doesn't necessarily create a linear response by the iranians. it's only across a certain threshold of pain where they're likely to cry uncle. what we'll have to see in the coming months is whether that threshold has been reached. i think matt's right that the iranian regime strongly wants to pursue a nuclear weapons capability. that is, get to the point at which they have the option of developing nuclear weapons for the reasons that matt suggests. but they have to be conscious of the fact that at a certain point, sanctions could be so severe it generates domestic unrest or that it brings about a military strike. that's why they might dial back their nuclear program to avoid the threats to the regime that emanate from the sanctions and the possibility of military action. so we're about to see whether the costs are sufficient to strange their strategic calculus. we're not likely to see a break-through in the coming months but disagree on whether or not we might be able to get a confidenceable measure. ahmadinejad agreed with the

capping at 5% last fall. it's something that the iranians might be willing to do. that's important because the one-month scenario that matt suggests presumes that they have a bomb's worth of 20% low enriched uranium sitting around which they may get by the end of this year. if you get a deal on 20% uranium, you stop that particular concern. the last point i would make is that the united states has enough military forces postured in the region to go to war with iran within days. okay? it doesn't take months of warning to be able to do this. we still have time to see whether we can get a diplomatic solution or at least start to build progress toward that. and the problem with doing what matt suggests is trying to start to build a coalition for military action is that if you convince the zwrooem they're going to basically be attacked no matter what they do, it could have a perverse incentive on their willingness to engage in some compromise, not largely because of a threat but because

it creates a domestic environment in which it's difficult for the regime to save face by backing down. >> one of the issues that iran has for a long time thought is that the west is simply only about regime change. isn't this something that would just play into that? i should ask you since you're arguing that military strike is something that should be considered and time is running out for anything else to work. doesn't that just send a signal that yeah, the west is only interested in regime change? >> well, i think if we end up going the military route, that that's -- it's something we should be concerned about. iran, one of the concerns of a military action would be what iran could do in response militarily. i think it's important to point out iran doesn't have a powerful conventional military. that's not really a response option. it has been investing in a symmetric capabilities. it has ties to terrorist groups and has ballistic missiles and

could cause a problem in the persian gulf. those would be the options. i do think in the event of a strike if they think the regime is at risk that they have nothing left to lose, that they koes exercise some of these more extreme retaliatory options including possibly trying to close the strait of hormuz. it's important if we decide to use military force we are very clooer in our public statements and private messaging and our targeting we're only interested in a limited strike against the key nuclear facilities, not after coming after the regime. i think iran can get that message. we have a number of ways of communicating with them. and i think that we can also play on iran's fierce. put yourself in the shoes of the supreme leader. your primary goal is for the regime to have continue to exist. if you wake up one morning and your key facilities are destroyed but your regime and military is intact, how are you going to responded? i don't think your response is going to be to pick a fight with

the greatest superpower on earth the one country that could cause a war that would lead to the destruction of your regime. rather you're going to aim for a calibrated response. wik play on iran's fierce by making it very clear if they close the strait of hormuz and conduct terrorist attacks in the united states, that united states would be willing to escalate and respond with a more devastating use of force but if they're willing to just retaliate in kind of a token way, that we would be willing to accept that and deescalate the crisis. that would be a good trade to strayed iran's nuclear facilities the major emerging national security threat to the country for a token iranian retaliation. >> fib me for being a bit of a skeptic but if this all sounds great on paper but as we've found out over the course of the past ten years what happens in is an actual ground war and an actual on the actual battlefield

can be very different than what is supposed to ideally happen on paper. how do you -- how do you sell the american public on this kind of -- this kind of military strike in a country that has for lack of a better term, war fatigue? >> well, that's a good question. first, i'm not sure that it would be that hard to sell to the american public. public opinion polls if you ask the american people who is the greatest threat to the united states, iran is by far the number one response. if you ask how do you want to resolve the iranian nuclear issue, by far the largest response is diplomacy. but if you ask would you be willing to support the president if he decided to use military force against iran's nuclear program, you get a vast majority who say they would support that. py think if the president decided this is what he wanted to do, the people would support it. you alluded to iraq and haven't we learned our lesson

