Peter brooks is leading the discussion this morning. He is also in his term as a member of the congressional us, China Economic and security review commission. Prior to coming to heritage he served as a Deputy Assistant secretary of defense for asian and Pacific Affairs at the george w. Bush administration. He is also served on the Committee Staff for International Relations in the house with the Central Intelligence agency, the state department and was an active duty naval officer. Please join me in welcoming peter brooks. Peter. [applause] thank you. Welcome to heritage in our program on iran. Is a 2015 the Nuclear Agreement with iran has continued with troubling policies in the uk in the middle east. Irans expanding influence in these wartorn countries have been facilitated by the strategic dividends and sanctions provided by the nuclear deal. This raises questions like how should the United States respond, what should be done about the Nuclear Agreement, how can the United States target the Iranian Regime through oppression at home. Joining us today to discuss these and other issues are jim phillips, jim is a senior fellow in the douglas and Sarah Allison center for Foreign Policy. Studies at the heritage foundation. He is a veteran Foreign Policy specialist was written and spoken widely on middle eastern issues, international terrorism. Since coming to heritage in 1979 he is offered dozens of papers on iran and its Nuclear Program and its use of terrorism. He has testified congress on irans Nuclear Program and other middle eastern security issues. Jim hansen, next to him, president of the Security Studies group. He served as the Us Army Special forces in conducted counterterrorism, counterinsurgency as well as diplomatic intelligence and trinitarian efforts in more than a dozen countries. Hes the author of cut down the black flag, a plan to defeat the Islamic State. Mark is the ceo of the foundation for the defense of democracy working with products on he iran, sanctions country threat finance and nonpolar ablation. If oliver denies that he is one of the key influencers in shaping economic station policies to counter threats to be run and its surrogates. Mark features one of the key quote on quote financial warriors against you iran by the wall street journals jay solomon in his book the iran wars. Mark is a buys the trump, obama and george w. Bush and ministration and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on iran issues and testified more than 20 times for congress in foreign legislators. With that, jim, start us off. Thanks, peter. I like to focus my remarks on irans. As regional brats and the degree to which the threats have been boosted income pitted by the iran Nuclear Agreement. Im sorry to say that the access of people is alive and well and if you like what north korea is doing today you will love what you run will be doing a few years down the road. Both of these states are led by rogue regimes that have sought Nuclear Weapons and missiles to deliver them. Theyve cooperated closely on the Ballistic Missile developments and perhaps to a lesser extent on Nuclear Issues. Both regimes have repeatedly violated their nonproliferation commitments and just as the 1994 agreed framework with north korea failed to stop that countrys Nuclear Ambitions i think future historians will eventually say that the 2014 iran Nuclear Agreement also failed to stop Irans Nuclear ambitions. I would argue that you run is a much more dangerous regime and imposes greater longterm threat the north korea. It has a much stronger economy, much more potent ideology, many more friends, allies and surrogates around the world and in the region. It has a much more aggressive record of regional interventio interventions. Irans neighborhood of the persian gulf is the center of gravity of World Oil Production so iran is able to establish dominance over the flow of that oil, it will be Tremendous Energy security, National Security and perhaps longterm economic repercussions cascading out of that. Contrary to the promises of the Obama Administration the nuclear deal did not moderate irans behavior. In fact, to run untrained. The activities in the region since 2015 in the Nuclear Agreement has been a bad situation worse by posting to rons economic and the geopolitical spheres in the Nuclear Agreement has handed iran in an economic up to a hundred billion dollars and no one knows how much in sanctions and unfrozen assets and this economic transfusion has boosted irans economy, enhanced its ability to threaten its neighbors with conventional weapons, terrorism and subversion and increased its support for its farflung surrogate networks. For example, iran increased its Defense Budget recently announcing that there would be 300 million more in funding for the Ballistic Missile program and that is very concerning because those are the most worrisome aspects of irans threats. The current force is a real elite force of the guard and its charge of protecting and advancing irans revolution, not their National Interest and thats important difference since the july 2015 nuclear remake, iran has escalated its. Irans troops and surrogate militias have played a leading role in assisting the assad regime attempt to claw that territory from rebels. They have deployed more than 5000 revolutionary guards, troops in advisors, as well as Technical Support and in addition, 20000 foreign fighters from iran backed militias