The same conclusion appeared in this time to pick a side, stop supporting hamas dared us to iran, we need the maximum sanction, the maximum enforcement of Nuclear Restrictions than the maximum international support. One way to justify additional sanctions is to renounce the nuclear deal, doing that would cause europe not to support distinction in many in the world would even say iwan was free to reopen it Nuclear Program without inspections or restrictions. Fortunately, the world is based, is blessed with an almost, beyond possible use Natural Resources and that is our supply of people coming from tehran. We can impose the maximum sanction without even mentioning the iran deal and then we will have european support as we point to almost 500,000 dead serious civilians, a direct responsibility of tehran as we point to the terrorism around the world, as we point to how they treat their own people and the execution of those of the lgbt communique. There is no shortage of reasons to support to impose sanctions on iran and if we do enough, and they will come begging to us to have negotiations on all the pending issues, including the inadequacies of the nuclear deal. Thank you. [applause] another member of congress has been very active on these issues as congressman hank johnson, a good friend and i would like to welcome him. [applause] thank you, mr. Chairman and good afternoon to the visitors here today. Thank you for having us. I want to extend my apologies, not my apologies, on the loss of your dear son and i would say the dispute involving a palestinian state of homeland before we can have peace in the middle east, its my opinion we are going to need to solve the israelipalestinian conflict and it will have to resolve in a two state solution, one state for the palestinian and another for israel. I think once that is done it is going to go a long way towards defusing a lot of the radicalism that is in existence in the middle east. That issue of course is not the only issue and its not the greatest issue are the greatest threat to america. Before i begin my talk, let me say how much i appreciate the Hudson Institute, an organization committed to dialogue and understanding. I commend the Hudson Institute for its dedication to American Leadership in the Global Engagement for a secure, free and prosperous future for the disciplines that defense, economics, health care, technology, culture and International Relations as well as the rule of law. I think before we can begin to talk about peace in the middle east or the suppression of violent extremism, that is really threatening to the whole world, that weve got to look at the issue of islam and islam is not a religion of hatred and violence, but it has been used by forces that cloak themselves in islam and then proclaim to represent islam, distorting its teachings. I think we must respect islam, the world second largest religion, one of the three abraham that religion. I think we must respect that religion and we must respect those who want to be peacefully apparent to that religion, but we do have a group for mayor saudi arabiabased, the walkoff list sect of islam, which is the state religion of saudi arabia, which is the greatest exporter of ideas of violent extremism on the face of the earth in my humble opinion. What autism, and so we can address the issue of saudi arabias support for wahabbism and the violent jihadist philosophy is, we will continue will murder ourselves further into the mud. We can wean ourselves further into the dependence on oil which seems to be the driving force of our policy towards saudi arabia so they can deal with this issue of wahabbism to a greater degree than we do now. Thank you. Mac first, israel is contending with a deepseated hatred, nurtured actually by leaders and nurtured over many years because theyve seen the text books as has occurred in mosques and schools and newspapers and televisions. This has to stop. As one witness told our committee, incitement is the term we usually use. What we mean is teaching generations in young people to hate jews by dehumanizing them. That is what we seek to address here. That is at tailor for us act seeks to address here. The other aspect of this is people are being lured to tourism by more than just words. They are being lured there by this concept of pay to slay, by this inducement, that is financial reward that says the longer the sentence, the more people that are murdered, the greater the stipend that goes to you when you get out, poster family in the meantime purpose to your family if you murdered yourself murdered yourself undertaking this act of murder. We want to ensure we do this right and send a clear message to the palestinians. The payments are at the terrorism are unacceptable. On iran, the u. S. Has got to respond to a full range of threat, not just the Nuclear Program because we see in syria and iraq along western sea. Now the cuts were says in the higher gc taking advantage of this fight against isis and moving and brutalizing mncs so much territory and irans terror proxy is amassing troops along israels border in the north along the east and iran continues to acquired destabilizing conventional weapons, but also intercontinental Ballistic Missiles. The administration has taken a realistic approach on iran recognizing the full range of these threats. This is what we have been messaging in a bipartisan way on this committee. This is what the chairman and i. , mike mccall, elliott ingo and i have been talking about as we push these policies. Congress and the Administration MustWork Together to confront these threats while ensuring iran never develops a nuclear capability. And i will add another point here because that approach was evident just over a week ago when the administration implemented a provision that Congress Passed in july has Michael Mccaul shared with you designating irans powerful revolutionary guards