united states because they're aware of their history and that is the two revolutions in the past were boarded after the western defeats. and they fear that would pose a growing threat not only to the base of their power, but would undermine the legit maasty of the revolutionary ideology and weaken their claim to leadership of the muslim world. and i think these are not minor factors in their thinking. tehran's strategy now appears to be to run out the clock, and they've accelerated their -- this diplomatic strategy is meant to stave off effective sanctions while they continue their mans. -- plans. the world's foremost state sponsor of terrorism will soon or eventually have one of the most terrifying weapons, and the basis of this special report is

that we think the united states should do a lot more to prevent this disaster from unfolding and if iran does attain nuclear weapons, to take converted action with allies to contain and deter it. very quickly we realized it's not just the iran program in isolation, but as ilan said once iran opens this door, this pandora's box, there will be a cascade of nuclear proliferation in the middle east, and that's not exactly the most stable region to begin with. so i'll just quickly coover the ten recommendations we came up with in this report, and if you're watching at home it's available on our web site and also in our iran briefing room which is a web site attached to the heritage.org web site. our first recommendation was to adopt a protect and defend strategy aimed at neutralizing iran's nuclear deter rent. we need to strengthen deter

reasons against the threat once it emerges by deploying enhanced missile defenses, especially to our allies in the region, israel and other countries threatened by iran. the u.s. navy also needs to be ready to deploy missile defense cruisers at appropriate places and times in the event of a crisis. and given iran's growing ballistic missile capability, we think it will be very prudent to invest in missile defense. not only for regionally-deployed and local missile defenses, but at home because the u.s. must be seen as providing robust missile defense for itself because a secure america adds to the credibility of our backing for our friends and allies in the region. secondly, we said that the u.s., washington should warn that any threat to use an iranian nuclear

weapon or the actual use would be responded with with devastating force including a possible nuclear missile response. u.s. warnings should come after strengthening the u.s. military posture in the region, and this could lead to expensive and difficult long-term deployments, we mentioned it would be possibility, the possibility of a permanent deployment of two carrier task force in the persian gulf and other military activities. and also it's important that washington develop and refine capabilities for nuclear forensics in order to identify the possible culprit or culprits behind a sudden nuclear blast that maybe a terrorist group would set off at some point. thirdly, we think the u.s. should mobilize an international coalition to contain and deter a nuclear iran because that

threatens many countries, particularly in the persian gulf. and so it's necessary to maintain a strong u.s. naval and air presence there to deter iran, but also to step up intelligence cooperation, military exercises and strategic cooperation with the gulf cooperation council which is an organization of countries in the gulf set up in 1981 to defend, provide collective defense against iran, but also with israel, turkey, and other friends in the region that are threatened by iran. fourthly, i think the report recommends that the u.s. should make clear american withingness -- willingness to block oil exports in the event of a crisis because iranians tend to use the threat of closing the strait of hormuz as one of the weapons in their quiver to try and intimidate the other members of the gulf. we think that the u.s. should not only press for other persian

gulf oil exporters to develop alternative means to export the oil by building pipelines that avoid the strait of hormuz, but also it would be very helpful if they could build up their excess oil capacity to cushion in the event that a crisis comes regarding iran's nuclear program. fifthly, we think the administration should review contingency plans for a possible preventive strike to disarm iran, and this should not be taken off the table. tehran should not think that just because it's acquired a nuclear weapon that it's home free, and by stressing the increased risks following the attainment of a nuclear capability, it may lead an iranian goth -- not this government, but perhaps futcher iranian government to recalculate the costs of going ahead with a nuclear program. sixth, we think the u.s. should

lead a coalition to impose the strongest possible economic sanctions on iran because one of the regime's weaknesses is on the economic frunt. the mullahs have really miscalculated in their economic policies, there's a lot of corruption, mismanagement, they've been hurt by the fall of oil prices from the high of 2007-2008, so sanctions could get more traction. it's doubtful that these sanctions will be able to arrive at at the u.n. security council because russia and china essentially act as iran's lawyers, but they should get as much as they can at the security council but look outside the framework for the most effective sanctions and that's on denying the iranian regime foreign investment, subsidized trade and loans in order to make clear the trade-offs that iran must consider as it goes forward with this nuclear program.

