 My name is Clark Murdock. I'm the Director for the Project on Nuclear Issues. It's a program as many of you know that has sort of a three-fold mission, try to create a networked community of young professionals across the nuclear enterprise. Secondly, to generate new thinking about nuclear issues and also to contribute to that's my folder right there so you'll have to sit someplace else. My only role in this is, first of all just to say that Pony is a program that is intended to provide opportunities for young professionals to I guess essentially career development, professional development, train the next generation of leaders. Most young professionals prefer to be called next generation leaders, but I'm an old guy so I still call them young professionals from time to time. My only role here is to actually introduce the young professional who, the next generation leader rather, who will be running this show, Stephanie Spies. Thanks Clark. So, like Clark said, my name is Stephanie Spies. I'm a research assistant here with the Project on Nuclear Issues. Thank you all for coming to tonight's live debate on U.S. policy towards Iran. It's actually the second in a two-part series that we've hosted over the past month or so, the first of which was about the efficacy of sanctions towards Iran. It can be viewed on our website. So tonight we're going to be talking about the military option against Iran. As most of you are aware tensions between the United States and Iran have increased in recent months. The military option in particular has featured quite prominently in discussions in the media and amongst policymakers and academics about potential policy solutions towards the nuclear issue. In particular, recent statements by Israeli officials, as well as new information from both the IEA as well as the U.S. intelligence agencies about Iran's nuclear activities over the past couple months have increased the salience of the military option in these discussions. And at the same time, the Obama administration has still primarily pursued a strategy of diplomacy and financial sanctions as a means of dealing with the Iran nuclear issue, yet it still maintains that all options are on the table. So this debate is obviously very relevant, especially in the past couple of weeks, as you all probably notice in the media. So I think both debaters would agree that the Iranian nuclear threat is one of the most important issues that's currently facing the United States. And probably I think most people would agree the world, although they disagree about the benefits and costs of using the military option as a means of resolving that dispute. So tonight's debate will address the following resolve statement. The United States should take military action against Iran to ensure that it does not develop a nuclear weapon. And on the affirmative, we have Dr. Matthew Crainig, who's currently a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and an Assistant Professor of Government at Georgetown University, and was also formally a Special Advisor in the Office of the Secretary of Defense from 2010 to 2011, where he worked on Iran policy and defense strategy. And on the negative, we have Dr. Colin Call, who's a Senior Fellow at the Center for New American Security and an Associate Professor in the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University, and also was a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East. So the structure of this debate that we're going to use is that both debaters will give opening remarks for about 10 minutes, and then they will each have five minutes to cross-examine one another. Then I'll ask a few follow-up questions, and we'll open up Q&A to the audience. And then both debaters will have an opportunity to give final closing remarks. So with that, we want to get started with the first speech. Great. Well, thank you very much for that introduction. It's a pleasure to be here. I'd like to thank CSIS for hosting this important debate. I would like to thank my fiancee, Daniela Hellfitt, for being here with me tonight. And I would like to thank all of you for coming out. It's a beautiful spring evening in Washington. But I think you made the right decision to be here. You have some expert debaters on stage. Apparently our moderator was a debater in college. Colin, some of you may know, actually won a national championship in debate at the University of Michigan in college. And I once got an A- in a seventh grade public speaking course. So you're in for a real treat, I think. But turning to the subject at hand, I think that Stephanie's right, that Iran's rapidly advancing nuclear program poses the greatest emerging national security challenge to the United States. And deciding how to deal with this problem, I think, is the biggest issue facing the United States government right now. And as I see it, there are only three ways that this issue is going to be resolved. First, we could get some kind of diplomatic settlement with Iran. Second, we could simply ask to a nuclear armed Iran. Or third, we could conduct military action designed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Now clearly a diplomatic settlement would be the best way to resolve this issue if we could get a diplomatic settlement. I think at this point, though, it's highly unlikely that we're going to solve this issue diplomatically. And in fact it's really hard to imagine any overlap between what Iran's supreme leader would be willing to agree to in terms of curbs on his uranium enrichment program that would simultaneously reassure Washington and reassure the West that Iran's nuclear program is no longer a problem. So there have been some signs in recent weeks that we might return to negotiations. But Iran has said that at this point they're unwilling to even discuss curbs on the uranium enrichment program. So we should hold out the hope that diplomacy and sanctions work. But if that doesn't work out, as I suspect that it won't, that means that the United States could very soon be faced with this difficult decision between simply acquiescing to a nuclear armed Iran or a military strike to prevent that from happening. Now a nuclear armed Iran would pose a grave threat to international peace and security. Nuclear armed Iran would lead to further proliferation in the Middle East as other countries in the region sought nuclear weapons in response. It will lead to further proliferation around the world as the non-proliferation regime was weakened as Iran itself becomes a nuclear supplier, provides sensitive nuclear materials and technology to U.S. adversaries around the world. Nuclear armed Iran would be more aggressive. Right now Iran restrains its foreign policy because it fears U.S. retaliation. But with a nuclear deterrent it could feel emboldened to push harder, could step up its support to terrorist and proxy groups, engage in more course of diplomacy in the region. So this could mean an even more crisis prone region. So a crisis prone region with a nuclear armed Iran, a nuclear armed Israel in the future, perhaps other nuclear armed states, has a real potential for things to go very bad. Any one of these crises could become a nuclear crisis, could result in a nuclear exchange. Given Israel's very small size any one of these crises could very well result in the destruction of the state of Israel. And once Iran has ballistic missiles capable of reaching the east coast of the United States, which experts estimate could be in as little as five years, any one of these crises could very well result in an attack on the U.S. homeland. So we would put in a deterrence and containment regime to try to deal with these threats. I think we could deal with some of them, but not all of them. But even with the deterrence and containment regime in place a nuclear armed Iran would pose a grave threat. So President Bush and President Obama didn't agree on a lot but they agreed that a nuclear armed Iran was unacceptable. So this leaves the military option. Now the military option is not an attractive one. There are significant risks to military action. But that said I think military action is preferable to simply acquiescing to a nuclear armed Iran. A U.S. military strike could almost certainly destroy Iran's key nuclear facilities. This would set Iran's program back. It's difficult to estimate with any precision but I would estimate somewhere from three to ten years. But of course the hope would be that eventually Iran ends up permanently without nuclear weapons. So this is a significant upside to a strike. Now there are significant costs as well. But I think that these costs are less severe than many people think they would be. And I also think that the United States could put in place a strategy to mitigate some of the downside risk. So the biggest and most obvious cost would be Iranian retaliation. And many people assume I think including Colin that a U.S. strike would set off a regional conflagration major conflict. And I just don't think that's the case. If you put yourself in Iran's shoes it's really hard to imagine I think how this becomes a major conflict. So first Iran doesn't have great retaliatory options. Iran doesn't have a serious conventional military as we usually think about it. Instead they've been investing in these asymmetric capabilities. So their options would essentially be to sponsor terrorist or proxy attacks to launch inaccurate ballistic missiles or to cause problems in the Persian Gulf. So those are their options. Then there's a question about what Iran would do. Would they lash out with everything they had or would they aim for some kind of calibrated response? So again put yourself in the shoes of the supreme leader. Your primary goal is to make sure that your state and your regime continues to exist. And you wake up one morning and your key nuclear facilities have been destroyed. But your military is intact. Your regime is intact. You have your own strategic dilemma. On one hand you're going to want to strike back to save face. On the other hand you're not going to want to pick a fight with the one country on earth that could make sure that your regime comes to an end. So if they strike back, if they don't strike back hard enough they lose face, but if they strike back too hard they lose their heads. And I think we know how people think in that situation. So Iran is almost certainly going to aim for some kind of calibrated response. And the United States can play on those fears by clearly communicating a deterrence message to Iran. Clearly communicating that we're only interested in the nuclear facilities, not in the regime, that if they engage