many cases of iran, the iranian media is not permitted to say a word about what's going on in syria. they're not only not trumpeting it but they don't want you to know about it, and they really don't want to think about it because this is in a way and i don't think we have to tell this crowd why that's important. syria and iran have been allied for a period of time after the iranian revolution and syria is the channel by which iran maintains contact with hezbollah and lebanon as well as the group inside syria itself. and the various -- the various groups like islamic jihad and others who that -- that's where they go to meet is in damascus.

if damascus, no matter what happens, if this changes away from a sort of about what happens now simply because they haven't made any plan be in terms of how they do their business with regard to israel or the islamic jihad or hezbollah or hamas or anything that is basically left of syria and that's got to be a huge

concern. so in that sense, i think that iran hasn't been the winner ini this process and that is my .6 is that iran really despite its claim has been the big loser in the arab strength again, if you look at the signs, iran didn't play a role in any of these. nobody was waving signs saying we want to be like iran. we want to have mahmoud ahmadinejad as our leader. that we like their economic system. that we think it's the way to run a government, really, no sign of it. and, you know, iran can stand up and make all the statements that it likes about the fact that these are all modeled after the iranian revolution, but there was no sign of it in actuality. and iran was not a model for any of them. moreover, these uprisings really provided a reverse model for iran, and i think have actually

inspired the green movement in iran which was certainly declining more rapidly and has given them new heart. that doesn't mean they're suddenly going to kick out the ayatollahs and take over, but i think they've seen that they shouldn't give up too easily because, in fact, things can happen that they didn't dream about and i think that's important and also iran right now is probably more divided than i have ever seen it since the revolution. fighting is going on internally. this most recent situation where the mahmoud ahmadinejad, the president basically fired the minister of intelligence and then the supreme leader says, no, no he has to stay in his job and he couldn't make up his mind and he finally went back and it turned out if you look carefully

at what was being said, mahmoud ahmadinejad wasn't talking about the ministry of intelligence. he was talking about the intelligence organization. he was actually getting ready to start his own intelligence organization under the presidency rather than having it being dominated by the supreme leader and the revolutionary guards. that rivalry pretty much out in the open is pretty new. we have not seen a lot of that and we're seeing more and more of it all the time. i have really serious problem with mahmoud ahmadinejad. i really, you know, publicly announced -- you know, he comes and gives this dog and pony show every year at the u.n. and a bunch of academics like me get invited to go and have dinner with him and sit around and talk. and last year i said, enough. i've been to three or four of

these and the performance has been pretty bad and as much as i appreciate the good iranian food, i really was not -- i was not going to go back the next time. and needless to say, i haven't had an invitation since that time. and a lot of this had to do with the crackdown after 2009 and the election and the way he behaved and so forth. but that being said, the guy is fascinating in his own way. the kind of politics he's playing of getting ready of the subsidies in iran -- that was a really gutsy move. and nobody in the past -- anybody else who tried it got their hands burned very, very quickly. and thus far he has succeeded where everybody else failed. he tried to start his own foreign ministry. he got slapped down and he did it on the side and he's got his own advisors. he's creating a separate government. and -- or trying to create a

separate government. and the guy just won't quit. he just keeps at it all the time. and his good buddy mashied he's obviously grooming for something and i'm not sure what it is, is playing a bigger role. and these guys are -- they're not intimidated easily. and they won't back down. and so it's fascinating to watch. so iran has this fractured environment in which things are going on, which again i wouldn't have predicted either. so i think in the next few years, it's very possible that we'll see some really significant political changes, but i have no idea what those are going to be. but it's hard to imagine this system with a lousy economy and all of these fractures that run all the way through it will continue to exist just as it is in this continuing state. we'll have to wait and see. the revolts in the rest of the

middle east have not made it easier for them to do what they were doing before. item 5 is egypt. and again, i have no qualms, in fact, i agree with bruce and his analysis. the key thing to me is egypt had been in the past a regional leader. it was an agenda-setter. it was the country that actually was responsible for determining the direction and the speed of politics in the region. and in the last -- at least the last decade and a half, that just hasn't been true. i mean, mubarak was sort of a walking corpse and he was really only interested in maintaining his own power. he wasn't doing anything imaginative. egypt just didn't exist in the foreign policy realm. i suspect that they're going to exist now. i'm not sure what they are going

to be saying but it's probably -- well, it's not going to be the same thing that we've taken for granted. the u.s. and israel in particular have taken for granted over the years. any egyptian government going to take the kind of pressure and opposition that it takes to maintain that wall on the southern end of gaza to prevent people from coming in. is the egyptian government really ready to do that, to cooperate with israel on, to keep gaza. without talking about, you know, giving up egypt's -- the -- you know, the things that egypt agreed to do, its commitments to the peace process -- even without -- even if they accept those completely, and i think they're very likely to accept those and continue those, there are going to be certain policies that you just won't be able to take for granted now and i think

israel and the united states has been taking israel for granted for a very long time and we're not going to have them to take for granted. if, in fact, egypt does emerge again and begins playing a major role in the middle east, we're going to have that old triangle of the three ancient states, egypt, turkey and iran sort of defining the outlines of the middle east, and that's a fascinating thing. and that doesn't mean that they'll all get along with each other or that they will form a phalanx or axis but i really do think it's possible that those three countries will be, in fact, the agenda-setters for the future and then there is the wildcard of iraq as i mentioned earlier because of its, you know, potential growth in power but that will be slower in coming along. my fourth point relates to saudi arabia. in a way the saudis have adopted in the course of this series of

events an entirely new policy, at least for them, as a sort of serial interventionist. they are now suddenly intervening everywhere. they intervened in yemen and now they've sent troops over to bahrain and they may go back into yemen again. and they're being very much -- their elbows are much sharper than they used to be and we're not accustomed to see the saudis behave that way and they have taken the gulf cooperation council into a kind of monarchial protection shoat it reminds me very much of the brezhnev doctrine for those of you who are old enough to remember. basically any country -- any country that adopted socialism was not prepared to go backwards. once you got there, you couldn't return to a different shape or form. in a way, the dcc is doing the same thing. or saudi arabia is trying to

enforce the same thing that any monarch -- any sunni monarch that exists in the gulf is not permitted to revert to any other form. and as a result, saudi arabia, i think, is trying to define the gulf as a safe place for monarchs and despots to some degree. and it's interesting to see saudi arabia playing that game openly. and i'll get to the point of why i think that's going on. but my third point and i'm supposedly increasing in the importance of these as they go along but anybody could argue about any of these. united states, today the united states -- you know, when i was a young naval officer, which i was once upon a time, my first real tour was in the persian gulf. and in bahrain. and at the time that i was there, the u.s. military had two

destroyers that occasionally came in and out of the region. and we had a flagship that couldn't fight its way out of a paper bag with a -- with an admiral who rode it around and we made port stop to remind people that there was a united states of america and don't forget that we actually exist. that's changed a bit. and today we have the largest military footprint of any country in the region. we are dominant in their economy and their diplomacy and everything that's going on. and we have a string, if nothing else, just look at the string of bases. we have, i think, 30 or more bases up and down the gulf starting in iraq and running down. some of them really enormous. i don't know how many of you have been to alludade but this is right outside of doha and nobody wants to talk about it and they try to keep it quiet

but my god it's the biggest air base i've ever seen. it's really miles and miles of airplanes parked and actually fighting two wars from there. my question is, on things to watch, we have very carefully -- nobody has asked how much that's costing us. and what's it buying for us? and that's -- that's been a subject that has been taboo sort of in washington. you just don't ask that question. i think that's not going to be taboo in the near future as the two wars wind down and i think they will one way or the other, iraq and afghanistan, we're going to have to ask what -- do we really need all of those facilities that we have now? in the indefinite future and are we prepared to pay for them and maintain and also the political costs that goes with it. i think for any of us who are

thinking somewhat longer term, it is not a good idea to start with the assumption that the u.s. presence never changes. i think we're likely to see some changes and i think those changes are likely to be headed down rather than up. how much security do you actually need to make sure that these oil-rich monarchs keep selling their oil? not very much actually. i remember the iran/iraq war when there was actually a tanker war going on. people were shooting at the tankers going through. what happened? we had a glut of oil. the price of oil was low. the insurance rates went up and it didn't make a bit of difference and people just came and kept taking the oil. well, it doesn't look so bad in retrospect and it does mean that that market is pretty robust. it is not going to just fade and go away because somebody, you know, sneezes. so i think that this is

something that people are going to start thinking about. my number two point and one that i will not talk about is israel-palestine. i think it's going through a transformation and i already made the point that i think that israel and the u.s. are no longer going to be able to pay -- just make certain assumptions or take certain things for granted. i think we don't realize how many things we've taken for granted from a political point of view in that part of the world and we've just assumed that will just go on forever. and it's not going to go on forever and we don't know necessarily where it's going to go but our diplomacy and our ability to think about this is going to be challenged in the very near future starting now and going on for really the indefinite future. this is not something that will be over in the next six months. the changes that are going on are going to be with us for a very long time and at the end of that, at the end of it in the

sense of a short period or a long period, the assumptions are going to be very different than they used to be in the past. my final point, number one, is that the sectarian card is being played. .. making a statement about what they're willing to accept. basically the saudis have indicated quite clearly that ifa rou just scratch any shia ac little bit to find an on iranian sitting there underneath andran waiting. there it is.so so basically shia means iran,

and so anything that is shia is unacceptable.ow,t muchs not really much evidence that the iranians had much to do with the business, let alone any of the other things that have gone on in the world. but but if we are -- if we decided to look at all of these events yncertainl and certainly the event in thee gulf through purely sectarian lines, sectarian lens, we're going to come out in a different place. and it's not so much that our intelligence leads us to say that's when it came from, but let's face it. if we are all accusing iran and doing all these terrible things, they may decide if they're being accused of it anyway they might as well go ahead and do it. i think at the possibly of a self-fulfilling prophecy here is that when we might not want to see. also, since it is so useful to have a universal enemy, you organize your foreign policy and

security policy around one enemy, iran makes really this, it's terrific for the. so the sectarian card plays out that way into the sense that we can explain everything by what iran does, and if we are just tough on iran will take care of all of our other problems, that's wrong. but it's a very seductive idea because it is simple, straightforward, and has a lot of political support in this country and elsewhere and with some of our friends and allies. i think i've got other things i get a, particularly on the sectarian side because i think this really is one of the big problems that we do have to face, but i think i've used up my time so i'll stop there and see if anything comes up in the discussion period. [applause] >> actually, i think we could listen to you for a long time and be quite happy with it.

it's fascinating. i want to thank our two panels. i want to open it up for questions. there's enough food for thought for a year, or two in these two presentations. i'd like to ask the first question of both panelists, and that is something in the spirit i think of gary six-point that things just don't stay the same your assumptions change. and one of the things that we've kind of grown to respect, to understand i guess is china and their activity in the middle east. but could both of you say a word about how you see china moving as it gets more muscular in terms of its military and it continues to need the resources of the region, and it will need even more, and that if you talked to any egyptians they're concerned about agricultural projects in sudan. they're concerned about this, concerned about that.

but i suppose just in the sake of order, either of you can go first, but bruce, you spoke first, can you address it? >> i'm afraid i'm not a china expert. what i know about china is mostly about ordering on the menu. [laughter] what i would say is simply this, the counterrevolutionaries whom kerry has i think correctly identified as the saudis have already made it clear that they are looking towards china. the prince, the famous saudi ambassador to the u.s. literally seems to fallen off the face of the globe for much of the last two or three years, reappeared last month going to beijing and to islamabad looking for support. in beijing he wasn't offering

sweetheart financial deals and investment deals in the kingdom. and looking for chinese political support for the brezhnev doctrine as transfixed so nightly put it, that saudi arabia intends to impose on the gulf. and pakistan he was looking basically for mercenaries to be used to suppress revolution in the arabian peninsula. and i think he was able to find that those would be available for the right price. plus 10% off the top. for the president of pakistan. [inaudible] >> so if prince bandar's travels are any indication that the chinese will be a player, they were probably be a player on the side of the counterrevolutionaries. but i think the chinese also have the same fundamental policy

dilemma that the united states has, and that is we want to play both sides of the revolution in the middle east and in the arab world. we want to be on the side of history when it succeeds in egypt, because egypt is very important. but we also need to be on the side of the counterrevolution because, after all, we do want to fill up our tanks and go home after this event today, and we know we need the saudis. this means american foreign policy, and i would suggest chinese foreign policy and european foreign policy, has to play an inconsistent game. many would say american foreign policy is good in playing an inconsistent game, but that's usually unintentionally. [laughter] it's a lot harder to do it intentionally, and i think for the problem the obama administration has right now, i'm sympathetic to this problem come is it knows it has to play both sides of the game here.

