next, congressional members and staff hear from a political scientist and a historian who spend their careers studying american-iranian relations. they traced the history of u.s.-iran policy and iran's nuclear program which began in 1957 with the assistance of the eisenhower administration as part of an adams for peace initiative. this event was hosted by the national history center. >> okay, good morning, this is an amazing crowd. we've already had to turn away, i'd say, a good 50 people or more. i'm dane kennedy, director of the national history center. i want to welcome you to this briefing on the history of u.s./iranian relations. this is part of an ongoing series that the national history center provides to bring historical perspectives to current issues that are

confronting congress and the nation. the purpose of the program is not to provide or advocate for any particular political positi position. it is nonpartisan. it is intended to inform policymakers and the public about the sorts of issues they are dealing with. i want to first give a few thanks first to the melon foundation for providing the funding that makes these briefings possible. i also want to thank our assistant jeffrey who is outside this room for helping to make the arrangements. i want to thank the office of jerry connolly which booked the room. and i want to remind or explain why there were index cards on your seats and why i passed other index cards around.

what we will do after the presentations by the speakers we will get questions, answer questions, but we would like you to write those questions on the index cards rather than ask them in front of the audience. keep your index cards ready and jot down questions when they come to mind. and so now i will turn this over to matthew to offer introductions. >> thank you, dane and jeff and everybody who helped arrange this event. everyone out there who supports the national history center and the american historical association and all of the other professional organizations and networks that help historians thrive, and thank you all for coming to the event. we'll have to get you information about professional

organizations like schaefer. panel rooms are full like this every june when that organization meets. what we're talking about today is the history of u.s./iran relations. that's our theme. and this bi-national relationship as with most, history is a matter of perspective, how one defines it. to some we need to understand why thomas jefferson had books about cyrus the great in his library. to others we might need to study the arrival of american missionaries in iran in the 1830s and study the work and education and public health that they continue to do through the mid-20th century. some would contend this early history was displaced by the official u.s. presence in iran which arguably began during the second world war and came in the form of tens of thousands of troops. others would point to dates like 1953 when an anglo american coup

overthrew a democratically elected government of iran at the height of the cold war. still others are interested in the more contemporary past that began in 1979. it was in that year that the near 40-year rule of a u.s. ally came to an end. the monarchy was replaced with the republic of iran which just commemorated the 40th anniversary of its revolution this past february. so we have the deep past, the kind of cold war period and then the more contemporary post-'79 era. regardless of the period one studies it's an exciting time to be studying the history of u.s./iran relations not because of daily headlines but because of developments within the profession. today we have a range of methodologies that can help us better understand the past. despite meth methological diffes between transnational trends in

this rich inpterpretive declassification of documents or through the reinterpretation of old documents through the lenses of race, culture, gender, and emotion to name just a few. in addition to these historical subfield, other disciplines helped drive the conversation. if one comes from the iranian studies or middle east studies background, these are inherently inner disciplinary areas of inquiry. one could borrow from political science, for instance, is always helping to move the conversation about u.s./iran relations forward. that's what brings me then to the introductions. we have two speakers today. one is mark gasiorowski, a professor in the department of political science at tulane university. i will not read his cv to you all here, but you have plenty of biographical information on the program. many of us probably have read

his book "u.s. foreign policy and the shah" published in 1991 in addition to his articles on u.s./iran relations. john ghazvinian is our second presenter. he is the associate director of the middle east center at the university of pennsylvania. he also has a very long list of publications, but i would just alert you to one. it's forthcoming and is titled "iran and america a history." you can pick that up in the coming months or year or so when it's published. with that, i'll turn the floor over to professor gasiorowski. >> thank you, matt. thanks to dane and the national history center for inviting me here. i'm going to talk about or give a sketch, that's about all i can do in 15 minutes, give a sketch

of u.s. policy toward iran since the revolution 40 years ago. the u.s. has really shifted a lot and cycled back and forth between different approaches toward iran. to simplify things a little bit, i would say that u.s. policy toward iran has sort of cycled through three main postures toward iran in the 40 years since the revolution. first, a posture of engagement in which the u.s. uses primarily diplomacy toward iran and toward third parties to try to reach a comprehensive settlement of outstanding differences with iran rather than just specific narrow issues. and also engagement usually is aimed at bringing about some kind of domestic change in iran, although certainly peacefully, mainly encouraging moderates. the model for engagement or at least a very good model for

engagement is, say, u.s./china in the 1970s when the u.s. and china went from being extremely hostile toward each other toward a much more cooperative relationship. so engagement is one posture that the u.s. has taken from time to time. secondly coercion where the u.s. also is trying to bring about big, comprehensive change in iran's behavior but in a much more hostile way using economic sanctions or military action of various kinds, various levels, to try to intimidate iran into backing down across the board or really what the preference usually is using these kinds of hostile measures to carry out regime change in iran, to try to bring down the islamic regime or at least change it very substantially. thirdly, containment. repeatedly the u.s. has sort of

