Iran, the Bomb, and My Five Dinners with Ahmadinejad, Iowa City, Iowa, October 25, 2011

- [Jennifer Smyser] Thank you, Janet. I requested the honor of introducing today's speaker because he's a friend and colleague. I met Jim, Dr. Walsh, about 2-1/2 years ago when we came together in the formation of a new coalition of organizations mostly U.S. based at that time called the Fissile Materials Working Group, which is at the heart of the work that I do at the Stanley Foundation focused on the security of nuclear materials worldwide. I got to know him quite well in that process, and what I can tell you officially is that he is an esteemed expert in many international security issues and areas. He, of course, comes from Massachusetts Institute of Technology where he is a research associate in the Security Studies Program. He's written, researched on many areas that would probably be of interest to us, but in particular topics involving nuclear weapons and terrorism. He's testified before our U.S. Congress, and has appeared numerous times in the media. If you haven't seen him lately on CNN keep your eye out he's a regular. He also has written and had analysis appear in most of our major print publications New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, LA Times, USA Today. You name it you've probably seen Jim Walsh's work in it. What I can tell you unofficially is that he has a tremendous sense of humor, and I have a question for him right off the bat, which is I want to know what kind of dinner jokes you tell with Ahmadinejad? I've heard a little bit about these dinners because one of my former colleagues was sometimes invited as well, Michael Kraig, and he has shared with me a little bit about them, but I know that while being quite serious in sharing with us today that Jim might also bring a little levity to what is a very tough subject in terms of international affairs in today's world, so please help me join me welcoming Jim to the podium. - [Jim Walsh] Well, I want to thank, I want to thank Jennifer for that wonderful introduction. It was too nice an introduction because you don't want to raise expectations. I'm actually not that funny, I'm not, and normally what happens is I have a PowerPoint, and because I have a PowerPoint I'm able to, you know, show pictures that are funny, so I'm just going to have to do the best I can here, but I know Iowans, you know. This is my first visit to Iowa. I've been waiting to come to Iowa since 1987. It has been a goal of mine these many years. I swear to God I'm in a congregational church I swear to God, so I am thrilled to be here, thrilled to be in your beautiful state at this time of year, which I take it it's so beautiful that it will be fleeting and leaving soon, but I'm here I'm glad I'm here when I am. Again, I want to thank the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council, Jennifer and Janet, and all of you for taking time from your busy day to be with me today. I will try to be funny. I really doubt that's going to work, so I'll try to be at least substantive if not funny. Let me tell you a little bit about my experience with this topic. As was said I work on issues related to nuclear decision-making, and in particular countries that are interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, or were once interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, so I've been to North Korea, I've been to Iran, but we're going to talk in particular about Iran today, so I want to tell you a little bit about my work there. I've been to Iran five times. I've spent about 16 hours now with President Ahmadinejad, and have met literally hundreds of Iranian officials, and Iranian experts including the Foreign Minister, people at the Expediency Council, the Ambassador to the UN, Senior clerics, so I've had a chance over the last several years to listen to what Iranians say, and to sense the different perceptions we of them and them of us. This talk is essentially divided into four big chunks. You probably shouldn't say chunks on public television. It just doesn't sound like a very good word. Four different areas. I can't believe I'm being filmed, and I know I'm just going to mess this up as I go along here. The first one is nonproliferation. Let's put this problem of Iran in some broader context, so that we can judge Iran against what we know has happened in the past with other countries in similar situations, so I'm going to talk about nonproliferation, and in particular what I call the puzzle of success that the predictions that people had about the spread of nuclear weapons turned out again and again and then again to be wrong, and that things worked out better than anyone would have guessed, so that's the context the context of success. Then I'll talk a little bit about Iran itself, then more specifically about Iran's nuclear program, and then finally end up talking about policy options that the U.S. has, but let's begin at the beginning, and talk about this broader thing we call proliferation that we all read about whether it's Iran or North Korea or some other country. Now there's a standard way of thinking about this, right? It's a chain reaction that one state gets a bomb, and because they get the bomb their enemies become fearful so they get a bomb, and this chain continues on out, so you start with one and then you get five, and then 10 and many more. Historically, you can look at it and say, well, yeah, there are chains going on here. Remember Nazi Germany had a bomb campaign, a bomb program rather, so the United States having discovered this started it's own bomb program. When the U.S. had one Russia followed suit, China followed suit and when the Chinese got one India followed suit fearing the Chinese, and then Pakistan after India. There's actually a Tom Lehrer song that sort of describes that process, so the chain you have countries going ... Imagine my PowerPoint and you have a picture with a chain the number of nuclear weapon states is going up, and that's why you got all these predictions from the 1940s on the nuclear weapons would spread and spread, and one day we would live in a world of 40 nuclear weapon states and lots of nuclear wars. Well, I'm here to tell you that that model, and that understanding about nuclear proliferation is empirically factually wrong. That is not what's happened. In fact, if you look at the rate of proliferation how many new countries join the nuclear club each decade the rate of proliferation has declined over time. It goes up like this and then it goes like that. The peak decade for countries joining the nuclear club was the 1960s when three countries, Israel, China, and France acquired nuclear weapons, but from that peak decade of 1960s steadily fewer and fewer states have acquired nuclear weapons, but the good news is even better than that, and that is not only is the rate of proliferation declining, the number of countries interested in acquiring nuclear weapons has never been fewer than at any point in the nuclear age. In the 1950s and '60s you had dozens of countries that were interested in acquiring nuclear weapons, and few failed to accomplish that. I'll talk about that in a minute, but compared to the '50s and '60's where there were dozens of countries who were thinking about, playing with, experimenting with the notion of becoming a nuclear weapons state today that number is less than a handful, so whether it's the actual accumulation of nuclear weapons, or the candidate pool both have declined over time, which I think warrants it being called the biggest public policy success in the 20th century. If the abolition of slavery was the biggest policy success of the 19th century the constraint of nuclear weapons, and the way in which all those predictions failed to come true is the biggest public policy success of the 20th century. Now I mentioned that a lot of countries started down that path and stopped in reverse course. I have a chart of them and I can't show it to you, but I'm going to read you the list. They include some 25 to 30 depends on how you categorize them, but they include some surprise candidates. Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Egypt, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Iran under the Shah, Iraq, Italy, Japan, Libya, Norway, Romania, South Korea, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, and others either had a program starting towards nuclear weapons and then gave it up, or inherited nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, and also gave them up. In fact, the rate of renunciation since 1990, the rate of countries giving up nuclear weapons is higher than the rate of countries acquiring nuclear weapons. Since 1990 four countries that inherited, or built nuclear weapons gave them up. South Africa, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine, and only one country North Korea has gone onto acquire nuclear weapons, and even in that case they promised to give them up, and then they changed their mind, so you know it sort of goes back and forth, but at a minimum that's four to one in favor of renunciation over acquisition. So having given you the context and set the stage let's talk a little bit about Iran in particular. First, I just want to describe Iran as a country, you know, there's a lot of talk about Iran in the news today as a foreign policy threat, but I think, again, as with comparing Iran to other countries in the nuclear age it's good to have just some general background information about this country. So, you know, I'm a securities studies guy, and securities studies guys they tend to look ... Men and women I should add they look at the size of the country. They look at the size of the economy, and they look at the size of the defense budget. Three big sort of lumpy measures of power. Now if you look at Iran, and I'm going to compare Iran to the United States here. The size of Iran it's roughly the size of Alaska, and the United States is more or less the size of the United States, so, you know, Iran is much smaller than the United States. Let's look at GDP, gross domestic product. Iran's gross domestic product is $827 billion. The U.S. GDP is $14 trillion. Now I'm not a math guy, but I know that ours is at least 14 times larger, you know, and I don't mean double, I don't mean triple, quadruple that's 400%. We're talking about 14, 15, 16 times the size of Iran our economy. How about military expenditures? Iran spends about $8 billion a year on its military. We spend $670 billion a year, and I'm not going to even estimate what that ratio is that's really, really big. I'm an MIT guy and I'm just going to say that's a really, really big discrepancy. Eight billion, 670 billion. I share this with you the sort of, you know, state the obvious Iran is not the Soviet Union. It's not a peer competitor. It's not a great power like a Germany, Japan, Russia are great powers. It's a regional power, it's an important power in Southwest Asia in the Middle East, but it's not a great power, it's not a global power, so let's keep that in mind before we all get too exercised about it. Let me talk a little bit about the domestic situation in Iran, and of all the things I have to say today this is probably the most important for trying to understand Iran and the U.S.-Iranian relationship. Now we all watched two years ago June 2009 when the Greens protested the disputed election in Iran. You saw, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people in the street, young people, and it was all very exciting to watch. Now, of course, the state reimposed order after that, but that wasn't really the most important story in Iran. It wasn't about the Greens. What has happened since the election is actually far more profound, and it is a division not between the leaders and the Greens. It's a division within the conservative ruling group. At first it was simply Ahmadinejad, the president of Iran and the Supreme Leader who is the head of that country. The president is not the head of Iran. The Supreme Leader is the head of Iran, and the Supreme Leader, the Conservative Clergy, President Ahmadinejad were on one side, and they started to cut out of play conservative pragmatic establishment politicians in Iran, not the Greens, but people who had long served the revolution, people like Rafsanjani, who is head of the Assembly of Experts, one of the main governmental organs in Iran. Others who had previously served in Iranian government, still serving in Iranian government, and those people were being pushed out, being arrested, their relatives were being arrested, so this is conservative against conservative. This is ruler against ruler, and now it's taken a new and more divisive, and some ways more troubling turn sometime in the last six months. President Ahmadinejad gets all the press when he comes to the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly meetings, and he gets all the press because he's prone to say use strong language in describing events, and to be provocative, sometimes, purposely provocative, so people focus on him, but the reality is in the last six months the Supreme Leader has targeted him. He is on the outs his people are being arrested, and there's a bitter ugly power contest going on at the highest, highest levels, not just the Greens, not the conservative pragmatists, now at the highest echelons of the Iranian government there's a blood fight between Ahmadinejad on one side, and his opponents including the speaker of their parliament, Ali Larijani, the Revolutionary Guard and the Supreme Leader. In fact, there's real speculation almost a betting pool, although, I don't think those are allowed under Islamic law about whether Ahmadinejad would simply be arrested, or allowed to finish out his term. I think he will be allowed to finish out his term, and he's a bit of a loose cannon, so he may not go quietly into the night here. There may be another shoe to drop. I wonder if I can use a third metaphor in a row there, but what I'm trying to communicate is that domestic politics in Iran are roiled right now, they're divisive, they're unpredictable, they're ugly, and they may yet get uglier. I say that's the most important thing to tell you about Iran, and the most important thing to tell you about U.S.