and it knows that's a very difficult policy to articulate, because it looks like your inconsistent and it looks like you are not putting your values ahead of your interests. but that's precisely what we, and i suspect every other player, will have to do. >> also not a china expert. let me make one quick comparison. i mentioned what the u.s. footprint looked like in the gulf, back as late as the mid '70s. i guess not much. we really had almost nothing there. during that period of time we were free riding on the british. they were in charge. they were doing the politics. they were doing the security work, and we were riding along on the back and we were quite comfortable with it. when i was on that flag ship sailing around the persian gulf, we came into our home port in bahrain and tied up to a doctor

owned by the british. we were there guests during the time we were there. i would argue -- and we really had no desire -- we had a really good deal, and we had no great desire to go in and do all of this ourselves. that was forced on us. the iranian revolution in particular made us do that but we did everything we could. after the revolution and we lost, you know, the shah of the persian gulf, we looked around for ways to solve that problem and came up with twin pillar policy which is basically to let iran and saudi arabia to the placing for us so we didn't have to go do it are so. we did everything we could to avoid getting involved in that process here but in the end we couldn't do it. at some point it came along and they wanted us to come income and we did with a vengeance. so this is all fairly new.

i would say that the chinese are in very much the same situation right now, that they are free riders. they enjoy the fact that we provide security for their lines of commute nation. what's not to like about that? and do they want to come in and compete with his head for head in the persian gulf? i find it very hard to believe that they are -- even if given the opportunity, they would want to do that. so basically circumstances may force him into those situations, but i don't think they are out looking for blood and will have to worry about them come in and taking our jobs away from us. >> open up for questions. [inaudible] much of the oil that you're speaking about in iraq is in the north, particularly in the near term. and i don't see the kurds who are actually the ones at the

moment controlling how it's being accessed, have any intention of sharing it with a full government in iraq, not to mention what else is happening in turkey and iran. so that's at least a candidate. i think it's a good candidate actually. >> and has things to watch, iraq all into one bag, but obviously that's probably not fair to do that. there's more to it than that. let me just say a word about how iraq and iran got to the point that they are in right now. some of you will remember 9/11, and what happened afterwards. the united states went directly into afghanistan and scattered the taliban, removing iran's worst enemy to the east. and then before that was over we turned around and marched up the valley to baghdad and got rid of

iran's worst enemy to the less, saddam hussein. they we presided over the installation of a shia government which had not, there have not been any such thing literally for centuries in baghdad. and then we discovered that iran was more powerful than they were before. and this was a gift from us, and i that iranians say we really appreciate, we're not quite sure why you did this, but anyway, we are glad. we do appreciate what you did for us. and believe me, there is a part of the middle east, and particularly in the gulf, and one of our problems right now with the saudis is that, well, i want to ask a very senior american official, he was ranting about how iran was up to all these terrible things and how their power was going and they were in, you know, inserting themselves elsewhere. and i said fine, i agree with you but i said, didn't we have

something to do with that? that created a set of circumstances. and he stopped for a second and said well, we didn't mean to. [laughter] >> yeah, right. and that's very likely true. but the saudis don't believe it. they do not think that this was just a fit of absentmindedness on our part. they have always suspected that we're going to go back and do a deal with iran the way we did with the shah. and they're very suspicious about that whole process. so we have created this set of circumstances, and that, of course, is what complicates if you talk about the goodies situation, that complicates things very much because you've got another player that is involved in the process. and i personally, we were on this wonderful trip a few years, a year and half ago i guess, two years ago, when we had a chance to talk to the iraqi ayatollahs and discovered that they were

not to be enthusiastic about iran. and these were shia leaders, religious leaders and their who really didn't want anything to do with that form of government, or anything like it. which left me feeling that the iranians will exercise some influence in iraq, but it's not going to be a calling and they are not going to take it over. and particularly if we are right about the fact that iraq begins to develop much larger oil resources than, say, iran has. i think iran has got its work cut out for to keep up with that. they will find it difficult to deal with iraq during that period. they would have something to say in terms of, or maybe even make the situation worse because their relations with the kurds are good. it's a political conundrum, but i agree, that's an interesting point. >> next down the aisle.

>> quick question regarding the next few years. if syria, egypt and other countries in the middle east do begin to transition to stable political sort of democracies, what are the implications for saudi arabia, in terms of will it be vulnerable to the long-term political effects of the arab spring? and then what are the implications of u.s. foreign policy moving forward over the next five to 10 years? >> well, we're going to have a problem. first of all, your original assumption or a surgeon that -- assertion that he's turned into democracy on the way may or may not be the case. in fact, we know that things could go very wrong and that things can happen that you

didn't anticipate. so, you know, a friend of mine said the other day, you know, be careful that the ever spring doesn't turn into an airport or. i think that's something worth really keeping in mind. but if, in fact, democracy is the new guide word in the arab world as it has been accepted not because we impose it on them but because they come to the idea themselves in the sense of finding more political space, more openness. indeed, i think if you look at the we saudi arabia is behaving right now, a lot of it is just sheer peak. they are really angry that their old buddy, mubarak, is gone. we didn't go in and rescue him. it isn't quite clear how we would have rescued him, but they think we should at least pay the higher price along the way before he collapsed. and you've got the situation in bahrain and the situation in

syria, that they have certain relations there. so they have a whole set, as does everybody else, a whole set of new political circumstances to have to contend with. and i don't think they know what they're going to do, and i don't think we know what we are going to do. this is -- it's very difficult. that's what i focused on sort of long-term things, things we really should look at, to think about them after the end of the day when you have gone through this list, what do you aim at? what is your objective at the end of -- what would you like the movies to look like 15 years from now? and then said that as a kind of model or target and then organize your diplomacy and your military and other things to try to facilitate coming to that kind of a conclusion. if anybody has that target defined, even in the own it,

please let me know. i really am interested in this, and i think that this is the kind of thing that we need to think about and it's a kind of think the saudis -- the saudis need to think about but i don't think that any answers. basically they are behaving, they are saying hold back the tide, turn it around, make a go the other way. and in the short term with the kind of money that they have got and the kind of support that they will have from various places, they can probably succeed. but there is going to be a panel i think on saudi this afternoon, which i'm sure can't answer all of these questions better than the two of us up here. >> yes, the lady right here. >> hello, mr. sick. i have a question about the list over there. why do you omit turkey from the list? or do you think it cannot have, like, the impact the regional

impact over middle east? are a country, like what you think about turkey's power? >> i guess it's probably because i'm not a turkey specialist, and i know a little bit about the gulf and although less about the rest of the arab middle east. i know relatively little about turkey. and i see turkey as an outside player, although i did point out that try and go where you have the egypt, turkey, iran could assert itself as a very important factor in the interplay between these three. but it's an extremely good point. and i was personally really disappointed when the obama administration rejected the intermediary help that turkey was offering to us on the whole nuclear thing. i really think that was an error on our part, and it's one that

we'll end up paying for. i do think that turkey can play a role, and why don't you go ahead? >> i agree with all the. i would just add one point. i suspect that when we look back five years from now and try to figure out why this happened in 2011, in addition to the factors of demography and the mukhabarat state, maybe the example of turkey. turkey returned to the middle east in 2009, 2010. most dramatically with the flotilla. and i think that that was a wakeup call for many in the arab world that you could have democracy with islamists in a government, and you could play a role on the world stage, and you could have a thriving, booming economy and islamist country. and i can't prove this, but i

have a suspicion that there was a bit of turkey in the going on in much of the arab world. there is pretty good polling that shows that turkey's leadership was far more popular in the arab world in the last year than any arab leader. and i think that says something about the impact, the turkish example, may have had. we will know better when the dust is settled. that's my suspicion. >> about turkey's leadership, like the indy going on in the middle east, i was in syria in 2010, and everybody was talking about the turkish prime minister, the syrian people and how they love the turkish prime mister. i live in iraq. people in turkish side were talking about our prime minister and the whole construction, 70%

of the construction is going on by the turkish firms. and right now, as far as i know there's disagreement that turkey had initiated between iran, iraq, syria and turkey, that's like totally an opposite way to the agreement. and the new forum wants to be graded with jordan, syria, turkey and iraq again. i think its impact in the middle east, it's impact that wants to have in the middle east should be something to be observed. thank you. >> i think actually you've given me another contender for my point that is missing out of my list. >> more questions? yes.

>> i want to offer a counter narrative and asked for comment on that. sorry. okay. i just want to offer a counter decade and ask for your response on the. both on syria and egypt your many very fine of service of the syrian scene has said that while there are certain sizable protest, and you may be right, we may have reached a tipping point there, there's a sizable portion of the syrian population that while they may hate the regime and see them for the thugs that they are, they feel that the alternative would be chaos and the kind of sectarian and ethnic breakdown that iraq experience, and that is worse than anything they are experiencing under the present regime. this will be a stabilizing factor pushing back against, going over the tipping point. i'm wondering if you'd comment on that. and also, many people feel the situation in egypt is not going well at all. you had said that they seem to

be dismantled the security state, but the military is still very much in control. the process of this so-called transition is lacking tremendously lacking in transparency. security bodies are being dismantled, but didn't seem to be put together under a different name. many people were unhappy that the elections were not postponed to give other parties longer time. there's a sense this thing is not going well at all in egypt, and i'm wondering if you can respond to those sentiments. and then quick question. many people -- [laughter] >> sorry. prospect for tunisia which many think is probably the best, the best hope for process. >> i will take a stab. you know, in the middle east you can almost always see whether the glass is half full or half and he did in it's easy to argue the case is half empty.

i really think that's a lack in perspective. that is looking to close day today. i think if you step back just a little bit and look at the six-month perspective, this is remarkably fast, remarkably nonviolent, remarkably orderly process. as i said, it's a military coup and a revolutionary simultaneously. and that helps to explain part of the herky-jerky nature of this. my take on field marshall tantawi as the military, they don't want to run egypt. they have accepted that there is profound change. they want to protect the equities of the egyptian officer corps, which is understandable, as long as they feel those equities are reasonably protected i think they are prepared to let the process of democratization go forward. now, clearly dismantling the mukhabarat state is not just a matter of opening the prisons.

it's a matter of changing the culture of how the security services work, and that is an enormous challenge. they may not succeed, but they have at least taken it on. on syria you are probably right. there is a huge fear of chaos. i thought i made it clear that i share that fear of chaos. the syrian state is very brittle. he impose order on it in the most ruthless draconian way, and people are happy for the peace that he brought. but i don't think it is a sustainable system. and once the martyrs began to arrive, and they are, it will be harder and harder to turn back the clock to where we were in january. the problem the regime faces now

is that there is no way to have political compromise, because once you begin to interject accountability into the system, then there has to be accountability. and the regime is accountable for mass murder, not once but several times. in egypt you could make the case that hosni mubarak was a relatively light handed dictator. i wouldn't make it to very many egyptians right now. they would get me off the stage. but in comparison, this was a fairly soft mukhabarat state. it's all comparisons. my guess, and it is just a guess, as we passed the tipping point in syria, but we will see. it may be kicked down the road six months, but i think we are past the point of no return for

arab revolution reaching to damascus. >> i will just say one word, and that is i think it's not a dichotomous choice. it's not between liberal democracy on one hand and mukhabarat state on the other. if anything, it seems to me that these revolts, uprisings, are creating new political space. and in many cases that space has not been explored for the last 40 years. and we don't really know what they will do with that, but there will be new players, people that were not accustomed to seeing. for instance, and how we may be there for a while. but new people are going to emerge if they are given space and grooms to do that. and that is, that's unpredictable. and it could go a variety of

giveaways. you could go right back to another dictatorship. that's happened before. or you could not. or you could find something in between weather is more accountability. and i think that's what they're playing with. to me, although it's very, very competent and difficult, and we are not always equipped to deal with it. back to the extent that we can have a role in this process, that should be our role, to try to moderate that process so that the amount of political space is left open as much as possible, to let things take their course, not to close it down. >> i take it we're going to leave tunisia for this afternoon, and i believe we have now come to the end of this panel. i want to thank the audience, thank the speakers. it was great. thank you very much.

