 Good afternoon and welcome to CSIS and CSIS and our brand new headquarters building. We moved here nine months ago and we've already held 1,200 conferences on myriad subjects. My name is Arnold D'Vorgrave, I've been a journalist since 1946 with CSIS since 1991 and co-director with Tom Sanderson of CSIS's transnational threats project. The dramatic advances by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS inside Iraq last week are sending shock waves throughout world capitals. Elected in February 2014 from the Al Qaeda network, ISIS, as you probably know, is up to no good. Actually, it stands at the vanguard of a wide array of experienced, motivated and lethal violent extremist groups. With designs on establishing an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria, ISIS's recent advances in northern and central Iraq pose serious challenges to President Obama's administration as well as foreign national security communities. I feel we're very fortunate today as we have three legends in their own time, media, intelligence and diplomacy to discuss the hottest topic of the day of the week of the year. David Ignatius argued by one of the world's most prominent journalists and commentators with a globally syndicated column, a man who knows more about transnational terrorism and espionage than many, if not most of our colleagues, as he demonstrates in his eight spy novels crowned by the latest title, The Director. His Body of Lies book was also a 2808 movie with Leonardo DiCaprio that most of us of course have seen. David joined the Washington Post in 1986 as editor of the Sunday Outlook section. His Must Read column kicked off in 1998 and continued even during a three-year stint as executive editor of the International Herald Tribune in Paris. Early in his career Ignatius was a reporter for the Wall Street Journal where he covered at various times justice, the CIA, the Senate, the Middle East and the State Department. Steve Kappus, the veteran clandestine officer, came out of retirement in 2006 to boost morale at the CIA's troubled ranks and stepped down again as deputy director. A former Marine officer, Kappus served undercover in Moscow, Islamabad, Pakistan, and was the first officer from the clandestine service to become the agency's second-ranking official since the early 1980s. Senior Democrats in Congress applauded Steve Kappus and gave him credit for soothing turmoil at the agency after the intelligence failures that preceded the Iraq War. For obvious reasons, Mr. Kappus, many spectacular clandestine achievements must remain secret. He left the CIA in 2004 after clashing with AIDS to Port Auguste, who was then the director only to be brought back out of retirement by General Michael Payton. No one is indispensable in the intelligence world, but Steve comes close to it. Sal Khalizdat is a CSIS counselor and CEO of Khalizdat Associates, an international advisory firm and the only man to have served as U.S. Ambassador to the two major conflict countries of the past two decades, Iraq and Afghanistan. Afghanistan-born, he was also U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations on the State Department's policy planning staff and special advisor to the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, 85 to 89, and then special advisor again to the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Planning in the early 1990s. Last but by no means least is Tom Sanderson, a dear friend and close colleague as co-director of CSIS's Transnational Threats Project, in which capacity he has traveled to over 60 countries from North and Sub-Saharan Africa to the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, and authored and co-authored 14 major CSIS studies on transnational terrorism. He also lectures NSA classes. Tom, it's all yours. Just one moment as we remove the lecture. These are two of my strong interns and pretty solid guys. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Arno, for your unmatched leadership and perspective and your kind introductions to our fantastic guest today. Let me also recognize our program's senior advisors who lend us their exceptional energy expertise and leadership to the program. John McGaffin and Dick O'Neill here in the front. Ro, thank you so much. And to Juan Zarate who could not be with us today, but along with an expanded team of advisors and helpers really make the program what it is. My name is Tom Sanderson. As Arno said, I'm the co-director of the program. I've been here for just over 12 years. And I'm very much proud to be a part of this organization, CSIS. We meet at a time of very dramatic change in Iraq, where an extremely violent group, the Islamic State of Iraq, in the Levant, known by a number of acronyms, ISIS and ISIL, is threatening Baghdad in the overall stability and viability of the Iraqi state. The reverberations across the region in the honor are unmistakable and profound. After losing nearly 4,500 American lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives and spending well over a trillion dollars in the war in Iraq, U.S. citizens, indeed, much of the world can rightfully ask, what did we get in exchange for this immense price? The Iraqi government of Nuri al-Maliki has sharply alienated Sunnis, pushing many into the arms of ISIS as they seek to survive in a Shiite-dominated Iraq. Iraq and much of the world are naturally looking to the U.S. not only for an explanation, but now for a solution. In this discussion today, we'll discuss ISIS. For those of you not familiar with this designated terrorist organization, we've prepared a very brief video highlighting some of their key characteristics, which we'll play now for about one minute. We can kill the lights, Travis. The Islamic State of Iraq in Syria, or ISIS, is a group so vicious and unmanageable that al-Qaeda expelled them in February of 2014. ISIS uses the ever-expanding safe haven straddling the Iraq-Syria border to pursue a regional Sunni caliphate. Originally intent on striking the regime in Damascus, ISIS is more frequently battled in an array of Syrian opposition forces who in turn suspect ISIS of colluding with President Assad. Iraqis dominate ISIS leadership, operate robust local and international funding schemes, and lead several thousand foreign fighters from more than 70 countries in their assault on Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government. What do these dramatic developments mean for an already volatile Middle East in the wider world? To discuss ISIS and the implications of their recent and ongoing action, we've assembled a panel of truly outstanding experts. Ambassador Khalilzah, David Ignatius, and Steve Kappus will offer insights and perspectives on what has unfolded over the past two weeks, which in fact is part of a longer descent into chaos across Iraq, Syria, and in fact much of the Middle East. Following roughly 30 minutes of conversation, I'll inject a few questions for additional remarks and then turn it over to the audience at that time. We'll turn first to David Ignatius, who has to leave very briefly for a conference call related to the President's remarks made just a few minutes ago. So we'll start with David, and then on to Ambassador and Steve Kappus at the end. Thank you, Tom. And Arno, one of the liabilities of being a columnist is that you actually have to write columns. And so having just listened to the President's remarks, there is an effort to background it, which I should listen to so with apologies. I'm going to briefly duck out and then come back and join you. Let me make a few basic remarks. I don't know if people were able to hear what President Obama said in his remarks in this conference, but to summarize, he said that he intends to send 300 military advisors to Iraq. It's my understanding that those will be, their mission will be to assess Iraqi government military forces that used to be called train and assist, but I think assessment is the term of art for the moment. So I think we can, and he did not openly say that Maliki must go, although it's on our website, and it was in the Wall Street Journal this morning that the White House has reached that decision that Maliki must be replaced as Prime Minister for there to be any effective government that can wage war against ISIS. I'm assuming that the reason that the President didn't explicitly say in accompanying his remarks about sending these 300 advisors that they are going with the U.S. expectation that there will be a change in government in Iraq is the feeling that if the United States says that publicly, if the President says that publicly, it makes it harder to achieve, but there's all sorts of discussion about the U.S. list of alternative candidates for Prime Minister. The names are flying about. You know, it will interest many of us that one of the names on that list is very familiar to all of us. I'm at Cholambi. The once-in-future, we will leave that for discussion. Let me make just a few basic remarks about aspects of the situation and then turn to people who really are more expert than me. The first thing that I would say as an observer of this is thinking of advice that my closest friend gave me once. Big disasters in life are not the ones that sneak up on you. They're the ones that you see coming a mile away. And frankly, this is one that we've seen coming at us. Our intelligence agencies have seen coming at us. We've seen developing in Syria, developing in Iraq. Mosul has effectively been under ISIS control for two months. Assassination campaigns have been underway in all of the areas of Iraq. So this should not take anybody by surprise. The second observation is that the political blame game that we've been seeing over the last few days is extremely counterproductive for a country facing a crisis as serious as this. It may sound naive to make this comment, but there really is enough blame here to go around. And this is a moment where people really do need to pull together to support a coherent policy. One question that obviously looms large as you think about stopping ISIS beginning to reduce its numbers is it possible to do effective targeting? And the answer for the moment, I think, is no, but will soon be sort of. And so I think one reason that we're sending these additional advisors is to have people on the ground who can get the kind of information that's only available when you're there. It has been reported that we have so-called ISR surveillance resources in the air over the key parts of Iraq now. And so that tells you that, given the extraordinary capabilities the U.S. has, better information is on the way. So if I was an ISIS cadre, I would not be sleeping well for the next while. So I think everyone who looks at the situation understands that the key strategic objective for the U.S. is to somehow pull the Sunni tribal leadership and the ex-bathists who have been opportunistically allying with ISIS away from ISIS and back toward some kind of relationship both with the United States and with a successor Iraqi government. It's clear that will be impossible as long as Maliki remains prime