Focus 580; The Persian Puzzle: the Conflict Between Iran and America

In this hour of the program we'll be talking about Iran and the relationship between Iran and the United States. And our guest is Kenneth Pollack. He's director of research at the Sabahans Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. where he is also a senior fellow and Foreign Policy Studies he's been following the politics of the Middle East for quite a long time. Let me tell you just a little bit about him he served as director for National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations before that was director for Persian Gulf Affairs on the National Security Council. That's between one thousand nine and 2001. Also before that director for Near East and South Asian affairs on the National Security Council he was senior research professor at the National Defense University and was an Iran Iraq a military analyst for the CIA and between 88 and 1995. He's the author of a new book which is titled The Persian Puzzle The Conflict Between Iran and America. It's published by Random House and is out now and he's joining us from Washington from the Brookings Institution we want to thank them for. Setting up the connection on their end and

thank him also for being with us as we talk in this hour of the program of course. Questions are welcome the only thing we ask of people calling in is that they're brief and we ask that so that we can keep the program moving and get in as many different people as possible but of course callers are certainly welcome the number here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we do also have a toll free line. That's good. Anywhere that you can hear us and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 0 locally 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. Mr. Pollack Hello. Hello David how are you. I'm fine thanks Intrade off. I'm doing well thank you. Thanks for having Well I appreciate you giving us some of your time to wit to begin I guess. There are these days a lot of people are talking about because we have just passed the 25th anniversary of the beginning of the Iran hostage crisis a lot of people are talking about that and and it's probably tempting to as one tries

to understand the strained relationship between Iran and the United States. To start there and I think as as you would say and a lot of other people would say as you fact you have to go back a little bit further you have to go back to 1953 and to the involvement of the United States in a coup and Iran at that time as something that and I I fear that I probably mention this almost every time we talk about Iran but it's something I think that Americans need to understand and keep in mind it because it's something that many Americans that's a story many Americans don't know and certainly Iranians know it. They haven't forgotten what happened in 53 and certainly it was in their minds in 1979 when the Iranian revolution took place so let's talk about what happened in 1953. Yeah I think that's absolutely right. You know as you've kind of laid it out most Americans see our problems with Iran as starting in 1979 and I think for most Americans the 1989 hostage crisis came out of the blue. Why were these people suddenly taking this act of

war against us. But of course for Iranians this was not the first step this was simply the continuation of a long series of problems that they saw as you point out 1953 is where it all starts for Iranians at that point in time. You had in Iran a very popular prime minister named Mohammad Mosaddegh who had taken on the British Iran's old colonial exploiters by nationalizing Iran's oil industry taking it away from the British company that run it ran it that today is the British Petroleum BP still in existence. And this is wildly popular in Iran and in truth the Truman administration counseled the British to accept it that this was important that most a deck was a nationalist and that we really needed to to allow this to happen because it was good for Iran and otherwise Iran might be proud of the Soviets but when the Eisenhower administration came into office they had a very different perspective. And in collusion with the British they overthrew most of deck. Now one of the important. Points to

make that most Iranians overlook is the fact most of us actually have actually made himself much more unpopular by the time he was overthrown than widely acknowledged he'd actually alienated a lot of Iran's clergy and therefore all the CIA really had to do was to give him one final push. But in Iranian memory the CIA coup itself came out of the blue. There are legend is that Mohammed was that it was this wildly elected wildly popular Democratic leader who the CIA didn't like because he was nationalizing Iran's oil and so we moved in there and we overthrew him and the problem is that they are right in the basics. The Eisenhower administration was fearful of most attack they thought he was a communist they thought he was going to turn Iran over to the Russians. None none of which was true. And the CIA did overthrow most Adak and it was a out not coup and it was the first one that the CIA mounted in the post-war world. Following that then again a. And a reason for an Iranian resentment the United States also has to do

with the perception that we were continuing to support the Shah. And there was a great deal of resentment in Iran about how the country was like when he was in power how he and his circle lived the kind of dislocation as they were a result of his idea of modernization the fact that he was very hard on people that he saw as religious fundamentalists and generally was seen as a desk but and opponent of democracy. And here it is the United States was seen as his chief supporter and there I think you really put a lot of responsibility at the door of the Carter administration. Well I think the Carter administration the next administration and to a certain extent the the Johnson administration as well all have. Share of the blame in how we handled Iran during the period after the 1053 coup in the restoration of the Shah. It's also it's important to keep in mind kind of the Iranian perspective you know for a hundred years before the 1953 coup Iran had been subject to the