-Iranian relations because countries that are deeply internally divided find it very difficult to engage in negotiations. They're too busy battling themselves then to talk to others, so that will be a theme that we'll want to revisit a little later in this talk. All right, having described Iran's economy, and its internal political situation let's now turn to the nuclear program. Again, here a little bit of history is worthwhile. People talk about Iran's rush to the bomb. Iran's first nuclear efforts really started under the Shah in the 1970s, and actually the Shah was a late bloomer in the nuclear world. He really didn't get interested in nuclear, and I think nuclear weapons until the mid and late 1970s. Of course, by 1979 he had been thrown out of office, deposed, and then you have the new government come in. Now when the Islamic government came in 1979 as often happens here in the United States the people coming into power say whoever was previously in power they were wrong about everything, we don't want to have anything to do with it, so when the revolutionaries came in 1979 they shut down the Shah's nuclear program, and wanted nothing to do with it. Then you remember that Iraq invaded Iran. There was the bloody Iran-Iraq War, the bloodiest war in the region on record at that point, and then starting in the mid 1980s the Islamic republic began to invite its nuclear scientists who had fled to return back to Iran, and they started a nuclear program sometime in the 1970s. I'll just say nuclear program. I'm not saying nuclear weapons program just nuclear program. So this is a program that started in the mid 1980s. This is not a race for the bomb. This is a program that languished and was unproductive, and didn't accomplish anything for almost 15 years. It wasn't until the late 1990s when under new leadership for the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran a new more dynamic and competent leader, frankly, took over the agency that they began to make progress in nuclear technology. So this is a program characterized by a slow start then rapid advance, but there are often exaggerated claims, and it begins with the Iranians. The Iranians will come out and hold press conferences saying that we've mastered technology X, and it's way better than anyone's. It's the best technology in the world, and we're the leaders in the technology. That turns out just to be not true, you know, they're just saying that for domestic consumption, and they say it because that's their speaking style, and then people who really dislike Iran and the United States they seize on those statements, and say, look, Iran is making tremendous progress in its nuclear program, so you have sort of this dysfunctional couple here where Iran makes exaggerated statements, and then the anti Iran people and U.S. seize on those and play them up when really the reality is much more mundane. They are making progress. They will continue to make progress, but it's often two steps forward, one step back. Sometimes, it's one step forward, two steps back, but as I say this program even if you date it at the late 1990s it's 2011, right? A decade, more than a decade has gone by, and they're still not at a point where they are in a position to build a nuclear weapon, so it's not a race to the bomb. It's a clunky, sometimes haphazard, but nevertheless, progressive attempt to build nuclear technology, and to gain core competency. It's also worth remembering something that's often forgot during this period, which is that Iran agreed to suspend its nuclear program. Between 2003 and 2006 it actually stopped running centrifuges, so that would certainly be a case where Iran was willing to engage in negotiation, and where that negotiation had a successful result. Again, that's something to return to later. So I think their program it's established, it's improving, it's modest. It has problems with re-supply, problems with foreign intelligence operations, killing its scientists or inserting computer viruses, but I think over time we should expect steady advancement characterized by the occasional setback that's the program. If that's the program what do we say about Iran's intentions? Here I think it's worthwhile to follow the lead of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. The Director of National Intelligence oversees all dozen plus intel agencies that the United States has. You know, we often think it's just the CIA. It's not just the CIA. There's CIA and DIA and INR, and a whole bunch of agencies, alphabet soup, that are working on different parts of intelligence problems. They all look at Iran, and then the Office of the Director of National Intelligence tries to pull this altogether, and offer some summary judgment about Iran, so here's the summary judgment. I'm going to read it in full. I'm not going to use ellipses because I think it's important to get this as the actual text. This is the February 2010 assessment for Iran. "We continue to assess Iran is keeping open the option "to develop nuclear weapons "in part by developing various nuclear capabilities "that bring it closer to being able to produce "such weapons should it choose to do so. "We do not know, however, "if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons." Now that's pretty far from the way politicians talk about the Irani nuclear program. The summary judgment of all the U.S. intel agencies is that Iran is keeping its options open. It's probably interested in a nuclear weapon, but it hasn't made that decision, and it's not clear what that decision will be in the future. Why do I mention that? Because as a student of nuclear decision-making I find that there's a big difference when you look back in history between countries who say we want to have a nuclear weapons capability. We want to have that as an option versus the countries that say we want a bomb, we want it now, we're going to make it job one. Remember that list of countries I read, Australia, Argentina, all the rest who had an interest in nuclear weapons. Not all, but most of them make a capability decision. They said we want it we're not sure when or what, but we're interested enough. Well, what happens is those countries say they're interested and then they end up in a war, or there's an earthquake, or a change in leadership. Stuff happens along the way and then they get derailed, whereas, the countries that say I want it. I want it now, it's job one, they get it done. I mention that because at least right now it's the consensus judgment of the U.S. Intelligence community that Iran is a member of the former group not the latter group. It's a group that Iran has an interest in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, but it has not made yet what I call the bomb decision, so that means there's play in the system here. This is not a foregone conclusion. That also means that the last thing you want to do is create a decision moment an agenda setting moment. You know, governments don't work where they sit down everyday on Tuesday they say, do we want to have a bomb? No, and they meet again on Wednesday, and they say do we want to have a bomb? No, and they meet everyday that's not the way it works. The way government works on nuclear decision-making is there has to be a reason a cause to bring that issue to the table to be decided on, all right? So if Iran has not yet made a bomb decision the last thing you want to do is create an agenda setting