essentially, not to put words in your mouth. many people draw the comparison to iraq and i understand it, but i think it's misleading to do so. there was a great book written by professor at oxford university called analogies at war and he said when it comes to foreign policy, people often reason by analogy, what's the lesson of vietnam and iraq. he argued it was a mistake to do so because people miss the underlying details that rl matter. what i'm talking about with iran is very different from what happened in iraq. iran is much closer to having nuclear weapons than saddam hussein. we know that because there are inspectors visiting the facilities every two weeks writing detailed reports every three months. and second the reason iraq was so expensive and in terms of blood and treasure was because we put 100,000 troops on the ground and stayed for ten years. nobody is talking about that kind of conflict with iran. i'm talking about a limited strike against iran's key nuclear facilities, we're

talking about six facilities and the air defenses we would need to take out in order to get there. so this is a campaign that could be over in days or weeks, this isn't a ten year a ground war. >> is this realistic? >> matt's write i don't think the prospect of a large scale u.s. invasion of iran is on the table. it's a mountainmannious region of 70 million. there's no appetite for that and none of the prospective strike options presume that, although general cartwright who hoss cartwrig cartwright, testified about two years ago that the only way you would permanent lit end iran's military program through military action would be to invade and occupy iran. short of that all you do is delay. that's actually where i think the iraq analogies historically matter the most. the first iraq war related to its wmd program was not in 2003, it was in 1981 when the israelis struck the nuclear facility. it didn't stop the program. it just droevt program

underground. when inspectors arrived after our war with iraq they realized saddam was a lot closer to getting a weapon because he had an infrastructure nobody knew about spurred on by the strike in 1981. not only did we have the 1981 gulf war but 1 years of containment, isolation, sanctions intrusive inspections followed by a ground ipvation in 2003 and regime change. so the lesson of iraq is you might be able to start this with a surgical strike. but that's not where it's going to end. and if we're going to contemplate military action in iran we have to be open to the possibility that this just be the opening salvo of a decades-long campaign of military action and containment against iran. so if you're going to go down that path, you should do it with your eyes wide open to the enormous costs. now obviously you have to wega the costs of doing that versus doing nothing but the costs are substantial. not just of the strike itself but also of doing this.

the other point i would make is that look, matt admits if the regime thought we were coming after them in a strike, that the regime would lash out. the regime already thinks we're coming after them. they already blame computer viruss and assassinated scientists and mysterious explosions on a regime change effort by some combination of the united states and israel. whether that's true or not, they already seen even minor actions as about regime change. if you hit the crown jewel of the regime, their nuclear program they have banked an enormous of domestic leth sill on, they will see this as an oping show the in a regime change campaign and likely to respond in the kind of fashion that one would find if we were going after regime change. the last point i will make is, we can send all these signals, but once americans start dying in iraq or afghanistan or elsewhere at the hands of iranian prox is or once the iranians start threatening shipping it in the strait of hormuz, there are a lot of

scenarios for us being drawn deeper into a conflict. we need to again have our eyes wide open that he war is not a neat calibrated thing where you poof your pieces around on a chess board and contemplate every moore and counter move. there's a lot of friction and fog especially between two countries that don't like each other and have no means of communication that are reliable and timely. the prospects for miscalculation and escalation are a lot higher than people think. >> do you want to respond or can i move on? i want to move to the strait of hormuz and the threat that iran has put out there that if the u.s. or fur israel launches a military strike that it would shut down the strait of hormuz. does iran have the ability to do that, or is that just a threat and then it uses some asymmetrical type of warfare to just make oil prices escalate because everybody's afraid that ships going through there might be attacked?

>> so, you know, there was a 1987 document by the cia that's been declassified that said said at the height of the war, the iranians had the capability of closing the strait for about two weeks. things like mines, anti-ship cruise missiles, fast attack crafts, marines those types of things, their capabilities are much greater than they were in the 1980s. os tenably they probably have the ability to close it for a longer period of time than that. that said, think they will be be very careful not to try to do that but are likely to threaten it. they're likely to threaten it because they want to bring international pressure to bear on whoever the combatants are that attack them to deescalate. they'll make threats in the strait of hormuz but at the same time, they're going to start to do things for defensive purposes that will be very difficult for to us interpret in the context of those threats. there's start dispersing their missiles and fast attack craft.

