 Great. I think we can get started. I want to first thank all of you for coming. This was very short notice even by my own standards. We put this together in about 48 hours and but I couldn't be more pleased to have two wonderful speakers. To my far left is Ali Ansari. Many of you have read his books. I would describe him as one of Iran's foremost historians, probably the foremost scholar of Iran in Europe. He's been at St. Andrew's University for many years. He has a new book out which is called What Ali, The History of Iran. Just a very short introduction. Very short introduction to you, Rob. Short introduction. Oh, that series, that wonderful series. Short, sweet, cheap. And Nazila Fati, I'm sure is known to many of you. She did some marvelous reporting from Tehran when she was the New York Times correspondent base there for about a decade, a decade and a half. She had to leave Iran in 2009 and she's been outside of Iran since 2009. She also has a beautiful new book called The Lonely War and we're not selling copies here, but she tells me if you buy a copy, she will gladly sign them for you. And the title of our event today is Lessons from History. Because I think that one's perspective on where Iran is at today is informed by when you started looking at Iran. If you started relatively recently during the era of Mahmoud Ahmad Jod, right now is an incredibly hopeful time because it's, you know, certainly a lot of progress is made compared to the time of Ahmad Jod when the country was under severe internal pressure and external pressure as well. But Nazila and Ali have the benefit of having started looking at Iran much sooner than that during the time of former President Hashemi Rafsanjani and also the Khatami era. So wanted to begin basically with a very broad question about where the two of you think we're at now, looking at, you know, in contrast to say the last three and a half decades of the Islamic Republic. There's kind of three schools of thought at the moment. There's the very hopeful school which says that if this nuclear deal happens, it's going to shine light on Iranian civil society and moderate forces who want to prioritize the country's national and economic interests before revolutionary ideology. And this is going to lead to an internal transformation of the Islamic Republic. You have a more pessimistic scenario laid out by some who argue that if you look at the history of the Islamic Republic and the few moments in which the regime has shown external flexibility, whether that's to end the Iran-Iraq war or nuclear detente, they clamp down internally to show their own population that don't think that our external flexibility signals internal weakness. And then there's, you know, kind of more modeling, modeling along more of the same. So just starting off with a very broad question about what is the mode you feel having covered three, four previous administrations in Iran. Are you hopeful about where we're at today? Is the trend lines are positive or are you a bit more sober? Maybe I'll start with Nazila. Well, Kanym, thank you so much for putting together this event. I think this is a very interesting question because it is really hard to predict what will happen, but in many ways the past shapes the future, especially for people who have lived through those times. For me, because I grew up in Iran, I lived through the war with Iraq, and I was in Iran. I became a reporter in the years after the war ended. For me, this was a reminiscent of, I would say, about a year before the war ended. Clearly, because there was a lot of hope, the war had dragged out for eight years. I mean, we thought that it could just drag out for many, many more years, even after Khomeini's death. It had been the best excuse to galvanize the nation behind an outside enemy. It was not about anything other than stabilizing the foundations of a regime that was not popular at all. And the nuclear program was exactly the same thing. It served exactly the same purpose to galvanize all different factions who had started to oppose many of the major principles of the Islamic Republic behind an outside enemy. And even though a lot of people didn't agree with the country's nuclear ambitions, they could never say anything, because if they did, they were accused of treason. And now it seems to me that Khomeini, Ayatollah Khomeini, is very much worried about the legacy that he's going to leave behind, the rumors that he is ill, whether he is or he's not, he's quite old. And he's very concerned about the legacy that he's going to leave behind. He does not have the charisma that Khomeini had. Whatever he did was somehow justified because he was a supreme leader. Khomeini lacks the religious credentials that Khomeini had. Yet after his death, until this day, a lot of his allies, a lot of his close friends, have criticized his policies to drag out the war, including Rafsanjani. So, Khomeini is very much responsible for prolonging this standoff with the West. And I think he has reached a point that he wants to make sure that he settles things before the war. But I do agree with you. I've spoken to a lot of people on the ground, a lot of civil society actors, opposition leaders. And they all say that they are worried that there's going to be a wave of crackdown after a political deal. If you remember, after the ceasefire in 1988, over 3,000 people were secretly executed. That cannot happen. Such a thing on that scale cannot happen because of communication tools that people have because of the internet, satellite TV. But I wouldn't be surprised if the hardliners inside the country go after journalists, activists, keep a lot of people in prison and make life harder for society, for people, for women. There's that paradox because on one hand, the people who are most enthusiastic about a potential nuclear deal within Iran are these moderate forces of civil society. And the people who are most concerned about that are the hardline forces who have thrived in isolation. But I think you allude to how it will play out is quite unpredictable. Adi, how would you answer the question of where we're at today, what the trendlines are? Well, the interesting thing is that the Iranians themselves and certainly the team behind Rouhani in his election campaign in 2013 basically drew this comparison and said actually that where we are now is almost where we were in 1987 or 88 after this sort of devastating eight-year war. And so it's in some ways their own parallels sort of argument, which is why also it has to be said that they emphasize that what needs to be done first and foremost is the economy and the political reform can wait. And I think one of the big mistakes many people make abroad is we tend to see in Rouhani, you know, Khartimi redux. But this is simply unrealistic. One is that Khartimi inherited a far different legacy in 1997. And the direction of travel was quite distinct and we could see it. Rouhani has inherited a situation which I call basically a lost decade in Iran. I mean, the decade of Ahmadinejad has been, I think, you know, by most accounts really quite disastrous for the country and very, very destructive. So I think that there is a period of possible transition there, but I'm much more sanguine than I think many of those who are enormously optimistic about the prospects of certainly for political change. For me, the chief objective of the current negotiations is to lift sanctions. And I always said, even at the time when Rouhani was, when we had the first of a number of historic breakthroughs, I have to say that we've had several in the last few years, and when Rouhani first came in, I said there were three, you know, you can look at policy in Iran or the direction of travel in three sort of concentric circles. The most ambitious are those that really surrounded Khatami or the sort of the reformists that did exist or weren't in prison who basically said that what we really need is a complete political transformation in the country. That was dismissed pretty quickly. I mean, that wasn't even a real, even the number of reformists thought that was far too ambitious. So there was a second circle really that surrounded Raf Sanjani and basically said the chief function now is really to get the economy back up and running because it's just such a disaster. And I have to say, I mean, one of the striking things about Rouhani's election is they really did then open the books and all of us who had been railing against what Ahmadinejad had been up to, I think were in many ways vindicated by, you know, what, even accounting for the fact that a new government always tries to say that the preceding government has been disastrous. I mean, this was pretty disastrous. So, you know, there was this option. And I think for about three, four months there was this argument that Raf Sanjani, you know, could play quite a pivotal role. But I think we've seen over the last 18 months that Raf Sanjani himself has also been sidelined. And we saw with the Assembly of Experts elections recently that actually he can't even win that election. I mean, you know, that's getting a bit tough. And, you know, if your own son gets convicted to 15 years in prison, although whether he sits in prison for 15 years isn't either here nor there. The fact is that even Raf Sanjani can't protect his offspring. That looks also very, you know, a non-starter. So really, you know, what we're looking at is to get the sanctions lifted. And I think that's the chief sort of tactical, even you could say, strategic aim. And what comes after that? Who knows? I mean, that's not very clear at all. And what you will