of the death, destruction, devastation and prospects of peace and prosperity for much of the western world, six people, it would be simply drive home the core point. leaders what they do for good or ill is critically important to whether the world gets better and we have my judgment a profound absence of leadership. just about everywhere. this is by the way not something confined only to the arab and muslim world. israel has its own leadership crisis as it makes a transition from the founding generation to a set of politicians who lack legitimacy and the authority to make the kinds of decisions that their predecessors were able to make. an investment trap, lack of street credibility, everybody says no to america without cost for consequence these days. and the absence of leadership.

these are the three issues which will continue to dog and hound our policy. just a quick regional tour. iran, the issue of the nuclear issue in iran cuts to the core of one fundamental question that is do the -- want to acquire the capacity, if not the actual stockpile of nuclear weapons that is the core issue. there are five permanent members of circuit court council they have security weapons. the north koreans, the pakistans and the israelis. three of them in my judgment are nations driven by a fro found sense of insecurity and a profound sense of entitlement. that was the worst possible combination in a nation. it's even worse in a human being. someone who is profoundly insecure and yet who has visions of grandiosity. in my judgment iran is the poster child for this.

so your answer to the question does iran want the capacity to acquire a weapon? splul. will they acquire one? there's only one country that will prevent that from happening. only one that is iran. if they choose to base the policy on the fact that the costs of acquisition of a weapon are prohibited, 2011-2012 there will be no war, no deal. this is a to 13 problem. and ultimately it will be a problem with the united states fundamentally is going to have to wrestle with. syria, the situation there will continue until two things occur. number one, the russians can be dissuaded from their policy of backing -- and there would be some fundamental change on the ground. right now you don't even have a hurting stalemate. you have a situation where the regime still controls the issuance of state power. the opposition will not break

but neither can it cause the regime to break. now what to do about this. this of course is the great co-none drum. what do we do? here again i am a believer. in the united states determines that it is in its vital national interest to remove this regime, then it should act comprehensively and decisively in an effort to do it. if it does not believe it it is in the vital national interest to resume it and in my judgment it is not a vital national interest, we should stay out and certainly not adopt the kind of half-baked ill advised, half measures that will get us into a military commitment without producing the desired results. arab-israeli peace. it is now closed for the season. it is missing three things. i am not idea logically opposed

to this. it is not not happening because of some managic metaphysical reasons. there's no relit jat reason that israel yeahs and palestinians cannot end their conflict. it is simply missing three things. number one, leaders on each side who are prepared to pay the price for a conflict ending resolution. neither side right now is prepared to pay that price. two, the urgency that is required to make these decisions. nations like people take both decisions for one of two reasons. either their prospects of real pain or alternatively there's prospects of real gain. without bane, disincentives or gain incentives you have the status quo. manageable, painful, uncomfort shl, but it does not change. and there is no example in the history of the irish-israeli peacemaking where in fact you can make progress without lieders who are masters of their

constituencies not prisoners of their politics. finally the third missing ingredient if you had the first two, if you had the first two would be an administration who is prepared to be re-assuring enough, tough enough and fair enough to actually serve as an effective mediator. now we haven't had one of those for a while. abe and i will continue to disagree on this. i just taentded saturday night jim baker's 82nd birthday party. now i admire jim baker. i really admire him. he was tough. he was unsentimental and he locked horns with many in the american jewish community. but ultimately the policies he undertook benefitted not only the united states, but the state of the union and the arab world as it was at the time. so you kwoif me those three factors you give them back to me or create them, we can have a

real peace process. if not, this is an illusion, which may be in our interest to maintain, but it is still an illusion. finally, president obama. let me be very clear. this president i think has learned a great deal about american interests in this region. he came wanting to bebd the trajectory of american foreign policy to transform it. i think he quickly understood that was simply not possible. i would give him relatively high marks. no spectate lar achievements with the exception of killing osama bin laden. but no spectacular failures either. keep this in mind, the revigss on eisenhower now argue that his greatness as a president laid in what he didn't do and an english general was quoted as saying some of my greatest victories lay in the battles i did not

fight. we have to be very clear here. who will be unforgiving about when we project our power, economic, military and diplomatic and why. and frankly i think obama has learned much from this. some say he's leading from behind, it's a ridiculous expression, but it reflects something expremierly important. it's leading from the front means iraq, if leading from the front means a badly mismanaged delusionary policy in afghanistan. if leading from the front means bringing american credibility and setting america up for failure, well i don't want america to lead. last point. barack obama. barack obama he's different. i voted for him. i voted for him not because i knew who he was. i voted for him not because he could transform america.

