now more confident going forward. and he did praise president obama for discounting war and emphasizing diplomacy. he has kept a less ideological former president, hashmi as the council and his advisers has stated that iran is open to compromise, et cetera, et cetera. we can list a number of other positive indications. and the hope here is that sanctions will put enough pressure that he will back down. we know he's a reasonable man, rational man. he makes decisions on cost benefit calculations. we also have to look at what is it in -- what are his personal/political interests? what are his ideological

interests as iran's supreme leader? and, more importantly, what is his world view? how does he see the world, the united states, in the nuclear program? when you look at him, he really believes that the islamic republic is engaged in conflict with the united states. he believes that the united states has never accepted the revolution of 1979 and will never accept the revolution. he doesn't believe that the united states is just opposed to iran's specific policies on the nuclear program, for example. but he has stated that the united states opposes the very essence of the islamic republic. and i don't think this is going to change as long as he is alive. this is the way he thinks about the united states. he participated in the revolution. he was one of the revolutionary leaders. he helped overthrow the shah, and what he believes to be u.s.

domination over iran. his world view is very much based on his experience. the islamic republic, he may even believe is an important military deterrent against the united states, even if iran does not develop a nuclear weapon. the fact that it has a virtual capability, that it has the capability to assemble a nuclear weapon, if need be, i think, serves as a valuable deterrent for iran. and iran has seen the united states overthrow neighboring regimes, like the regime of saddam hussein and the taliban with relative ease. so decision makers know that in the future the united states may take military action against iran to overthrow the regime. circumstances for that right now are not very good. this is not the u.s. intention, but it's a possibility for the future. in addition, he really believes that the nuclear program is a sign of his regime's success.

he sees the nuclear program as a success for the revolution, despite the years of sanctions and isolations iran has faced. and the sanctions we talked about now are nothing in terms of them being strong. they're very draconian, as barbara said. but iran has been under sanctions for 30 years. and he believes that their progress on the nuclear program shows that its able to resist the united states. when you listen to how many spee speeches, this is a constant theme. he emphasizes iran's progress. last friday's speech was all about how iran is ranked number 11th in terms of scientific progress. this is what he claims, et cetera, et cetera. of course, hominy's viewpoint is not necessarily shared by all iranians. within the political elite, also

the leaders of the green movement, reformists may not see the nuclear program in a similar ideological and political terms. in fact, the isolation iran has faced, the sanctions hurts the socioeconomic agenda of pragmatic conservatives who want to liberalize iran's economy, open it up to the world and have political reforms. but this is not hominy's mindset. very much, compared to these other figures rs an isolationist and an ideological leader. it's not clear how the iranian public feels about the nuclear program. we hear that there is a sense of national pride. a lot of iranian support is the going aspect of the nuclear program. there's been a lot of polling done on the issue. we don't know for certain how iranians feel. i would argue that, yes, the regime has had some success in selling the nuclear program as a

matter of national right, that iranians think why should israel, pakistan, india, et cetera, the west have access to nuclear technology and why should we not? and some iranians probably would argue that iran should have nuclear weapons. so, the question remains, will he give into pressure? sanctions have undoubtedly hurt iran's economy. the iranian currency has really devalued it. prices have gone incredibly high. the average iranian is really suffering. the middle classes. some of the same people that support democracy and this is one of the unfortunate aspects of sanctions, that it does hurt certain objectives while it does help iran from disarming. there's no question that he is fundamentally rethinking iran's position on the nuclear program. he has admitted that sanctions

are painful, but there are signs that he's getting iran and its population ready for a long struggle with the united states. we'll have to -- when we look at ir iran, we have to remember that iran and the regime specifically have survived a lot. have survived the revolution, the long war with iraq, years of sancti sanctions, insurgencies. hominy has survived assassination attempts. he's not a man that could easily bend. and he has named this year -- i don't remember the specific name, but the year of national labor and promoting iranian domestic productivity. he really believes that in the face of sanctions that iran can become more self sufficient and that he points out to the nuclear program other scientific achievements for this. in addition, he, like his predecessor, the founder of the revolution, is not as open to

advice from the political system. hominy and he used to have dinner twice a week and that's not happening anymore. he's not giving him advice. instead hominy is relying on a very small inner circle of revolutionary guard officers and security people to give him advice. in a lot of ways, he's cut off from the world. he believes that the united states is in geopolitical decline, that the united states faces decline in the middle east because of what he terms the islamic awakening. what we call the arab spreading, the iranian regime calls islamic awakening. because of the overthrow of pro-american regimes in tunisia, egypt, yemen and instability in countries like bahrain, et cetera. he believes as iran stands strong in the face of sanctions