this is an hour and a half. >> okay. good afternoon everyone and welcome back. i'm glad to see we didn't lose too many people after lunch. it's been a great three sessions in the morning. two sessions, three sessions? two sessions. and glad to be part of the third one. i would like to thank the plan howard and the foundation for inviting me to be here today. it's a pleasure because i think i have a great panel and also a very important topic as we all look at what is happening in egypt, tunisia, syria and libya and other places. - one of the key questions on all of our minds are what about the iran issue and is of people in the region what will the new power players be, will be -- we heard earlier maybe it was bruce or gary who said is of iran, egypt and iraq, will they be the

three big power players? xu today's topic is iran as we look at the gcc and we look at iran and saudi arabia and also i hope they will touch on the issue of the sectarian divide because we can't really think about the region specifically in the gcc as we think of iran without also paying some attention to the sunni shia defied. so with that, i will ask him who i have to think for being here he took a flight from san diego last night sittings for taking the effort extra effort. >> am i supposed to go out there? >> absolutely. wherever you want to. >> especially having three hours of sleep on the plane. >> okay. thanks very much for every one that is here to listen to our panel. i'm based in the department of literature's i want to start

with this story, and the story goes something like this. a few months ago, i am listening to the iranian satellite tv based in los angeles and we happen to have one in our house, and this guy comes on tv and in his various interviews he does it is the bill will rarely of the opposition movement in southern california, very famous, charismatic, and certainly in the middle of his interview this guy from iran calls and happens to be a member of the besieged. he calls and he calls the servants of the interior west paid the u.s. and this guy fights back. there's an interesting verbal debate going on. in the middle of this debate it certainly calls we will defend

imam harmony until the last month, the harmony. i just remembered the term imam was only used for hunting the guy that originally established the islamic republic. remember he was charismatic. this guy was called imam in order to bring the sides together. there was a whole philosophy behind that. when this guy got selected into office in 1989, mr. khamenei he wasn't called stifel. many people questioned his religious degree. they realized he was a midranking clear and never the less a political figure in the revolution but no one called imam khamenei. but guess what, post election kuran compost 2009 election kuran the last two years there seems to be a systematic attempt to call him and imam.

what's guinn on? for the students you clearly remember the history of the revolution. the story of the revolution. usually they need a charismatic leader and eventually they get routinized and through that, the state becomes bureaucratic and so on and so forth and it loses the charisma but somehow maintains its ideological rhetoric. well, in 2009 that also happened when there was a mass uprising of mostly middle class iranians and also middle class rising up and challenging the islamic republic on so many different levels and it was about the election later on after -- all the way until late 2009 it became the question about whether we want to actually have an islamic republic. because of that crisis of the timid it seems the various factions in the republika decided to reinvent the state to do it one of the first attempt is to reinvent the state is to

reinvent the figure of ayatollah khamenei and making him to a charismatic figure. you see that picture right there it is mr. khamenei, and he's actually in his famous car driving around and some other cities in iran. a bunch of light in his face. of course the idea is to meet to him glorified, to make him coldly and of course the constant association between him and with the government and the different rhetorical discourses in iran have done is associating him with imam khamenei so there for you get the term. now what is going on here? i just mentioned the islamic republic under way reinvention of the state of 40. khamenei was this to be the key figure and to bring prisoner back is a very difficult task. nevertheless we're beginning to see the name imam khamenei in the political discourse in the

people involved in the government on the various different levels. let me go through this a short history. there's a massive uprising and cnn was there. actually wasn't there that somehow there was a wonderful coverage of the elections. there was went to be a major revolution in iran. that didn't happen. the islamic republic was to creative with that and the eventually came up with the idea of a soft war not necessarily to simply do away and stifel the irony in society but also challenge with the proceeds to be the u.s. covert revolution in the country, and much of the really revolved around somehow making of the green movement look as though they were stooges of the west.

the green ashura famous december 27 uprising, challenged again saying that the green movement was still there, challenged the government, but eventually, in the 40's comes in, believe in february, 2010, the famous intelligent agency in the islamic republic are able to do away with the green movement so many different levels and the street really cleaned away after that major event and the police forces were able to dominate the public spaces. i take that picture from of the hard-liners, the website on facebook. reliever able at least on some ideological level to make the green movement look lonely stupid, but simply basically the paid agents of the west. of course that rhetoric didn't

play well among the of iranians who didn't believe it but nevertheless the islamic republic that was there. they have victory. they got the green movement was out of the picture but that cannot of the uprising. it surprised the heck out of the islamic republic. just like anyone here in washington they are surprised what happened in tunisia and leader egypt the islamic republic was also very much surprised especially surprised when the green movement decided to revive itself to come back and reinvent itself and mostly happened and when they can out of a new demonstration of the events on february 14th dillinger wednesday, the government really got upset. the couldn't believe so many people showed up for that event. they thought they had already taken care of the green movement but not necessarily to be orie 14th we saw massive presence of

opposition actors in the streets of tehran and major cities but we also saw the governments in many irrational ways reacting out of repressive we crushing the movement on the street level. one thing we learned february 14 this the whole february 14 the event was organized as a way of revering or inspecting what happened in egypt and tunisia. and so much of that was the reaction to what happened in the arab streets and in the regime was free surprised and the second most important thing was the reactive measures in order to stifle the sense and a great example of that was of course for the first time they decided to address to the so-called leaders of the movement. they were recently released and they still have them on house arrest by the way. terrie all the different uprisings were happening and

popping up here and the different era of countries, despite the fact they didn't know how to deal with the different events going on, the iranian regime and the different factions realized too important things. one, the arab opposition movements are not the same as the green movement. and they are not for two reasons. one is the green movement made a lot of tactical mistakes including simply focusing on the daily protests. this is something obvious with one of the successes of the egyptian uprising is that it went into the night and that really scared the egyptian government, whereas the irony in government and the green movement really wanted to go home at night and took the protest on the rooftop of the houses and as a sign of weakness. the second is the organizational aspect. after february, 2010 the islamic republic especially the intelligence agencies of the regime realized that there is a

major organizational weakness in the green movement and they could manipulate, the could intervene, they could dissect and eventually disintegrate the movement of some levels and they could become a virtual movement a virtual communicating line but they didn't predict the virtual community could eventually come back and it would be on the during 14th. the islamic republic also new look the arab states who were either unable to prevent these revolutions happening or a prison is happening in the other countries would continue to be very much different with the islamic republic. first you either have the states that have roots in the military apparatus, former criminals or military officers who took power and the monarchies, the islamic republic are different. we talk about the revolutionaries who know how to do their job.

they know how to infiltrate, they know the mentality of the green movement in the revolutionaries so they knew how to have advantage. they also knew that they were not accountable to a number of different muslim countries like the way that tunisia to the extent bahrain and egypt where we still are. so, there's the added advantage. nevertheless, they realize and still to this day there is the on a certain element. they do not know how the heck this thing is unfolding in different it countries and how this is fluently developing in ways that cannot predict. just like the way washington is unable to predict what is happening in different arab countries. two steps the of iranian regime, different factions, very much on agreement took. on the domestic level these reactive measures. the inspiration in the green movement could have some various different movements and could be

the problematic for the status. and the stability. so they decided to go hard core. the repress people, even putting in prison for leaders of the green movement. and also, the height of the ideological rhetoric of course. and they tried to also frame the movements, the arab movement as an islamic awakening, islamic movement. so many, even people that follow the regime didn't buy their argument. for obvious reasons. these are mostly -- there's a large secular tendency with these arab movements, and the regime also realized and recognized the couldn't publicly talk about it. and on the regional level, the iranian government had a very ambivalent approach. it really didn't have a clear policy obviously, just like the way that the u.s. doesn't have a clear policy of what is going on with regards to the movement in the different arab countries. but i would say that it took first and foremost a cautious attitude. it didn't take too many risks. especially in countries like

about me or saudi arabia. and it still looms and also the country like yemen where also the u.s. has certain presence and the scene with about rain as well. but it did also with another approach being very assertive in supporting its only arab ally, syria in preventing its fall in response to the popular uprising which continues to this day. in general, on the domestic foreign policy level, of course mubarak iran continues to have a multifaceted policy, but things have changed. look at the first one. in regards to the various defense arab states especially the gulf states and my colleague is going to talk more in detail about it, i feel, and if you carefully read the pro-government newspaper agencies in iran you kind of gets the feeling there's an interesting new cold war happening between saudi arabia and iran. and iran is fully aware that

saudi arabia has actually gained more power in various levels especially militarily in respect to what happened in bahrain or what has been happening in bahrain the last few weeks. ..

>> at the same time, they will not be friends with algeria either. not much changes with the famous 2006 renewal of the nexus pact. finally with iraq, the same policy they approach. we're going to see new northerlyizations and ties between the two countries. woi would -- i would not see them as emerging new allies, but nevertheless, egypt will be an interesting case how the country is going to establish new ties with iran. now, some final remarks. i think iran does not have a cohairnt policy -- coherent policy or no what's going on and as a result is testing the water as things unfold on the grounds, but make sure you make a note this protracted turmoil could increase iranian influence especially in countries like

lebanon and iraq, but at this stage it's all really just a guess. if syria goes, i argue this and assad is toppled expect opposition movements because they lost a great ally in the arab countries and world. in many cases, the reaction to future arab opposition is gilledded according to faxal politics within the conservative politics and camp which will become clear in post 2012 elections. keep an eye on the 2012 parliament elections because we're going to see how this uprising, and of course, the green movement inspired by the arab uprising is going to change the iranian domestic politics in making it either go hard liner pragmatic conservative, and i have the faces of some people up there, the guy in the

background, we do not know how he'll react to the developing iranian politics, the factual politics in months to come, but nevertheless, i do not rule out ahmadinejad. we'll see ahmadinejad and followers for years to come and almost created a personality which is fascinating, and we're seeing that happening in the conservative camp now in iran, but, of course, ahmadinejad and pronationallistic methods, and this hard core, hard liner islamist who says, you know, we shouldn't emphasize too much on nationalism and the other character in the back, the current mayor of tehran is a pragmatic conservative who may go with the current speaker of the house of the iranian parliament. i don't know, but what i do know is whatever happens within the

factional conflicts within the conservative camp, they need to consider how they can influence the fascinating relationship between the supreme leader and the parol elementary -- parliamentary intelligence apparatus. the question is hamani passes away and dies and if there's a serious division over the issues just talked about, especially the green movement. it will particular conservative faction come to power and dominate? is there certain compromises within the elites? these are things i ask everyone to keep an eye on because 2012 and 2013, the presidential elections will be faze enating in -- fascinating in iran. thank you very much. [applause] >> babak rahimi, thank you very much. i was taken by more comment about the iran cold war, so i look forward to hearing more.

now to alex vatanka and more on iran with a different perspective. >> thank you very much. i'm sorry, i'm trying to multitask and get this up and see if i have the skills it takes for -- where's my computer? i'm sorry. oh, there it is. okay. is it coming up? i think it might. >> just like the guy in the geico commercials. [laughter] >> thanks for your patience and the invitation to be here. delighted to be here today. i'm going to follow on what babak rahimi ended up with. one of the key points he made at the very end is to sort of suggest there's no coherent iranian strategy.