seventh, we thought we should be strengthing the proliferation initiative to prevent iran from acquiring the materials and technologies necessary to sustain their program. unfortunately, they probably have most of what they need already, but psi greatly focused, more focused on iran could avert shipments from other places that still could have an impact on that program. eighth, i think the administration should launch a public diplomacy program to explain to the iranian people the very high cost that the policies of the regime impose on them in terms of economic policies. and up until now the ahmadinejad regime, i think, has had monopoly on explaining the nuclear issue, and many iranians see it as just a question of nuclear power. president obama and before him president bush made it clear that it's not just the

electricity-generating capacity of nuclear power that's the problem, it's the military program, that that civilian program masks. ninth, we should not just narrowly focus on iran, but must continue efforts to discourage other states to acquire nuclear weapons, and that would be to condition the extension of a u.s. nuclear umbrella to new allies as requiring a stronger non-proliferation commitment, especially if it's going to involve the deployment of missile defenses. and then lastly, i thought, well, the panel concluded that it's important not to give up on efforts to dissuade iran from considering its nuclear program even after it requires a nuclear weapon if it can be convinced that it really doesn't do that

much for it in terms of international security, in fact, could bring new threats, could bring new targeting from a whole slew of other countries, not just the u.s. or israel, but many other countries will be targeting sites in iran. that that could eventually lead a future government to step back from the iran, from the nuclear capacity, and we should reinforce the validity of the libyan path. that is that iran should know that it has an option to step back from the brink, and if it incontrovertedly surrenders its nuclear materials and could go to a weapon, that it has the option of being welcomed back into the international family much like libya did. so let me just end it right there. >> great. so we're going to quickly go to the audience and just very simple ground rules, if you'd

just raise your hand and wait for me to recognize you, and if you'd just announce your name and affiliation. so while you're thinking of your questions, we're going to do a quick lightning round. i love the john mclaughlin thing. in 60 seconds or less we're going to jump in a cab, go to the white house, you get a minute with the president. what do you tell him? >> oh, my goodness. crs, we don't make my recommendations, but what i would say is i think iran is in a weak position right now. the internal turmoil has made them, perhaps, more willing to compromise, to religious their legitimacy. the u.s. has a window in which iran is weak, and my view would be to take maximum advantage of that weakness to press for a nuclear deal on very favorable terms to the united states. >> okay. >> well, i have a somewhat different perspective. it seems to me i've looked at iran for a while, not as long as ken has, but for a while, and it

seems the conversation we've been having over the last several years is misleading in the sense that the nuclear program tends to be a red herring when we think about iran. we're concerned over the nuclear program, but if you transpose that onto another country, say luxembourg or what have you, portugal, you don't, simply don't have that kind of concern because the threat of the iranian nuclear program emanates not from the technology, but it 'em mates -- emanates from the regime that will ultimately wield it. we're concerned over the intentions of this regime, its involvement in international terrorism, its continued, continued source of instability for iraq, for afghanistan, and so i think what's happening within iran now is certainly a hopeful sign. it may not be a hopeful sign for very long, but i think it's an opportunity to refocus on the center of gravity in this whole debait. >> so what does the president

do? >> i think right now the most important thing the president can do and he's done so at least to some extent is try to create that empty political space within iran so there is an opportunity for opposition forces to organize, and a part of that has to do with the fact that he has to articulate to the eye rape yang regime -- iranian regime a deal, any other deal is not unequivocally supported by the west. there are things that could derail that deal such as brutality on the part of the regime towards the people, such as, you know, another tee tianan square, this time in tehran. i think it's very important for us not to ignore the human terrain. >> jim? >> i would just say that i think i would tell the president that the goals that he's set for the engagement strategy could only be accomplished in the event of a change of regime because i think this regime is committed to attaining a nuclear weapon which it sees as a way of preserving itself in power because it fears its own people

for good reason. and secondly, if i expect the administration will continue on its engagement strategy regardless, and i would say it's important to set a deadline on that because otherwise iran will just run out the clock and, you know, kind of engage in pseudo negotiations. and thirdly, i think that, you know, president obama's been very mindful of the iranian narrative ant -- about iranian-american relationships, but i think he should keep his eye on the ball of the american narrative and realize that ultimately iran's policies will only change when the regime changes and that, therefore, we should put aside ourselves -- ourselves on the side of the iranian people, and i think he's starting to come around on that but i think was very slow in the beginning. >> right down here. wait for the microphone please. >> csic.