and that the u.s. will face prob. we could arlg he is delusional, that obama is exiting from delusions. we can argue that he is delusional. this is what we have in iran, viewpoint of a man making decisions for the entire iranian population. where does that leave the united states in terms of policy options? i believe the next panel will talk about these options. military option. not a lot of people will argue that even within israel there's a military solution. there's an attack against iran. the regime can crack down on opti option. there will be a greater swell of national pride. i don't think iranians will forgive the regime of its sins because of an attack.

but it could very well put the regime in a very favorable position, especially if the israelis do not manage to really damage iran's nuclear program very much. it also sets back the u.s. objective of democracy in iran and could lead to greater instability in the region. diplomacy is a solution. and barbara mentioned that the goal is really to manage the situation, to prevent an armed conflict. but in terms of diplomacy, if we're going to rely on diplomacy, this situation can go on and on and on and for the next several years. and, ultimately, there has to be a solution. not just to the r iranian nuclear program, but a solution to the islamic republic and our relations with the islamic republic. i would argue that as long as ayatollah hominy is in power, we will not solve our problems with

iran. is he not amenable with u.s. relationships and will do everything in his power to undermine relations in the region. the u.s. intelligence community assesses that there's no indication that hominy and the leaders have decided to weaponize the program. given the vulnerabilities that the regime faces at home, lack of legitimacy, the woeful situation in iran, regional influence, including trouble with his allies, like syria, this gives us opportunity to contain the islamic republic and hope for something better to emerge in the future. if you look at iran, i think iran -- more so than a lot of countries surrounding it, has the real potential for a democratic system. and ultimately only a democratic iran will be the exclusion to

the crisis. thank you. [ applause ] >> thanks very much. when we were drawing this up, i thought it would be difficult to make the case that there's some hope for diplomacy. i do agree that there's increasing hope but i'm going to do my best to pour cold water on that increasing hope. despite the fact that i'm very, very much a supporter of diplomacy, i think i would support a much more ambitious diplomatic approach than is likely to happen. but i'll explain some of the obstacles in terms of american domestic politics and in terms of sort of structural international reasons in the international system. i should also revealle i was doing work on iranian potential proliferation 2006 and 2007 but for the past year or so, i've

been working on the asia-pacific region. i'm actually heading to pivot back to the middle east as i think the administration is having to pivot back to the middle east. so i will defer on many recent development it is to my co-panelists. you have to say the good thing about u.s./iran or western iran diplomacies is that there are really good metaphors. closing windows, clocks running at different speeds. so, again, i want to reiterate, i favor diplomacy. i favor probably an unrealistically ambitious diplomatic approach. the very fact that that approach is unrealistic causes me to doubt whether or not we will get to where we want to go. as i mentioned, ali covered quite well some of the obstacles to a diplomatic resolution to

the problem. i want to focus on u.s. politics and impediments and suggest where we might go from here to prove me wrong. so, in terms of american domestic politics, the general idea i've been trying to get out into the public is that what might work can't happen and what might happen can't work. and i think that's a fairly glum assessment. i hope that i'm wrong about it, but that's what i believe at this point. as barbara mentioned, the congress' attitude has been let's add more pressure on top of the existing pressure and promise not to put any more pressure if concessions are made. in fact, it's even stopped that last part of not putting any more pressure. the central bank sanctions, for example, congress did not write an off-ramp for iran to say, oh, by the way, if you fulfill these 57 demands that we're making, we'll remove those sanctions. if iran and you're looking at

what congress is doing and saying, all right, what are the demands here that we can fulfill conceivably that would give us a way out of this, the congress has stopped, by and large, even gesturing at the idea of an offering. i think that's something of an indication of the role that congress intends to play. i'm pretty much partisan of congress as an institution, that they have really not covered themselves in glory, i think, with their participation in u.s. diplomacy toward iran. my read of what the congress is up to is that they want to appear very, very concerned to various interesting constituencies about the problem and that's about it. the one saving grace that we may have is that as an institution, they are cowardly enough to ignore the power granted to them in article i, section 8 of the constitution, which, indeed, gives them the power to declare war. we used to do that, declare war.

