>> frankly, the president, ahmadinejad himself, has been extrord i recall marginalized. he was had a fight with the see preem leader, has he lost decisively. i think the os of the president himself has been weakened and the supreme leaders try to put the presidency back in the box. you don't get to run for president unless the supreme leader agrees that you're okay. so i guess he thought mousavi was fine but not so much. it could complicate diplomacy for all the reasons politics and a heated political moment complicates diplomacy. it allows the sides to play

politics instead of actually settling it. it's happening already in our country. i don't know why we expect it not to have an effect in iran as it goes through election ps. >> dr. kron anything? >> i agree with peter on that. >> yes, sir. >> i have a ten-secretary comment. negotiating with iran is a little bit like doing the hokie pokey. they're entering their second year. there's a that have been involved. my question is dr. kahl said one of your points was that in 60 years there have only been nine countries that violated -- we've only gone nuclear, nine countries have gone nuclear. we have not only the three mentions thatty of you have mentioned, saudi arabia, but also nigeria, bahrain, have all

announced military programs. pakistan is building two more heavy water processing plants, a second chemical processing plant. the nine countries within the context of the u.s.-soviet competition now are within the context of the middle east and the sunni/shi'a ferocity. my question is doesn't that change the likelihood of more countries getting nukes? >> it could. we have to be very careful. one of the countries you mentioned was the uae. we should hope every country develops their nuclear program the way the uae has. they've given up the right to domestic enrichment. there's no responsibility for proliferation as long as it sticks to that agreement. a lot of countries have nuclear programs. it's allowed under the npt. in, change for not building weapons, you're allowed a

nuclear program. as long as the treaty is the way it, is you're going to have actives engaged in nuclear hedging we've seen countries doing the hokie pokey of moving forward and not move back but not always go the same way. and we're not helpless to things about it. in the event iran fully consummated its nur clear guarantees and sanctions. there are not a lot of countries on earth that would like to go through what iran went through. i don't know that any that you listed are willing to be the

states so i think there a lot of can options to address the concerns you raise. >> one of the reasons he's more optimist sick he says we've never seen it historically. i disagree with that. we could see japan, taiwan, india, pakistan, other countries develop nuclear weapons. some of those countries did develop nuclear weapons, endian, pakistan and other countries didn't. so think we're likely to same the same thing in the proliferation and us. and colin said one of of the things that we can do to tamp down the proliferation in the region is to provide security to those countries. that's a pretty big increase in u.s. military and commitments to the region. what colin is talking about with

signs formal defense packs opinion maybe with neutrals. would rereally be willing to trade new york for riyadh in nuclear war? it's an incredible threat. we'd probably have to station u.s. troops on the soil, to make sure we get dragged out to any conflict. there are serious costs with those as well. >> farmer state department. ironically you brought up a point i wanted to actually ask about with the disclaimer analogies are very, very dangerous. why is there not more focus on the idea of a very limited

coalition? i'm not talking about a whole national security guarantee or a mini nato. but one thing is a lot of those countries in the middle east, even saudi arabia, really doesn't want to spend its money on nuclear capabilities. they want to be able to assure their people that they're protected. my colleague has sort of tossed out an idea that seems to make a lot of sense and that is that we should look at starting to build a coalition but again disclaimer about analogies to others, with saudi arabia, with turkey, with the gulf states and a number in the region that attack against any -- or one is an attack against any. and it has a number of elegant elements to it and obviously one is the long-term arab-persian

conflicts, shi'a, sunnis, there are a lot of reasons far beyond the united states and israel for the rest of the middle east to want to wall off without having to be able to compete with iran or totally cozy up to the united states. so i guess my question to you all is why is not more being done on this? this has to be done on a longer term and it doesn't have to be a big coalition that requires treaties and these kind of things. but i think it would really get the iranians' attention and is no one doing anything on this? and if not, why not? >> dr. kroenig? >> you know, it's a good question. i think there is a lot -- i think part of the problem is we have these three different paths and we not, in my view, properly planning for any of them. it's not clear to me what our strategy is going into these negotiations what we're willing to accept, what we're willing to offer the iranians.

