Can we do this better the biggest thing that i iran into. When i was engaging in the larger thinking community and larger academic trinity is this challenge of getting past iran. That we can ironically to go to understand as well as the idea that iran is irrational. What i consider the mad problem is that iran is too crazy and both of these ideas really handicap us. A train and been able to understand what iran is thinking about and how it looks at the us and formulates its foreign policies. Thats the heart of what i am trying to do in this monogram is take the face off that confusion and say you cant understand this and its what im trying to do. Its not so much provide a whole bunch of policies policy prescription with this administration or for future administrations but basically, provide analytic framework and models, if you will, for understanding how iran develops its foreign policies, how iran develops its approaches in particular to Security Issues and how it goes to war, how it looks at the us, how it looks at israel, how it looks at its rivals in the persian gulf, how it looks at threats such as isys and how it develops the concept about military doctrine, the budget and these Big Questions. This is what i want to provide for the Larger Community here in washington and around the world about ideas of toolkits. Things that you can use to develop better policies. If you understand the variables that go into a ron purchase warfare or how iran approaches its Foreign Policy decisions, as things, for example, the is the saudi press increases from their viewpoint or decreases. As gdp increases or decreases, how that will affect their defense spending or how that will affect their approach to investing in certain capabilities. This is what i want to be able to do with this type of work and provide a Better Foundation for that. What some of the key findings that we did get from this work is that fundamentally perceptions doesnt drive iran behavior more than anything else. Once they are on a path they tend to stick with it. Perceptions is it requires a change to push them off that path. Fundamentally, the us drives that more than anything else and after that israel and then perhaps extremist groups like isys maybe after that the saudis and other golf rivals. More than anything else they fear their own people and internal instability. Ideology still matters. This is, of course, the point of contention when people wonder is the revolution still alive. Does it still matter . I think it does. What we will see in the i did geologist is an important point in key aspects of their foreignpolicy and drives one of the geopolitical rationality is in places like its policies toward israel, its overinvestment in places and in other places it behaves like a normal state. The question is what the islamic military guard court does and its proxy groups like haps bola and the more normal geopolitical actors. From a conventional military support ron still is very much a distinctively and this is where its frustrating at times for people to deal with this aggressive destabilizing iranian Foreign Policy that we have two proxies. This is combined with a weak military that is still fundamentally deterred by the us. Its a reminder that a degree of leverage that we have. 2016 also appears to be a fundamental Inflection Point where iran is shifting to a more offensive conventional military and thats been driven, i believe, bite wars in syria and iraq where iran is looking that he needs to build a different type of military. Also when i looked at in digging into irans Defense Budget and its approach to acquisition, research and development, that what i consider that discretionary defense spending and investment is actually somewhat rational. Especially, when you look at investments that are not tied to ask essential fights like what you have going on in syria right now. This is an important tool for policymakers when youre looking at how were going to respond to iran longterm after the implementation of the nuclear deal. You can understand that if you know where iran gdp growth will be and if you have a sense of oil prices are going and you understand where their perceptions are whether its looking at fighting the us and israel were mainly looking at regional wars against rivals like saudi arabia or others or looking at nonstate actors like isys or al qaeda as its main threats. If you understand these basic variables you can anticipate where iran may be needing to put most of its money. Attend when it comes to will invite new airplanes or ships or investing in its Missile Program or buying good stuff from russia or will it build most of it stuffed indigenously. These really Big Questions about where to put all these millions after the nuclear deal which is of course an important issue for us right now. You can understand those broad patterns. From my own Research Iran tends to spend its money in a fairly rational manner. When its not tied to what i consider ask essential fights like syria. Then finally i would say that the us has an overwhelming influence on iran through strategic decisionmaking. This is something that i cant drive home enough. I think for the us as were looking at what to do. We have to remember that iran has chosen to make us their number one enemy. This is not something that we necessarily we did not create the situation from our perspective. They chose after 1979 revolution from an ideological standpoint to make us their enemy. They have created from their Strategic Thinking, they build their military first and foremost, not only to protect their own regime, to protect them from revolution from their own people but to protect them from us. We still have that degree of influence over their threat perception in any type of war that we go to with iran, we control escalation and we have to remember that. We can shape the resources that go into their defense industry. Theres a whole spectrum of capacity that we have. This is something that in many ways should give us greater confidence in approaching iran