President of people analytics. His work focuses on demistying peoples behaviors and opinions in complex societies and difficult contexts, such as iran. He holds degrees from Syracuse UniversitysMaxwell School and a phd in policy studies from the university of Maryland College park. Following the flash talk, well begin our panel discussion, and ill introduce our panelists at that time. Unfortunately, Professor John st stimple, the former chief of the Tehran Embassy section, is unable to join us tonight. Please join me in welcoming the doctor. [ applause ] hello, hello. I appreciate the chance to be here. Hello to chicago. Its my first time here. Thanks for the welcome. [ applause ] oh, thank you. I am presenting to you a survey that has been jointly done between iran poll and Chicago Council on global affairs. Iranian Public Opinion four decades after the hostage crisis. Yeah, so iran poll. Independent company focusing on opinion polling, only on iran but from toronto, canada. Hello to canadian consulate people here. Were based in toronto. That is one of our call centers in toronto. Scientific polling from iran has been proven to be reliable, scientific. As an example, in the last president ial election in iran in 2017, when president rouhani, the current president was selected, iran poll was able to predict the results of the election. We send the results to economists. They published it web day befone the election. Our prediction was accurate between two Percentage Points of the official results. It is something that could be reliably used, as is with any other polling. So the polling im presenting today is used by exact same methodology. 1,000 sample size. It was conducted by telephone. It was conducted in october 2019. It is very fresh. Going into it, iranians say the economy is bad and it is getting worse. Interestingly, they blame their own government more than they blame the United States or the sanctions. So 68 of iranians say Economic Situation is bad. 54 say it is getting worse. Now, 55 of iranians, they blamed the domestic economy by mismanagement and corruption. 38 blame the social pressures. You see the continued trend. That does not, however, mean that the iranians are not seeing the effect of sanctions. When we asked how much of a negative influence are the sanctions having on the Economic Situation of your family, we get 76 of iranians say it is having a negative effect on them. 53 say its having a lot of negative effect on their family. Despite these poor economic conditions, despite all the pressure, still iranian people are not ready to give in to current administrations demands. So we proposed a scenario to them. In this scenario, we told them, suppose that the United States were to propose a deal where by most u. S. Sanctions on iran would be gradually lifted and iran would be able to have a Peaceful Nuclear energy program. In return for agreeing to fully and permanently giving up the right to enrich uranium on its soil and to always allow International Inspections of its facilities. Do you think youd agree or not . 73 of iranians said, no, we reject that deal. 53 strongly rejected that deal. Now why . Two reasons. There was a classic rallying around the flag here. Thats something you can expect from any human society. When we asked in the same survey how proud are you to be iranian, we get 90 of iranians saying theyre extremely proud or very proud to be iranian. Gallop is asking the same questions from time ago. United states, the american people, theyre 47 extremely proud to be. Iranians are 68 . This level of saying theyre extremely proud is very similar to 11 september in the United States. So when there is a real attack towards your country, you have this effect, the rally around the flag. There is another point, iranians really believe they have the right to have Peaceful Nuclear program. 90 . So that helps, as well. A second reason for why iranians are rejecting the deal that we put in front of them, its the simple fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me. Its the idea that if in jcpoa, they didnt hold their part of the bargain, who says they will again . We have been asking the popularity of jcpoa, the Nuclear Agreement with iran, since 2015 continuously. 76 of iranians used to support it. Now its down to 42 . We asked another question from iranians. Thinking about how the jcpoa has worked out so far, which view is closer to you . First, the expeerrience shows is worked well for iran to make concessions, because they can negotiate mutually beneficial agreements with world powers. Or the jcpoa experience shows that it is not worthwhile for iran to make concessions because iran cant have confidence that if it makes a concession with world powers, theyll honor the a i agreeme agreement. 72 of iranians say it has not worked well to make concessions with the world powers. I want to end with good news. Its better. First good news, iranians are really not supportive of Nuclear Weapons program. When we asked them, do you think iran should or should not develop Nuclear Weapons . We get 59 saying it should not. Interestingly, 66 of iranians say the development of Nuclear Weapons is against the teachings of islam. While 17 , they say islam does not prohibit the development of Nuclear Weapons. Interestingly, only 18 of iranians didnt have an opinion about what islam says, which shows a very confident people about islam. The last point, iranians are not categorically against negotiations with the trump administration. When we gave them this option, if the United States returns to the jcpoa, leaves all sanctions related to Irans Nuclear program, and is willing to talk in a forum that includes all the p5 plus 1 countries, under such condition, to what degree would you support or oppose iran holding the meetings . They were supportive. The future does have some hope for us. Thank you. [ applause ] zbl thank y thank you very much. It is my distinct honor to welcome our panelists. Kate koob is a professor. She spent over 27 years in the Diplomatic Service of the United States. In 1979, she was serving as the director of the iranamerica society. Shes one of the 52 americans who spent 444 days as a hostage in iran after the seizure of the u. S. Embassy in tehran. Kathleen stafford is an artist whose work has been acquired by american and foreign embassies in museums around the world. 