returned to a posture of containment toward iran where we try to limit iran's objectionable behavior but without any great hopes of achieving big change. sometimes in periods of containment the u.s. and iran have made limited transactional agreements that are mutually beneficial. but containment is mainly aimed at just that, containing iranian influence, limiting it particularly limiting its geographic spread in the region, very much like u.s. containment efforts towards the soviet union throughout the cold war. so i'm going to very briefly sketch through what i would call ten distinct periods in u.s. policy toward iran since the revolution. the early ones i'm going to skip through pretty quickly because they're not so important for

today. there's an awful lot written about this. john's forthcoming book probably will be very good. another one that i would recommend that came out five or six years ago, a very good book by david chryst called "the twilight war," which i think you'll find quite fascinating. ten periods in u.s. policy toward iran. first of all, the first ten years after the revolution, 1979 until about 1989, the u.s. really bounced back and forth between different approaches. the carter administration before the u.s. hostages were taken in november of 1979, the u.s. embassy in tehran was seized by iranian radicals. before then the carter administration made extensive efforts to try to encourage moderates and try to swing the iranian revolution in a moderate direction. of course this didn't work. they did to some extent continue

this after the hostages were taken, but very quickly the carter administration was consumed with trying to get the hostages released. and iran was in this process of rapid radicalization, and it just made impossible any efforts by the u.s. to achieve change with iran. so the carter administration was a time of engagement. this was entirely frustrated by growing radicalization in iran. second time period, basically the first reagan administration, '81 through '84, you might think this was a period of hostility and coercion toward iran. there was a certain amount of hostility but this really was not a phase of coercion. i would really score this as a phase of containment toward iran. and quite surprisingly given there were major clashes between the u.s. and iran especially in lebanon in the early 1980s, iran

was backing basically groups that were precursors to hezbollah of lebanon, and they did a lot of very fasty things, killed several hundred americans in terror attacks. took about 15 american civilians and a few government personnel hostage. some of them were tortured to death. there was a lot of severe hostility and attacks by iran toward the u.s. despite that the reagan administration was pretty restrained and, in fact, didn't retaliate for most of this stuff. so the early reagan period i would score as containment. and relatively effective in this regard. iran became rapidly became isolated in this period of the early 1980s. the second reagan period is the period of the iran-contra affair which is pretty fascinating little detail but it's ancient history at this point.

1985-1986 the reagan administration tried, number one, to get hostages in lebanon released but also the iran-contra affair was aimed at, number two, trying to initiate with iran that hopefully would snowball and lead to comprehensive change and moderation on the part of the iranians. this, of course, didn't work. once again radicals in iran very much torpedoed this initiative. i would score iran-contra as an effort at engagement but it, too, did not work just like carter's efforts. after iran-contra the last two years of the reagan administration basically this was a period of reversion to containment. there was a lot of tension between the u.s. and iran in this period, military clashes between the u.s. and iran in the persian gulf, the iran/iraq war

and various other kinds of tension not really coercion but certainly far from engagement. soap the first ten years cycling back and forth between engagement and coercion, engagement and containment, nothing really working very well. the first bush administration coming into office in early 1989 at least initially sort of gave a look of pursuing rapprochement with iran but never got anywhere. the bush administration, the famous phrase in bush's inaugural speech in early 1989 was good will begets good will. if iran shows good will to the u.s. and this mainly meant getting their friends in lebanon to release the remaining american hostages in lebanon, if iran shows goodwill, we will reciprocate. one problem was that it took three years for the remaining

hostages in lebanon to be released, so it was not until december 1991 that they were released, by which time things had changed quite a bit. and, secondly, u.s. priorities shifted rapidly after the desert storm war, the madrid peace process began, the bush -- the first bush administration was very invested in that. pushed it very hard. iran was very much an opponent and that really soured the prospects for better relations. so i would score the first bush administration as really a period of containment even though there was a little bit of talk about maybe engaging in pursuing engagement but that never really got off the ground. the early clinton period largely continued this. the clinton administration was pursuing many of the same goals as the bush administration in the middle east, especially the

israeli palestinian peace process which morphed into the oslo peace process under clinton. also in the early clinton years, iran was carrying out a lot of terrorist attacks, especially in eur europe but also elsewhere, assassinating iranian exiles and also a couple of attacks in argentina and elsewhere. so there was a period in which iran was really being rather schizophrenic. on one hand being open to the united states in terms of its talking points, but on the other hand carrying out very nasty attacks. all of this culminated in the hobar towers bombing of 1996 backed by iran, although not carried out by iran. in which 19 u.s. air force personnel were killed in a very, very dramatic terrorist attack. there was strong suspicion immediately that iran was behind this, but the clinton administration didn't get concrete proof of this for quite

