 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to this session of our summit on the Middle East. My name is Lasha Janduridze. I'm professor here at the College of Graduate and Continuing Studies. It is my pleasure to introduce to you three distinguished speakers in this panel. Professor Ali Disboni is hails from the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario. He will present his paper about religious extremism and political violence in the Middle East. Professor Diane Zori is from National Defense College of the United Arab Emirates, based in Abu Dhabi. She will speak about Saudi Arabia and Iran in the era of great power competition, scenarios for the future of the Middle East. And our discussion today is Professor Peter Hene, who hails from the University of Vermont. These three participants are very knowledgeable and experienced experts in the region. They have both professional, academic experience, working, dealing with the region. So I'm pleased to have them here talking to us about the region. So the order of presentations will be like Professor Disboni will go first, followed by Professor Zori. And then Professor Hene is going to summarize the points. And after that, we open the floor for questions. So 15 minutes each, and followed by summary comments by Professor Hene. And then the floor will be yours. So Professor Disboni, please. Thank you for the introduction. So as Lasha said, 15 minutes. So I'm going to condense the presentation. The time frame, religious extremism and political violence in Middle East. The starting point is about the significance of the topic. It is a very sensitive controversy. Both in academia and in the public policy arena. Place of Islam, not only in Middle East, which is my topic, but also in the globally, in India, in China, Myanmar, which makes the news, and in the Western world. In terms of Islamophobia, racism, orientalism, on one, neocolonialism on one side, and the labels on the other side, apologetics, or apologists, appeasers, Islamofascism, and all that. So it's a very heated topic. So especially for students, I wanted to kind of situate you. Indigrader scheme of things. Root cause or culture is another thing that comes up in the public commentary. Secretization framework of Islam and Muslims. So depend how you work, how you look at the question of religious extremism. Your secretization policy and your public safety measures will depend on your perspective on the relation between religion and religious extremism and political violence. So it has very important CVE implication and also in terms of peace building. Not to mention that two more take away from this is the terminology Islam, terrorism, extremism, political violence. Actually, political violence is probably the easiest one. The other one are not very easy to grasp and we have a huge definitional problem. What is extremism? What is terrorism and what is Islam? And actually Muslims struggle to have a consensus on what constitutes Islam. Framing the question also is important. How you phrase and structure your question is going to impact the conduct of your thinking and also your output. Okay, let's go a bit faster. I'm going to have a critical review of scholarly literature and the relationship between the two concepts, Islam and political violence. The first is causality thesis. Causality thesis. The second is non-relevance of the religion as an explanatory factor. And the last one is religion as a factor. It's not an explanatory factor but it matters to understand how political violence actors frame and inform their actions. In terms of first thesis, there are so many different phrasing on it, theology, culture, identity, history, but bottom line is that religion is the driver of political violence. We're not Lewis, Samuel Huntington, and I gave a quotation of Lorne Dawson that you see there. As an example, even he's talking about the foreign fighters in the Western world. However, the quotation shows you that even most discursive causality people, they do not believe that Islam is the key cause or the sole cause, but however they put Islam in the causality bracket. The problem with this epistemology is the first one. I'm not going to explain them. We don't have time. Methodology is the second. Ontology, the finitional issue as I explained in the previous slide, what do we mean by those topic and also specificity problem. If Islam is the key driver, why not are Muslims terrorists? So if Islam per nature is an issue, so it must lead to some specific form of action, but it's not happening. Irrelevance thesis is that it's an epiphenomenon. It doesn't matter. Political violence is something else. Probably, so far the presentations we had, most of them. When they touched on political violence falls in this without saying that religion is not relevant, but they mostly focus our colleagues in these two days on other contextual structural issues. Robert Pape, Mia Bloom are two examples of this group. Problem with irrelevance thesis is that they totally brush aside, ignore religion as to understand the narrative of political violence actors. So it is important to see not only in terms of motivation of terrorists or extremists, but also in terms of how their understanding of the religion informs their action. So it matters, but not in terms of causality as we see here. Alternative, Islam matters, but how? Not in terms of cause, but again, for a third time, I'm repeating myself in terms of informing the actions. What I'm searching here for is not explanation, because explanation, as