To solve him on this one. Right now, we are gonna shift over to thinking about some of the more diplomatic aspects of the problem set and one of the things we heard from the Previous Panel is a lot of Solutions Come from the diplomatic toolkit. We have another remarkable panel to help us think through the. On the extreme right from your perspective, ambassador patterson is the former assistant secretary of state for near eastern affairs. She was ambassador to four Different Countries egypt, pakistan, colombia and el salvador. She was also the assistant secretary of state for national law enforcement, the aptly named drug and thugs portfolio and she was the acting ambassador and deputy ambassador to the united nations. Next, we have ambassador doug silman of the institute in washington. He previously served as the u. S. Ambassador to iraq and kuwait and was the deputy chief in baghdad and ankara. At the end, doctor vaez was on the International Crisis group where he previously served as the theme youre iran analyst before he joined icg he headed the project at the federation of american scientists. He has a phd in biomedical science from geneva, masters in International Policy from the Johns Hopkins school for International Studies where he studied with jon alterman. So im quite delighted to have ali on the stage as well. It seems to me that the last panel kind of kicked it all to you guys. So this is a fundamentally diplomatic problems set. What are the unexploited diplomatic opportunities . Not the lowhanging fruit although its interesting to talk about those. Diplomatically, what are the big things that we need to do that we are doing . I want to pick up with a last panel left off, but i want to make a few remarks about the state of american diplomacy in the gulf and frankly in the middle east generally, and simply put it, it has a rather dramatically, and what are the implications of this . If we dont know what is going on out there in key areas. Its not just about sending personnel out to bust heads, although that has grown obviously in some cases, but we just dont get about like we used to and i suspect relevant to the gulf that this is particularly true in saudi arabia where we dont know what is going on with the clerics, we dont know what is going on with the royal family and we dont know what is going on outside the major cities although many people are visiting there and this is a truly destructive result of what took place in benghazi although in fairness, it has been going on for years since the beirut bombings in bombings of our embassies, our embassy in yemen is closed. Our embassy in libya is closed. After the attack, we went back to saudi arabia instead of three and four years so, what are the implications of this, apart from not knowing what is going on that which diplomacy cant succeed . We look afraid and it aggravates enormously since a withdrawal on the ground because when you ask somebody to come to your fortress instead of going to their office, the signal is you are afraid to engage with the local population and the sense of withdrawal is i think much more dramatic so the first thing i think is to build a diplomatic capacity to enable people to get out and to do that we have to take more risks and we have to have people who speak the language and who are there longer so, what are the opportunities . There are still opportunities. The first i would say is to do everything we can to heal the rift among the gcc countries. I would be the first to say to people in the administration have worked on this that it was always perceived as a second tier goal. It certainly had nothing to do with israel security. It really did not affect that so it was always sort of relegated and was never a highlevel issue, i would argue but i think it does have implications, really serious implications and that is what i would call the effect because what i have seen is this rift in weaponized in places like libya and the horn of africa. There is certainly potential, i would think, for it to be weaponized with the peace deal with the taliban and of course the russians in general have taken enormous advantage of this. So i think we need to do everything we can, the u. S. Needs to do everything it can to work on this. I think its very unfortunate that did you see is collapsing i know the Security Architecture was always sort of a myth but the fact that the u. S. Was there and working on this, there were, i think modest, modest successes overtime. There were certainly successes on the economic side and theyre pretty boring, like coastal immigration and economic integration but they are things worth doing and i want to mention one more reason we should work on the golf and the gcc and that is the imf report that came out about two weeks ago and what the report said was that, and i know many of you in the audience are very familiar with the gulf and will sort of poohpooh this because scholars and others have been predicting the fall of the house for Something Like seven years but it basically said that without massive fiscal improvement, the countries in the gulf would have serious Financial Issues and 15 years, saudi arabia in particular, kuwait, and everywhere in the uae would be insulated because of their sovereign wealth funds, but there is a very interesting article about the implications of this which would be that they would turn on each other, or assistance in jordan in lebanon and the palestinians would drop and very critically because i think this issue has been under studied by scholars, guest workers would be sent home to already struggling countries like egypt and pakistan so in other words, i think given our longterm strategic objectives in the gulf, we need to do everything we can to encourage security and energy integration, no matter how hard it will be and i dont think it will be all that hard if we concentrate on it and