if we are serious about military action, i think there are things we could be doing that we're not, i talked about building a coalition. and on the detaining side. it's not clear that's going on. part of the reason might be that it's difficult to plan for a nuke claire armed iran. i think that developing those kind of pro potion aposals are developing outside of think tanks and other places. it's difficult for the administration to do that i think for political reasons. >> i wouldn't even say political. diplomatic. the problem is the minute that you signal that your intensive planning on a containment architecture inside the pentagon for a nuclear armed iran, you signal to the israeli they better strike now. i'm not saying that's

berezinski's view -- >> the coalition of if you attack one of us, you attack all of us. that's not the same thing. >> in the after math of iran getting a nuclear weapon, it's a form of extended deterrence. i haven't read all the details of dr. brezinskis proposal. i would be very cautious about having a limited club that left a lot of states out because you would signal it's not okay to attack turkey or assad saw but because iran's not on the list, that's fine. we have a history of accidentally leaving countries out of security emumbrellas and then getting invaded. i don't think that a formal treaty is what's necessary. i think could you have a declaratory policy that the middle east and the gulf in particular and israel are in the fundamental national interests of the united states, it's not

news to anybody, that we will resist any effort by outside powers to change borders or attack others with any means, up to and including nuclear weapons. we already have enough trip wires in the region. we have 40,000 u.s. troops in the region. we have 8 hub forces in saudi arabia that conduct training and others. we have -- if there's a war in the gulf, we're in it already. you don't need to deploy additional forces. we may need to edit our nuclear posture but there will at least be a period of time where iran doesn't have ibms. it will be a long time before they can hold the u.s. at risk but we'll be able to hold run at risk forever. so i think our ability to deter

iran is a little higher than people presume and i don't think will will take a lot of shifts in the posture we have. i think countries like saudi arabia and turkey and the others wouldn't necessarily want to be part of a formal arrangement. it's not really their style. i suspect they'd be more comfortable when this posture. >> i had two quick questions. first i was wondering if you think the campaign of we love you, we will never bomb you that's going around in israel, do you think that could change the course of international relations between israel and iran? and if war were to come, what do you think would be the role of arab supreme countries given the fact that a lot of them are led now by factions that aren't

exactly pro-israel or keen with regard to israel. >> thank you. >> so, you know, i think these movements in israel are important, although i would say that there are are similar mu s movements on the palestinian issue so i think we have to be cautious about too much optimism. the polling in israel is a little complicated. the israeli public is clearly divided about whether israeli military action is a good idea or not. it becomes more complicated if you ask the question would you support israeli unilateral military action and there they would not support it. there i think they're out of step where benjamin netanyahu and mahmoud barak has said.

i think we need to be care about israeli or american action in the current context because of regional dynamics. for one thing it would allow iran to play the victim and through it's retaliation against us or israel resuss stated street cred, something that's suffered in the arab spring, a populist object nationalist phenomenon. as a consequence iran's appeal in the region is in the toilet nowoned an appeal would allow them to start to pull up from that dissent. i also think it would allow islamists who don't like the iranians to nevertheless use a strike against the country to demonize the israeli, and so as populism takes hold, we have to worry about the arab street and their reaction. a lot of people will say in palaces and riyadh and abu dhabi

they'll be clapping new cut off the head off a snake they'll be clapping. that may be true. about in other places, they may not be clapping. >> so that should be all right for israel to be the victim rather than iran to be the victim for the government to convince the american people that we can't go to war? >> i don't know what it means for israel to be the victim in this equation. we don't want to wait until israel gets attacked by iran for that to happen. the way i would cast it is that's all the more reason you stick with a diplomatic route for as long as it's viable because you want the onus to be on iran to be the one who walked away from that process and clearly seen as rejecting a genuine offer to have a peaceful solution. if they did that, then iran's ability to play the victim and

play to international public opinion would be undermined. >> all right. we've come to the point where it time for our closing statements. >> i'll be brief. you know, i'm really pleased that we are having this discussion. i wrote an article in foreign affairs in the january/february issue laying out the case for the military option on iran and i took a lot of heat for it. but part of the reason i wanted to right the article is i was frustrated this fall by what i saw as a lack of a serious debate on what i thought was the most important national security issue facing the country. i felt like iran was steadily marching towards a nuclear weapons capability and a lot of people had their head in the sand, putting all their eggs in the sanction and diplomacy basket. as i said before, i'd be delighted if we could solve this