depredations of the British and the Russians who would involve themselves deeply in Iranian affairs had mucked around in every aspect of Iranian life and as a result of that century of foreign interference. Iranians just came to assume that this was the norm and so in 1953 when the US put the Shah back on the throne and we made it very clear that the Shah was going to be our ally there was an assumption that the United States was continuing to run Iran through the shot exactly the way the Russians and the British had done so during their era of domination over Iran. Of course this wasn't actually the case the U.S. was allied with the Shah. U.S. presidents did look to the Shah as their close ally as their proxy in this vital region of the world especially at a time when the U.S. was completely preoccupied with the Vietnam War and didn't really have the time of the resources to pay attention to the instability of the Persian Gulf they really look to the shot to do it for them. But as a result of that the Shah actually had a tremendous amount of leverage and much of what he did in Iran he did

entirely on his own. Often times the United States recognized that what he was doing probably wasn't the best thing for Iran and Iranians. But the sin that the United States was most guilty of during this period was not active complicity in the shah's behavior but just outright neglect. We just didn't care and honestly most the United States knew a lot of what the Shah was doing. They knew that the Shah was running a rather brutal police state and no one over here cared. They knew that the Shah was his regime was deeply corrupt and a lot of Iran's oil wealth was simply going into the pockets of the Shah's courtiers and again we did nothing about it. And so by 979 we were complicit in the sense of we had done nothing to stop all of these depredations on Iranian society but we weren't guilty the way that Iranians came to believe it which is that we were behind the Shah and we were in fact setting him up to do these various things. You know it's interesting that just recently I talked with a journalist who's written a book just on the hostage crisis and how it is that it developed. And one of the things that that he notes is that.

Very quickly this event got out of hand and that it took on a larger greater almost symbolic significance to people on both sides in the sense that when the students originally applauded this thing and carried it out they were interested in making it again making a some bollix or sort of striking a symbolic blow against the United States and had in mind something that might last about 72 hours and that that what happened was this big upswell of public reaction in Iran to the hostage taking gave it this this weight that very quickly got away from them and then on the other side in the United States that the United States couldn't be seen as being weak. There was a great public sort of upswell of. Of support here in the United States for a very tough sort of line and it seems that very quickly both sides got in got wedged into positions that would be almost impossible to negotiate from and that's perhaps why it

is that it went draw drag on for more than a year and there's no question about that. That is absolutely correct. If the problem is the bunny 1079 you had this tremendous emotional set of issues within Iran all bound up with the Iranian relationship with the United States. Iranians had come to see the United States as the source of all of their problems. All of the problems that they saw with the Shah all of the things that were going on as a result of the Shah's root regime that they didn't like they believe were ultimately the cause of the United States because they saw us as the power behind the throne. When the students took the embassy it's pretty clear that what they thought they were doing was simply striking a blow street taking an act of revenge for 1053 and so on the students said it very clearly that they wanted to show that they could lash out at us and in particular at the place where the coup was originated. The US embassy was the place where the coup was was basically enacted in 1953 but very quickly this one gesture got bound up in these enormous

emotions which Iranians have been harboring for these 25 years beforehand. Some of them fully justified because there were things that the United States had done to Iran particularly the coup. But in other cases aspects of the relationship that were to a great extent figments of the Iranian imagination embellishments of things that the United States had done or simply the Iranian perception of foreign interference in their internal affairs transposed from the British and Russians on to the United States. And I did get caught in this web and it made it infinitely more difficult for anyone to resolve because it did get up in these emotional issues and of course these emotional issues then became critical internal political issues inside of Iran because the Ayatollah Khomeini was using these various emotional issues to try to gain control over the new revolutionary governments. One of the things that really that's frustrating when you look at the ups and downs of the relationship say since

the since the hostage crisis and attempts with people on both sides to establish some kind of dialogue is just in how many cases we seem to come close. We Sui stretch the hand out and we don't quite touch and then something comes along to disrupt the process and it seems that almost sometimes for every step forward we take we end up taking two steps back. Why is that do you think that that's that has happened again and again and again. Well I think you're right. This is an important phenomenon that we've seen we've seen over the last 25 years. I think it's hard to ascribe it to any particular set of causes but the things that do loom large just again are these emotional issues on both sides. And the connections that there are exist between the emotional issues and domestic political considerations. So for instance in Iran again the revolution the Iranian Revolution came to be about anti-Americanism in to a great extent that was one of Ayatollah Khomeini's goals.