minister. And the biggest reason to seek a change in the prime ministership of Iraq is so that Sunnis and to a lesser extent Kurds will again see themselves lying with the government in a common fight. It's obvious, I should have noted, from what the President just finished saying that the judgment of the United States is that the Iraqi military still has units that can function effectively with Americans accompanying them in some instances. But a lot of people have just given up on the Iraqi military after its performance in Mosul to Crete and Anbar. The President seems to have made a different decision. Just to give a little bit of personal perspective on this key question of whether the Sunni tribal leadership can be pulled back from the extremists. Two months ago I was in Amman trying to do some reporting from inside Syria, which was not possible, but I was able to speak with some of the leading tribal figures from Anbar who came to Amman in part to talk with me. And they were frank about, this was at a time when ISIS-led forces were in the lead in Fallujah, as they said, were three kilometers from the Baghdad airport, were in the Baghdad belts to the west of the city. They were already effectively in control of Anbar province. And these leaders said, with a kind of gut opportunism to be frank, that the Sunni population's anger at Maliki, their belief that he was following a sectarian agenda, was so complete that they saw no alternative but to ally with these fighters, who were effective fighters, and go after Maliki. And that clearly has continued in Mosul to Crete and other areas in northern Iraq. The point that they made to me and that I would share with this audience was really a plea that the United States find some way to be in contact with them, to re-establish liaisons, to get at its rolodecks. Nobody knows this process better than Zal Khalilzad, who got it started in some ways. But the time to be re-establishing these Sunni tribal connections is now, working obviously with help from friends of Saudi Arabia and the UAE. I guess the final point I'd make in closing my opening remarks, the question the country has to think through is whether it's possible to effectively create an alternative government in Iraq without the acquiescence of Iran and the person who is really the key stakeholder now, I would say, who's the head of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani. Is it possible to think about pulling this country back together without Iran on that shit? And my answer would be no. That if you want to go without Iran, you'll effectively cement the partition of Iraq without any hope, worse, of having a formula for overtime, of pulling it back together. But I'd be very curious what my colleagues on the panel have to say about that and the other issues, so I'll end it here. Great. Thank you very much, David. Ambassador? Thank you very much. It's a great pleasure to be here. I'm delighted to see both on the panel and in the audience, great friends, predecessors, what have you. I want to start by saying first that the president has defined the problem and what needs to be done right. That the complex challenge that the ISIS move presents to the Iraqis in the first instance but also to us requires both political and military steps. And they have to be pursued. The preparations for both success with regard to both have to be pursued simultaneously. But the execution in terms of operations, that is something that one has to think about whether you sequence that, how you sequence that in relation to politics. And I'll say some more. But preparations, I think, have started on both tracks and I support the decisions that the president has taken with regard to both. We've been there before on the political track where there was a time that violence had really increased in Iraq and there was a sense after the election that in order to deal with it you had to do both security steps and political steps. And the political step that is needed now similar to then is how to establish a unity government in the aftermath of an election. Where that government can attract the population who support and fighting the extremists or the terrorists would be extremely important. Because if you don't do that you could strengthen the extremists and the terrorists by pushing the population or other groups to cooperate with them. In other words to strengthen them. And I believe that what is needed to establish a unity government in this instance which we did not have this problem in the 2006 period is that it's not only a Sunni Shia issue that is really front and center which it was then but you also have really a very pronounced Kurdish Baghdad Kurdish Maliki issue further complicating this the Kurds are also saying that they would not support the prime ministership of Maliki for another term and if Maliki does stay that they would look at the option of restructuring their relationship with Baghdad a code word for meaning perhaps asking for a referendum to be authorized to negotiate separation of sovereignty from Iraq. So the political requirement now is even more important than it was in the 2006 period. I think the best way to deal with the issue of the political track is since Prime Minister Maliki his party has got the largest block now in parliament the process for him to have a respectable exit would be that the other parties that he doesn't have enough votes to form a government on his own although he has the largest block is as it happened with regard to Prime Minister Jeffrey that the other blocks inside the Shia alliance as well as outside refused to support him for prime ministership and that is absolutely necessary and for that to happen it is possible that the issue of who the prime minister to replace him with should not be addressed in my judgment tactically in a public way before the block before Prime Minister Maliki it's been demonstrated that he cannot form the government and then candidates alternative candidates could formally be considered of course in Baghdad right now besides Mr. Chalabi my friend who like compared him often to a stockbroker he's a brilliant maneuverer of playing with other people's money meaning he doesn't have a lot of his own block members in parliament but given how smart he is, how clever he is to put himself forward or be considered as a possible future prime minister and in order particularly to have the Shia support for a change especially in the current environment where there is with ISIS and particularly ISIS is very from the Iraqi context point of view very counterproductive posture with regard to the shrines it was one thing to say Maliki must go but to pronounce that if they take over the rest of Iraq they will destroy the Shia shrines as had the effect of certainly unifying to a degree that more than was the case before the Shia as had a significant effect inside Iran with people volunteering to come in the name of protecting the holy shrines of Shiaism so in order to have the Shia to separate I agree with David and this is what happened in the last time too and although it hasn't been discussed publicly as much that Iran had to be talked to and that after a period of reluctance on the part of Iran it ultimately filled to to Mr. Soleimani to come to visit Mr. Jaffery and tell him it's the interest of the Shia of Iraq as well as all of Iraq for him to step aside so I believe it has to be a combination of giving Maliki a chance but this has to happen in a very compressed time frame because of the laws that have been passed since the last election that compresses things to then a discussion of alternative names perhaps presenting one candidate maybe whether it is from Prime Minister Maliki's block or one of the other Shia leaders my prediction is that Maliki's price is likely to be someone else from his block the way that Jaffery to some extent insisted that he would step aside at the end but it had to be someone from the Dawa party and that the United States needs to keep the Arab states and Turkey in its diplomatic engagement very much in mind because they do have their own influence but Iran's role will be extremely important I think I would say if Iran does not want this to happen it will be very difficult for it to happen especially among the Shia now coming to the military dimension of this just a word or two I think that without the political settlement or a progress on the political settlement an attack alone on the ISIS can there are going to be all kinds of complications that David talked about about knowing where they are how mixed they are with others and where the target is that must be dealt with but I believe that an airstrike alone can degrade the threat but will not fundamentally change the situation without the political settlement the team that is going of course buys us time in part for politics to work but yet we are doing something which will give us credibility with the Iranians and with Maliki that we are leaning forward to do something and we get an assessment of which units are capable of what of Iraq but I would say that our security response cannot be only with the central government at this time because of the complexity of what has happened in Iraq as we did the last time also build relations as David recommended or reported on this conversation with local leaders we have to repeat to some extent the sons of Iraq again and we can succeed in part if they believe that we are working the political track and for them the political track is not only the prime minister but the political track now may include from their point of view a clear statement on the modification not that it will be done later but as part of a much more trusting from their point of view assessment some progress commitment on the federalization of allowing federalization to go forward for the Sunni areas too because the constitution practically does not have any serious role for the prime minister except to transmit the request for federalization to the independent election commission to conduct a poll or a referendum in the province but in the last year and a half unfortunately prime minister Maliki has blocked several efforts at federalization in an unconstitutional in my judgment a manner that has become part of the problem I think that there has to be besides participation in the future government the unity government for the Sunni there has to be some programmatic aspects to it that as resonance and that motivates some of the opposition that you see also I believe that in order to do the politics this time right the Kurds are now a very strong not only territorial factor with their takeover of Karkuk but also in terms of their military capability to effect the situation so we may have to review which could make things difficult how to relate to issues that would be fundamental for the Kurds whether they come in or they block a political progress and there may be tension not only between Kurds and Shia Baghdad but also with the Sunnis which would make the job difficult and that is the issue of oil exports that's one on the political track