i voted for him because only we of any democratic quality in the world including the israelis including the french including the british could have done what we did in november of 2008. that is to elect a man of color who's wife is the direct deden sent of slaves to the presidency of the united states. that was a transformative act. that is the essence of our exceptionalism. he's not a transformer he's a transactor. i'll make this one point with respect to the israelis. i've watched presidents and secretaries of state. 4 is not bill clinton when it comes to israel. this is not george w. bush. this is not a man who instinctively and emotionally understands or bonds with israelis. he's much less sentimental. much less forgiving.

he described him as bloodless. he would describe the other as a con man. if he could, if he could, he would bring to bear an enormous am of pressure on the israelis in an effort to facilitate a solution to this conflict. he may or may not. he may or may not have the chance. and finally, i'm writing a book called can america have another zbraet president. i'll close with a phrase of the last president who had an emotional impact on me, jack kennedy who described himself as an idealist what illusion. that's where america should be. never giving up on the possibility that the world can behave better. every religion has a concept for it. improving the imperfect world. as we go through this process of improvement, of reform, we'd better have our eyes open. the cost of consequences of not having our eyes open have now

become prohibitive. thank you very much. [ applause ] >> aaron is a tough act to follow and a good friend. i'm honored to be back on the panel. it's good to see so many friendly faces. look, i'm going to try to focus just on two issues if i can. things that i feel are on people's minds that i feel is swirls around and i like to try to address them head on. one is the issue of iran. i know that people here care very much about what's going to be on that issue. the other issue is there going to be an egypt israel peace treaty, is it going to last. it will be the center piece for israel for the last 30 years. by the time i add a third issue, it connects to a broader thing of the arab spring. basically how america and israel

maybe look at egypt a little differently. where the similarities are. where the differences are. let me try to stick to those two points. look, on the iran issue we saw a convergence with the president and prime minister's meeting in march. there were come convergences on iran, but the gaps were not closed. i think the good news was that there were these convergences but it didn't close the gaps. the convergences were that the president said for the first time containment will not work. more explicitly than ever before said this is america's problem to deal with. this is the vital american national interest that has to be addressed. this isn't just an israeli problem. this is america's problem because iran with nuclear weapons means an arms race in the most dangerous part of the world the middle east. a nuclear arms race with the saudis, the turks, if egypt

would recover from its financial crisis, egypt as well. so this is something that was very important and his concern that this would lead to proliferation to nonstate actors, to terror groups like hezbollah. that's what the president said. and that is crucial. why containment would work, there's been argument with the containment school, we'll contain the nuclear weapons. i think there's some real key differences that the president really by saying it won't work, he understands. a, the issue in the woeld war we had 500 thousand nato troops in the middle of europe against the soviets. we had embassies in moscow and washington throughout the whole time. since the cuban missile crisis he had hot lines from the kremlin into the white house. we have none of those things when it comes to iran.

and i'm not even talking about the fact that you have a regime that has some mez yanick impulses. even assuming they're rational actors. rational doesn't necessarily mean reasonable. read the accounts of the cuban missile rye kis even with very rational actors even with 500,000 troops and even with embassies and even with all these contacts the chances of miscalculation were very high as he says it. and here we don't have any of the prerequisite infrastructure. that to me sees when there's not that communication the chances of miscalculations go through the roof. moreover in the middle east we have local triggers for conflict with approximaty groups that get funding from iran that we didn't have in the cold with hezbollah and to a lesser extent hamas. these make the situation more dangerous. moreover we didn't have the case

of the soviet union saying we're going to wipe your country off the face of the earth like with israel. certainly none of this existed between teheran and jerusalem. it's a very dangerous situation. it's important that the president spoke about containment not being a viable option. by really saying that therefore it's america's issue that we have to solve. and he also talked about israel's right to defend itself, by itself and that was a critical piece at a time that was brought to question he clearly went back to jerusalem, focussing on that focus as well. but with all these convergences and the fact that pa fete that spoke more about the military option when he said we don't take things off the table and he gave a speech last month explaining what he means in terms of the military options saying we will act, it's a last resort. now the gaps are not closed

because of the asemitri in the military capability between the united states and israel. united states is a super power. israel knows very well that it is not. and therefore when you have more capability your ability to wait longer is there. we heard steve simon an hour ago talking about all the sanctions which are going to be enhanced on july 1st with the eu oil cutoff. i believe the real has been devaled by 68%. that is very -- in most countries in the world when there's a massive devaluation there are political con kwenss. a lot of the iranian oil is sitting in tankers because they can't sell it. the sanctions are sharp and they will be sharper especially given the fact that oil is accounts for most of iran's foreign currency reserves. as steve simon said to you about how iran cannot even access 60% of its reserves. that's important.

