>> our gathering today is ambassadors and representatives including the ambassador from tunisia and iraq, jordan, morocco, iraq, jordan, morocco, turkey, a , zi mbabwe, slovenia, and ecuador. from the four corners we come to you. and here at the atlantic council. into welcome us government officials to have a question and answer session this

richness is enhanced by the superlative interviewer. tom friedman needs no introduction and with foreign affairs in the new york times and thrice won the pulitzer prize. to be focused on the middle east and one of which is a favorite of jerusalem is the textbook as an undergraduate. now let us turn to the man of the hour. a long resident senior fellow at the career center for the middle east in addition to reading his work on the website you can read on his own blog 25 years in florence one - - foreign service in the

last overseas posting the deputy chief of mission in yemen and in 2003 during the iraq war serving as department spokesperson at us central command from the university of beirut and phd in political science from the university of new york the published articles of leadership and development and the middle east journal and the journal of middle east studies. i recall a conversation i had at the time with a mutual friend of ours former deputy ambassador to the united states i said us was lucky to send a deal with arabic to smooth the way that abdullah

corrected me. know. the opposite is true. arab-american diplomats have a much hired - - harder time everybody expects them to do favors and make exceptions and they don't get the same respect as the other diplomat we don't have to listen to him he is one of us. and when your government does something the locals don't like they hold them personally responsible. so we are eager to hear your thoughts to be the arab-american diplomat in the middle east during the era of volatile and vacillating relations. we are on the record.

so please come to the stage the floor is yours. [applause] >> this is a great audience it's a treat for me to be here with you. thank you for the great introduction. by this book. [laughter] the first thing one author has to say to another. we have known each other a long time we knew each other from casablanca and baghdad and yemen i don't know much but i am a connoisseur of people to know the difference between a mirage and a oasis. i was always drawn to him

because of that. he really knows the region and is reflected in this book and he has a fascinating perspective of arab-american perspective on american diplomacy and as a diplomat in the region and particularly in iraq given and incredibly heated time. so just for starters for anyone that does not know you , tell us your story. how did you get from lebanon to senior position in the us state department quack. >> it was a mistake. [laughter] first of all thank you for lunch and for some after lunch conversation. and thank you to tom to engage me in conversation today something that we have done several times over the years

including in baghdad a couple of places where i was assigned and in baghdad i would meet some people but a friend of mine to meet a very secular cleric who is about as secular as they come but he had the grandson so they sat there conversing for a good couple of hours and then had dinner with the mullahs and expressed how optimistic he fel felt.

for those leaders in a country like iran from 2003 was hot and is still hot. that the occasion for the discussion today called you have your lebanon and i have mine he expresses the contrast between the vision of the beauty of lebanon and as a symbol of diversity and coexistence in harmony and that reality back then 100 years ago from corruption he may have as well as risen

because the situation fact is gotten worse because of the corrupt political elite has not only ruined the economy but they have run the country into the ground in violence. i think if he would arrive today he would say nothing has improved. the book ends in very short form by a palestinian and he talks about himself and says he feels like a postman who has messages to deliver but doesn't know who they should go to. and as a retired diplomat i identify very much. i still want to have an impact

but sometimes you can wonder if you play a role. so this is a long way of saying that i come from lebanon i was born and raised not just for lebanon but for the entire region. so whenever i work in any of these countries may deeply try to bridge the differences no matter how wide that gap. and baghdad 2003 certainly it was. >> so in the title bunker diplomacy you reflect this because you saw a transition that i lived through as well the americas crisis in the middle east was deeply embedded and integrated in

society from america that the one - - hid behind the walls and i was is actually there when it started april 1983 i was in my apartment at one oh 6:00 p.m. the last was so powerful it knocked the transistor radio off my desk kids, that's a radio. [laughter] i also had a typewriter. [laughter] i ran out of my apartment and i saw a smoke cloud in the distance and i ran toward it as i got closer he said it couldn't be i turned around and there was the american

embassy remember asking a junior diplomat what happened. he said a man drove a truck up the front stairs of the nbc and blew it up in the lobby. two things they always remember my shock i said you mean he killed himself clicks it just seemed incredible to me somebody would commit suicide how incredible it was at that time and there was no perimeter around the embassy embassyd literally walk up to

today it is fort knox. so i had gone out there used to be at the heart of istanbul part of the open marketplace i was interviewing the us diplomat i said look at the embassy. he said the terrace to blew up the british consul and assembled they were captured afterwards in the interview them and they said we wanted to blow up the us consulate but it's so secure they don't let birds fly there and they wrote a column called where birds don't fly. but you lived that transition from being open, integrated to

working out of embassies that were bonkers what was that like? what did that mean and what are the implications quack. >> my first assignment was in egypt it was to be overlooked we no longer have those. it was a nice beautiful villa. he had just one sleepy egyptian by the door but nobody ever asked and actually the muslim brotherhood which that branch was supposed to be the tough branch came to one of my roundtable discussions at the center and engaged former congressman.