that's my argument today and i want to dwell on why that is and their strategy. looking at the region, iran itself with all the upheaval particularly in places like bahrain facing the saudi intervention and the rivalry that iran always had with saudi arabia. this iranian-saudi rivally is not something the islamic republic created. the same can be said about the rival iran had with iraq before hussein and after hussein. really, the point i'm trying to get to is the impact of the arab revolutions on the iranian strategy. my key question is what strategy did iran have looking at the gulf states collectively? often case right now we hear the word gcc's angry about iranian intervention. my point is iran never had to have one strategy for the gcc states. iran always had two follow on a

bilateral level, vis-a-vis, members of the gcc states, and it seems to work with them. right now, it seems the same game can be played out in the next few months. the question is will that work because there's signs already that the gcc states are coming together. there are -- they are so afraid of what's happening they are coming together. when i hear gcc states talking about creating a federation pulling the foreign defense policies together, that's not something you hear every day. that tells you these are extraordinary times. the question is the iranian position a lack of strategy will be good enough for them. so, with that, and i apologize in advance for one of the most bland powerpoint presentation you'll see after all the good pictures you've seen. i love the sheep by the way. [laughter] three points. the first is no sign of the

iranian plan to deal with the gcc states. second point, and i'll get into the points as i go on. is there one consistency that you can detect from iran in vis-a-vis these uprisings is the rhetoric? you can say, well, this is a rhetoric you can expect. this is the islamic republic at its best. you can say, well, they are just retaliating against the saudi arabia and so forth. there's nothing unusual about it. as i said before, the question is is this enough for the iranian policy in the region? is rhetoric alone good enough? you're charged with meddling in the afires of -- affairs of bahrain even though they are not the key driver if iran really has a role at all. yet, you are going about with your rhetoric, talking about bringing down various regimes and so forth. i just wonder if that kind of a line, just having it both ways

can be sustained in the face of the regional upheaval. then i'd like to talk a little bit about the rift in tehran, and i wasn't here this morning to here gary's remark, but he hinted at this division as happening right now in teheran about what's going on in the region. there's no consistency in the conclusions that the main factions in iranian regime have about what's going on. the supreme leaders people believe apparently, from what i can gather, believe one set of things, and ahmadinejad, the president, and his people have a different take. a final point is this notion that can you, as i said, both support regional change, be the champion of revolutions across the board, and at the same time simultaneously maintain you have nothing to do with anything going on in nearby states? okay, with that said, let me go through the iranian strategy or

as i said lack of it. look at those members of the gcc states or the gcc individually. if you look back the last ten years or so, iran had good relations with countries throughout. iran has had okay relations, working relations with united ash emirates, and iran, on the other hand, had poor relationships with kuwait and bahrain throughout this time. my point is this bilateralism happened for one reason, the inability of the gcc states to get together. nothing that iran did, but the gcc states are divided. some in this particular point in time are happy to have saudi leadership and prefer that over iranian meddling or iranian domination, but it's important to remember this hasn't been one strategy coming from tee rain.

iran had six strategies dealing with six states facing it to the south. i don't really want to repeat what babek said, because i agree with that he said. one line from at teheran and the iranians meddling and being involved, but the reality is if you look to iran, iran looked at each arab revolution specifically based on its immediate material interests. as was pointed out, iran did nothing about the early protests in algeria, nothing. they really said almost nothing about what's going on in omar. in the case of egypt, iran was one of the most early supporters of getting rid of mubarak reflecting they had a tough relationship going back to 1980. the idea this there's an ideological driver behind the iranian attitudes going on i think is a mistake.

if there is any ideology, you can say it's the rhetoric, and i recruit about it the anti-american antisaudi rhetoric, but it's not a very well-thought, water tight ideological blueprint to serve iran or iranian interest in the face of these upheavals. that's the only consistency frankly if you look back to the middle of january and what happened in tunisia and so forth. this debate in teheran who is behind rebellions and how iran should respond is actually very interesting because you can draw a lesson from this debate and say for those in washington and elsewhere and west look at the iranian regime and say this is an antisemitic group. they are waiting to start world war iii. if you look at it like that. then the tacet shows you

something else. within a group of hard liners, the same people united when facing the green opposition movement, ahmadinejad people and the supreme leader, they are united on the issue of dealing with the green opposition movement. well, listen to the debate right now about what's going on in the arab worlds. on the one hand, it seems that mr. ahmadinejad believes what's going on is an american plot linking with all to wikileaks and everything else leading to the arab revolution saying this whole thing was staged. america is doing this to secure american interest and strengthen israel's position. if you listen to the represent lick of the scream leader who seems to believe this is an islamic awakening, muslim people rising up, found their roots, and by the way, this plays again and again throughout the propaganda coming from teheran. they are inspired by the 1979 iranian revolution.

in many ways there's a strong domestic issue here by legitimizing their own rule by saying what you good people of iran started 32 years ago is happening today, but you did it right and early, but don't get upset with these arab populations. they are finally caught up, and they are joining us. that's the message. but i mean, if you for a second put yourselves in the shoes of a small gcc state, half a million population of bahrain or 2,000 in qatar and listen to the iranian rhetoric, and i don't think the iranian regime listens to its own rhetoric, you have to ask yourself would you blame the gcc states about being worried about what your intentions are? can anybody -- i mean regardless of the nature of the regimes, but can you blame the gcc states when they react the way they do? i don't think the iranian regime appreciates the volume of its

anti-gcc rhetoric. it's very heavy and coming steadily. i think that last point there, i thought it was interesting, and you can find -- you can find so many examples of that double talk coming from iranian officials saying on the one hand they support, in the same paragraph and sometimes sentence, they support arab revolutions and welcome them, ie, nay welcome the toppling of the current regimes, and at the same time they say they have nothing to do with it. if you were a gcc audience or ruling one of the gcc states, you are not convinced pi -- by that message. you put emphasis on iran being the champion of revolutions, and that alone is driving the gcc states towards where it's going right now, two major, very strongly worded communiques issued by cgg states the last week. we haven't seen that in the history of the gcc in 30 years

within ten days issued two very strong communique. that tells you something about the mentality or the threat perceptions in the gcc, and when you get gay tar of all places -- qatar again to back you up tells you something. okay. let me finally go into this light here and take you to -- twail, i don't know that this is the last one. jordan and the gcc. what do i mean by that? i want to take you to the debate happening in iran a few months ago and this takes us to the factual dispute inside iran. a man called rahim, the right hand man of ac ahmadinejad was going around the world and talking about the school of iran comes first before islam. he made a lot of people in iran angry. what is this talk about?

what is people pushing iranian nationalism for? why are you sidelining islam and the jeer ji? that's a separate debate and i believe ahmadinejad is prolonging his state in power. they now islamism is a spent force. they need to find some new ways of galvanizing the people, and the school of iran is one of the things they hope will galvanize at least the youth. here's the story going from al albania to other countries talking about iranian-persian heritage. forget islam for a second. this is about iran. one of the countries he visits is jordan. king ab dull la -- abdullah the second gets the invitation. jordan is a cia asset; right? this is the perception. cia runs jordan. you go up to ahmad and invite the king of the country for what

purpose? ahmadinejad's people as they always do don't budge. they maintain. this man is invited for persian celebrations in march. at some point, and this probably happened as a direct consequence of what the arab world experienced in the uprising particularly after the arab support, pro-u.s. arab states supporting the crackdown by the family in bahrain. it became unatepidble, and suddenly representing ahmadinejad said the visit has been canceled. the point about this is that you have a fundamental -- it seems to me a disagreement between one man, mr. ahmadinejad, the president, the elected man, who is pushing constantly the supreme leader and wants more and more and more power, and this is just one example of this power struggle.

we are all so focused on the green opposition movement, but frankly, the green opposition movement is in the defensive position now. they are not sitting their tepider now. the most important dynamics is the fite between ahmadinejad and hammani. now, the same jordan is now being touted by the gcc states as a country that could join the gcc because jordan brings with it 7 million citizens, labor, trained military force that could be a force. i would like to round up by that sort of underscoring the same point saying the iranians don't really have a blueprint. there's a lot of rhetoric, and in my reading, they underestimate the i want pact of

-- impact of their own rhetoric. this notion of you can say what you want and call all the ruling elites in the gcc as lack kyes of the west and then say we didn't mean it, well, it's not working for them, and it's very obvious from what the gcc states are doing right now. these communiques, talk about confederation, bringing jordan into the group. please don't tell me there's extraordinary sort of time that we are witnessing. if that happens, the lesson for us, i guess, is how badly iran played all this because the gcc states, because of the fact that iran didn't face one block, one interest representing all the gcc, but dealt with six small arab states that iran could play with, play against each other at times and did successfully with qatar, playing qa that up to the

saudi arabia and so forth. if the gcc states are forced into one another's arms and have more unity than before, this represents a major geopolitical loss for the islamic republic especially if you look at it collectively in for instance of bringing about more isolation for the regime if on the nuclear issue, for instance, the united states was looking for more better effective cooperation, and willingness on the part of the gcc states to play their part. so far, the gcc states have not played a role except with the usual suspects of saudi arabia, but that's not a country to deal much with iran on the trade front. how do you get the qatar's and ua's on board. if this continues and gcc states remain angry or nervous about iran, the outcome could be iran weakened on the southern flank. that's one scenario, and with

that i think i stop. thank you very much for listening. [applause] >> thank you very much, alex. for years we wanted to see the gcc become a real body, so maybe this will happen. for the country, we were all looking at, saudi arabia. >> thank you, ambassador. i want to thank the jamestown organization for hosting this event and inviting me to participate in it. last week i was having similar conversations to the ones we're having here today. i think there are two parallel lines of discussion here about saudi arabia and at the end, i think we can make the two parallel lines come togetherment one is the domestic situation in saudi arabia, and the other is the -- >> just set it down. >> is that okay? the other is the gcc situation.

their only related, but they come together at the end of this presentation. you may have read analysis and all kinds of sayings in the "wall street journal" that this is the next big domino of the arab spring. it's leadership, youth employment bulge, and a society that has no way to make its manifest political will and make the government responsive to its desires, but, in fact, nothing happened in saudi arabia and likely that anything would happen. the so-called day of rage fizzled. there were a lot of reasons for this, and i want to run through them quickly. saudi arabia is not like e egypt or tunisia. i was there last fall, and it

was infuriating. the led hand of the government and of the depression and the political inertia was probable in tunisia. saudi arabia is a very dynamic environment. it's not like that. it can't be compared to what was going on under these despites who seized power illegitimately. now, first of all, king abdullah, king of saudi arabia is popular. people like him unlike the viled rulers in egypt and tunisia. the senior members are not perceived unlike the shaw. the shaw family has been laboring since the 18th century to forge a unified country on the arabian peninsula, succeeded

at the beginning of the 20th and they put saudi arabia to the and the glue that holds it together in an environment where there's certain elements of tribal differences. they are the ones who hold it together. the alsad have the support of the religious establishment which is very powerful influential force in saudi arabia. now, you can say, of course, they have the support of the religious establishment not because of the partnership with mohammed, responsible for the creation of the modern state, but the employees of the government. they work for the state of saudi arabia, and they make a good living and are very comfortable doing it, therefore, they do what they are told. you can, to a certain extent, discount the pronouncements of the most notable one, of course, the one issued validating desert

storm; right? everyone knows the people of saudi arabia and the people themselves didn't approve of that massive invasion of foreign troops into saudi arabia, but what the king wants at the end of the day, the king gets. you can discount the value of the proclamation saying these are unislammic and prohibited, but people believe that they are taught in the earliest days of school that islam requires obedience to the just ruler and they are the upholders of that. furthermore, the saudi people just lived through, like only yesterday, a three year period of violence upheaval and shootouts in the streets during the al-qaeda uprising thatgan in 2003. they lived through that. security barriers went out, cars searched, policemen took to the streets first time in saudi history, and they didn't like it. they didn't like upheaval in the streets that disrupted life in

the kingdom of saudi arabia. that's not the saudi way of doing things, and they didn't want to see a repetition of the what came with the demonstrations and protests in the streets. there's, in addition, of course, don't discount the confidence now and the determination of the saudi security forces. the government reissued a proclamation saying demonstrations and striking are illegal and security forces were prepared to enforce it, and if there's one benefit to the saudi state from the uprising by al-qaeda in the arabian peninsula is the security force of saudi arabia are much more efficient and competent now than they were 10 years ago. they are good at what they do, and they were not tolerating any kind of disorder in the street, and they made that clear. it's true that saudi arabia has an impoverished underclass, but

it's a religious relatively small slice of the population, and they are far outnumbered by the citizens who benefited from the existing system and benefit from it every day through government jobs, state-funded ventures, business ventures with the ruling family, scholarships, to the extend that people have succeeded in saudi arabia in education, in business, in professional life, and that's a lot of people unlike egypt and tunisia. they have succeeded because of the system, not in spite of it, and therefore, they have no incentive to overthrow it. furthermore, unlike egypt, tunisia, and yemen, saudi arabia has pot loads of cash; right? which is a powerful lubricant when you are trying to keep things turning over smoothly as the king demonstrated with more than $100 billion in the

packages of goodies he handed out. nothing to do with demonstrations in the street, you understand? this is the king bestowing the benefits of the country's wealth on a deserving citizenry, and why not? now, you could say this is essentially bribe money. well, that's a cynical way of looking at it, but, in fact, that's the way the saudi state has operated since 1938; right? the central government, ie, the king collects money and gives it out; right? that's why electricity and water are almost free even though they are short of both; right? that's why gasoline is 40 cents a gallon in saudi arabia. that's why health care and education such as they are are free. that's the way the system works. what you just saw was one big fat manifestation of the way the country has worked, and by the way, largely to the material well being of the population for