Again he saw the United States as the source of all evil in the world he believed that ultimately was the United States that was the great oppressor of the Iranian people. And so he made the Iranian revolution. About the United States and that was part of his legacy and it has been a part of his legacy even after his death. And so today when Iranians think about the revolution anti-Americanism is deeply embedded in that. And as I suggested before that's also become a critical element of Iranian internal politics today you've got a regime that are the descendants of Ayatollah Khomeini the spiritual and political descendants of Ayatollah Khomeini who are having increasingly greater difficulty holding on to power. Younger Iranians are very unhappy with the state of Iran both in terms of economic issues social issues and political issues and the regime is very loath to give up on all of these aspects of its idiology which justify their continuation in power. And unfortunately the anti-Americanism is a key element of that ideology which is of course a

source of their legitimacy so you can you've you've continuously had Iranians step forward and say we need a better relationship with the United States. And the pushback that you've gotten from people on the other side is effectively how can we justify our continued rule. Give on this critical issue that allowed us to take power which was the enmity between Iran and the United States and to a lesser extent you've got similar issues in the in the United States. Iran is regularly vilified and not always without cause the Iranians have done a lot of really egregious things the United States over the years. It's very easy for an American congressman to stand up and blame a an American president for being soft on Iran. And no American president wants to be seen as being soft on Iran because of the emotional issues on the American side. Going back to the hostage crisis in Lebanon everything that came after. Well that's just to follow up on that just for a moment. I think that that you would suggest other people would suggest that actually perhaps a little earlier in the Bush administration

there it looked like there were indeed some possibilities not on a high level but there were some contacts going on there was maybe some possibility for an improvement in this relationship. And then came the axis of evil speech I mean why is that at that point that the Bush administration in so deliberately so provocatively. A challenge to the Iranian government at a time when it looked like there might be at least some small possibility for an improvement in that relationship. I say I don't think that we know just yet. It will be a fascinating thing to look at when the histories are finally written as best I can tell I did do quite a bit of digging and I spoke to a number of people in the Bush administration about this is best I can tell the Iranians were to a certain extent road kill the president speechwriters came up with the term axis of evil which they really liked and really what they wanted to was they wanted to start to lay out the case for Iraq. That was really what the axis of evil was

about was first about Iraq. Also recognize that North Korea was there so is an easy one to try to group Iraq and North Korea together. The speechwriters came up with his term axis of evil and they felt for some reason that if it was an axis there had to be more than two. There had to be three. And so decided who is the third most evil country in the world after Iraq in North Korea. Why it was Iran. And there was push. Back within the Bush administration from some of the foreign policy experts saying you know gee we don't think that Iran belongs in the same category as Iraq in North Korea yet Iran is involved in some very nasty stuff and clearly they are opposed to our interests but they're very different country they're more pragmatic than either North Korea or Iraq they've got a real reform movement maybe we should take it out. And apparently President Bush said no I want Iran in there I want to send a signal that Iran is basically in the same category as these other two states and as you point out this was a real shock for Iranians. Iranians had not been expecting this first run there are a huge

number of young Iranians who are very pro-American. I don't think most Americans are aware of this but on September 11th 2001 there were spontaneous candlelight vigils in Teheran and several dozen other Iranian cities in solidarity with the United States the only place that that was true in the entire Muslim Middle East. And so then there was also actually as you point out there were these these behind closed doors contacts very extensive tacit cooperation between the United States and Iran in Afghanistan. So that was it that was critical to the invasion of Afghanistan where the two countries worked very well together. And it was at a time when I think a lot of Iranians were assuming that we might be able to have some kind of a detachment and then all of a sudden they get hit with the Axis of Evil speech and to them it seemed to come out of the blue. Let me introduce Again our guest we have a caller would welcome others. Our guest is Ken Pollack He is director of research at the Saab and Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. from 1995 until 96 and again between 99 and

2001. He served as director of Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council where he was the principal working level official responsible for implementing U.S. policy toward Iran before his time in the Clinton administration he spent 70 years in the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst. He is author of a new book that's titled The Persian Puzzle The Conflict Between Iran and America. It's published by Random House. It's out now. Questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. Toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 we have a couple of people here. We'll start in with a caller in Champaign line 1. Hello. Yes. Yeah. I have a couple of axes of questions. The first one has to do with what you're talking about is anti-American anti-Americanism which is part of the ideology. It Khomeini or they us is Satan. And then the response on both sides perhaps to that ideology which is the clash of civilizations and and how

that works in with what president said to me was talking about in the 90s about a dialogue of civilization. Are you saying that this axis of evil statement kind of acted to squelch any kind of talk about a dialogue of civilizations. Certainly the axis of evil didn't help things and I think from Iran's perspective it really did put a damper on the possibility of greater cooperation between the two societies. That said I don't think that we that you can put all of the blame on the Bush administration. There were other forces at work too. First within Iran President hot samee had largely been emasculated even by the time of the axis of evil speech President hot to me Started out like a fireball and fortunately he fizzled in by I'd say the summer of 1999. It was here that the hardliners in Iran had effectively undercut the reform movement in today if you speak to Iranians they will tell you that the reform movement in Iran that Muhammad to me LED is