to recognize their right to export oil but how to share revenue there are lots of ideas that are around but there has to be one on which there is an agreement and the other thing is what role would the Peshmerga play with how the outside world, how the center relate to the Peshmerga including payments of their salaries and what have you so it is a difficult challenge a complicated challenge it's not only Maliki that is going to be difficult resist leaving but other Iraqis the issues involved are complicated but the alternative that they all face and we face as a result that you could get a southern Iraq that is really dominated by Iran and Kurdistan that goes sovereign and Baghdad and stable and difficult place with a lot of violence and the Sunni region that will be a kind of wild west with a bit of Talibistan inside it posing a great challenge to the region and to the world I would like to stand with Steve Steve very nice to be with you all today I want to take a moment to look at the nature of what I call the targets and the things that the United States needs to consider the intelligence community and military needs to consider as they look at this problem let's start with the obvious one, the easiest one, ISIS I believe that the Bolshevik analogy applies here to a small group of very dedicated, very committed completely ruthless leadership they have, I believe, demonstrated that they're capable of more violence and they're more predatory than any terrorist group we've seen in the post-911 environment they have morphed from what we would call a terrorist group maybe as recently as three or four months ago into actually I would consider to be a terrorist army so it's a problem like we haven't seen quite frankly since the towers went down in 911 but with this morphing they also have demonstrated an extraordinary understanding of the use of propaganda in the modern world they've done things with Twitter, with the internet with all sorts of modern IT communication which extends their ability to create fear and intimidation in ways that no other terrorist group I think has applied so far I think they're way ahead of al-Qaeda actually in the use of some of the horrible things you've seen and you have to rest assured, as I know many of you do because you're informed in this audience that you've had all over Iraq and they certainly see it around the other parts of the Middle East to include some of the sovereigns in the Gulf States now the other parts of this target the president has to consider of course ISIS or ISIL but also you have the Sunni side of this question you have the Kurd side of the question you have the Shia side of the question then you have the Iraqi government side of the question and then you have Iran now what I would offer to you is that you're presented with two different questions you have the tactical question which is what is happening now what is happening today did the jihadists raise a black flag on the refinery are they closer to the Baghdad airport what is it they're doing this week or before tomorrow to try and put those together but you have the more difficult strategic question even though it's a somewhat short term which is what are the actual plans of intentions of all of these targets that we've just listed here and how do you deal with those individual plans and intentions this gives me a chance to offer this subject that for any of you who have been involved in intelligence collection and you know this that in the intelligence business there's two things there's secrets and then there's mysteries I would offer to you that the mystery is still out there as to why that fruit salesman set himself on fire in the Tunisian market a few years ago that's a mystery there are some mysteries in this piece too that are difficult to sort through for any president no matter who they are the difficulty too is as always in the Middle East and quite frankly most of the world but particularly at this moment none of the information has come out as a seamless fabric the full of contradictions and quite frankly based on what I've seen so far it's also full of deception and remember we're talking about an area of the world that's been deceiving one another I only go back to the 600s on this but I think before that so my point is as the United States government has to sort through this it has to sort through contradictions in information it has to sort through favorite sources it has to sort through people who have come to them before the information was incorrect but it sounds now right but also the deception that flows regularly in any of these projects now all of you probably know this but let me say it anyway all intelligent services are driven by their own national interests and they look at things through their own lenses their own glasses of religion, culture, ethnicity this is no different so the Sunni services in the areas have a particular view of Shia militias and organizations and structures and of Sunni extremists the Shia service in this case here excuse me, Iran has a very particular viewpoint but at the same time I would offer to you that the Iranians have the best established networks of intelligence and influence in Iraq at the moment I hate to say that being an American I wouldn't have said this two or three years ago but at the moment I think it's absolutely true and so you have the way this information comes back to various leaderships and it comes through in many cases through these lenses that the services have put out there I'm not saying that people are making things up to provide their sovereigns, their presence or whatever but what I'm saying is all of them do their analysis differently in this part of the world I'm proud to say that American analysis I believe is still the best on the planet regardless of some mistakes are made but there are methodologies that are put in place to try and sort through these things that's not always the case in the rest of the world now I want to echo David and Zahl on the issues that the Gulf states in particular can be very helpful in engaging the Sunni tribes that were engaged previously and trying to remind them along with some very very brave Americans of which Zahl was one who talked to these tribesmen and remind them of the differences between themselves and these terrorists as they did remind them of the difference between themselves and al-Qaeda when they finally turned and threw out al-Qaeda there was a time there in which you may have seen I saw an article today which I thought was interesting in which one of the colonels who participated talked about how quiet it had gotten after the tribes came to realize that they were boring in 2008 or 2009 that we called so I think the capability is still there but it will have to be re-engaged and reactivated but of course the question remains how do you stop ISIL since they are the ones that are actually generating this chaos and this crisis this is my view I would offer to you that ISIL is an evil force and I would offer to you they can only be stopped by force and I don't think they have any interest in negotiating in any way that makes sense it is an extension of what we have seen in the post 9-11 environment I don't think anyone in this area in this room has ever heard anything that al-Qaeda has done in which they have been willing to negotiate for anything a person, cash, money, land nothing it is all or nothing and I think ISIL reflects the same thing now let me comment briefly and there are some of my old colleagues I have seen a couple here from the IC so if I don't have this quite right bear with me I am getting older but the USIC I think some of their missions are clear obviously they are searching for ISIL leadership they are trying to determine ISIL plans they are also trying to identify and determine ISIL weaknesses but also to uncover ISIL covert influences I would offer to you that some of the things we have seen recently in which Iraqi soldiers have thrown off their uniforms and dropped their weapons is not just because they were afraid I would offer to you that ISIL has been effective in ceding the field before they arrive to reduce some of the conflict they might face whether it be for cash, whether it be for threats to families whatever the case may be because they are ruthless in every event it is important for the US government to try and determine what are some of those strengths in their covert influence and to try and counter those some of that could take place with the tribes in the west and the south too of course it becomes necessary to re-contact, reactivate old sources and things of course there was a better infrastructure when the entire US government was represented there but it is possible to reactivate and re-contact those people and that a very important part here is to make sure we do not forget one lesson that we learned from 2003 onward and God knows we learned a lot of lessons now I would offer one little piece because I have for one reason or another I banged my head on the Iranian question for over 25 years as you can tell not always successfully I would offer that it is very important and I believe this for many years that it is very important that the United States and Iran on a wide variety of issues and this one becomes very important because of the serious and the immediate nature of it it is never easy it will never be easy but I would suggest that you cannot make decisions regarding the two holiest places in Shia Islam by excluding the Iranians you cannot make decisions regarding the country that is on their border by excluding Iran even though Iran is in every piece of US policy whether it be the nuclear issues support the terrorism and energy security economic issues that are all out there but I think we have to recall and remember the fact that we were able to deal with the Soviet Union on an entire range of issues over an entire period of time when they actually had missiles pointed at all of our homes and not forget that it is possible even when you have such vast, vast, vast political, diplomatic and military differences I am not recommending joint US or Iranian operations but I am recommending contact I would offer to you too that it might be important this time to recall how we used to anyway have the ability to have discreet contacts in ways that allows you the flexibility for great diplomats like Zal and Ambassador Negra Ponte to do things to allow it to advance in a way that did not put everyone in a public position had to declare where they were at that exact moment in time and I would only throw this out because I think one always has to be very cautious before one thinks about US military action because by doing that there are consequences that no one can really measure or mark early enough so I would just suggest, regardless of our history in Iraq we always be careful doing that wonderful, thank you Steve and thank you Ambassador, thank you David why don't we stick with the Iran topic while we're on it right now let's put ourselves in Tehran in the shoes of the Iranians what are they thinking, what