you know, somebody mentioned this morning in the panel that explanation, theorization in social sciences is a distant goal. We must strive for it, but it's a distant goal. Interpretation is a more within the grasp option. The construct of meaning is really one of the key takeaways in my presentation. The text, context, structure, and individual agency. Nick mentioned, Professor Roberts mentioned Michel Foucault. We are aware of what we're doing, but we're not aware what's going to happen after. It's a bit like that, because Michel Foucault is part of, in this family, of constructivism, of meaning. And in this frame of, in this thesis, essentialism does not work. There is no such a thing as core Islam, sui generis, as concept, as practice, as history. So again, I'm not talking that political violence actors instrumentalize religion. That's not my point. My point is that even if they are true believers in the religion, religion is not, you cannot put it on the back of religion A or B as a cause. Is there reconstitution of that reservoir of meaning? I hope I'm clear here. Case in point, al-Qaeda, construct of jihad. I know I'm not being too fair here to al-Qaeda. But anyway, that's a kind of a simplification and generalization of its ideology. Islam equal jihad, jihad equal violent action. Violent action equal terror by every Muslim. And enemy is the far and closer enemy. You heard that category before, a binary perception of the world. ISIS even pushes this further in terms of simplistic generalization concept of caliphate, territorialization, apostate and all that, okay? An absolute violence in a Klaus Witzian term and beyond. It's going to go easier from here. Is it kind of an extra case for that we cannot make Islam as the cause of political violence? One demonstration for this is the civil war between ISIS and al-Qaeda. The civil war between Taliban and ISIS in Afghanistan. That shows you that it is about, even if we assume that there is a sincere belief system, it is about their reconstitution of Islamic reservoir of meaning, themes, slogans, values, history, practice into a context of political action. Second, here we are not talking about political violence. Another example of that political actors in Middle East reconstitute Islam for their variety of purposes. Even sincerely, if we grant that. Sunni and Shia version of political Islam is one demonstration for that varieties of Muslim brotherhood, Indonesia, Turkey, Egypt, maybe Dayan going to take, you know, talk about it a bit more in terms of different nonviolent political Islamist version and they do not agree on the social protest in the region as Said talked about the Dr. Gulkhar is that even a step further beyond political, nonviolent political Islam, which is about the separation of Islam and politics. I'm not assuming that these people are Muslims by faith or practice social protesters or Arab springers, but they are living in a Muslim context and children and Muslim parents and they do not believe in the association of Islam and politics, which is one of the basic understanding of Islam in the scholarly literature, at least part of it. Peacebuilding to finish on the note of peacebuilding and Islam in the Middle East. So if you believe in the Muslim agency, which is a natural thing and as a note for the students, if you're trying to understand what I mean by agency, just remember that you have around you as many Islam as possible in the Western context or in the Muslim world. You have Sufi Islam, different version of mystical Islam, philosophical Islam with different traditions, different schools of Sunni thought, different school of Shia thoughts. So if you're grappling with the concept of agency, just look at what it is there. So Islam is plural by the fact of Muslim agency in understanding the reservoir of scriptures, okay? So I conclude on the point of the liberal peacebuilding based on this assumption, there is a possibility of dialogue. Instead of pushing aside Islamist or Muslim NGOs and all that, there is a possibility of establishing a dialogue between mitigated record of secular peacebuilding in the region, we talked about it this morning, and the religious NGOs. Partnership is possible and dialogue meaning given take between the actors. I give you that the Islamic Muslim actors do not have exactly the same understanding of human rights and universal record, universal human rights is disputed even in the Western context to some extent. However, I see that there is a significant possibility of given take between two sets of actors. And I finish by the sentence that in reality we negotiated, not with non-violent Islamist, we negotiated with violent terrorist organization, we negotiated with Taliban, right? I'm not criticizing it, it's a statement of the fact and sometime reality imposes itself. Negotiation with the Iranian regime after a couple of decades of saying that this is a irrational, a sponsor, a state of terrorism. We sat down and concluded a treaty with that regime. So in reality this kind of stuff happens. I think I am on time. Yeah? Thank you. Hello everyone. It's a pleasure to be here. My name is Dr. Diane Zory and I am an associate professor at the National Defense College of the United Arab Emirates. So I wasn't always there. Before that I was teaching in Florida. And before that I was in the defense industry where I did integrated systems and foreign military sales. Prior to that I was a US Air Force officer. So today I'm going to be talking a little bit about Iran and Saudi Arabia. Okay? But before I