70 years. that's what they do there, and, in fact, of course, the worldwide increase in oil prices prompted by all these other troubles has enabled the saudis to hand out all these goodies without busting the budget. i believe this year they balanced the budget at $80 oil even with the new expenditures, so $110 oil, they are in fat city; right? they can give out as much as they need, so i don't mean to make light of it. these are serious issues, but i can tell you that the people are not in an insurrectionary mood, and they -- to the extent that you talk to the people in saudi arabia, they are actually quite am biff leapt about what we

call, the term we use collectively for what we call a democracy. you talk to the saudis about opening up the government and allowing greater citizen participation and elected parliaments and all of that other stuff, and they talk about iraq. you say elections, they say lebanon. right? you talk about an elected parliament with real power, they say kuwait; right? they don't like it. they don't see that the well-being of the body politic of the state benefits from relacing the is -- replacing the islamic system and the monarchy that's particularly good to them with a system that causes disorder and state paralysis. why would you want to do that? you add all these things up plus, of course, the complete disenfranchisement of women who are troublemakers in some other countries, and you don't have

anything approaching critical mass for the kind of upheaval in saudi arabia that you saw elsewhere, and if you read the petitions that -- there were petitions that circulated, and there's petition spasms every few years in saudi arabia in which petitions are sent around. the latest rounds of petitions were uniform in their collective call for modifications and improvements of the existing system, not for replacing it with a different system, and so perhaps elect the asshura, and i found widespread sentiment for separating the job of king from the job of prime minister. this is the time of fasal.

this is a big complicated country now and nobody can do both jobs, certainly at the age of 87 and people think the next king should not be the next prime minister. there may be three or four king in saudi arabia over the next ten years, but this issue remains because it goes to the territory, so finally, the -- and by the way, i might say that i had a long conversation last week with the friend of mine, well-known in the circles, the third name on a long list of signatures on the petition, and he confirmed what i was told by other people that by circulating these petitions, the relatively small handful of articulate discenters in the kingdom are not under any illusion that the king and crowned prince reads them and says, you know what? that's a good idea. no, what they are doing is they are educating, they're laying

down markers for a politically unsophisticated populous. this is what you should want. this is what you ought to aspire to in a modern state that's more responsive to the citizenry and where there's some accountability. they don't believe it's going to happen tomorrow, but people, the -- there's no -- there no sense of what concerted political action would look like in saudi arabia because it's been prohitted for so long. in that sense it's similar to libya, all right? the reason there's furious arguments in saudi arabia all the time, intense debates about really obscure matters of religion. this is the how long should your beard be art; right? the government encourages those arguments because they

substitute for politics. you don't have even with all the educated people, you don't have a politically sophisticated citizenry. now, all of this is about what had happened or didn't happen inside saudi arabia. it's related to what happened in bahrain only in the sense that the shia minority in saudi arabia misread the situation and overplayed their hand, and i think there's pretty good evidence that the saudi-shia who insisted they are not stooges of the iranians, just good arab citizens who want to be treated fairly, i think they were perceived as having gotten out in front of a movement in saudi arabia that they anticipated but which didn't happen, and because it came to be associated with the shia who did have some demonstrations, it immediately alienated everybody else who didn't want to have anything to do with a potential movement

that could be traced to shia or be perceived as part of some iranian fifth column. in the midst of all of this was the excitement and bahrain; right? i have to say that the morning the saudi troops went in there, it was before ten o'clock when i got my first call from somebody in the media wanting to know what do you think? what's going on with the saudis sending troops to bahrain and gcc? i wouldn't talk to him about it because i refused to believe it. i was literally unable to believe that the gcc, which for reasons you just heard alex explain, could not tie its own shoes on strategic issues for years actually took a collective decision to intervene in bahrain. turned out i was right. the gcc as an entity did not do this. the saudis did did, and then they got other people to support

it beginning with the uae, but alex is completely correct that given the rival ris within the gcc which have prevented it from becoming -- they don't even have a unified currency after committing themselves to it years ago let alone a unified security strategy; right? partly because they are afraid of domination by saudi arabia. when qatar endorsed what the saudis had done, you knew the extent of the collective alarm about bahrain which means collective alarm about iran. well, i thought from qatar's perspective what saudi arabia did in bahrain sent a very dangerous precedent. the saudis could walk into any little country if they wanted to, and they were afraid of that. you may recall in the last six months of sitcom commander, general petraeus gave public speeches in which he essentially said this is so snow white and

the five dwarfs here in the gcc, and they will never have a unified leadership security strategy, so we stopped trying. we're girchg to -- going to create bilateral nationalism. this is the only way to do it, and now this was not actually i'm told this was not actually a peninsula shield force but a saudi force masquerading as a cloak to give the look as the gcc. i mean, come on, who is fighting the war in afghanistan? we are; right? we have -- same is true in cab. i talked about to a lot of people about this, some directly involved in foreign affairs, and others not, and of all their differences in the direction of the country, they were unanimous

that bahrain was going to fall to the iranians whether officially or not, and that's a red line, and that is not going to happen to the extend that iran wants to come across the gulf, that cannot be permitted. i didn't hear one word of dissent from that notion or some people might think the saudis should have sent more or less troops or done it differently, but no one objected to that so in that sense the issue was related because the perceived involvement of the shia in trying to stir up trouble inside saudi arabia was part of what kept the citizens pass mid. now, all that said, i don't want to leave the impression that all is well in saudi arabia, and that everybody is happy with the present situation. i've been going there for 35 years, and this most recent visit, i found people more

willing, even eager to criticize and speak out about what's wrong than i ever have in the past. a friend of mine actually said to me, we are the tea party. we're fed up. i was astonished. this was an open phone line, and what was he talking about? he was talking about not that the monarchy has to go, but that government offices, agencies, schools, systems, hospitals are incompetent and inefficient. there's no accountability. there's no way to make the system respond to you, and that's what they wanted to change, and so they do think that it's possible to achieve that improvement within the existing system. at least they think that so far. i don't know what they will think in 15 years, although i don't think it's going to be that much different. we used to have a saying, i don't know where we got it, but when i was in active duty in journalism, we used to talk

about the idea if only the czar knew. you know, conditions for us pes cants here in russia is terrible, but if the czar knew, he'd do something. there's a certain element of if only the king knew about the at dude in saudi arabia. the king is a good guy, and he's just too busy to do it himself and thatst that's why the prime minister shouldn't be the king. i don't see a domestic threat to the saudi system no matter what happens in all the countries all around. thanks very much. [applause] >> thank you, very, very much. let me take advantage of my position here and talk to thomas lippman and king abdullah is

popular, but what do you think the successors will look like and have the capacity of making the kinds of change that you're talking about and that i think the saudis are asking for, not an upheaval, were certainly more accountable and efficiency in government. who is capable of that? >> well, i'm only going to answer the question because i already have a five year multiple entry visa. [laughter] this was a sure way to alienate people in saudi arabia who can make life difficult for you which i don't want to do. look, there are only a dozen people in the world who know what kind of deliberations are going on inside the alsad family about this, and i'm not one of them, and anyone in the country who tells you they know is making it up or lying to you. the succession issue is in saudi terms imminent. some people actually think that

that -- those goody packages the king handed out were a phaser well present to the -- farewell present to the people of saudi arabia, but there's more uncertainty than certainty about this because of the age and state of health of the next people in line. i think it's a pretty safe bet now that although he is crowned prince, sultan will not become king because he's not capable of exersing the power to the kingship. the second deputy prime minister is king niyaf, one of the brothers who have shown solidarity to the task, and the fact he's second deputy prime minister does not by a matter of law mean he becomes king if the two ahead of him were to die. he could, may be the leading candidate, but under the so-called allegiance law system that the king adopted three or four years ago after king

abdullah and sultan, the next subsequent successions will be determined by the so-called allegiance com, and the best cay to think of that is the way it's set up in the law is analgous in which they go into the vatican and eventually there's a puff of smoke; right? theoretically any cardinal could emerge as the pope, but what happens, of course, is pope watchers in the media and elsewhere designate certain cardinals before they go in. one of the six guys will emerge as the pope. you can figure out, you can name six princes. one more thing that i think it's human nature we can assume that

the senior princes and members of the allegiance counsel, there's 35 of them, are ingauging in a little -- engaging in a little family horse trading. i know i'm not king, but if i vote for you, what does my son get? it's human nature. they are fathers. there's rivalries in the clan like anywhere else. in the short run, and by that i mean 15-20 years from the american perspective, i don't think it matters much because any potential king is going to be somewhere between 5:30 and 7:00 on your so-called left to right spectrum. there's no coipt sitcom for -- tolerance for democratic or radical reform. >> okay, let's open it up to questions. yes, please, go ahead. >> hi, yes, i have a question for mr. alex vatanka concerning

his, i guess his premise that the iranian state is based on rhetoric and there's not a policy there, and you provided a lot of evidence to support your case of rhetoric, but i'm wondering if you have evidence to support your point about the lack of policy especially when you mention things like ahmadinejad inviting the jordan king to visit or a moderator this morning mentioned -- sorry, out of breath -- as the moderator mentioned that ac ahmadinejad tried to get rid of his intelligence agency. can you respond to that please? >> actually, that's a very interesting point too what's happened with the minister of intelligence whose resignation was accepted and then suddenly was back in the cabinet, but the official mask piece for the regime kept the story and said

the resign was gone, not removed, but the fact he got 219 members to write a letter saying president, take a step back from the brink of, you know, stop this fight with the supreme leader. this is a plot. everything's a plot. anyway, back to the question about the foreign policy, why did i mention jordan? i mentioned jordan specifically because as i said, you can look at what's going on in terms of the debate in iran as the ahmadinejad faction looking at his own intersections and saying where can we move forward and keep the regime and somewhat appeal to the population particularly after what happened in 2009? this is a faction that is looking at populist motives that might work for it. if you look back to 2005 elections, what was the basic message of ahmadinejad elected?

back to basics, wealth distribution, and such things as social reform. the government of iran should have no business in dealing with what people wear, how long their beards are, and so forth, socialist stuff. he didn't deliver in the first term, 2009, he didn't get the vote, and we all know what happened in 2009, but to make a come back and looking for ways to sort of set the stage for the ahmadinejad faction to continue and in the field of foreign policy maybe what's happening right now is ahmadinejad thinking, okay, all my talking about holocaust never happened, didn't really deliver anything for me. the arab world doesn't love me the way the love israel and more than me. maybe i should radically change any foreign policy. school of iran appeals to my population who had enough of islam after 32 years might also resinate in the region.

remember how his hands are tied. he's playing in a situation where he takes one step too far too quickly, gets letter from the supreme saying put your add min straitive intelligence back in there, please because the supreme leader doesn't need institutional restraint on him. he can just decide policy at whim. that's what i was trying to say. reaching out to jordon to symbolically say we want to break away from that rejectionist cap or not limit ourselves to the hezbollahs and syrias of the region anymore. again, the big picture is ahmadinejad is trying to be his own man. you can see that in domestic policy and other issues and foreign policy, and hammani doesn't like that and you can see that and this could come at his expense at limitations of his power. >> i also say something about

that quickly? >> yeah. >> i think there's adding to alex's comment which i very much agree is i think there's a possibility of two interesting things developing. one is a new development, the possibility that we are now seeing in iran and the post-election iran, the e engineering of two nationalistic discourses, one of the ac ahmadinejad time, the idea of focusing on iran to legitimize a state that lost lee expwrit -- legitimacy after the elections and the other is islamic and of course the supreme leader supposed to kind of lead that image or that discourse on so many different levels. that is possibly happening right now and coming out in the factional divisions within the hard liner or conservative faction in the iranian politics. there's another possibility which i think probably dates back to 1980 and is the

institutional one, the tension between president and elected office and the supreme leader, and we saw this happening with bani in 1980 br the tension was so much that eventually the president was kicked out, left the country, and now lives somewhere else, or the tensions we saw with hamani and the supreme leader and seeing the old tension emerging with the president and the supreme leader. whatever way, i think it just shows that there are major shifts and changes happening within the islamic republic at this moment. >> [inaudible] >> [inaudible] >> microphone. >> our speaker seems to agree that one salient development has been a more coherent gcc approach to the challenge in

bahrain all be it one led by saudi arabia. my question is we see reports in the media of a gcc role in negotiating a solution to the situation in yemen, and i would like your assessment of that. is that also a meaningful gcc activity or is it a saudi activity under the guys of the gcc, and what does it say about the development of coherent gcc policy and the future of relations between yemen and the gcc? >> very quick. >> well, just quickly. my understanding -- i've tried to stay out of yemen, you know, i mean, really, but i do think the gcc states including the