are they doing and what are the key levels of escalation for them that would draw them more deeply into Iraq well let me let me lead off the I'm told that the person we've been talking about Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force has been an on-scene viceroy indeed I'm told he was yesterday of all places in Talaqar in the northwest of Iraq to illustrate Steve's point ISIS propaganda had it several days ago that Talaqar had fallen to ISIS well no one hasn't and Qasem Soleimani was actually taken by the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Maliki to look at that battlefield so I think anybody who doubts that the Iranians have a very hands-on approach here I think is missing the point the defense of Baghdad what stopped ISIS on the way to Baghdad was not the Iraqi army whether it can be rebuilt with stiffened with the American assessment teams that are going in will see but it's my understanding that the decisive line was drawn by the Asaib al-Haq militia and other Iranian run militias that are really part of Soleimani's force structure not by the Iraqi government so Iran is decisively in Iraq I think can exercise a veto almost over almost any approach that the United States tries to take since we're not going to send another 150,000 troops in and as I think both Steve and Zal have said US policy needs to begin with the recognition that that is a fact I would offer that you have to work for the foundation that Iranians are distrustful of anything we think we're doing because remember the connection between the US and Iran is so fractured there have been no context of any kind so in many ways there's a great possibility always that they will completely miscalculate what we're doing and they will think it's something more than it is so I would suggest there has to be some way to reduce the temperature a bit in order to at least have some conversation now Qasem Soleimani is a famous anti-American so I'm not exactly sure he would be the person that the Supreme Leader might want to send him but maybe President Rouhani might want to think of someone else but they'll have to designate someone maybe it's the current foreign minister who seems to have been successful to a certain extent but there has to be a way to lower the temperature and the other thing has to develop because there isn't this at the moment they have to develop a way to actually communicate to actually say hold on a second that's not the United States doing what you think is happening so that the Iranians don't overreact and come up with a not just a strategic miscalculation but a strategic no calculation so as a result trying to figure out a way to put together a communication of some kind to try and reduce temperatures and allow yourself a way to get back and forth to try and continue to reduce temperatures and make sure you're checking I think becomes very important to this thing because there's no way really to predict what ISIL is capable of doing in order to actually bring the United States and Iran to blows which is to their advantage well back to your Cold War analog we need a hotline between Tehran and Washington for that Ambassador I think that Iranians are not easy to deal with that's true they are negotiating with them it never ends when you even think you've got an agreement negotiations modified continues and they're very deceptive but I have personally dealt with them for years in Afghanistan I had the authority to talk to their ambassador in the context of Iraq we had meetings with them and started to talk with them again on Iraqi issues there is one thing that with regard to Iraq the person who's messaged as consequence with the Iraqis is Qasem Soleimani not the foreign minister not the president even because of the long-term relationship that he has had with the Iraqi interlocutors and he has helped them in difficult times he's been there one time he's been good for them and at the same time however although there is this continuing to negotiate but when there is an agreement they have delivered often their part and I would think that there is a risk that if we don't engage the Iranians and we don't come to for example an agreement about the need for a unity government I'm talking on the political track and that Maliki should be I think bringing him to cooperate will be difficult that he would try to play the U.S. Iran against each other in which he would say that if you don't do XYZ I'm going to invite the Iranians if you don't give me that then I'm going to do the Iranian thing and I think having if we can reach an understanding with them that would be that would help the political track. On the military track I think David is exactly right in terms of helping the Iraqis to think about the defensive Baghdad or even beyond already they are I'm sure not only Qasem Soleimani is there but quite a few others or they've acted very promptly and I believe that my judgment is the south of Iraq perhaps even Baghdad but particularly the south is so important to them that I think they would get heavily involved with large numbers and they believe that the Sistani fatwa that called on the Shia to come to the defense of Iraq or the shrines or Baghdad against ISIS and they see that as I read them as also giving them a green light legitimacy to participate so I think they would do a lot more than they've done in Syria because this would be far more important for them David you are ready to point out how influential Iran is if we look at the wider battle space we have Iranian Revolutionary Guard advisors in Syria and of course supporting and directing their proxy Hezbollah in the battle with Syria and of course now with Iraq we have a huge crowd here so I will skip the additional questions and go right to it starting with Ron Marks and please identify yourself in your affiliation and keep the question brief we'll have microphones up here pretty soon. Sandra in the front here great thank you Hi Ron Marks I'm a senior fellow here senior stilling committee member I'm afraid I'm old enough at this point to remember something called Vietnam so when I hear you guys talk about military assistance when I hear you talk about changing governments when I hear you talk about increasing the amount of intelligence activity within the country at this point I get a little nervous so the question I would like to ask then is how do we get out of this or how do we go to some form of end state that doesn't produce this kind of great internal struggle that will continue on for years and years that we find ourselves involved with Thanks Ron You go ahead and I'll follow Okay Anybody's first name is Ambassador Starts with an A Yeah Well I think that we really don't have another option in my view given the description of the threat that we heard about ISIS the question is how do we get out of having to do this every few years because we did it once before as you remember the 2006, 7, 8 time frame and we've learned a few things since as well and I think what at least I have learned and maybe a tall order to achieve but it's necessary if we want to get out of this business one is that there has to be an internal agreement among key Iraqis as to what it means to be Iraqi and I my own judgment is that it really means a federal Iraq and the Sunnis have moved more towards it at least that's my judgment based on my frequent interaction with them they were very much against it in the constitutional period but there is some evolution I don't know whether they are all there but there is some evolution too and there has to be power sharing at the center you need also an understanding among regional players Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Iran we've discussed a lot about the role of Iran but there has been a significant increase in the role of Turkey compared to the period when I was in Iraq 2005, 2007 because of what the qualitative change in the relationship between Turkey and the Kurds and also with significant Sunni groups the Arabs of course so there has to be an understanding and then the security institutions and so forth have to be trusted by all and I think that we are gonna have to deal with an emergency situation potentially now because of the ISIL group but there is a longer term requirements and I think we can self limit as to how far we'll go so to avoid what you're describing in terms of the Vietnam issue but the alternative is what I described before and the problem can only grow in that environment I would only offer that and I accept your Vietnam thinking in theory because I'm about old too but I would tell you that counter terrorism potential here is much different than Vietnam if you allow me a moment to be a tad dramatic and to take it to ISIL does dominate the upper third of Iraq there's nothing that says that they don't then move themselves into a position where they decide to project their power in the same way that Taliban and al-Qaeda do so I think this question of counter terrorism is something that we can't move away from in terms of homeland defense which separates it significantly from Korean War or Vietnam War or issues that were concerned maybe more with nation building Iraqis are necessary I do think that counter terrorism piece is so critical that we'll find ourselves in this difficult issue for some time until we're able to bring it to an end but I don't know what that means yet We can turn to the former Iraqi ambassador to the US Distinguished Go ahead Mike Thank you very much Excellent presentation Thank you very much I'm going to point to a few essential themes It is right that the defeat of IS IS because it has so many acronyms is the most important strategic objective for the United States and for Iraq, they've got to be defeated We've learned from the time of the surge through the action of the American forces in Iraq that you cannot defeat them in pure military terms unless you have the people on your side This I think has to be accepted as a fact Therefore, in order to achieve this strategic objective you need to have the population of that area to be with you on board Now that's, let's leave that on my side On the other side I completely understand the attractions or the impulse to outsource the problem of Iraq's security and stability to Iran They are on the ground They are more capable of to make things happen And the Iranians at the moment seem to be reading the American position as a green light for them to intervene Only yesterday I had somebody call me from Basra to say that after the comments of Secretary Kerry there was an influx of thousands of so-called pilgrims from Iran into Basra whom everybody thinks are operatives and not pilgrims So Iranians are acting They are on the ground and as some of the panelists have said they are at the front of this fight The exception is that the Americans and the Iranians are ganging up against the Sunnis How are you going to get the Sunnis to to do what they should be doing which is turn on the Al Qaeda ISIS This is really a crucial central issue that comes out from the discussion Seems that at this table the cards