get to that, boy oh boy, everywhere I go today I can't get away from this notion that we're moving away from the US-led international system to something that's been called multi-polarity. Okay? But meanwhile the United States has the largest economy by GDP in the world, $23 trillion. We are the security guarantor for so many countries around the world. We have a formal alliance structure that is rival. It doesn't even come close to anyone else's. We have the largest expeditionary military in the world. We have 11 aircraft carriers. We are the reserve currency for most central banks around the world. So why is the notion out there that we're moving to a multi-polar system? And who are these other poles? Well it's been argued that China is obviously going to be one of these poles at some point and perhaps Russia. Okay? So what is this new multi-polar world look like and how do we know that it's actually multi-polar indeed when all of the data suggests otherwise? So I will say this. You are fundamentally inheriting a very complicated world as future diplomats and future military officers. You will inherit a very complicated Middle East and you will have to deal with that situation and you might not know the entire history of it but you will inherit it just like the children on Game of Thrones inherited what their parents did in terms of mistakes. Okay? There's this great song by a guy named Billy Joel and it's called We Didn't Start the Fire. Okay? And I think about that a lot when I think about the Middle East, we didn't start the fire but we're the ones that have to live with the repercussions of what's already been happening. So when you look at Iran and you look at Saudi Arabia, what has been happening and I don't have the time to give you the brief, even the last 70 years, I can't even tell you everything. But I'll give you a snippet like a Billy Joel song. All right? So 1953, there's a coup d'etat in Iran. Okay? Who leads that coup d'etat, the U.S. and the British? We're trying to put back the Shah. 1979, there's a revolution to overthrow that Shah. There's then a hostage crisis. Our people are held hostage for 444 days. Okay? The day that President Reagan took office, those guys come home. Then there's the Iran-Iraq war. Okay? Iran and Iraq go to war. They're at war for 8 years. In between there, there's the Iran-Contra scandal. So the U.S. was in a very complicated way, aiding both sides of that conflict. You have the fall of the Soviet Union and that doesn't take place overnight. It actually takes place over a period of a couple years and during those couple years you can see the decline in Russia's influence or the Soviet's influence and then Russia's influence all over the world, including in the Middle East. Then the 1990 Gulf War where the U.S. comes out looking very good as the leader of the New World Order and the enforcer of sovereignty and the enforcer of Kuwait's sovereignty, the protector of the sovereign nation state and protecting the flow of oil out of the Middle East. Okay? There are sanctions on Iraq and that takes us all the way up to the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. So I'm not going to talk about Iraq so much but it's very important to understand that conflict within the context of the Saudi Arabian-Iran conflict. So look at Saudi Arabia and look at Iran. Okay? Just on this graphic you can tell that they are the biggest players here and what's in between is Iraq. Now Iraq up until 1990 had the fourth largest military in the world. They had 56 divisions on the border with Iran. Okay? Think about a division. Think about the 82nd Airborne Division, the 101st Airborne Division. 56 divisions. Okay? Between them and Iran. So Saddam Hussein obviously saw that as a threat. When I like to think about the fall of Iraq, I like to think of it as removing an I-beam from the Middle East. And we remove that I-beam and worlds collide. And the two worlds that are colliding are the ones that are more Saudi influenced, Sunni Islam and the world of Iran which is Shia Islam. Now I hate to do that. I hate to have a sectarian vision of this because it's more than Sunni Shia. Much more. What is really fundamentally different about Iran is their regime. Okay? So what does this regime look like? Under the Shah they were still Shia but they were very friendly to the United States. We had a great relationship with the Shah. In fact they even had a relationship with Israel. It's the current regime, which is also Shia that is fundamentally different than the regime of the Shah. So what does this regime want? They want to export an Islamic revolution to the entire region. They see themselves as the guardian of the face and they also believe in a curious methodology for implementing governance. And that is called Viliad al-Faqi. It's a top down governance. So the idea is that the state makes people good versus good people make the state good. Okay? So it's very top down, very autocratic, very theocratic. And it's not that everybody there wants it either. A lot of people there are protesting against it. But this is the state. Okay? The strategy after the fall of Saddam Hussein was quite interesting. So Iran was coming at this not from a position of great power. So how did they embed themselves across the region and gain a lot of influence? They did this in a very methodical way. And you can't blame them for this. Iran is under very heavy sanctions. And those sanctions have ebbed and flowed over the past 40 years. Right now they're very tight, but the state has to survive. So how do