under the terrorism sanctions he had advocated. This has got to represent the beginning of a cooperative effort to turn up iran and this week the house is going to do its part by bringing up by legislation on the house floor we passed out of committee targeting irans Ballistic Missile program and targeting hezbollah, the regimes leading terrorist proxy. On qatar, it has a disturbing history, a facilitating radicalization and a broken promise to reform its behavior. In 2014 for instance, saudi arabia, uae, bahrain, they said qatar was interfering with their internal affairs promoting extremism through al jazeera and other qatari mediated networks and supporting the Muslim Brotherhood throughout the region. After that they promised not to harbor persons with powerful agendas towards the poll states and promise not organization with the legitimate indiana and peered qatar has failed to live up to its words which is why saudi arabia, uae, egypt admiring cut ties with qatar this past june. Shamefully until may of this year, qatar was also hosting senior hamas financiers. After representative and several other members including mr. Sherman, introduced legislation increasing sanctions , qatar expelled those senior hamas financiers. Given the history of false reporting, broken promises, i am concerned this is a type of the come in on a strategic shift away from supporting hamas. Though how must take serious measures to fundamentally alter its policies. No more bait and switch in no more backsliding. We need real commitments from qatar to end its permissive attitude and actions toward violent extremists. And on our hamas therell come a continuing impediment to peace and security for the middle east is hamas. This Deadly Terrorist Organization continues to work towards israels destruction. Massis other human beings by hiding their tunnels under schools. Ive seen them myself, so has chairman mccall and other members of our committee here and we saw them as recently as our last trip to israel in august. Hamas is responsible for the murder of other israelis than 25 americans. Representative mast legislation further isolate hamas. Its very simple, anyone who funds will provide support to hamas should face u. S. Sanctions. Hamas is a Foreign Terrorist Group especially designed specifically by the United States as a global terrorist group. I mention one last issue i wanted to bring up and that was the Muslim Brotherhood. We need to push back against extremist ideologies like this one. It is a movement staunchly hot aisle to secularism. It is steeped in antisemitism. In many cases they exploit Democratic Institutions to further their sectarian and, having no intention to share power. There are no means of benign movement and must be effectively countered by employing moderate voices including more effect of broadcasting. We must go after its leaders, does that meet the criteria for individual terrorism sanctions. So, i would just now like to thank all of you, thank you forgiving the opportunity to me and my colleagues, especially to be with you to address you today. Good work on your Development Time implementing policy. Thank you so much. [applause] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] yeah, definitely. [inaudible conversations] yeah, definitely. Good afternoon, again. We have a very distinguished panel to hopefully inform you and entertain you. Hopefully. At the end, i would like to introduce rate to introduce rates akita, who i would say is the leading scholar i do want to get in trouble, but a leading scholar in iran and of course many other distinguished attributes. That is one of them. Then comes bill wechsler, who was Deputy Assistant secretary of defense for special operations in combating terrorism. Sounds like a terrifying title. Then comes my friend who served as an added take ambassador to the u. N. , United States ambassador to iraq and United States ambassador to afghanistan , all with distinction of course. Then comes general wald who was former deputy of the u. S. European command. Then comes ambassador alberto fernandez, a Career Foreign Service officer whom ive heard fantastic things about food. They ran a Brilliant Program to counter al qaeda propaganda. Am i right . Wake up. Anyway. Hopefully. Then comes hello fried kitten, director of the hud and Institute Center on islam democracy in the future the muslim world. So he is of course a great authority. Anyway, we are going to start off today are fascinating, hopefully, discussion. Since 9 11 of course the u. S. Said we have big enemies in the middle east, one being terrorism and one b. Iran. So, im going to ask the piano to comment each and hopefully briefly an interesting pleased on how you see it, starting with you. Brief and interesting. Well, i look at the brief part right, hopefully. Terrorism is a strategic option of the iranian state. It is actually they have does a proxy and also there was a time terror muslim was considered as a weapon of considerable Strategic Deterrence because right now the iranian case is that if the United States accuses us of terrorism, we will respond with terrorism against American Forces in iran and elsewhere. That argument has been persuasive to a lot of people who essentially do not want to confront for fear of iranian terrorism. So more sausage or a sheriff political violence, terrorism has been remarkably effect it to the islamic republic. You can say a little bit the iranians are backing the who these again in. Are involved in syria, yemen, iraq, certainly iraq. They are involved in bahrain, throughout the region. It is sort of imperialism on the cheek because on one hand it is a very grand imperial project. On the other hand by relying on proxies of surrogates, also chiefly executed because at the end of the day they dont have to sustain its own national armies. Also, i ran to suffer from it own version of the vietnam syndrome since the