in some kind of token retaliation we'd be willing to end the conflict there. But if they strike back too hard, if they say conduct terrorist attacks on US soil, if they attempt to close the Strait of Hormuz then we would respond with a devastating military response. Now Colin goes on to argue that even if Iran shows restraint that the United States won't, that the United States will keep itching for a bigger fight because if Iran retaliates at all we would have to strike back. There would be political pressure on the White House to strike back. And because the US military would want to eliminate any possible threats going in, so they would prefer to completely smash the Iranian military first. And so he has important points, but I think that the United States should show restraint in that situation, that we should understand that trading Iran's nuclear facilities, the greatest national security threat to the country in exchange for token retaliation is worth it. And I think that strategy should dictate tactics, not the reverse, and that we should aim for a limited strike. So there are other potential costs that again I think that when compared to a nuclear armed Iran are less severe than with a nuclear armed Iran and that the United States can manage some of those, I'm sure that these are going to come out in Q&A. So in short I think if the United States finds itself in this situation where it has to choose between acquiescing to a nuclear armed Iran or prevent a military strike, that the United States should conduct a limited strike on Iran's key nuclear facilities, pull back and absorb an inevitable round of retaliation and then seek to quickly de-escalate the crisis. Now Colin is going to argue that we have time to make this decision, and I agree with that. I think that we have less time than Colin thinks we do, but we have time. Colin's also going to argue that there are significant risks to military action, and I agree with that also. But I think that unless Colin is willing to argue that a diplomatic breakthrough is just around the corner, or that he would prefer to see a nuclear armed Iran than to conduct a military strike, that nothing he will say tonight calls into question my conclusion, which is that when compared to the grave threat posed by a nuclear armed Iran, strike is the least bad option. Thank you. It was actually second at the debate championships, so there are at least two other people who were finished better than I did. So I'm going to make a number of arguments. Basically I think Matt's arguments follow the decade-old playbook that we saw before the Iraq war, and he follows most of the mistakes. He exaggerates the threat presenting at his grave in imminent. He exaggerates the benefits of war while downplaying the escalatory risks and spillover effects. He completely ignores post-war scenarios, and he dismisses the prospect of a diplomatic breakthrough just at the moment where negotiations are about to restart. In repeating these mistakes, I'll argue Matt's advocacy risks drawing us down the same road that Neoconservatives did more than a decade ago when we went into Iraq, and we saw how that movie ended. I'm going to make several arguments. First, the Iranian threat is growing, but it's not yet imminent. U.S. and Israeli intelligence officials have noted that it would take at least a year for Iran to construct a crude, testable device from the point of decision by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Hameini. It would take several more years after that for Iran to be able to develop a weapon that could be fitted on a ballistic missile. Although Iran is clearly positioning itself to develop such a capability, James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence recently testified to the Senate that there's no hard evidence that Hameini has yet made the final decision to do so, which is very, very important. Moreover, Hameini is unlikely to do so in the near future, because to generate a bomb any time in the near future will require him to divert stockpiles of low-enriched uranium and use declared enrichment facilities at Natanz and the Fordo Enrichment Facility near the mountain at Combe, both of which are under IAE inspection, which means he would get caught. And because he doesn't want to get caught, because he knows that that would bring down draconian consequences from the international community, he's likely deterred from going from a bomb anytime soon until he can substantially compress the timeline to build a bomb or do it in secret, which means we're probably many years away from that possibility. Second, a nuclear armed Iran would represent a significant challenge to U.S. national security interests, but I think Matt adopts a worst case assessment of those challenges while adopting a best case assessment of how the war would actually go. If current sanctions and diplomacy fail, it's still conceivable that Iran may actually settle for a so-called virtual capability as opposed to a fully consummated, fully fledged nuclear capability. A virtual capability is one in which they would have all the technical components to rapidly construct a weapon, but would actually not do so. The goal would be to generate a minimal deterrent while trying to prevent the international community from coming down too hard on Iran. The outcome would be destabilizing but hardly the nightmare scenario that Matt portrays. Moreover, even if Iran develops and deploys an actual weapons arsenal, Matt's own writing suggests that they're highly unlikely to use those weapons or to transfer them to terrorist groups. Instead, Matt's major arguments center around Iran being threatened in the region and the proliferation cascade that would follow from an Iranian weapon. You know, I agree that a nuclear armed Iran may be further emboldened to use its proxies, particularly groups in the Levant, such as Hezbollah and Palestinian militant groups that threaten Israel. But Iran does that already, and after it acquires a bomb, the regime will have to be more cautious to avoid letting these activities become a direct nuclear crisis with Israel. Thus, the scenarios for escalation that Matt talks about are highly unlikely. You have to remember this, historically Iranian adventurism actually reveals a degree of risk aversion. Iran supports proxies and terrorists precisely because it doesn't want a direct confrontation with its adversaries who are much more powerful than it, the United States and Israel. So their whole purpose of doing this is to avoid direct confrontation with countries that can end them. Matt agrees that the regime is rational and Iranian leaders will have a profound interest after acquiring a nuclear weapon of not allowing crises in the Levant or elsewhere that are by their very nature peripheral to the survival of the regime become nuclear crises that would become intrinsically related to the survival of the regime. It's highly unlikely even if they become emboldened that we would see a nuclear crisis emerge. Ironically, Matt's own academic writings also suggest that when crises do occur, they don't escalate, and the countries that tend to win those crises are those that enjoy nuclear superiority and higher resolve, both situations which will define Israel in most future scenarios. What about the proliferation cascade? Matt's a proliferation scholar, but apparently he hasn't figured out the fact that there's never actually been a proliferation cascade ever to include in the Middle East after Israel supposedly developed its own nuclear weapons in the 1960s. So there's not a lot of history to support the fact that you're going to see this cascade, this chain reaction of nuclear proliferation around the world. The most likely candidate which Matt will probably talk about is Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabia is a long way away from getting a weapon now they might be able to buy one from Pakistan, but after the AQ Khan fiasco Pakistan is going to be highly reluctant to give them one, and the Chinese are not going to want to work with them to help put a warhead, a Pakistani warhead on the Chinese ballistic missiles that the Saudis already have. So the Saudi scenario is also highly unlikely. Other potential proliferants like Egypt and Turkey are even further away than the Saudis. Matt could argue that the Iranians will try to back us down in the Gulf, but it's highly unlikely that they'll be able to succeed. After all, North Korea and China both have nuclear weapons and they haven't been able to push us out of East Asia at least this last time I checked. Third, Matt's description of a surgical strike on Iran with limited escalation potential is actually a mirage. The type of attack Matt advocates would hit the crown jewel of the regime. It would be very difficult therefore to communicate that this wasn't about regime change. A problem compounded by the fact that there's decades of mutual distress between the United States and Iran, and Iranian predisposition to see everything we do as about regime change, the lack of reliable communications channel, and the inevitable fog of war. Mutual fears and miscalculations could also lead to rapid escalation. The Iranians will fear that further U.S. attacks are imminent, that could decapitate their missile arsenal, or their naval capability, or their command and control capabilities, which means they will face incentives, very high incentives early in the crisis to use everything they've got in retaliation before they lose them. That's the use them or lose them possibility. Moreover, the United States will also face incentives for preemption. At the very least Iran is going to do a bunch of things. They're going to activate their integrated air defense network. They're going to start dispersing their fast attack craft. They're going to start dispersing their submarines. They're going to start moving their minds out of storage. All of those things would represent huge threats to United States forces in the region and to international shipping. And the United States will have an incentive early in the crisis to cripple those capabilities before they can do much damage. Moreover, the types of proxy attacks that Matt is talking about could result in the deaths of dozens of U.S. diplomats in places like Afghanistan, many troops in Afghanistan, or against U.S. facilities in the Gulf. And it is inconceivable in an election year that that wouldn't drag the United States into an escalated conflict. Fourth, a surgical attack along the lines that Matt advocates would not buy much time and could actually make the nuclear challenge worse. A near-term attack on Iran's nuclear