but that gives america more of a chance to try to wait it out. to see what maybe sanctions will buy you. if you have more capabilities you can wait longer. if you're not a super power and israel is not a super power. you're very cognizant of the fact that your capabilities are more finite. and therefore your window for action is tighter. you have a tighter timetable, but we're not sure you can. it's na asymmetry. a military power between the united states and israel that means it's not closed. one word, you get to take away one phrase the talks are not sin kronized. and that is the concern because of this asymmetry in the military capability. does this window close at the end of this year. i agree with aaron miller

there's no immeant attack. israel wants to see how the sanctions play itself out. there's no diplomacy going on between the u.s. and the merm innocent five members of the security council on iran. it's unclear if a deal is going to be done. israel's fear is that the iranians try to create a wedge between washington and jerusalem to do just enough to encourage the united states that these talks are going somewhere. but not enough that will make it, you know, that will be decisive. for example, will israel if iran agrees to ship out their enriched uranium of 20% enrichment, will that be considered for israel enough, will israel agree that as an interim some people say there is no end that iran can enrich at the lower level. i don't want to bore you, i'm not a nuclear physicist. the hardest part of making a nuclear weapon is nuclear fuel.

anything below 20% is hard to do. that's only reactor grade fuel. to go up to high enriched urine yum heu is weapons grade fuel. to go from 20% enriched but to 90% enrichment might only take a few months. for israel the fear is you can't cut it too close. because will you detect it in time and will you act on what you know if you do detect it in time. israel has some real concerns about that. and in the united states believes we will know how to detect it in time and we will act on that knowledge. israel's not so sure. and so israel's going to have a tighter timetable and it's going to have a higher bar for uranium action. we'll see if this diplomacy works. no one's ever going broke being a pez mist on middle east diplomacy. so you know, you won't count on it. it could be that israel wants to tell the president we're not up

to mess up your re-election. you're concerned that gas prices are going to shoot up. this will choke off a very weak recovery and pull in peril your election when europe is going headlong into a recession. we get that. we're not out to mess that up. this is a huge issue. the other element is so that the iran diplomacy we can discuss this more. there's an asymmetry there. on the issue of egypt israel peace, the differences are clear that the united states is hoping for the best. israel fears the worst. the u.s. believes there are people flooding the square yelling- knacksy and economic empowerment, how can we not be for it. israel's fear is that a muslim brotherhood government will say whatever it takes to get into power. but ultimately it is certainly not committed to the treaty given all the statements over the last decades. united states is counting on

egypt's economic peril to say egypt couldn't afford to renounce the treaty, they have virtually no currency reserves. this were $35 billion. they're under $15 billion. apple computer is buy the way over $100 that's the only thing they have is the economics. so the u.s. is hopeful. the israelis are more nervous. mubarak was the linchpin of their regional strategy for 30 years that has given israel peace. i keep focusing on economics. i think it's key. if you think how much israel spent on military spending, servicing of the debt, that was about 40% of its gnp. today it's 9%. if you look at the back of the envelope that's a $60 billion , b, bill, savings in one year. think of all the jewish philanthropy organizations you know. maybe they give a billion and a half, they don't give $60

billion, that's for sure. no matter how cold of a peace it is, it has had a dramatic impact on israel. that's why israel feels that it's a march into the unknown. it's whitewater rafting so to speak with a new egyptian government that is going to the polls to vote for president this month. steve was charitable when he said it would be a bumpy right. whitewater rafting might be more like it. so i would say in summary that that there's differing views on where we are and what this means going forward. israel fears this new new middle east is something that is going -- that maybe in the long run is going to be good because you have peace between peoples, but in the middle east, you live in the short run and you live in the intermediate run. and the short run and the long run may be decades and decades away.

so i would say put the tray tables in the upright positions and fasten your seat belts. thank you all very much. [ applause ] >> good morning, everybody. it's an honor to be here. i've spoken to the adl group many times and i'm always so proud to see such a great group of people so committed to such a wonderful and important cause. so good for all of you. for being here today. speaking last, it's always a little bit difficult because one has the challenge of redundance and being fresh at the same time. also i can't see my watch without my glasses on, but i can't see you with my glasses on. so i've got a double challenge here so i'll try and get to it. it's lovely being here with my colleagues and aaron never fails to provoke me into saying something.