now we've reverted to hand waving and table pounding, which may be a good thing. congress often does bone-headed things to get its oar in the lake of the iran/u.s. diplomacy, but have not really provided hope or anything constructive, i think, to the diplomatic agenda that the administration is following. as for the obama administration itself, you have to give it credit. it put its neck out there on the campaign, saying that it was open to diplomacy. in 2009, gesturing in the direction of diplomacy. i perceive not too terribly much interest in spending gobs and gobs of political capital on getting diplomacy with iran up and running in a way that will be fruitful. i can't entirely blame them for that. it's not clear they have enough capital left to get things rolling in a fruitful direction. the goings on at the supreme

court, they have lots of domestic priorities on which they're spending political capital. i don't envy the position in which the obama administration finds itself. i think to echo what some of the other panelists have said, any diplomatic process that has the hope of producing long-term results would be, itself, a long-term, protracted process of meetings after meetings after meetings that would be easy to sort of demagog as the obama administration selling out to the islamic republic. the campaign commercials rather write themselves. that's a politically perilous thing for the administration to do. for a variety of reasons, i will defer to michael adler, gladly, on this and hope that he's right. i'm not sure theies rail israel as well received to president obama's message. again, i remain open to being persuaded that that's right. but i wonder if it is.

so moving on to sort of a structural international obstacles, i'm really indebted to remind me of the insight to one of the panelists on the second panel, who has a forthcoming paper where he mentions this topic. but to start with, the diad, as the political science kids call it -- the relationship between iran on the one hand and united states on the other hand -- is terrifically imbalanced in terms of political power. iran cannot conquer the united states. the united states, if it decided to, could conquer iran. would be a big mess. i don't support doing so. but in terms of material power, there's simply no comparing the two countries. so, given that, if you look at things from iran's perspective, any diplomatic deal would involve making lots of substantial security assurances to iran. if you do this, not only will we not -- not only will we do something on the one hand, but

we also agree not to do something in the future. so, the question becomes how could iran trust assurances provided by a country that has overwhelming power and, indeed, i believe is still a unipolar power in the u.s. system? how do you make credible assurances to a relatively weak state that, if it decided to, could reneg on those assurances at any point. it's not very well grasped, at least i don't see evidence that that's very well grasped by the administration or certainly by congress. it's just very difficult, no matter how genuine the intention, to credibly convey that to a country with which, coming from both sides, there have been poisonous relations for the past 30 odd years. this is a very important point to highlight. and president obama, in a recent interview with jeffrey goldberg of the atlantic pointed to cases where he thought diplomacy had

produced good results in terms of nuclear nonproliferation and pointed, of course, at south africa and then libya. if you look at the libya deal and say, well, we could get ourselves a libya deal here. what about that? it doesn't look like a very good deal. again, the united states could very easily reneg if there was a breakdown. if the united states decides it has had just about enough of a dick torial regime in tehran, cracking down on protesting civilians. i think to get our head around it is my sunday purch for a long-term diplomatic deal that works. i want to reiterate, in case someone cares to -- and quote me on the context. favor diplomacy, very robust

diplomatic approach to iran, but i'm afraid what might work can't happen and what can work nigmig not happen. when we win concessions of the security council to do another resolution sanction of iran and what have you, there's a sort of "or else" on the other side of that in terms of people that have signed on to the deal. we censor iran. and in our mind we have an "or else" statement at that end. i think the rest of the world doesn't really have an "or else" on the end of the security council resolutions or any other statements. we need to get our mind around that. if we decide there's an "or else," it will be us and a very small group, should it come to

that. it's conservatives to have particular views about the united nations tend to endorse the idea that the security council sanctions should bite in important ways. i think we would probably have to make large, probably prohibitively large concessions at the outset to get iranians to believe that we're serious about diplomacy. if you look at 1737, 1747, i think it's probably unlikely that iran is going to agree to suspend outright as those indicate. and i think we would probably have to do something in terms of the unilateral sanctions from washington or from europe in order to convince the iranians that we were serious. i also think that that's probably a political nonstarter. if you could get them to do something like stop enriching the 20%, i would be willing to walk back some of the things we're doing. nost just promise not to do anything in addition, but indeed to walk back some of the things

