this past weekend featured little rock, arkansas. with book tv at the collection at the university of arkansasing. >> jay in high school collected photographs and he was particularly again interested in the 19th century, the civil war in particular. these are two friends, union and confederate, who knew each other prior to the civil war, who fought against each other at the battle of pea ridge in 1862. survived the war, came out alive and remained friends after the war and here they are at age 100, sitting on the porch talking about the old days. >> american history tv looked at life in a world war ii japanese internment camp. >> a lady wrote a wonderful book called the art of gaman. and gaman meant surviving the unsurvivable sort of. and she talks a lot about how the arts and the crafts were sort of how they kept their

sanity and it gave them something to do and about how depression was so bad in a lot of the camps and that people -- there was the high incidence of suicide and so people would make these little things of beauty to give to each other just as a way to say, you know, we support you and we care about you. >> our lcv cities tour continues the weekend of may 5th and 6th from oklahoma city on c-span2 and 3. and now experts on iran nuclear weapons and national security debate the pros and cons of a u.s. military strike on that country and the prospects for the next round of nuclear talks expected this month. michael adler of the wilson center said the chances of a military conflict have decreased in recent weeks but the diplomatic process would be long and difficult. cato institute here in washington is the host of this event. it's about an hour and a half. >> we're good.

>> all right. thank you very much. welcome, welcome to the cato institute. my name's christopher prebble here at cato. and it's my great pleasure tore welcome you to the new auditorium. and to the newly redesigned cato institute. so welcome, and we are very fortunate to have for this conference a terrific lineup, two panels. it's my privilege to be able to introduce them. i do want to thank before i forget the plow shares fund for their support for this project. and really congratulate in fact justin logan who is responsible for organizing it. i think many of you here in the audience have the bios but for those of you watching online, for your benefit -- what's that? or on c-span, i would very quickly want to introduce the four panelists speaking in the order they will speak and then i

will get out of the way and let them get started. our first speaker today will be michael adler, a public policy scholar at the woodrow wilson center, is a reporter. he covered the uprising in burma, the reconstruction of kuwait after the first gulf war, the war in bosnia and the movie in the german capital from bonn to berlin and covered the fall of mobutu. sigh ear. he covered the nuclear crisis from 2002 to 2007. and he has reported from tehran, geneva, berlin, new york, tripoli and other key cities on the iranian issue and currently writing a book on the diplomacy of the iranian nuclear crisis. our second speaker is barbara slavin who specializes on iran at "the atlantic council. as a public policy scholar at the woodrow wilson center for sol lars, she authored bitter friends, boss some enemies, iran, the u.s. and the twisted path to confrontation, assistant managing editor for world and

national security at the washington times. in 2008 and 2009. prior to that served for 12 years as senior diplomatic reporter for usa today where she covered such key issues as the u.s.-led war on terrorism in iraq, a policy toward rogue states and the arab israeli conflict, avoiding three secretaries of state on their officials travels and reported solo from iran, libya, israel, egypt, income, china, saudi arabia and syria, all the garden spots. our third speaker today is of ali nader, a senior international policy analyst at the rand corporation. his research has focused on iran's political dynamics, decision making and iranian foreign policy. ali raises publications include coping with a nuke rising iran, israel and iran, the next supreme leader, you can ses in the republic of iran, saudi relations since the fall of

saddam and many others. his commentaries have appeared in foreign policy.com, global security.org, international herald tribune, "new york times" and others and he is a frequent guest on television and radio. and the final speaker is my friend and colleague justin logan, the director of foreign policy studies here at cato. he's an expert on u.s. grand strategy, international releases theory and american important policy. his current research focuses on the shifting balance of power in asia and the formation of u.s. grand strategy under unipolarity. he's authored numerous policy studies and articles including on "uss-china policy, u.s.-russian policy, and policy approaches towards a nuclear iran. his articles have appeared in many policy journals including foreign policy and the national interest, orbis, foreign service journal and others and he also has appeared on many television and radio networks. with that i will get out of the way and introduce our first speaker, michael adler.