some time. and so the clinton administration chose to sort of wait until they had strong evidence. by the time they had strong evidence things had changed a lot in iran in ways i'll talk about in a minute, and so the clinton administration never retaliated with military force though they retaliated with a fascinating covert operation called operation sapphire which you can look up on the internet and read about. it's pretty interesting. all of this changed very much, and really the beginning of, i guess, the more important period for today in u.s./iran relations comes in may of 1997 when a stunning election outcome emerged in iran, a very moderate figure was elected president of iran. he began making overtures and we began to reciprocate.

beginning around maybe the beginning of 1998 i would say that the clinton administration began pursuing engagement with iran. and see if they could make something of it. unfortunately nothing really came of it. it was a tantalizing period and one of the periods of engagement the u.s. pursued. conditions were even a little bit more fruitful having to do with what was going on in iran in 2001, the very beginning of the bush administration. they never formulated its policy and had conflicting views,

hard-liners wanted to be tough on iran but more soft line people wanting to continue obama'sa approach of engagemen. once 9/11 came along that changed everything. for a few months after 9/11 iran was actually extremely helpful to the u.s. especially in afghanistan. they very much facilitated the u.s. effort to overthrow the taliban government in afghanistan and wipe out al qaeda training camps there and then iran was very helpful in setting up the new post-taliban government headed by karzai and the bush administration took advantage of this goodwill by iran but did not reciprocate. pretty quickly the bush administration after 9/11 began to sort of reveal its new approach toward iran and the

middle east in general. broadly speak iing this was phrased as the global war on terrorism whose main objective was al qaeda but pretty quickly iraq especially was brought into this as a supporter of terrorism and iran as well. in early 2002 bush made a speech, i think it was a state of the union speech at the time, calling iran part of an axis of evil and this began a period of strong hostility toward iran and a period of coercion which continued for the remainder of the bush administration. of course pretty soon the u.s. invaded iraq, 2003. gradually in iraq tensions heated up between the u.s. and iran with the u.s. supporting various ethnic guerrilla and

iran backing shiite militias in iraq that carried out many, many attacks against u.s. forces. so you could say there was really sort of a low level secret war playing out in iran at least in the last few years in the george bush administration, with hundreds killed on both sides. hundreds of american military personnel killed with iranian fingerprints on their weapons and hundreds killed in terrorist attacks that seemed to have been backed by the united states, although this is kind of murky. certainly the last seven years of the bush administration were a period of coercion and really the model of coercion that is out there today. finally that brings us to the obama administration with the failure of the bush administration to achieve much from its coercive efforts obama

came into office wanting to pursue a different approach, engagement, and he made a series of preaches speeches in his fir and really tried very hard, but the iranians did not reciprocate in that period. gradually the u.s. began further ratcheting up the economic sanctions that had begun under president bush and obama ratcheted them up quite substantially and iran really started to scream. the economy really went into a tailspin and so in about 2013 the obama administration launched an initiative toward iran to negotiate an end to iran's nuclear program. john will be talking about that in a minute. and of course this led to the jcpoa nuclear agreement in 2015. the obama people certainly hoped that this would lead further to

a broader rapprochement, and this was certainly a broad engagement effort but nothing came of that. i ran did certainly agree to limit its nuclear program and has been abiding to that agreement until recently. nothing further came of it. in this sense obama's engagement initiative if the goal was a broader rapprochement was a failure. that brings us up to the trump administration. i would say the trump administration has not yet fully revealed what its intentions are towards iran though clearly the u.s. has been quite hostile toward iran. i would say it's not at all out of the question that president trump might decide to do with iran what he's been doing with north korea which is bizarre. it's not at all out of the question he might try that with iran and has hinted about that, talked about that. it's really too early to say what the trump approach is. so what conclusions can we draw

from this sort of cycling back and forth among three postures toward iran? the main conclusion is that nothing has really worked very well with iran. iran doesn't really respond either to friendship or hostility from the united states. engagement, there have been four major efforts of engagement, carter, reagan, clinton and obama. none of them produced anything other than small agreements here and there. mainly because radical forces torpedoed these efforts, and they're still there now, maybe stronger than they've been in recent years. engagement has not been successful so far and i think it's prospects are limited. coercion, a george w. bush administration, as i explained a minute ago, this got nowhere.