so i'll do my best to be a little bit measured and not respond to every little thing he said. after all, i am sitting next to him and i can kick him when i sit down. aaron described the notion of being an idealist without illusions. and it's a pleasant sounding if not ringing idea. i prefer to think of america as a country that is idealist with ideals. and while there are always occasions when we cannot meet those ideals, nonetheless it seems indispensable that we actually have them. it also brings a certain coherence to our foreign policy, one that unfortunately the notion of leading behind doesn't actually bring. everybody has heard of the expression situational ethics. god knows you're in washington, so you know that. but situational foreign policy really isn't one that succeeds. and when you fly by the seat of

your pants in addressing the various challenges around the world and you don't have a set of principles that animate you, you really are in kind of a difficult place, because you don't actually know where you want to end up. and i think that's where we find ourselves right now. so let's think of that in applied fashion. and by the way, let me explain to you why i'm an idealist. maybe we represent -- i see some of you are younger, some of you are still older, thank goodness. but we represent a generation for whom at least the memory of world war ii is fairly alive. it is certainly for me. and when i think about what america can do, i think about that. because you see, we never want to do the right thing. we didn't want to get into world war i, we didn't really want to get into world war ii and really

didn't want to get into any conflict. winston churchill was absolutely right, we always do the right thing, but always after exhausting every other possibility. and we're in the midst of exhausting every other possibility right now. why should we want to do the right thing and what is the right thing? well, i don't think that's a big mystery to most of us. the right thing is to live in peace, freedom, for individuals to have rights and responsibilities, for them to be able to change their governments as they wish, for there to be transparency and accountability. for minorities, women, religious minorities to have rights that are protected by the state and for the state otherwise to not dictate too much else into the economic or private lives of the individual. sounds okay to most of us i'm sure with a few tweaks here and there. well, that's how we live for the most part. and i think that that's how most people wish to live. again, with certain tweaks to the parameters of it. but certainly that's how most people wish to live. and many don't.

many particularly in the middle east don't. and what does that do when so much power is reposed in the hands of the leadership? it tends to breed resentment and that's what we see in the arab spring. we had embraced the notion that countries with dictators were the ultimate instability and of course those dictators shared that embrace, but what you discovered is maybe it's a decade, maybe two decades, maybe seven decades in the case of the soviet union, but eventually those dictatorships are unsustainable. and how they end is pretty important. we learned in iraq and will learn elsewhere as well. but countries that have stable democracies with people who have the kinds of lives that i've described tend to be not perfect but tend to be less belligerent, tend not to fight with their neighbors, tend not to kill that many of their own people and that's a good thing. that's an ideal that we can fight for, that's an ideal that we can stand for.

and we can't always fight for that ideal in every country in the world. we have to look for that unique confluence, we have to look for the unique confluence of national interests and our ideals. and where we see that confluence, we should act. ideally we act with others and we use all of the power that we have, our moral, our economic, our political and if necessary our military asuation, but we always consider the fact that we act alone. that's the menu of options that i believe exist with the united states. where do we see that confluence? well, i could turn directly to syria, but i know it's not front and center in the minds of everybody, although it is front and center on my mind since hundreds of people have been killed since the great cease-fire that was imposed by the united nations. why do we care about syria? let me use it to pivot for a

moment and say we care about syria because we care about iran. and one of the problems that we face in iran is a government that is developing nuclear weapons despite disagreements from some about what their intentions are. a government that is developing nuclear weapons and a government that will survive any military action, whether it is led by the united states or by israel or by anybody else, for the simple reason that none of us have any intention of targeting the regime itself, but only the nuclear program. and that's unlikely i think most believe to lead to the fall of the iranian government and the fall of the regime, the system itself, of the islamic republic. and that at the end of the day is what's going to last. and what is going to return to the quest for nuclear weapons. so that's a bit of a problem for us. why is syria interesting in that regard? syria is iran's most important ally. and while things are going

reasonably well for iran in its quest for a nuclear weapon, things aren't going reasonly well for iran in the middle east. the arab spring has not been good to iran. efforts to label it as an islamic awakening have been rejected entirely. part of that is because it has been in many ways a sunni revolution but part of it is that iran really sdekt have a good reputation for democracy or for standing up for individual rights and most people don't like iran. so there were great hopes for example that after mubarak left office a year ago in egypt, that iran would be able to renew relations with egypt, there was a lot of talk about it, the military leaders talked about it, the muslim brotherhood talked about it and the i rain januarys talked about it a lot. and it hasn't happened. to the contrary, the relationship is very frosty. needless to say, iran's relationship with its gulf neighbors has declined substantially over recent years