know is that what I have said, and I looked very closely at this, if you look in the last 18 months of the Raf Sanjani administration, there has been very little, if any, structural or, you know, serious political change or even tentative political change taking place. In fact, it seems to be that the deal has been cut that you can have a free reign over the negotiations but you will not touch the domestic political or economic situation. So what does that mean if all this money goes back into the system? Well, you know, it will go into the regular roots. So it will basically consolidate and support those very groups of people who have spent the last 10 years consolidating a very authoritarian state structure. This is something that I think we just need to be realistic about. It's not to argue against anything, but it's just simply to say that I think those of us who are hoping for a new dawn, I think need to be a little bit more sober about it and pay a little bit more attention to what's going on domestically. You agree, Nazila, that looking at this from the perspective of the supreme leader, if there is going to be a nuclear compromise for the leader, this is more tactical than it is strategic, meaning he's not going to, after 35 years in power, 26 years as supreme leader, he's not thinking of abandoning the policies he's been pursuing in shifting to more cooperation or more of an alliance with the United States. This is kind of more tactical with the aim of regrouping economically, getting the sanctions lifted. I think you're absolutely right. I think Khamenei has been even very open about some of the principles that he's not going to back down from. And, I mean, rapprochement with the United States is something that he has explicitly talked about. He has said that the nuclear talks are not about mending diplomatic ties with the United States. And if this was not on his agenda, he wouldn't have talked about it. If he talks about something, that means he cares about it and this is still one of the red lines in the Islamic Republic. But, you know, the nuclear program, I don't think was among those major principles, one of the foundations of the Islamic Republic. Khamenei has always seen himself very much as the protector of what he inherited. I don't think he would have been this kind of person or would have pursued these policies if he had not become supreme leader. He was a much more moderate figure before he was appointed as supreme leader. But somehow Iran, I think, got caught in this nuclear program that turned into a very costly both politically and economically economic program. And they have reached a point that he thought towards the end of his life if he didn't solve this problem, it would overshadow his legacy forever and ever. But I don't think the nuclear program, ending the standoff, has anything to do with rapprochement with the United States. Having said that, Zaidi Fankeri have spoken with each other in the past 18 months, much more than Iran and the United States have ever had any kind of diplomatic engagement. So it is definitely a new era, but I don't think Khamenei is planning to change Iran's foreign policy. One of the things that we've stopped talking about in the last several years is the civil society movement within Iran. After 2009 we saw massive protest movements, but since then it's been fairly dormant. The leadership or the nominal leadership of the opposition, Mousavi Qadr, we are still under house arrest. Many of the other leaders either remain in prison or have been exiled. How would you describe kind of the state of that movement within Iran? I think using the term opposition movement ascribes more cohesion than exists. It's just kind of a group of individuals who are discontent with the status quo. What would you describe as the state of those forces? What is their alternative vision for Iran? Maybe I'll ask both of you to talk about this new idea of reform 3.0. The mood music is certainly better. The mood music is a little bit more encouraging. I think most people like to say that the one thing we have in abundance is hope, which is great. But in practical terms, you get the distinct impression that any civil society in the authentic use of that term is fairly dormant and very wary. As one would expect, I think 2009 was a very, very serious moment in that experience. Again, I would say, and I think Carrie made the point very well, you're talking here with people who would have been familiar with what was going on in the 90s and the Khatimi era. I think that gives us a very different perspective as to what is possible. I think if you have your experience in the Ahmadinejad area, you think what's going on now is at least better than nothing. I think that's fair enough. It's better than nothing because they add nothing. Now, as I said, the mood music has changed. But I think in practical terms, there's been a lot really staked on the fact that the nuclear negotiations will deliver. So basically, everything has been kept, has been delayed in effect until the nuclear negotiations unlock the possibility of other things happening. But there, again, I think that's, I mean, there was a very interesting statistic came out recently. I was mentioning this, it's only in the recent budgets. They said that, as we know, the economy in Iran is not in great shape. And they were saying that, you know, raw honey has had to slash cultural and other budgets by about 60% over the last couple of years. Which one would expect? We're all suffering from austerity, obviously. But somehow the policing budget has been increased this year by 35%. So, you know, we know that certain priorities can still be attended to. I mean, you can understand in some ways that you want to make sure the internal security of the country is in check. Particularly if you're going to go through a tough economic time. So, but it does allow you in a sense, you know, a little bit of an insight into their sort of thinking. You know, raw honey at the end of the day, he comes from a very strong security background. You know, he certainly doesn't have a background as hard to me did in a sort of the arts and culture and other things. You know, I mean, it's a much more insider role, which has, you know, positive and negative consequences. Of course, you can read it however which way you want. But if you look at what's been happening, I don't think really you've had the same sort of encouragement to local organizations and even the sort of the quite modest growth in civil society that you had in the late 1990s. And even then, by the way, I mean, we shouldn't be romantic about it. Even then, you know, doing the Khatamira, it was tough. I mean, it wasn't that easy. I mean, they kept shutting things down, then they kept reopening. So it wasn't exact, but at least there was something happening now. I think it's, I think people are very wary and they want to sort of basically watch from the sidelines and see what's happening before they actually stick their heads above the parapet. I often find that one's analysis of Iran is dependent on your hopes and your expectations for the country. If you're kind of an American analyst of the Middle East and you compare Iran to Saudi Arabia, you say, well, you know, this women can drive and, you know, people vote and so we should be, you know, very hopeful about Iran or much more positive about Iran. I think if you're someone like Ali, who, you know, those of us who in some ways have a personal stake in it, you obviously never want to conflate your hopes and your analysis, but you have greater expectations for the people of Iran. You know, obviously that leads you to more disappointment. But Nazila, how do you see the future of this reform movement? And maybe you can talk a little bit about this movement, which is taking shape under the leadership of Saad el-Kharri, who was a former acolyte. He was the former Iranian ambassador to Paris. He's related to the Supreme Leader by marriage and he's trying to start a new reform movement, which is somehow aligned with the Supreme Leader rather than against him. Well, I want to be clear about how I use the word reform. I think the reform movement that Khatami initiated in 1997, that is gone. I don't want to say it's dead, but that has disappeared. Its leaders are in jail. Those who are not in jail are not inside the country or outside the country and its supporters were very much disappointed in 1999. I think that reform movement lost its core supporters after Khatami failed to stand up to the system and side with the opposition leaders in 1999. Those people continue to support Khatami only because there was no other alternative. He seemed to be the only person who was speaking their language, was talking about what they wanted. But the reform movement in the sense that was created in 1997, I think somehow vanished. Saad el-Kharri I think is just being an opportunist unfortunately. He's been calling about the third generation of reformers. I don't know what happened to the second generation. And a lot of people have been asked, Isn't it called nedan? Okay, I'm sorry. Yeah, so anyways, everybody's wondering what happened to those people. Those people are still in prison. So how can you talk about another generation? And a lot of young people started making fun of what he was doing because he has aligned himself to the supreme leader who is the man who went after the reformers. But I am generally very optimistic by the idea of reform in Iran and I think that is a totally different thing than the reform movement and the leaders of the reform movement. I think reform in Iran