moment that gives them cause to sit down and consider that choice. Now if they do they might still say no, but you want to avoid having those meetings. That's what you want to do if you're in favor of nonproliferation. So these trigger events, these agenda setting moments you can imagine what they are. One might be a sudden loss of internal legitimacy. It's hard to imagine they could have one worse than they did a while ago, but something happens where the government feels like it has to rebound, and demonstrate it's worth to its people that might be one. Another would be military strikes. In the 1980s Israel struck Saddam's nuclear program. At the time Saddam's program was one of many exotic programs that was sort of languishing wasn't making much progress. After the Israeli strike Saddam Hussein made it job number one and they made real progress towards building a nuclear weapon. That was a real bomb program of Saddam's until the intervention under the first war with Bush, the first Bush not the second Bush, but military strikes you can imagine people will react nationalistically. People will react countries will say, oh yeah, we'll show you, or they'll feel we're under threat, and we have to follow through on that. No, it's not always the case. Syria's reactor was struck by Israel. I'm guessing that Syria will not reconstitute its nuclear program, but that's just a wild guess, but certainly in the case of Iraq the Israeli strike definitely led to a decision on the part of Saddam to pursue nuclear weapons. In fact, there's a new article out this has been the subject of scholarly study for some time, but there's yet another article out in this quarter's edition of International Security. I know you all read International Security, but it's the academic journal devoted to these sorts of things, and there's a new article this quarter about that very dynamic, so in summary what you want to do is not create reasons for states to consider the nuclear status. You want to let sleeping dogs lie. Now I still think that a nuclear weapon, you know, I'm against all nuclear weapons. I'm against all proliferation, so I take all of this seriously, and I take Iran seriously. Just because they haven't decided doesn't mean it's not a problem, but I also think that we're not focusing on all the real near term dangers with Iran while we talk about other things. To me I think the primary threat that we face in U.S.-Iranian relations is not what people are talking about that the real danger is that we're going to wander into war. That we're going to have an accidental war, an inadvertent war that leads to escalation, and then in turn leads to a decision on the part of Iran to acquire nuclear weapons, and I'm not the only one saying this. In fact, the main people who are saying this in the U.S. today are the uniformed military officers in the U.S. military. The retiring head of the joint chiefs in a public speech in Washington said that he thought the major danger we face with Iran was accidental war. I've had private conversations with the commander in charge of CENTCOM, which is the regional command that includes Iran. The whole meeting was about that very problem the problem of accidental war, and what both those senior military officers have suggested is that we need to establish lines of communication with Iran. We don't have to like them, we don't have to embrace them, but we need to talk to them so that if something does happen it doesn't get out of control, and spiral into something that nobody wants because wars happen. Wars happen even when none of the parties want them. We think of World War I, no one wanted World War I, but that was a case in which everyone ended up in a place that no one wanted to be, and that's what we need to avoid with Iran, and no one other than the U.S. military is talking about that problem right now. So let's move from there to talking about policy options. We'll take the last few minutes, and talk about U.S. policy options, and there are three that received the most attention. One is sanctions, you know, everyone loves sanctions, especially, politicians love sanctions, and I'll describe why in a minute, but are they effective? Well, this turns out to be a really hairy social science problem to try to measure whether sanctions are effective or not because you've got lots of cases, you know, some are are on human rights, some are on this, some are on that, and how do you measure effectiveness, and over what period of time it becomes a real morass, but I will say in summary form that sanctions more or less work whatever work means in about a third of the cases, so they work a third of the time. They fail two-thirds of the time, you know, and the question often is it's not whether you can impose cost on another country. Sure, you can impose cost on another country. The question is whether the cost you impose lead to the policy outcome you desire, so we can impose cost on Iran, but the question remains will they stop their nuclear program because of those costs? So far the answer has been no, but, you know, it's possible that that will happen, but at the end of the day there has to be some logic that says what you're doing is not simply painful, but will lead to the outcome that you desire. I think, though, that we as a bureaucracy as a government love sanctions. We have a lot of practice with it. It allows us to wave our finger at the offending party, and say you're bad. It has bipartisan support. You don't have to deal with the other person negotiations you have to talk to them, and they're irascible or difficult. Sanctions, you just impose them, you know, and you can do it by yourself and it's not ... And, you know, you don't have to go to war, but on the other hand it doesn't look like you're not doing anything, so it's perfect, it's perfect, right? You get to do something, don't have to involve the other guy, and you look like you're being tough, so that's sanctions. Military action, well, as I said I think military action can delay a nuclear program, not stop it but delay it, but often delay equals death. The whole idea of killing a nuclear program sort of stretching it out over a long period of time, and sort of things happen and it ends up being closed down, so military action can do that, and it may be that Israel's strike against Syria is an example of that. Too early to tell, but it wouldn't surprise me if that's the case. The problem is military strikes as we discussed previously can also be a trigger to go from not sure what you want to do to deciding, yeah, I want to do that with Iraq being the primary example. Not to mention the fact that the country might want to retaliate, and that the U.S. is currently involved in three wars, and this isn't, you know, a race to collect as many wars as possible, and, you know, there's this thing called the Arab spring, and what would military strikes look like in this new context of the Arab spring very unclear, so lots of risks not without potential benefits, right? It could work, could fail, could fail with big cost, but, you know, not the first thing I'd grab off the shelf in dealing with this problem. Then there's negotiation. You know, when I look at North Korean and Iranian behavior with