and that we should not see iran as 10 feet tall and recognize that iran poses a significant threat to stability in the region but we can approach things, with greater confidence and with greater strategy and frankly, smarter way that we have in the past. Thanks, matt. A good evening, ladies and gentlemen and friends. Thanks for inviting me to represent so calm tonight. This is an important topic. I only wish that when we were working these problems six or seven years ago that someone had written this had written this for us to use as a tool. Im no middle eastern expert but i am a military planner and from my perspective, tools that we can use to understand our adversaries are critically important to us as we try to provide options for our government and our secretary going forward. Thats what this product does. Anytime you have an opportunity to get into the mind of your adversary and try to understand decisionmaking process and allows you to prioritize your plan in a way that you could do otherwise. In particular with iran thats particularly important. I took a few specific things away from this as takeaways from our pre perspective. I will remind everyone that socom is a support position for iran planning. Within the department of defense, we are in the process of going through another drill at this time on what are way ahead needs to be from a dod perspective on iran. Socom certainly contributes to. One of the things that we bring from socom is a global perspective on several issues, the reach of uranian networks is certainly one of them. Thats one of the ways our analysts and our planners can help in that regard. A couple things that jumped out as from me. You hit right off the bat on probably the most important and that is that if you understand the mindset of this particular adversary, their activities will be predictable. Most of the time, you will be able to look at this and see enough body of evidence since the revolution of 79 to prove, i think, as you point out in the monograph, that their actions will be predictable and the fact that they dont match up to a rationale that we easily understand in the west doesnt mean theyre not predictable if you spend enough time understanding the mindset of the important aspects are to the regime, what they will do anything to fight for, and what, as you call, conflicts of opportunity versus ones that are comics of survival in their minds. That allows us as planners to develop a list of options for our leadership that are focused on that. The second big take away is related to that. Its the idea of proportionality. That was something that we struggled with when you and i Work Together because it doesnt seem proportional and it may have been asymmetric, iranian response to whatever the issue was but in their mindset, it was proportional, most of the time. Thats the important thing that we can use and understanding how the United States actions will affect iranian activity going forward. Thats probably even more important element as far as planners. Either way, we have to plan for as many eventualities as possible as military planners. That will be standard to anything we do. Fortythree we had to prioritize our planning efforts. We will continue to plan primarily against that network of proxies and Unconventional Warfare that he iran pushes out the way to create that buffer for the regime that you described in the paper very well and that will be the focus. I know theres been a lot of discussion on whether increased Defense Budgets in iran will lead to a greater emphasis on the conventional military capability but i thank you hit it right off the bat where you said that iranians are going to be driven by what they perceive as the threat. More than anything else, more than budgetary opportunities or limitations, so, thats the piece that we can still manage even if they choose to put more money in their defense spending, in particular on the conventional side. Right now, for us, i think, your paper supports the idea from the socom that will state focused on those proxies and networks and the reset iran has well past syria and yemen into africa and south america and europe as well. Again, thats part of the nature of my commands charge to look at these problems from a global perspective. Thats going to be one of the key takeaways. The last point i make and it has to do with the last section of your paper on developing an industrial place and whether or not its even possible for them to significantly increase the capability of our conventional horses internally and how much can they depend on getting from others like russia. Ill tell you, in particular, the last two years they worked in socom area on our budgets and how we develop our decisionmaking process and on what we buy, that takes a long time to change. You have to really build a significant in structure and right now, i tend to agree with your conclusion that that is unlikely to happen. Even though its possible, military planners, we will make sure that secretary matus and the president have options, in either case but our focus will be with the expectation that they will continue to push and, if anything, increase in fence dollars and he iran will increase that network and look for ways to expand it. Weve already seen evidence of them taking units and officers out of the commercial side and working with the irt see in syria and that may be an indication that theyre looking to push on the inside with the defensive nature of their conventional forces we dont see that being a major change, anytime soon. Anyway, as a tool, the paper is extremely useful and will make it mandatory reading in our planners down in tampa, florida. Going forward, i wish we had it a few years ago. I look forward to the discussion in your questions. I approached the iranian question, first of all, thank you for having me here today. I approached from a former fleet commander, i spent a year in baghdad in 2006, 2007 timeframe and is possibly formed penetrator network in the milan activities that were going on were striking to