we're already doing to convince them that we were serious. it would be a political nightmare. or one other thing we could do, particularly if they agree to stop enhancing the fordo facility, that would be terrific. i would take that as a sign that we would -- we should be willing to walk back some of the things that we're already doing. this is not a mainstream point of view. i've not heard from the administration or from the congress, and i think it would be a political nightmare. but there again, i think you see the domestic political influences constraining our ability to operate internationally. the net take away is that if you really want diplomacy to work and if you really think that a military option is a terrible idea, you'll have to really bite the bullet, so to speak, and do some things that you would really rather not do in order to get the train rolling in the first place. in the second place, realize that this is going to be a long,

agonizing process that's going to have lots of set backs and may not, in the end, work. i hope that we get that far, but i fear that we will not. so i think i'll just leave it there and turn the podium back to chris to field questions. thank you very much. >> thank you all very much. we left a lot of time for q and a. maybe before i open it up to the audience, do any of you wish to respond to anything that was said by the other panels? all right. very good. with that, i will throw it open to questions. we have a rule here. the rules in the new auditorium are the same rules in the old auditorium. when you ask a question, wait for the microphone so everyone can hear you. including those online.

state your name and frame your question in form of a question. this is a jeopardy rule. and no speeches, please. who is first? hands, right there. >> i'm with peace action. you were talking a lot about -- or people mentioned the sanctions. and that that's hurting the people of iran. but no one really talked about whether sanctions even work. and i recently read a report that they don't, that there was some study that was done that showed it, that they have never worked. so, my question on that is, why are we pursuing the policy that doesn't work, that's very harmful, that would be perceived as bullying, i would think, by the people of iran. and we're talking about confidence-building measures. that doesn't seem to me to be a

confidence-building measure. >> okay. thank you. so, the question is, sanctions don't have a terrific track record. what is different about these sanctions, if anything? i think all four of you might -- barbara, first? >> they do work in some cases. we have the south africa example where sanctions did help get rid of the apartheid regime and that's usually referred to. we have sanctions because it's a substitute for war and substitute for diplomacy. people don't want to declare war in this country. i mean, even the congress, even some of the more gung-ho neo conservatives don't want to declare war. and so what do you have? you have sanctions. they've taken on a momentum of their own. this started under the george w. bush administration. our treasury department has become one of the most creative

parts of the u.s. government in terms of devising ever more clever ways to destroy the iranian economy. i was at a session with ehud olmert where he basically bragged that when he was prime minister in his talks with the u.s. treasury department, they had already come up with the idea of excpeling iran from what's called the swift, which enables countries to do trance alcohols with foreign banks. and he says this was already an idea they were talking about four years ago. so, we're good at it. we're good at sanctions. we're obviously not good at diplomacy and we don't want to go to war. >> anyone else? mike? >> sure. i think, in a sense, we are losing a state of confidence with iran, taking place in convert operations inside iran and short of every sanction

short of war. the purpose of sanction sincere basically to get iran to talk. so, you can see the talks coming up as one way in which sanctions have succeeded, because the question with sanctions is they certainly are causing problems for iran. but the many main question is, are they sufficient to get iran to strike a deal with us on the nuclear program? so, i think the jury is still out on how this policy ends. and, once again, the fact that we're having these talks, which justin referred to the difficulty of getting forward and getting real concessions. i think that the way -- at least the west is approaching it, they want to start very slow. and there are actually two plans out there for the diplomacy. one is called the russian plan. the other is the american plan. interestingly enough, the first

step in the russian plan is that the united states would give security guarantees to iran and, in return, there would be freezing of sanctions. news bulletin, that's not going to happen. i remember back in 2004, 2005, when this whole thing started. i got what's called a nonpaper. that's a diplomatic brief on how to go forward. europeans had prepared it. one chapter was security guarantees. and once the americans got ahold of it, that chapter disappeared. but that is not to say that there couldn't be security guarantees at the end of the process. and in terms of it being a political nightmare, going on what you said, this whole thing is a nightmare. we're in a situation that, in a sense, is not going to end well. somebody is going to be unhappy. it's going to end in tears, one way or another. but i think despite the elections, despite everything going on, if we can get a start to this process, you have the situation in iran where --

barbara spoke about it. after the parliamentary elections, there's a possibility for consensus in iran. this is a very polyanna-issue view, by the way. if kholmeni has rendered ahmadinejad a lame duck through these elections and saying, look, we are really having trouble doing business. can't we do something to get out of this? there might be a way in which the iranians would decide that if they can get a face-saving solution where they get to keep some enrichment, where they can go forward with what they say is only a civilian program, that that would be a way where they might want to strike a deal or it might be in their interest. this is a best-case scenario. in that situation, you would move very quickly to the sort of things i was talking about,