Foundations Margaret Thatcher center for freedom. His key areas 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 the u. S. By the london daily 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 iraq to u. S. British leadership. His policy papers are widely read on capitol hill where he is regularly soughtafter. He received his doctorate degree from yale university. Let us welcome him and the rest of our panel today. [applause] 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. And we have two superb washington foreignpolicy experts with us today. And you will see both rebecca and michael on cable shows here in washington on a regular basis. Rebecca specializes in nuclear deterrence, Missile Defense and counter proliferation. She has served as a military advisor to trent franks and has helped to launch the bipartisan Missile Defense caucus. Michael is a senior fellow at 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. I would like them to briefly say 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 q a with 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. And i went 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. I specialize 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 challenge the u. S. Military are investing in Ballistic Missiles because they marry with Nuclear Weapons and chemical and biological weapons. It allows them to coerce a world 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 addition to the iranian jcpoa, 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 a very old man compared to these 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 new york to then trying to 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 zaire at the time. Ultimately, i wound up shifting from that to the Woodrow Wilson school. I also spent time on capitol hill. Congress 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. A research 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. Is this basically, in your view, 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 . If you could address those 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 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. But, isis is very good at 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. We will see that isis as an Islamist Militant Group is not going to be 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. And 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. How rapid we are going after 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. That is what is owed to the success of the work. I would agree with virtually all of that. I think president obama clearly 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. There were a couple places where they fought to the death, fought very hard. In other cases the enemy decided lets just shave our beards and revert back to being regular citizens of iraq or syria and sneak away. Hopefully nobody figures out who we were. Especially for a lot of the foot soldiers. And perhaps stay around to fight another day under different auspices in the future. For those of you who have forgotten a little bit of what happened at the end of the iraq war we really felt we had defeated alqaeda there with the iraqis, but lo and behold a lot of the extremist fighters and others who became radicalized as time went on were sort of biding their time to see what would happen under the new iraq of Prime Minister malaki. When they didnt like it, they joined up with isis and of course isis took a lot of iraq, too, as rebeccah said. Those were the two countries, iraq and syria, where it had the strongest foothold. We have to be very careful about declaring victory. President trumps path forward in iraq is difficult but easier to imagine because we have a government there we can work with and should be trying to help reform, help further improve the conditions in its own country to patch up the sunnishiakurdish divisions, to moderate or minimize the role of iran. There are some things we can do, staying engaged with iraq with relatively modest numbers of forces and maybe turning more of our Security Assistance into economic aid because iraq is still struggling economically. If theyre going to repair those sectarian divisions theyll need a stronger economy. I think the path forward is going to take some continued american attention and resources but is relatively easier to sketch out as to what it should be. Syria is still a huge hornets nest. We are nowhere near finishing a solution to the civil war unless youre like russia and youre happy to see president assad just win the conflict. Even if you have that view which i dont think most americans do it is not clear to me assad can really stay in power and stabilize the country because he has so much blood on his hands at this point, so many sunnies, the majority of the country so angry with him because he killed their brothers and cousins and friends and sisters and, so, that country is a long way from anything we should call victory or stability. On that one ill just give President Trump a very interim hopeful grade but nowhere near a success. Ms. Heinrichs if i may tack on there, the other challenge with iraq were seeing is iran is trying to make sure that before the United States tries to pull back again that it has a greater influence in iraq and over the iraqi government. That is something the United States government is acutely aware of and trying to make sure that part of the final solution, whatever that might be, in iraq, a stable government, protected zone borders and set up before it can do that on its own the United States wants to make sure iraq is an allie of the United States 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 sort of in the region. Mr. Gardiner thank you for those excellent answers. It is very striking that 7. 5 Million People i think were liberated in total actually. And over the last couple of years. Thats a huge achievement. Moving over to iran, now, over the past few days weve seen a wave of street protests, not just in tehran but practically every major city in the country. An astonishing level of public protests in an extremely authoritarian, dictatorial country. What should the u. S. Response be to the protests . Has the Trump Administration handled the iran protest issue well, considering president obamas handling of the 2009 protests in iran . What are the implications as well for the Iran Nuclear Deal . Could we be potentially seeing even possibly the downfall of the islamist regime in iran . Ill kick off with michael first. Mr. Ohanlon thanks, nile. Well, to answer the question, first, how to handle demonstrations like this i do think so far President Trump is doing fine. And, you know, factoring in and adjusting for his particular approach to how he addresses 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 protesters and condemning the government is generally fine. But i do think when you look more broadly at how we handle these kinds of situations lets imagine 2009 with president imagine 2009 with president obama in iran or the arab spring and then how we try to help gently push and then more firmly push president mubarak out in egypt or try to encourage protests in syria and look what happened. We have to be a little bit aware of the down sides of luring people into thinking well come help them in a way that we wont. That would be my main caveat or caution would be, not that iran today is equivalent to syria, 2011, but sometimes these things take on lives of their own. You cant really read them that well even if you are a specialist in the country. To know when things get to a Tipping Point and you have sort of an emergent phenomenon of mass protests and knowing where that goes. Very hard to foresee. People didnt necessarily foresee tiananmen in 1989 or the, you know, wave of liberation movements in eastern europe. About that same time period. These things tend to be unpredictable. What you want to do is be true to your own principles. Be clear about where you stand. You also want to be aware of the limits of your influence. And so not that i believe it to be likely, i would not suggest President Trump give iranian protesters the sense that were somehow going to intervene on their behalf. It would be pretty unlikely we would do so in iran given its size and capacities. That would be my one caution. Otherwise i do think that the initial response is basically fine. One more quick word on the nuclear deal. Maybe stop there. On the broader question of how we deal with iran going forward. The nuclear deal that president the nuclear deal that president obama negotiated, joint comprehensive plan of action in 2015 is going to be very hard for the United States to overturn now because it is an International Agreement and the monitoring bodies in charge of it basically say that iran is doing most of whats asked under that particular deal. On the Nuclear Portfolio at least. Otherwise iran is still behaving horribly. Probably worse even than in 2015. But we need to use other mechanisms and means i believe to address that. The nuclear deal i dont believe was as good as it could have been but it is going to be very hard at this point to undo it. So we can try to improve it. But thats got to be done through negotiations which means we need new leverage. That is going to be tough to get. If we just rip it up i think well be in a worse place. What i hope is that President Trump stays very tough on iran in regard to the demonstrations, in regard to its regional activities, you know, its covert actions in iraq and syria and elsewhere. Figure out better strategies to push back against iran in those domains but leave the nuclear deal essentially intact even if he doesnt like it because again, it is going to be hard to replace it with anything better at this point given that the whole International Community is essentially behind it. Even if we stop dealing with ira