program would knock it back by at most a few years. Meanwhile, it would motivate Iran's hardliners to do a bunch of things. Kick out IAEA inspectors. It would likely settle the internal debate within the regime about whether Iran needed a nuclear deterrent. And it would incentivize the regime to rapidly rebuild a clandestine nuclear infrastructure. Consequently, in the aftermath of the strike, Washington would have to encircle Iran with a costly containment regime, much like we had to do for 12 years after the 1991 Gulf War with Saddam, and be prepared to re-attack at a moment's notice to prevent the Iranians from reconstituting their program. A unilateral U.S. strike would also shatter the international consensus and allow Tehran to play the victim, making containment after the strike extraordinarily difficult and leaving Washington to bear the burden alone. And once the IAEA is kicked out, we wouldn't even be able to know the degree to which they were reconstituting their program, let alone take action against it. So Matt's going to try to set up this false choice between living with a nuclear Iran or striking them. But you know what? Striking them is the clearest route to Iran developing a nuclear weapon. The resolution, by the way, is unconditional. It says you should strike now to ensure that Iran does not develop a nuclear weapon. Well, a strike doesn't ensure that Iran doesn't develop a nuclear weapon. In fact, it's most likely to have the opposite outcome. Fortunately, we still have time for other options. Washington-backed pressure measures are starting to bite. The Iranian economy is struggling under sanctions and Iranian leaders have signaled their willingness to come back to the negotiating table. We need to take a collective breath in this town and let this process play out. A diplomatic solution that provides sufficient assurances against weaponization efforts while respecting Iranian rights under the MPT will be difficult to achieve. But unlike military action, it is the only sustainable solution to an enduring outcome. Military action should remain an option. Indeed, a credible background threat is important for diplomacy. But framing the issue the way Matt does simultaneously hypes the near-term threat and dismisses any prospect for a diplomatic outcome, which narrows rather than expands the space for a lasting solution that ensures an end to Iran's nuclear ambitions. In closing, Iran is not very close to a bomb. The crisis itself would be extraordinarily difficult to manage. In addition to all the risks that I pointed out, there are all sorts of instability risks as it relates to expansion of the conflict in the Levant, instability in the context of the Arab Spring. There are a lot of reasons why now is not a very good time. That's the nuclear clock. In any case, if you agree with what I've said, then I would ask you to vote negative. Okay, great. So I think it's my turn to ask Colin some questions before we open it up to everyone else or before he asked me some questions and we open it up. So Colin, I mean, I've read your Foreign Affairs article with great interest. We debated this issue last week at the Council on Foreign Relations. As I said in the beginning, I think we have some time before we have to make this decision. But I'm still not sure what your bottom line is on this key question, which is if we get to the point of having to strike or not what you would recommend. So let me just ask directly if President Obama called you today and said that he just received credible intelligence that Iran was enriching uranium to 90 percent and he wants to know whether he should begin the process of building domestic international support for a strike or begin the process of deterring and containing a nuclear armed Iran, what would you advise? Well, I'm going to actually answer that in two respects. The first is to, I hate to do this to you, man, but to pull a little bit of a debaters trick. The resolution actually doesn't say if X, Y, or Z happens, then we should consider military action against Iran. It's unconditional. So to vote affirmative means that you're confident enough that diplomacy has failed, that sanctions have failed, that we should take military action. If you don't believe that, if you have some uncertainty, if you believe that we can wait, then that's an argument against the resolution, not an argument in favor of it. So let's be clear about that. I didn't write the resolution. I'm just here performing. To answer your question, you know, if I got the call, first of all, he's highly unlikely to call me, especially if he watches the YouTube clips. I think a lot of it would depend on the context, frankly. Not all of the red lines that you have discussed in other contexts I think are actual red lines. I think there are some things they could do that would be particularly troubling. If they kicked out the IAEA, that would be bad. If they took steps to start producing weapons great uranium, that would obviously be bad. If we had evidence that they were reconstituting a structured weaponization program or we discovered a wholly operational covert enrichment facility, these would all I think raise some very, very tough choices for the president. But you know, a bunch of questions would have to be asked. How compelling is the evidence? What are the prospects for forging an international coalition and building regional support? What can be done ahead of time to mitigate the consequences? So the problematic steps have been taken. Is there a non-overt option of accomplishing the same objectives while minimizing some of the downside risks? All of this I think would affect the risk-reward ratio and therefore what I would recommend. And since I don't know the values of any of these future variables today, and neither do you, frankly, I wouldn't unconditionally endorse a strike, which means that I think you still basically end up voting negative. You're unwilling to take a stand on the really important question that the country's about to face. But I'll go to the next question. So you've said in your introduction that we have a lot of time, that Iran isn't close to building a nuclear weapon. And I think we agree that the first step would be enriching to higher levels. David Albright's new report that came out last week says that Iran could now produce enough highly enriched uranium for its first bomb in four months after deciding to do so. I think that's the relevant timeline. But you've said that the relevant timeline is actually years because even once they had the material, it would take time to make a bomb, it would take time to put it on a warhead, it would take time to deliver it, etc. So if all that stuff, the years-long timeline that you lay out is really relevant to the military option, could you answer if Iran gets enough material for a weapon, kicks out inspectors and moves the material to some undisclosed location, what military option you would recommend to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Well if the scenario is premised on them having a bunch of undisclosed locations then your solution of bombing their overt facilities doesn't help us out very much. No, it's not premised on that. So let's get the timelines right. Our intelligence officials have said a year. That year is comprised of two things. One is how much time it would take for them to enrich their stockpile of low enriched uranium to a weapons grade level. The standard assessment is six to seven months. If they acquire enough 20% enrichment for one bomb, that could be cut dramatically. But here's what's really important. They'd have to use Natanzer photo to do that and they'd get caught. Which means A, they're not likely to do it because they'd get caught and B, if they got caught there would be time to respond. The year, however, is the time it would take them to construct a device. So even if they could generate weapons grade uranium in a couple of months, it would still take them a year based on our intelligence estimates to generate a device. That's a long time to go after their facilities. And the United States has a lot of capabilities. So you said six months. David Albright came out with a new report last week that suggested four months. But I think that you agree with my point, which is that we can bomb facilities. The military option is relevant once they're producing material in facilities. Once they have the material, the only thing that can stop them is a ground invasion. So this time to build a weapon is really irrelevant to this question. Actually the only way to stop them period would be an invasion and occupation. The only military option that insures an end to their program is one you don't advocate. And that is the invasion and occupation of Iran. The resolution calls for you to ensure the end of Iran's program. Surgical strikes don't ensure that. All surgical strikes do is motivate them to go all the way to a bomb. And insure it is to invade them, occupy them and change the regime. So if you're prepared to advocate that, that's a completely different debate. But I think we'd have to have Jamie fly on that side of the table, I think, to have that argument. Now you have five minutes to ask some questions. Okay. I have some questions here. So I guess the question would be, we could turn it around a little bit. Are there circumstances in which you would not endorse a military strike? Thanks for that question. I think the answer, the short answer is yes. And I think a lot of people assume things about my article from the title, the Foreign Affairs article, which was very provocative time to attack Iran. But what I really argue is that if Iran crosses, let me actually quote myself here. Page 77, quote, if Iran expels international atomic energy agency inspectors, begins enriching its stockpiles of uranium to weapons grade levels of 90% or installs advanced centrifuges at its uranium enrichment facility in Combe, the United States must strike immediately or for its last opportunity to prevent Iran from joining the nuclear club. So as I said at the beginning, I'd be absolutely delighted if we could get some kind of diplomatic settlement to this. If we just got word that Iran gave up its enrichment program, I think we'd all go out and celebrate. So if they stop short or if they roll back their nuclear program, I think we should use force. But if they continue down this path, if they cross these red lines, then I think that the United States should use force to stop them from weaponizing. So I guess the question then, does the resolution ask you if X, Y, and Z happens then we should use military force? Or does it say we should use