically very interesting it shows you how much dissatisfaction there is whether or not after this you get something else. But I don't believe these riots themselves are going to lead to a lot of change real quick. I would say that I would agree completely with that. The absence of for example a coherent or popular Iranian revolutionary presence abroad. I mean right now we are the United States has chosen to support probably the single most hated Iranian exile organization the MEK as the substitute. They used to very kill us but now people like Giuliani and even former General Jones go off and give speeches for money. Yeah. And the other I think I saw something today which said that they have already killed about a hundred demonstrators in Iran and I agree completely with Iran that they are going to do whatever they need to do in order to stop these demonstrations. They've been very clear and what you need to remember is that the methodology that Bashar al-Assad has used in Syria he was taught by the Iranians. That is really it's the IRGC that went into Syria and really helped Bashar use the extreme measures that he's used in order to stop the Syrian uprising. The riots in Iraq have much more potential for political change but that wasn't the question. Okay. All right thank you all again for being here. Sorry. My name is Kiruna Nankumar and I am a junior in the Ford School undergraduate program focusing in diplomacy and international security. The next question that we have for you is how do U.S. relations in the Gulf interact with U.S. relations with Israel? In particular how would a cooling of U.S.-Saudi relations for example with the bill to end U.S. involvement with Saudi Arabia in Yemen impact Israel? Yeah there was a theory in the Trump administration that because the Israelis and the Gulf share the same concerns about Iran that there was therefore an opportunity to actually push forward on this idea of what's called outside in that in other words you could get the Gulf states to take steps to normalize their relationship with Israel on this basis and to open diplomatic relations to do all of the other steps regardless of where the Israelis were and their negotiations with the Palestinians? I think that what we've seen over these past couple of years is that expectation that idea was vastly exaggerated and that while the two sides there's no doubt that quietly under the table Israelis and Gulf Arabs are working much more closely together that the Gulf states are more willing to be open about the nature of some of their relationships particularly on the security side than they were in the past. Nevertheless there is a cap on how far they're going to be willing to go in the absence of some movement towards a resolution of the Palestinian issue and particularly what's called the Arab Peace Initiative which is basically full normalization between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for a two state solution, a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital. This is the position, it is still the position and I think that the reality is that unless there is something that addresses Palestinian requirements you're not going to see the Gulf states go beyond that. If I could add one point I've seen this movie before in the course of my career. There have been I can think of three historical instances when American policy beginning with the momentary sento alliance that led to the overthrow of the monarchy in Iraq where we were going to get Israel and the further Arab states, Iraq and the Gulf states, allied against the Soviet Union. And then we tried it a couple more times. When I was in Abu Dhabi Alexander Hague was building a trying to build a alliance against the, I keep even forget if it was a Soviet Union or Iran at that point. But it was a Soviet Union again with the Gulf states. So we've done this. We've done this several times. We think that as we have no memory it's always a fresh idea. Yeah, exactly. Okay, next question. Next question for you. What are the most effective strategies for combating Iranian backed groups in the Middle East, such as Hamas and the Quds forces in Iraq? Since we haven't seen one yet it's hard to know what an effective strategy will be. Can I just say very simply one sentence, doing our best to fix the problem so you dry up the swamp in which they dwell. In other words, if you try to deal with them directly this is their turf. They know their turf. They know how to survive in that turf. If we progress on the Palestinian issue I don't even know how to deal with Iraq. I couldn't even begin at this moment to suggest how we deal with the Iraqis. Iraq's an interesting case because the Iranians have gotten a lot of power in Iraq. But the Iranians are not well liked in Iran. Americans often make the mistake of thinking because there are a lot of Shia in Iraq that they're for somehow very close to the Iranians. They forget the eight years of the Iranian Iraq war with thousands of people killed. The foot soldiers of Iraq were mostly the Shia and then they never changed sides. They never went over against their own government. And in fact what I served in Iraq after our invasion it was not good for you if you were an Iraqi politician to be seen as too close to the Iranians. And now you're getting a lot of pushback. The Iranians do best in Iraq when the country is unstable because then they can work with different power centers for their own interests. They have always had the risk that a stable Iraq will be a threat to Iran again as it was all the way back to the Battle of Karbala in the eighth century. So this is not like a new thing. We keep reminding you that things are not so new. So right now they have a hard time. I think one can say that some things one should not do are much clearer than exactly how to affect this. Iraqis are really tired of foreigners messing about in their lives and their wars and making their