ones that border yemen have really come to see the potential of danger to them of state failure in yemen. it would inevitably have a spillover effect if nothing else because when yemen runs out of water in a few years there would be a pool of refugees that would be unmanageable. there's a collective recognition of an imminent threat. it doesn't cost the gcc anything to try to talk to people and negotiate. it doesn't threaten the sovereignty of any of the individual members the way the bahrain thing did so this may be an example where the gcc might perform a unified coherent function. there's a new secretary general of the gcc who seems more up clined to go down those lines. >> if i could just follow up on what tom just said. i've only been to yemen once and flew in from dubai, and that

gave me the wrong impressions about yemen because i was going back no time. [laughter] the lack of water, substance abuse, dropping oil production, you name it, they are faced from different fronts, and you are a tiny gcc states that wants investment confidence, there's this wild card at the tip of the arabian peninsula, you have to deal with it, but this is something that saudi arabia took the lead. i think it's a question of money. the first deal they put in front of the yemen opposition was rejected. one wonders if he was happy with the sum offered or the opposition didn't feel it was enough for them, and another thing i say about this is look at the gcc involvement because here i mentioned clearly the saudis would have been involved because saudi arabia always been involved in yemen. when i was in yemen i was told, you know, huge sums of money, over $100 million annually shows

up in yes , yemen to various parties and that's the way in yemen. can i prove this? no, but it's the chatter in yemen, so saudi arabia must have played a role in that, and i think the other states probably did have a distinct view on yemen and went along, but look at the way the qatar plays their role in libya versus all the other gcc states. if there's a common policy, how come it's not playing itself out in very important arab case like libya but plays out well in yemen? i think it's because the case of yemen, the stakes were low for the other gcc states, and yet, there's a common threat perception and the iranian leadership pulled it off. we don't see that repeat itself elsewhere, most notably in libya. >> okay, somebody else over? no, all the way to the back there. >> one of the things that is

interesting to us is with the impact on teheran's domestic situation. there's large minority populations within teheran, kurdish and so on, but there's no mention of how the grass roots movement in the world could impact the minority groups and how they request mobilize against a regime they feel marginalizing them. most of the political groups discussed from a persian perspective is can anyone speak on how the minority groups mobilize due to the uprising in the muslim world especially as sunni muslims and how they respond to this? >> okay, first of all, we have to be aware of the problem sources. i mean, i worked on the arab-iranians for years and still not dare make any major judgments about the arab-iranians as one minority

group in iran both in politics, society, and economy. also, we have to be very careful with regard to the ethnic politics in iran and the religious minority politics in iran because it's extremely complicated. i guess in washington we have a tendency to look at politics in a region with terms of tribes and ethnic politics. in the case of iran, we have know that iranian nationalism continues to play a major role, so even at times an ish iranian who lives there sees himself or herself as an iranian first then perhaps an arab. looking at it from there, the ethnic minority issue is not the major theme especially in the post-election iran. most is around the idea of reform or making the government

more accountable or making the government more efficient especially in the proprovinces. now, at the same time, we have to be very here careful because they have been more discriminated than the arab-iranians or other et nick minority groups so i would probably say the minorities took a more ethnic politics with regard to the post-election politics and used that politic led in order to justify itself as this benevolent government here to protect the unity of iran within the nation states. when it comes to the small political faction, military faction, the korp, the very tiny political movement in exile, the iranian government is not really that much worried. it is worried about the case and still is, and remember, there's

a saudi role here, and this is more arguing about the cold war with saudi arabia and we shouldn't forget that aspect, the complexity of the regional politics there, but the only thing i ask everyone here is to be careful with the ethnic policy in iran. unlike iraq, iran has had a very powerful experiment with nationalism, and that's really good news for the iranian government. they don't need to worry too much about it. i don't know if that answers your question, but i just try to kind of shake up the premise of the questions you brought up. >> if i could just follow up slightly on that. one way when i was sort of comparing, i say when you look at iraq, it's a country put together, you know, less than 100 years ago. look at the iranian -- look at somebody like me, half persian, do i consider these two components? no. it's a perception they lived there for 2500 years. when there's a sign foreigners put one group of iranians

against the other, it backfires. human rights, there's a very receptive audience in iran, they want to hear about repressive methods at the hand of the islamic republic. they don't want to hear about a guy somewhere creating a new map of the middle east all divided into various countries, but i also say this. there is an element right now that's very timely to bear in mind. ..

. iran is not quite see that region go away because there would be leaving it behind. my point is at times of heightened regional geopolitical rivalries, you see these issues come up so iran suddenly said to be involved in the shia and saudi arabia had to live and also where oil is and i think it has to be very careful with this of the sectarian tensions don't have to be that big nor does the efik dimension have to be and if we are not carefully gets big and out of control all parties and i believe excuse me including the west would be losing out. >> actually just a reminder historical footnote to the members also realized in the efik argument the minute he would walk in out of the iranians would join hands and that backfired. they will have still be fought hand in hand with the irg sea

members in fact many of them became irg see members and the iraqi arabs despite the fact they had family members still so just let's be careful because i know mr. biden, i love him, but it focused on the ethnic and secretarianism it's really just too simplistic. i love biden. [laughter] >> utter questions. yes. >> i have a question for mr. wittman on the u.s. saudi relations, where you stand on mubarak and bahrain. how do you see that happening now? and also in the long run being more assertive in this region to keep up this assertiveness. >> this does appear to be one of those rare times in a relationship of it.

unbeknownst to me, i wasn't aware of it, apparently the saudis were extremely unhappy at a speech secretary clinton gave in doha in february about the corrupt era of leadership, which they fought pointed at them. we got really down in deep in the weeds apparently in his last days of the state department spokesman, peter jay crowley was making a statement about the region in which he said the united states believes governments in the region have to respond to and accommodate sentiments of the people including saudi arabia. a gratuitous addendum to the sentence as the saudis so the mubarak thing i don't think they believe the united states could or should have saved the mubarak presidency. what did they want us to do any more than we could save the

shah, but there's the sense that we contributed to the humiliation and should we say the unseemly haste with which we jettisoned somebody who had been perceived as being to the saudis' view one of the good guys for a long time. you add up all of these things on top of very lingering but deep-rooted sentiment that we the united states delivered to the iranian and pretty disenchanted. but that's not to say that there's going to be any permanent or sustained breach in the relationships neither country wants it, neither country can afford it. we've been through bad times in the past. the arms deal will go ahead, and will blow over

>> and not ask the panel about that expression scratch a shia and you will find a in the arabian underneath. one of the other places i recently visited was bahrain and it reminded me of things i'd seen in southern iraq and southern lebanon where you could actually find bader and me have a picture of khamenei in their home but that doesn't mean their pro-iranian at all and i felt the same thing in southern iraq. to confine the iraqis who are veterans of the iran iraq war who fought against the ayatollah forces and yet they have no sympathy for the irony in state but they have admiration for ayatollah khomeini as a revolutionary shia leader. and it -- i wonder when you thought about -- people have recently been silenced in this conflict in bought rain so only the leadership of iran, bahrain and saudi arabia and the gcc

seem to be speaking so they've basically been silenced. i don't know if anyone wants to comment on that. >> where is he when we really need him. [laughter] >> for what it's worth -- for what it's worth i personally think and i've seen people in the u.s. government sort of reflect the sentiment is a mistake on the part of the arab, pro usair of governments to come out so quickly as they have done and label their citizens who happen to be shia first as shia and then as arabs because what they are doing in my view is repeating the same mistake that they did in iraq while effectively pushed maliki and all of the sunni elite of the country into the arms of the iranians coming and you can bet there was a vacuum they would fill it particularly involving the shia. this is a mistake. call them as eda was first and then refer to their religious

identity. not the other way around because it is giving the game to the iranians. we have seen them ideal playing very dangerous game in my view and i think that has said this has been expressed by certain u.s. government officials saying don't look at all of the shia in the region as agents of iran. about rain is a unique case in many ways because in the case of bahrain there is actually one-third of the population happened to be of iranian descent. people who left but in the 1920's under the rule, so directly half when in bahrain as soon as they know where i was born they will play me some music or persian music just to sort of -- there's a strong cultural affinity in many ways as i said that 30% of the iranian descent. but i am skeptic about the idea of seeing pictures of khomeini everywhere. i agree i don't think -- the

iranian cultural influence is far greater than the political message of the islamic republic. which you have to go into sort of isolated pockets like hamas and hezbollah and so forth and of the charity work would have cultivated in to the ties and often case because they bring money to the table. >> to comment on that, the whole khamenei aspect. in 2005 when i went to visit southern iraq i saw the pictures all over the place and i would go and ask the rockies so what is the deal are you going to follow and they say no, we do not want to vote the republic we just love holding. all the different stuff we hear. khomeini has actually followed as the supreme leader of the religious ritual leader as we hear from the u.s. reporters and journalists simply reading to

that. and what is a look if iraq is something to try to establish the islamic republic in iraq which of course was in the case even muqtada al-sadr, the famous so-called revolution even advocated that notion. so his father disagreed. we talk about diversity and that is very much the case with a different she get factions throughout the middle east and it's sad for the king of jordan to talk about the crescent and it's a self-fulfilling prophecy but it could be a big mess for them to demise their own rule. >> can i just add one thing? i agree with all that and if you go to the center of the saudi shia they will all tell you the same thing. yes, we are shia and the discrimination is all full and we are prohibited from this and that, but we are not stewards of the iranians. we are proud saudi arabs, but this is a subject on which on

the subject of israel and the iranians are not. there's a deep opposition to and loathing of israel on all religious persuasions on the arab world and about any of the sunni arab regimes. >> i would add we all talked about the whole body in question and the one that hasn't come up yet is why has the leadership crackdown so harsh. we all know the paranoia about the irony in hand behind the shia and bahrain so i think it's also important to mention there were divisions within the sunni family in bahrain. i think there were factions within the sunni family in bahrain once some of his supporters who wanted to have a dialogue and maybe come to the more regional approach and the other side of the family primarily who insist on the

crackdown and it was just a red line as you say. i want to too much time. yes, we've got five more minutes i think. >> one of the strategic questions brought up this morning i would like you to address and agree to put an end up what you've got and a piece coming out with jamestown on iran and syria. it seems to be really the big question about what would be the strategic impact on iran, you know, should the regime fall, and perhaps you can talk about it but also alex me because the strategic dimensions address what it would mean really in it than thomas if you could just address how the saudis might react because that seems like it might be the equivalent of the berlin wall to make an analogy to what happened in 1989

>> i just wrote this piece a few days ago and what i argue of course is iran is going to have a major problem especially in the case of hezbollah which has been supporting many years and of course syria is the bridge for iran with hezbollah and if that goes especially as a sunni lead especially islamist let the government that replaces it's going to be a major problem for iran because the sunni islamist fashion and syria is a certain extent but sympathetic iran and to the sympathetic training and even for the hezbollah what they did in the so-called 33 they were red with israel still they're suspicious of iran. and having said that i think iran would not use syria. that is why so much in support

to stifel the center that's what i'm saying, and another thing is that the same time iran is confident to take care of the descent and they will stay in power at least the same government will stay in power but i would absolutely agree with that point that garrey brought up this morning that iran would have a major problem in the eastern and major loss of tehran. major loss. syria has been a great practical channel to hezbollah and lebanon to take syria out. it's harder to deliver whatever it is you have to deliver to hezbollah but i think that they have always had a pretty healthy in my view held the view on where we stand with syria. this has never been an ideological issue the regime has

nothing uncommon in terms of ideology with the province. very convenient and it's pretty obvious whenever the syrians and israelis started talking and making headway is about the return you'll hear them say this is where our friends, that's the price. and then we can kiss this relationship could buy. but it's not be as a result i agree it's been to put them at a disadvantage and. particularly saudi money and coordination is what brings the new syrian regime to power that is a big geopolitical loss because --. >> remember what happened in an effort to sort of the space between syria the king did quite a lot in the saudi view.

first essentially took the investigation of the table. even though he was here they say one word about that anymore and then he invited him to the opening of king abdullah university, the project, great fanfare and then he went to syria on a publicized state visit in which he took the saudi media with him and what was the response to invite ahmadinejad that comes to syria and a news conference to talk about solidarity forever and then to go back to meddling in lebanon. they have had it with bouchard. so the idea that he would replace brochard al asad with a sunni regime of almost any sort of political structure is not unprofitable. >> other question? last question at the very end.