iraniraq war from 1980 in aftermath and has no problem with the shiites calling arab sunnis to maintain some measure of that. No problem with members of hezbollah dying in syria. None whatsoever. Of members of hezbollah which you know is shiite in lebanon. The most effect is groups. As a result of all of that. Iran is getting closer every month to its greater strategic objectives across the region not only to have control over lebanon, but increasing control over iraq and over syria to project power elsewhere and disrupt sunni governments throughout the region. At the same time, the other side beside the arabian terrorism is the jihadist terrorism, most notably the Islamic State and al qaeda, which are on the heels right now. As secretary panetta said earlier today, they are not going away in any way shape or form in the way we have to continue to combat them is both through military means and also through looking after the longstanding political challenges that aggravate in iraq and elsewhere, but also through what the panelists talking about the terrorism, the finances and ideology thats still in too many places contribute to the growth of these jihadist groups. You say that basis is not going away. Do you see as the sunnis for example will be a new isis group you see them spreading into africa or where do you see isis going . Isis in the son of a system of whatever its name should be will expand because of the ideological religious component of the view of the caliphate and also local dynamics. The local dynamics as you said in terms of iraq are excluded from the future of their country and similar local dynamics where they have achieved a lot of interest. The real challenge of the United States perhaps goes without saying, but i will say it, does our unlike any other terrorist groups in that once they have a place that gives them sanctuary and they can act with impunity, they will do external attacks. Weve seen it again and again. We saw it in duty and, at the msdn, yemen, syria appeared in every one of those days, people of the United States government and Intelligence Community would say this group is only interested in local issues. We see no evidence of them planning for external attacks and were always surprised they went to external attacks. We need to understand its the nature of these groups to do this. Right now do you see these groups having a place to operate from . They are local pockets. In all these countries, syria, iraq and of course libya is still one of those dangerous terrorist groups we have. Okay, sal. Two greatest threat being iran. Share, on terrorism, i think one of the issues that we do not pay enough attention to his base support terrorist groups directly such as hezbollah or hamas. Some of these militias that now exist, including one that is lied many years ago, but irans policies create certain sense is to sunni extremism and terror and takes advantage on one hand, but the firefighter to come against in iraq against the population creates extreme circumstances and those find a home. And then i ran comes de facto by a member of the coalition tries to defeat those forces. But it uses the defeat to extend its influence into those areas. They have been devastated because the the actions taken against isis, but now there are sunni militias we assume they are all shia. They are not. There are some that are now a sunni militias working with iran to control those areas. We are very good at going after, we should, such as a says or al qaeda, but we are not that good at what we do after so the threat does not reemerge such as politics, economics, selfgovernment, participation and powersharing and has very cleverly used counterterrorism to extend its control. At the moment in syria, prices between the kurds and iraq and the bad that government has created an opportunity for them to bring kurdistan, general sulaiman of the cubs forest has been the architect between the iraqis and the kurds in the militia forces that they control has been heavily involved in the fight against the kurds. In fact, last night there was a meeting between the kurdish passion marga and the Iraqi Security services in iran that force to be represented, but also the militia forces that iran controls end a lebanon representative from the meeting and also presumably from the cubs forest. Iran has made great progress influence in iraq generally, but there was a pocket where the kurds particularly the barzani kurds wanted to bring them to heel. It is very important in the aftermath of what the president has announced to the strategy that the iranians are pushing forward, not being restrained, not being deterred, but they are being more aggressive and its very important in my view that we look at these militia forces in iraq and i dont know whether anyone from the pentagon or congress. Its very important that we demand that those tanks are not allowed to be controlled or owned by the militia forces. They either need to be turned to the iraqi forces are ready to disable them. The roster with the passion mode go, too . They have some equipment, less capable equipment than the iraqi forces, the regular iraqi forces and some of the equipment acquired from the iraq he forces because the the abandonment of the weapons forces in the face of isis and by the current government. This is an important issue. We dont want another hezbollah in iraq, these militias to create an hezbollah that that they can do burden sharing when they run into difficulty, use these people as they have been doing with hezbollah in the area and sending also iraqi militias to syria and had been burning asking shiite and pakistani shiite to minimize their role in terms of vietnam because its expensive to reduce the cost to do your dirty work and that is what they have been doing. I agree with the notion that terrorism and iran and part of it is separate from each other, but they are part of the