it was quite harmful. several killed with iranian fingerprints and not a stopping to iran iian. so this brings us to containment. i would say that containment also has not worked very well toward iran although it may be better than engagement and coerci coercion. they have expanded their presence in places like lebanon, iraq, syria, now yemen and elsewhere among the palestinians. on the other hand iran is pretty isolated in the middle east. the only government that is friendly with iran is syria and that is just a shadow of a government. iran has a few friends here and there like hezbollah but it is isolated. containment has had some successes and there have been minor -- not necessarily always minor but small, specific

transactional agreements reached in the various containment initiatives, post importantly the jcpoa of 2015. i think containment is about the only thing we can hope for for the foreseeable future. i don't think conditions are ripe for agreement or coercion. radicals remain pretty strong especially supreme leader khamenei. he is deeply anti-american. he always has been. he always will be. the one ray of light, the one piece of good news i guess i can mention khamenei now is 80 years old. he's ailing. he has prostate cancer. he's lasted a long time. he's been in office about 30 years now.

one of these days he'll exit the scene. that might possibly, conceivably bring about change in iran as the death of stalin there is no guarantee the post-khamenei era will be any better, so probably containment for the foreseeable future is the best we could hope for, be sadly to say. thank you. well, thank you very much. a very big thank you for the national history center for inviting me and thank you to matt and mark, it's a great honor to share the stage with such distinguished historians and really exciting to see so

many people here. in this kind of overflow room. i'll try to be as boring as i can so people leave and we can create some seats -- could someone give john a seat, please, former american hostage in the embassy in tehran. i think the man deserves a seat. maybe someone could give him a seat. >> good job, good job. >> i think that's important. so i'll try to be as brief as i can. as mark says, i'm going to address the nuclear issue, which is something we've been talking about for a long time. and i'm going to take sort of an unusual approach to this many of you may disagree with and i'm happy to talk this through in the q&a. but it's going to be my -- as a historian i've been working for a number of years now on this book on the history of u.s./iran relations and this is one of those things when you tell people you're working on it, people want to know what you

think. i remember when the jcpoa was being negotiated. oh, you're working on the history of u.s./iran relations. what do you think? it's self-evidently a good deal. i think anyone who looks at this closely would say that. but i think it's irrelevant, that it's not the real issue and this entire nuclear crisis ginned up for so many years is a distraction and is difficult to really engage with in isolation. from the larger issue. and i know that's something people are surprised to hear. such an urgent crisis and so on. i'm not sure i entirely agree with that. you understand that if you look at the history of the iranian nuclear program you start to understand why i would sort of

make that argument and i hope i can make that argument in the few minutes that i have here and my broader claim is that in the absence of trust, in the absence of a constructive conversation or a constructive channel of diplomacy, genuine diplomacy, between the united states and iran, there's not much point in talking about isotopes and fuel rods and so on and i would say this when we were talking about the jcpoa, we've seen that proch to be the case in the past couple of years. we've seen how quickly things can unravel when there is not a larger atmosphere that is constructive. that nuclear deal was negotiated at great, great, great time and energy. and in the end, it all kind of disappeared in a different political climate. so i think that's what we really have to address and mark, of course, has laid out very nicely some of the broader outlines of

this political climate, but i'm going to talk about the history in about ten minutes and hopefully get us up to the current moment we're in so we can understand better why it is that maybe this isn't quite as important as we think it is. the takeaway message i have today is it's not really about the nuclear program, all right? it's not really about that. so as an historian, let's start at the beginning. i'm curious by a show of hands how many people actually know when or -- well, when the iranian nuclear program actually began. raise your hand if you know. not the panelists. okay, one john lindbergh, basically. present at the creation. it actually begins in 1957, '58 and begins with cooperation, actually very vigorous cooperation from the united states. it is the eisenhower administration that had its flagship adams for peace program.

this is an attempt after some horrors of hiroshima, nagasaki, to prove that nuclear power could be used for peaceful purpose, atoms for peace program. purposes positive purposes. the idea was the u.s. would cooperate with developing countries to develop peaceful nuclear energy for their civilian purposes. so the u.s. gave iran its first batch of enriched uranium, about six kilograms of leu. in the late 1960's, they helped iran to build tehran's research reactor. this was for radioactive and medical purposes. this continued through the 60's and 70's. it wasn't just democrats, some of the most vigorous advocates of

the nuclear program were people like henry kissinger, donald rumsfeld, and dick cheney in the ford administration. if you look at some of the documents, you will see how vigorous they pushed this. they felt it was critical for iran. you often hear the talking points from opponents of iran. why does iran need nuclear power no one can take seriously the idea that they would need nuclear power. the u.s. actually felt that iran needed nuclear power. a basic reason was if you're a developing country that has a lot of oil, it does not make a lot of sense to build very expensive refineries to use the oil for domestic power purposes. it is kind of a waste of time and money. if you have huge amounts of oil, you are better off selling it on the international market using the money to develop a much more sustainable energy program that