and people's longing for change hasn't gone anywhere. And I think in fact, Iranian middle class has grown tremendously even under Ahmadinejad partly because he was very generous with the security forces, with the militia forces, with his own supporters. He put them on very generous retainers and these people moved up in society, joined the middle class and I got to know a lot of them. Once they moved up in society, they were not radical anymore. They were not talking about the things that they spoke about a few years earlier. So the middle class has grown. I used to speak to a lot of opposition leaders inside the country and they used to very openly say that if the government left us alone, if this regime was not so intrusive, we didn't care about politics. But we live in a society that the regime cares about who we hang out with, how we party, what kind of music we can listen to. And that makes people frustrated. So I think for the majority of Iranians, political freedom does not come first. I think for the majority, especially for the middle class, which combining the lower middle class, middle class and the upper middle class, and it is over 80%, it is more about social freedoms, about personal space. And their longing for that kind of reform hasn't gone anywhere. I think it's simmering beneath the surface. Even in 2008, I think the majority of people who came out were part of this movement, part of a civil movement rather than a civil society that was organized. And I think they can come out again, but they are not willing to make the kind of sacrifices that the Egyptians and the Tunisians made, partly because they're middle class, people from the middle class tend to act very differently. They are very much afraid of any kind of institutional breakdown. Many of them either remember or their parents have lived through the 1979 revolution and the first decade of the revolution that was during a war. And people don't want to live through that era anymore. One more question for both of you and then I'll hand it over to all of you so I have your questions ready. But let me ask you to both speculate a little bit and let's play out a scenario in the next year and then the next 10 years. Over the next year, I suspect that the nuclear deal, I don't see this as either kind of success or failure. I think it's either success or stalemates. We're not going to declare it a failure, but it could take longer than June 30th. And if the nuclear deal isn't signed anytime soon, I think vast majority of Americans probably won't notice. It's not going to affect people's day-to-day lives in the United States, whereas in Iran people are on the edge of their seats. They're waiting for this deal to happen to even make minor life decisions, whether to buy a house or buy a mobile phone or whatever. And so the question is play this out over the next year. There's in a way much more pressure on the Supreme Leader to sign this deal than there is President Obama. And so over the next year, how does this play out within Iran if there's no deal? That's question one. Question two is to look over the longer term, say the next decade, decade and a half. And I think the two most commonly comparative paradigms which are invoked to try to capture the Islamic Republic and its future trajectory are China and the Soviet Union. Is Iran a mini-China or is it a mini-Soviet Union? A country which starts to prioritize economic interests first before revolutionary ideology. It opens up economically. It becomes economic power. But it keeps the political space for itself, so that's China. But somehow it manages to evolve. And then the opposite of that is the Soviet Union, a country which continues to prioritize ideological interests before economic interests. And eventually it implodes under the weight of its own internal malaise. So, you know, near-term scenario, longer-term scenario, just ask you to speculate. I think it's probably, you know, I always feel it's like the Soviet Union struggling to be China. I mean, it's, and there are these tensions. I mean, the difficulty in ever sort of categorizing Iran in nice, neat compartments. It's always very difficult because obviously there are many different groups competing. The regional in Iran will have several different opinions. I mean, it's, you know, they will move and shop and change depending on their mood. But also how events play out. I think there's been a lot of talk, you know, in Iran for many, many years, by the way. I mean, none of these discussions are new. I mean, this is one of the things that always, I have to say, I'm being a bit of a crusty historian here, but it gets a bit sort of irritating when you hear all these people coming up with these fantastic discoveries they've made about Iran. And I sort of say, well, you know, actually, you know, these discussions have been had for at least the last 25 years of the other, unfortunately. And so the China model or the Japan model or this or that or the other has always been there. I mean, it's been discussed quite heavily. And I think Raf Sanjani was the first talk of the China model. The problem, unfortunately, with a lot of this is when you actually probe a little bit deeper, they don't actually know what the China model is. I mean, this is the difficulty. And the China model is actually having relations with the United States and opening up and having a degree of managed, obviously, economic development, but one in which basically capitalism replaces communism. In Iran, they haven't really made that decision yet. I mean, they're very reluctant to give up control. I mean, this is part of the problem. And in discussions, you know, I used to have extensive discussions with businessmen and entrepreneurs as far as they were in the 1990s and others. And, you know, there's a very strong nationalist urge in Iran to be able to be self-sufficient to do things on your own. And they would eventually come to the conclusion that actually this revolutionary urge isn't getting us anywhere. So, you know, there's a lot going on in an international environment, so we do have to engage with the world. But ultimately now today, you know, and certainly in that lost decade, as I said, when actually a lot of the economic resources of the country moved from that quote, I would put in quotation marks, private sector, because it's not a private sector as we would understand it, but into sort of an IRGC-backed, you know, foundations very tightly controlled. It's much more difficult to envisage that happening easier. It's out of a bit of a push. I mean, this is one of the things that I think was very important. I remember many years ago having lunch with Saeed Hajarian, who was the strategic thinker for the reforms at the time just before they shot him. And he's a wonderful metaphor for the reform movement in Iran, because they never killed him, but he's basically not incapacitated, obviously. And he made this very good analogy. He said, you know, we want to persuade people to come with us. We're realistic enough to know that these, you know, these stakeholders, these people who own the means of production if I can use a slightly marked system in Iran, they will never give up control unless we can push a bit, unless we can use a bit of people power to push. And I think that's always the essence in Iran, that actually these vested interests will never give up willingly. I mean, there's no sort of, you know, there has to be certain pressures, and I think the economy, of course, will push them in a direction, but this idea at the moment that you're going to see a shift towards either a sort of China model in the next few years without something quite significant breaking or pushing them in that direction is something that I think at the moment is probably a little bit too optimistic. You know, if you look at their relationship, their chief international relationship at the moment is with the Russians. And they follow Putin quite closely, and Putin, I think, and Khamenei share a similar world view. I think that's pushing it a bit. But, you know, these are attempts to make things sound rosier than they are. I think Khamenei has a particular world view, and, you know, he's very adamant that he wants to keep that sort of control. And you can see this also with the nuclear negotiations. You know, for me, my heart in a sense says that, you know, we're going to get somewhere. My head tells me all the time that this is going to be a lot more difficult than people are saying. And if we talk of the June 30th, you know, I think even the mere fact of sitting down and writing this document in a way that is not going to be misinterpreted is going to be a task that a number of lawyers are going to have a thoroughly good time doing for many, many months. I cannot see this being written in the time frame that they're talking about. But, you know, who knows, maybe they'll pile in with hundreds of lawyers to go in and write this document. I just can't see it. I think it's going to take longer. I think you've got to find a document. And it's insufficient, by the way. I hear too many people say to me, well, there's diplomatic spin. You can fudge things. You can do this. You can word it in this way that they can take it in one sense and someone can take it in another sense. That isn't going to work. The minute you write a document that can be interpreted in different ways by the different parties, it's a recipe for disaster. So it's got to be a document that's clear. And I think those of you who are not a treaty of any sort, although it's not a treaty, of course, it's an agreement, is going to require a lot of