All right. Hearing will come to order. Welcome, everyone. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on u. S. Policy in iraq. I thank our witness for appearing today. Before recognizing myself for the purpose of making an Opening Statement, i would like to take the opportunity to recognize and thank the members of our committee who served in iraq. Were grateful for your service and your input today is going to be invaluable. I will now ill make an Opening Statement and turn it over to the Ranking Member. Also before i begin on my comments here, i would like to take a moment to express my condolences to the families and friends of the sailors killed in pensacola last friday, the three sailers dedicated their lives were taken from us far too soon. And we need answers about the shooter and how this happened. Certainly at this point, the president and all of us must require the kingdom to give full and transparent cooperation with the United States investigation so we can understa
Gulf more generally and of course, those issues are linked to a whole range of other regional issues relevant to u. S. Foreign policy in the middle east from israel and the palestinian territories to the conflicts in siria, yemen and afghanistan and beyond, and to have a discussion on such an important and wideranging array of issues we have assembled a Real Dream Team of diplomats with experience in the region and im going introduce them briefly and trust me, introducing them in a timeefficient manner requires distillation of their incredible accomplishments across decades of u. S. Foreign service. Im going to start on my left, your right with ambassador Gerald Feierstein who say 41year career veteran in the u. S. Foreign service and now retired and he was ambassador to yemen during the Obama Administration from 2010 to 13. The Principal Assistant deputy the state for Near Eastern Affairs from 2013 to 16 and has had many other crucial posts of mission in pakistan as well as senior pos
All right. Hearing will come to order. Welcome, everyone. The subcommittee is meeting today to hear testimony on u. S. Policy in iraq. I thank our witness for appearing today. Before recognizing myself for the purpose of making an Opening Statement, i would like to take the opportunity to recognize and thank the members of our committee who served in iraq. Were grateful for your service and your input today is going to be invaluable. I will now ill make an Opening Statement and turn it over to the Ranking Member. Also before i begin on my comments here, i would like to take a moment to express my condolences to the families and friends of the sailors killed in pensacola last friday, the three sailers dedicated their lives were taken from us far too soon. And we need answers about the shooter and how this happened. Certainly at this point, the president and all of us must require the kingdom to give full and transparent cooperation with the United States investigation so we can understa
Iran. This event was held at the ol university of michigans ford school of a policy in ann arbor. Hello everybody and welcome. I would like first to add my thanks to the weiser family as well as to the American Academy of diplomacy with which weve been fortunate to partner to bring todays event together. The topic we will address is obviously timely and extremely important. Going to talk about us iran relations, the nuclear deal, politics and security y in the gulf more generally and of course those issues are linked to a whole range of other regional issues relevant to us Foreign Policy in the middle east from israel and the palestinian territories to the conflicts in syria, yemen and afghanistan and to have a discussion onsuch an important and wideranging array of issues we have assembled a dream team of diplomats with experience in the region. Im going to introduce them briefly and trust me, introducing them in a time efficient manner requires a lot of distillation of their icincred
Good morning and thank you all for joining us today. Also, our live stream audience. Atlantic Council President and ceo fred kemp. Thanks for joining us both here in the room and virtually for our conversation. If you want to use social media, use ac iraq. Aciraq. You know its an important event when the ambassador is here and when key members of our board are here and its always such a pleasure to have our International Advisory board member jafar here. Thank you for Crescent Petroleum support for this, for the Iraq Initiative, Global Energy center. Ive been stealing ideas from a long period of time, he happens to be one of the best thinkers and actors as an analyst in the region and also a pleasure to have him here as well. Todays event was organized by the councils Iraq Initiative and Global Energy center. Our Iraq Initiative is led by dr. And abbas working with us. Hes one of the rare individuals who understands the workings of the country hes covering, iraq, so intimately and also