wars. And so right now when you've got a lot of backlash against Iranian pressure is a good time for us to kind of shut up and sit down and not to be very heavily involved. Consult quietly with people but you've got a very volatile politics. You've got some things that are going in a direction that we kind of like. So don't try, we have a desire usually to do something. And this is one of those places where you're much better off right now watch it go. You may see an opportunity to do something useful but don't assume you have to do something. One quick point just to rest this question of Shia, Iranian Shia influence over Iraq. If looking at it in theological terms, Najaf and Karbala are Roman constant that Opel at best Koum is Canterbury. And maybe not even... It requires a certain historical perspective to know what you're talking about. Yeah, exactly, yeah. I hope you all understood that. If I can just add that, you know, the Houthi experience in Yemen and I think it kind of sharpens the point that Iran and Pat were making. And that is that each of these instances where the Iranians have been able to establish relations to work, to build alliances, relationships is really kind of unique to that particular set of circumstances. So in the case of Yemen where you have the Houthis, yes, they have a relationship with Iran. Yes, they have exploited that relationship and the Iranians have exploited the relationship with the Houthis in order to achieve an objective that they have which is to stress and put pressure on Saudi Arabia. But nevertheless, the issues that are unique to the conflict that's going on in Yemen right now are issues that are internal to Yemen. The Houthis are not fighting because they are partners or proxies of Iran. They're fighting because of their circumstances in Yemen. And the best thing that we can do to the extent that we can do it is to help resolve those internal issues. If you deny the Iranians the vacuum that they have been very successful at exploiting, then you can deny them the air that they need in order to develop these relationships. And that's true, I think, with Hamas. It's true in Iraq. It's true with Hezbollah in Lebanon. And it's absolutely true with the Houthis in Yemen. But the basic point that underlies all of these is you have to actually know something and you have to pay attention to the different situations and the differences and you can't do this on the basis of kind of two-dimensional policy and sound bites about Iran. Which is, of course, where we carry out our public discussion. That's right. Okay, we'll go to the next question. Alright, so next we have a question turning towards combating terrorism. Can the Arab coalition of states led by MBS, considering some of MBS's actions in the region, be trusted to combat terrorism in a manner that is in line with U.S. and global geopolitical interests? Maybe sometimes no. Mostly no. It depends on what terrorists are talking about. You know, I think that the Saudis were good partners for us, for example, in fighting against al-Qaida and the Arabian Peninsula. We had a lot of success and in fact there was one particular instance you may or may not remember called the printer cartridge bomb attempt which was in 2010 and was right when I got to Sana'a where there was an attempt to smuggle explosives on board an airplane in printer cartridges. We would not have known about that. We would not have caught on to that had it not been for Saudi intelligence and they're tipping us off and also the British off about this plot. So there have been instances where in fact they were extremely important partners for us. There are other areas where we work closely together but then you also have the larger issue, frankly, where Saudi policy has in fact on occasion exacerbated terrorist threats and has made it more difficult for us to deal with Libya being a good example. Next question for you. How does Turkey and President Erdogan fit into the equation? Badly. Turkey has a lot of its own agenda. It's feeling its oats as it's moved into Syria. Again, Turkey has helped in certain areas. It has helped combat extreme movements. At the same time in parts of Syria you have Turkey being quite tolerant of movements that are allied with the Islamic State because the Turks are worried about other things. They're far more worried about Kurdish terrorism than they are worried about the Islamic State. So if helping works, they'll help. But if helping us fight the Islamic State gets cross ways with where they see a stronger threat and interest, then they're not so helpful. Turks also are really feeling their oats on the kind of expansion of their influence. This is like round, this is like Kurdish policy 2.0 because they had this sort of same view right after the breakup of the Soviet Union. We're really going to expand. These are all Muslim countries in Central Asia. The lift was way heavier than they had the capacity to undertake. Now they're kind of trying some of that again and again I think they're going to find that their ambitions their their reach I think exceeds their grasp. And I would add that there is an internal dynamic. President Erdogan came to power how many years now? His first 7-8 years in power were fantastic. He, you know, the best leader of modern Turkey you could possibly imagine. He really did bring, made an enormous difference for Turkey. Some place along the line, whether it's Megalomania, miscalculation or something, he has had problems. The problems reflect themselves in election results, local elections that have not gone well for him. And like most guys who want to, like most leaders who want to stay in power, an occasional foreign adventure is not necessarily a bad thing properly managed. Okay, so during your comments towards the beginning of this section, you commented on the potential of some sort of movement or lack of potential for movement in Iranian-U.S. relations. I'm wondering