Asking or followup, you mentioned twice we have 26 bringds just a few minutes left in this discussion, you can see the remainder on our web site cspan. Org. And we are looking at the u. N. Drone strike that killed iranian general Qassem Soleimani and why the Trump Administration acted against him. Welcome. And thank you for joining us today for this important and timely discussion focusing on the implications regionally and internationally of the recent developments, and escalation between iran and the United States, and the killing of Qassem Soleimani. As you know, on january 3rd, an american air strike ordered by u. S. President donald trump killed the top Iranian Military commander Qassem Soleimani. Iran responded by attacking two military bases in iraq that host American Forces. The last weeks have seen sequence of violent events and escalation both before and after this Major Incident with varying degrees and impact. Today, we seek to discuss the implications on three levels. First, domestically in iran. With the Iranian Regime continuing to face protests and a crumbling economy, especially after the shutting down, the shooting down of the ukrainian commercial plane and further sanctions by the United States, what are irans options, both domestically and regionally, as well as with the europe and the United States. Second, regionally. What are the implications of soleimanis killing for irans regional influence and expansion nist projects . What is the impact on iraqi sovereignty, internal political dynamics and iranian influence there . And on u. S. iraq relations. Also, while irans allies in the region have threatened to avenge soleimanis killing, will the process of economic and governance crises in lebanon and in iraq prevent such steps . Third, internationally, how willing are the European Countries to break away from the u. S. And chart their own iran policy and nuclear deal . What is the current and future strategy by the United States and the Trump Administration towards iran . Especially given that it is an Election Year here. Amidst all of these domestic, regional and International Crises are iran and the United States ready for war, negotiations, or neither . Or are we to expect a continuation of controlled escalation and probably the use of Unconventional Warfare methods . To answer these questions, and help us analyze these developments and options, we are pleased and fortunate to have with us a great panel of experts to discuss the implications of the recent tensions and the killing of soleimani both regionally and beyond. Thank you all for joining us and thank you for taking the time to be with us today to contribute to this discussion, and thanks to ahmed to my right, the director of research in washington, d. C. Who has agreed to chair the discussion as well as contribute to the conversation. Before giving the platform to natalis, i would like you to silence your phones and for those of you not familiar with washington, d. C. s format, we use these cards for questions. So during the q a session, please use the card and write your question and name and affiliation and bring the card, one of our staff will pick it up from you. And with that, i will turn to ahmed and we will start our discussion. Thank you. Thank you, tamara. Good afternoon, everybody. I hope its not too cold outside, but i think its manageable. We are here today to discuss really one of the, its a serious, serious problem through the United States and iran, and a serious problem with repercussions regional, local, regional and international. We really have a very good panel today, were going to be discussing issues pertains to iran specifically like tamara said, iraq, syria and lebanon, which are basically places where are rather impacted by what is going on between the United States, and iran, what is happening in the region. I would, with the order of the presentation, by the way, each will have about 12 minutes to present their cases, and i am lenient. Im not going to be cutting people off, but it would be nice to just stick to the time limit. And then dannal bromberg from georgetown university, he will be talking basically about the United States iran policy, and basically the overall geostrategic policy and i did mentions of such policy. Then nagara maltazabi, an iranamerican journalist and analyst for al jazeera and cgpn and she will be talking about the domestic dynamics of iran today, and what is going on there, and how that will be impacted in the future. Bess calman, the director of the Iraq Initiative at the council, and he will be talking about iraq and how its affected by issues by the current conflict, and yours truly will be discussing reflections on what are implications for lebanon and syria of whats going on today. So without further ado, please, daniel, go ahead. Well, thank you very much, tamar and ahmad, and im delighted to be here at the arab center. I have a presentation that is essentially thr essentially three points and i might come in essentially under 12 minutes. We will see how it goes. And my task, is there will be questions in that time and it will reduce to the following three closelyrelated points. First and foremost, my perspective on the Trump Administrations approach to iran, to put it in the largest frame possible at this moment, is that its just basically tactics and no Clear Strategy other than a strategy of im pli Police Regime change and Economic Warfare and actually i dont think it is a strategy of coherence or chance of success. When youre looking at the kind of conflict that we have between the United States and iran, whether its focusing on the Nuclear Issue or other issues, you have really two choices. One is to engage, and you can use various forms of