through diplomacy efforts but i don't think we can. i was afraid that we were going to end up in a situation where we woke up one morning and iran had nuclear weapons situation that i think would be very threatening to u.s. national security without having had this discussion. so i'm delighted simply to have the discussion. colin pointed out there are risk to a strike. i agree with that. colin pointed out that we have some time for diplomacy. i agree with that. i think we have less time than colin thinks. i think the risks of a strike are less great than colin does. but given the grave threat of a nuclear armed iran, nothing colin said tonight has -- leads me to back away from my conclusion that if we're faced with this difficult choice, a strike is the least bad option. >> thank you. >> you know, i think actually the tone of -- and the assumptions that one brings into this issue are really important.

and i think ultimately matt and i have now done this like four or five times. it's like barnum and bailey. we go from city to city doing this thing. the problem i ultimately have, my discomfort comes from the fact that on the one hand i'mer in -- i'm nervous about adopting worst case assumptions. i think it's really bad -- not as bad as some argue but nevertheless we have to be cautious about worst case assumption. why? because in the leadup to the war in iraq in between twooe, a war that cost 4,500 americans theirless, 33,000 wounded, more than 100,000 iraqi dead, millions of refugee, $1 trillion and growing. we adopted worst case assumptions about a phantom. we have to be careful not to do that again. we have to be careful about

having worst case assumptions about the prospects of diplomacy. we can talk ourselves into saying that's it, that meeting didn't go well, that's it, it's time for military action. i don't think that matt is saying that but i think a lot of people who pick up on matt's argument and we'll them about in town and others on talk shows do make that argument, they're looking, waiting for any sign that sanctions or diplomacy have failed not because they want them to succeed but because they want war. we have to be careful about that. lastly we have to be very careful about adopting best case assumptions about how the world will go and what the aftermath will be like. all we know about war -- i've been involved in pentagon stuff for a long time now. they're all klee share in the pentagon that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. the world will not go according to the way matt proposed, it won't go the way i said it will.

it will go in some uncertain trajectory. but in a region that is extraordinarily unstable, where there's already extraordinary uncertainty in a global economy that's just now pulling out of the great recession, it's time to be cautious and to not fall prey to best case assumptions about how easily the war will go, how much time it will buy, how easy it will be to bottle of iran in the after math. reject the worst case assumptions, be equally skeptical about the best case assumptions as it relates to war. the good news is i'm not as pessimistic about diplomacy at the end of the day i think as matt is. i don't think there's going to be a breakthrough in the coming months but the iranians are really hurting. the regime is hurting. the supreme leader has made certain moves inside his government to give some freedom of action to dial back the tension. next year or two or so

to reach a final resolution to this issue. ooh think in this point i would agree with president obama. there is no military next short of invasion and occupation that creates a permanent solution to this problem, only a diplomatic outcome creates an enduring solution. we should give every opportunity before rushing into war. >> let's thank our guests tonights. thank you so much. and thank you for joining us. you guys are brilliant.

coming up in 40 minute on our companion network c-span a discussion on the peace process in afghanistan. among the speakers, stephen hadley and a former afghan ambassador, live on c-span 10:30 eastern. tonight on c-span3, american history tv will look at the mexican american war which gave the u.s. undisputed control of texas, california, nevada, utah, and parts of other states. that's at 8:00. eastern on c-span3. >> martin luther king is a man

of all the people that i've met and talked with and spent time with over the years, is a man that i most -- the american individual that i admire most of all of all of them. he is my personal hero. why? because martin luther king put his money where his mouth was. >> his career spanned over 60 years. cbs' mike wallace died this past weekend at age 93. watch any of his almost 50 appearances in the c-span video library, including his interviews with i reasonian preside presidents rafsanjani and ahmadinejad. every c-span program since 1987. >> the feminist majority foundation hosted a forum on 2012 elections.