negotiations what I see is they tend to be a little better behaved when they're at the negotiating table then when they're outside of the system throwing stones and throwing rocks. I like negotiation because it allows you to test the other side to see if they're serious or not, and also it establishes this line of communication, so that you can avoid inadvertent war, and accidental war that no one wants. Now some people say and I hear this all the time we can't engage in negotiations because that's playing for time. Sometimes in history there are these situations where everyone looks at the same thing, and they get it all wrong, and this is one of those occasions, you know, you look up and you say that's the morning star, and that's the evening star. No, no, actually they're both the same thing, and neither of them is a star, and in this case they're all playing for time. Oh, yes, they would be playing for time. Playing for time works the following way. There's a country they want to do something. The only time they can do it, though, get away with it is when they're in negotiations, so at the end of the negotiations they start doing the bad thing you don't want them to do, and they drag out the negotiations, so that they can continue to do the bad thing that's playing for time. That does not describe the current circumstance at all. Right now Iran is building centrifuges. It was building centrifuges a long time ago. It's building them now. If we go into negotiations they will build centrifuges, and they'll probably build centrifuges after the negotiations depending on the nature of the deal. There's no playing for time here. These things do not line up. They will continue to build centrifuges whether we talk to them or not, so I think it's probably better that we talk to them. Now both sanctions and military strikes have their downsides and so does negotiation as well. First of all it's just darn difficult. Both countries have a history of grievance each side the U.S. and Iran can both get up, and complain for hours about what the other has done, and I've sat in meetings where that's happened, and it's not pleasant. Nationalism, pride, the fact that we don't have relations means we missed signals. This is true for both parties we refuse to negotiate with them if we think we're weak, but the moment we think we're strong we want to press our advantage, right? Won't negotiate when we're weak because we're weak, and then when we're strong we won't negotiate because we want to use our new strength, so essentially that means you never negotiate. A positive side by one side is seen as evidence of weakness, and the need to continue the pressure. Look, Iran is giving in on this that shows sanctions work, that shows pressure works we need to do more of it, and both sides do this. Of course, domestic opponents are happy to attack any successful result that looks like it might be going somewhere. True in Washington, true in Tehran, and I can point to several examples. Now we've had, again, we've had success with negotiations in Iran. They froze their program 2003 to 2006, but it is difficult, so I'm fast arriving at the end of my time, so let me move to, well, what are we going to do? Well, let me remind you again. We've had great success with nonproliferation. Sanctions have been part of that. They've been a minor part of that, but they've been a part of that. They help impose cost, cost irrelevant, but we currently spend 90% of our time on sanctions when that's really about 10% of the solution. More often success happens when all the states buy in, not just pressure, but they make a positive buy in to some new agreement where there's a face saving deal. That means we have to give our enemies a way to save face, not a very pleasant thing to do, but I'll say as much as I'm a fan of negotiation, and negotiated settlements it's difficult to do right now because Iran is so deeply divided internally it's hard to negotiate with someone whose split in half, where there's a deep division, and, you know, you could say the same thing in the U.S. about the Republicans and the Democrats, but it's even more intense in Iran so while I think negotiation is the better path if only so that we avoid misadventure and miscalculation it's going to be difficult given the domestic situations in both countries, but I conclude by saying an Iran with nuclear weapons is not inevitable that's what both history, and the U.S. intelligence community tell us, and the key factor will be this leadership fight in Iran, but let's not push them, you know. I think we should follow the physicians code here do no harm. Iran's nuclear program is a glass of water sitting on the edge of the table, and what we don't want to do right now is begin shaking that table, and forcing a decision and an outcome that actually works against us. Let's not create the very thing that we're trying to avoid, and finally in the meantime we need to address this very real risk of accidental war, so my final gift to you, I'm sure you'll see it as a gift, is if I saw presidential candidates what would I ask them? There are two things I might ask them. One, the U.S. intelligence community's consensus finding is that Iran is working on a nuclear capability, but has not yet decided whether to build a bomb. Aren't military strikes or the threat of strikes likely to strengthen bomb advocates, and push them towards a decision to build a bomb? The second question I would ask. The U.S. military's top uniformed officers publicly expressed worry that we may stumble into an inadvertent war with Iran, and have called for establishing lines of communication to avoid it. Should we be talking to Iran as they suggest? I encourage you to think about asking those questions as leaders come through, and people who would hold the Oval Office, but in the meantime I will end here, and allow you to ask me questions instead. Thank you very much. - [Jennifer Smyser] Please do tell us about your dinners with Ahmadinejad. - [Jim Walsh] Well, they ... What can I say about them? I can tell you sort of how they're arranged, and what I've gotten out of them. So the first one was some years ago. At any given dinner there might be 10 or 20, 25 Iran experts in the room, and we're seated around the table. In fact, in the PowerPoint after this I can show you the picture if you want. You can actually see George Stephanopoulos sleeve if you look closely, never been photographed before. So we're all sitting around a big square table, rectangular table, we eat, and then we're sort of seated in a pecking order, and then we each get to ask a question, so all of us ask all our questions, you know, so there are 10 or 20 questions collected in a row, and then he responds to them in serial form, takes the first one, second one, and third one. You know, actually he's pretty good about remembering the question, recapitulating it and then responding. That doesn't mean you always get an answer, right? But he hears the questions, he understands the questions, and it's at least a faithful retelling of what the question is. The answers are often in some other way, you know, goes off in some other direction, but I learn something different every time I go, and I see different Ahmadinejad's. You