coercion to buttress that engagement. But the purpose of engagement, and negotiations, is to resolve this through a compromise, which means implicitly or explicitly that you accept the legitimacy of the existence of your opponent and do not go into the process with the aim of bringing down the regime. Or you can make war in one way or the other. Those are your two basic options. Theyre very different options. They have very different outcomes, obviously. And there are different ways to make war, we hear now that we have of course the debate about whether the assassination of soleimani would precipitate a military war, but in effect, the United States is already at war with iran, because not only dlt administration pull out of the nuclear deal, but it imposed sanctions which amount to an economic war, which has had drastic effects on irans economy. So we have chosen that option. I think that choice persists despite the fact that bolton left the white house. I think there are many in the white house or near it, including pompeo and others, who support basically the assumption that somehow through some use of force, we can somehow bring down this regime, and achieve all our options, the Silver Bullet strategy. Im not sure that President Trump actually completely understands the implications of the choices before him in any sort of way other than instincttively. He doesnt really have a strategic concept of what the options are, the kinds of things we are talking about here really are not much concern to him, and that has allowed for a certain effort to leverage his own involvement in this, i think his instincts are to keep out and i said in my piece, a week ago for the arab center that i thought he would not pursue conflict with arab and his preference for negotiation and he didnt know how to square his desire for negotiations for what is in fact objectively speaking, to use a term, a policy that is really built around regime change. Now, iran, i think we need to understand that irans response to this policy was something that i and others have called a policy of controlled escalation, the purpose of which as far as i can really understand is to get the attention of the europeans and use leverage not because the iranians thought they could solve the problem with the United States, but use a process of controlled escalation to im pell or encourage the europeans to create a mechanism that would allow iran to sell its oil. Because when iran is signed on to the nuclear deal, it made a really strategic decision, and that was that its future was based on engagement with the west, while selling oil, and reviving the oil economy, and not on nuclear weapons, certainly and not perhaps on nuclear power. And so they were desperate to sustain this agreement, and to get europes attention, and get europe to find some way of creating this much talked about, but thus far failed mechanism. And what has happened i think, is that has failed. And iran has become more desperate. And a lot of what iran has been doing under this rubric of controlled escalation is pushing as hard as it can, i do not feel, nor do i accept the argument that this is a part of the intrinsic expansionist identity of an iranian government. I think this was a response to american policy, dictated by the few choices iran had, given what the Trump Administration decided to do. So what weve seen, as i said in my piece for the arab center is that in the past few months, irans hope for that mechanism, that trading mechanisms was really dashed, iran became more desperate and pushed harder and harder and the United States responded and until then, all sides, the u. S. , iran, seemed to understand the rules and red lines of controlled engagement. But increasingly, they were violated. I did say in my piece for the center that i thought that irans objective now would be to recapitulate those rule, and not go beyond them, that what iran would rather do is avoid a headon military conflict with the United States and i think that is trumps preference as well if he can somehow make this work. The second and closely related point i wish to make is that, and this is one of the paradoxes of our approach, is that the reason the United States and i think the Trump Administration believes it can make this nonstrategy work is really an imbalance of power between the United States and iran. A tremendous imbalance of power. If you look at the u. S. Effort to negotiate with korea, for example, or north korea, that is or the u. S. Effort to negotiate with the former soviet union, during a period of time that i was alive and various family members had an intimate view of in fact, what dictated that negotiation was the parity of power between the two, and mutuallyassured destruction. There was the necessity of engagement at the top, and the alternative was worse. In the case of the relationship with iran, there is a tremendous imbalance of power so we feel we can take the risk of pushing iran without necessarily falling into a precipitous war. And. We do, we somehow feel we might prevail. But the problem with the paradox we have enough power to engage in what is called maximum pressure, this euphemism for this strategy but we dont have enough power to prevail, we dont have enough power to prevail. And we dont know how to square that. We simply dont know how to square that circle. And again i dont think the president is aware of this, of the deep paradox there. And as a result, we dont know where to go, because we have, we are tempted to use power, but we really dont know how to prevail, and iran has all kinds of power. To push back against us. For which we dont have an easy or simple response. And my sense having spoke within a lot of folks in the u. S. Military, is