which are held by the United States appear to be weaker than the cards which are held by the Iranians What's the leverage that the United States can use in order to get the Iranians to cooperate into a solution which might not be such a high priority for them but might be perfectly willing to live with the ramp of Iraq under their control and the rest in chaos that they can even use as a lever as they are doing in Syria and they're quite content with the situation in Syria it seems to continue indefinitely Why can't they be content with the situation in Iraq to be Syrianized and to continue indefinitely I would like your thoughts on these things Thank you Samir is a distinguished Iraqi diplomat had the pleasure of working with over many years both here and in New York and in Iraq so his comments are all very good ones not surprisingly First on the issue of getting Sunnis to cooperate how do you manage this recommendation that you have to talk to the Iranians as well because you need their cooperation for the reasons you also mentioned that they're on the ground, they're strong my judgment is you need to make sure you're also talking to the Saudis and you're talking to the Turks that you want the neighborhood as a whole to come and they have different relative influence I believe that you would agree with me in order to have the Shia parties in particular to cooperate with a reasonable outcome that's broadly acceptable that the Iranian influence cannot be ignored and therefore you would have to engage them on it but you have to be careful I think your caution about how it might be perceived among the Sunni Arabs but as well as in the region has to be managed they ought to be able to manage that to do that and now as to the Iranian calculations of course I'm sure they have multiple scenarios that they have in mind too I agree with Steve that they are quite capable especially when you compare them to some of the other regional parties I come down myself that they do not want to get entangled in another costly problematic situation already serious cost a lot of their side may have their upper hand at this point but it's come at a huge price for them and to take on another such task I think they would not like to worry about is that they would like us to do their dirty work for them while they become a free rider to expand their influence or maintain it we need to make sure they do their fair share if you like I think there are risks in dealing with them but we need to be careful I believe they don't want a breakup of Iraq they don't want a protected conflict that they take the responsibility for kind of managing I think they are quite satisfied if you like with a democratic Iraq the words I would use maybe they would use a different word because that empowers the Shia and they have relatively good relations that means good relations between Iraq and Iran whether they want to take responsibility for a conflict my judgment is I could be wrong is that no they don't want that who don't offer I think you are right I would never recommend subcontracting anything to the Iranians but I would offer that in my experience if you do not have contact of some kind of a hostile party and I think in this case because their lack of understanding of US intentions, motives and actually how our system works anymore is so short that that contact would make a step towards moderating their behavior so they don't overreact to something that they misunderstand just to briefly add to this and to thank Amir who always embodied reminded us what Iraq at its best is about I think that the hope within the administration is that the Iranians will do the dirty work the Iranians will break the news to Nouri al-Maliki that the game is up and the US is sending signals that it's come to that view but it's not stating it publicly in parts so that the Iranians can move I just want to introduce and perhaps we can come back to this the subject of the Syrian battle space as it were in this fight against ISIS because it's important and it's important in terms of leverage against Iran I have felt for two years and feel still that some serious program of US assistance to the non-ISIS non-al-Qaeda Syrian opposition is crucial in part because it will fill a vacuum that we now see absent an effort by the United States and its allies filled by the worst people there's an idea that General Dempsey the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has said to have come to think is a good idea to train using Title 10 US military forces a stabilization force for the areas of Syria that have been liberated and the US military forces are not in control I think that's a really good idea it is said further that the reason that that hasn't happened even though General Dempsey the president others support it is that regional powers especially Jordan are nervous about this open US military involvement in their country and would do it only if there's political cover that makes them feel comfortable so I just would float the idea that for this stabilization force and you could actually imagine a similar force going into the Sunni areas of Iraq the idea that the Iraqi army is going to retake Mosul I don't think that's going to happen folks but it's possible that some stabilization force working with tribal leaders could begin over time to bring a degree of stability especially if it was operating under a flag of support from say the Gulf Cooperation Council or say the Gulf Cooperation Council and a majority of the Arab League or you can come up with different formulas but I think in thinking about Syria and Iraq that's an idea worth considering let me revisit a part of the Ambassador's question which I don't think we've quite yet we keep talking about engaging the Sunni tribal groups successfully during the surge or prior to the surge who engages them we engage them because we're on the ground we're not on the ground so who engages them Shiite government that's the one that alienated them in the first place how were they brought in so that we cleave them from ISIS well you know you can engage them in different places different actors when we were there in Iraq in a big way the engagement was by our forces in the field and then by our diplomats but before we did that we used to meet some of them in Jordan they easily could the tribal leaders travel easily to the neighboring states in those days Jordan Amman was the place that occasionally you met them in UAE so I believe that we have the personnel to be able to engage them but then once you get into the programmatic of what it is that you're going to do I mean assuming a post assessment and the assessment here is a kind of the military capability that exists that we could invest in and build up and provide them this capability I'm putting on the table that we that assessment should include what are the local forces and elements that need to be taken into account because the first things if they switch from ISIS and work against ISIS they assuming the other things are in place which is a big assumption you would need people on the ground because I agree with David that the central forces going back and taking all these places maybe difficult David has put some other option on the table but putting that aside for the moment one of the elements has got to be local forces local leaders and that's we would have to have contacts and relationship and knowing who are we relating with and what are we doing for them go to John McAffin John McAffin John McAffin, CSIS the two ambassadors touched on part of what I wanted to get at but it concerns me so much I'd like to try it on you as well I can see how relative term this turns out well but I can see given the scenarios of some sort of a unity government somehow being developed in a short period of time Maliki stepping aside I can see how that you might make some progress there what worries me is with Shia and Sunni what worries me is what happens if you don't do that and the chances of the U.S. really coming out on the wrong side is very difficult I think to straddle a sectarian battle it's like trying to work both sides of a really bad marriage you end up being friends with none of them I think there's a danger here and the Saudis and the others the Gulfies to this mix how do you know we hope it turns out the way we're talking but do you see how we can avoid this this problem of the U.S. coming out as friends of the Shia at the expense of Sunni well of course if you don't do what we're suggesting then the other option is and I'm sure my colleagues sitting here remember that some people thought we ought to take sides some people that thought let's go for the 80% solution if I remember correctly and the question is you bought yourself then a kind of a very long term headache essentially if you take side now of course it's not 80% because there is a Kurdish tension with Baghdad as well so I think I'm sure smart people in our government and outside perhaps are hedging you know what if you don't succeed what you do and we ought to be what we ought to be thinking about that but I think as a declaratory policy as a real policy the first thing to do would be to do what we have all discussed that needs to be done that kind of a marriage of diplomacy to get the political situation right as said to get the people on your side to be able to win against the extremists and terrorists and then to apply the military measure but we all know at least my judgment is absent that you would have perhaps the jury of not the fact of the vision an instability for some time to come of the country great thank you secretary nickapani one of the great things when Ron Marx asked his earlier question about Vietnam I spent 13 years working on the Vietnam issue and I think the amazing thing about it is even today looking back 50 years we can't agree amongst ourselves at the situation we were looking at you take people who work there during that time and sit them down over drinks we'll each have a different view and I think that's a bit of the problem we have with Iraq I'm not sure we know fully or understand what it is exactly that we are looking at so I find myself very much in sympathy with Zal's view well you know okay but we can't fret about that too much take the first step it's pretty clear there's an emergency we've got to figure out how to deal with it I gather the president's announcement goes towards that if what David says is true that the Kurds have really given up on Mr. Maliki they have the power in the parliament to change it no one's mentioned that so far all you have to do is follow the constitutional process that exists and that Kurdish block which is a swing vote in the parliament can align itself with a different group than Mr. Maliki's group and a game set match as far as Mr. Maliki's political future is concerned so they've already certified the results of the elections the next thing is to seat an assembly and then they have to form a new government and if what you said is correct Mr. Maliki will not be the prime minister six weeks two months from now so the question