Im pleased to have mike morell back at this table. Mike its always great to be here. Charlie why title it the great war of our time . Mike this challenge we face against islamic extremism is in some ways akin to the cold war. I call it the great war for that reason and because of the timeframe we are talking about here. I believe my childrens generation and my grandchildrens generation will still be fighting this thing. Charlie what is our goal . Contain them . Mike i think its to get to a place where its no longer a military problem more paramilitary problem, but a Law Enforcement problem. When we move from the military phase to the Law Enforcement phase we can say victory. Charlie how do we get there . Mike we get there in two ways. One way we have talked about at this table before is one of the real resins learned in dealing with terrorism is that you have to keep the pressure on them. When you have the pressure on them you make it difficult for them to plan, train, raise money and plot. When they have to worry about their own security, they can do less damage. That is what happens when you put the pressure on. As soon as you take the pressure off, they rebuild, they put things together again and they do that very quickly. The terrorists who already exist, youve got to keep the pressure on all the time. The other part is something we do not do very well at all and that is stop the production of new terrorists. Stop the radicalization process. That is really tough to do. Charlie where is that battlefield . Mike that battlefield is in the schools in muslim countries. It is in the mosques in muslim countries, it is in thebattlefield . Homes in muslim countries. Charlie and online . Mike and online. I talk in the book about indonesia as being a place where they have had quite a bit of success in this regard with programs in schools, with programs to support programming on television and on the radio, program to support the arts, all with the message of tolerance in religion, all the message of looking at both sides of an issue. One of the interesting facts is the number of indonesians who have gone to fight in syria and iraq for isis is less than the number that have gone from the United States, canada australia. It is remarkable for the largest Muslim Country in the world. Charlie they are not seduced by the argument. Mike one of the things they do in school is when they talk about the palestinian problem they are providing the palestinian respective but also the israeli perspective. This is very important for these countries to get their arms around. There is not a lot we can do about this as a country because we dont have a lot of credibility talking about these issues. Charlie it requires an accelerated effort by muslim countries. Mike by Muslim Leaders and leading clerics. One of the places this is starting to happen is in egypt. The president is starting to talk about the issues with his public. Charlie and king abella in jordan. I want to talk about King Abdullah in jordan. I want to talk about the leadership. Is it changing . I read that the leader of isis was injured in a strike. Has that been confirmed . Mike i dont know if it is confirmed. One of the questions that is out there is is he alive or is he dead . I think if we were dead he we would all know it because they would want to portray him as a great martyr. That is the president we have seen with these groups. I think he has been injured. I dont know how seriously, but i think he has been injured. This is a pretty tightknit leadership team. A lot of command and control, so taking out leadership here is really important. Because it is so small and tightknit, you can do some real damage. Charlie at what level are the former iraqi generals that works for Saddam Hussein . Mike probably second tier. Charlie when it comes to recruitment, whose responsibility is it to fight that . What part of government should do that . Mike the state department has an effort focused on this. It has never been particularly wellfunded or particular a well resourced. For a couple of good reason. One is your first instinct of your First Priority is to deal with the guys coming at you to kill you. That has to be priority number one. Dealing with the longerterm radicalization always becomes the second priority. The other reason is, as i said earlier, this is not something the united date can do on its own. The best we can hope for is to put out test practices and talk to arab leaders offline president to president , president to Prime Minister about what is working and what is not and organize the effort in an informal way. Charlie you seem to be an all you write and all i know from you, increasingly alarmed about the possibility of a 9 11 kind of attack whatever variation it might be on the United States. I assume the ultimate attack would be some kind of dirty bomb or something. Mike right. I am concerned about an attack in the homeland. Charlie why are you more concerned . What makes it what makes you see a rising fear of that attack to mark of that attack . Mike the most significant threat today comes not from isis, but from al qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and al qaeda in yemen. We have talked about that before because they focus on it, they have a highly skilled lawmaker who can make bombs that could be hidden in things. They are the biggest threat today. What is happening in yemen is giving them greater room to maneuver. We are having a harder time collecting intelligence, we are having a harder time denying them safe haven and taking them off the battlefield. We are still conducting Drone Operations in yemen and thats a good thing as far as im concerned. By virtue of the civil war underway in the chaos underway in yemen, they will gain strength. They have the capability today to bring down an airliner. Give them more room and they could do something more significant. Isis today doesnt have the capability to conduct a significant attack. They can motivate people, they can direct small scale attacks but they will be able to do Something Else here. If you look at what is happening in iraq, we have taken back about 25 of