effectively dead and no one expects that it will be able to be revived in front of the five or 10 years. So Iran's own internal politics also helped squelch that effort at bridging the. The differences between the two sides and then beyond that in the Bush administration's defense and I think you have to be balanced in thinking about the problems on both sides here. The Iranians were also up to a whole bunch of stuff that I think that most Americans would would and did find highly objectionable. There was the provision of arms to the Palestinian Authority for terrorist attacks against Israel the car in a that huge ship that the Israelis intercepted. There was a a series of attacks in Riyadh Saudi Arabia in May 2003 which the United States was able to intercept communications these were attacks that were launched by people in communication basically directed by al Qaeda leaders. In of all places Iran and Iran had traditionally hated al-Qaida had

helped us fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. But now here all of a sudden they were turning around and allowing al Qaeda leaders to operate from Iran and to coordinate attacks against Americans in Saudi Arabia from Iran and then beyond that. And that well you know that's well that's in 2003 rightness of the point and the Iraq. War and the axis of evil speech. But I just wanted to show the axis of evil speech of course is January 2002 when the Iraq war was just April of 2003. So all these things you know happen fairly simultaneously from the Iranian perspective the first problem is the axis of evil speech. But add to that the fact that you did have this activity going on on the Iranian side. It helped squelch all of this. My second set of questions has to do with Flynt maybe you won't feel that you're prepared to talk about this but there's this news about the U.N. talking about having major changes to the way it's set up and and becoming more

interventionist At least that's the the buzzword I hear on the BBC. I haven't read about it in detail and I'm just wondering we've been hearing about these talks with Europe and Iran and how it may be that Iran is playing Europe against the US or something to that effect. I'm wondering it seems to me that the US has tremendous control over what happens in the UN to begin with. If I did these changes in the UN only going to kind of just give more power to the US and more power to you know the Bush administration if they take place during the Bush administration's term it seems to me that they're just going to be an arm of the war on terror and the Bush's. Station season which includes the addition of Iraq for example. Well I certainly think that that would be the preference of the Bush administration and obvious though that is the direction of many of the changes that they're talking about. There are other people talking about very different

kinds of changes or changes that would make the United Nations in some cases more accountable in some cases more useful. I think that could take the United Nations in in very different directions it wouldn't necessarily suit the interests of the of the more activist and interventionist members of the Bush administration which are likely to pan out. I'm sorry. Which way is it likely to pan out. I think it's very unclear at the moment and my guess is it's going to take a long time to make any of this happen because the fact of the matter is that these kind of changes to the U.N. some of the change that people are talking about are so far reaching expanding the Security Council bringing in additional permanent members. These kind of changes are so far reaching that I think that we have to think about them not happening for quite an. I wouldn't want to speculate on exactly which way they're going to pan out over that kind of a length of time. I will say though that I actually think that what's going on now between the IAEA and Europe in Iran is actually very positive set of developments. Believe me

it's not a solution to Iran's development of nuclear weapons but I think that it could be the beginning of a solution. And I would very much like to see the United States involved in those talks not simply standing on the outside criticizing because they think that this is one of those problems where this kind of a multilateral approach is probably our only hope of solving the problem. Can you talk more about that and I'll hang up. Thanks a lot. Sure. The problem that we have with Iran is that there aren't any easy answers to the problem of Iran's desire to develop nuclear weapons. Iranians are fiercely nationalistic they are deeply concerned about the United States. Because they believe that we have a history of intervening in their country and they're not entirely wrong about that. They do feel threatened by the United States. Iranians also have a tremendous sense of their own importance they want nuclear weapons because they think that their country ought to be one of the great powers of the world and they see membership in the nuclear club as bringing that kind of interest. So there is some powerful incentives in Iran to acquire the nuclear weapons and I think that what we learned

during the 1990s was that neither the policy that the United States took nor that the Europe talk was particularly successful the U.S. policy in the 1900s was pure sticks just hit the Iranians and hit them harder every time they did something that we didn't like and hope that this would change their behavior. The Europeans on the other hand had a policy of all carrots just reward. We have lost our connection with the guests there. Hopefully we can reestablish that in just a moment. We do have another caller hold and we'll try to get on to some other people and get them into the conversation maybe I'll just take this opportunity again to reintroduce the guests for this part of focus 580 We're talking with Ken Pollack from the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. where he is director of research at the sub and Center for Middle East Policy at Brookings has been following events in the Middle East for quite a long time particularly Iran. He served on the National Security Council this was during the Clinton administration before that he spent