to work on this for our long term objectives and then finally on the opportunities and i know doug is going to talk about this as well, four years ago, five years ago when we started to think it wouldve been a lot easier to get the iranians out because they were basically just wanting to stick it to the saudis and had no real strategic interest in them and i think its probably a lot harder now but im not sure. This is an issue that just cries out for sustain u. S. Engagement to try and reach some sort of settlement because of humanitarian costs being so high and secondly, the real cost, as my colleague Jerry Firestone keep saying is that it is ruined the saudi relationship with the u. S. And that has strategic implications as well so we need to do everything we can to prepare them and that would be the next place i would put u. S. Diplomatic emphasis. Thank you. During a crisis in early january at one point i was put on fox news, and talking to a couple of their anchors and they played for me the clip from senator rand paul when he said this means the death of diplomacy, so how do you react to that and i said ive been a diplomat for 35 years and i believe that diplomacy will never be dead and i think what you heard at the end of the first section with recession is, there are really lots of opportunities for diplomacy it is just that that is not the priority, either of the Academic Community or the administration to identify and implement right now. The final question we had coming from over here about the growth of multipolarity is where i wanted to start the discussion discussion, looking at the middle east in particular i was in riyadh and abu dhabi last week this is the only game in town in the gulf for middle east. That means the emiratis, the saudis, the kuwaitis, the omanis, they are looking for other alternatives, looking at 5g infrastructure but also looking around the region, there is no other country that i can pull to gather the different regional powers or International Powers like the United States. Some people want to draw a parallel between the british withdrawal from empire after world war ii or britain gave up the United States actually is not doing that. First of all we are not a colonial power in the traditional sense. We dont occupy countries and run them around the world what we have is a soft economic power and and agreement and in good places representation of the government government. Even though relatively less powerful we arent losing much of our influence and power and our deployment list we choose not to use it. So looking at multiple any growth, there are a lot of opportunities at the end of 99 and beginning of 2000 and what i saw was positions from washington and iran to walk back from a war between the United States and iran. I disagree with the evaluation of the first panel with the iranian escalation because the United States took responsibility for killing soleimani, iran felt it had to respond directl as i ran so those missile strikes on the iraq bases were irans parallel strike to even the playing field. But after that both sides went back secretary pompeo and secretary mnuchin double down and the iranians said we will not do anything for now but with this region we have taken our retribution for the killing of soleimani so what both sides of dennis walk to the brink, decided not to jump off and walk back to the areas of comfort and support the proxies and attempt to put pressure on the allies of the United States to reduce the impact of u. S. Economic sanctions and for the United States doubled down on economic sanctions and try to figure out individuals who might have , where the individual impact could potentially work on iranian policy. Several areas, and this is really more for another discussion that are not sure anyone is working on it but we think there is a real role for american diplomacy but it is american diplomacy to build internationalizes with our european allies, with our golf allies, with israel and potentially in some cases even with china. First of all, is a jcpoa two point oh. It is pretty clear iranian recouped is not coming back in the way it did before but it is also pretty clear that iran is willing to move in that direction, and david zarif over the course of last summer laid out on a few different occasions slightly different visions of what iran might be able to accept including accelerating the Additional Protocol by a couple of years, seemingly in a way that President Trump complained that he had gotten a better deal, on a nuclear deal than obama had gotten. That would seem to be the direction. If you look at the use of iranian Ballistic Missiles against u. S. Forces in iraq, you can almost see that to a large extent i see that irans strategic projection is going to be more easily done with missiles because, one it does not have the same International Implications if you were using conventional warheads and iran was able to use those Ballistic Missiles to strategic effect. You can look at those Ballistic Missiles but it appears to be cruise missiles guided by drones but again, a technological win by iran so iran may not be as concerned about keeping its Nuclear Weapons program as it might have been in the past. That also moved to the second issue, how do we work with our allies in the gulf and the International Community to reduce the regional threat of irans missile programs and again, there is lots of experience in the u. S. Government in the state have of the d. O. D. Indian elsewhere, how do you walk and do an effective arms control agreement, especially missile control agreement, im not sure anyone is going there now but what im in the gulf, the big elephant in the room is not Nuclear Weapons or post missiles, its actually support for proxies, and those in the jussie sea countries are very concerned about it continued iranian interference with troops in this