becomes how do you get there from here immediate assistance I would agree a couple of other things that I would suggest is and somehow I feel this administration hasn't done enough to create a little bit more motion on the field you know when you're in a sports event you want to have several things going at the same time even when you can't fully decide what you want to do for example we had this magnificent arrangement on Afghanistan called Six Plus Two I seem to remember there were eight countries that sat around and met on the subject of Afghanistan periodically and that it seems to me the Iraq situation lends itself perfectly to that and it's a way of incorporating Iran without giving them too much priority so to speak we have the Turks and the Saudis and the Jordanians who could be dharly affected by this situation sort of at the table and why don't we create a regular forum second thing someone asked earlier what leverage does the United States have well obviously we have less in terms of coercive power than we had before we have none, very little but we still have great standing we have convening power we aren't much more trusted than the Iranians or anybody else as honest brokers in these kinds of situations and I heard Ryan Crocker say something the other day that I thought was very wise he said if we really want to bring about some kind of solution to this the Secretary of State and the President are going to have to devote a lot more time to the diplomacy of this situation and if they're not inclined to do that well one thing they might want to consider and you know be careful what you wish for they need a special envoy for this political situation I'm pointing at it and that's no but seriously you've not done that job before I have not got sufficient experience it wasn't as complicated when I was there but something like that to keep the diplomacy going while you try to buy time in these other respects and lastly do you really think that ISIS is thriving because Maliki has been a bad leader in Baghdad I think he was pointing at you David Well John I was saying that can you really imagine that I think that Maliki has been a sectarian polarizing leader who at every moment has made bad choices as I've watched him I think one of the mysteries of this period is how when the Iraqi people in their good sense voted in another coalition headed by Ayatollahoui Maliki emerged once more as the Prime Minister I think ISIS has been determined to build itself as a decisive force in Syria it's fed off of the rage at Bashar al-Assad Syrians will tell you it's been getting a free pass from Bashar perhaps because he knows that it unifies people behind his government so I don't mean to say that Maliki is to blame ISIS had plenty of bad intentions and the ability to achieve them but I'm not going to relent on my assessment of Maliki I think he's just been such a tragic figure for Iraq Iraq deserved better than him Well since it may be that their friends are going to ask Maliki to do something difficult step aside, not very easy that one should give him his due in part with all due respect to my friend David which is that he did some good things, difficult things early on so he can take that with him should he be replaced that he did on the occasion in Basra even taking the risk for in his personal security to go there to confront Mahdi militias and he did recognize for not this last election the one before that he needed to adjust to appeal to Iraqis so from the Dawa party he created this state of law and tried to bring in Sunnis and Shias in it and I think that he has some things that he can point to that were important but I think during this last four years I agree with David that it would have been better that the results of not this last the previous election had been respected and Ayat should have been given the chance to form the government rather than a deal to keep Maliki but it's not all should we say negative especially that he's going to be asked to make a huge sacrifice potentially for the sake of his country to step aside sorry Hi, I'm Rafael from the Brazilian Embassy if you could elaborate on the role of Saudi Arabia in this crisis and the other Gulf states especially and United Arab Emirates and particularly when it comes to Saudi Arabia the role of the Wahhabism and the Al Saud family also in Jihadists and the ISIL what is what is their influence and what's at stake for them when it comes to influence what will be left of Iraq or about it, thank you well I have had a pleasure of traveling frequently to Saudi Arabia to ask for their help to bring the Sunnis into the political process that they were by cutting let's say there is some intrinsic views or beliefs that Saudis have that have not been helpful with regard to Iraq although on some issues they were helpful to me one is they generally are suspicious of Shia political forces especially of those that they saw as having spent time in Iran as quite a number of the Islamist Shia opposition from Iraq had spent some time there and to see those forces essentially as an extension of Iran and therefore isolating them and not accepting them and therefore being more sympathetic to those opposed to those and in a sense almost helping entrenching the influence of Iran on those forces rather than by engaging them treating them as serious political forces in Iraq giving them a sense of comfort that they could loosen whatever relationships existed I would not name name but a very senior Saudi for example to consistently argue with me that since we arrived in Iraq some two to three million Iranians have moved into Iraq and that now the official language of the Iranian of the Iraqi Ministry of Defense was Persian and I would say to this very senior Saudi that the only time they speak Farsi is when I go to visit because the Kurds of Iraqi Kurds who see me as the chief of staff and some others their Arabic is poor and they don't speak much English but they speak Farsi and I happen to also know Farsi so I engage with them but I promise you that there is minister or the minister than Arab and there are no Iranians defending the Defense Ministry in Iraq so there is this issue and there has been support for some Sunni opposition and I think in the new context of the sectarian conflict that is the defining kind of the fact of Syria, Iraq some of the Gulf states they are on two sides and you've seen even if you in the press today the statements from and Maliki on the one hand from Prince Faisal on the other one with regard to Iraq that polarizes it that's why I think we have been very staying away from our own political situation here one thing that happened that was negative for Iraq the Syrian conflict that David raised and we haven't really focused on which is Iraq's composition is such that if it takes side in a sectarian conflict outside it like it did in Syria being more sympathetic because of Iranian influence with Bashar it just did not have the support of all of its citizens the Sunnis were not sympathetic to that policy they were sympathetic to the opposition and the Kurds were not sympathetic too they were trying to stay out of that conflict so Maliki's entanglement in part because we were in there and Iran became even more influential at this kind of as backfired in part the two conflicts have become more intertwined than they might have been otherwise Steve I would offer that the Saudis have come a long way in about the last decade I would recall for everyone that remember al-Qaeda and if we accept that ISIL is maybe a child of al-Qaeda call for the complete destruction of the house of al-Saudi for the destruction of the monarchy and the destruction of Saudi Arabia as we know and once again you have to look for nuances and signals in Saudi society but the all-selection of Muhammad bin Naif and the Minister of Interior is a clear demonstration of their aggressive stance against the Sunni extremists Sunni radicals so I would and I don't want to I would separate what has been sort of traditional funding of the Saudi government for Sunni fundamentalists in the Wahhabist strain from what you're seeing with the extremists both certainly al-Qaeda as well as ISIL they were frightened they've been frightened more than once in the fact that so many Saudis are participating and you may have been aware of some of the laws that have changed in Saudi Arabia to make it against the law to participate in Jihad in Syria and now I would guess in Iraq now they move at a different pace than we do but I think they've been much more aggressive than we even know in some cases and in some cases what we do know and so they're a much better partner than they would have been 10 years ago it's also if I could put a plug in for this it's why the United States government must I say again must keep King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia fully briefed in a prize of what's going on because when the Qustodi in the two most holy places in Sunni Islam loses track of that, that's a difficult issue for American policy I agree with that Ma'am I'm Mitzi Werthe, I'm with the Naval Postgraduate School I'm also a social anthropologist by training so I find this discussion really fabulous but I've spent almost 40 years with the Department of Defense which I think always looks for a mechanistic solution and we don't educate our people to think in terms of complexity nuance and foreign languages I was told when we went into Iraq there were only six people at the CIA who spoke Arabic well enough to understand what was going on I don't know if that number is right but for the record that's not correct I can confirm that although I've not been certified I had it so my question for you is and I guess this really goes to David because so much of our education comes through the media how do we educate Americans to think in more complex terms in terms of nuance and we don't have quick solutions for this the quick answer to that if I can preempt David is to send them overseas that's what Americans need to do is go overseas but David we can't send 3 million people overseas or 300 million people overseas but you can heavily incentivize it by look how much do we spend on certain things we could incentivize American families by making junior year abroad in a non-English language country free covered okay that's one way to do it I'd like to take before David starts a slightly contrarian viewpoint I don't think we give ourselves credit enough in the United States particularly in the United States government for the amount of insight we have developed over the last 10 or 15 years I might even go back as far as 1993 with the first world trade center bombing I would certainly go pick it up in the 91 time frame when we were in Kuwait now there was a time when we really didn't know where we were going but I would offer that there's far more people that carry a great deal of information inside and have a real sensitivity and understand nuance in their hip pocket than are ever given credit for not just in the government and in the media, certainly a lot of David's colleagues