heavy work. So I think this is going to be a longer-term affair. We will get to something. I'm not sure quite what it will entail. But at the end of the day, something else will have to give. Something else will have to give either from the White House or in the leadership office because there are a number of areas where the disagreements remain quite striking. And they've been very blunt about it. Just in case, you know, Khamenei, from his point of view, he doesn't want to be misunderstood. So he gives his wonderful speech in Persian. He makes sure it's translated to English and put on his website. He then offers his own fact sheet just to make sure you just don't know. Then he has his tweets that he sends out just to let you know. Just in case you misinterpreted him again, then he tells you what he thinks his red lines are. So something will have to give there. And I think there's a certain amount of optimism having to contain his constituents, his hardline constituents. I think most people who know Iran would wonder which hardline constituents these are. Maybe he's talking in the mirror. The chief person that you have to convince is him. The chief person you have to convince is him. And he has a legacy, but he also has concerns that he doesn't want to leave a legacy that has Iran as weak or submitting. So there is still, I think, a way to go. And a lot has been achieved and I think it's very encouraging that Kerry and Zarif like to talk to each other so extensively. I think that's very positive. Good. Let's take that for what it's worth. But I think we need to be quite sober going forward to make sure that all those areas of disagreement are also reconciled. I tend to agree with Ali. I think this is going to take much longer than what we might expect. And Iranians are already warning Iranians about it. I mean, there are a lot of op-eds in Iranian papers. A lot of Iranian officials, especially people in charge of commerce, economy, the minister of economy have been talking about it, have been warning about a deal. They've been saying that even if there is a deal in June, things are not going to change for a long, long time. They're trying to manage expectations. Oh, absolutely, yeah. It's going to take years and years to get all the sanctions lifted, which is very different than what Khamenei said just two weeks ago, which again raises the topic whether Khamenei is unaware of these facts, or he was speaking to an Iranian audience. He wanted to make sure that he's addressing some of the concerns of those people that he had steered their emotions against a nuclear deal saying that we are on top of this. We're watching everything carefully. We will make sure that Iran's interests are guaranteed. But everybody else in the country is just warning about the consequences. They're saying things are not going to change for years and years, that the sanctions that were put in place under Saddam have not been completely lifted now in Iraq. So Iranians, I think, are very aware of the psychological effects of this, of the deal, of the agreement so far has had a huge effect. People, I think, are feeling much more positive. They are seeing the future in a much different way than they did before this agreement. Whether Iran is going the Chinese way or the Russian way, I think not. For many different reasons I think, first of all, Iran and Iranians are a country that have been very much shaped by their own past. Starting from the religion, Shiite Islam, they were invaded by the Muslims. They became Muslims, but they never became so many Muslims. They became Shiite Muslims over a period of centuries. They shaped Islam into a kind of Shiite Islam that was more Persianized than anything else. For Iranians are people that they have survived centuries and centuries of invasions. They have to learn to adapt themselves, be pragmatist, live in harmony with their surroundings, and come up with policies that would secure their survival. I think for the Islamic Republic it's exactly the same thing. The revolutionary ideology of 1979 I think died after Khomeini's death along with them. If you listen to Khomeini's or even to Musavi's talks when Khomeini was alive, it's a totally different discourse. The lexicon, the words that they use are very different than the way any of them speaks now, even Khomeini. I think we are living in an era that the Islamic Republic is very much concerned with survival and the revolutionary ideology, ideas of exporting the revolution, they are non-existent. For the same reason Khomeini when he came to power he did not stick together with Khomeini's allies, he alienated all of them. He brought people to power who were not clerics, who were not religious. They were quite military figures and they were dependent on him for survival. And he has made sure to replace them at least every 10 years so they wouldn't become very powerful. So predicting the revolution is very important. I don't know if you have said yourself. But whatever is going to be, is not going to be a Chinese or a Russian model. Okay, let's open it up. If you can identify yourself and be brief as possible. Let's start in the back and we'll move forward. I can actually bunch together a few questions. Please, sir. Hi, I'm Hamid Yunus from Gallup. Thank you for an excellent, extremely nuanced discussion on Iran. If there is more money coming into that system as one of you sort of implied, what will Iran's regional behavior look like? Will it be more aggressive, less aggressive, more reliant on proxies, less reliant on proxies? What's that dynamic, what does that look like from where you said? Okay, well, actually we can go one by one. Why don't you want to start with the first one? Well, it's interesting because there is a view that if all that money comes in and they will flex their muscles a bit more in the region. I think certainly it will make life a bit easier for them in terms of supporting Assad and other proxies or other allies they have. I'm not so sure to be honest that it means they're going to be even more aggressive in the region. I mean, I think they've probably reached the limits of actually what they should really be getting up to if we count Yemen and other things that are going on. And I know that Jaffari and the others have been very, you know, the IRGCB have been very almost boastful. I mean, there are a couple of, mainly there are mainly Amr and Nizad Akalai, so I have to say, you know, we dominate all these capitals and this sort of thing. I think many other of the more politically intelligent class in Iran, if I may say so, are probably a little bit more circumspect about making these claims because it's the sort of attention they may not like. And I thought that was quite an interesting encounter, obviously, recently when the Iranian naval ships sort of turned back when the ones at the Teddy Roosevelt sort of turned up. I tend to see that Iran has a very good public relations impact abroad. Some of it is true. There's no doubt about it, but they tend to puff themselves up. I think they have very strong allies, by the way, in Israel who tell them, you know, that they are the most existential threat in the world. I think there's many people in Saudi also probably think that, and that probably encourages them to think that they are. You know, I mean, obviously, if they're all saying that we're the worst thing since Sni-Sprev, then maybe we are doing pretty well. But, you know, I would remind us all, and everyone seems to have forgotten about this, but a couple of months ago they built a cardboard cutout of a US ship and blew it up for the spectacle of its officials. And this was taken as some sort of great moment of Iranian power. I thought it was vastly embarrassing, I have to say myself. And, you know, this idea that this mock-up was a way of showing that they could handle the United States. I think in this respect, Obama is quite right that, you know, they don't pose a threat in that sense to the region. They have the potential to cause a lot of mischief. Although, at the same time, you know, from an Iranian perspective, you'd have to say to be, you know, to be on balance fair, you know, that they could quite rightly point out, I think, to the way in which the West is also into being obviously in the region. I don't think the last decade has really shone a great light on the strategic now Western planners either. So, you know, they would say there's a mess in the region and they're, you know, taking advantage of this. But I think the money itself, you know, will not necessarily mean, you know, that anything will get particularly worse in that respect or they'll be more aggressive. I think a lot of them will just enjoy the fact that they can get richer. You know, and that's something that I think will be the main consequence. And actually, ironically, I mean, in some ways, if the money goes in and the structures of the state are the same, you know, it will flow out again because they'll be buying lots of money and it will go in and it will come out. And it will probably go to Dubai and other places where it would be stashed in some lovely bank accounts. So, you know, it's just the system as it works. Unless you make some serious structural changes to the economy of the country, that's what's going to happen, which is, you know, which is something that I think bears some reflection. I saw a headline. I'm not sure if it was confirmed or not, but that Iran is going to be invited to partake in the next, they're going to try to be invited to that. Do you see nozilla potential that in the aftermath of a potential nuclear deal, a lot of caveats