will last many years after the oil has run out. that's what all the studies in the 1970's, that was the case they made. the u.s. government-funded studies in the 1990's and 2000's made the same claims. that have not changed for iran. the fact that it is an oil-rich country does not mean it doesn't need nuclear power. there always has been a genuine need for nuclear power. as you know, nuclear technology is a duel use technology. it can be used for medical research, radioactivity, energy production, and also, building nuclear weapons. that's were the concern comes from. in the 70's, this was not much of a concern. henry kissinger said famously "i don't think the issue of proliferation really ever came up. " the fact was we trusted this close american ally enough that we believed whatever he said when it came

to nuclear program. it doesn't mean we gave him a carte blanche, there were limits on how much nuclear cooperation the u.s. was prepared to undertake with iran. it wa the same -- it wasn't the same atmosphere of distrust that exists today. 1979, revolution breaks out. iran's nuclear program is completely abandoned. not because the u.s. put this huge amount of pressure on iran, but because iran chose to abandon its nuclear program after 1979. the one who came to power felt the nuclear program was yet another example of the excessive fascination with shiny western objects and technology, things that were not islamic, that were not authentic to an islamic republic, and that it should be abandoned. this is not just the idea of nuclear weapons, this was the nuclear program completely. they said

weapons of destruction were a sin against islam. he cited a lot of text against these kinds of weapons of mass destruction. he said even the peaceful nuclear research that was going on, the energy production, all of that was new western technology that iran could do without. he mothballed the entire program. when khomeini died in 1989, a new more moderate, and somewhat more pragmatic group of people came to power. they felt iran could not afford to be quite so complacent about either its energy needs, medical needs, but also, security needs. the feeling was it is not islamic to build a bomb, but is it islamic to do some research? to maybe build some centrifuges? perhaps enriched uranium? there

is nothing against that? it was also a concern about saddam hussein. this is what is often missed in american conversations about theiranian nuclear program. we have conversations about what the u. s. can do to get iran to do what we want. we often forget iran, despite the rhetoric and the heated nature of the u.s. -iran relations, iran is often less concerned with what the u. s. is saying or doing then what its immediate neighbors are doing. in the 1990's, western intelligence, global intelligence was convinced saddam hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction. you all know about that. it wasn't just the u.s. that was concerned. who would be more concerned about that than iraq's neighbor? the neighbor who just fought a devastating eight-year war with saddam hussein. no one was more concerned about saddam's

ambitions when it came to wmd's than iran. iran had a moral concept in the 1990's to continue to maintain the islamic -- stricter against research and development of a nuclear program, or to not build a bomb, but get as close as they can. build the technology that might make saddam hussein think twice before developing a nuclear weapon or unleashing it. that was the calculation they made. iran's nuclear program in the 1990's was brought out of the mothballs and reinvigorated. it was largely rudimentary. the possible military dimensions of that in the 1990's has been something an conclusive, and one of the major issues. to what degree was it just research and development and

basic first generation centrifuges? to what extent was it more? it is an open question. one of the most interesting things about what happened in the 1990's is how was iran going to build a nuclear program? it was easy in the 70's, pick up the phone to washington and you got the help he needed. how will iran do that in the 1990's? it is trying to reinvigorate the program it abandoned. this is where we step back to history, but you have to look at the larger global infrastructure of nonproliferation. the whole issue that we danced around, in terms of the legal infrastructure behind this, was the 1968 nonproliferation treaty, the ntt. for those of you who are not familiar with it, it is the part of the global initiative to try and

avoid nuclear catastrophe. the idea behind the ntt was to get as many countries as possible to sign it. there were three basic principles behind it, disarmament, and nonproliferation, and cooperation. the basic jist, you have five countries in 1968 with nuclear weapons, u.s., soviet union, great britain, france, and china. the idea is you don't want more countries to get nuclear weapons. the three basic principles, the five countries that have weapons agreed to a gradual process of disarmament, reducing their stockpiles. that process is still ongoing and has not fully been accomplished. there's nonproliferation. the countries that don't have the bomb will promise not to have it. if you are a country without nuclear weapons in the late 1960's, how

will you respond? that doesn't seem very fair. that's where the third principle comes in, the cooperation. that's what is often forgotten about. this is the glue that found it together. this is the nuclear haves saying you will have to stay have not, but we will cooperate with you, we will give you all of the help you need to build a peaceful civilian nuclear program that you are not being held back scientifically or in any other way. those are the three basic principles. if you are a student, you will realize that the key is it only works if everyone signs up to it. if you are a country, if your neighbor has not signed up, why would you? let them build a bomb while you don't? from the very beginning, getting countries to sign up was the most important part. a lot of countries that didn't have nuclear weapons were very resistant to it. not so much the small countries,