start dispersing their mines out of storage facilities. they're going to activate their air defense network along the coast. they're going to do all these things as soon as they're attacked purely for defensive reasons. but in the context of the tensions in the aftermath of a strike and threats to close the strait, the military will see all of these moves as extras narrowly threatening and have an incentive to destroy those capabilities. do i know they're going to do that? i don't know they're going to do that. the prospect of miscalculation in that scenario is very very high even if you will presume the iranians don't intend to close the strait. >> i would just continue colin's line of thought. if iran tried to close the strait of hormuz, the united states would reopen it. that would mean essentially destroying iran's navy in weeks and that's part of the reason why they would be unlikely to do it. i think they would threaten it but unlikely they would go

through unless they thought it was a final showdown and they had nothing to lose. >> but they've threatened this. is that something that we should really worry about given the economic situation in this country already with almost $5 a gallop gas? that just even the threat, that's what i'm getting at. even if they don't really close it, assuming we can bat back whatever they throw our way and i'm assuming israel would be working with us to bat back whatever iran throws our way but just that anxiety that would be produced. is that something that this country and the rest of the world can handle given the economics of the global market right now? >> yeah, i mean, just taking a step back, something that's important to understand is i laid out three options at the beginning and they're all bad options. so if anyone's in a position of defending the options they're on the spot.

the military option is a bad one. when you're comparing these options you need to pair them to each other. you're absolutely right a u.s. strike on iran's nuclear facilities would lead to a spike in oil prices. traders would bid up the price of oil. no matter what we do, we're going to have higher oil prices. we're already seeing the sanctions and the oil embargo is driving up the price of oil. the conflict died down quickly, the price of oil would likely return to the precrisis levels. and a nuclear armed iran would likely lead to spikes in oil prices. in that world, oil traders would have to factor in a huge risk premium. you're dealing with the middle east in which iran is more aggressive, and each of these crises in a future middle east could result in a nuclear war in the gulf. if we think about these threats to close the strait, right now the u.s. united states can

confidently say we'll reopen it. if iran has nuclear weapons, it's much more complicated. would we be willing to risk nuclear war to open the strait of hormuz? maybe, maybe not. a nuclear armed iran i think would lead to a long-term risk premium being built into oil prices that be could in place as long as iran had nuclear weapons. a lot of these other national security interests we're in a bad situation regardless of the way we go >> look, i think that -- the best outcome is clearly a diplomatic outcome here. there is a lot of anxiety causing oil price tosses tick up. but a military strike on iran, i don't model this tough, i'm not an economist or a trader, not traitor, i'm neither one actually. but you know, the folks i've talked to said a strike could easily push gas prices to between $5 and $6 a gallon in

the near term. the question would be, if the markets became anxious that the war would continue to escalate or drag on, then this isn't a short-term blip, a two to three-week thing. this is something that goes tick, tick, tick and keeps going up. if the you could see this happening over many, many months and there you start to see the possibility of slippage back into recession here in the united states, in europe, which is even more vulnerable to these types of effects than we are. so the market is incredibly tight in part because iranian oil is being taken off the market from sanctions and because the saudis apparently have limited capacity to significant lit increase production. we have a vijayic petroleum reserve but that can't be used for an indeft flat crisis only a short time. i think the economic consequences are substantial which is a reason why we should give diplomacy more time to operate rather than less. >> i want to go back to something that you mentioned earlier on. and you mentioned the worry

about miscalculation and the potential for this to be a broader conflict, that it wouldn't just stop with a surgical strike on iran. what's the likelihood of that spreading? there are a lot of expert who's don't think that that's actually something that would happen, that it would just be limited to the u.s., israel and iran that others would not be brought in. >> well, i'm laughing because not so limited. if it's the u.s. israel and iran, if israel gets dragged in, this is a completely different ball game. let me give you an example. first, beverly, i think that if we did it, we would try to make sure the israelis didn't go along with us. it would be like the 1991 gulf war where we said stay out of it because we'd try to have as large as coalition as possible to include arab states and having israel participate gums that up. the israelis have an amazing military but don't add capabilities that we don't