michael? >> good morning, and thank you all for coming here. >> would you please speak from the podium. thank you very much. >> oh really? okay. good morning. when i first was asked to the topic here today is can diplomacy work. when i was first asked to do this which was before the meeting of benjamin netanyahu and president obama in washington and they had asked meet to defend the concept of diplomacy could work, i thought this will would be a very thankless task. it is amazing how much things have changed over the past month in the month of march. and the first development was that the rush to war which seemed to be accelerating ground to a halt. not a screeching halt but a halt anyway, there's still some screeching about war when netanyahu met obama. and what happened there is that the president both gave a kind

of statement the united states would eventually use force if necessary but also said there still was time for diplomacy. and the israelis have reluctantly come aboard with that and the day after the meeting of -- just want to watch the time, the day after the meeting of the two leaders, catherine ashton, who is the foreign policy representative for the european union sent a letter to jalilli, the iranian negotiator on the nuclear issue to say that she had accepted talks which he had proposed earlier. now, these talks are between six nations, britain, china, france, germany, the united states and russia called the p 5 plus one and these are the five permanent security council members plus germany. and they are -- they have been negotiating with iran since about 2006. in a crisis that began in 2002

when it was revealed that iranhan been hiding nuclear works for some two decades. the talks had not gone very well. there have been several sign posts along the way, but not to go through the whole history, but what brings us up to what's happening now is that in october 2009, there was a meeting at which the two sides agreed to a fuel swap where iran would ship out most of the enriched uranium it had made in return for getting fuel for a research reactor in tehran which makes medical isotopes. and the idea behind that and the idea behind these talks in general is that it would be a confidence-building measure. iran would have shipped out most of its enriched uranium which makes them less able to break out to make a nuclear weapon. at the same time, they would have gotten a defacto recognition of continuing their enrichment and that would have set the is taken for serious talks. that deal fell apart.

then there were two meetings in geneva, in december of 2010 and in istanbul in january, 2011 at which the two sides tried to relaunch the process. this ended badly at a meeting in istanbul after the meeting in geneva where the two sides had free reinton express their opinions. they discussed the nuclear issue the iranians had brought out a range of other concerns about world peace and about the influence of capitalism in the world. the iranians came to the second meeting and instead of negotiating imposed two conditions which basically killed the process and they were that all the -- all the sanctions against them would be lifted and that they would have an unequivocal right to enriched uranium. so this prevented any kind of deal in istanbul. and after that, pretty much you had a growing march to war.

what can i say? there were concerns that israel was about to -- was about to take action in regards to iran's nuclear program as an existential threat. and that was what was stopped at the beginning of this month. and now we have the talks coming up again. so these talks with not taking place in a hopeless atmosphere where people are just going through the motions. these talks are actually a chance for a new start after there has been a step back from going to war. so i guess the question to ask is, what is the chance of success at these talks? i think that certainly the p5 plus 1 and certainly the united states are coming into these talks with low expectations. and the success of the talks will probably be if a second round is scheduled. the second round would occur fairly quickly because the idea would be to be start moving

ahead. but this is not the meeting at which there will be a dramatic break through. this is not the meeting at which there will be a fuel swap and a major confidence-building measure. so the main thrust of what's happening is just to start talking again. but once again, it is in an atmosphere of saying, we've stopped the rush to war. let's really see if diplomacy can work. in the past, there has been -- it's been very much a set piece at these talks. justin said to me that i should come up with a suggestion how things could be better. my suggestion which will never happen is that when they sit down and the talks are scheduled from mid-april, we don't know the where they're going to be. they're probably be somewhere in switzerland, that when they sit down, i think that the p 5 plus one should say you know something? let's not really get down to talks till the afternoon.

let's have some tea. let's talk to each other. how is your family? what are things like in tehran because the iranians like this sort of approach. the iranians want and informal kind of talk where everything's not laid on the table at once and above all where they're not presented with an ultimatum. and so i think the best thing that the united states could say to the iranians at this meeting is tell us how we can help you. we're in this together. let's try to work it out. i don't think that's going to happen. but i do think there is a real determination at least on the american side to make these talks work. so, there will be an effort to do things in a way where the iranians can feel that there's a forum for them to talk at. another way to measure the success of the talks is if there are bilateral talks between the united states and iran. iran very much wants to talk directly to the united states.

iran feels that the united states is the country which is going to deliver the goods. and the beginning of this process from 2003 to 2006, the europeans were doing most of the negotiating and the united states was not even present at the table. and diplomats told me that they always felt that the iranians were looking over their shoulders to see where were the americans to guarantee the kind of security guarantees, the kind of delivery of technology that would make a deal work. so i think a key sign of success at this meeting is if there's a bilateral talk between the iranian representative and between the american representative. and the talks assemble in geneva the last two talks, there were no bilaterals between the americans and the iranians. if we get through this first round, and if we get to a second round, which would happen fairly quickly, that's where the real difficult things begin because

you want to have a confidence-building measure. now, if this can't be a fuel swap, what would be a smaller sort of confidence-building pesh? it might it be something called adhering to the additional protocol where iran would agree to wider inspections of their nuke yash facilities. it might be iran agreeing to give early notification when it's constructing new facilities. right now iran will only disclose new facilities six months before they are going to introduce nuclear material. those, believe it or not are the small confidence-building steps. the larger confidence-building steps, excuse me. , would be iran enriches uranium right now to 3.5%, which is the level needed for a nuclear reactor. they also started to enrich to 20% because they didn't get fuel for their research reactor and 20% is very close to the above 90% you need to make a nuclear