there, that Iran's regional policies will, there's room for flexibility and modification on those regional policies or would you expect more of the same? Well, I think it all depends on who's going to be involved in the talks and which faction in Iran has the upper hand, whether it's the moderates or the hardliners and hardliners, I mean the revolutionary guards. But I think we cannot forget two points about Iran and the Islamic Republic and that includes both the moderates and the hardliners. First is the question of legitimacy. All Iranian officials, whether it's Zarif and Rouhani or it's Khomeini and his revolutionary guards commanders, since Khomeini's death they have all been seeking legitimacy. Partly because under Khomeini, Iran did not have that kind of legitimacy. Everybody was waiting for this regime to collapse. They have proven over the past two decades, over two decades that no, they are very much in control. They're going to be there, the Islamic Republic is not going anywhere, but still the regime has not received the kind of recognition that it wanted. Number two is being a regional power and I think that doesn't make any difference whether it's the Shah or the Islamic Republic or a different regime. Iran lives in a very lonely place surrounded by Afghanistan, Sunni Muslims, Pakistan with a nuclear deal. I think anyone who is in power in Iran wants to have some kind of be a regional power, have influence in the area. Iranians have been taking advantage of problems in the region. I mean the only reason Iran has managed to expand its reach in Iraq, in Yemen, in Syria is because of dilemmas that have occurred there. Assad has been a very good ally. They don't want him to see him leave. And I think there are a lot of other countries in the region that they don't want to see Assad leave because Syria will probably collapse into a situation like Libya or Iraq in another civil war that is going to be very destabilizing for the region. So I think as long as they can secure those two concerns legitimacy and being an important regional player in the country they can shift their policies. Great. Gary here in the front. Thanks very much. I'm Gerrit Mitchell and I write the Mitchell report and I've been trying to think of another way to pose this question and I can't suppose it this way. If we try to get inside the head of how many and in doing so we could use some new brain science what of two factors that I'm going to name and maybe there are others what is most central to his to his being, to his way of thinking that he's a Persian or a Muslim? Good question. Ali you want to talk first? I think he publicly says he's a Muslim. I think you could actually you would probably be the best person. If you look at his the way he has transitioned from being president to leader obviously in some ways the role has made the man and he's surrounded by people who tell him that his role is a very specifically Muslim leadership role although he does often aspire to a leadership role that's even wider than that occasionally. But originally he's been known actually as someone who has very strong Persian sympathies if I can put it that way. He's very fond of certainly the language and literature of his native land but I think on his public persona and certainly the way he's developed certainly over the last 10 years and if you look at his writings it's basically dominated by a Muslim narrative but you could say what Nazir was saying in a sense a Persian Muslim narrative as opposed to a broader thing although he could not possibly say that publicly. One of the interesting things that I have to say I always thought these are all these surprises. I always thought that one of the great tasks that the regime would have to do in the post Rohani was to rebuild its bridges. You don't have to be affectionate but you rebuild its bridges with the Saudis but actually if you look at Saudis and his comments they could fit in rather I historically speaking it's almost a very Persian approach to the Saudis and the Arabs of the region I mean it's quite striking but in his own mind it would have to be his view as a Muslim one and it's the Islamic Revolution that he's there to protect. I mean that's his role and that's what they were told him it would be impressed upon him and I think over the last 10 years he's basically absorbed that. I mean that's basically what he's become. I totally agree with that Ali I don't really have anything to add to it. I think Islam has become part of a Persian's identity as well I mean the two of them are nothing that can be totally separately separated Iranians have taken Islam and it's now part of their culture and when we talk about secular Iran or desires for having a secular Iran I think that's not going to happen in a true sense and I think Islam is always going to be part of people's daily culture it's become a way of life in Iran but Persian ambitions are definitely there and stronger than a solely religious identity I think it's a combination of both of them. I think society is moving in a very Persian direction by the way and I think also there's a distinction between the Islam of the Islamic Revolution and people's general sort of popular Islam that people might follow. I mean if you look at it in society as a whole I mean one of the great paradoxes of Iran by the way is society has consistently been way ahead of its politics I mean this is one of the paradoxes of Iran and so people who travel to Iran are always slightly bewildered because you look at society and it seems to be actually quite secular in an Anglo-Saxon way I should say not a French way but it's the politics that are now waiting to catch up really with what's going on at a societal level and I think you find very strong Persian elements there. I mean one of the great and I work on this a lot because my field is nationalism really and if you want to look at it is how Cyrus the Great has become basically a prophet I mean this complete junk but it's an interesting way they have a co-opted a strongly Persian narrative and legitimized it by giving it a veneer of Islam which obviously doesn't make any sense but you know that's not the point the point is that you bring these all in there was a very famous newspaper headline which actually a harmonized brother who's the head of the Iran the Iranian studies foundation said that Cyrus the Great was the founder or the progenitor of monotheism well okay I think there'll be many Muslim scholars that might sort of get worried about that but I mean that's it shows that they are you know trying to co-opt nationalism into into a wider sort of into a wider narrative so you know there are lots of gray areas with that really there are lots of gray areas I mean I just add to that I don't want to get too technical but Khamenei is actually a Turk he's not ethnically Persian so I would distinguish between Iranian and Persian as well and the reason why I say this is that I hear often times from people in the Gulf who say that Iran says that we have tension between Sunnis Shiites or Kurds and Arabs and Iran is itself a diverse polity you have half the population Persian Kurd or Azeri you have Kurds Baluchis, Arabs but I think what is unique about Iran is that a lot of those groups still have there's not there is this kind of strong Iranian identity whether your mother tongue is Azeri or its Persian but specifically to the question of whether he feels like he's more Muslim or more Iranian when I did this study of Khamenei years back and I haven't checked his website to confirm this is still the case but at that time on his website it said the supreme leader of the Islamic world didn't say supreme leader of Iran so he had these kind of grander ambitions than just being the leader of Iran and we saw that in 2011 when the uprisings happened in the Arab world that we call it here the Arab spring and in Iran they call that Islamic awakening and they thought that they were kind of the leaders of that Islamic awakening because it was following the lead of the 1979 revolution which was a movement against local western backed autocrats the last point I'd make and it's not it's tangential but this question about whether the leadership in Iran puts their Islamic identity first or their Iranian identity first just on a personal level I noticed that it is unique in the history of Iran how the Islamic Republic really seems to court Arabs Shiite Arabs in particular and repel Iranian, secular Iranians in particular the number of Arab Shiite colleagues I see from universities and think tanks who are moving back and forth between whether it's the west or Iraq they visit Iran frequently they have much much better access than many Iranians do who are sitting have been sitting out the last decade, day and a half in the west and elsewhere so I see these they kind of see in Shiite Arabs stronger allies than they do secular Iranians so let me I want to bring in a female voice if there is any yes please Hi my name is Barbara Dello Iran has a very old culture my dad always said back thousands of years with traditions and a special identity you talk you talk a lot about moderate influences how willing are the people to give up their old traditions and identity and does that vary geographically within the country okay let me let me add this gentleman here in the front had also a question did you have a question sir I wanted to ask an economic question and that is do you see think that it is possible that the future main or leading trade and investment partner of Iran will not be western countries but actually China and what might the political and economic