know, there's the Ahmadinejad the conciliator, Ahmadinejad the fiery anti Imperialist, you know, you see different aspects of people. He's a smart guy, he's not a pat you on the back, shake your hand campaigning easygoing fellow. He's shorter than I am. I know that's hard to believe, but he's shorter than I am, and maybe that's why, you know, I get invited. I tend to be in the smaller range of Americans, but he does engage the questions. I found them useful. I think just spending time with people is useful. Seeing him in these different guises, if you will, is useful. One time this was after the crackdown after June 2009 I went to the dinner in September of 2009, and I had a colleague of mine who I met with in Iran, and he had been swept up and arrested, so I asked my question and then I said, "Mr. President, I'd like to respectfully ask "about another matter. "You encouraged us to come to Iran. "You encouraged us to speak with Iranian colleagues "about these issues, "but how can you expect us to do that "if when I come and I do that "that person is then subsequently arrested?" Then three days later he was released. Now it doesn't mean he was released because I said that, and other people raise the issue as well, but it's at least plausible to think that that might be an example again of where communication matters, and even in this small way may have helped one single person, so, you know, sometimes, you know, there are always protests in New York City when he's in town, and people are always nervous about going to the dinners, but I'm a scholar. It's a scholar's job to go and meet people, right? To meet people, to collect data, to make evaluations whether they're your enemies or your friends I consider that part of my job responsibility, and I embrace that and I found it to be worthwhile. - [Jennifer Smyser] Okay, I'm going to start with the questions that folks in the audience have that relate to the headlines they've been reading. - [Jim Walsh] Yes, I expected as much. - [Jennifer Smyser] Wow, he is smart, yeah. So the recent assassination plot that was revealed, you know, driven supposedly by Iranian elites, you know, what does that have to do if anything with nuclear program? Second question is slightly different, but with the recent announcement of our pull out of troops from Iraq with that exit, you know, what does this mean for what connections does it have, again, back to the nuclear program? - [Jim Walsh] Well, you Iowans are living up to your reputation for good questions I'm glad to see that. You know, I'm a big fan of the Iowa caucuses because I'm a big fan of the New Hampshire primary, and I think both states need to hold together this because candidates for president need to hear these sorts of questions, and need to talk to people face-to-face. On the first question the plot. I think there are three important related questions. One, is it true? Two, if it's true what does it mean? No one, no one is talking about that, and then number three what should we do about it? On the first question is it true? You know, I don't know. You know, a lot of my friends in the Iran expert community, terrorism experts, former government officials they look at this and they're really skeptical about it. A lot of things do not add up. It's inconsistent with the way the Quds Force has behaved in the past. The Supreme Leader is seen as risk averse. Why would they assassinate a Saudi on U.S. soil when if they really wanted to do it they could do it more easily in the region. Why would they want to alienate Saudi Arabia who is head of OPEC, and on whom even though they don't like them, on whom their economic fortune is dependent because Saudi is at the top of OPEC, Iran is at the bottom of OPEC in terms of power within OPEC. The details that the Quds Force would contract with a non-professional who in turn would contract with a drug cartel totally unexpected. So, you know, there's that initial skepticism, but then I might add it's certainly true that governments do stupid things, and they often do stupid things poorly, and that doesn't mean they turn out well. It's just another level of bad, so if you look at the U.S. plots for assassinations, or other plots for assassinations, you know, so I don't rule it out as being impossible. So my stance is the one that I don't hear very often maybe we should wait 'til the trial begins, and see what the evidence is. I think the empirical context here is other terror plots. Since 9/11 we've had a lot of terror plots, right? And big announcements, big press conferences, and what have we found? We found some of them turned out to be true. These people are serious and they go to jail. Others, these cases fall apart in the light of day, and it's dismissed and sort of an embarrassment, but not as many people hear the second press conference as the initial press conference, you know, when the announcement of the charges comes. Then it seems to me and this is just my feel for the thing I haven't quantified it that a lot of these charges are technically true, but less than what you're led to believe when the charges are announced. There's someone, they're an amateur, they really don't know what they're doing. They engage in technical violations of the law. They're sort of drawn along in a sting operation that had they been left by themselves they never would have actually done anything, or had the capability to do anything, so, yes, there's something there, but it doesn't have the same meaning, it shouldn't carry the same meaning as if it was a terror plot in the ways that we're talking about this one, so first question is it true? I don't know, there's skepticism, but let's see what the evidence is. Number two, what does it mean? If it is true then I think we need to step back, and ask ourselves what's going on inside Iran? Is this just some sort of rogue or dissident, or incompetent group within the Quds Force? Does this reflect a change of Iranian policy and behavior, and if that's the case we need to ask ourselves why, and then we should be thinking very much about that problem of accidental and inadvertent war. It seems to me the conclusion would be that we have even a stronger need to begin to talk to Iran not less of a need. Remember the Soviet Union? You know, we battled them a long time, and they had nuclear weapons, and we had all sorts of assassination plots, and espionage plots that didn't keep us from talking at the table, and protecting ourselves from getting in a nuclear war with our adversary. We fought them tooth and nail, and we talked to them at the same time, so if the plot is true I think that's even more reason to think about the phase we're heading into, and how we can protect our own national interest, and then, thirdly, what to do about it? Well, again, assuming it's true it's an opportunity for the U.S. to put pressure on Iran, but I think, you know, you hear a lot of presidential candidates, or think tank people invoking military strikes, a military strike because a country tried to kill someone else on our soil, you know, I think that's a troubled logic, but in any case as I say we have in world history, in post fortify history a lot of experience with states trying to carry out assassinations, and in