weapon because you -- because it's an exponentialal curve. it's more air rith met tick. the first really significant confidence building measure is if they will stop enriching to 20% and ship out the 20% they've already made. this would really be a sign that we're in a process that means something. it is a sign the israelis are looking for where then it is a sign that diplomacy is serious. i want to wap up because i've been asked to. after this would come a larger fuel swap out where they would ship out much of their low enriched uranium. at that time, i think the p 5 plus one would begin to move to freezing sanctions. is the chances of that are low. but the bottom line is that there is hope of a serious process which was unforeseen two, three months ago and let's see how it develops. thank you very much.

>> there's a dial on the right. >> all right. good morning. thank you, cato, for inviting me. i basically want to endorse much of michael's analysis. i think that the race to war has been halted. i think president obama handled bb netanyahu brilliantly and he embraced him close and at the same time, he basically read him the riot act and said no, you are not going to start a war now and not before my re-election, at least my hope for re-election. if you look at the remarks that were made at the apec conference and when the two of them met and afterwards, i think this is rather clear. at the same time, we've seen some interesting signals from tehran. and perhaps ali will talk about that a little bit more as well,

but not exactly, well, i mean what passes for a charm offensive from tehran i guess is the best way to put it. right after the comments that obama made talking about decrying the loose talk of war and stressing that diplomacy was his preferred option for dealing with iranian nuclear program, ayatollah khomeini the supreme leader reiterated a 1995 fatwa in which he said that building nuclear weapons would be a "great sin." and he praised obama which is not something the supreme leader of iran often does for tamping down the threats of war. he said such remarks are good and indy indicate a step out of delusions. he also at the same time claimed that the economic sanctions that have been imposes on iran are having absolutely no effect. well, as we all know the sanctions are having a huge effect. i think this is another reen why we might actually have a diplomatic option in front of

us. for those of you who have r haven't been following it, these sanctions are unlike any that have been imposed on iran since the 1979 revolution. they're the most draconian i think that have been imposed on any government. if you look in terms of the u.n. sanctions combined with the american sanctions, european sanctions, iranian banks are basically excommunicated now from the international financial system. there are very few banks in iran that can do any kind of transactions. iran is resorting to barter increasingly. i would refer you to "the atlantic council website, acus.org where we have a number of papers that our task pors force has done and a couple that deal in particular with iran's reliance on china and on barter transactions. hard currency can't change hands, currency can't change hands. essentially iran is sending is oil to countries such as india, and china getting a credit and receiving back goods and

services from those countries. iranian oil production is going down i think in part because iran realizes it can't sell the oil that it wants and get the money that it wants. it's down to 3.3 million barrels a day. that's down from 3.8 million barrels a day just a few months ago, and 4.1 million barrels a day a year or so ago. this is truly hurting the iranian economy. the currency has dropped in value by about half against the dollar, inflation is up. unemployment is up. and there is a lot of discontent within the country. so the what are the other signals we're seeing from iran that it might actually want to deal with the united states and the rest of the p5 plus 1? the kinds of things that we follow like hawks if you're interested in iranian internal politics and foreign policy. on march 5th, the iranian supreme court ordered the retrial of a former u.s. marine an iranian american who had been

sentenced to death for supposedly spying for the cia. and march 13th the u.s. deported back to iran an iranian to iran iranian arms dealer who had been caught in a sting operation in the republican of georgia a few years earlier. and in this country, it was revealed that our treasury department has begun an investigation into the former governor of pennsylvania, ed rendell, and several others, for taking money to promote an organization called the iranian opposition group on the state department's terrorism list that's been trying to get off the terrorism list for years. and has been paying very, very well-known former u.s. officials great sums of money to advocate getting off the terrorism list. they have not gotten off the list. i think there was supposed to be a march 26th deadline for the state department to rule. that deadline is gone and i would predict there will be no

decision on this issue, certainly, before the nuclear talks. this is another signal to iran. iranian government hates this organization. it's believed to be responsible for assassinating five iranian scientists over the past few years, in cahoots with -- so the talks are april 13th. though there are still some -- april 14th, some question about the exact date and the exact venue. and i agree with michael's analysis. i don't think we're going to see any dramatic breakthrough. what we're looking for is to manage the situation. nobody is going to solve the iranian conundrum overnight. the idea is to cap the program in some way, reduce some limits, greater transparency that will contain the iz railies. i think the problem is to containi israel, not iran right now. not rushing toward a nuclear

