for that we're joined by: suzanne maloney is a former u.s.te department official who dealt with iran issues. she's now at the brookings institution mehdi khalaji spent nearly 15 years studying theology and law in the iranian holy city of qom and later became journalist in tehran. he's now at the washington institute for near east policy. >> an agreement but about what exactly? >> i think it's an achievement we're returning to the table. we've had quite a bit of difficulty getting the iranians to even speaking about the nuclear program and the communication from the iranian security committee has actually u indicated he's prepared to talk about nuclear issues. that's not always the case and the new-found willingingness at least on paper to allow inspections which is a major source of concern so it's a useful starting point. >> we have been down this road before, right? tell us about what led up to this? >> the sanctions which are in place now are quite unprecedent and really target not only revolutionary guard and factories and individuals but

next to suzanne maloney in the savon center in middle east studies and she is going to talk about iran and this of course is iran in the news now and a couple of ways. the parliamentary election taking place in iran and of course the last x-ray weeks has been speculation about whether man is reaching the point with the israelis decide that they will go ahead and conduct a military strike against iranian nuclear facilities. so she will describe what is going on in iran but that nuclear program software. our third as robert gallucci, president of the macarthur foundation and spent a lot of time in u.s. government in the 90s working on these issues including assistant secretary of state for "politico" military affairs was very much involved in working on the current framework of north korea in 1994 and after jonathan and suzanne will have advice on how to fix the bombs in what should the u.s. policy in terms of addressing these questions. .. so amidst the quiet encouragement of the moment, i thought it would be useful at first to briefly review some of its history, how we find ourselves a

suzanne maloney will talk about iran. today there are parliamentary elections taking place in iran, and has been speculation about whether iran iran is reaching that point with the israelis to signing they are going to go ahead and conducting a military strike. describe -- suzanne will describe what is going on with that effort. robert gallucci is president of the macarthur foundation and spent a lot of time working on these issues, including as an assistant secretary of state for political, military affairs. after jonathan and suzanne, robert will give us advice on how we should fix the problem at what the policy should be in addressing these questions. there is a price for sitting in the middle chair. finally, we have strobe talbott, president of the brookings foundations. he grappled with these issues in the 1990's, and he will address two questions. one, what did these two cases say about global order to deal with this global threat, and how do these kinds of questions by into politics in the united states in a politi