they survive? Well, they tend to survive with networks that are gonna bring them the most money for the effort that they have to put into it. And unfortunately, that is gonna be black market goods. So weapons, drugs, body parts, people, that's gonna bring you the most money for the amount of effort that you have to put into it. And how do you get those goods out into the international system? You get them out through supply lines. And those supply lines run right north of Iraq into Syria and into Lebanon, where they have a proxy organization called Hezbollah. Okay, they've also worked on crafting supply lines through the Arabian Gulf around the Straits, around Oman, around Yemen, which is not on the map, and then up through the Red Sea. Okay, and they crafted their policy as what I would like to call kind of imperialism 101. It's a dividing conquer strategy. What you do in imperialism, if you want to control people, control a state, control a weak area, you go in. And the last thing you wanna do is empower a majority faction. You purposely look for cleavages in the organization or cleavages in the society, look for minority factions, empower those minority factions, and get them to be dependent on you. So in Iraq, for instance, the minority faction were the Shia. They were able to successfully integrate themselves into the Shia communities, empower Shia militia leaders, and then create lots of dissent even amongst the organizations that they are creating. And purposely divide those groups, empower them to be more powerful but always dependent on them. They've done this all throughout the region. Okay, it's a divide and conquer strategy. So what does that mean in terms of the Saudi-Iran relationship? Okay, well Saudi over the past 20 years or so has grown quite a bit. They've grown their military capacity. They've increased their economic capacity. They're looking to what happens after their oil economy. They're developing resorts. They're becoming more entrenched in the global community. They're giving women more rights. Now these sorts of things don't happen overnight. They take a long time and even if the person at the top really wants this to happen quickly, they still have a huge constituency. So you but you still see this gradual shift towards something that's a little bit more what I would say Western friendly, globally friendly, globalized. And a lot of what they're doing is in direct contention with Iranian goals. Okay, so there's a lot of friction there. And a lot of that friction has played out across the region no more so than in Yemen. Yemen is the hotbed of that friction. Now, there's a lot of sunk cost there for the Saudis. And they don't want to leave that situation with an Iranian victory. Right now they are working very hard to dampen some of the heat in the region. It doesn't mean that they exactly want to have to rapprochement with the Iranians. But I will say this, the future of that relationship can really go one of three ways. Okay, one, there's a major conflict. Okay, two, you have what you have right now which is sort of this, okay, it's a cold war. We're fighting on the fringes. It's not a direct conflict, but I'm sure you've heard it, it's a gray zone conflict. Hey, lots of activity in the gray zone. Or you get to the point where you're at rapprochement. Now, there's been some signaling across the region that they're trending towards rapprochement, which is great. What we saw just a few days ago was an agreement to have embassies back in both countries. And who negotiates this agreement is China. China's foray into Middle Eastern diplomacy is negotiating that conflict, which is quite interesting. And it sends a few signals. And you can read these signals many different ways, okay? What's Saudi Arabia doing? Are they abandoning the US? Are they not aligned with us anymore? I would say no. I would say it's a signal, a strong signal that they're very unhappy with the Biden administration. They're looking for an alternative to the US-driven order. And it is a signal to Israel, okay? I would also say they're hedging. Hedging is a very interesting position. Hedging happened a lot during the Cold War, where you have countries, they don't really want to be on one side or another. So they hedge their bets, so to speak, not to be fully aligned, because they don't know which way it's gonna go. All right, what's the signaling from China? That China is saying, hey, look, we can lead diplomacy. And it's interesting, just 30 years ago, Mihail Gorbachev was really trying to negotiate hopefully that the US would not actually go into Iraq to save Kuwait. He was trying to negotiate this in a big way. He was calling up everybody on the planet. Please don't let the US do this. This is wrong. And China wouldn't even pick up the phone. So China didn't really wanna have anything to do with this. They're here in a big way. China is also signaling that they're willing to fill the power vacuum. But not necessarily militarily, but perhaps economically and now diplomatically. Finally, it could be a signal to the United States. Don't abandon the Middle East yet. Okay, I'll leave it at that. All right, good afternoon, everybody. Thanks for the invitation to come down here. It's nice to engage with other Vermont universities. Also, my brother was an Army officer, ROTC graduate, so I'm happy to support the work you do here. And I'm also happy to talk about these two great papers. Very interesting, slightly different topics. And so I'm gonna go one by one. First, Dr. Disboni, this is a great overview