me at the time. My most recent military assignment as the Deputy Commander at Central Command and theres a consistent theme. In fact, for those of us who have studied this and watched it closely since the 79 revolution, weve seen these spasms of increased tension with decreased tension have an flow and from a western mindset it seems like its a very difficult thing to anticipate or predict. From a Navy Perspective they are very much focused on the asymmetric, they like minds, they like small votes, they like a lot of different small submarines, the main thing in my mind is a former fleet commander is how to prevent miscalculation christmas no one wants to go to war. How do you prevent that and at the same time, not taken the first strike was back when i was a Strike Group Commander when i was in the gulf that then fleet commander said dont take the first launch and i dont want you to start a war. Somewhere in the spectrum of potential activities and people would ask me how frequently do you interact with the irradiance coursework it would be on a daily basis. There is a marked difference between the irg cnn and the iri end. Weve had iri and regular navy vessels render honors before to Us Navy Vessels so theres an entire spectrum in our vast majority of interactions have been routine and professional. Then youll hear us refer to it as not routine or unprofessional or aggressive or that sort of thing so in the big spectrum of activities we watch it closely. Youll see contradictions in the midst of the run up to and the subsequent to the nuclear deal, as the the escalation and some of the activities, some of the line activities have increased. Theres been interdiction of force and flow into yemen, for example. Were seeing a lot of postal missiles. Iran, from my perspective, has been devoted to proxies and to asymmetry and they are the masters at keeping it just at or below the boiling point. Its a home game for them and we have Rotational Forces that come through and so its always important that we get the Commanding Officers and the action officers on board a ships and an aircraft to make sure they understand how to handle the situation and always been a place for your prepared. As was previously mentioned, we have a very, dominating ability to escalate and to control a situation but at the same time in International Waters and in International Airspace and in the case of the navy, they have every bit much right to be at sea as we do. So, this is something you watch very carefully, when i was asleep he would challenge me to argue that boyle frog are you the guy thats been in the hot while longer not that its now the norm so its something that you have to make sure youre not completely cooked but at the same time, its something that requires thought and reflection every day. I thought your piece was really well done and i too, add to toms comments that wouldve been useful to have some of these thoughts the longer you study the iranian psychology, i guess thats the way to put it, over the last 5000 years, its only been the last 500 that the west has someone. They think of themselves as globe coeur dalene, powerful, heirs of the persian empire. Thanks for having me here today. I look forward to the discussion. Thanks. Before i turn it to the audience, i want to push a little bit on something im hearing generally which is a Comfort Level with the likelihood that the iranian focus will continue to remain asymmetric and probably not go heavily towards conventional military capabilities. The critical threats and our analysts whos worked on this extensively and formal analyst caitlin templeton, have worked extensively on some of the iran elite push toward the more conventional capabilities including i think we could look at the deployment of deployment officers to syria as being a sign of conventional activity or unconventional activity. Theres also the question of at what point does a tragic activity become symmetric if you have enough missiles that are not asymmetric anymore. If the iranians were to acquire, say, anti shipping missiles from the russians for the s230s that they want to buy from the russians. At what point does iran have to cut off a threshold into the term of threat it poses to the United States and to because my last comment would be sometimes we become fixated on the fact that we need of the United States can take anything that they can throw at us. That may or may not be enough that our lives in the region cant and may make different calculus. Ill begin and pass it to tom. Your point is well taken and that is their symmetry is asymmetry. Thats how theyve done business all along. To see the ir gc now in a syria thats their modus operandi. Theyll find a way to create the syrian hezbollah and little clones that will follow in lebanese model. When you Start Talking about new technologies about us for hundreds or sc3 hundreds those take money in those take training, which is another way of saying its a conventional capability but it would certainly change your thinking especially if you talk about the as 400. That is a part of their layers of trying to prove their capable of handling anything that we have. Its a sobering problem when you start thinking about the kind of the volume of fire that they could generate. That makes you a very intensive reader of warnings and indications. If youre walking down the street and youre in a tough neighborhood and its dark and there are people around you that you dont trust, youre in a oneness stands. If youre happygolucky and some just walks up to you and ask you and youre not ready for it, its our job to be the ones that are ready for whatever may come. Id look at the idea that were seen more, as i mentioned, theyre working in ir gc orders and toward their goals. I see that more of an expansion of the proxy network than i do expansion of their conventional capability. It goes back to, math can cover this in more detail as well, it goes to your idea that its really about what they perceive as a threat. Do they perceive a conventional threat to toront