it's interesting -- there was an interview a few years ago with the shaws nuclear chief. he said they never should have signed it. iran was one of the very first thing the trees in 1968. it signed the document the day it opened for signatures. none of the major countries signed it. countries that mostly signed it were fiji, nicaragua, clearly never want to build a bomb. the midrange countries, argentina, they stayed out. they said they are going to build the technology and then sign it. that's exactly what they did. by the 1990's, almost every country in the world had signed it. a couple dozen of them had only done it after they first developed the technology. iran did not do that. by the late 1990's, you have three

countries refusing to sign it, india, pakistan, and israel. all three of those countries had refused to join, not just so they can develop the technology, but to build actual bombs. india and pakistan got the nuclear weapon in 1998. israel has always been vague. today, they have 200 nuclear warheads. this is the point of the iranians would often make -- we're running out of time. this was the situation iran found itself in the 1990's. they want to restart the program, but how will they do that? members of the ntt, cooperation is part of that, right? they were not able to get much cooperation. every time they went out to get uranium or something from

argentina, china, russia, the u.s. put pressure on those countries not to cooperate with iran. iran was not happy about this. they said it is a violation of the npt, but no one listened. what are they going to do? they started to have to go to more illicit channels to get what they felt was their rights under the npt. what happens if you are iran in the 1990's and you go to more illicit channels to build your nuclear program? it is going to immediately increase the suspicion that the u.s. and other enemies have of what you are doing. if you work within the npt, everything works great. you get the cooperation you want. one of the key provisions is you get inspections from the iea. if they think you're doing something suspicious, the corporation ends. -- the -- i think that's where the dispute began. i guess we're out of time. that's where we ended up in the 2000 when the dispute

became much more front page news. i want to leave a lot of time for q&a. i wanted to talk about the 2000 and when we got here, but that's the deep history of the iranian nuclear program. you don't have to sympathize with the iranian or be a big fan of their government, but you should understand historically how we got here. it is not perhaps as simple as some of the headlines suggest. (applause) >> at this point if you want to take one minute and write down a question on the card that is on your seat when you sat down then we proceed to collect them and a lot some questions on those cards and if your question doesn't get asked

you can stay after and we can talk a little bit but i have one question that i'd like to ask you all when you consider your question my question directed towards both of our panelists, it deals with the plane of action and the iran nuclear deal. my question is, john, you made a statement that without trust there is no reason to talk about other aspects of nuclear technology so my question is this, does iran's nuclear program demonstrate that's been around for many decades does it provide the vehicle for the united states and iran to have these distinctions and is it a vehicle and an issue that could be discussed in ways domestic issues in iran over the proxies

cannot. and my question would be to mark, how do you respond to this question and is the nuclear issue a path to engagement to provide the acceptable risks and the leverage to reach some broader approach or other equities that makes clear in the international system the asymmetries that makes such efforts difficult to pursue. this is the jcpoa nuclear deal to engagement or is it something that obstructs the dialog to see down the road between the two countries? >> that was exactly obama's philosophy obama came to power that he wanted a much more broad approach and to rewrite the map of the u.s.

alliances in the middle east. i don't think he was interested in the nuclear issue, but because it was the hot issue, he saw it as a way in to a broader conversation. i think immediately, we saw how quickly it fell. by focusing on the nuclear issue, it allowed those opposed to the idea of the relations, in particular, those days, israel, to basically make a lot of noise around the nuclear issue and encourage ways for the u.s. to get more bogged down in some of the specifics of the nuclear negotiations. we saw how that went. eventually, obama got his deal. in a way, the clock was kind of ran out. he got the deal within about one year at the end of his second term. there wasn't much energy or time left for serious

agreements. >> i agree entirely. i would add that on the iranian side, there was no appetite for following up these past four years. what's been happening in the last year or so, the water is much more muddy then it was back then. >> we have some great questions and one question deals with the united kingdom and its position to the least current rising tensions in the world and what the core of this question his or what it speaks to is the american allies so, are there historical insights that can gain and can help us understand what the united states can manage and let's allies and they might have the same

interest as united states vis-à-vis iran but allies that they deal with. how many american allies compared to the u.s. iran relationship historically? i'll (inaudible) take a quick crack. >> i don't think u.s. allies have been important players toward iran in these big, diplomatic issues we have been talking about since the british bow down in the early 50's. the europeans, both individual countries and collectively as the eu, have engaged in negotiations with iran, they are pursuing a different path today, but it is not amounting to a lot. i don't see them being able to make some type of agreement without the u.s.. i don't think they have the desire. i'm not sure they have the power capabilities to do so. i think it is really an american show.