military force? Well, I guess I'm going to lose the debate here. I didn't realize the debate started when we were negotiating over the resolution. I needed a better lawyer at that point. The question I'm interested in answering is, again, if sanctions and diplomacy fail and if the United States has to make this decision between striking or rolling over that we should strike. So flesh out for me again how a scenario happens in which an Iran with nuclear weapons finds itself in a nuclear war with Israel. They don't border one another. They're relatively far away from each other. So ostensibly it's because Iran is in bolden use of proxy. So you have a repeat of the 2006 Lebanon war but this time there's the shadow of an Iranian nuclear bomb in the background. Is that right? Yeah, that's basically right. I mean, I think the United States wasn't a suicidal state but we were willing to risk nuclear war a number of times during the Cold War over things that in hindsight might not seem to have been worth risking nuclear war. Well, that's interesting though because your own academic work suggests that in the history of nuclear crises countries that enjoy nuclear superiority and higher resolve both of which will define Israel in these equations back down their opponents. Why would Iran which you agree is rational even transform a future Lebanon war into a nuclear crisis? By its nature these crises are peripheral to Iran's interest. Why would the regime risk annihilation for peripheral interests? Well, two responses to that. The first is that I think many people don't fully understand nuclear deterrence theory. Many people think that nuclear deterrence ends with mutually assured destruction. Two countries have nuclear weapons and nuclear war would be bad so international politics is over. Nuclear deterrence actually begins with mutually assured destruction. Nuclear arms states still have conflicts of interest. They still try to coerce each other and the question is how do they do that? There's a large scholarly and policy literature on this. Thomas Schelling proposed one answer which is they make a threat that leaves something to chance. They engage in a process, the nuclear crisis. They purposely raise the risk of nuclear war play these high stakes games of nuclear chicken trying to coerce their adversary into backing down. So I think it's very likely that Iran and Israel, Iran and the United States, Iran and other adversaries are going to have conflicts of interest are going to threaten nuclear war as a way to try to coerce each other and in that crisis type situation things could spin out of control. I'll conclude. I guess you quoted yourself. Let me quote you back to yourself. In a future article you have coming out on an international organization, you say proliferation in Iran would disadvantage the United States by forcing it to compete with Iran in risk taking. On the other hand, the findings of this article also suggest that the United States would fare well in future nuclear crises. As long as the United States maintains nuclear superiority over Iran, a prospect that seems highly likely in the years to come, Washington will frequently be able to achieve its basic goals in nuclear confrontations with Iran. I didn't write that, you did. I get it that nuclear crises are a game of risks, but why would Iran take risks in a crisis with Israel far away that's peripheral to its interests and isn't risking annihilation of the regime? Or why would it succeed in those risk taking encounters with the United States when you've concluded in other forums that it actually, the United States would triumph? Well, so the article Colin cited is coming out in a nerdy peer review journal. So let me just translate it into plain English. So first of all, when we're assessing the threat of a nuclear under Iran, we need to consider many possible effects on U.S. interests, including nuclear proliferation, Iran being emboldened, stepped up to support to terrorist, all the stuff I talked about before. One thing to consider is how it affects nuclear war and nuclear crises and course of bargaining. So what I find in this article, what I say is that the United States will be better off if Iran doesn't acquire nuclear weapons first, because the United States now has nuclear and conventional superiority over Iran, can use that as a course of advantage. If Iran gets nuclear weapons, however, it would transform U.S. Iranian competition into these high stakes games of nuclear chicken. So that's bad. Second, I say that the United States and Iran would find themselves in Cuban Missile Crisis type situations. That's also bad. Third, I say that from my study of nuclear crises from 1945 to the present, that countries with a nuclear advantage over their opponent are more likely to achieve their goals. Past what I found is that of the 52 crisis participants, just over half the time the country with more nuclear weapons got its way. So this suggests that in crises between the United States and Iran, just over half the time the United States would achieve its basic goals, as long as the crisis doesn't end in nuclear war. So if that's reassuring to anyone, I think you're much more relaxed than I am. I take the findings of that article as bad news for Iranian proliferation. So those 52 conflict diads in your article escalate any of them? It's a yes-no question. The answer is no, right? The answer is no, but I think... I mean, I know what you think. You just explain what you think. But there are 52 conflict diads, some 20-odd nuclear crises in the last 60 years. None of them escalated, right? I think it's naive to think that nuclear weapons will never be used again just because they haven't been used in 60 years. And I think the more countries that have nuclear weapons, especially in crisis prone regions like the Middle East, the more likely we are to have a nuclear catastrophe. Okay, so you're willing to... So at the bottom line, you're willing to roll the dice and guarantee a destabilizing outcome for a military strike that may not be necessary, hedging against the possibility of something happening that's never happened before. Right? No. I think that a strike is the consequences of a strike would be less bad than the consequences of dealing with a nuclear armed Iran for years, decades, maybe even longer to come. All right. We've got to move to the next section. So I just have a couple questions for each of you, and then we're going to open it up to the audience. So my first question is for you, Matt. We talked a little bit earlier about the ability of a strike to kind of limit the damage at the outset of retaliation and things like that, an escalation, because the United States would be able to clearly communicate to Iran. I think the phrase, yeah, use clearly to communicate to Iran, we are only interested in striking their nuclear facilities, but not interested in things like regime change. And Colin kind of touched on this a little bit in his opening remarks, but if it's true that one of the reasons why Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be bad is because miscalculation and miscommunication is likely and those types of deterrence failures are likely, why would the United States or how, I guess, would the United States be able to clearly communicate to Iran that we are not interested in taking out their regime so that they would not escalate their response? It's an excellent question. So I don't think that a nuclear armed Iran would be bad because of miscommunication per se. As I laid out, I think there are a lot of things that could go wrong with the nuclear armed Iran, and I think the risk of nuclear work can happen as a result of these nuclear crises as countries are trying to coerce each other, and I don't think that miscommunication is necessarily an important part of that. But I do think that the United States could communicate to Iran that we have limited aims. I mean, in the run up to any kind of conflict like this, the United States would do this very differently than Israel would do it. Israel's done kind of preventive strikes on nuclear facilities like this in the middle of the night. The United States wouldn't do that. We would clearly try to build international support before. There would be a number of presidential statements about our interests. So I think, you know, Iran is going to pay attention to that. So I think that if we're very clear in our public statements that we're only interested in destroying the nuclear facilities, not in a broader conflict, we have various back channels through which we can communicate to Iran. We can use those back channels. And then we can communicate through our targeting. If we go after the key nuclear facilities and the air defenses necessary to get there, but we're not targeting the, you know, government offices, we're not targeting command and control centers, I think Iran would get the message. And, you know, Colin's scenario under which this leads to Iran just saying they have nothing left to lose and lashing out with every thing they have assumes that Iran is going to commit national suicide, essentially, if we strike their key nuclear facilities. I just think that's unrealistic. Their primary goal is to survive. If we bomb their key nuclear facilities, that's clearly bad for them. I think it is the crown jewel of the regime, as Colin said. But again, they still have their military. They still have the regime. I don't see why they would voluntarily pick a fight with the world's biggest superpower after that. But just to be clear, you do think that we would have to initiate some sort of military action to clearly communicate to them, because I mean, you mentioned we could also use public statements, but the United States now says all options are on the table. Obama says I do not bluff. Those things seem like him attempting to clearly communicate a threat. So why is that not sufficient to deter them if that's the case, that they're not suicidal? I think if I under, so what I'm talking about here is communicating what type of force we would use if we decided to use force. Do we have to use force at all to convince Iran that the United States is not interested in regime change? Is it possible that we could do that purely by threatening to do so? I mean, you mentioned, I guess I should re-clarify. So one of the reasons, at least in your article, for why a strike could be limited in the fallout is that the United States would be able to both demonstrate restraint on its own, and it would be able to convince Iran to calibrate its response. And I'm wondering if you, I guess, could just go more in depth about what kinds of things