1979, she was a visa clerk at the embassy in tehran when it was seized. She was one of six americans exfiltrated from iran with the assistance of the Central Intelligence agency and the canadian government after the embassy seizure. Please join me in welcoming our panelists. [ applause ] thank you again for being here. Id like to set the stage. In 1979, what was the Political Climate like in iran when you arrived there . Well, there were curfews. We were limited in terms of where we could go. My question was, what does an Islamic Republic look like . That was the reason i was there. This was the stated goal of the revolution, to establish an Islamic Republic. People were unsure. Everybody was treading lightly. People who were known to have been workers for the shah lived in fear. People lived in fear. There were people yanked out of their jobs and, because of their loyalty to the shaw, were tried and executed. It was a very tenuous situation when we when i first arrived in july. We were working carefully to see what we could do and what we couldnt. I was the director of the iranamerica society, but i met with the italian cultural society, the german cultural director, et cetera. We talked about, what did we think we could and couldnt do in our Cultural Centers . Everyone was walking care flich fully. We were there two months before the takeover. We a i rivalled in september. We just moved into the participat apartment. I had the clothes on the dining room chairs. She didnt come the day of the takeover. She was your housekeeper. Thats right. I went to work. We were excited. This was a new adventure for us. Were going to see this wonderful country that is famous for its culture, poetry, and history. On the weekend, we went to the caspian sea, little trips. The weekend before the takeover, we made it back just in time. So kates memories of what it was like before that are more clear than mine. This monday was the 40th anniversary of the seizure of the u. S. Embassy. What were your experiences on november 4th, 1979, in the subsequent days . Well, the iranamerica society was, i think, about 3 kilometers from the embassy. We had our own building. This was a very strong structure and had been going well for many years. We worked together. The board of this society was iranian and american. We had english lessons and farsi lessons. The iranian board was working with us as we were trying to figure out with the italians and the french and the germans what we could do and where we could go. And on that morning, we were having a board meeting. In the middle of the meeting, my secretary, ava, said, i think you better take this phone call. It was one of my Board Members saying, this is a major demonstration going on at the embassy. You might want to check and see that everything is okay at the society. As a matter of fact, two of my Staff Members went down to the embassy to see if they could see what was going on. We turned on radio and television to see if anything was being carried on the local news. It became very clear this wasnt going to go away. So the story goes on from there. But it was it was aggressive from the very beginning. We hoped, and my personal hope was that the Foreign Ministry would do what they had done at an earlier demonstration. I think it was in february. They basically said, okay, youve made your point. Youve demonstrated. This is an embassy. These are diplomatic grounds. Now lets be on our way. We could settle down and see what was going on. That didnt happen, obviously. Back at the branch, we were closed. The visa section was closed to protest the fact that there had been lots of graffiti, down with america, death to carter, written on the walls of the embassy that weekend. We were protesting. We had no visa applicants that day. So i went over. I thought this was a good chance to go over and get my diplomatic id card. I walked across the compound and turned in my passport, which meant i wasnt going anywhere without that afterwards. The ladies in the office were very nervous. They said, why did you come to work today . I said, i always come to work. They said, no, but today is the day of the martyrs. So then i went back across the compound and told my husband he should go over there because those ladies were in a bad mood. He should get his id card, too. If he had gone, he would have been in the chancery at the time of the takeover. Luckily he didnt listen to me, and we both ended up in the consula consulate. Slammed all the doors when we saw that there was a mob outside. People had sticks and bats and things like that. So after about two hours, there were various activities that came and went. The rso walked across the compound, our Regional Security officer walked across the compound, trying to figure out what to do. He thought he could talk the students out of staying on the compound and leaving. So after a while, we thought we smelled smoke. We were all upstairs in the second floor of the building. It was safer. We thought we smelled smoke, so we thought we better we were probably going to have to leave. We destroyed the visa plate so no one could make false visas. The other wife and i there was one other spouse there, another couple, cora and i were there on an exceptional basis. We were the only spouses there at post. Washington had thought they would be bringing back adult dependents. After they saw the state of the country and that it was unstable, they were