one measure, dealing with abortion, reproductive rights and other women's issues. >> this next forum is called coming to a state near you. roundup of ballot initiatives and voter suppression efforts. you've heard a little bit today already about some of these so-called personhood initiatives that are going to be on state ballots. we have some of the leading experts to tell you a little bit more about where those are happening and the impact that those can have. you're also going to hear about the drive for equal marriage, both in states where we're expecting anti-equal marriage initiatives to be put on the ballot as well as literal will a couple of states where we're putting our initiatives on the ballot, to win back equal marriage. and then you're also going to hear about the ongoing fight for

workers' rights, some very critical elections in this country revolve around winning back the rights that have been so terribly compromised under these extreme, conservative state legislatures and governors that came out of the 2010 elections, we're never going to let that happen again. so i'm going to now introduce the moderator for this next panel, duvergne gaines the coordinator of our choices campus leadership program, also an attorney who works with our national clinic violence project to stop the anti-abortion extremists attacks on clinics all across the country. so please welcome duvergne gaines and hold your questions until the end. we'll have time for more q&a. >> thank you, kathy. hello, welcome. on to the next session.

thank you for sticking it out with us. yes, we are indeed right now talking about ballot measures and stopping the war on women and what's on deck in 2012 with respect to these measures. ballot measures present an interesting opportunity for us. they're used by our opponents to create division and we capitalize upon that to unite our movement and fight back and win. there's a lot going on. we have a distinguished panel here to talk about anti-union initiatives, anti-choice and personhood initiatives. i'm going to briefly speak about voter identification measures and amendments that have been passed, in addition to anti-marriage equality and anti-lgbt initiatives across the country.

we are -- it's been an interesting last two years with respect to voter identification, which is i think a good way to perhaps kick off this plenary session. last fall i was in mississippi working side by side with megan darby and planned parenthood and the aclu. we, the feminist majority foundation, were very active on college campuses throughout the state working to defeat initiative 26. that was the personhood initiative that made it to the ballot in mississippi. yes, that was a huge victory. and i don't want to steal megan's thunder, because actually i will boast a little bit about what happened in that particular battle and the incredible effort that planned parenthood and the aclu and other groups, especially planned parenthood, put into that victory coupled with our work on the college campuses. we were 31 points behind two months out before the election. 31 points. we literally, i know planned parenthood put up offices, campaign offices overnight.

i mean, threw them up. it was literally astonishing. and the incredible grassroots movement that took place in that state, i think it was something like, oh, thousands and thousands of phone calls that were made. over 412,000 phone calls made within a four-week period, 20,000 doors were knocked on. mississippians said, no, we're not stupid. we know this is misogynist and are not going to change our constitution with this crazy personhood initiative and we defeated the measure by ten points in the end. i'd like a little round of applause there. thank you. it was a tremendous effort. but, unfortunately, we lost when it came to voter identification measure. but unfortunately, we lost when it came to voter identification measure that was on the same ballot. and voter identification measures are out to disenfranchise millions of americans. and we saw a massive

proliferation in 2011 of voter identification measures nationwide. i think over 34 measures were introduced across in state legislatures across the country in 2011. and there's at least 32 that have been introduced in 2011. and many of them have passed. and it's interesting that states like texas it's passed, wisconsin, south carolina and many of these states are subject to preclearance under the voting rights act, because of bad behavior in the past in terms of discrimination. so they're actually subject to preclearance by the u.s. department of justice. and guess what? they're not getting it, because we know that these are racist, sexist laws. they're designed to disenfranchise voters. how are they designed to disenfranchise voters? if you're required to get a state-issued voter identification, like a driver's license, if you're elderly, if you're over 75,

most individuals do not have photo identification anymore. especially driver's licenses. if you are a student, you won't have the same address as your voter identification, as your driver's license because you're moving constantly from one year to the next, a new dorm, out of state. in addition, if you are a person of color, many places we're seeing what i would call polling location racial profiling. you're only asked for identification if you're a person of color. so it's sort of a selective bias and disenfranchisement that way. not to mention the fact, what we see in certain areas, there are people of color who are less likely to have photo identification -- photo ids compared to their white counterparts. or disabled individuals, individuals who can't go down to the dmv at the drop of a hat to get the new strict photo i.d. that is now required in their state.