what does the recent rise intentions between Israel and Iran marked by the Israeli Air Force strikes against targets in Syria a couple days ago suggest about Iranian ambitions in Syria and what is the risk of this turning into a larger conflict and kind of impacting this potential for change? I just, this is one of those places where I don't believe that the two countries really have an existential view of the other one as a threat. I think this is a large part of this is the Iran trying to maintain its controls or its influence in Syria and in large part this is Israeli domestic politics because it's really useful to have the Iranians as the boogeyman sitting out there. So I think this is more of a hype inside the United States and domestically in both countries as hype rather than let me rephrase that. I don't think either country wants to have a war with the other. There's no doubt that the Iranians were far more invested in the survival of Bashar Assad in his regime in Damascus and the Russians are that for Iran Bashar is an important partner access to Lebanon and to Hezbollah through Syria is incredibly important. I think for their own reasons the Iranians see the ability to expand their military partnership with Hezbollah in Syria as well as in Lebanon is useful particularly in terms of threatening Israel. The Israelis have responded I think the interesting thing is that the Israelis have responded extremely aggressively against Iranian presence they have gone after Iranian arms depots they've gone after Iranians they've killed a number of Iranians in Syria they've killed a number of Iranians now in Iraq. The response from Tehran has been zero and I think that that is it's one of those situations frankly where the two sides have decided that this is a game that they're going to play and they're going to keep it confined to this particular battleground and they're not going to allow it to spill out into other kinds of conflict. Alright, thank you. How does the current state of US-Iran relations affect US diplomatic efforts in the country to Iran's east Afghanistan? In Afghanistan. What's happening in Afghanistan, the Iranians it's useful to remember were initially quite supportive of our intervention in Afghanistan. There's a big difference between the way the Iranians look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Iraq is a historic threat to Iran. When I was in Iran under the Shah years ago every year in western Iran the troops had an annual military exercise where they exercised the basis of the Iraqi invasion of Iran dropping back the reconstitution of forces pushing the Iraqis back. Afghanistan's not a strategic threat. They get nervous about us. So the Iranians were very helpful in the bond negotiations in putting government in place in Afghanistan. I think I had probably the last meeting we used to meet with the Iranians in Afghanistan up until 2005 I had the last order to suspend those because we wanted to put pressure on them about nuclear weapons. I argued with Secretary Rice that that was a bad decision I lost. She was the boss. Yeah, she was the boss. But anyway, they remained fairly supportive. Very nervous about when we'd put troops close to their border but otherwise basically supportive they became a little more belligerent pushing on the Afghans during the period of Ahmadid Nijad in Iraq in Iran. But now the kicker is that they are very concerned about two things. One is the growth of the Islamic State presence in Afghanistan and the other is the perception that we're not going to hold up our continued involvement in Afghanistan. The situation is going to get worse. So from their point of view the greater danger between Taliban and Islamic State is the Islamic State. So if that means that they need to warm up their relations with the Taliban in order to prepare for the expected panic departure of the U.S. and the collapse of Afghanistan that's what they're doing. So you have a definite warming of relations between the Iranians and the Taliban as you have between the Russians and the Taliban. And in both cases it is premised on the two perceptions. Islamic State is a bigger threat to me if you're Russian Iranian and I can't trust the Americans to hold up their end in Afghanistan they're going to walk out and leave chaos and I got to have friends. Thank you. So turning to kind of humanitarian issues how concerned should we be about the human costs of sanctions on Iran for ordinary Iranian civilians? How much we should be how much are we? Should be. If you're looking at it from a purely moral and ethical point of view it's a little bit like our sanctions on Iraq and the lead up to the 2003 war in which we frankly we took a position that the humanitarian crisis that we had created in Iraq was the fault of Saddam Hussein and we tried to sell that domestically. I don't think we ever managed to sell it. If we tried to sell the same story in Iran I don't think it's going to be sold. We've caused the there has always been a bit of humanitarian crisis. We've exacerbated aggravated the humanitarian crisis in Iran and with a few exceptions I think the Iranian government will do a remarkably good job of convincing the Iranian people it's the Americans fault. And that's a really important point because you know one the official US position is that we we are not interested in punishing the Iranian people we are interested in putting pressure on the regime. But the reality is exactly the opposite. That in fact the weight of US sanctions is falling on the common people. And as Ron said earlier and my wife is in the tourism business and up until we got married a few years ago she used to lead tours to Iran I told her to stop but she used to lead tours and she said that that the Americans on her tours were always amazed about the warmth of the reception that they got the fact that the common Iranian people liked Americans and they liked America and they