Room. Our going to introduce Panel Moderator and let him theyduce the panelists so can introduce themselves. I am very pleased to introduce the director of the heritage foundations Margaret Thatcher center for freedom. His key areas of special place of specialization include the United Nations and the role of Great Britain and europe in the u. S. Led alliance against international terrorism. He was recently named one of the 50 most influential britons in dailys. By the london telegraph. And a leading authority on transatlantic relationships, he has advised the executive branch of the u. S. Government on a range of issues from the role of International Allies in postwar british. Britain leadership. His policy papers are widely read on capitol hill where he is regularly soughtafter. He received his doctorate degree from yelp universe from yale university. Let us welcome him and the rest of our panel today. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to todays event. Thank you everyone for joining us in such extremely cold weather. Really cold weather. It is more like moscow and washington. We will be talking about the russians later. Superbhave two washington foreignpolicy experts with us today. And you will see both Rebecca Michael rebecca and michael on cable she was here in showsgton on on cable here in washington on a regular basis. Rebecca specializes in nuclear deterrence, Missile Defense and counter proliferation. She has served as a military franks and hast helped to launch the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. Athael is a senior fellow the brookings institution. He is also rector or research with a foreignpolicy program at brookings and he specializes in u. S. Defense strategy and American National security policy. He is also an adjunct professor in columbia and princeton. And the university of denver as well. He is the author of several books on Foreign Policy. He received his doctorate in foreignpolicy affairs from harvard university. Briefly say them to a few words to kick us off for todays discussion. And then i will follow that with a series of questions for our two panelists and then, we shall go into a you and a with the audience. Q a withll go into a the audience. Rebecca, i would ask you to introduce yourself a bit more and provide any insights you would like to kick off with regarding todays discussion and debate. Rebecca good morning, everyone and thank you so much for braving the cold to come out and join us for a little conversation about american foreignpolicy. Is this on . You can hear me well . Ok. I thought for this audience i wanted to give you a little background as to how i got started in Foreign Policy because i think that tends to be a curiosity for undergraduate students. I got my bachelors degree in history and Political Science at Ashland University as an ash brook scholar, a Political Science program. I did an internship every summer, i studied Foreign Language at the ohio state university. I am from ohio. And then, i came out to washington, d. C. As soon as i graduated and got my first job on capitol hill working for the house judiciary committee. Now, i had always wanted to focus on National Security policy but that opportunity was not open at the time so i took a good job on the house judiciary committee. To graduate school. I went to grad school at the u. S. Naval war college. And got a masters degree and National Security and strategic studies. And then focused my studies more narrowly. And then i got a job for the congressman who is on the House Foreign Services committee and began specializing in strategic security. That is Missile Defense, nuclear deterrence, and counter proliferation. And that is a very short timeline. If you have more questions about the particulars of that afterwards, i am happy to spend some time talking with you all. In networking for the congressman and we launched the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. It was to be a forum for republicans and democrats to discuss the challenges to the u. S. From the threat of Ballistic Missiles and because Ballistic Missiles have become one of the i would say that we have entered a new missile era. Countries that do not have large militaries, navies and air forces that can travel to the u. S. Best that can challenge the that cantary challenge the u. S. Military are investing in Ballistic Missiles nuclearthey marry with weapons and chemical and biological weapons. A worlds them to coerce power, a superpower, like the United States of america, which is why we are seeing so much focus on the iranian Ballistic Missile program as well as north Koreas NuclearMissile Program. So, i wanted to create this forum for republicans and democrats to look at the threat and try to find areas in which we can find consensus and tackle those issues that we can agree on to better buildout our countrys missiledefense architecture. The caucus is there today and it still does that. And then i would just say that is the area of my focus although i do cover a wide spectrum of National Security issues now that my focus, because of how acute the north korean security problem has become, that has been my area of focus in oa,ition to the iranian jcp the iran deal and all of the issues that surround the problem. I will leave that there. Michael, if i could ask you to say a few words. Michael, as you can see i am to thesed man compared two young whippersnappers up here but i will not make you hear the year by year. I love how rebecca did that. Let me do an equivalent. I studied physics in college. My summer jobs during then