very few cases has that been a cause for war because the cost of war ... It's easy to say, oh, we should have military strikes without thinking about what the real cost of that would be, so I would think we would not want to fritter away our political and moral advantage if, in fact, the plot turns out to be true, but use it for leverage, but also use it to protect our own national security interest, and that the last thing we'd want to do is double down, and make things worse for ourselves internationally, and more generally by launching military strikes that put us in a whole new world of hurt for them, for us, and for what we're trying to accomplish in the Middle East right now, so it may or may not be true. If it's true we ought to pay attention to it, and try to figure out what the hell is going on here, and then, three, if it's true we should respond, but certainly starting, you know, there was a war that was started over an assassination, and it was World War I, right? And that was a war no one wanted, so I think maybe we should retain the lessons of World War I, respond forcefully use it to our advantage, but don't be stupid and make what was once, you know, snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or victory from the jaws of defeat, whichever it is. Don't make it a problem rather than an opportunity. So that's my view of that. What's the second one? - [Jennifer Smyser] The withdrawal of troops from Iraq. - [Jim Walsh] Withdrawal of troops, yeah, there's a lot of loose talk about that too. You know, if we withdraw ... I was driving in on the radio here, driving in in a cab there was a talk show on the cab ride, and the guy in one paragraph said, going into Libya was a terrible idea. How could we intervene in Libya, and what are we doing pulling out of Iraq? I was really impressed that he had the mental dexterity to take what seemed to be opposite positions in the same paragraph, but anyway, so the big argument here is that this is a gift to Iran, right? Iraq's going to take everyone. I've heard this for a long time. I think Iran might enjoy some increase in its position in the near term, but it's important to remember that Iranians are Persians and Iraqi's are Arabs, and one is Sunni and one is Shia. Now there are Shia in Iraq, but, you know, these are guys that fought an eight year bloody war against each other. I think if you ask me which is more important in the Middle East is it nationalism, allegiance to statehood, or is it allegiance to religion it's really allegiance to statehood. It's whether you're an Iranian first and an Iraqi second, not whether you're a Shia or a Sunni. So I except we'll withdraw Iran might be able to score some tactical points over the next two or three years, but when things normalize in Iraq they're going to go right back to hating each other. They're the two biggest powers in the region they're going to compete. That's the law of international relations. They will compete and be rivals, so I'm actually not that worried about it. - [Jennifer Smyser] So this next batch of questions has to do wanting to dig in a little bit more on the accidental war scenario. Israel and the role that it might or might not play there is it trying to provoke a war between the U.S. and Iran? Should we consider them doing something to take down the Iranian nuclear program as they have in other places, and, you know, is there anything in the three-way relationship that's significant between Iran, Israel and U.S., and then finally-- - [Jim Walsh] Isn't that enough? - [Jennifer Smyser] Yeah, I know. - [Jim Walsh] I mean, really? - [Jennifer Smyser] There are more over there. - [Jim Walsh] I know, but I mean at a time. - [Jennifer Smyser] At a time, I'll help you. - [Jim Walsh] Three is pretty much it for me. - [Jennifer Smyser] Yeah, yeah, yeah, and then is there anything internally that could trigger that accidental war Ayatollah Khomeini's death? - [Jim Walsh] Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, assuming I'll need help for the audience on this. First one, what does accidental war really mean here? I think in talking to U.S. military officers, the highest ranking officers in the U.S. military what they're most concerned about as a trigger is that incident at sea because we're in the Persian Gulf, they're in the Persian Gulf. One can imagine a naval battle that goes badly, and then one or the other sides feeling, particularly the Iranian side who like us are proud and nationalistic, but them even more so feeling like they are compelled to respond because they don't want to lose face. Then maybe that shows up in Afghanistan, or that shows up in Iraq, or it shows up, you know, at sea, but I think the thing that people are really worried about right now are naval incidents because there's a lot of traffic, and a lot of cheek to jowl interaction between Iran and the U.S. Navy in the Persian Gulf. You know, would Israel attack Iran? Well, you know, Israel has been threatening to attack Iran. Israel's been saying Iran is a year away from the bomb since 2000, right? I once made a bet with a friend of mine, he said, you know, this was in 2000, "I'll bet you a six pack of beer "Iran has nuclear weapons by the end of the year." I said, "Fine, done." So a year comes by I win, but I don't want to make him pay. I'm Iowan that way I'm a nice guy, so I say, oh, you know, we'll just make it double or nothing. So now we've gone on more than 10 years, and now he owes me a brewery, but, you know, every year we're told Iran is a year away from the bomb and I think every year Israeli officials sit down with American officials, and talk about Iran, Iran, Iran, but I think it may reflect some authentic concern. It doubtless does. It probably also is a form of leverage or pressure because the Israelis would prefer that America do whatever is done not them, obviously. It's the middle of the Arab spring they have a Palestinian problem, they have political divisions at home, it would be easier and more likely to be effective if the U.S. did it rather than them, so I think we're right around the corner from Iranian bomb talk. A lot of that is to pressure the U.S. government into taking action, but I think the U.S. government to the Bush administrations credit, and to the Obama administration's credit has been on top of this, and has sent clear, unambiguous signals by sending top ranked U.S. military officers to Israel for meetings where they make it clear in the press conferences afterwards that the U.S. does not want a military strike on Iran, so the U.S. both tries to reassure Israel, and has also laid down the law that, no, this is something your most important friend does not want to see happen. Frankly, with the internal divisions in Israel right now, you know, and with Syria, you know, all the states on their border influx, Egypt influx, Syria influx, Jordan a little shaky, I don't see that happening, and for the most part if there are additional internal problems in Iran, or additional internal problems in all these countries I think that leads to a focus inward rather than outward, so I don't think states get very excited about engaging them. You know, there's this wag the tail or wag the dog thing where states try to divert, governments