seven years in the CIA as a Persian Gulf military analyst. And he has a new book out that looks at the difficult relationship between Iran and the United States going back certainly to the Iran hostage crisis and really even further back than that. Back to the coup that took place in 1053 that we talked about at the beginning of our conversation. Ken Pollack's book is titled The Persian Puzzle The Conflict Between Iran and America. And once again this book is published by Random House it's out now in the bookstore. If you would like to take a look at it also of course if you're interested in Brookings. And in seeing some of the other things that Mr. Pollack has written he and other people who are attached to Brookings are there available on the Brookings Institution website and there were a few go to the page where you'll find out about him. There are a number of publications that you might like to take a look at some of his comments and not just on Iran but also on the Iraq war on terrorism on Middle East policy more

generally and if you're interested you can look at the Web site which is w w w Brookings dot edu and I think we have him back Mr. Pollack. We got you back now. Well we're still working on it. These We have these high quality connections that we sometimes can use. Between Washington D.C. and here and other places that have them it almost makes it sound like the person is in the studio with us but he's not. He is in Washington this morning. What we might have to do is simply get on the telephone and do the second half of the show by telephone. Our apologies is once in a while technical things go wrong and sometimes it's not within our control. At any rate in just a moment here we will set up our connection again and we'll get back to our conversation with Ken Pollack. Questions are welcome we do have one caller who is ready to go and again if that person will just be patient and hang in there we can talk with him.

And then we'd be happy to take some other calls as well. The number if you're here in Champaign Urbana where we are 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and we do also have that toll free line and that is 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 Mr. Pollock. David can you hear me now yes you're back. Yes I'm very sorry. I'm not sure how that happened as I was explaining to people here we we have these this ability to make this connection that sounds as if you were if we're in the same room together but we're not he is in Washington D.C. I am here in Urbana will cross our fingers and hope that we'll be square for the rest of the show. The gremlins off the line. Exactly. I guess what you were talking about Iranians. Iran's nuclear ambitions and this has of course been a point of tension between Iran and the United States the Iranians say that they're interested in developing nuclear power. The United States is concerned about the possibility of nuclear weapons. And I guess that you know one thing that we know is that a state that has the means and is determined to develop nuclear weapons it's kind of

difficult to stop them. Might it be that we might indeed have to say at least for a while that we would we would just live with it. We would say that all right if Iran want to develop nuclear weapons and we have a few that that's something that we could deal with and again we would hope that that they would never be used but they would say if we continue to have some negotiations and we wouldn't have some sort of X extreme position that says Well as long as you have these things we're not going to talk to you. I mean what do we do. Well from my own perspective I think what you're suggesting at the end of the day may be what we have to do and I will say that as far as I'm concerned. I think it is possible for the United States to live with a nuclear Iran. Iran is not like Saddam Hussein's Iraq they're not like North Korea. This is a regime that is aggressive it is anti-American it is anti a lot of things that we stand for and it will be very problematic if they have nuclear weapons but they are not reckless they're not crazy they have

shown a pragmatism and a prudence in their decision making which suggests that at the end of the day if we had to do so we probably could handle Iran through deterrence the way that we deterred the Soviet Union. That said I'd really prefer not to have to live in a world where Iran has nuclear weapons and I think that there actually are at this point in time still some reasonable options open to US diplomatic options economic options that are still available to us that could allow us to dissuade Iran from moving down this course. That's why I would very much like to see the United States get involved with the Europeans in their current efforts to broker a deal with the Iranians. I was think that the deal that the Europeans have so far arranged has a lot of problems with it. I think that is one that could be made much better. And if we could make it much better and get the persuade the Iranians to buy into it I think it would be a much better way to to deal with their problem than either some kind of a military option which I think in the case of Iran would just be a terrible idea at this point in time or simply allowing them to you know go insane if you want to you can have them which is

that I think we could live with but I'd rather not. All right well let's talk with someone in Indiana this morning. Toll free line 1 4 0 0 0. I would take this opportunity to speak to somebody in a sense you know has policies that are actually considered by people who are in power. So I used to be nebulous I'm just going to let you do it the way you want to but I want you to tie the end with a statement just make short time ago that I do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons. So what I want is sort of a broad brushstroke of the Middle East in terms of sort of the logic and the stakes you think. Ministration and maybe previous ones have made with Iran and you know and their whole conglomerate and I first thing came to my mind when you said that I do not want Iran to have nuclear weapons came to my mind that some young student who is contemplating you know which way is going to

