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IRAN: REALITY, OPTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES,

PART 2—NEGOTIATING WITH THE IRANIANS:

MISSED OPPORTUNITIES AND PATHS FORWARD

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY

AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS

FIRST SESSION

NOVEMBER 7, 2007

Serial No. 110–174

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html

http://www.oversight.house.gov

(II)

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California, Chairman

TOM LANTOS, California

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

JOHN A. YARMUTH, Kentucky

BRUCE L. BRALEY, Iowa

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

BETTY MCCOLLUM, Minnesota

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

PAUL W. HODES, New Hampshire

CHRISTOPHER S. MURPHY, Connecticut

JOHN P. SARBANES, Maryland

PETER WELCH, Vermont

TOM DAVIS, Virginia

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

DARRELL E. ISSA, California

KENNY MARCHANT, Texas

LYNN A. WESTMORELAND, Georgia

PATRICK T. MCHENRY, North Carolina

VIRGINIA FOXX, North Carolina

BRIAN P. BILBRAY, California

BILL SALI, Idaho

JIM JORDAN, Ohio

PHIL SCHILIRO, Chief of Staff

PHIL BARNETT, Staff Director

EARLEY GREEN, Chief Clerk

DAVID MARIN, Minority Staff Director

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts, Chairman

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

BRIAN HIGGINS, New York

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

DAN BURTON, Indiana

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

DAVE TURK, Staff Director

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on November 7, 2007 ........................................................................ 1

Statement of:

Dobbins, Ambassador James, director, International Security and Defense

Policy Center, Rand Corp.; Hillary Mann Leverett, principal and CEO,

Strategic Energy and Global Analysis, LLC; Flynt Leverett, senior fellow, director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative, New America Foundation; Lawrence J. Haas, vice president, Committee on the Present

Danger; and Suzanne Maloney, senior fellow, the Saban Center for

Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution .................................................. 6

Dobbins, Ambassador James .................................................................... 6

Haas, Lawrence J. ..................................................................................... 43

Leverett, Flynt ........................................................................................... 32

Leverett, Hillary Mann ............................................................................. 19

Maloney, Suzanne ..................................................................................... 54

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Dobbins, Ambassador James, director, International Security and Defense

Policy Center, Rand Corp., prepared statement of .................................... 9

Haas, Lawrence J., vice president, Committee on the Present Danger,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 46

Leverett, Flynt, senior fellow, director, Geopolitics of Energy Initiative,

New America Foundation, prepared statement of ..................................... 35

Leverett, Hillary Mann, principal and CEO, Strategic Energy and Global

Analysis, LLC, prepared statement of ........................................................ 23

Maloney, Suzanne, senior fellow, the Saban Center for Middle East Policy, Brookings Institution, prepared statement of ..................................... 58

Tierney, Hon. John F., a Representative in Congress from the State

of Massachusetts, prepared statement of ................................................... 3

(1)

IRAN: REALITY, OPTIONS AND CONSEQUENCES, PART 2-NEGOTIATING WITH

THE IRANIANS: MISSED OPPORTUNITIES

AND PATHS FORWARD

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2007

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON NATIONAL SECURITY AND FOREIGN

AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. John Tierney (chairman of the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Tierney, Lynch, Yarmuth, Welch,

Shays, and Platts.

Also present: Representatives Moran of Virginia and McDermott.

Staff present: Dave Turk, staff director; Andrew Su and Andy

Wright, professional staff members; Davis Hake, clerk; Dan Hamilton, fellow; Janice Spector and Christopher Bright, minority professional staff members; Todd Greenwood, minority legislative assistant; Nick Palarino, minority senior investigator and policy advisor;

Benjamin Chance, minority clerk; and Mark Lavin, minority Army

fellow.

Mr. TIERNEY. My apologies to all the witnesses who were kind

enough to come on time. We can’t seem to manage the floor as well

as we sometimes can manage the committee.

We’re now going to proceed with the hearing before the National

Security and Foreign Affairs Subcommittee, ‘‘Iran: Reality, Options

and Consequences, Part 2—Negotiating with the Iranians: Missed

Opportunities and Paths Forward.’’