rethinking that. In any case, cora and i thought, theyre going to send us home. We cant issue visas anyway. How far would you like me to go along . I think that is a good point. Okay. Prior to november 4th, did you ever anticipate that something as dramatic as the actual seizure of the embassy was a possibility . Well, during our training period and talking about the history and whats going on, and given the history of the United States embassies all around the world, my fear was that there might be some sort of a retaliatory act, some reason or somebody i thought wed all be told to pack one bag and get out of the country. Thats the normal procedure. Although, that year, there had been a very serious demonstration of and one of our ambassadors, i believe, was killed in afghanistan . Mmhmm. Earlier that year. There were memories in my mind of other takeovers, of not embassies but american diplomatic facilities. So i really was very much prepared to pack one suitcase and leave, but i was not prepared to stay for 14 months. No, i did not think that, about that. Kathleen . I think we had a town hall meeting. Must have been the weekend before that that we were told the shah was going to be allowed to enter the United States for medical treatment. Then the ambassador i guess it was bruce langan, he said, there are various possibilities on the gamut of nothing will happen and maybe theyll try to attack the embassy. None of us knew what would happen. It was a wait and see. As kate said, we were hoping it was just going to be at most wed have to leave. Where you stopped your story, many people in the room may be familiar with the movie argo, which dramatized your exit from iran. What did the movie get right, and where did they take creative liberty . Well, with that, there we were up on the second floor, thinking we smelled smoke. We should leave. Various people left in groups. People were in the nonimmigrant section that day. We looked outside the back door where the visa applicants could come in without having to enter on to the main compound. That was a little alley off the side. That was a separate entrance that only we had. There was nobody there. The students either didnt know about that entrance, or because the consulate had been moved from a different part of the compound, they werent aware of it. So we realized the coast was clear. We left in small groups. First the iranians. Then our local the visiting iranians and then our local staff. Then there were about 12 or 13 of us americans. We split into smaller groups. In our group, there was the other couple, bob anders, who was our boss, and joe and i, my husband and i, and a couple of other people. So we all went out with our group. It started to rain, which was probably really lucky because we put up umbrellas. Everybody was concerned about rain and not us. So then we headed off toward the british embassy, which was supposed to be our sanctuary. We didnt know where it was. One of the iranian employees said she would show us. As we were walking that way, we saw a really large mob, another group of people coming from that direction. Bob anders was with us and said, i live closeby. Im going home. We said, were coming with you, bob. We separated a little more and walked to bobs house. When we got to his house, we listened to the embassy radio. We could hear voices. We could hear all the americans talking back and forth. Trying to figure out what to do. People talking about the vault, which is where all the classified information is kept. Finally, we only heard foreign speakers. We knew everyone had been captured or taken. Then we called kate. And they came over. It was evening by that time. Thats right. We were still doing all right. As i said, my staff had gone out. They came back, and we were they said, yeah, its really serious. So i called the embassy and got an answer switchboard or from the switchboard, embassy occupied. I remembered i had a direct extension. I called bruces office. His secretary said, kate, it is bad. Get ahold of the guys in the communications center. Find out whats going on from them. Theyre in touch with state. I called using that, and they were shredding material, taking care of classified stuff. They said, call state. They gave me the number at the department of state to call at the operations center. They had another link. I and my staff. And some of my staff were helping me do this. You know, god bless them. They were taking a chance. But they were monitoring what was being said on radio and television, taking notes, transcribing it. We were feeding that back to washington, to the op center, and also linking to the Communication Center until they said, were going to have to go out. State says, tell them theyve done a good job and well say goodbye. The next thing i heard was, tell them theyre gone. We told them that. That was when the vault was breached. They were taken over by the farsi people. We were trying to figure out what was going on. Toward evening well, kathy, another person had showed up there. She couldnt get back to the office. She had been at the airport that morning. Supposed to be going home. Lillian johnson. Lillian, right. She came back and was there helping us. The six of you showed up. I said, good. We can sleep. We stretched out on the sofas in the library. They got on the phones with washington until it was almost sunrise. I think you went to my house. We went to the other houses. We did eventually go to your house. Okay. They had the car. We were there. The next day, someone came. I got out the back door and went around the corner to the german institute. They said, why dont you go home with us . I said, oh, this has got to get settled. This has to simmer down, and i have to get back to the phones. I talked with washington and they said, do you think it is safe to get back to the phones . I said, well, you know, i hope so. At any rate, i went back.