weap weapon. it will help to contain the u.s. congress, which insists on passing more and more resolution that is would attempt to tie the hands of the obama administration in negotiating a solution. there is a resolution that would forbid containment. that was making its way through congress until rand paul stood up and said, no, this is a kind of backdoor authorization for war and we can't have it. it was remarkable, actually, that we have to rely on rand paul to prevent congress from passing ridiculous legislation, but there you have it. there are a number of good proposals that are out there to provide this kind of management of the nuclear issue. and michael has referred to some of them. most of them center around iran halting enrichment to 25%, pe l perilously close to weapons grade. if iran will stop or slow that, if iran will stop enriching at a facility called fordo, built

into the side of a mountain and very, very difficult for anyone to attack -- if it would slow that, stop putting in more centrifuges there, that would be a major step. katherine ashton, the eu foreign policy chief, says she wants a sustained process of dialogue going on. this was in her letter. the way it work ed is that ashtn first sent a letter to the iranians last october. it took iran until february to respond. and then finally in march, after the meeting between obama and netanyahu, ashton said yes, the p5 plus 1 would be willing to meet. she wants constructive dialogue, not a one-shot deal, not one two-day session in istanbul and nothing after that. so, we do have to see that there are more meetings scheduled and they begin to get into the nitty gritty of the nuclear program and not just talking about

principles, that iran is not just presenting its lit any of grievan grievances against the west, which it has done in the past. a couple of more things in iranian politics, which i think is useful. they were not what we would call free or fair, but the iranian government declared them a great success. it declared that 64% of the irani iranians had participated, which is undoubtedly an inflated figure. there's a joke going around that 80% of iranians sat home watching 70% of iranians vote on television. there's something there that's a little bit off. it allowed the supreme leader, i think, to consolidate his base. he has won his fight with the president of iran. in case you haven't noticed, he has been fighting with the supreme leader of iran for the past year. he reached out -- the supreme

leader reached out to another of his rivals, former president, and appointed him to another five-year term as head of something called the expediency council, a largely toothless group, but is supposed to mediate conflicts between various branches of the government. of course, he's a famous pragmatist and has reached out to the west. this is another signal that perhaps the supreme leader can be a little bit more flexible in these negotiations. the u.s. goal is to prevent iran from developing a nuclear weapon. i think this was also very useful during the netanyahu/obama talks. instead of talking about a nuclear weapons capability, which is what this senate resolution discusses and what thei israelis have been harping on for years, this is a nuclear

weapon, much easier in terms of preventing a conflict and much easier in terms of negotiations. it gives a lot of leeway for the iranians to maintain an enrichment program but not a nuclear weapons program. that definition will be key if we're going to be able to achieve some sort of success. there's a very good report that's out from the congressional research service just yesterday that talks about the fact that iran -- of course, we know that they've dispersed their nuclear facilities widely across the country, but also there are accounts that they have centrifuges and places to make centrifuges widely dispersed throughout the country, which means there is no military solution to the iranian nuclear program. you can bomb the known sites. you can kill a bunch more scientists, but you're not going to be able to destroy iran's ability to reconstitute its nuclear program. as many experts have suggested, bombing iran would be the one thing that would convince iran

that it absolutely has to have a nuclear weapons program in order to deter future attacks. so, i think we've seen some clarification and very useful clarification in terms of the goals of u.s. foreign policy in recent weeks. i personally think that if the united states and its allies fail in stopping iran to developing a nuclear weapon, containment is an excellent option. we've been containing iranians for 34 years and i think we can continue to do so. iran is more isolated now in the region. i don't know if we'll get into a discussion of its problems with its neighbors, certainly it's very, very worried about its situation in syria. it has lost its cache. it's narrative as being champion of the oppressed doesn't wash so well when it's oppressing its own people, putting down demonstrations after its 2009 elections and supporting the

regime in syria. i think we're in a relatively good place. the question, however, is whether the u.s. government will be able to come up with some creative ideas in what is, for us, an election year. and whether obama will have the courage as well as ayatollah will have the courage to compromise. i'll leave it there. [ applause ] >> good morning. thank you for inviting me to speak today. i've been asked to basically talk about why diplomacy may not work and what are the challenges. i want to commend people on expe experts, commentators, analysts who emphasize diplomacy with ir iran, because i don't think that a military strike against iran by the united states or israel would solve the iranian nuclear crisis. and i do believe that it would

be very counterproductive to u.s. interests and the middle east. as barbara mentioned, there are signs, positive indications that iran is open to compromise or engagement with the p5 plus 1. we just had parliamentary elections in iran. the supreme leader has consolidated power. president mahmoud ahmadinejad -- after that, one of the difficulties in engaging iran and reaching a negotiated settlement was the fact that there were so many players involved, often domestically opposed to each other. for example, ahmadinejad came upped attack of the left and the right of the iranian political system for trying to broker a