the United States would do to get Iran to calibrate its response, such that Colin mentioned use it or lose it pressures that the Iranian regime would feel, especially if there are already tensions with the United States over other things like the Strait of Hormuz, what sorts of things the United States would have to do to resolve those pressures that it would feel. One of the reasons why we use it or lose it idea was that Iran would shoot off all of its ballistic missiles right away to make sure that we didn't destroy them. I guess that's possible. I think it's unlikely for two reasons. First, as I pointed out, I think Iran isn't going to want to make this a bigger fight than they need to. Again, they don't want the regime to come to an end. They know that picking a big fight with the United States could very well mean the end of the regime. And the second is that they are going to have to save military capabilities for a future conflict. They can't expend all of their military capabilities. In this conflict, they're going to want to save something back for deterrence and for future conflicts. So I think it's unrealistic that they would shoot off all of their ballistic missiles. And they only have a limited number of launchers, so it would actually take them quite a bit of time to go through their inventory. But in terms of your question of communication, we would communicate that again through public statements and through targeting. We would say we're using military force to enforce these United Nations Security Council resolutions for now, which demand that Iran suspend its uranium enrichment work. Iran is ignoring those Security Council resolutions. We're going to use force against the nuclear facilities to enforce those. And that is the end of our objective. And Iran can keep this a limited conflict. But if Iran wants to retaliate and close the Strait of Hormuz, launch major terrorist attacks in the United States, then we can respond with a larger conflict if they want to make it one. But I think we communicate through the targeting and through public messaging. Okay, one last question for you. So there was a little bit of discussion earlier about the distinction between a strike being able to delay Iran obtaining a nuclear capability versus eradicating it entirely. And so you even mentioned that it's possible it could only at best delay Iran's nuclear capability. But how does that, in a scenario in which the United States does strike them and perhaps it does only delay them because it doesn't eliminate that latent nuclear knowledge or even the ability to build new centrifuges, what does the United States have to do in that post-strike sort of preventative plan to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon? So I do think that it's possible that this strike would merely kick the can down the road. I think that there are also a good reason to believe that it could become permanent, however. I think it's possible that Iran would give up in the aftermath of a strike. Colin and others assumed that Iran would double down and rebuild its nuclear facilities quickly. And that's possible. It's also possible that they would give up that we've been working on this expensive nuclear infrastructure for decades. It's now completely destroyed. Are we really going to spend another decade rebuilding only to invite future military attack? Buying time is good in and of itself, I think. If we have to deal with the nuclear armed Iran, I would rather deal with it in 10 years than next year. The strike buys space for something to happen, something else to happen where Iran ends up permanently without nuclear weapons, maybe an indigenous regime change, maybe some other conventional conflict that prevents Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons buys further time for diplomacy. And I think that a strike could also change the bargaining space for diplomacy. So I think there are certain things with the strike that make diplomacy harder, but I think there are also things that could make it easier. I think if I were the supreme leader, I'd be much more willing to trade away a shattered nuclear program than one that was within months giving me a coveted nuclear weapon. So I think there are reasons to believe that a strike could lead to Iran that's permanently without nuclear weapons. If all we do though is kick the can down the road, then I think the way we would deal with it would depend on the circumstances at the time. I think we would want to use that space for diplomacy. I think we would want to use that space to pressure the regime to support opposition movements. I think we would want to use that space to put containment regime in place. Colin argues that the containment regime after a strike would be the same as if Iran had nuclear weapons. And I think that's misleading. Clearly the commitments with the nuclear armed Iran would be much greater. We'd be talking about extending the nuclear umbrella to Saudi, to Gulf states, to Israel, to other countries in the region. We'd be talking about forward deploying U.S. nuclear weapons on the territory of those countries to make the threat to trade riyadh for New York more credible. So this would be a massive military political increase in U.S. military and political commitments in the region. So I think the containment costs are clearly much higher on the side of a nuclear armed Iran than they are in a post-strike environment. Thanks. Colin, I have a couple questions for you as well. So I know you kind of backed away from answering this earlier because it may or may not fall within what you're supposed to defend for the resolution. But just for kind of the sake of discussion you talked about some scenarios under which it might be possible for the United States, or a good idea even for the United States to have to execute a strike. And I was wondering if you could speak to the question of Israeli strikes and how do you think the United States should respond if it becomes the case that an Israeli strike is in fact imminent, if that changes the calculation in kind of any of the scenarios that you outlined. Well, look, Matt and I have done this before. I think the one thing we will definitely agree on is that if anybody is to go after the Iranian program militarily it should be the United States. An Israeli strike is a disastrous proposal because it generates most of the downside risks of a strike with almost none of the benefits. The Israeli military capabilities are a fraction as profound as they are. They are a fraction of U.S. military capabilities. The Israelis would have to travel about 1200 miles to hit, you know, half a dozen or a dozen sites, many of them extraordinarily hardened. Some of them Israeli weapons probably couldn't do much damage to. And they have to do it in a single day, a single strike, and race back before they ran out of fuel to defend Israel against the inevitable rocket attacks from Hamas, which they're dealing with as we speak, Hezbollah, and other groups. The United States would have the ability to do a lengthy campaign and has much more formidable military capabilities. So an Israeli strike is just a bad idea. You know, I think President Obama said during the, when he was a candidate for election that he wasn't against all wars, he was just against dumb wars. In Israeli, preventive war in Iran is a dumb war. I don't know if folks saw Meir DeGon's interview on 60 Minutes the other day, but he made a pretty compelling case in exactly the same dimension, and that guy's no dove on Iran. So in any case, I think Israeli strikes are a very bad idea. Now the question would become, what should the U.S. posture be if the Israelis do strike? I think a lot of it would depend on the nature of Iranian retaliation, frankly. So I mean, I know, look, I know that it frustrates people when you say it depends, but that's because I'm not willing to make a certain advocacy for going to war in the absence of knowing precisely the scenario under which I would make that recommendation. I actually think that's a huge difference between Matt and I. I'm just a lot less confident in the calculus, which is I think a good thing. I think the experience of Iraq where we lost 4,500 servicemen and women and spent a trillion dollars for a questionable gain suggests that we better be damn confident about launching another one of these things before we do it. So it would depend in the context of Israel about what the Iranians did. I think if the Iranians retaliated full bore against the United States and the aftermath of an Israeli strike, then the United States needs to punch them back in the mouth. One of the things that I think actually Matt made reference to this, I think it's just because we've had this conversation back and forth, I think actually Matt's suggestion is a lot closer to the reason why the Israeli strike is a bad idea in the sense that it's a pinprick surgical strike. When I actually think if you're going to do a military campaign against the Iranians, you punch them so hard so they don't get back up. It's the only way probably to compel an outcome. But Matt's not comfortable with advocating that position. So he ends up in this kind of bizarro Goldilocks situation of not hot enough, not cold enough, just wrong. He advocates a strike that's just enough to piss the Iranians off, wound them, and leave them motivated to go for a nuclear bomb. That's the worst outcome and certainly not as the resolution advocates the type of military action that would ensure that Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon. So while an Israeli strike is the worst option, Matt's option is a close second worst. So kind of a follow-up question of that. So clearly you've made your views on surgical strikes clear but I was wondering if you would talk more about, not that you have to defend this, but what kind of scenario would the United States, if force to execute a strike, be most likely to be successful and at least if not halting delaying Iran's nuclear capability? So if I was arguing Matt's case, how would I try to make it better? You mentioned a lot that a full scale invasion would be effective. Matt's been caught in a little bit of a circular firing squad in Washington. He's gotten attacked by folks like me, but he's also got attacked by folks on the right who believe that he doesn't go far enough because he hasn't called for military regime change. Military imposed regime change in Iran wouldn't work and most likely and you'd get into the breaking Humpty Dumpty and being responsible for picking up all the pieces problem. I think if you were going to do military action, what I mean by punch