but I've had the opportunity to know a lot of private citizens who because travel these days is unbelievable I was talking to a fellow the other day who's a very successful hedge fund gentleman who was thinking about a trip to Tehran so my point is I take your point and there's never enough because the schools try to communicate with language schools all over the country on programs of language for Farsi for Arabic and some of the other Pushtun for example but it became a matter of dollars and cents because it's a pyramid in languages it loses, you know you have a lot when they're freshmen but you lose a lot up here so the schools are always looking at the federal government for money so my point is I would give the US not just the USG but the entire US a little more credit now than we've given ourselves in the past but there's always more that needs to be done to make these things become more complex and start to move faster so we need people to be able to move more quickly excuse me but that's a great long standing point I wanted to make I think Steve said it well and I couldn't really add to that the American people sometimes seem allergic to Iraq and you can understand why given all of the terrible difficulty and people's feeling that our money and lives were misspent and I think it's going to take real leadership from President Obama and Republican members of Congress who are willing to work with him to build a political base for the things that this country is going to have to do to deal with this crisis absolutely gentlemen in the Yalta my name is Richard Sacks I'm a State Department Foreign Service Officer but I would like to offer this as a private citizen the comments today the presentations have been very insightful this talk about Vietnam makes me reflect that our opponents at the time the Vietnamese communists were always focused on unifying the country whereas the ISIS seems to be an agent of dissolution so there I think there's a difference it seems to me several things are clear Iran is now the hegemonic power in southern Iraq or at least among the majority Shia the Kurds have practiced a remarkable amount of independence for a long time now and now the comment is there's no way the Iraqi army is going to retake Mosul at least in the near future perhaps no military will ever do it it also occurs to me that we're nearing the 100th anniversary of the Sykes-Picot Agreement I know this is an unsettling idea but might we admit the possibility that Iraq is a losing proposition that Iraq is just not going to be a state as we have known it to be and that might go for Syria also I would throw that in because after all the focus of Syrian Arab politics over the last 70 years has been to dissolve the boundaries between the Arab states and that seems to be accomplished now to some degree I would agree that ISIS the success of ISIS threatens us and that it is definitely in our strategic interest to oppose ISIS and to eliminate it if we can but might we think about a different map in the Middle East and why would that be completely antithetical to our interests and another question what accounts for the extraordinary attractiveness of ISIS was mentioned in the beginning they managed to get fighters from 70 countries around the world in their small army why is that thank you we would like to take a stab at the border issue and then the appeal of ISIS good luck in the border issue what would it go to the border issue potential disintegration of Iraq is something that is present in the mix that's a potential scenario that could happen if the political developments do not go in a particular way that is openly the Kurds Kurdish leadership has been discussing it giving interviews about the potential referendum to renegotiate with Baghdad and now maybe given the situation they would even negotiate with Baghdad but what I am wary of even when I was a government expressed my views was that we the United States if that's what the implication of your intervention was that we in our wisdom side and then make it our policy to go and implement or lead a big effort to implement is to divide Iraq into several countries and draw their borders and that that I think I would advise us very much against that kind of an approach I don't know if that was the implication of what you said if it could happen there was a possibility but I wouldn't say that this should be the U.S. objective or the U.S. plan U.S. goal and strategy to enunciate that we think Iraq should be divided into three countries or four countries or whatever that would be my response David I could just add a word I agree with Marcel that it's not our business the game is up dissolve into your constituent pieces but that does appear to be happening in fact on the ground the reality is that there is a de facto partition of Iraq that's basically happened and I think it's going to last for a while that's also the case with Syria Syria is effectively partitioned I covered the Lebanese Civil War and was effectively partitioned for 15 years absolutely but it still had a president, a parliament, an army they just didn't function but eventually the sense of Lebanese identity was strong enough that it overcame that canonization and Lebanon came back together as one country what I wrote yesterday I just would briefly note I think we're seeing the end of the post Ottoman system and the line drawn in the sand which is how Sykes-Bicot famously was described is dissolving and so I think the essence of why is leadership of the United States is to as the immediate crisis ebbs because right now we've got a three alarm fire to put out but as it ebbs to lead a process drawing in the key regional powers balancing Saudi Arabia and Iran finally so this insane Sunni Shia fratricide will have an end point bringing in the permanent five members of the UN Security Council all of whom have an interest in stopping this process of disintegration and taking the lead in thinking what's this part of the world going to look like under some new structure will it will we have a kind of post Yugoslavia break up is that or should we try to keep a more federalized looser those are questions for the future but I really hope the United States will embrace them because that is the essence of American leadership let me add a few comments on the second part of the question about what accounts for the appeal of ISIS if you're a Sunni in Iraq it's pretty clear revenge against the Shia government that's alienated you brought violence to your family a lot of reasons if you may be a purist you believe in what ISIS says about re-establishing the Sunni Islamic Caliphate of bringing religion in the practice of Islam back to the time of the ancestors the Salafs the Nats appealing to you if you are a Sunni from other parts of the world then you're a sectarian it's the battle against the Shia in a previous project I was in Peshawar Pakistan I interviewed a leading journalist who said don't forget what Zarkawi remember the initial originator of this group when Bin Laden in Zawahiri al-Qaeda core leadership wrote to him and said stop killing Shia stop beheading Americans it's not good for public relations etc etc and he returned a message saying anti-Americanism is learned behavior anti-Shiaism is innate so that's a major driver if you're a foreign fighter it's adventure it's a legitimate jihad in the eyes of many people it gives you purpose if you're a sectarian again it gives you opportunity also to return home with credibility in a place where you may have been marginalized in every way and to bring violence back home potentially a lot of reasons and nothing succeeds like success you want to join the winning team or you want to join the moderates in Syria who are not winning I think in the United States these days in the way that we do business now in our culture we underestimate the power of a charismatic leader whether it be good or evil a charismatic leader of someone who can pull together disenfranchised young men from a variety of locations that make them feel as if they're involved with something bigger than themselves and it gets back to my focus of a very disciplined small leadership group which can spread that message consistently and therefore convince these young men that the ends do justify the means and I think we underestimate that we underestimate it with the song of bin Laden at the beginning I think we underestimate it with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi because in the United States these days quite frankly if a charismatic leader stands up then we do what we do these days in terms of evaluating them well that's not what happens around campfires around buildings and things when the leadership of these organizations show up and those stories are passed orally as well as by some of the modern communications so I would not underestimate the power of these men to bring into disenfranchise by picking people off of lines at airports in Pakistan for example they did brilliant work in grabbing young men in Morocco and other places it's a far more successful thing that people realize here in the United States and in fact the lack of charisma the liability for the current al-Qaeda in the back corner My name is Basan Baramendi and I'm from Syria I think from Syrian perspective I'm assuming that the way we look at what's going on in Iraq is a little bit different what you are saying in Iraq what we see that there is a Sunni revolution anti the Shi'a or anti the Malki it's in a way hijacked by ISIS but ISIS doesn't represent more than 5%, 7% of the whole movement when the public opinion or the journalists talk more about ISIS in Iraq and forget to talk about the real component of this revolution ISIS cannot control Muslim there's no way there's no way to do that the more the US think about that case that in Iraq in this crisis I think this golden opportunity for the United States to tell Iran enough is enough rather than go to Iran to tell them please help us to stabilize Iraq this number one for the ISIS thing in Syria the Syrian revolution and the Syrian Free Army they have been parking the DOD and CIA needs we need your help to fight ISIS till yesterday they sending messages we willing to fight till yesterday literally we really willing to fight ISIS just give us some ammunition not even weapons and the answer is big no so many question marks about your party thank you very much thank you for your comments yes ma'am good afternoon I'm with the US commission on international religious freedom I'm going to direct my question to Mr. Kapas if I will but if the other panelists want to weigh in through my travels with the US commission on international religious freedom I've met individuals from various religious communities and you hear one thing specifically over and over again which is those groups will go to any group swear allegiance to any group millions and millions of people are displaced refugees etc so regarding your comments which I find absolutely spot on about fighting terrorism how do we deal with these individuals who could be indoctrinated into