from lebanon. Untrained immigrants from afghanistan and pakistan. This aggressive intervention which has been partially eclipsed by the Russian Air Campaign has decisively consistent in favor of the assad regime. Now that the Islamic State is on the verge of defeat, the us must take steps to preclude iran from filling the vacuum left by the Islamic State and prevented from repositioning in the Golan Heights and elsewhere for the next round of warfare with israel. Iran is also stepped up its hostile activities, targeting the jewish state and provided thousands of increasingly capable longrange rockets to hamas and palestinian in gaza in addition to an estimated 150,000 rockets and missiles to hezbollah. In case the Israeli Government had any doubt about the nature of irans hostility, the revolutionary guards helpfully provided a sign on one of the missiles they tested in march 2016 which said in hebrew, not in farsi, but in hebrew israel must be wiped off the earth. Iran also as escalated its threat to arab adversaries. Since the Nuclear Agreement was signed its wants to regulate shiites and by rain, back militant groups such as hezbollah and trained militants from bahrain and revolutionary guard camps in iran. Bahrain is an intercepted several arm shipments and thats in violation of Un Security Council resolution 2231 which enshrines the Nuclear Agreement and prohibits these arms exports. Iranian hardliners have also is quite a pressure against bahrain claiming that it is a long lost province of iran that should be im not a proponent of the deal and im not focusing on the deal here and it was up to me we would find iran in violation of that deal that is deafly violated the Security Council resolution that accompanied the deal but regardless of what the policy is on the Nuclear Issue the us has to push back stronger on the regional level. First and foremost we must draw clear redlines and enforce them. Number one is the nuclear red line and i would argue that its a deterrent that is the chief barrier to irans proceeding down the nuclear path and not just some diplomatic agreement and that the us needs to maintain its strong forces in the gulf and an ability to launch a credible use of force against the Nuclear Facilities or other aspects of iranian power, if called upon. The us should also strengthen its allies, especially israel and the Gulf Cooperation Council state that face the most immediate threat from iran; they should build of gcc defense capabilities; anti summering forces, naval forces, intelligence, surveillance and recognizance and the pentagon should expand an institutionalized joint planning and joint exercises to develop a shared strategy for deterring and containing the Iranian Regime. Missile defense should be a high priority. Israel has a very good one in the us can do more to help israeli withstand the Ballistic Missile threats but the gcc states also faced that bret and they have much less capabilities. They all have except for oman, us provides soul patriot missiles but those missiles are not integrated into a Regional Defense system and that needs to be done to improve the effectiveness against the iranian Ballistic Missile threat. Another priority should be imposing additional sanctions on iran for terrorism for its Ballistic Missile activities and human rights abuses, especially targeting the right illusionary guards in the huge constellation of enterprises, revolutionary guards have spun off to support its operations and the goal of these sanctions should be to forced to run to pay an increasing price for the hostile activities of the revolutionary guard and finally, the us should weaken and undermine irans allies and circuits, particularly hezbollah which has been instrumental in irans campaign in syria, as well as iraq, has paula has been training rebels in yemen. Its also active in lebanon and last year the gcc and the arab league declared hezbollah as a terrorist state and designated it as such but the eu continues to differentiate between the hezbollah political wing as if the political wing has no knowledge or power to stop the terror activities of the socalled military wing. Washington should work with the gcc of israel to try to influence the eu to step up with sanctions on hezbollah and during the rest of the world in trying to reduce the threat of that organization poses. The bottom line is that the nuclear deal has not moderated iran. In fact, it has a strengthen and embolden hardliners with in iran they were one of the most major producers Industry Leaders of explosively formed projectiles that killed american troops somewhere between 501,000 american troops were directly killed by weaponry provided by the ukrainians to the shia militias that were used by them and al qaeda in iraq to kill us troops and somehow he decided that they were going to be the ones that we should back. That was the worst we should back and now we are dealing with that. Were dealing with the fact that not only have they been in powered but they been returned to the International Community and their banking privileges and their cash and 2016 they were the state departments leading sponsor of terrorism worldwide. Now, that may not give you much in the Trump Administration but in the obama and mistress got you a house full of cast flown in the middle of the night. They are spending that money now on a lot of the organizations that jim mentioned. I want to talk about their