he mentioned that its lubricant that saudi arabia running smoothly. could saudi adjust, the society in the government and just back to the 50-dollar per barrel oil price if that were to happen over an extended period of time peacefully? >> how much time are you talking about? ten years, sure. you used to hear saudi people looks postulating that okay there's no oil we will go back to the old way of life today is saudis have grown up in air-conditioned the rick's and departments and they wouldn't know how to live. remember what happened in the 1980's when the price of oil went below $10 a barrel for a

while. one thing that happened of course was the vice president george h. w. bush went to saudi arabia and urged them to drive the price back up because west texas was going down the drain. they've got enough money in the bank that they could absorb the budgetary deficits much better than other countries i talk about for quite some time. and i think -- and they have the devotee to control to a certain extent the way that would work. the saudis wish to maintain solidarity within opec for their own reasons. but it would take quite a sustained quite depression to take them any pain. >> with that i would like to thank our excellent panel in the audience for listening and for participating. [applause]

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now a discussion ofussion education issues affectingng mis minorities. how to measure studentacement. achievement. this is part of the conferencecs on race in america hosted by the aspen institute from the museumn in washington, d.c. this is a little less than an hour and aha half. [inaudible conversations] >> this morning we've looked at the issues of personalpersal re responsibility versessp institutional racism and other aspects of the racial issues in the context of home and family and in politics. now this afternoon we are going look at institutional places pl

such as schools, homes and prisons someone who is the afternoon moderator -- excuse me, that dayside moderator from 10:00 a.m. to noon on the msnbc. before msnbc he was anchor at cnn headline news and cnn worldwide. he has covered the presidential election of 2008 at cnn. he has a degree from michigan university and pursuing graduate studies in international security at stanford for 25 years. he has been involved in community service and africa, asia and the united states particularly working with homeless and affordable housing, nonprofit. please welcome richard lui. [applause] >> thanks for having me. i was watching the entire first half for my hotel room and i

just couldn't leave because it was so engaging so what it rate discussion, to discussions we have this morning. i hope that after we get past our food, as i may have you all stand up and do a couple of jumping jacks and we can keep on moving but it sounds and looks like everybody still has a lot of energy. what an esteemed panel we have today to talk about some fantastic issues, things that are very important to our country. this is the third panel you have seen in your documents there. we will be looking at some of the institutional factors. charlie started by talking about that this morning. he was talking about the institutional issues that we need to deal with as well as personal responsibility. so during this segment we are going to talk about specifically some of the institutional factors and i would like to introduce of course our esteemed panel. we have russlyn ali tribe at the assistant secretary for civil rights at the u.s. department of education. thank you for being here. we have reverend al sharpton, president of the national action network. thank you for being here. we also have janet marguia.

thank you for being here. first mistake. i'm really good at this, guys. president and ceo of la raza. i apologize. dr. julianne malveaux. you have that aura. everybody thinks you are from bennett college. >> that is a good thing. we want everybody to be from bennett college feel which is where women. you too can be bennett ties to feel like. lactose be all right. she is ready with us. okay, what we are going to try to do is focus on solutions during this discussion and please feel free as we are going through this to pipe in as you feel as is best for you and what i have done very briefly as i have laid out some potential solutions to the problem that has been outlined earlier today. these are some solutions that have been out in space, some that you are familiar with and i want to get your ideas as to what you think of it. first thing i want to talk about

is education. that was our first topic. we will do education and then we will do business and then we will talk about schools to prison pipeline, that issue that we are so very familiar with. so the first solution i would like to discuss is the one that i put up there and i'm hoping you can see it, is the issue of unions and districts working together. we talk about how education at this moment is certainly in the middle of the debate. at nbc we have spent a good amount of time trying to understand some of those realities and some of the issues related to that. what i may start to my left first first and if you talk about the issue about how collaboration can work the twain unions as well as districts and how to refocus some of the discussion. >> there has to be a collaboration between all of the adults responsible for transforming the way our schools work. if we don't, we will not meet our goals is an nation. the achievement gap is --

low-income students across the country. the kinds of collaborations we are seeing already in place. for example secretary arne duncan and 150 districts where there superintendents, school board presidents and their union president came together to talk about how to replicate those principals from very progressive contracts that drive student achievement across the country. it is about taking the positive success we have seen clear unions and administrators and parents and community and policymakers are coming together to do what is right for kids and helping to replicate those and support leaders everywhere trying to do the same thing. >> reverend al are unions a problem? >> i i don't think unions are a problem. we wanted to see accountability and of late i have seen some very serious moves in terms of unions on how to deal with that. the president of the american federation of teachers did a

tour, and she has even made some very progressive recommendations on how you deal with tenure and where there must be accountability you can't have a situation set up where teachers are not judged on their performance. there is no accountability. the nea spoke about it last week. so i think unions are beginning to adjust to a climate that some of us have tried to advocate, say when you do with policy. i have worked with la raza on this around the country. we have been able to see it shift i think to some of the unions that were inflexible three years ago to now saying themselves there must be accountability but it must not be where we have an anti-teacher or a demonizing the teacher. i think sometimes people have used accountability as a goal to demonization of teachers and union busting.

i don't think that is the solution neither. >> so we see the examples, have only janet? >> i think so and i would agree that those common elements that we all aspire to and i think that is true for the teachers as well as many of us who are advocates for the highest quality in education is accountability and i think as long as we are all committed to effective teachers in the classroom and making sure that we have ways to hold them accountable, and to engage, all the stakeholders and making sure we are making that happen, i don't believe that it has to be about unions per se. i think we can really tap into everybody's aspirations to have high standards. i do believe that we do need to have common standards in which we can have more uniformity. >> national standards? >> yes, because i think if you have different measures and different states for different topics, it creates a very very

confusing matrix for folks who want to be engaged to know-how and so for us, i think it is having a set of common standards where i know secretary duncan has been committed and a lot of other folks so we can have a quality. and the last thing i would add is within the standards of accountability for us in the latino community and i know for children of color, students of color, it has to be having teachers who have high expectations for those students oftentimes we find that the biggest terrier isn't so much that teachers aren't qualified, because within the margins they are qualified. but when they are in classrooms with students who have the highest needs, a lot of times stereotypes and other types of perspectives seem to cloud the ability for some of these teachers to understand that all students can achieve high standards and have very high aspirations for themselves.

when he teachers to really reinforce that and then also make sure that the accountability measures are in place. >> dr. malveaux what you think about the issue of tenure which is also part of this discussion and let's also build a off what jena was thing. >> i think which ended saying is phenomenal and really important for teachers to have high-tech cetaceans and challenging people. we go back to segregated schools and we can look at examples of teachers who push students to learn, push them to do, push them to achieve and so we have those examples. tenure is not a bad thing but tenure can be reformed. and i think that there are many in the teachers unions who are looking at reform of tenure. here is my problem with the so-called education reform. we are sitting in a city, washington d.c. come up where we have this crazy woman come in here with a broom to say she was going to sweep out all of everything and now we find that perhaps there was some fraud in the so-called metrics that said that this harsh method of dealing with teachers -- i am

going to fire you if you can't get your kids grades up. but now we find the racers and all kinds of things. most teachers are good teachers. one of the things that i think we must do, and i say this as a college president who deals with students from the inner city k-12 system. what we must do is look at all of the other factors that shape a young person's life. everybody can learn and that is why i think janet said that. everybody can learn if we encourage that learning. but at the same time if somebody comes to school hungry, if somebody comes to school out of a chaotic home and if somebody comes to school where they just had a drive-by i'm not sure how much funding is going to happen. i don't want teachers to have to be social workers but i want us to look at the whole picture and i think that michelle rhee and let's not call names -- michelle rhee when she came to washington did not want to deal with some of those other issues. i think we have to deal with all of those issues at one time.

we don't have an education crisis in america. we have an inner-city education crisis. if you go to alexandria virginia their children are going to harvard. everything is fine. but if you come to inner-city washington d.c., if you go toward age which is the poorest ward here in the district of columbia, you will find challenges that are partially a function of a social economic dynamic that we don't want to deal with. so i want us to look at tenure. i want effective teachers. if you are an effective we can show some folks are ineffective. if you are an effective, go away and do something else. but if you are in a district where gorey school where there are so many things working against it, let's try to work with some of that. you know what? i think we can. >> this tenure assist in this goal to bring more diversity and professorships and teachers? >> you know if tenure is a mixed blessing. on one hand tenure provides

people with security of employment anyone who wants employment once the security of an employment. underhand we need to make sure we have effective teachers. in the things i think we need to do that we ever looked at him k-12 are sabbaticals. there are people who get so burned out. you have people who have to deal with crazy nonsense daily and forgive me, an academic way of saying crazy nonsense. deleterious effects. [laughter] but you know, the point is this. we need to nurture our teachers so the best of them can continue to be the best in the worst can go someplace else and do something else. tenure perhaps as not allowing us to do that but we want to protect the best of them. so there is an organization and the national educational association. i think it is called turn and i don't know what it stands for but they really are talking about reform. we want to have the best of both worlds. we are not going to throw the baby out with the bathwater. we are not going to say someone

who is 57 years old okay we are going to throw your weight because you had a bad year but we are going to say our kids come first. our kids come first. >> you know i think the proposal that aft and weingarten raised deals directly with that. my understanding is that the teachers would be just on their performance-based on how the students in the classroom that they are in charge of are doing or not doing and should not be test driven, which is in itself a problem. and then, if the teacher in another year does not make improvements they are given 30 days for removal. i think that tenure is an absolute is not the answer but i think the whole thing of putting them out or first come first serve is not the answer. and i think when you have unions raising progressive alternatives they need to be entertained and i think that is what will get us closer. the other thing is i absolutely

agree that you have got to take into consideration the environment that students are coming from and teachers that i can teach in that environment. that is part of being an effective teacher. if you can't deal with the student coming from may be a home that is not the same as a home with two parents and a peaceful community, you have got to have people that can deal and relate and educate that child. i don't think that you can have an education system set up where the child has to be derived of the environment he or she comes out of. i think the teacher is to be equipped adequate to deal with it. that is what ms. rhee della. >> that reminds me. my mother was a teacher for 25 years and worked in several districts in san francisco. one of her last schools was in a very challenging area of san francisco. that these teachers to your point knew how to teach these kids who came from very

difficult backgrounds. but the testing, we go back to testing janet, that did not necessarily reflect how successful they were because they did have standardized test across the state of california. so there is opportunity there, isn't there? >> i'm going to ask you because i'm a native of san francisco. >> ii am low high school. >> is right there in the area of. >> i wanted to get more specific. >> starting school is on the top of the hill in the area of -- gosh i don't know the street. >> it is over in bay view. >> it is over and bay view, yeah. >> which is one of the poorer areas and indeed you know the challenges have always been the teachers have to love their students and they have to believe that students can learn. and this is the problem. as i think you know diane ravage road a great review yesterday in

the "washington post" of a book about michelle rhee. they called her they v. swallower. >> tell us how you feel. >> tell me how i really feel? >> i don't think you are being bashful. >> is not in my dna. one of the things she talked about is an affinity. they have people who love to teach and they love kids and they are people who think teaching is the job. you have got to see every little child who is in front of you whether they are dirty or clean or whatever and say to them, you can learn because then they can. >> go ahead. >> matters hugely that i want to push want something. their scores didn't reflect how successful they were. >> that was the argument being made against the school. >> right, so our assessment has certainly gotten better and needs to get a lot better. with with the standards movement we now have is janet mentioned, we have a growing turn in the

country so that's it code does not get to determine what you've learned. that said, we have a long way to go before our standards are implemented in the classroom, the four children and one community in a class called algebra are actually learning the same that their peers are in a wealthy community. our assessments guide who is learning what. they tell us that the achievement gap and allow us to focus resources on where students need them the most. assessments need to get better and dr. malveaux is undoubtedly right that the willingness to teach, the expectations that all children can learn at the highest levels when todd at them, the love for children, huge components and whether a teacher will be successful and whether we will see progress on those assessments. >> assistant secretary how do we to behold lisa because they were successful by a lot of other measures. how do we hold that up?