extremist ideologies so 20 years from now we're not fighting the people who we're seeking our help now I think that's a brilliant question and we've never even met I would offer to you that for years now I've been offering that one of the great counter-terrorism tools that the United States can bring to the table around the world is jobs I have a very strong belief that jobs and the things that we have done here in our own country make a significant difference because I've talked to young men if they had a job and they had a sense they could support their family, raise their children and actually make something in their lives for them to sit there and listen over a period of three or four nights in a row to a recruiter for al-Qaeda or now ISIL I worry that because we've got ourselves into such an economic twist here that we can't project jobs in the way that we would be able to that I think would answer part of that now there are some cases in which when people are hungry as you know you've got to go someplace to get something to eat particularly if you have a family that will always happen to a certain extent I'm a great believer that the United States can figure out a way to get out of our funk economic funk and begin to project once more I always tell this story I asked African leaders at one point why they always do business with the Chinese they said well that's simple I said why is that? I said well when the Chinese sign the contract they show up the next day and begin work says you Americans you do six more months of research we have the EPA show up we have all these things show up we never get started what I'm talking about I think is employment jobs actual pay and things that take place so someone can say yes I am able to do something that's more than myself I hope that's not too simplistic for you but I actually believe it quite strongly education yes absolutely with the jobs because Americans we do a nice job we do train people when we hire them and we would be excellent in many of these places around the world if we could in some cases that's my view as a citizen jobs, education, political engagement but you still in the end you have a small number of folks who are ideologically as you know Steve and everyone else here knows who are going to go to the battle in the front here please I'm Peter Humphrey I'm an intelligence analyst it's fashionable in this town to assume that there's no linkage between the current crisis and the Iran nuclear negotiation the Calicut state in Iraq and Syria at CSIS is the tea party of the jihadist movement if they succeed not going there if they succeed in doing the Bamiyan Buddha treatment in Karbala or Najaf Iran may reconsider its desire to surrender its nuclear weapons development it may decide to someday test its nuclear weapons over Anbar and secondly it is possible that if this gets ugly enough Iran may seek concessions in those nuclear negotiations to make an end game that looks a little more friendly to American interests I believe this is the best time in modern history for a real Kurdistan and US opinion doesn't matter and Iranian opinion doesn't matter and Iraqi opinion doesn't matter the Kurds are going to say not our fight enough we're out of here the only opinion that matters is Turkey and Turkey has come around they will tolerate the new entity in exchange for their own territorial integrity and help in suppressing the PKK any questions from over here I haven't seen many hands okay are you up front then and back hello I'm Pavel Penif with LaRouche PAC I have a solution on what you were talking about with creating jobs which is actually the United States bringing in other partners like Russia and China specifically the new Silk Road that was proposed by the Chinese government that goes through the whole region of Asia is a project in which the United States collaborates with those nations you can start economic development throughout that whole region other than that I really want to disagree with Steve on his assessment on Saudi Arabia and their involvement in these terrorist movements I will just ask him how many Saudis were part of 9-11 for example don't misunderstand me I'm not forgiving them for anything I'm talking about improvements going forward recently Maliki for example said that the ISAS has been funded by Qatar and Saudi Arabia and that's being reported which my organization has proposed to cut off the funding of the ISAS as a more effective means to deal with them than just use military force directly against them and that's the case in many of these organizations a lot of them you have money that comes from drug trade from Afghanistan for example the problem there so these are some of the questions that you comment on thank you get some more questions I would also remind you as I know my boss is thinking right now that yes bringing Russia and China as many players as we can as many economic contributions but let's not forget when the Chinese show up with a project they show up with their own workers oftentimes so that's to be remembered all the way in the back thank you my name is Jake Waxman from McAllister College I'd like to build off Peter Humphries talk about the US-Iran nuclear engagement Israel is apparently opposed to any sort of engagement between US and Iran that doesn't either end up with a strike on Iran or some sort of complete nuclear deal I was wondering how their opposition to US and Iran working together on well how would Israeli opposition to a US-Iran deal affect our ability to work with them on Iraq thank you that's a good question well I don't know whether the Israelis have any express views that I'm not aware of even when I was in government in talking to the Iranians about regional issues whether they were opposed to our discussions with the Iranians on Afghanistan or opposed to our discussions with regard to Iraq I don't remember that so I don't know whether they would be concerned if we were talking about Iraq now with the Iranians on the nuclear issue of course they have a legitimate concern as to what kind of a deal is acceptable to them we have differences even here in the United States on sort of what it should be like whether the an agreement on Iraq could help a better deal from our point of view or it will make a mutually acceptable deal easier because there are some people who are fearing that if we make a progress on Iraq with Iran then we would concede more on the nuclear front because they would be helping us in Iraq and in exchange we will be easier on them on the nuclear issue I find that an unlikely scenario I have been in favor of myself of bothering the talks with Iran from the beginning that it shouldn't be an exclusively nuclear talks there are lots of these issues like the other country that I also had the pleasure of serving in there's a lot to talk to the Iranians about right now we've got a very contentious post-election environment in Afghanistan and there too there may be a need for the two candidates to come to an agreement about the future and Iran has strong relationships that could be helpful in facilitating or encouraging an agreement so that it doesn't get polarized along ethnic lines there rather than sectarian lines as we see in Iraq so I happen to think I'm not one of those that sort of thinks they will outsmart us if we negotiate with them and they will get more out of us I just think that they are good negotiators but we have had good negotiators as well we can negotiate, we can hold that on there's no reason why we can and sometimes you make trade-offs across issues but I think trading off on the nuclear front to accept a deal that would increase the risk of nuclearization and that I think I would think it's unlikely that negotiators will go there Thank you, final question goes to Raymond Wong from Singapore one of our great partners here at CSIS Gentlemen in light of the current developments in Iraq I could not help but recall that part of the problem could have been because the Maliki government was unable to negotiate or to conclude some kind of a SOFA agreement in the US after which virtually all US forces in Iraq were withdrawn Well, given this I wonder whether there would be any lessons to be learned in the context of what we are now facing in Afghanistan because I know that the Kazai government has had some difficulties with the US in terms of trying to work out some kind of a BSA I wonder whether the lessons learned here in Iraq would be relevant to Afghanistan going forward and whether if there is no residual US forces or ISAF forces remaining in Afghanistan after 2014 whether all the gains have been made in Afghanistan would be lost and was something like what's happening today in Iraq could happen in Afghanistan in the future Great question, Raymond I think there is that risk myself I think that in Afghanistan, more than in Iraq there is near consensus to keep US forces there President Kazai is isolated doesn't represent the views of his country on that issue we saw in the grand assembly in the Loi Jerga and we've seen it both candidates who are vying to succeed him saying they will sign the agreement right away and I have talked with both of them in the recent days and they are concerned about this deadline of going to 0 in 2016 although the administration is saying it's not 0 there will be some number in the embassy but effectively 0 it seems to me so there is I think since this will happen by the time that this administration will be on its way out my hope is that the new Afghan administration and the new post 2016 US administration will see the wisdom based in part informed by Iraq I have revisiting this issue to have some residual force for my concern is the administration's thinking and that if the terrorists central which has been weakened but if we have 0 presence are they thinking that by the end of 2016 that mission would have been completely accomplished and if it's not or they are going to live with that risk they haven't really explained how they plan to deal with that is that an efficient effective better way than an Afghanistan some presence in Afghanistan to address that issue and I don't have a good answer when I've engaged them on this other than well the world is risky you're going to perhaps accept a higher risk and besides all the Afghan issues that you raised so I am of the view that one has to be a little more patient and be there if the casualties are not there and the cost is substantially less I think the politics of it becomes easier here as well so I I agree with the implications of what you said Final comments Great question will Baghdad fall No I think it's clear now that Iranian backed Iraqi militias in the lead that Baghdad will be protected I think the question is whether Baghdad has fallen as the capital of the Unitary Iraq and I would say as of today the indications are yes I agree with David on Baghdad falling I don't think it will actually fall Steve's out David thank you so much the large and late staying crowd is a real testament to our expertise and we're really grateful to have you here thank you very much