proxies, the main one is hezbollah obviously is a humanitarian group that operates in lebanon to be the poor, as we are all well aware or has blood a terrorist organization that shares illgotten gains with people to buy their allegiance. They are a bad actor. Hamas is another Wonderful Group of humanitarians. He iran back to them. They are causing no end of death and destruction and the other thing id like to note is israel is a great ally. Holy cow. Lets get back to that again. We can go from having iran as an ally, israel as a friend to me at best under the Obama Administration to israel being our only true friend in the region and he iran being the enemy to peace in the region. I think just if we change nothing else but that thought process, i think we have established a much better and much more realistic world order. Some of the other groups obviously, their backing and iran is the seas in yemen and theres a bit of a dangerous situation there because you have the gulf arab states, uae and the others and theyre not helping the good guys but there helping less bad guys and against them but we have a shiite, sunni, scrap going on and this is dangerous and its something we need to keep an eye on but the uranian influence is most important to United States is that iraq and syria and afghanistan. We have wars going on in both of those and we have a plan about the nice thing is we are actually at the end game in iraq and what is going on in this area, does anyone know . No one knows what the answer is there. It is not good. It is not ended and closer to the end but we need to be planning for a post isa space in both of those countries. One of the things that has to happen is we have to stop the advance of the iran into both of those areas and we have to push them back. One of the main dangers and one of trans biggest goals has been to create what some would call a shiite crescent or a land bridge to the mediterranean. If you go through iraq and syria you get to the and that would be irans greatest dreams along with nukes and other bad things. They want to control that swath of territory. They like to control all of it but if they can at least have the capability to move from the iran to the mediterranean or the other way they have accomplished something that we cant tolerate. That is just a bad scenario for everyone. They have been very, very good at beating that area with militia. We always hear about the shiite militias that have been involved first in the iraq war and in killing americans and as a destabilizing force there but once we left and he iran moved into that backing they started creating alliances with local shia melissa militias and what could become a shiite crescent. Thats a horribly bad thing for everybody. These are local shiite in sunni areas and theyve reversed the sons of iraq concept. During the search we went in and we worked with the tribal leaders and we made friends with them and said this is your territory. We will help you. Al qaeda is in iraq, an enemy to all of us we want stability. We basically made them the local constables and said we will back you as you try to take control of your own areas from al qaeda and iraq. What you iran has done is in the areas where there were pockets of shiite villages and people they started paying them and they said we are protecting you against isis and were protecting you against the other imperialist, the coalition and we will be your friends. They built alliances with these people, and allegiance from these people that goes to tehran not even to baghdad and thats something we now have to deal with because they are there and they are armed and they feel empowered and unless we and the other books in the region can do something to push them back they will be, at least the foundation, of that land bridge to the mediterranean. That cannot happen. So, ive got an idea. Lets do something about it. Lets not just admire the problem and say this is awfully portable. There are ways we can deal with this. The areas that they are in are in the majority sunni areas. Same place that isis has decimated essentially part of the regions that now have to come back under control. Iraq and syria are both broken states. The baghdad government exist, they are fine and doing things but the idea is that they alone can go into the sunni areas and provide governments in a way that will be accepted by the people there is a fantasy. It wont happen. They dont trust them. They been burned once. We promised them after the surge we make sure that the majority shiite government in baghdad, which is highly influenced by iran, with treat them well; would do fine by them and share wealth and do all the things they need to do. That didnt happen in the iranians took more control and essentially those guys got burned. Now we will ask them to do it again, trust us again in the Central Government will defined by you and dont worry about the uranian influence and dont worry about the shiite militias that slaughtered their way across the territory to push isis out. One thing that has not been covered much is just exactly how that that was. The humanitarian slaughtered during the contest there was outrageous. We need help their well, there are two countries that have a border on southern iraq that could help us. The saudis in jordan. They have got a dog in this fight and now the President Trump has a new best friend, mohammed, the new saudi conference two has said bab