three former centcom commanders have all three suggested that we should learn to live with an iranian bomb much the way we learned to live with a soviet bomb under stalin and a chinese bomb under moo see tongue, and i'm just wondering where you would come out on this. these are three guys that understand the problem, and they say we should learn to live with it obviously in exchange for some geopolitical deal which would include hamas and all sorts of things. >> okay, well, i'll start. i think where you stand depends on where you sit, and i think it's interesting that you sort of identified these generals, very knowledgeable, very worldly generals, but they all come from centcom. i've spent some time working for

centcom, as i'm sure you have, and they tend to look at iran as a management problem. when they look at the middle east, the assumption is that the iranian nuclear program is so robust that it's impossible to derail completely, and there are, you have to manage it. and there's obviously ways to make iran more predictable. the way i see it, iran has a little bit of dual character. so when centcom thinks about what to do with iran, it tends to think about how to make iran more a country and less a cause. if the regime is a country, you can deer the it -- deter it, contain it. i think what's going on within iran suggests that the situation is fairly fluid, it may play out in the way ken suggested, and i think it probably will, but there's obviously a great deal of things that are moving pieces on the street. and so we should be certainly thinking about management, but

we should also be thinking, i think, a little more holistically about the main fault line in the regime which is the fact that half of its population is under the age of 24, and how do we exploit that? >> good morning, gentlemen. with all due respect, i'm from iran. first and foremost, you have to understand the culture of iranian people which is different from other nations. you cannot compare iranian culture with other countries. transportation no similarities. now, my question, my comment is when a regime is deceiving its own people for the past 30 years it has been deceiving its own people, has been brutalizing its own people, has been embezzling the national wealth, what do you expect to do with the west? if the west is really serious to get rid of the nuclear issue and terrorism, international terrorism which is being

supported, funded by the iranian regime, if the administration is really serious to put an end to it, it has to throw its full-fledged support behind the iranian people, and the window of opportunity has been open since june the 12th. and the young people in iran are on the streets. they are completely different. we are different. we love you people as opposed to the arab nations which the governments love the united states and the west, and the people hayes. the eye -- iranian people love the administration, but the government does not. now, i recommend you to go and read ken cut lin's book on page 243 it tells you all, you cannot deal with this nasty criminal regime, none whatsoever. you have to go for regime change. help the iranian people now that are on the streets yearning for

regime change. mousavi is an excuse. i was born, raised or and educated in iran, and i've been living in this country for the past 34 years. >> thank you. >> thank you. >> ken, would you like to respond? >> well, i guess my problem is we're sort of dealing with the iran we want. i mean, there's no secret, i mean, i think everybody in this room, everybody in the u.s. goth wanted ahmadinejad to lose the election. we don't really know what happened, but it seems like it's going to prevail that he won the election. we have to really sort of, i think, deal with the iran that we have. the protesters are very visible, they get a lot of attention, they have a lot of resources, but they are not a majority. they are just not a majority of the iranian population. and i think we have to just sort of deal with it as we haven't. >> [inaudible] >> well, okay.

[laughter] >> we are for regime change. >> thank you. my name is mike. among your recommendations there is one item, refuse to give up on efforts to persuade iran to abandon its nuclear capability. my question is how can you convince iranian government that it is in their own interest in view of the following two facts: a, three countries -- israel, india and pakistan -- continue to possess nuclear weapons, and, b, among the member countries of the axis of evil one country which did not possess nuclear weapons was invading the other country, north korea, is now a nuclear-armed country, and it is not invaded. >> jim? >> i think that's a good point, but i would distinguish iran from those countries, at least

from israel and india, because iran did sign the nuclear proliferation treaty whereas i don't believe they did. but as you mentioned, i think the regime sees a nuclear weapon as a guarantee of survival, and it would only change its cost benefit calculus if it was convinced that continuing on the nuclear path would subject it to an intense economic sanction so intense from the outside world that it would plunge the iranian economy into even more chaos and threaten its power even more quickly. the problem is at the security council sanctions are such a slow-moving process, and they're diluted and delayed by russia and china that they don't really come to bear on iran. and, i mean, short of war i think sanctions would be the only hope of persuading the regime that its hold on power will be even shorter if it continues although the closer

they get to a nuclear weapon, and they could be, you know, as close as a year now, the time is rapidly running out on that. so i'm not optimistic that they are going to be convinced by these pressures. >> [inaudible] >> stuart, reuters. a general question for the panel. the president of iran is sometimes portrayed as somewhat of a us nut case with holocaust denial, with direct threatening of israel, and with general comments that seem off the charts. do we think he's really that, or do we think he's a good poker player with some very good bluffs going on? >> ken, do you want to -- >> well, you know, there's some people who are, you know, maybe treated for psychological problems can be brilliant in games in some ways too. i don't think it's an either/or situation. i do think, however, that he has

attracted the wrath and lack of admiration of a significant portion of the disciples of ayatollah khomeini, and i think that's what this rift is about. those who were followers of khomeini and implemented khomeini's policies from the time he was in exile in france feel that ahmadinejad is just not worthy of that mantle, of that succession to the presidency and that he has seriously isolated iran to the point where it is hurting economically and vulnerable to economic sanctions. and to go back to some previous questions my view is instead of focusing on changing the regime, that maybe the best focus to achieve u.s. objectives would be to redouble our efforts on the sanctions issues which i think were hurting the regime, particularly last july to the point where perhaps they were reconsidering their strategy on the nuclear issue.