society that pose policies, this is now more prominent in iraq and syria than it has been in the gulf, and i think that the maximum Pressure Campaign has probably reduce the amount of money the iranians have to fund some of these external activities in and again, this is something maybe a leak unaddressed, we have been hearing some implications that the iranians are tiring specifically of support to the houthis in yemen that hasnt done much but prolong the war. But they are not great iranian allies. They are too disunited havent always used iranian training and weapons the way they wanted so there may be an opening for the discussions to deescalate in yemen as an opening to other Security Issues. Its also possible a few weeks ago where there was some talk of a larger discussion of Regional Security issues that might bring in missile programs. Members of u. S. Forces and other allied forces, all as bargaining chips with the iranian to have them reduce your support for group so again i lay out these issues not because they are happening but i see opportunities for the United States to grab some of these diplomatically and move forward, but we cant do it unilaterally. Its going to have to be done with our allies. Were going to have to get over this growing multi polarity in the world. We will have to bring together the most influential nations in the most effective nations, probably in different groups for these different issues. Thank you. Ali . Thank you very much, john, it is a great pleasure to be at csis another ear of taking credit for my education, i will also take the blame i hope you will also take the blame for whatever mistakes and make today. But i thought it might be useful to shed some light on iranian strategy here. The first panel i think did a good job in discussing the confusions around the u. S. Strategy. Now, the iranians, as you all know, for the first time of the Trump Administrations maximum pressure strategy, adopted a strategy of maximum patients. They decided to basically stay in the nuclear deal to the extent possible, sit under ads, be careful in the region, the number of issues between the u. S. Navy and the iranian navy came down, israel targeted iranian assets in syria hundreds of times and the iranians basically did not respond. In the hope they can isolate the u. S. And thereby neutralized u. S. Sanctions and the possible did not really work at the end so as of 2019, when we pushed for basically bringing irans oil exports to zero, the iranians decided to adopt a policy of maximum pressure of their own and is two two different forms, one in the nuclear realm, every 60 days it took a step back from their obligations under the jcpoa and in the region we saw a string of attacks starting from limpet mines on tankers in a port in the uae to attacks on tankers in the gulf of oman, to the east coast pipeline in saudi arabia, to shooting down of a drone, to the very brazen attack on saudi oil. This obviously culminated in the killing of general soleimani and then iranian retaliation than i agree with doug that for the iranians taking a direct strike on a u. S. Military installations somewhere in the region was crossing the psychological threshold in the same way that killing an iranian general by the u. S. Was crossing the red line so, the iranians basically wanted to establish that this cannot happen again and the iranians have deterrence of the rug, im curious what the general would say about this, from what ive heard everyone agrees that iran is quite risky it is chirac luck that no one was killed in the attack on the base in iraq, but in any case, now is there a debate in tehran, whether they should go back to some patience for the remainder of President Trumps first term or to stay where they are and doubled down on the maximum pressure strategy and there are arguments on both sides, you can probably guess who is advocating for what within iranian system. Moderate forces of iranian politics obviously want to go back to trump patience and the irgc and more hardline elements are quite content with what they have done in terms of regional pushback because they believe it has demonstrated irans capabilities, a lot of people in the region were concerned, impressed, by the accuracy of the force that was used on saudi aramco, the force of the ballistic matte missiles on u. S. Bases in iraq. It is demonstrated vulnerabilities of the other side, the fact that we dont have a single Patriot Missile basically protecting the bases in iraq were not a single missile was fired and the low flying cruise missiles that were hit coming to hit aramco, and i think they want to drive a wedge in the coalition the Trump Administration is put together and their view is being that that has been a relative success. We saw some shift in the uae position, at least some escalation in tensions and even with the u. S. By september we came pretty close to a potential deescalation package that president macron of france was trying to negotiate so you put all this to better get their, there is a debate in tehran about the costs and benefits of continuing on this path but the biggest question is how do we change trumps calculus and if trump is there for another four years, so we are talking about another five years of iran under sanctions, what should iran do, and i think the majority view is iran should not become another cuba, a country that lives under sanctions or another iraq that was weakened under sanctions and toppled easily so my only sense is the hardliners now have the upper hand in iran and the moderates are more and more isolated. If i want to bet, and it is a risky thing to bet in washington in front of a crowd. And cspan. And cspan, is that i think the iranians will probably slow down the Nuclear Escalation because on that front we have and it up in an implicit less for less situation, the iranians are obviously doing last with