>> it depends on which allies you are talking about. since the u.k. was brought up, for at least 15 years, i have been saying despite all of the chicken little rhetoric, i have never felt there was much likelihood of a u.s. war with iran, but for the first time, i'm concerned about the possibility of a british war with iran for a number of reasons. the ship taken in gibraltar, apparently the spanish were given the same intelligence and said they would not act on it. the british took the bait. i do worry with boris johnson in power, with brexit looming, the u.k. is much more isolated, it has been needing allies. i think you can expect the u.k. to grow much closer to the u.s. position. boris johnson is motivated by

instincts and sees himself as the type of leader. what better way to unify the country then bringing out the gunboats? or the splatter of musketry? unifying them. that's something i worry about with the general brexit atmosphere. >> we moved from allies to advisers. one question how do you feel about john bolton's influence on the trump administration? and other advisers but my question would be, about the relationship between presidents and their advisers so we're starting to read about national security advisers but ron -- iran officers on the national security council and the folks in the mid level bureaucracy. is there anything you could

tell us about the relationship between presidents and their advisers and the formulation of policy that could address bolton and pompeo today or perhaps a historical moment that speaks to this question? >> i could say a lot of things. we both spent a lot of time looking at mid-level advisors. i think the role of someone like dennis ross is critical. it is interesting to look at. i actually think that despite the so-called warmongering instinct of someone like bolton, the goal is not war, and it is not to bring about regime change. it is pure speculation.

i think they genuinely believe that if they put enough pressure on iran, that they will somehow come to the negotiating table. i don't know if they wanted to talk about a more broad deal so they can say they did a better deal. in a way, i like that approach. i always thought the u.s. should take a much broader approach to its iran diplomacy. before i get quoted as saying i like the approach, i like that they are looking at a much broader range of issues. however, i think they will find themselves disappointed if they actually believe iran is going to capitulate on every single issue in the way that they

presented it, giving the u.s. this sweeping victory in the u.s. had with the cold war and so on. that's not going to happen. i think that's what we are going to find out. i >> think of the kennedy period and how much the administration pressure or not pressure the shot of iran and decades prior to the revolution in the early sixties and kennedy is very important and people like robert comber, 1961 and 62 are in the policy conversation about iran which is at the desk of the president for executive action or national security member. the question i think we can see parallels from the past with the present situation. >> i'm reminded of the moments, the 2003 grand bargain shot down by cheney and rumsfeld, and make sure it never reached

the desk of the president. a lot of people disagreeing about what exactly was involved. they proposed a sweeping negotiation of broad negotiations with the u.s. and the response, colin powell was hoping there would be a serious hearing. instead, the response was they don't talk to evil. >> with regard to iran and what they might want, or why they would not enter into negotiations with the u.s., important context is iran's rights within the international system and under the npt regime. this often gets lost in conversations that happened quickly and are covered in

brief news stories. what rights does iran have within the international system, within the context of international law as they are dealing with the rest of the world? what recourse do they have in these feelings? >> they certainly have a right to develop the civilian nuclear program and a right to free trade and things of that sort. the trump administration doesn't seem to care much about that, nor have previous administrations. i think this is much more about exercising power. the key issue is whether the economy will withstand the sanctions or not. the jury is still out on that. we will know within one year. the economy may be screaming. that may trigger domestic unrest in iran. it is hard to say. that's the key instrument the u.s. is wielding, the sanctions. a key part is whether the europeans will go along with or work cross purposes to the u.s. sanctions.

secondly, were there other players, especially china, but also the russians, maybe east asians, that will violate the spirit of the u.s. sanctions? that's the key set of issues, how the economics will play out. it is too early to say. who cares about rights anymore? not the trump administration, that's for sure. >> how about the history and mark, you discussed really distinctly going through ten stages we have a specific question about the iran and iraq war and its impact on u.s. iran relations and you made a comment that some of the developments was ancient history or was in the past. how do you make sense of the iran and iraq war to having a lasting impact on iranians and everything they experienced in the war. how do we consider decent store cull hang-ups between the

united states and iran or major conflict that result in death, lots of life in society. how do they affect conversations today? >> iran was severely traumatized by the war. probably not one family in iran that didn't lose somebody or at least had somebody wounded. i have known so many people who have cough from poison gas or had limbs amputated. certainly loved ones lost. it remains a big factor inside iran. above all, the impact of the war is to make iranians very careful about their security. this is a major impetus for iran reviving its nuclear program in the 1990's to have a nuclear weapon we can use to deter an iraqi attack in various other kinds of preparations and concerns in the 90's about iraq.