that they are very concerned about operating a fullscale war with iran as well. So we have this paradox of just enough power to push the iranians, maximum pressure, but not enough power and ways to express that power to prevail with a coercive expansion, and i think we have not solved that problem. I dont see that problem ever being solved in the near future. I think that trump would rather, and he said it many times, he said it even after the attack with soleimani, he said i want to talk. And this was the third time he said, and not only did he say he wanted to talk, he said i do not want regime change, which is, this was seconds or third time he had publicly made that statement, that he does not want regime change. Remarkable. And i think, you know, hes speaking uncharacteristically in an honest way, because he is really, thats where hes coming from. But he doesnt know how to square that with the u. S. Policy. And finally, my third point, and this gets back to some of the issues that tamara raised at the outset of our panel, and that is the implications for irans own internal politics and as i said in my paper, i predicted that iran being quite adept at managing crises like this would leverage every opportunity, including iraq if possible, because of course, all this occurred against the backdrop of these extraordinary protests in baghdad, and in beirut, and tehran, all over iran, and you know, a region that has witnessed these amazing street uprisings. I think it is premature to see in those uprisings the end of sectarianism. I think theyre complex. I think theyre contradictory. I would not jump to that conclusion. But they did pose a huge strategic threat to iran. And iraq, and lebanon, and in iran itself. And this was the irgcs perspective. And it hit back hard. I think this attack on soleimani, that is celebrated at the end of the irgc, its going to collapse, im not an expert on, this but everything i read from the experts tell me theyre very adaptable and have ways to assert their influence and the new commander there, will find ways to assert influence. I think all of that means that they will leverage this situation. Having said all that, this is hardly the end of protests. Not at all. And i think, and this is something that we, of course, none of us anticipated in disast wer the ukrainian airline, and the downing and the protests precipitated by that which demonstrates this yawning gap between the iranian government on the one hand and its people, particularly the urban middle class, and the enormous alienation of that class towards the government. Having said all that, and here is where ill finish up, if you want to find a way of creating a context in which those protests could have meaningful impact on irans own internal politics, advocating a regime change is not the way to go. It only empowers the hard liners. And it only makes it more difficult for any interlocutors between the protests and the regime to have any negotiating power. Because iran is like many you a tock auto cracies, it is, and the way it is limited, through some process, long, arduous, difficult, of negotiation. Protesters provide negotiators and Reformist Movement with leverage. They always have. Khameini tried to leverage that as much as possible in the early 90s and 2000s but it doesnt mean revolution. It is means a long long arduous struggle. And therefore, there is a writeoff of reformism and the writeoff of reformists is to do them a great injustice but also more importantly to not recognize what it would take, the hard liners want conflict with the United States. Because they understand that a deescalation of conflict, with the United States, as some sort of normalization, is going it make it easier in the long run for the reformist to push for a process of legal reformation, however slow and arduous. So to the extent we write off that possibility and pursue a policy of regime change via Economic Warfare provides a means that whatever space there is, for any kind of evolution within the body politic of the iranian authoritarian regime will not be there. If you can imagine the United States having pursued the salt negotiations at the same time going to destroy the soviet oil industry, and pursuing a policy of open regime change, and at the same time negotiating, this is profoundly a sort of contradictory situation, and it is from from my perspective, it is difficult to imagine that gorbachev and his allies would not have emerged had it not been for the policy of the engagement that was part and parcel for the wider strategy. So i think the current american approach, rather than create the preconditions for some minimal form of political mobilization if not beyond that will create a sation where those forces that want to find change, and or leverage the power from the streets is really critical will not be in a position to do so. And that has to, you have to keep in mind, because in february, there are parliamentary elections in iran, followed by president ial elections, and these are not easy. Thanks, dan. Nagara . Thank you to the art center for having me, and thanks to all of you for coming for this event. I also will try to be in time but feel free to cut me off if i go over time. I want to speak of the regional implications of the soleimani assassination, based on irans regional activities or adventures, and then i will speak a little bit about the domestic dynamics, and talk more about the hard liner reformist moderates and how the decisions are playing out post soleimani. And then also to trump iran Foreign Policy in general especially to the west and United States, prospects for talks. So as far as the regional policy, its true that Qassem Soleimani was a unique person, he was a capable c