already have. if the united states went alone, however, i do think israel would still get dragged into it in large part because the iranians won't draw any distinctions between the americans and israel. they don't draw any distinctions now when things blow up in iran, they draw no distinction. they think the great satan and little satan with basically the same enteight and don't believe one would do something without the other. they may not be able to tell who hit them and will have an incentive to drag israel into the fray because as they position themselves in the region, they want to position themself against the zionist crusader on the one hand and the champions of resistance on the other hand problem is they would try to get groups like hezbollah and jihad and hamas and others to do rocket attacks and other things into israel. and once you start that ball rolling on any significant scale, tracy a real chance of a war in the lat vont. i've traveled to israel 13 times in the last few years, had hundreds of meetings with senior

military officials. they almost all believe at some point israel will have another war with hezbollah. once that is ball starts getting rolling, you can talk yourself into an argument, if hezbollah starts it, we might as well finish it. we might as well take advantage that hezbollah and iran are distracted by the strike and finish them. once that decision is made, is widen the war into the levant into a conflicting that involves israel and lebanon and maybe syria and maybe the turkeys. i'm not saying this will happen. i'm saying it very much col happen. these are the types of widening of the conflict that could have effects on markets. >> do you agree or think that's not likely to happen? >> i think it's not likely. >> why? >> well, so the united states, that's something to be concerned about and it's possible. but i think that the united states can do quite a bit to mitigate these kind of worst case scenarios.

the first thing we would need to do is go to israel and make a deal and say we'll be willing to destroy iran's key nuclear facilities but you have to agree to iran's key nuclear facilities, but you have to endure some level of iranian retaliation. we struck a similar deal in the first gulf war where israel was willing to absorb some missile attacks from saddam hussein because we asked them to. i think that's a trade that israel would be willing to make. so that keeps israel on the sidelines. i already mentioned the reasons why i think iran would have incentives to respond in a calibrated way. if iran doesn't strike back hard enough, it cluzs face, but if it strikes back too hard, it loses its head. we know how people think in that situation. we have to look at the situation from the point of view of hamas and hezbollah. he's right if iran would attack it would ask hamas and hezbollah to attack against rocket fire against israel. but they're not going to salute and do whatever iran says. they'll have their own strategic

calculation. hezbollah won't want to pick a fight with israel that will lead to a fight in southern lebanon. they'll choose rocket fire. and nasrallah said publicly he thinks iran wouldn't even ask hezbollah to retaliate if it were attacked. that's unlikely, but it might be an effort he's maybing to distance himself publicly from iran so that if called upon you wouldn't necessarily have to retaliate in a big way. so i think it's possible as collin points out that things could spiral out of control. i think it's unlikely. things could also spiral out of control if we don't do anything and iran has nuclear weapons. things spiraling out of control with other nuclear armed states is much worse than anything we could imagine iran doing in response to a strike. >> let me follow up quickly on the other actors in the region. if, as everyone fears, iran gets

nuclear weapons, who else is likely to follow immediately? is it saudi arabia? is it egypt? is it -- name your country in the region. who is most likely to follow suit if p iran moves forward. >> i think collin and i basically agree on this, that in the short term it's hard to imagine any country instantly snapping its fingers and having nuclear weapons. i think the demand is going to be there immediately. in fact, i think you see the demand is already there. turkish officials, saudi officials, are already talking publicly about the possibility of getting nuclear weapons in response to iran. so i think the demand is already there. the thing that will be the limiting factor are their capabilities. so none of the countries that are often put forward have nuclear infrastructure already. they don't have advanced industrial capabilities. so it would take time for them to build up a nuclear infrastructure. the one exception might be saudi arabia.

there's some reason to believe saudi arabia and pakistan have worked out a nuclear deal. it's possible pakistan could transfer nuclear weapons to saudi arabia, i don't think likely, but possible. and so that would be the one scenario in which you could imagine a country getting nuclear weapons quickly. otherwise i think you're looking at at least a decade before any other countries in the region get weapons in response. one problem i have with the debate is people think about what does a nuclear iran look like in the first six months or first month, it doesn't seem too bad, why worry about it? only one country historically has given up nuclear weapons, south africa. if iran does, it will be forever. the possible threats posed by a nuclear iran are threats we have to deal with forever. we have to have a much longer time horizon thinking about the threats posed by nuclear armed iran. so i think over the course of a decade or two you're going to see a couple of states acquiring nuclear weapons in response, possibly turkey, possibly egypt,