consequences of that be great there was one more here in the center and I will try to clarify some yeah fourth row Hi my name is Farzan Saban visiting fellow Georgetown University so thank you all for wonderful presentations so basically I'm just going to set a brief pretext for my question it seems that at least until the 2005 election the conflict between Iranian centrism and reformism undermined both the goals of economic and political reform and was actually a factor in Ahmadinejad's victory but since in the two camps so has the Rouhani administration and the broader reform movement whether second or first generation I learned from this experience and will this to some extent how will this to some extent help advance both the goals of economic and political reform during Rouhani's presidency or could it thank you you want to start Nazila very quick on the Iranian cultural identity I don't think any Iranian wants to give up past traditions I think this is true about countries with ancient traditions everywhere Iranians have been very much affected by global events the majority of Iranians feel they are more citizens of a global culture than the Islamic Republic of Iran that has tried over the years to confine them and change their traditions but it has nothing to do with giving up Iranian traditions or practices I haven't come across anyone who hasn't cherished those cultural heritages everybody respects them even here in the US I mean we teach our children about Persian traditions we celebrate and many other Persian traditions but political partnership with China I don't think either the Iranian society or the Iranian leaders have had a good experience with China I mean first of all there is this huge stigma you speak to anyone in Iran and they hate the fact that whatever they have their shoes their clothes everything is made in China I tell them listen even in the States everything is made in China Iranians don't want to buy anything that is made in China they want to buy things that are made in Europe but they want to buy things that are made in the United States how possible that is but on a social level these are people's desires I think Iranian leaders have always looked westward they've always wanted to import technologies that were western they had no other options and that's why they turned to Chinese firms or even in terms of developing gas and oil they had to turn to the Chinese but if they have a choice their first priority are American investors then Europeans I don't think they would go for the Chinese Rohani I think has made quite good achievements I mean I talk to young people and they are a lot happier than before 2009 I mean people are optimistic there were a lot of pictures on the internet just this week about musicians on the streets apparently this has become very common and this was nonexistent I don't remember ever a time somebody singing and dancing with an electric guitar on the streets sometimes they were traditional singers but they did it late in the afternoon in the dark and they were more treated like beggars than musicians so things have changed them under Rohani he has managed to draw the support of even a lot of conservatives I mean during the elections a lot of more conservative figures backed him partly because he appeared to be more competent he made promises that a lot of people in society were also talking about them and he did become sort of a unifying figure especially after 2009 I mean we have to wait and see what's going to happen after a nuclear deal whether there are going to be new lines among Iranian leaderships but so far I think inside Iran people are very happy with Rohani especially if he can deliver the nuclear deal as well I think on questions of identity I mean the Iranians have had a tremendous capacity over their history really to absorb different cultural influences and often reproduce it better I mean they often make it Iranian basically I mean so that identity I don't see that as a particular problem of giving up anything what they do is they're in a relationship with the outside world it is the crossroads of civilisations after all which means it's basically a mess I mean everything goes in and out and it produces something that is identifiably I suppose you could say Iranian or Persian or whichever way you want to describe it and it does borrow a lot I mean it always has borrowed a lot if you go back to the Greeks they talk about it I mean they talk about the Persians actually being amongst the people who are most willing to adopt the practices of foreigners but what they do is they turn it off into good effect so I don't see the debate that I think you have in Iran today is really an internal debate about you know which aspect of the Iranian character if we could call it that is really going to win over whether you do have these sort of more humanistic influences which are very prominent throughout Iranian history in particular areas and of course like all countries and societies of course we always there are periods of fanaticism there are periods of moderation there are different pulls and pushes and you can see it as the Iranians giving up their identity for something utterly alien the Iranian lay religious philosopher Abdullah Karim Surush says that the Iranians have three cultural inheritances one is their pre-Islamic inheritance one is their Muslim inheritance and the third interestingly is their Western inheritance and they have absorbed all these and they sort of reproduce them so I think the battle is an internal battle rather than one of adopting anything there is a degree of durability of course there is a degree of durability and there is continuity and change I think in the economy the basic issue here is if you want to buy things and you want to buy a lot of cheap things you can go to China but if you want to get technical expertise you have to come to the West and they know that by the way and this is particularly true over the nuclear industry one of the things that I am very interested to see about the nuclear talks one of the aspects of the fact sheet and the UN declaration as well that one of the aspects was safety safety and making sure that every facility that would be some sort of measure making sure that the facilities were up to a certain international standard you talk to Iranians and those in the know the technology and the equipment they want and the investment they want is certainly coming from the West and by the West they include Japan by the way I don't see China at the moment as being they talk a lot about selling oil to China that's fine but in terms of investing in their oil industry really what they need are Western oil companies to come and invest and as for the nuclear industry again I guarantee you what they want is Western technology I think your point is on a theoretical level again one of the great tragedies for me when you talk to Iranians who know what the problem was they've looked back and they've seen the mistakes they know full well what the issues were and the issues were really in that sense to put it very simplistically in a way but as you said was that the Khatami reformists battled Rafsanjani and the whole thing went into a bit of a fiasco I remember at the time I also was very critical of Rafsanjani and a lot of people said to me you're being very short sighted at the time Rafsanjani represented this very centrist Akibash Shah as they called him and all this other and I think now there is a realisation the problem is how this can be to use that awful word operationalised that's the problem and how you bring these two because they are there and you saw that very very vividly in Rouhani's election when you had I think in the week after his election Khatami Rafsanjani going to congratulate Rouhani for the two wings they had come back together they were together my problem has been really is that both these figures have been hammered since then and for me Rouhani the problem of Rouhani for me is not him as an individual it's that he lacks a constituency of his own and really the people that brought him in were Rafsanjani and Khatami they brought him the constituents if you remember at the time I mean it was a very strange election lots of people were going to boycott that election and yet Khatami came out he stuck his neck out and he said vote and this is not the time for the end of the Persian word so if you go and vote but also Khaminay if you remember came out and said even if you don't like the system vote for the honour of the country you know they wanted people so there's a sort of a I think there was a lot of I wouldn't say tactical voting but strategic foresight I mean I know RF was standing he stepped down so the question is how that as I said now moves forward and I think if you read you'll see that sort of centrist reformist distinction has merged I mean people understand that but the question is now how do you put that into practice so you know that's what people like myself are really waiting to see we want to see some tangible results so two final questions thank you for organizing this great panel my name is Malcolm Byrne I'm at the National Security Archive at George Washington University where I help to run a series of conferences looking at the history of US-Iran relations and Karim has actually been at one of those and there are many striking things that come out of these conferences which involve former policy makers from the US Iran and other countries where they sit around and talk to each other about what happened and why they believed what they did so a lot of surprising things a lot of