and after that they would come by from time to time the discussions were always intellectual never any sense of hostility. and the ambassador at the time said i was of president mubarak this week why is your culture deceiving these people? [laughter] i said we are engaged due at me to stop and he said no. so this openness and atmosphere quickly changed. and it was changing from

islamism and also from what that created and the very popular reaction of us politics which over the years we did not adjust as a person said but because i was a spokesperson and then to have outreach in london i became a well-known figure i remember coming back from baghdad sometimes i literally had to carry guns. and people didn't have time to send the protective vest so my friend and colleague at the time worked for dod and put a

gun in between us and then he is an egyptian american and took me to the shooting range and you feel why it happens that you feel the danger and then always hiding under my bed. you become a soldier. that you don't understand diplomats. and you don't have the training because they need

permission and you can't be spontaneous and then to have that appointment and security first and without having an armed guard. and in yemen and with the yemen security card i had to take my own security and say i just want to go out and meet people. they don't know where i am. and heard some stories about that and then to go in her car

when you exit that somehow and there is something special about the american diplomats because of the brits in the chinese because they are not attacked and surrounded like we are. so one has to ask partly it is the region but it is the image that we project and usually it is arrogance to rub people the wrong way. why not the chinese or the french.

and that attention between so many things that went wrong or right but to end on a note that that vacillated between those democratic periods and that is what we are seeing different ways and different places saudi arabia and tunisia struggling to find its way to make i use that line when i was a spokesperson and baghdad because i would face very angry journalists. personally i didn't think it was a good idea but i did my job but i was a spokesperson and lucky that way but i engage them as a person i

listened and responded that i could go into broader areas so, to me as an arab the fact that most of the era rule one - - world is ruled by dictators is what we see in the streets in beirut and baghdad to get rid of the oppressive structure i want to get rid of that but at the same time i understand it rubs arabs the wrong way all over the region. there is something about troops marching into the air of capital and to react

viscerally. so what could i say? so in the long term it needs the revolt against dictators like that. and that they didn't want to demonstrate against the us. and then to think of the french revolution goes through. but it wasn't he was coming on horseback. so whether it's a force from outside or the inside it has to be a good thing long term in the short term you will go through hell.

the arab spring between 2010 and 2011 that manifestation in beirut and they seem to be the tyrant as the strong man but the content is what type of secular society we want to have. are we reading too much into that? >> tunisia was a cakewalk because of many reasons. and partly don't have that same kind of diversity.

and then for the first time this is not about israel or linking hands across that genuine feeling with that political elite and the whole thing changed so the side of this across the spectrum lebanon doesn't have a single dictator of 12 mafias of the

militia to say that all of them how do you do that and then to ship them off to cyprus or somebody. and the problem is the various political interests to be a very serious reform plan if somebody is wise enough they could adopt the serious plan with this ministry or that ministry i told some friends of mine and government you could put the jackass in that position.

this is how you change the system from sectarian corrupt to proper democratic republic. unfortunately frankly each side benefits materially and they don't want to get through those advantages. in baghdad they haven't sold one - - solve the problem in the arrangement at least. and then to have a good political understanding so in

the long term so youth has risen and then they finally get it and understand by corrupt political elite what about syria quack. >> which is a real disaster. and of the effort of the regime. >> it could have been helped

but at the right time. one of the faults of the obama administration very much as a person and a president too much hesitating for something like this. and then of course the russians jump in 2015. and then you have to have something. and then we haven't been at the poker game. and to be assisted by russia

and iran and has below. and then just to make a living. that then to go back to the established assad regime i would love to see one arab dictator. but that's not happening. >> and to be so politically

correct and any american general assigned to the middle east do you think the shortest distance between two points is a straight line cracks if you say yes okinawa korea to mine - - germany who are the diplomats and military officers what did they have and others that they flow through them cracks. >> over the years particularly in baghdad and then in yemen i have a compact at the military level with those lieutenant

colonel's but usually it is a fresh look at the military officers have that people don't have. >> they are not at princeton. >> i will give you one anecdote of lebanese americans that was the head of centcom and somehow he came over for a visit so we were waiting outside and that what's going on in the north? know it's not militarily and

then try to convince us and we look up and down and sideways it is an internal matter and i said we can help we can help diplomatically to mediate indirectly. or certainly economically. the system has to work for everybody otherwise if the government fights and fails then the southerners want to succeed then it will be worse than afghanistan because they will break apart then you will have to come in and when he came back to washington to get

more aid money for yemen. and someone who truly understood to be the very last resort and the preconditions why young people become radical in the middle east and then to succeed to observe their people as human rights that we never got out of the cold war mentality. with the dictator and military regime to fight soviet influence up to the minute to

sign off the agreement. and at the different points of view with the state department we are trying to convince people who change the system let's keep the security establishment because we work with them we were never able to let go certainly forget it and understanding anything but obama. very intellectual and understood the transition in