iraq was no longer hostile towards iran. it was a friendly regime in power that we put in power in baghdad, which iran is pretty happy with. the iranians are concerned about their security. we shouldn't forget the u.s. participated in the iran-iraq war, and enabled clashes in the gulf in the last year or two of the war. iranians look at the war as a reason to fear american power. they have taken all kinds of measures to prepare themselves to retaliate against the u.s., and they will use them. there was definitely a big impact, as much as world war ii on the u.s. >> the other critical aspects, when you think about the nuclear program, it is another point often lost in the u.s., whether you choose to believe them or not, there

is something you need to take in consideration, which they are the victim of significant chemical weapon attacks. that shaped the mentality of the country more than we appreciate. this was the first major use of chemical weapons warfare since the first world war. you still have veterans walking around and feeling the physical effects of this. perhaps no country other than japan is more sensitive to the issue -- to the danger -- the hardship and suffering brought about by weapons of mass distraction. this often plays into the discussion about the nuclear program more than we appreciate. in addition to the religious concerns about weapons of mass destruction, iran has felt firsthand the consequences. it will be difficult for any iranian government to seriously gain major public support for the idea of building, let alone using, a nuclear weapon.

>> a couple of other questions came in after i asked the last one and we have some history students in the room, a question about the shootdown of the iranian plane in 19 eighties and the question that goes back to 1943 so wanted to acknowledge those questions with historical context and ask them on more before we break for the day. i guess this is directed towards professor yes around ski but not fielded by any of us. the question already directly is it possible that all three approaches and all three strategic approaches failed because they switch between them so much and could the united states trust and succeed with engagement with others if the u.s. proved to be consistent, trends worthy, and stick with it?

is it a question of strategic flaws or a question of strategic consistency? >> this is a good point. i still think the most important set of obstacles is the nature of iranian domestic politics. there is a lot of deep hostility towards the u.s. among iran's leaders, not so much among the iranian people. the inconsistency, shifting back and forth, most are medically, we have seen the trump administration abandoning not just about jcpoa, but the engagement approach of the obama administration. that severely undermines trust. hoow severely, how adversely that would affect prospects in the coming years, it is hard to say. i have been surprised to see iran make some noise about wanting to have some discussions with the u.s., or renegotiate the jcpoa in the

last few weeks are so. i think they are probably more pragmatic than i usually figure them to be. these are just words, you can't really tell how serious they are about it. this is a really big problem. they don't know almost from one minute to the next what the u.s. will do, especially if there are changes in the administration. i'm sure the iranians are hoping trump will lose the election in 2020. hoping the economy can hold out until then. further down the road, they can't be sure who would replace them. the current democrats seem to be pretty much on board with going back to the obama approach. beyond that, who knows? they certainly have a lot of distrust in the u.s.. a fair amount of that is valid. they are a lot more stable than we are, and a lot more consistent, because they have a dictatorship that has not changed much. that's the downside to democracy.

>> it's a next to the question and i agree with most of what mark said but i want to point out that it's true that the changes in the administration are relevant but it's within the administration there's changes and you mentioned bush senior, goodwill in 1989 and i understand it's not to blame the united states for this cause things change that the hostage is released but in his inaugural speech they said goodwill begets goodwill and you bungled the quote slightly but it keeps us abroad whether it's a marble step and someone can fact check the exact quote but the implication was we can

keep the hostages free and you have the cold war and the calculus changed and we help them get them released and was not easy for them despite the way it was presented they would control the straight line and then went to lebanon and found it very difficult on some of the lebanese militia and they didn't get rewarded for that. that stayed with the iranians throughout the 1990s and even though obama came with these speeches and televised readings there is a lot of skepticism and you can we really trust this? words -- they had seen nice words before and it was a reference to 1989 and we want to see action and over the next few years when it came to the final stage of jcpoa the leader was skeptical

but let's try this. it's heroic flexibility but he said i'm not quite sure this will work out and most of the hard-liners felt you can't really trust america. it's unfortunate and i don't think that's just the change of administration that's proven that point of view, it's made very easy for the hard-liners in tehran to say you can trust america. but you don't have to agree with or love the republic to see from their perspective that negotiations and engagement have turned into a game of robot dope. sure, but actually it's yet another way to get us to do what they want. the iranians have said that we'll talk, we will negotiate but not if you're just trying to use the negotiation as another tool to in a victory.

they are trying to dismantle the republic or regime change and to be honest, unfortunately that's a lot of what we've seen, so that's where i differ a bit with mark. it's not always about changes and it's about the fundamental mentality that we have in this country. the goal should be to bring it back to complete surrender and capitulation for the republic. i'm not sure it's a useful goal for us. i don't know that we're able -- it might not happen but if it does it will not be because of the u.s.. >> thank you all for the questions and the discussion. (applause) >> we can stay up here and have a conversation

with anybody who would like to have them.

>> up next, cornell university history professor lawrence glickman describes how the modern concept of free