of this debate on Islam, violent extremism and a nice attempt to find a middle ground in this approach. I also appreciated, is in the paper more than the presentation, the various political terms that get thrown out when you try to work on this issue. I've been called many of these things, like imperialist, colonialist, whatever. So if you wanna study this, it's worth reading the paper and seeing what you're in for. And so I just had thoughts on your three different approaches. The first, that sort of Islam causing terrorism, good critique of that. You also talked about scholars like Juergensmeyer who see the problem in religion more generally and actually try to make the case that Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism all have these elements. I wonder if you think those two should be combined. Similar with Gilles Cappell, focusing on Salafism rather than Islam, is that the same as saying Islam is causing it, or are there certain strains we can focus on? The second element, right, the idea that you said the irrelevancy thesis. Here you talked about the idea that it's material factors driving violent extremism, but also people arguing that Islam itself is a force for good. I think both are valid. But in the paper at least, I got a lot of the sense of you engaged more with the Islam as a force for good and why that might not always work. And I like to hear more empirical evidence with the issues behind people like Papenblum. I think there are some issues with them so we could expand that. Finally, the constructivist part, I think that's great. I've been called a constructivist. One of the nicer things I've been called when I work on this issue, so I like that. And maybe we can expand that and engage a little bit more with some of the international relations work. A lot of good work in my area on this with religion as a way to frame your struggle, religion interacting with institutions. Someone like Ron Hasner has done great work on sacred spaces and how religious discourse and both make religion conflict inevitable over these spaces but also allow for dialogue and they might be a useful interlocutor. So overall, a very good attempt to sort of figure out how we can confront violent Islamic extremism without demonizing Islam or Muslims, which is important. Okay, Dr. Zori, that's also a really great paper. Really good overview of the tensions we had in the region between Saudi Arabia and Iran, the history, the scenarios were really interesting to think through and it's a good sort of perspective analysis. What I'd ask for is maybe a little more formality in the theory. This is more in the paper than the presentation but you framed it as a realist argument. Talk about in terms of power being most important but as we know, that's not all there is to realism and others like constructivists also think power matters, right, so realists see material power being primarily important and then certain dynamics flowing from that like balancing dynamics. And I think expanding that in the cases and then the scenarios could give you a little more analytical tools to move forward but one question I had here is if you really think that material power is what's driving it and you seem to and that's okay but if we're really gonna go with the realist route we have to say the religious ideology elements don't matter at all and then we can take Saudi Arabia and Iran remove all of these cultural symbolic elements and we'll see the same exact outcome and that's a valid argument, I don't agree personally but that's a valid argument, people make that but if that's what you think maybe expand that. The other issue with the realist take is that realists, at least academic realists don't think sub-state or non-state actors matter which has always been frustrating for someone like me who studies terrorism. Obviously they matter, you have good examples of Iran's connection to these non-state networks and so how would we reconcile that? Can we expand realism or maybe look elsewhere? But overall it's this great idea in terms of the shifting polarity possibly affecting conflict in the Middle East and I think it's all there just kind of firming up some of the theory is great. So overall two really interesting good papers and I appreciate the chance to comment on them. All right, so now we open the floor for your questions. Please, we have two microphones. Hey, can you hear me okay? Okay, this question is mostly for Dr. Zori talking about the Saudi Iran deal. So as you've talked about kind of the widespread kind of talk of the US pulling out with drawing, losing interest in the Middle East, I'm curious to know your thoughts on if, especially as a professor in the UA, if the US kind of has to be hostile towards China's role in mediating this deal or if Middle East might be a place that the US and China could work together in the future over mediating and diplomatic efforts in the Middle East and maybe your take from a non-US setting about really what the US's role with China could be in the future in this region. Thank you. That is a great question. So the US has a very big problem with China and I think that some of the countries in the Middle East don't appreciate the depth of our issues and a lot of our issues are revolving around China's compliance to norms that we have developed and theft of intellectual property, things like Taiwan, the Uyghur issue. So we fundamentally have a lot of trouble with China and we're colliding in places like the Middle East. I think working with China is quite difficult and we've seen