them so hard that they don't get up is you have to hold the regime at risk. In other words, Matt's surgical strike is precisely aimed not at holding the regime at risk so that it doesn't retaliate, but the cost of that is by not holding the regime at risk you can't compel them to abandon their nuclear program. Now I think, by the way, military action is not the right answer. Certainly not the right answer at the moment, but if you're going to do it you shouldn't go half cease. You need to jump into the deep end of the pool. We're going to open up questions to the audience now. We have people walking around with microphones so please wait to ask your question until you get a microphone and when you do state your name and affiliation and please try to keep it to one question. Hi, Barbara Slavin from the Atlantic Council. There's one aspect that neither of you really touched on and I'd like both of you to address this. That is that an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities, however surgical, would kill lots of Iranians, would release materials that are toxic, radioactive, that could kill lots more Iranians. Given the state of the US image in the region now, and I'm thinking particularly of what's going on in Afghanistan, is it really in the United States' interest to attack preemptively another Muslim country? Wouldn't that just unify the entire region where the United States is already not that popular against us and wouldn't that have far worse consequences than whatever peer it gains you might get from hitting Iranian nuclear facilities? Thank you. Well I think the US image is one potential factor to consider when considering military action. I think you're absolutely right that there are many people who are going to respond negatively to this. I do think that there are things that the United States can do and will do though to try to mitigate that to some degree. So as I said before, the United States would do this very differently than Israel would. We wouldn't do a bolt out of the blue strike in the middle of the night. We would work in advance to try to build international support for action. I think we could maybe even try to table the Security Council resolution. The Chinese and the Russians would almost certainly veto it. But I think that we could build a coalition. I think we could certainly get the Brits maybe the French, other NATO allies. And I don't know that we would get public support from Arab countries, but I think that we would get private support. And we've seen that leaders in Saudi Arabia have asked the United States to cut the head off the snake. So they might condemn us in public, but congratulate us behind closed doors. So I agree that that's one potential risk, but I think when we're talking about one of the greatest national security threats to the country that that is perhaps weighing the cost and benefits, one cost that's willing that I would be willing to absorb in order to reduce the security threat to the United States. Barbara's question wasn't what you'd be willing to absorb. It's how much damaged civilians we're willing to inflict. Look, we can't kid ourselves. This is not a small, neat, this isn't a game. Where you have pieces on a board. You can anticipate every counter move and you cleverly move your pieces around to mitigate the consequences. This is going to be confusing, messy, violent, and completely unpredictable. But the one thing we can predict is that people are going to die. And potentially large numbers of people are going to die. Now it depends. I don't, you know, I'm not a nuclear scientist. I couldn't tell you about the fallout or other things. But if you start going after targets like centrifuge production facilities, which are in downtown Tehran, you're going to kill a lot of people. So let's make that clear. If you believe that we should rush into military action you're making a decision to kill a lot of people. Now there may be an argument to do it or not to do it, but we shouldn't pretend that this is some antiseptic exercise. This is real, and they're real people's lives at stake. The consequences for the region, Barbara, I think this is one thing I wish I had more time to talk about. You actually gave me the opportunity. Look, the region is going through, let's just say, an interesting time. Matt is right that behind closed doors, you know, some folks in Abu Dhabi or Riyadh might clap or say nothing if the United States did it. But the Arab Street would not react that way. This would give Islamists and besieged elites who were searching for populist messages to bolster their case in the context of the Arab Spring. Never has the Arab Spring heard more than today. It would give them a lot of ammunition to turn the narrative about the Arab Spring, which is very much about an intra-Arab conversation, into an anti-American one and an anti-Israeli one. And it would inflame the worst impulses of those who would want to do us harm. It's not in our interest. Ironically, we're at a time in the region where Iran's closest ally in the region, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, is wobbling. Hezbollah is defensive. Hamas doesn't know which way to turn. This is the worst time to give Iran a gift. And believe me, what Matt is suggesting gives them a gift, because it allows them to play the victim by saying they got attacked. And through their retaliation against the United States, which Matt admits is inevitable at some level, it allows the Iranians to do something that they really want, which is to rejuvenate their street cred on the Arab Street as the champion of resistance in this part of the world. If you look at the Indian polls in the Middle East, Iran has taken the hugest hit during the Arab Spring three years ago. They were above 60% approval in most Arab countries today. They are not above 20% in any country but Lebanon. They are getting slaughtered on the soft power scores at the moment. You let them play the victim, you let them rejuvenate their resistance credibility, and that is a gift, a gift to this regime. James. James Akin, Carnegie Endowment. I agree with Colin that it would be very, very hard to convince Iran that you are only engaged in limited strikes. But for the sake of argument, let's assume that Colin is wrong and that you really can send out a signal that this strike was limited. You argue that Iran will be deterred from responding, but isn't there another possibility? Which is that the Ayatollah sits there and he thinks, well the US went into Libya with limited aims and deposed Gaddafi. And the US went into Iraq in 1981 with limited aims and ended up deposing Saddam. So because even if this strike was limited, the next strike won't be limited and they're going to come for me, the Ayatollah. And if he thinks down that line, then the logical thing to do is to try to deter the US from coming after the regime. Which presumably you do with a big asymmetric response to convince the US that if they come after the regime, there will be another big asymmetric response. In other words big Iranian retaliation is necessary for them to develop the credibility of their deterrence against regime change. So given that, how are you so confident that the Ayatollah is going to decide, because it was only a limited strike, they're not going to come for me in future and therefore I'm not going to retaliate big style. It's a clever question. I hope you're not advising the supreme leader. I think that's a possibility, but I think again given the stakes involved, given what we think Iran's primary goal is, it's the continued existence of the current theocratic regime. I think that we've seen, despite all the inflammatory rhetoric, that since 1979 they've had a fairly pragmatic foreign policy, that they do what they can to make sure that they continue to exist. So you might be right that they might think that well the United States says this is limited, but it's actually going to be more. But if we tell them very clearly that if they engage in certain forms of retaliation that it will certainly become much more. And his inclination is going in that direction anyway. I think that that would deter him, given that if he thinks that it's likely that we're going to respond in a big way, we tell him if he crosses these lines we will certainly respond in a big way. And given his inherent pragmatism and desire to exist, I think he's going to refrain from crossing those lines. Mike Gerson from the Center for Naval Analysis. So if you look at just your Foreign Affairs articles back to back it seems like the debate is to attack or not to attack. But really it seems like really what's driving this debate and what underpins it is the cost of attack versus the cost of a containment deterrence regime. That seems to be the two options that's the real debate. So I'm just curious if I could sort of ask both of you sort of a counterfactual. Which is to say that in the late, in the mid to late 1940s and even into the 1950s I've sort of been struck by the seriousness with which the United States considered in the run up to a Soviet acquisition of atomic capability a preventive strike. And even in the early 1950s when that capability was extremely rudimentary and that for that matter ours was as well, the serious considerations all the way up to Truman and then to Eisenhower about preventive war. So given sort of what we know now about what that, what that, how that played out in the extended deterrence commitments and everything else we did to deter and contain the Soviet Union at that period of time back then would either of you have advocated for a preventive war, a preventive strike against the Soviet Union? You know I don't know, I wasn't alive then. I think one thing we need to be cautious about though is comparing a nuclear Iran to the Soviet Union. No, I mean it's, you know, I know you're not but you're asking to draw a parallel about conclusions about a preventive strike or not a strike or containment deterrence vis-à-vis Iran as it relates to the Soviet Union. It's just, they're apples and oranges. So I don't know what I would have advised in the 1950s. I do know what I would advise now which is that a strike has a lot of downside risk and as a result we should push the decision about it as far into the future as possible. I do think there are some important differences. You know you mentioned extended deterrence regimes. You know during the Cold War it was difficult to credibly commit to trade, you know, Boston for Berlin. That's the standard point. You know with Iran in the context of extending US nuclear umbrella over countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia it would be a little bit different. I mean in some ways it would be the same. We'd easily be able to convey that countries like Israel and Saudi Arabia are central to vital US national interests. If Iran nuked Saudi Arabia it would be catastrophic to the US economy so the United States has an interest in the security of Saudi Arabia. And raise your hand if you think that if Iran nuked Israel there would be any chance that the United States would not massively retaliate against Iran. So that's a given. But a couple of other things are different. Iran for the foreseeable future will not be able to threaten the US homeland. They're years away from an ICBM capability let alone one that they could put a nuclear weapon on and the United States has very robust national missile defense and increasingly robust theater ballistic missile defense capabilities to shoot those things down which means that Iranians would not be able to hold the US homeland at risk to nearly the degree that the Soviets were. And the United States has overwhelming conventional superiority vis-a-vis Iran which means we have escalatory options below the level of nuclear escalation which wasn't the case with the Soviet Union where we had to in fact default to nuclear escalation because of Soviet conventional capabilities in western Europe. So the reason I went through all of that is to suggest that actually the Cold War model about deterrence and containment is not the wrong model because Iran is harder to deter and contain. It's the wrong model because Iran is not the Soviet Union and in fact they should be easier to deal with. Not easy, but easier to deal with ultimately than the Soviets ever were. Just a quick response on that. So I agree with Colin I think that the Soviet Union might not be the best point of comparison. So I'd agree that on one hand Iran is much less threatening than the Soviet Union was. I completely agree with Colin on that. On the other hand I think there are things about Iran and if you think about the nuclear balance between Iran and Israel around the United States they're actually more frightening than during the Cold War. A lot of the things that we think led to stability between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War like secure second strike capabilities large countries, long distances between the countries that allowed time, ballistic missile flight time that allowed time for communication, hot lines between the two capitals. All those things I think are missing when you think about the Iran nuclear balance. So I think that that is reason to believe that it would be a less stable nuclear balance than the US-Soviet one was. And just one more point, I think a better comparison might be say Pakistan or North Korea and some people say well Pakistan and North Korea got nuclear weapons and it hasn't led to the end of the world yet. Why should we worry about Iran? I think if you think of either of those countries think about Pakistan. So Pakistan's provided uranium enrichment technology to Iran, Libya, North Korea part of the reasons that Iran and North Korea are so far with their uranium enrichment programs are because they got help from Pakistan. There's an academic debate but many argue that Pakistan's been more aggressive, more willing to attack India since it's had nuclear weapons. We've had a number of nuclear scares between India and Pakistan. US officials were worried in each of those crises that could escalate into nuclear war. We're constantly concerned that nuclear weapons in Pakistan could fall in the hands of terrorists, that Pakistan could collapse and we'd have a loose nukes problem. And Pakistan's only had nuclear weapons for a little over 10 years. They tested in 1998. So we still haven't seen the full range of consequences of a nuclear on Pakistan. We could still have a nuclear exchange involving Pakistan in the future. So I think these are all the things that we should be worried about with the nuclear armed Iran. It could be more aggressive, could transfer nuclear material to US adversaries. They could fall. The country could collapse. They've had a history of a revolution that nuclear weapons could fall in the hands of terrorists and we could have a nuclear war. Second couple more questions. In the back. The first point that you just mentioned in that last round, Israel and Saudi is being vital to US interest. Most of our oil does not come from Muslim countries. Saudi Arabia is not necessarily vital. I won't start on the Israel thing. The other thing I want to say is... The price of oil is fungible. For the record, it doesn't matter who we buy our oil from. The price is determined by the total amount of supply. You take the biggest supplier off the market. The price will go up astronomically. So it matters for the US economy whether we buy it from them or not. I just want to make that clear. The other 800 pound elephant or 1,000 pound elephant in the room is... Sorry, can you speak directly into the microphone? It's hard to get it up here. First of all, does Iran have a bomb? Do they? No. Okay. We've been hearing for about, oh gee, back to 16 years ago that they're having a bomb. Sorry, I'm looking at my notes. I was actually at a talk with Stephen Walt. One of you wrote for foreign policy, so you're probably familiar with him. He was actually saying it would be a benefit for Iran having a bomb because we wouldn't be constantly threatening World War III against them if they did. What happened with North Korea back when we went into Iraq? I remember watching that when Colin Paolo was sitting there saying that, oh yeah, North Korea's no problem or anything. Sorry, we're running kind of short on time. Do you have a question? I just really think that it's really beneficial for us to go to war with them. Let's get the chase. I think both of us agree they don't have a bomb now. We disagree about how close they are to getting one. Neither one of us thinks military action is great. Matt thinks it's a little greater than I do. And neither one of us is arguing that Iran getting a nuclear weapon would be a good thing. The debate is about whether the margin of badness and the proximity of badness justifies going to war sooner rather than later. So I hope we made our positions clear on that relative. Yeah, in the front right here. Thank you. I would say that this is a global question, security and peace. And so would you like to bring in our global adversary, China, into the pictures with Dr. Cronick and Dr. Cao speak for both of your solutions with China in the picture. And also with our recent pivoting focus to Asian Pacific. How would that affect our interest, national interest in the Asian Pacific if China is involved with the Iran picture? Thank you. Well, I think we have been trying to work closely with China on our nonproliferation policy with Iran. We've been frustrated with the Chinese. They've been unwilling to come along with us to go as long as far as we would like in terms of their support for sanctions and other things. But we have tried to work with them. And I think in the case of the military option, I think it's very unlikely that China would support the military option. But I also think it's unlikely that they would directly retaliate in any meaningful way against the United States. I think they would probably protest diplomatically. But that would be it. In terms of the pivot Asia I think that many people do see China and East Asia as the future center of geopolitical politics. And the United States should stop spending so much time in the Middle East and pivot toward Asia. But I'm afraid that the Middle East is going to continue to throw up these thorny national security challenges that are going to keep drawing us back. And I actually think, believe it or not, that simply acquiescing to a nuclear armed Iran could actually lead to a greater U.S. military and political commitment in the Middle East over the long run than a strike would. Because I think it would cement the Iranian regime in power. It would mean that we sign formal defense packs with allies and partners in the region. It would mean that we forward deploy troops in the region to make those defense packs credible. And I think that would remain in place as long as Iran exists as a state and has nuclear weapons, which could be decades or even longer. You know, China is a key player on the diplomatic side of this. I think at the end of the day a diplomatic solution that Iran signs up to with the P5 plus one, the permanent five members of the Security Council, of which China is a member plus Germany, would allow the United States over time to reduce its posture in the Middle East and therefore would facilitate a pivot to Asia. Currently the United States has about 1,000 forces in the Gulf, even after the drawdown from Iraq to carrier strike groups. And a lot more folks on Iran's eastern flank in Afghanistan and the Central Asian Republic. So we've got a lot of folks there, the pivot to Asia. I think a lot of it hinges on the Iran scenario. I think Matt's right about that. If you want to pivot to Asia, the best solution is a diplomatic solution that allows us to reduce our forward posture in the Gulf, which is largely oriented around Iran. But if you want to guarantee we can't pivot to Asia and deal with China, then do what Matt says. Because if you do a surgical strike on Iran, we are locked into the Gulf in tens of thousands in perpetuity to prevent Iran from reconstituting its program. For 10 years, sorry, 12 years, the United States sanctioned, inspected, enforced the no-fly zone, and periodically bombed Saddam Hussein. And it still took an invasion and an occupation to get rid of every last remnant of his program. So if you liked that, you'll love this. I think we have time for only one more question in the front row right here. Thank you. My name is Cameron Palavani. My affiliation is humanity, a U.S. citizen and a taxpayer. And my question will first, a few facts that may not be known to most people. Persians are not Arabs. They're Iranian. Number two, the health of the Ayatollahs and that is common knowledge over there. Number three, the only person that's made any rash statements about bombing anything is Ahmadinejad and he's on his way out. So I'm not too sure what's going on here with the war rhetoric. It's been very costly for us as U.S. citizens. It's been costly for human lives there and here for our U.S. citizens that go to war. I have a lot of friends that are in the military and there's post-drama things that go on when you go to war. There is no threat. Our military, the United States military is more powerful than any military in the