the territory they took when they dig their blitzkrieg across iraq, so we are having some success. We took brak we took back t ikrit, but we have had no success in syria taking back any territory. No progress in iraq, no progress in syria, so as you put increased pressure, they will come back across the border and go into syria. Unless you have a plan to deal with them, they will have safe haven there and they will get stronger. Charlie what is the plan . Mike the plan at the moment is to train moderate opposition fighters to train and equip them to take on isis and then take on Bashar Alassad but we are having a very difficult time finding moderate opposition guys to train. Even if we could find them, we dont have the numbers to train them by. Charlie what do we do . Mike i dont have the answer to that. The airstrikes only take you so far. They strengthen the ground force as you go in trying to take the territory, but the airstrikes cannot take back the territory. In the way of iraqi troops and Shiite Militia we dont have that in syria. Charlie we will talk more about saudi arabia and the changes there, but one thing from the new crown prince and deputy crown prince seeming to be a more aggressive military posture. You see it in terms of how they view the conflict with iran. What are they prepared to do in syria to build up moderate forces to take on isis and see bashar assad removed . Mike they have been doing that for some time. Theyve in providing large amounts of funding to the moderate opposition in syria. That the saudis, no. What happened is big chunks of the moderate opposition left the moderate opposition to go fight for elements in isis because they were being effective against assad. The moderate opposition itself was not, so a bunch of guys stood up and said im going to fight for somebody whos making a difference. The moderate opposition got smaller and smaller. Charlie when i talked to american officials, you hear they are growing in strength. Mike they are growing in strength and they are concerning to me because they are aligned with al qaeda and pakistan. They have a group focused on attacks connected to yemen and getting sophisticated explosives. Thats a serious back to my 9 11 concern, the stronger they get and the more they think about external attacks, the more comfortable they get, the more dangerous they are here to us in the homeland. Charlie i want to connect this to the arab spring. You write about the cias failure to appreciate how the arab spring would play it help out. They were optimistic that somehow, this might the a wedge in the battle against terrorism and then it did not work out that way because isis and others , al qaeda, saw an opening at the time of the arab spring and have since turned it into, some say, the arab winter including you and you think the cia should have been able to see that. Mike let me say a few things. Yes, the arab spring was a huge boon to al qaeda and i have titled that chapter the al qaeda spring. We had to analytic calls to make. One was on the arab spring itself and their, we did well strategically a not so well tactically. What did we do strategically . For a number of years, our analysts were telling policymakers that pressures are building in arab societies for change. That citizens in those countries are concerned about where the countries are going and concerned their children were not have will not have a better future. Charlie and they are fueled by the fact that the media told him whats going on in the rest of the world and they said to themselves, im in a bad place here. Why havent i done better . Mike they are getting more and more frustrated. We are covering that and in a strategic sense, we got that part right. We did not call the turning point. In tunisia, some guy sets himself on fire and starts this whole thing. Whats possible is to say mr. President , the pressures are rising to unprecedented levels and we are really concerned about whats going to happen over the next six to 12 months. Strategically, we called it, i would take tactically, we missed the arab spring. Once the arab spring started analysts said we think is going to spread like wildfire. They got that call right. Once the arms bring started, we made another call, and this is the one you referred to. We said we think its going to undercut al qaeda and we think is going to undercut al qaeda because this will undercut their narrative that violence is necessary for political change. Charlie why didnt it . Mike because we were wrong about that. Because the arab spring created to dynamics that benefited al qaeda. The first dynamic was it made countries unwilling to take on extremists inside their borders. The best examine the best example is egypt and mohamed morsi. My counterparts in egypt i worked with for years still had the capabilities to deal with it inside egypt but did not feel like they had the political top covered, so the eased off. What happened . Al qaeda came back to egypt for the first time in 25 years, very quickly. Charlie as al qaeda, not the Muslim Brotherhood . Mike yes, and they are still there. And they have not gotten rid of them. Thats how hard it is. The other dynamic is it reduced the capabilities of countries to take on extremists inside the border. The best example of that is libya. Under moammar gadhafi, he was very effective at dealing with extremists inside his border. When his government fell in those institutions elkhart there was no capability anymore to deal. When those institutions fell apart, there is no capability to deal. The one difference i would have over the call we made is i dont think it would have made any difference had we made the right call. I dont think it would have made any difference if we said the arab spring is going to be a boon for al qaeda, the outcome would have been exactly the same. We got the call wrong but the consequences are not that significant. Charlie theres a feeling in some quarters of the middle east that we are less relevant today and have less capacity to influence events. Mike i think we have all the capacity we need. There is a strong feeling among our allies that we are not showing