that play out in numerous contexts like 5G network, the UAE has a deal to get the F-35 and that's been put on hold for now mainly due to issues with compliance and use of Chinese technology amongst other things. So I think that we're sort of putting different countries in the Middle East in this position to pick one or the other and because of the complexity of the region I don't think they necessarily want to. So it's forced them into this sort of hedging sort of strategy where they're not really picking one or the other but I think it's difficult for the US to work in that environment and cooperate with China because of the issues that we have in all these other areas. Please. So you said that Saudi Arabia has been a Wahhabi state and continues to be a Wahhabi state. I'm under the view that Saudi Arabia has been cracking down on Wahhabiism ever since the Ikhwan revolt and even now with Muhammad bin Salman's reforms with towards him arresting his family members and his liberal economic reforms currently. Diane, did you talk about Saudi Wahhabi ideology? I didn't mention that, did I? I saw it on your page on the speaker panel. You're right, Saudis do not want to be called Wahhabis. It's a pejorative terminology in Saudi Arabia. But one would say maybe the main problem is not Wahhabism. It goes back further, the Salafism. And to make it more tangible for us is textual approach to Islam. Like you go to the Quran, the Muslim Bible, and you take stuff textually as it is and you apply it to today. Like for example, a bit of some version of Christianity, I'm not gonna name the denominations, is not my field, right? So that textualism is the basic problem. Either you call it Wahhabism, Salafism, Hambalism, I'm gonna stop there, yep, okay. Hello, my question is for all the panelists. I couldn't help think throughout the whole presentation that we focus a lot on theoretical aspects and very much an American perspective about this issue, which makes sense, we're in the United States, but I feel like we lacked a little bit in focusing about the humanitarian side of this issue when you're discussing peace in the Middle East. So my question is, how do we bring the voice of the people that actually live in the region, the people that actually suffer from the consequences of the conflict and US, China, Russian influence there? How do we bring their voices into this conversation? And referring to what you said, Muslim agency, because this is a conversation about how to bring peace to the Middle East, we need to bring their voices out because the issues in the area, so external influences is not just focusing that does not solve the problem entirely. So how would you say we bring those voices up? Say one sentence on it, and then the end. Deliberation and emancipation comes from text, excuse me. You emancipate yourself from text from power and text has a power. So based on the assumption in my paper that if you believe in Muslim agency, it's a bit like Lutheranism and Calvinism in the European sense that they, from the Bible, they created new movement for the liberation of Europe. I think this is important to acknowledge that Muslims can understand legitimately their scriptures and foundational texts in different ways. And I'm not prescribing it, it's happening. However, for a variety of reasons, they did not become the mainstream. And the primary reason in my view is a kind of a Caesar that is state formation in the region and also intervention, external intervention had a part in it. But I think, as Diane said, there is already a problem there to start with. So you cannot put everything on the back of foreign intervention. Yep. I agree completely. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you again for presenting your research and bindings. This question is mainly directed to Mr. Desboni and apologies if I messed up your name at all. However, I found your work to be especially limited and given. We fail, and many people fail to account that language and how we utilize it does have an implication in terms of policy outcomes, how we approach any problems. I wanted to ask, given, as we see in your presentation, some of the prices that we pay in terms of how we approach policy as a result of how we utilize language, where does the ball start in terms of addressing and, I won't say simplifying, but at least reaching a point of understanding where we utilize language in a way that we can more better address issues. Is this a fundamental thing with education? Is this a fundamental thing in terms of youth and culture? Is this the thing where it starts with the media or perhaps the government? And where, in your opinion, would the ball start in terms of addressing this issue? I would frame it as populism within the region or elsewhere. Look at, for example, Brazilian President Bolsonaro. How he, or the left one, is not only right problem, the left two, is the simplification of a complex topic is what sells, right? So that's what people, the branding is important in the electoral politics everywhere. So I think that's part of the problem and politicians kind of lost the leadership quality and they became rather what Plato was afraid of, the follower of the people rather than interacting with people and leading them and also being led by them. You know what I mean? Yes, sir. Yeah, so populism, I see it as a big problem, yeah. Thank you so much, sir. And part of Islamophobia is, come forward please, yeah. Part of the Islamophobia is the policy agenda and part of the anti-Westernism and anti-Americanism is a