how do we show that to the district? >> give me an example of what a successful measure that kids are running? >> no that they are learning. >> how do we know that at the assessments were reflecting a? >> the test themselves we are saying they are not successful. the teachers are saying we are quite successful. we are getting these kids to school. they're coming to school every day. they are doing their homework. there are certain parameters that they defined for themselves based on their understanding of the marketplace to say it was successful. >> the question might be what these tests are measuring. the tests are measuring multiple-choice think. your ability to say it abc, all of the above, none of the above. that is not necessarily success so this whole race to the top run to the bottom using the standardized tests with all do respect because i think you guys are on the right track but in the wrong direction. i think that we really need to think about what these tests are

measuring. with s.a.t.'s we know that s.a.t.'s are projector of your first year college success. in other words if everything stays the same. everything is never going to stay the same for a freshman. nothing is going to say the same for a freshman so you are measuring something that is almost abstract. you know, if you can look at that test as an evaluation as opposed to an admissions metric you can say richard has a map rob lum so we want to intervene right now and make sure that we help him with his math problem so he can do the next thing as opposed to saying richard has a math problem so we are not going to let him in the school. so i really raise questions about the content of these tests, what they measure and widely used these tests exclusively to measure success of our young people's. >> sure and i think that is where the broader set of common standards comes into play.

doesn't just become about teaching to the test of the more the test is one factor but it is not the only factor. one of the things that continues to remain a challenge for many children of color and students of color is that by and large you can see the data on this and it has proven time and time again that the kids with the highest needs have the least effective teachers in those classrooms. we have got to do something to switch that paradigm because the more that we allow for only the highest quality teachers to be in the most affluent school districts we are never going to tackle this problem so we need to really be thoughtful about how do we see more of that shift occurring so that kids can have, our kids can have the most effective teachers in place. >> how do you do that? >> it is a combination of factors and i think people are looking at that, but one of the things that we have in the latino community that is a particular challenge that i think needs to be addressed as we look at the different factors

that school districts are being judged on and that is 20% of kids are in public schools. about half of them are what we call english language learners. they are still sort of transitioning into using this language in mainstream classrooms to be able to learn like everyone else. it is important for us to be able to get that right because when you look at the demographics as we just saw at least by the final statistics in the latest census we know that now the best growing part of the population of poor students and for children under 18 has been latino kids and one out of every four kids now is hispanic. so we need to make sure sure that we are tackling that issue so that those kids can have access to the kind of learning that they are going to need to be successful throughout the rest of their years and that school system because if we miss those kids, they are going to be lost in many ways forever. tackling those issues at the

front end and i would even argue one other piece is really looking very thoughtfully and early childhood education because the other statistics that they know is that when kids get into access to headstart in preschool, their chances for being successful crow exponentially throughout the rest of their years in the school system. so there are ways that we can move the levers that will allow our kids, all of their kids to have the most success possible. it is not just about the test. there are social factors and their educational factors out there that we ought to be looking at and it is looking at the whole set of them. does not just one driver out there. >> assistant secretary anything else? >> two things. this notion of needing assessments to get better is precisely why when the bipartisan congress and the president were able to get the recovery dollars, $100 billion flooded into american schools in

part to save jobs. $350 million was carved out to build coalitions around developing much better assessments. today there are 44 states engaged in this process of precisely that, moving away from multiple-choice into assessments that actually measure critical thought. our proposal, janet is absolutely right, this is a pipeline that goes from babies through college and beyond. and our early childcare focus especially as you would have seen in the president budget proposal to begin to really move that agenda. this idea of equity, the opportunity. achievement gaps are not caused by someone's skin color. they are caused because the janet said we give them less of what we know makes the biggest difference including and especially access to the courses in those high rigor standards and access to effective teachers. but as you said, measuring schools by what their

marketplace, right? that is how low expectations play out. and marketplace in a poor community will not be any different in terms of what we expect from those children than a marketplace in a wealthy community. the last president -- bigotry of low expectations and i have heard folks across the country say things like it is not when they are in schools wrestling with how to pull students that come to school and credibly challenged up so that they can compete in this new global economy. >> gacy i think if we go back and as i said in the beginning, the whole test up session and just trying to run a test driven kind of educational system which doesn't really take into account all of the students. the other part of that is the clear bias, if you will, and we dealt with this with secretary

duncan, has been lower expectations. and would you have teachers that don't expect anything of the students, they communicate that to the students even nonverbally. so, if you are being told that it is expected of you and that you are not going to achieve not only academically but in life that communicates a devastating blow to you. i grew up in a single-parent home in brooklyn that i had an expectation from my church, from my mother that i was going to do and be something. one of the things i think when we did the education tour with secretary duncan we went to a school in philadelphia which was the first city. we went to a school that has been at the bottom of academic achievement and three years later was number one in the city. and when we talk to the students and were asking the state -- students, not the teachers, not the administrator, not the principal while some of you who were here threes ago what he think the school is doing much

better including you? they said, well we were treated differently. there was discipline. we felt people cared and they expected us to do something. so a lot of it is the students themselves understanding what is pink and indicated to them. speier now the long-run implication of this, which is what i think we need to focus on them a look at where we are economically and internationally is that we have countries competing with us who are investing in ways that we refuse to invest. we have cut countries competing with us to believe that they're young people can learn. there is no notion that the young people in china, and india, in eastern europe where there producing new engineers than the united states they believe that they're young people can learn. one of the things that we have to look at, and they know that the morning panel dealt with that is what is the impact of demographic shifts on the level

of expectations that teachers have for the young people who come into their classroom? in other words, i believe that we seem to do is invest in education when those in the classroom became blacker and browner. i really believe that we look at at -- when i graduated from college in 1974 i had $2000 worth of student loans. the average student today has $26,000 worth of student loans graduating. the average hbcu grad $28,000 worth of student loans. someone was telling me something like, you know we are going to make sure that you get out of school and that you do well. someone telling these young people you are shackled her go so we really have to look at the messages that have shifted richard because of different demographics. >> i would like to move onto another discussion about teaching, diverse teachers which i think you are touching on earlier. how do we attract more diverse teachers? >> i think you have to make being a teacher more appealing

to a diverse set of americans. i think first of all, i think the level of pay. i think the level of how they are regarded. i remember president obama i think in the in the state of the union address started talking about teaching should be something that we make as something as appealing as being an entertainer or whatever. i don't remember his exact example but i think part of it is the appeal. when we talk to a lot of people around the country, you did not hear like you used to years ago teachers being considered at the level of someone's ambition that we should so in order to diversify, think you have got to appeal more to the diversity of the population of what teaching can mean to them. that is one. second, think the impediments of getting there.

you talk about student loans. the president talked about how he was paying student loans, he and his wife almost until they became a best-selling book. so i mean how do you tell people even if you think that teaching is a noble profession and something to look up to that you will be paying for getting education to be a teacher until you are 45 or 50 or so. >> a tough economic argument. >> correct her go. >> the reverend is absolutely right and since the president has been in office, the money for probe -- pell grants for low-income students has almost doubled. the recovery money alone allows $36 billion to go to ask us. this has been the biggest investment since the g.i. bill. now it is true the profession today is not as diverse. it does not reflect the student body. in fact only about one in every 50 teachers are african-american or latino male.

the president secretary duncan have launched a teach campaign to do just that, help inspire and provide the kind of campaign that is necessary to change the way we think about teachers. on teach.gov, young people can go and find out the requirements to be a teacher in every state of the nation. >> will we have to wait another generations or will we be able -- is there something we can do right now? >> you know we have an education department at the college for women and our young women are doing great work in the state of north carolina and in other states as they finish and graduate. some of the work that gave administration is done has been very helpful in terms of providing additional dollars and we are very grateful for that but i think at the same time, there are rigidities. if we are not aggressive richard, i think always the notion of social change to move slowly and must be aggressively intervene. i would like to see more aggressive intervention,

especially in hiring african-american males, in the k. through sixth grades which i think would make a phenomenal difference. and those k. through sixth grade which i think make a phenomenal difference for young man to see people who look like them your educators. i think also with women it is very important to ensure that these young women have opportunities. we have a think what the administration has done what it can do at the bottom but i think in terms of some of the accrediting organizations and teaching that we have to do it at the top. one of the things that teaching district should be judged on his diversity. they should be judged on diversity just like they're just on every other metric. people don't want to be judged on diversity. people say they have diversity fatigue. that is like having sunrise petite. the sun don't rise and the sun falls. diversity fatigue, our country

is diversifying and our young people by 2040 there will be no majority population in our nation so we need to make sure that i am people who are learning me to have teachers who can hit them within the. >> janet what about charter schools? is at a place to look at as well? >> well i certainly believe that we have to have an avenue where charter schools can be an option. too many of our systems have failed, many of our communities and when the community comes together so that they want to have a chance to do something for their kids i think we have to give them that opportunity. at anne c. heller we sponsor and work with about 110 charter schools across the country that are run by many of our affiliates, community-based organizations that are serving hispanic families everyday. >> do they break the mold? do they break the situation where we often see minorities are starting a year behind and

never catch up? >> that is what is so exciting i think on the good side when it comes to charter schools is that they have a little bit more flexibility to do things that are really speaking to the children directly to do what they think would be helpful and the incentives whether it is targeting some of those areas of learning that other teachers and perhaps public schools have not been supporting to do. we believe that having the training for those teachers in the charter schools that directly allows them to support those kids really is a positive advantage and in essence many of our charter schools become those laboratories where we are able to identify what is working uniquely to help latino students succeed and then maybe see those taken to scale as we work with the department of education and others with a reauthorizing of these bills when they. we see what is working when did we see the gaps. >> we have got two more sections. >> let me say one more thing very quickly. the data does not suggest charter schools are more effective than public schools. while charter schools are

innovative, not against them, let's look at some of the data. the data do not suggest that they are more effective. >> finally that i want to talk about this, the issue of lawmakers and some are asking for more and some are asking for less. we are talking about cash and money and interest in energy. what is right talent and what should we ask for in terms of our lawmakers to do going forward? >> well i mean i think clearly you need equal funding. i think that we need to deal with the question of whether we spend, have the same investment in our in the cities as we do with the property tax setup but i think we also have to do with the fact that we cannot use privatization schemes to take money away from public education, and i think the danger that we run into is, and it happened right here in washington d.c., is that there was so much energy put into trying to give some young students a way out, voucher

systems and others, rather than a commitment that lawmakers had to all. we should be really trying to see how we make the funds that are available and more work for everybody rather than having some scheme set up on how we are going to have some escape. by definition is we are writing off the majority of our young people and i think the jobs of lawmakers are not to select who they think can succeed. to me the mandate of those that are going to fund education is to give equal funding for an equal opportunity for everyone because you never know when a child will develop. who are you and i to select the way the sun can escape and we write the others off. i think those kinds of schemes have polluted the education revival in the past several years. >> it is more money spent more

wisely. the country is facing a budget crisis the likes of which most educators in and the system had never seen. very very tough decision to have to be made. and we likely won't have the kind of investment that we had with the recovery dollars anytime soon. that said, it is about equality as a reference pension and it is also about equity for students that are coming in behind. they may need more and we need a civic and political will that acknowledges that. tied to what dr. malveaux said earlier have we close the achievement gap as we said we wanted to as the country a country over 20 years ago? we would have estimates predict anywhere from 315 to 525 higher gdp. so if we are serious about closing the achievement gap we will see progress across the country. that is, in some ways about closing the equity loophole that exist now where poor students

and students of color get less dollars and at least bringing it up to equal but we also might need to go further to help children that are further behind. >> i would just and on onto that he said as much as people want to listen to washington and to lawmakers they're what we fundamentally understand about education is that it is a local issue and it is one fell by communities directly and i think we need to do a better job of really helping empower our parents and our community stakeholders to hold those local elected officials accountable because i think that voice can be much more powerful than it has been. we can be a stronger voice of advocacy and we are talking about holding teachers accountable. we need to hold our elected officials accountable for how they are making investments and we have community leaders, parents, can really come together and we have seen it happen where communities when

the parents are involved and there were her parents as partner programs, when they are part of an efficacy movement in that community, they can have the kind of changes for their children that i think we would all like to see across the different communities. >> a great discussion on education. i want to move into the other institutional factor and that is moving to business and one of the statistic that was brought up earlier this morning that you'll remember that i remember specifically was the earning power disparity that racial blood sweat and income was 52% for blacks, 25% mean net worth. those were fairly striking statistic that were released this morning. so we take a look at business. what can business due to kind of bring in inclusion? one of the ideas that might be discussed is what was brought up at the start of our discussion this morning and that is how diversity is good business. it is good business so i want to understand from your perspective help businesses might ring that