felt as though were not for the political differences that they would be able to have a good relationship with us. The risk that we run is that we are changing that perception and that we're building opposition we're building anger against the United States among the Iranian population and that's going to do two things one is it's going to strengthen the regime because it means that as Pat said the regime can say it's not us we're not the reason that the economy is collapsing we're not the reason that things that your life is so difficult it's because of those Americans. And the second thing is that when the day comes and it will come that we would like to normalize the relationship with Iran that we would like to to get back to business with Iran that there is going to be popular resistance within Iran to doing that that's going to make it much harder to achieve our objectives. Let me add just a comment on sanctions sanctions are an effective tool if you outline clearly the behavior that you want to change in the current long list of sanctions on Iran and I'm not an expert on Iran there is no desired behavior that's enunciated in other words we don't have a clear policy of what we want them to do other than you know denuclearize generally. Again if you outline what you want to have the behavior when I say also let me add another point in fine tuning we're able to allow exceptions and to allow certain things to go through etc. But the intent is really for the behavior of a state to change the Trump administration as I just said has not enunciated exactly what it wants to achieve so the pressure is felt politically it is you know played up domestically and the longer they run the harder they hit. Actually there's even I take the same point and take it further lack of clarity because the deepest lack of clarity and this has been true for several administrations not just for this one American is whether where policy is about change in behavior or about regime overthrow and as long and we send mixed signals as long as the belief there's a possibility that what our policy is really about is regime change then there's no reason to make the concessions necessary because you're just weakening yourself in order and you're setting yourself up for the next round so the concessions which we say we want and sanctions on behavior it really only makes sense even if you wanted to have that agreement if you believe that that's what the Americans are really about it's not about regime change and the way we talk about this leaves you very uncertain of what the policy is or what the policy will be tomorrow. And some sanctions are very targeted and when we sanctioned for example Russians in the context of cyber it's very targeted like stop hitting us we're going to sanction and then we'll use more offensive ways through cybercom. Any other questions? Last question? It's between this and cocktail time. What's your advice on how students interested in Middle East diplomacy can best prepare to succeed? Alright gentlemen, with all your years of wisdom. I'll try the first one which is succeed at what you're doing right now come out of here do well in school and then just get to know as much as you can about the Middle East there is no magic formula it's simply a well educated person who has educated himself on the region and who has a real interest not just but you need to start developing a visceral interest in the area like all three of us got stuck with and that's the best way to prepare for it. Did you choose it or stumble into it? I stumbled, most of my life I stumbled into things and I stumbled into this. This one I chose. Actually I had three and a half months after graduate school before joining the military and I went out to visit my parents in Afghanistan and that was really where I sort of began to develop a strong interest in the Muslim world. I would say there's any number of things we could all pontificate for hours up here and that would really delay the cocktail but you'll never be fully expert you have to recognize what a colleague told me going to one post when she said you will never understand this country on the day you arrive because you think you have a perception you get into the details you learn more and more it gets harder and harder to make simple bottom line judgments. So recognize that this is a lifetime business but that's not to be discouraged but it means understand that what you come out of here with is a basis on which to go forth and learn it is not a basis of knowledge sufficient to already proclaim how things ought to be. So prepare yourself but the history these are countries which have an enormous and true a bunch of the world an enormous sense of history and this is often an impediment to them it's really hard to go forward quickly when you're spending all your time looking backwards you need to understand the history you need to understand where people are coming from then you go and then you learn to listen and my old boss the late Hal Saunders who was very involved there but really negotiations and other things who really had an understanding of the psychological dimensions of negotiations as well and he had a saying which was listen deeply enough to be changed by what you hear and it's an enormously important point of both scholarship and diplomacy if you want to get other people to do things your way and like it you have to know what their way is so as well as the history and knowledge having a certain amount of humility and learning to listen and spend a lot of time listening is a good thing to learn I want to slightly flip answer very early on how to make a choice between studying Russian and studying Arabic and I realized that if I was going to study either of these languages I'd spend the next 15 or 20 years of my life in that part of the world and frankly I like Lem better than I like Cabbage Well on that I want to thank you gentlemen thank you