policy agenda issue too, as Said said this morning, yeah. All right, good afternoon. Dr. Zori, this question is for you. During the course of your presentation, you covered the history of the Shah's regime, how it came to power with the 1953 US-backed coup d'etat and then you jumped to how it was deposed in the 79 revolution, which put in the Islamic Republic we have today. You touched on the repressiveness that the Islamic Republic sees, but you didn't really cover on the Shah regime's repressiveness and corruption, you sort of left that out, it seemed. Like I don't know if you covered that in your paper and you had to cut it out due to your presentation, but would it be unfair to say that the repressiveness of the Islamic Republic is due to the US backing another repressive foreign-backed regime? So let me see if I understand this right. The repressiveness of the Islamic Republic is due to the... The US backing the Shah's repressiveness. Like is it sort of like a radical reaction to that? Maybe, I don't think the two are correlated. I think that, I think the intention in the beginning was to not be repressive, but in order to maintain control, it's become increasingly repressive over time. So I don't think that the two are necessarily correlated, but there's probably scholars out there who would beg to differ. Thank you. All right, one more question, please. Hello, my name is Durshan Fahad. I'm an international student from Afghanistan here at Norwich. First of all, I think I would like to point out the fact that this peace and war summit, the question, the way, it kind of sets up the mood for disappointment. It's like peace in the Middle East, an impossible mission. So that kind of, it's just already, okay, let's not have any hope for that part of the world. So I would like to point that out and my question is for you, ma'am. At some point in your presentation, you said that the United States, possibly, like they did not start some of the issues in that part of the world. I honestly think, in some cases, probably they were insinuators. As someone who has read one of the work of journalism by Wesley Morgan, the hardest place and it's a work of journalism that focuses specifically on the military aspect of how it first functioned in a specific mission in a specific part of Afghanistan and how some of the failures of people who went there and came with different agendas and then there was no follow-up for the second person who came in command. So those are some very much realistic approaches and some of the realistic evidences that we have there in that book mentioned. And as the United States, in the earlier in your presentation, you mentioned that it actually is the reason for worlds and some parts of the world, it's the reason for the security and the reason United States is the superpower. It's not because, only because it has resources but it's also for the number of times that it can influence other regions and other regions prefer or either agree to be influenced by the United States. So it's a bridge on both sides. So do you believe that, even though in the way you ended your presentation, it was like, okay, should we basically stop any kind of relationship with them and you didn't answer it? But the same time, my question would be, should United States first of all reflect on some of the responsibilities that they have now after everything that has happened, specifically in my country right now, the rhetoric for the United States military when they went into Afghanistan, one of the very strong points was women's education and they kept going on about it but right now women in Afghanistan, they don't have the right for going to school, university or work. And United States, as you may know, they completely ignore the matter. So what is your stand on how United States should move forward and actually maybe reflect on some of the responsibilities that they have because as much as United States doesn't want to deal with it, I think in some cases they should. I know it was a lot, but thank you so much for your time. Thank you. So when I say we didn't start the fire, I don't mean the United States didn't start the fire. I meant we as in like this room, we this generation or the next generation. So you inherit the fire that started by your father or your grandfather or people before you that you didn't even know. Just by function of being American, you're gonna inherit something that maybe you don't know a whole lot about but somebody else from another place knows a lot about. So I think as the US moves forward, it's a big world and it's obviously complicated in our country who's making these decisions? How do we set our foreign policy? How do we reflect on what's happened in the past? I would say this room is the future of the United States. Just right here, there's probably people that are gonna be in this sort of decision making capacity in the future where they're reflecting upon the past and how do we move forward responsibly? But you do inherit the mistakes of the people before you and sometimes they don't seem like mistakes at the time. Maybe it takes 20 years to realize that was not a good foreign policy decision. So how do we move forward? I would say things like this, education and talking about the issues and coming forward and having people from places like Afghanistan give us their perspectives so we can make better informed decisions in the future. And on that note, let us conclude this session and please join me in thanking our panel members today for our interesting presentations.