go I dont want a Christian nation be the only one that has nuclear weapons in terms specially how one of those Christian nations is operating right now in my back door. Thanks. Well you can deal with that however you like. Sure its It resists it I think some fairly important questions and we see I can take in that broad brush sense that the way that the viewer requested from or from Ron's perspective I think that its not hard to see why they would want nuclear weapons. They consider themselves the descendants of an ancient civilization very rightfully so they believe that they ought to be one of the great powers of the world and they know that nuclear weapons confer prestige which nothing else can. Beyond that as they see it they've been attacked by the United States a number of times over the past 50 years in some cases they were provoked were it was unprovoked in some cases they actually provoked us but the Iranian perspective is always that the United States is its implacable foe. And given the fact that the this these this ministration in

particular has just invaded Afghanistan their neighbor to the east Iraq their neighbor to the west and labeled them one of three countries in an axis of evil. Again I don't think it's hard if any one of us were Iranians to understand why they might want to nuclear weapon to deter an American specifically attack. That said we also do have real problems with the Iranians and you know looking at the region as a whole. There are a lot of people in the Middle East who are very very uncomfortable with the Iranians. This is a regime which for 25 years has set itself up as being the champion of the status quo movement. They have tried to overthrow governments in Saudi Arabia in Kuwait in Bahrain. They've mounted terrorist attacks certainly on Israel and the United States. But arguably also against Egypt and other Arab countries in the region they are one of the largest state sponsors of terrorism probably the leading state sponsor the terrorism in the world now that Afghanistan that the Taliban regime has been taken down and they can be a rather aggressive and also and often

very insensitive country. They occupied several islands that the UAE claims and then turned around and offered to forgive the UAE for objecting if the UAE would just come to its senses and it's things like that that really don't make too many of Iran's neighbors feel very comfortable with it. So there are real problems out there with Iran and of course one of things that we have to fear is that like Pakistan for example which wanted nuclear weapons for purely defensive reasons to deter to deter India once Pakistan acquired nuclear weapons they suddenly felt like the Indians couldn't do anything to them that India couldn't retaliate either in a nuclear conventional sense and that led very quickly to their very aggressive terrorist operations and ultimately the Cargill crisis which threatened a nuclear war between India and Pakistan and there's a fear that Iran could move in the same direction that they want the nuclear weapons for defensive purposes once they've got them. They might see them as basically immunizing them from an American response and therefore enable some form of aggression. So I think all of that creates a very

complicated perspective. And the trick for the United States in particular is to figure out ways to reassure the Iranians about their own security and also convince them that acquiring nuclear weapons ultimately will be more detrimental for them than helpful to them. There is a real debate inside of Iran and it's one thing that I hear most often missing from the Washington policy debate over how to handle Iran there's a sense in Washington that every Iranian wants nuclear weapons. And that's true but only insofar as it goes. Iranians want nuclear weapons but when you ask Iranians a different question which is how much do you want nuclear weapons and do you want nuclear weapons more than say democracy or more than say a stable thriving economy. You get very different answers. Most Iranians are most concerned about their economic situation. And I think that the United States has an opportunity working with our European allies to convince Iran that it's a con Amee will thrive if it agrees to give up these weapons it will suffer

if it decides to continue down this path and I think that would be an extraordinarily powerful set of incentives for Iran and its internal thinking we have about 15 minutes left in this our focus 580 Again our guest is Kant Pollack He is director of research at the Subban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution. He's author of a newly published book that looks at the relationship between Iran and America the title is The Persian Puzzle and it's published by Random House. We have some of the callers here will go next to someone in Gibson city this is line 3. Hello. Yes I guess I have kind of a question comment. The superpower the United States and I guess who should we be setting the example. Because I think we have the weapons of mass that the highest record of weapons of mass destruction I think the numbers I don't have the good numbers in front of me but our weapons of mass destruction are much more than any other country maybe several countries put

together. I guess maybe Bush. Take the log out of our own eye before we start trying to do. Take the log out of somebody else's eye. And I think that other countries looking at us are afraid of us because of all their weapons of mass destruction. And I know it would probably be a long process but I do think there'd be a way of. I guess I wonder what your idea would be a way of have an international court or whatever. These I take being the leader in getting rid of weapons of mass destruction starting with themselves and I'll hang up listen to what your ideas are. Thank you. It's a very important issue out there because. In point of fact the nonproliferation treaty which of course is the legal document that we use to try to keep other countries from acquiring nuclear weapons the Iranians signed the NPT so they have pledged themselves not to acquire nuclear weapons and we try to turn around and hold them to that. But I think most people don't realize is that the NPT also commits the nuclear