>> a question back here. >> sir, you mentioned that 11 million vote would be a lot of fraud, and you said that those people on the streets are not majority of iranian people. what you say to -- >> can't hear you. >> sorry, go ahead. yeah. >> okay. what i'm asking is when we read the chatham report and also when we go back to 2005 first round ahmadinejad has 5 million votes and in the runoff he had 70 million. at that time people were very suspicious about that as well, and now we have 24 million. how do you see this trend? >> again, i'm not there. it is impossible really to speculate on what happened. 2005 you had a much different field. rafsanjani was in the field last

time in 2005. he attracts, he used to be a conservative, then he moved more into the reform camp. he attracts votes from a lot of different places. i think speculating about how the votes should have come out and saying since it came out a certain way it's, therefore, had to be fraud i don't particularly find a convincing method doug. for me to say this was a complete fraud, i would need to hear it from some people who organized the fraud, and i think if there was that fraud, we will hear from them eventually. >> [inaudible] >> yeah. nobody can hear you, though, because you don't have a microphone, so just make a quick comment and we'll get a quick response. >> the 7 million increase despite the fact you mentioned his economic policy was disaster, i mean, how could that happen? >> we're extrapolating that

since certain things happened, the vote should have come out a certain way, and i just don't mind that methodology convincing. some would say that george w. bush might have lost the 2004 election because iraq wasn't going too well, and he won. i just don't think we can say that iranians should have voted the way we think they should have voted. i think we have to look more at hard evidence of the actual voting process itself. >> well, we only have about 5 minutes left, so we're going to go through the lightning round, and i'm going to quickly go through a series of questions that everybody wants the answers to, and i want really quick answers because we're going to end exactly at 11:00. the first is will the iranian government be more or less willing to negotiate in the future? >> no. >> i would say president ahmadinejad has already made it clear in the future his policy will be more harsh, and he's digging in, and really the person who counts is the supreme

leader. his ideas haven't changed at all. >> no, i think that's right. ahmadinejad made the comment even before all the protesters came out that he sees this as a mandate to be what he said, quote, more solid. and i think we all know what that means. >> ken? >> my view he's going to have to compromise to heal the tremendous rifts in the regime itself. >> okay. so u.s. engage m policy, is it going to continue over the next year? yes? >> yes. >> i think it's going to continue, and it's going to fail. [laughter] >> so, all right, will other countries in the region go nuclear if they either assume or iran actually demonstrates nuclear capability? jim, do you want to start? >> yeah. i think i would look at turkey, egypt, and saudi arabia, especially saudi arabia who may have some kind of arrangement with pakistan. >> yeah, without question. i think you're looking at in those countries in particular you're looking at programs that

are gaining speed and gaining steam very rapidly, and i think the strategic calculus is sort of what i laid out. >> ken? >> i'm sorry, what was the question? [laughter] >> will other countries really go nuclear? >> no, i don't think. i think the united states will try to head that off. >> okay. and this is the last question. will israel in the next 12 months attack the nuclear infrastructure in iran? >> no. because? >> because the pentagon will tell them not to. [laughter] >> if i knew the answer, i'd be a very rich man. [laughter] >> yeah, i would just say i think the chances of israel striking at the iranian program are higher than people in washington generally think, and i don't think the israeli government can afford to sit back with a regime that not only denies the holocaust, but is getting together the tools for a new holocaust and sit there. and my final point is there are two commandos at the top, you know, prime minister netanyahu

and barack, and commandos tend to be very bold. >> from the israeli perspective looking at the outcome of the election, do you think that increased -- what does that do, does that make an attack more or less likely? >> yeah, that's a tough question. i would say -- >> that's why i asked. [laughter] >> i would say probably more likely because it's going to become more clear faster that the diplomacy isn't going forward. >> right. so most importantly, thank you so much for coming and participating in this event. thank you for coming to heritage, and join me in thanking our panelists for a really great presentation. [applause] [inaudible conversations] ..