world. And I don't see anyone coming to attack the U.S. homeland whether they have nukes or not. I mean, the Soviet Union never did it. Yes, I have a question. I have a question. I'm getting to a question. But the facts are this, before we go into another costly war if Iran were to acquire nukes, how does that directly threaten the U.S. homeland? Israel may see it as a threat, but Israel is not the United States and us as United States citizens should worry about our interests domestically about our financial situation. We took a trillion dollar hit recently and why do we need to go around the world worrying about other people's affairs when our affairs here need to be concentrated on? I understand. There's just so many things to this. I'm just trying to figure out why we're in this situation right now. I think it's a mistake to think that the United States is worried about Iran's nuclear program as somehow a favorite to Israel. As the President said very clearly last week, a nuclear armed Iran poses a direct threat to the United States, to the international community, the United States, and the international community has an interest to prevent a nuclear armed Iran. And I laid out, I think before, some of the real threats that a nuclear armed Iran would pose to the United States and to the U.S. interests. But just to directly answer your question, the big one is nuclear war. Secretary Gates said when he was Secretary of Defense that Iran would have ballistic missiles if it got outside help the United States within five years. The United States and Iran are enemies. We've traded threats and counter threats. We fought a tanker war in the late 1980s. I think that the United States and Iran could very well find itself in conflicts and that those conflicts could escalate and possibly result in nuclear war on the U.S. homeland. So these are I think the biggest stakes possible. I actually want to say a few things about the Supreme Leader separate from his health. By the way, I don't think either matter I declared that the Iranians were Arabs. But the Supreme Leader, you know, I don't know him personally. President Akhmet Dinshad has certainly said more inflammatory things than the Supreme Leader, but I think we should keep in mind the Supreme Leader three weeks ago at a Friday sermon called Israel a Cancer that had to be cut out of the Middle East that's not friendly. So I think there's some threats going all around. But the Supreme Leader has also said that his program is for peaceful purposes. I don't know whether I believe him or not. He's also said that it would be a grave sin against Islam to either acquire or use nuclear weapons. I don't know if I believe that he believes it or not. Actually, I don't care. What I care about is that both of those statements provide an opportunity, a window of opportunity for a face-saving way out. That is what I think the Supreme Leader is doing, is saying that if he does have to back down and sign on to a final diplomatic solution, he can convey to his people, well, I only wanted a peaceful program after all. And I always said that acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a grave sin against Islam. So we didn't lose. And to signing up to some diplomatic deal, we didn't lose. So I don't care what he thinks. All I care about is what he says. Some of the stuff he says is abhorrent. Other stuff he says provides a window, I think, to get a deal. And that's what we all need to be focusing on is how do we get a deal? How do you get an interim deal to stop some of the most dangerous activities they're involved in, such as the enrichment to 20 percent levels, which could dramatically reduce their dash time? How can you stop them from installing more centrifuges in Fordo, which is driving the Israeli strike clock? And how can you use confidence-building measures in the near term to build up to a final agreement that gives assurances that they're not going for nuclear weapons while respecting their rights under the NPT? That's what we should focus on. I think the Supreme Leader has given just enough space, plus he said a couple days ago, that he kind of get a backhanded compliment to Obama for saying that there was a window for diplomacy. So whatever. This isn't about who wins or loses. It's about preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. And this debate is not a disagreement about whether an Iranian nuclear weapon is good or bad. I think it would be bad, but less bad than Matt thinks. But we both think it would be bad. We also both think it would be better to prevent than contain. That's not where the disagreement is. The disagreement is, I don't think we should rush into another war. And we certainly shouldn't do it the way Matt suggests, because I think that would make the problem worse. Okay. We're going to do each of them three minutes for closing remarks. Great. Well, the question we were brought here to discuss tonight is should the United States use force against Iran's nuclear facilities to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons? Now, Colin and I both agree that if we could get a diplomatic settlement that that would be ideal. I'm skeptical that we can get such a deal. And I'm afraid that the choice the U.S. President is soon going to have to make is should we strike Iran's nuclear facilities or simply roll over and allow Iran to acquire nuclear weapons? Now, Colin argues that we have time and we should wait. But we've been dealing with this problem since 2003. And we've been standing by as Iran has crossed many red lines over the past 10 years. And we've watched them. I'm afraid that if we continue to stand by Iran is going to continue to cross red lines. And we're going to wake up and find out that Iran has nuclear weapons without having had a serious national debate about whether this is in our interest and how we can prevent it. So instead, I think that we should be proactive and make it very clear to the Iranians that if they enrich above 20%, if they kick out international inspectors, that the United States will use force to prevent them from doing that. And then we place the responsibility to avoid catastrophe on Iran's shoulders. They can back down to avoid conflict or if they continue down their current path, they can invite a conflict that's going to be much worse for them than it is for us. So in sum, I argue that we should set these red lines. If Iran crosses them, conduct a surgical strike, pull back and absorb an inevitable round of retaliation. I'm still not sure what Colin's bottom line is, but I am pretty sure that nothing he said tonight convinced me that if we are faced with that decision that a strike is not the least bad option. Well, you know, there's this old saying in debate that silence means consent. So I want to talk about a few things that Matt that I mentioned that Matt didn't respond to and let you draw some conclusions. Matt says that he's afraid that Iran will continue to make progress, but of course he's admitted that they're not on the brink of having a nuclear weapon. They don't have one now. They're at least a year away from being able to do it from a point of decision. He concedes the point that they're not likely to make that decision for a number of years. So I don't know whether we should do military action or not. I actually, as the negative, don't have to draw a firm conclusion about that. Only he does. But I know one thing for certain now is not the time to do, to use military action. Actually, I don't hear Matt disagreeing with me. I hear a lot of if this, then that, then this, then that. But there are a lot of ifs in the chain, a lot more ifs actually than Matt would admit. The other thing that Matt strangely doesn't respond to is the fact that it's perfectly conceivable that even if diplomatic prevention efforts and sanctions fail, that Iran may pause and stop at a virtual capability. In some ways that's the best of all worlds for them. It allows them to have a minimal deterrent against attack while not bringing the world down on them. If that's the case, then the only way to move them from a virtual capability to a full fledged capability which has all the downside risks that Matt suggests is to do what Matt indicates. Which is to strike them, settle the internal debate about whether they should go all the way to a nuclear bomb and guess what? They will. And we'll spend the next decade trying to prevent them from doing it. Meanwhile, the inspectors won't be there. We won't know what they're doing. And the risks of a nuclear run go up, not down. A military strike at this time is not a way to ensure that they don't get a weapon. It's a way to ensure that they'll go for a weapon. Another thing that Matt doesn't talk about. He admits that they're not likely to use or transfer the weapon. He admits that even if crises become more likely, they're not likely to turn into nuclear crises because unlike India and Pakistan that are right next to each other, Iran and Israel are far away. And the types of crises that would be involved in are inherently peripheral to Iranian interests, which means they wouldn't turn them into existential conflicts that risk the annihilation of the regime that Matt agrees is rational. So the scenarios for a nuclear war are hyped. That doesn't mean that it's inconceivable. It just means the risks are very low. In contrast, we know what happens if you agree with Matt. We launch another war. And the costs of that I think are pretty clear. He also doesn't say anything about the fact that proliferation cascades have actually never happened. And that Iran is not likely to be able to push us out of the Middle East or bully us around. So it's not clear to me if you want to make the argument unconditionally for a military attack, you have to believe the threat is imminent and grave. And I don't think Matt has demonstrated either one of those things. I think it's also clear that the strike that he advocates wouldn't work. Its surgical nature is actually a bad thing, not a good thing. And it would be difficult to control escalation. It would have all sorts of downside destabilizing consequences. So we just need to settle down. We need to take a breath. We're not at the point of decision. We may not be at the point of decision for a number of years. And beating the drums of war, all this loose talk about war is what the president said the other day. It's not a good thing. It's already spooking oil markets. It's already having downside risks. We have an opportunity for diplomacy to play out. And we should let that play out. And if you agree, you should vote negative. Join me in thanking both of our debaters for coming.