went from dairy firm work in upstate to york to then trying disprove einsteins general theory of relativity with a team of physicists. In case you wonder who one that, einstein was right. And i am not even kidding. It was not my idea to do that project but that was what we tried. And then i did peace corps in the former democratic republican of congo. I had some other things that were more applicable to the year aire at the time. Ultimately, i wound up shifting from that to the Woodrow Wilson school. I also spent time on capitol hill. Gets a bad rap. Congress as a body often deserves it but it is an equal partner in our government with the executive branch. A lot of people forget that. I am proud of the time that i got to spend in congress. For me, it was the congressional budget office. Arm working for people like rebecca. And then, i have been at brookings, a nonpartisan Public Policy organization for 23 years. I will leave it at that. Thank you very much, michael. I would like to begin with an opening question with regard to the wide war against islamic terrorism. A huge priority issue for the u. S. Administration. Today and it has been a priority for much of the last two decades. The state department recently announced that isis has lost about 90 of its territory in iraq and syria. View,s basically, in your game over for isis in iraq and syria or is there a danger that isis could reemerge in either of those two countries . And what explains the very rapid defeat of isis . 50 of isis territory in syria and iraq was taken away in just the last 12 months alone. And the total 98 . Those could address questions. I will start with you, rebecca and then michael. Rebecca i will take just a piece of that. The answer to the first question is that i think that we can take we can be happy with the gains we have made. I think that it is remarkable how quickly u. S. Military has been able to actually defeat the socalled caliphate that had existed there. The organization that isis had in both of those places. Good ats is very reinventing itself and popping up in other areas in which there is a power vacuum. That is why when there was the tragedy of u. S. Forces killed in niger and people wondered why we had forces there, it was because isis is trying to gain a foothold there. Anwill see that isis as Islamist Militant Group is not going to be utterly if he did anytime soon utterly defeated anytime soon. Why . Why the success . Why has the u. S. Military been able to over 5 Million People freed that were previously under isis control. Remarkable. Remarkable progress. ,nd even during the obama years when the Obama Administration was prosecuting the war, over 3 Million People free. A slower campaign but it was also seeing some success. And according to the pentagon, some of the things that are different about the way we are prosecuting the war is the tempo. The tempo of the military strikes. Afterpid we are going these targets. It is not allowing them to regain territory quickly. It is just how rapid we are prosecuting the war. And equity are you mad us will say that we have not changed the rules of engagement. You will often hear people say that they have changed. But he would say they have not changed but he has been delegated down authority so we have cut out the bureaucracy for approving various military strikes before we go ahead and do them and that goes to how rapid we have been able to prosecute the war. Owed to the is success of the work. I would agree with virtually all of that. Obama clearlyent struggled with syria policy throughout his presidency but by the last one or two years, again to get a better concept of what he thought he was trying to do and he said a lot of the conditions. It took a while. Things were just beginning to gel by the end of his presidency. And then President Trump was able to build on that, amplify it in some ways, and to some extent the enemies, whether it was a big strategic decision or more of a pass they found to naturally proceed, they partly dissolved. A couple of places they fought to the death. In other cases, the enemy decided let us shave our beards and revert acta being regular citizens of iraq or syria and sneak away. Hopefully, ellen figures out who we were. Especially for a lot of the foot soldiers. And perhaps stay around to fight another day under different auspice is in the future. In the future. In 2009 and 2010, and going back to 2008 a lot of those extremist fighters and a lot of others that became radicalized were biding their time to see what would happen under the new iraq with the new prime minister. When they did not like that, they joined up with a and isis took a lot of iraq. In other with, we have to be careful about declaring victory. I think President Trumps path forward in iraq is difficult but easier to imagine because there is a government there that we can work with and should be trying to help further improve the conditions to patch up the shiakurdish divisions. To minimize the role of iran. There are some things we can do, staying engaged in iraq with a more modest number of forces. Struggling still economically. Ishink the path forward going to take some continued american attention and resources but it is relatively easier to sketch out as to what it should be. Syria is still a huge hornets ast and we are nowhere near solution to the civil war. Unless you are like russia. And you are happy to see president assad when the conflict. It is not clear to me that president assad can stay in power and stabilize the country because he has so much blood on his hands at this time. So