possibly saudi, possibly iraq even if you're looking in that kind of longer time frame. and we done even have to worry about just proliferation in the region. there is the possibility of proliferation in other regions. the nonproliferation agreement might be weakened in other countries. they'll see if they can get away with it. i think iran itself would become a nuclear supplier. i wrote a book in 2010 called "exporting the bomb," why countries transfer nuclear technology. iran is a country that's really elevated risk for transferring nuclear technology. it's already signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with venezuela and bolivia, two countries in the united states o'own backyard. it's not implausible that iran could announce tomorrow that venezuela is a country in good standing with the mtb, has a right to peaceful nuclear technology, so we're going to transfer uranium enrichment technology there for peaceful purposes. we have the same problems we've

been dealing with with iran in the last ten years. there are a lot of ways nuclear iran leads to further proliferation in the region and around the world. >> you know, we don't know, but what we do know is we've had 60 years of experience with proliferation and only nine countries have proliferated. so it's not inevitable. these long-term -- there have been predictions of a proliferation cascade for 60 years, and every single time the country crosses the nuclear threshold and opens the club, people presume the floodgates will be open to this happening in thirty region and around the world and it hasn't happened yet. does that mean it will definitively not happen if iran does it? no. but we have to factor in that historically the odds are pretty low. i think the country most inclined in terms of motivation, saudi arabia, because they are an international competitor, a regional competitor for implements and dominance with the iranians. they see the iranians as a threat. i think they would be the most motivated. even though saudi arabia is extraordinarily rich, they can't

develop an indigenous infrastructure very quickly. it would take them decades to do it. the possibility that people talk about is do they have a secret deal with the pakistanis to just acquire one. i think the prospect of pakistan being willing to provide one of these things and being the first country to transfer live nuclear weapons to some other state in the aftermath of the fiasco which embarrassed the pakistanis in terms of transfer of sensitive proliferation materials is highly unlikely. i think it would be very difficult for those pakistani weapons to be married to the chinese missiles that the saudis have without china getting in on the game overtly. that would be difficult for the chinese to do. that leaves the pakistanis maybe providing an extended deterrent to the saudis, stationing f-16s with nuclear weapons in saudi arabia or something like that. that would require you to believe that the pakistanis want to increase the risk of having a nuclear confrontation with iran and distract their focus away from india, their mortal,

existencial threat and focus on iran. saudi arabia is much more like toy to accept a u.s. security guarantee, because we have so many more capabilities to protect them, conventional and otherwise, than a pakistani deterrent, which would be my last point, which is the world doesn't stand still once iran gets a nuclear weapon. other actors will do pad things, and some like the united states could step in and try to provide disincentives for countries to proliferate, to include security guarantees, the threat of sanctions to dissuade them and other things. we have options, and the fact we have those options historically is the reason why nuclear cascades haven't happened before. >> we've come to the point in the program where our two discussants get to question each other directly. don't hurt each other. i'm in the middle. >> i don't know who starts. >> feel free. >> in the past you've talked about if iran crosses certain red lines, you know, you wrote

an article in foreign affairs talked about if they started installing next-generation centrifuges, making it possible for them to make missile material more quickly, if they kicked out inspectors, had a covert facility, those types of things. if iran crosses those red lines, should the united states be willing to go to war with iran even if we have to do it all by ourselves? or -- because in your article you suggest we should try to build a coalition, do it as many states as possible. that's a fair argument. but do you think that the united states should go to war with iran even if it's just washington against tehran? >> that's a good question. my position is that if we get to this choice of deciding between a nuclear armed iran or a strike, i think the strike is the least bound option, but we're not quite to that point yet. some have characterized my argument as i want to go to war last tuesday. that's not the argument.

if iran takes steps to kick out international inspectors, right now it's enriching to 20%. if it were to enrich up to 90%, what it would need for nuclear weapons, toez are the red line, the point at which united states has to use military force or forfeit our last opportunity to prevent iran from having nuclear weapons. i think the united states should work in advance to build an international coalition. there are a lot of benefits to doing that. and i think it's unlikely that the united states couldn't build a coalition. i think it's likely we could get british support, french support, ohs in nato i think would support us. the united states could build a coalition. the question is how large of a coalition. and it's one of my concerns with our diplomatic approach now. i think, you know, we should be focusing on trying to get a deal. but we also need to start thinking seriously about plan b. it's possible iran could kick out insor