things that may not be surprising but are still striking and one of those is how little each side has understood about the other Martin Indyk at one point sort of threw up his arms and said the Iranian decision making system is simply a black box to the rest of us so the good news seems to me anyway to be that on the US side subsequent consecutive US presidents have seemed to understand the process better and made more thoughtful and effective approaches to the other side so first of all would you agree with that and secondly if this isn't too vague a question are there any particular points of misunderstanding or lack of information on either side that you all all three of you would identify as key to resolving any outstanding issues thank you Malcolm. Is there any questions in the back? I'll get you the last one. Thank you very much Kareem. My name is Behnam. I'm an Iran Research Analyst at FTD. I have a quick two-pronged question one for Nazila and one for Professor Ansari. Nazila you mentioned earlier that the lexicon had changed since the 80s specifically. Do you really believe that? The Iran-Iraq war is battled every day in the Iranian headlines. Osam Soleimani and Major General Jaffrey talk about exporting the revolution on a daily basis and those four Arab capitals they mentioned specifically. Damascus in Syria I don't remember what your take on that is with the change lexicon and discourse and for Professor Ansari I was wondering if you could re-highlight some of the impacts of an influx of cash into Iran with sanctions relieved hypothetically in a post-deal environment. You mentioned that this would exacerbate the existing trend lines squeezing the private sector IRGC front companies more peristatal institutions. Treasury still designates the Iranian banking sector money laundering concern. What would that look like on the back end of a deal? Thank you. And this gentleman has been very patient. Thank you very much. Michael Kurtziger was the Iranian desk officer for the Department of Agriculture for many years. I want to switch a little bit. You talked about and you asked the question about the future and the hope and so on. A country that has hope has children but the fertility rate in Iran has dropped precipitously. So there's not much hope there because you don't want to bring children in such a miserable condition. Number two are there jobs in Iran? Are the schools training people so that they're marketable in the Iranian economy? Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. Thank you. Thank you. So why don't we do you want to start or give Ali the last word? Sure. It gives me time to think. Yeah. The fertility rate has dropped and I think a lot of people inside the country are happy about that because the population boom of the 80s, especially early 80s produced this huge population, young population and the government was not capable of producing jobs for them on employment. It's still high in Iran. The economy is in a terrible shape but I look at it from a different perspective. The Islamic Republic had one very positive achievement and that was especially the revolutionary regime of Khomeini drew a lot of people from the villages especially the women, especially women who came from traditional families, religious families who would have stayed in their villages and their homes got married. They would have probably worked in the cottage industry, nothing beyond that but Khomeini drew a lot of these people from the margins of society brought them into the center when I was growing up these women these young women from villages started coming to our schools. They called themselves morality teachers. We couldn't understand them. They spoke with a different accent. They were from the villages so they kept on warning us about things that they had no idea what they were. I remember in those days listening to music was not permitted so they warned us about having occupant and what they really meant was a walkman but the irony is that occupant in Persian means original packaging so I mean they had no idea what these words meant and what they were warning us about. What happened was that by the time I was in high school a lot of these women were, I mean even their appearances were changing. They were wearing braces. They wanted to look like the rest of the people in the city. By the 90s a lot of these women were Islamist feminists. They had gone to university. They had become educated. A lot of these people their husbands had fought in the war. Some of them had lost their husbands in the war and once they lost their husbands they started feeling the brutality of the Islamic law because according to the Islamic law which was introduced after the revolution their children didn't belong to them. They had to give up their children to paternal grandfathers. So a lot of these women became what we call them Islamist feminists and today they are a force of change in Iran. These women have raised totally different children. Education levels are quite high in Iran. Women have become increasingly more educated than men in Iranian society. In 1983 30% of university students were women. By 2000 more than half were women. Last year in many universities around the country more than 70% of the students were women. And you know this is a sign that Iranian women have completely changed and this is because of the revolution because a lot of these families wouldn't have allowed their daughters to go to the city to go to university but after the revolution they thought society was safe. It was a slumming. So education levels have increased in terms of jobs you're absolutely right. A lot of people don't have jobs. A lot of women. But employment rates for women reached almost the same level as before the revolution. But there was a difference. A lot of women worked at the cottage industry before the revolution. They worked on the rice patties but now a lot of these women are doctors, engineers, they work in management levels. So in that sense Iranian demographic has changed profoundly. Whether the lexicon has changed or not. I'll give you an example. The first decade of the revolution, all we heard was about Mustazafin. It was about Talbuki. It was about going to Karbala only because Adi was buried there. Are they talking about those things about those religious ideals or are they talking about political ambitions? I think that's where the shift has occurred. In the early days of the revolution it was more about political ambitions. And back to Malcolm's question I think we have to be thankful to two people in this breakthrough. I was really amazed that John Kerry and Javad Zadif's persistence to carry on the talks that week in Lausanne there were all these messages that we were hearing from reporters who were there and they were exhausted and their exhaustion suggested that the talks are going to end up in a failure. Somebody's going to quit. Somebody's going to resign. This had happened in the past, especially on the side of Iranian negotiators including Ali Larijani or Javad Larijani which one was Ali Larijani. He quit because he reached an agreement. He went back. Iranians accept the agreement so he quit. But this time Javad Zadif stayed there. I think his only problem was not dealing with the Americans but was also going back and checking things back home with Iranian leadership. There was definitely a very strong willingness on the side of Iranians to reach a deal. But the fact that there were two people who were determined to carry on the talks and give diplomacy a chance I think made a huge difference this time. Ali, before I hand it over to you, I just wanted to say one thing in response to Malcolm's question. First is that the book that your group did Malcolm was I think one of the more interesting and informative pieces of literature about U.S.-Iran relations that's come out in the last decade. What was the title again Becoming Enemies. I think the importance of it and it's something which is commonly misunderstood in the U.S. is that from the Iranian perspective, from the Islamic Republic perspective the thing that has angered them most and created the most resentment among the Iranian leadership was what they perceived as the U.S. support for Saddam Hussein during the Iran-Iraq war. I thought you guys did a brilliant job of shedding light on that history and I think there's another point which is commonly misunderstood which is that the United States keeps apologizing for the 1953 coup against Mosaddegh. I tell people if Mohammed Mosaddegh were alive today the Islamic Republic would either throw him in jail or execute him. So he is not someone who we should keep apologizing to Iran's leadership for overthrowing Mosaddegh. They were also opposed to Mosaddegh but I think you guys put your finger on it. It's the history of the Iran-Iraq war which is something that is not commonly understood for many people here. Second, I do think your question was the evolution of U.S. understanding about how decisions are made in Iran and one way we can see that evolution is how President Obama has been writing numerous letters to the Supreme Leader. I think he's written four or five personal letters to the Supreme Leader and that was unprecedented. Never had a U.S. president reached out to Khomeini directly and on the contrary. I remember during the Clinton administration, Mohammed Khatemi was elected president and the Clinton administration tried to engage the reformists and strengthen the reformists and weaken those hardline forces in Tehran. So I think that there certainly has been an evolution in the U.S. understanding of the power