2011 and the need for democracy. and to be of assistance and when they rose, he hesitated he was afraid to jump in so afraid of repeating the same mistakes and more importantly of all the security of the region and then he hands the files to saudi arabia and facilitates a complete siege of air land and sea on yemen to spread disease and going along with that not what the

young people of yemen want this is the direction they should be taking so now all blame for what he is doing the problem started with obama sometimes i think of him that if he swings from one yet to go from one to catch the other that you can leave and reach and grab onto the other bar. but it is shifting like that for us policy. the part that they've been hanging on to and then also creating terrorism to have a new way of dealing with the region of working civil

society. you saw when you came to visit me. and this was in the mid- nineties inspired me. this is that we should be encouraging with and with those budgets and then to invest more in tunisia. >> and to answer questions about yemen and the line from

wizard of oz a you a good witch or a bad which is that a good militia or bad militia. i get it but what gives you the right i don't understand that story well enough. >> because i appear in the media so to have that support just like in egypt so this isn't in my book and then to meet with the leaders and can't go back and forth and as we were talking about first of

all i was there to get to know them. second to see if i could advise them some positive things to change the situation. and to talk militarily. and then the euphoria and the thinking to take on the whole country. but the first mistake was the houthis. second for much of yemen they were abusing the rights of the media, there was no transparent system and i told them we were meeting with

their spokesman in moscow. and then there is this obsession with saudi arabia to fight iran in yemen but we are not. but the biggest mistake is that you are arabs any party your dictator or militia. but at the end of the day. and is not to go out and kill americans. and then to control the company.

and they are now forced to have real iranian interests and allied of members of parliament didn't know who the houthis were. so as the world went on more and more to iran. and mainly through hezbollah and iranians don't send them they send money. to the sensei can smuggle in some equipment.

but it's not anywhere near what we give the saudi's who are after all invading yemen. and has been in control of the arabs throughout much of the south and what have they done. and with those middle of the road and not with the lebanese army. >> that with the administration to assassinate qassem soleimani. >> i thought that was a bad idea and poor judgment. first of all we forget the imminent threat and the lying which was not the case. this was an assassination. but you pick the personality and the leadership position and then to improve members. and the fact because removing

the person is as important as he was doesn't change the picture. iran is highly institutionalized. and then to have a good cadre of people that could run this. to talk strategy and tactics. and then to understand. but the fact is for all the bad things and it is very

important militarily and culturally. those that we consider enemies now certainly i don't think the president understands and i doubt the people around them. the people that gave them this option so why do that in the first place? there is a certain psychological element. but killing somebody like that was not very important. the most had a halo. and certainly with iran. that will generate hatred we

have not seen the end of that. not just with the bombing of the base. i think that is high on - - here we go. >> and with our conversation with the israeli-palestinian conflict. what you say in the minds of the region and us diplomacy and diplomats. and how we address that problem. >> first of all is a conflict between palestinians and israelis that it was at a dead end ten years ago are more. and in the midterm.

i try to be as honest as possible as a spokesperson. what about the us and israel? between to establish peace between israel and palestinian. and then end with that support it does not work even if arabs are talking about them. >> and if you can call it

that. and with that interest that they involve there and quite frankly that's how we see it. >> how we see it. >> if i have genie and give you three wishes for american policy but would they be quick. >> you get to be king for a day and redesign our policy. >> that is embedded in the book. so what should we be doing quick. >> one of the reasons i sponsored this and the need to

understand the arab world and the middle east through poetry and literature and of politicians. but one of the strange things i did in the middle east those that were considered silly by some but and this year standing up to israeli soldiers and i summarize that and politics and poetry in the arab world because these

people the intellectual poets and they had their fingers on the pulse. >> but we use the people and get into the culture. and those who really understood the culture and the language they are not being listened to. >> the other wishes to finally abandon the autocrats and the dictators much like other people in the world.

and that they don't understand democracy. that's what young people want and for the large part in a dignified manner that security apparatuses so when the cs with these regimes it is in toward us i wish we could make a break and say you're in with the wrong crowd. and we need to cultivate a different constituents. and with those democratic practices and to do away with the corruption frankly.