many sunnis are angry with him because he has killed their family members. That country is a long ways away from anything we should call victory or stability. Give President Trump and interim and hopeful great. Rebecca the other challenge with iraq that we are seeing is that iran is trying to make sure that, before the United States starts to pull back again, that it has a greater influence in iraq. And over the iraqi government. The is something that United States government is acutely aware of. We are trying to make sure that part of the final solution, whatever that might be in iraq, including a stable government, its ability to protect its own borders and protect its own people before it can do that on its own, the u. S. Wants to make sure that iraq is an ally of the u. S. And not another proxy state of iran. That fits into the overall strategy for what the United States is trying to do in terms of pushing back iranian influence at large in the region. Thank you for those excellent answers. Striking that 7. 5 Million People were liberated in total, actually. And over the last couple of years. That is a huge achievement there. Moving over to iran. Past few days, we have seen a wave of street protests, not just in toronto but practically in tehran but practically every major city in the country. And astonishing level of public protest in an extremely authoritarian, dictatorial country. Bet should the u. S. Response to the protests . Has the Trump Administration handled the iran protest issue well . Especially, in comparison to president obamas handling of the 2009 protests in iran . And what are the implications for the Iran Nuclear Deal . And could we be potentially downfall ofbly the the islamist regime in iran . Michaelickoff with first. Michael thank you. Ofanswer the question first how to handle demonstrations like this, i do think that so far the president is doing fine. And factoring in and of adjusting for his particular he addressesow diplomacy in general which is not always my preference. But now that we know how he operates, i think the basic approach of supporting the protests theres and condemning of supporting the protesters and conducting the government is generally fine. When you look more broadly at how we handle these situations and imagine 2009 with president obama in a ron or the arabs in iran or the arab spring and how we tried to gently push out president mubarak in egypt or how we tried to encourage protests in syria and look what happened we have to be aware of the ringsides of lu people into thinking that we are going to come and help when we want. That would be my only caveat of precaution. Sometimes, these things take lives on of their own. No one to know when things get to a Tipping Point and when you have an emerging phenomenon of vast protest, that is hard to foresee. People did not necessarily foresee Tiananmen Square in 1989 or the wave of liberation movements in Eastern Europe at the same time frame. What you want to do is be true to your own principles. Be clear about where you stand. But you want to be aware of the limits of your own influence. I would not suggest that President Trump give iranian protesters the sense that we are going to intervene on their behalf. It would be unlikely that we andd do so given its size capacities. That would be my one caution. Otherwise, i do think the initial response is basically fine. One more quick word on the nuclear deal and maybe stop rone on how to deal with a Going Forward. With iran Going Forward. From 2015 it will be hard for the u. S. To overturn that because it is an International Agreement and the monitoring bodies in charge of it say that iran is doing what it has been tasked with on the nuclear portfolio. Otherwise, iran is behaving horribly, probably even worse than in 2015 but we need to use other mechanisms to address that. The nuclear deal i dont believe was as good as it could have been but it will be hard to undo it. We can try to improve it. At that has to be done with negotiation which means we need new leverage which will be hard to get. If we rip it up, think we will be in a worse place. I hope President Trump stays tough on iran with regard to the demonstrations and its regional activities including its covert actions in iraq, syria, and elsewhere. Figure out better strategies on how to push back on iran in those domains but leave the nuclear deal in tact, even if he doesnt like it. Again, it will be hard to replace it with anything better at this point given that the whole International Community is behind it. And even if we stop dealing with iran economically because we have decided we dont like the deal anymore, the rest of the world will probably continue to do its trade and investment with iran and will be giving it a potential pretext to withdraw from its obligations under the the deal. The tough against irans regional activities, be vigilant on the nuclear deal, be supportive of the demonstrators rhetorically. Thank you, michael. I could go 75 different angles on this and we could spend the rest of the time unpacking. Of what was a lot just said. I will start with the protesters. I agree that President Trump has done very well on this. Of his response of showing solidarity with the protesters was exactly right. And that goes for nikki haley and everyone else in the administration who has a role. You will hear a lot of pushback from former Obama Administration the other side of this. The other position is that we should be quiet. An iranian affair and the u. S. Government should stay out of it. That is not what many of the demonstrato