structure within Iran. I don't know how this has necessarily been an evolution in our understanding of how decisions are made in Iran. Frankly, I don't think that most Iranians understand how decisions are taken within the country who's in the room, how those decisions are made but in terms of the architecture of power in the Islamic Republic I think there's a much better understanding than there was say a decade or so ago but I'll give Ali the last word. Thank you very much. Let me talk about the birth rate. That's fairly quick. I mean there was a certainly among what we would consider a middle class was a reluctance to have more and more children but I mean recently Khamenei has asked people, he wants the population to double in the next 10 or 20 years or whatever it is. He's encouraging them and they've withdrawn a lot of assistance to the free contraceptives and stuff. We've all been now removed to encourage the population so I mean it's he wants to replenish the resource I guess and partly it's the view that we have an ageing population therefore we need a younger population to be able to support but I do know that there are many within the more the Ministry of Economics and others who view this with great trepidation that they're going to suddenly have to find resources for 150 million people rather than 75 or 90 in terms of capacity building I mean one of the interesting things is that as I said there has been a lost decade so there's a very well educated population but well educated in what and the question is and it goes back also to the economics when you look at it I found it very interesting, I used to go to lots and lots of conferences in the 1990s when lots of businesses were discussing about the prospect of going to Iran and there was always there a little bit of a sort of a semantic misunderstanding in terms of private enterprise investment this sort of thing but I think now the problems are even probably bigger in some ways partly because that decade has you know things have developed in the west for instance on lovely topics like compliance and anti bribery laws and anti corruption and so on and so forth that we all have to sign very regularly these days I mean I think people going to do business in Iran and Iranian businesses coming out to the west will suddenly find that the environment has changed coming to Europe and the United States so I think you know there are things that need to be done there is sort of a business education if I can put it that way that needs to be that needs to be built and I think you know to go to your point the back I mean I think for me the problem is if the structures of that economy have not changed substantially all that will happen is that money will go in it will flow into the regular areas and it will be recycled out again in a way and you know you can look at the economy under Khatami when oil was $7 a barrel and new economy under Ahmadinejad when oil was $60 a barrel and rising and what happened to that money then I mean if you look at rich kids in Tehran you can see that some of the money went into very interesting places I actually saw some pictures on websites of the most extraordinary houses being built in Rashid and other places I mean I think the Shah would have blushed and he built a house and such I mean I could you know it's far bigger than Niyar Varan I have to tell you so there is money I mean there's money there and there's a huge amount of money but it's a little bit you know what it gets me is it's a little bit like the sort of the oligarchical mentality in Russia I mean there are certain people making lots of money there are other people that are not and I think these are fairly well guided so I that is a problem and I but you know to go back to a previous question I mean there are people in Iran who know full well what the problems are you know one of the things that they have to do in Iran is to sort out the irrigation in this country we're running out of water you know it's a catastrophe I have to tell you that the Ministry of Agriculture will go and say actually we're extracting so much water from the ground and we're not replenishing it but you know in 20 years time we're going to be dry so I mean these are issues that need to be handled and handled and dealt with very quickly and I'm first of all very pleased to meet you in person because I it's very nice to see you I'm going to be slightly I'm going to be slightly in the interest of a couple of my students here actually I'm going to also be slightly contrarian with you I think that the American understanding of Iran has grown in leaps and bounds but the baseline was low I mean let's be honest about it when I started working on this thing and I written in my own book you know there's this wonderful line of Condoleezza Rice ringing up and saying it's probably apocryphal but it has a certain truth to you know how many people in the State Department have grown up one you know I mean this was and how many people with Persian and I have a number of friends of mine who are very good Persianists but would be appointed to desks out in the Caribbean you know this I mean it's a sort of a foreign ministry problem that happens everywhere by the way I mean I'm not saying it's particular to Iran I think the capacity in the United States has grown exponentially I mean I think it's been really fantastic to see how it's grown in terms of understanding decision-making however where I'm going to say is that there's a certain amount of decision-making in that way I don't think anyone necessarily understands precisely how the decision-making is done principally because of course there is a single decision-maker at the back end of it you know it's not that we're thinking of Khamenei as some sort of great omnipotent dictator or whatever I don't think that ever works but the fact is in 2009 it was made very clear that he has the last word and that was always the decision you know when it was about the election nobody debated whether it was fraud or not because he had the last word he'd spoken that he's into that decision-making process or his ideas it's often difficult as Karim says to work out who's actually sitting on this high table and discussing things with him but I do think and I'm going to finish off with this because I said for the benefit of my students who are here just a little bit of nostalgia for them there's a wonderful wonderful quote I have to say and I'm going to go back to 453 from Lord Curzon and I know you're going to sign and he complains about British policy towards the 19th century and he says the trouble with us in our policy towards Iran is we either we vacillate between the sort of the white heat of excitement and then the sort of the dullness of boredom of disinterest and I think the problem with Western and this is actually goes to the heart of where my concerns are over this whole nuclear negotiation and someone put the point out very he said these negotiations are like a rollercoaster and they are you know and what I'm trying to say I think to people is rather than great big highs and then followed by dramatic lows and the emotional rollercoaster this is let's try and level it a bit and approach it with a slightly more sober level headed approach because I think the Iranians also by the way when it comes when they say the Iranians are very good at negotiating and there are very good chess players in Iran we know they're also some very good I mean Karim says they're very good people who play chicken and you know and there are good chess but not everyone's good chess player in Iran and I think that cliche is often overused but one of the things about it and you'll see this in the cycle of negotiations is that ability to basically have this sort of emotional rollercoaster and the excitement I see after the Lausanne declaration is really that after 18 months of no movement at all when we all thought it was about to fail suddenly they come out with this dramatic announcement that it's all been a success and the excitement is palpable but you know the point about that is it's been a very good case of information management in some ways because when you look at the detail sometimes things are not as clear as they should be and I would far prefer that when we approach the other side the Iranians or the Iranians approach the Americans or the Europeans obviously is that we didn't have this rollercoaster mentality that we approached it in a far more sober way we learned those lessons we understand what the negotiating tactics are and we appreciate that really we can afford to be perhaps a little bit more laid back about the approach about what's going on I have to say, one of the things I will say and I'll finish off, Zarif has played his hand extremely well I mean there's no doubt about it I think he's done a spectacular job actually but he's done a spectacular job really in turning as I said somewhere America has now become the suitor and Iran can afford to be coy is all credit to him from a purely objectively diplomatic point of view but I think it shows that actually from the other side there needs to be a little bit of you know we need to we need to I suppose adjust our our understanding a little bit more refine it a bit more there is room there is room for improvement as I would say So I'd like to thank you for your thoughtful questions thank you thank you thank you thank you so well I see I should not have told you I would say we'll want to choose a role for you guys to play so we'll focus on these we'll start when you say well I mean I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm sorry