states to get rid of their arsenal of nuclear weapons and as the caller is pointing out the United States has a massive nuclear arsenal that we've we have significantly scaled it back since the end of the Cold War. But the simple fact of the matter is we still have several thousand nuclear weapons. And I certainly think that it would be helpful to the United States if we would be willing to further reduce our nuclear arsenal so that we could say to other people and especially those states that are thinking about getting nuclear weapons themselves we are honoring our obligations under the NPT and we are trying to move in this direction. So I certainly think that would be helpful. That said that's not going to be enough by itself to convince the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons program as I said before. They've got some very compelling reasons from their own perspective why they want nuclear weapons and just having the U.S. move down this track ain't going to be enough for them for that reason. I think that one of the other. Tax that the United States need to take one of the other assets that we need to employ in trying to convince the Iranians that it's just more cost than

it's than benefit in acquiring nuclear weapons is to engage in a program of dialogue and ultimately arms control with the Iranians. You know I think that if we were to hold out to them the prospect of a process in the Persian Gulf similar to like what we did with the Russians in Europe at the end of the Cold War that too might be very enticing for a number of Iranians remember. You know we had no love for the Soviet Union we were deeply distrustful of them at best. Ronald Reagan said we should trust but verify. But at the end of the Cold War we worked out a set of arms control agreements with the Soviet Union that did a long long great deal of good in terms of moving both of us to a much more stable relationship diminishing the distrust increasing our own sense of security and one of things that we don't have now in the Persian Gulf is anything similar to that. I think if we had something similar where Iranians could come air their grievances hear what we had to say work out confidence building measures and maybe

even the final step agreed this kind of mutual and balanced force reductions in the Persian Gulf that that might diminish a lot of the security incentives that Iranians have for wanting nuclear weapons it's not a full solution but I think it could be part of the solution. Well one thing bit before we find ourselves out of time. I want to raise it. Given that given the fact that the Iranians see the United States as being a power that his meddle in their affairs for at least half a century in how we have to be very careful about how it is we go in Iran at the same time though is it possible to find people in Iran that we could talk to they would be willing to talk with us. That might be a little bit more moderate a little bit more reform minded than the hardliners in the government and to do that without also making it look like we're in a ham handed fashion trying to influence Iranian politics. Now you had me right up until that last point and that unfortunately is the rub is the fact that we can always find Iranians who want to talk to the United States we can

always find Iranians who are moderate reasonable want better relations with the United States understand our concerns and want to help us to reach compromises. The problem that we have seen from with Iran time and time again is that those people rarely are in positions of power and ability to actually control the Iranian government. And because the United States remains this incredibly. Difficult emotional and political issue inside Iranian politics. Whenever these kind of conversations get exposed they invariably hurt the people having them. It's you know it's one of the tragedies of U.S.-Iranian relations which is that over the past 25 years every time the US has tried to reach out to a group inside of Iran and find some way to help them. Typically we've only wound up hurting them. We have some of the callers here let's talk with someone else. Champagne county line to follow.

Hi. I'm very pleased to hear you mentioning the NPT and the fact that it has other implications one one states sign onto it there. They're accepting their own obligation but they're accepting obligation by the superpowers to do something to ratchet down entirely the settlement to whatever we can call the end of the Gulf War 1 includes language about trying to work towards demilitarizing the region least ratcheting it down. So so we have that as well even more and more recently. I want to I would prompt me to call the US to ask about the constituency for attacking their Iran then for Bush putting it in the axis of evil. Well I believe when you were in. The Clinton administration the bombing of the apartment building where the servicemen were killed. The Saudis were trying to blame that not on their own constituency but from some outside outside Iranians and I guess according to cark book there was a move to attack Iran then and that's when you would have

been I believe in the discussions I'm just curious what you do. What would you say about how that was. I mean maybe some people actually did believe the Saudis but there is no reason to be to believe that they were not trying to fool themselves as well as other people about where the opposition to their rule was coming from that wasn't from there. Anyway I don't know what you're going to be comfortable say about that internal discussion where is the constituency is it just the Neocon. That's not coming out of the Pentagon I don't think. Sure it's a great and very informed question. I will say because I know we're running out of time. I have actually a fairly extensive section in the book that talks exactly about this. You know the caller's absolutely right. When the bombing of Khobar Towers took place in 1906 it was kind of unclear exactly who was responsible and it is true the Saudis initially immediately blamed Iran. Now the kind of the strange part of the story is