the necessary leadership and we have. These are arab sunni countries, this is with the king not humming to camp david, he sending a message. All of those countries are scared to death of iran. They are much more worried about iran than they are isis or al qaeda. They believe they can deal with isis at al qaeda effectively. They are much more worried about iran over the longterm. They see iran as a strategic threat to them. Charlie what is the threat they see . Mike they see iran wanting to dominate the region. They see iran wanting to reestablish the persian empire and trying to overthrow them. Charlie are they . Is iran trying to overthrow the royal family in saudi arabia . Mike it is exactly what we saw in yemen. Charlie the saudis support of the government of bahrain. Mike they provided support to groups charlie what is wrong with iran wanting to exert its influence . Mike you really have to remember that islamic extremism and islamic terrorism started in iran. It really began in iran. Charlie but it is mostly sunni now. Mike there are shia terrorist groups and has below is of the top of list and it would not exist without irani and support. Charlie hezbollah is part of the government and engaged in education. Mike they have a military terrorist wing. Charlie and it was utilized well in syria. Mike yes. But iran has this same kind of you and in some ways, its not as harsh. The same kind of view as al qaeda in terms of a religiousdominated government sharia law dominated society. And you cant forget this it is iranian government policy for israel to be wiped off the face of the planet. That is their stated policy by the Supreme Leader himself. That is not in our interest. Charlie when you look at the nuclear negotiations, do you believe part of that is the hope we can reach an agreement there, that it can build more confidence in iran to be a greater part of the community of nations and be less aggressive in terms of trying to influence regimes in the region . Mike thats a great question. You have to go back and look at why do the iranians want a Nuclear Weapons capability . Some people say capability, some people say they want a weapon. And they say they dont, that it is against their religion. That explain all the work you have done on nuclear weaponization. There are two reasons one is they believe we, the United States of america wants to overthrow the clerical regime and overthrow this particular Supreme Leader that we want to see fullfledged democracy in iran. Charlie do we question mark we do want to see a change in the behavior of the government. How do we get that is the question. Mike i think if you can convince them you dont want to do those things that you could impart you could impart affect their thinking. But theres another reason they want a weapon or the capability which is a tool to be this hegemonic power. This desire to be the power in the middle east is not something this Supreme Leader just cooked up. This goes way back in iranian history. This is the way the shaw thought. This is rooted deeply in iranian history. It goes way back. Charlie were we prepared to give Nuclear Technology to the shah. Mike i dont know. Charlie we viewed him as our friend and someone we support. Looking at that in terms of the parties, it is clearly a sunnishia conflict and clearly a conflict in which most of the sunnis which supported in some cases isis because they thought isis was the enemy of shia governments. Is that changing on the ground . In and bar province, for example . Cases where its going to be crucial to defeating isis. Mike i think there is on the part of the iraqis there is some distance between the iraqis and other sunni states. In the case of the iraqis they are willing to allow the iranians to help wherever they can and the iranians have been very effective at taking on isis. But i think as saudi arabia, as the united arab emirates, as jordan all look at this, when they look at iraq, they dont like the fact iranians are making a difference, so they are not willing to give the iranians a shortterm when to deal with isis. They would like the iranians out of a rock and no part of this. They are more worried about iran over the long run than they are al qaeda or isis. Charlie some of the emirate countries and saudi people have said they would be happy if the israelis would destroy their nuclear capabilities. Im sure you have heard that privately as you travel around the region. Mike yes. Because of the israelis do it the people would be in the streets protesting against israel and if the u. S. Did it, they would be protesting against us. Charlie do you share in the judgment of these arab nations we have been talking about saudi arabia, the emirates, and some others that they are concerned about the president and his intent and his will against iran and against terrorist forces . Are you prepared to criticize the president . Mike i am not going to criticize him because i dont know enough to. There is a perception in the middle east, this i do know there is a perception in the middle east, and the reason im not going to criticize is because i dont know if the perception is true. Theres a perception in the middle east that the president has a view that iran might be a more natural long term partner for the United States in the middle east than the sunni arab countries. Charlie theres a perception the president leaves that . You dont know whether he believes it or not. Mike ive never heard him say that when i was working for him. Charlie have you had anybody in this government say that . Mike not to me. Charlie nobody in the government has said they are interested in a longterm relationship with iran, but you are saying the others believe that . Mike yes. Charlie is that part of the reason king solomon is not coming to the summit . Mike i think we have to be careful because he told secretary kerry he was coming and then he said he wasnt coming. We have to be careful that this is an official snub. We may learn in a few days there are other reasons, Health Reasons, perhaps. Charlie the assumption would be people in the region have suggested Health Reasons . Because of his age