try to divert by going to war when you actually look at the empirical record that doesn't happen very often. Mostly states that have problems at home they focus on home, and they don't double down on their problems by launching a war very rare that you get that, so I think the more internal problems, so that's why I think one of the consequences of the Arab spring, remember, those Arab spring protests they weren't about Israel. They were about commodity prices, abuses by security forces, domestic governance issues, corruption. I think a lot of those countries are focusing at home, and not thinking about fighting the wars abroad, so if we can avoid the accidental wars then I think, you know, we're in pretty good shape. Did I answer them all I can't remember. - [Jennifer Smyser] You came close. - [Jim Walsh] Close enough. - [Jennifer Smyser] We'll let him off the hook, and this will be our last set of double-- - [Jim Walsh] Last set of seven questions. - [Jennifer Smyser] Yeah, so looking at some other players that you have not mentioned, the United Nations, the NPT, IAEA and inspections, and the role that they might play, so that's at the global scale, and then going to the public and private sector, you know, what role do businesses, and companies have in this, and what about media? - [Jim Walsh] Okay, that is about seven. All right, global NPT, IAEA, alphabet soup. IAEA is supposed to issue a new Iran report this week or next and it's being what is it? It's begin contested? You know, IAEA is under new leadership now. ElBaradei is no longer head it's Mr. Amano, and this has definitely made a transition in the agency. Some have welcomed it, some haven't. I'm a little perturbed by the agency's inclination these last several months to issue reports with innuendo to say we suspect stuff is happening, and to write things that imply that Iran and North Korea might be doing things without actually stating their evidence. I think IAEA has to work very carefully to make sure that it's not seen as a political player that it's seen as a neutral agency because we're going to need that instrumentality, we're going to need that tool called the IAEA when we're ready to actually settle things up if we ever get there, and if it's seen as biased, or as the lap dog of one of the players in the international system that's really going to undermine our efforts to achieve resolution of these issues, so I hope Mr. Amano works diligently to maintain the credibility of the agency, and, therefore, is diplomatic. When they have evidence, and they think they can make it public they should make it public, and if they don't have the evidence, or they can't make it public then they shouldn't be talking about it, so we'll see what this next report is about. I think they have a critical role to play. My colleagues and I wrote an article in the New York Review of Books sometime ago that says one approach to this global multilateral approach is to persuade Iran that we should take what are national facilities, and make them multilateral facilities where Iran is an owner of their enrichment program along with Russia, Britain, pick some set of countries, Japan who are also owners of this. It's no longer an Iranian facility, but an internationally owned facility in which Iran gets to claim credit. It gets the benefits of that facility, but that it's internationally managed, and you have eyes and ears on the ground, and that that's the model. We should be moving to multinationalization of enrichment reprocessing not the thing where everyone gets to own their own toys. So that would be my favorite approach to deal with this diplomatically. As far as businesses and exchanges, you know, it's difficult for businesses to operate in a sanctions environment, so I think that's of limited promise right now, but there are exchanges, cultural, educational, and other exchanges between the U.S. and Iran, and I think that that is useful, and I'm not remembering what the last ... - [Jennifer Smyser] Media. - [Jim Walsh] Pardon me, media. Well, you know, I was on contract to CNN until just, you know, my contract ends in October so I want to be very careful about what I say. I think some media do a better job than others. Thank you, thank you very much, and often they follow the lead of the newsmaker, you know, the person holding the press conference, or giving the speech, and I think some of those do a better job than others, but, you know, I'll give the media credit on this last thing about the assassination plot. Again, I'm agnostic on whether this is true or not. I have my doubts, but I want to wait and see what the evidence says, but to their credit rather than just running off taking the press conference of the attorney general at face value for several days afterwards there were stories raising questions about the logic and the evidence of the case, so, you know, I have lots of friends who are journalists, and who work hard everyday. I have lots of friends who are journalists, and don't work hard everyday, you know, I don't work hard everyday, so I think it's as mixed bag. You know, a lot of this is people are doing the best job they can, you know, even when they're, you know, they have to go from Iran to the economy to, you know, earthquakes to celebrity, you know, problems, so they're not experts in all these things, but I think diversity is ... When it comes to the media diversity is the best rule of thumb. You shouldn't be locked in only listening to people who you already agree with that would be my advice. - [Jennifer Smyser] So the time has come to conclude our program today, and on behalf of the Iowa City Foreign Relations Council I want to thank Jim, Mr. Jim Walsh, Research Associate. So Dr. Jim Walsh the Research Associate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Security Studies Program. I also want to thank our sponsors again, the University of Iowa's International Programs, the University of Iowa's Honors Programs, the University of Iowa Community Credit Union, andUniversity of Iowa, and the National Security Network who helped bring Jim here today. So as a modest token of our appreciation we would like to issue the-- - [Jim Walsh] Oh, awesome. - [Jennifer Smyser] Coveted Iowa City Foreign Relations Council mug. - [Jim Walsh] Very good, thank you. - [Jennifer Smyser] We think it makes a great pencil holder if you don't find yourself using it for coffee. - [Jim Walsh] I'll use it for both, but not at the same time. - [Jennifer Smyser] That's good, that's good. Many guests in the audience today, so thank you for joining us. If you do have questions about ICFRC please don't hesitate to let any of the board members in the room know, or check at the back table on your way out, and find out how you can become a member, too, and for those of you listening on TV and radio thank you for joining us. We hope you found this to be a stimulating discussion. If you want to support the ICFRC programs please consider doing so. It's a great time of year to do that. I'm married to a CPA and that tax deadline is coming up. You can still get charitable donations in this year, so it's a good time. Please remember to recycle your name tags, so thank you again for joining us. That concludes our program.