it actually has turned out that it was Iran. And in fact there was an indictment handed down in U.S. federal court a couple of years ago were because we now have extensive evidence that documents the Iranian involvement in it. But as the caller suggesting at the time the information was unclear and you know to give you kind of the punchline and I hope others will will actually read the entire part of that book part of my book that talks about this and and get some of the nuances but my bottom line was. While I think it would have been good for the United States to retaliate militarily against Iran at that time for what was a clear attack on the United States. Because I think that it was important to send that to turn signal to Iran the fact of the matter is we didn't have the information. And you know my my own experience with with the invasion of Iraq and the fact that we got it wrong on the weapons of mass destruction I think really needs to serve as a cautionary note that sometimes even when we think we have great intelligence we don't and you don't want to do something like mount a retaliatory

strike if you're not pretty certain about what you're about to do. I mean imagine if we had gone ahead and bombed Iran and killed a number of Iranians and then lo and behold it turned out they weren't responsible for Khobar Towers and again as I said we've got quite good evidence on this now but we didn't at the time. And whereas if I might ask we're going to find that on the web because. You can indict a ham sandwich of the famous experimental Absolutely. You know you should pull up the indictment. I would look I would you know do a Google search under Khobar Towers Iranian Lebanese You know a couple of names like that I've actually got. If you you know go grab a copy of my book I've got in the footnotes the actual website where you can find the indictment. But this is something where it took us eight years or seven years I guess with the Saudis working the sides because the Saudis did eventually by about 99 2000 come up with a very good evidence showing the Iranian hand behind Khobar Towers but it wasn't until 99 2001 Hutson meat was president in Iran again and

just to answer your final point about today you know you're absolutely right that there is a drumbeat saying we ought to attack Iran. It actually is as best I can tell coming from the office of the secretary of defense in the Pentagon it doesn't mean Rumsfeld himself that means the people work around Rumsfeld. There is a constituency there that is saying that you know Iran needs to be next on THE LIST. I will tell you that my my sense is the most senior administration officials kind of like the idea of regime change in Iran but they seem to recognize that our military options in Iran are really quite poor at least at the moment. Well it seems to me that. You know you talk about the polls that show how pro-American the population is. There's always been this problem with the. You know exacerbating the situation and maybe and maybe this is an argument for letting the Europeans actually handle most of the negotiations since they're there left school only except for Britain implicated in in the situation and.

But I don't think the people at the Pentagon Neo-Con or otherwise are. And the White House are particularly comfortable with you know at signing that kind of power to to any other at independent actor and you know there's no time thanks. Well I think it's certainly correct that it doesn't seem like the Bush administration is interested in in allowing the Europeans to take the lead in a process that would include the United States I would simply say that I think she's critical of the United States join in this process the Iranians. Don't regard the Europeans as credible in many ways because in all honesty the Europeans made some threats throughout the 1990s and never followed through on them so most Iranians think that they can get away with murder with the Europeans and I think it will require the United States to be on board to make it clear that no this time it's all going to stick. I also think that at the end of the day the Europeans have given just about all the stick or all the carrots that they can the country that needs to give on the carrot side is the United States and I think that the

way that we're going to get the Europeans the only way that we might get the Europeans to agree to sticks if Iran doesn't cooperate is to agree that we will provide carrots if Iran does cooperate. One further question unfortunately I can only give you about a minute. I'm interested in having you talk for a minute there are a minute and a half about what are what are Iran's interests in Iraq. Sure. Again and a hopelessly complicated question. What about in the Bundestag. Basic point is this. Iran has many interests in Iraq. Right now its preeminent interest is stability. The Iranians are terrified of chaos in Iraq and while they don't want any US dominated Iraq in Iraq that they think could serve as a springboard for an invasion of Iran. They're even more concerned that we will fail in Iraq or we will simply walk away and turn Iraq into Lebanon as it was in the 1980s. They saw how Lebanon destabilize Syria destabilized Israel. They don't want to be living next to a state like that and as a result you've had this kind of weird. Again tacit cooperation

between the United States and Iran. Unfortunately you see a lot of press stories that are blaming Iran I actually think very unfairly. The Iranians are in there mucking around in their own way but in fact they've actually been much more cooperative than they have been confrontational when it comes to Iraq. Well at that I think that we will have to stop as we have used our time for people who want to read more on the subject again I would suggest you look at the book we've talked about it's titled The Persian Puzzle The Conflict Between Iran and America. It's published by Random House by our guest Ken Pollack. He is director of research at the Subban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. And Mr. populum thank you very much for talking with us today. Thank you so much for having me it's been my pleasure. And also thanks to the folks there at the Brookings on their end of the connection also if you're interested in finding out more about the Brookings Institution. They have many different scholars interested in different issues both domestic and international. And if you have internet access you may simply go to their website which is w w w dot Brookings dot edu.