>> we always overestimate the analogy and underestimate governance. how people are governed on a daily basis that matters so much more than all of these others and to be driven home but the last day of voting in the egyptian election it was like a ten day period i went with the egyptian reporter and an elementary school and we stood outside and interviewed women they all said they voted for the muslim brotherhood and i asked each one they said better streetlights more security more healthcare there isn't one who said if i see

another woman in a bikini on the beach in alexandria and it was so telling lesson one - - a lesson of your point we align with a criminal syndicate is it any wonder and the relation between governing and the governed and that is what comes out in the poetry. >> exactly. >> i'm an intern i am particularly interested in

first of all why you think and that presence and in europe and second of all how they get involved and your prediction. >> and the problem was as a genuine and those ought to be changed. and then to get schooled in different directions. and then about something that they don't want.

and then that which creates chaos. that there is a strong genuine desire for change but it's very sticky. and that should be the last thing you want. especially in the country where thank you very much we were there for ten years. 's home in lebanon we have to be very careful. and then to give speeches but we have to be very careful when you approach a hornets nest you should be careful

where you poke. so i think advice certainly behind the scenes and that you don't want to provoke and me have some friends in government and to exchange their views against the demonstrators. so as complicated as a lebanese situation is and they had their own think tank for

those who are demonstrating. and then to come up with a serious reform plan and everybody in lebanon and then you really need to consider the approach the system like that. and the sectarian system and its difficult but it is doable. sometimes they listen. [laughter] >> i'm doing phd

congratulations if i could push back on the issue of democracy if i may because we look at the persian history you always have someone at the top is still the same thing. . . .

but the era of the world and iran are going through what you went through in the middle ages right now. i think they need to be given a chance to formulate one another, live with one another and they on a new social contract and we need them in almost every country. >> you've given a very excellent presentation.

in the role of law i've not gone to the region the last 40 years but they tell me i want dignity and i don't want to keep beggi begging. it is as good a microcosm is a good example of supposedly they denied the vote. it is in the wrong hands.

rich people are doing very well and many of them having to be in powerful positions. from the conference going on in europe to help save lebanon you don't need an injection of cash particularly. i used to say that in yemen but do projects and encourage new industries and exactly what you need in lebanon is a more productive economy. the bank bank sent people to exe money have been shoveling the money around.

it's the very basic services if you can provide the electricity and work people need. the they haven't been able to fix it because they don't want to fix it. if you do these basic services and do it well you will be creating jobs and nowadays, technical jobs, things that require some safety and expertise but absolutely you need to move it from just moving cash around to producing things in the agricultural industry and business. >> american task force i agree with most of what you said but

i'm surprised at the analysis and you don't think it's a mistake that the current administration gets in the attacks of the u.s. embassy in iraq a few days when the demonstration came. could it actually gave a boost of course it would give a boost for the people that lost thousands of fighters at the hands of the militia. it is a symbolism and i have to say the middle east who somehow it's very ironic.

it started from tunisia to egypt, libya are orchestrated a popular uprising at the same time how would it affect the issues we've seen a so they would somehow reflect positive positively. you can say as much as they wa want. your symbol is somebody else's symbol of the way t way ticket o

heaven and part of the problem in the middle east we think god is on the other side and become each other trying to prove it. apparently he welcomed it and wanted the opportunity to become a martyr figure that doesn't turby hope it doesn't turninto y else. in the war somebody facing you with weapons is something and when you pick on a person and you say this is an important leader for these people are going to get rid of him.

people can do the same thing to you. and if the successors, after an american general of some sort what is the feeling in the arab world and the positive or negative scenarios it includes a lot of policies, militias,

individuals they are killing and want revenge. for the people on the other side and paid what he represents, it is was a great defeat, but thats normal. that is the environment that we are in. the u.s. unfortunately is very polarized right now but if you really hate or love trompe and you somehow get rid of, in a friendly way, somebody from outside, does that change anything? can you get rid of anybody that you disagree with?

in the middle east as a reporter if they can't argue they want to destroy you. no one puts their arm around you and says i appreciate your analysis but i really appreciate your honest analysis here in this book and if you don't buy one, i know who you are. a lead.

>> welcome. the scheduling of this book and panel is certainly timely given the rising crisis with iran. we will get to that subject eventually, but the book entitled "seven pillars" and the discussion is to look more broadly and deeply at the drivers of instability of the middle east. from yemen to syria to iraq and now with iran, the region more than ever seems in a permanent state of turmoil if we can't become a land