I ask unanimous consent that only the chairman and ranking

member of the subcommittee be allowed to make opening statements, and that the gentleman from Virginia, Congressman Jim

Moran, be allowed to participate in this hearing, and that the

record be kept open for 5 business days and that all members of

the subcommittee be allowed to submit a written statement for the

record. Without any objection on all, so ordered.

I just want to welcome you again. I’m going to forego most of my

opening statement in the interest of asking you folks to put your

testimony on record and then as Members come back from the vote,

we can hopefully have some questions and answers.

I note that this hearing happens at a time when a lot of sabrerattling and bellicose invective has been going on. I think it is apVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:51 Jul 08, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00005 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\50111.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
2

propriate for us to try to get a thoughtful and comprehensive approach to what is happening in Iran, about their people and society, about recent history and diplomacy, what lessons we can learn

and possibly the consequences of any actions that might be proposed or considered. So hopefully we will do all this before any irreversible decisions are made, and this hearing is designed to move

us in that direction.

The rest of my statement I will place on the record, and at this

point give the other Members a chance to have their other opening

statements, the ranking member, at least, when he shows up.

[The prepared statement of Hon. John F. Tierney follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. In the meantime, our panel today is composed of

Ambassador James Dobbins, Hillary Mann Leverett, Flynt

Leverett, Larry Haas and Suzanne Maloney. Our first witness will

be Ambassador James Dobbins, who is the Bush administration’s

First Special Envoy for Afghanistan, who was intensely involved in

talks with Iran concerning Afghanistan. Ambassador Dobbins has

extensive diplomatic and negotiating experience, including having

served as Special U.S. Envoy to Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and

Kosovo.

Ambassador Dobbins, we would love to hear from you, please.

You have 5 minutes, but your written remarks will be placed on

the record. So if you want to deviate from that, that is fine with

us. We will try to be a little lenient with the 5 minutes, but also

respectful of all your time for being here and having so much of

it already pass by.

We have a policy in this committee to swear all our witnesses in.

So if all of you would please rise and raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. TIERNEY. The record will reflect that all the panelists have

answered in the affirmative. I thank you for that.

Ambassador Dobbins.

STATEMENTS OF AMBASSADOR JAMES DOBBINS, DIRECTOR,

INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND DEFENSE POLICY CENTER,

RAND CORP.; HILLARY MANN LEVERETT, PRINCIPAL AND

CEO, STRATEGIC ENERGY AND GLOBAL ANALYSIS, LLC;

FLYNT LEVERETT, SENIOR FELLOW, DIRECTOR, GEOPOLITICS OF ENERGY INITIATIVE, NEW AMERICA FOUNDATION; LAWRENCE J. HAAS, VICE PRESIDENT, COMMITTEE ON

THE PRESENT DANGER; AND SUZANNE MALONEY, SENIOR

FELLOW, THE SABAN CENTER FOR MIDDLE EAST POLICY,

BROOKINGS INSTITUTION

STATEMENT OF AMBASSADOR JAMES DOBBINS

Ambassador DOBBINS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you

for holding these important hearings.

There is a popular perception in the United States that in the

aftermath of 9/11, the United States formed a coalition and overthrew the Taliban. That is wrong. In the aftermath of 9/11, the

United States joined an existing coalition, which had been trying

to overthrow the Taliban for most of a decade. That coalition consisted of India, Russia, Iran, and the Northern Alliance. It was

with the additional assistance of American air power that coalition

succeeded in ousting the Taliban.

That coalition, along with Pakistan, was also very important to

the success that the United States enjoyed in replacing the Taliban

within a matter of weeks with a moderate, broadly representative

government in Kabul, which relieved the United States of the necessity of itself occupying and trying to govern Afghanistan. All of

those countries, and in particular given the subject of this committee hearing, Iran, were particularly helpful in the diplomacy that

led to the creation of the Karzai government. And in my written

testimony, I provide some detail and some anecdotes which flesh

out the nature of that cooperation and the degree to which it was

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indeed critical to the success of American diplomacy in the last

months of 2001.

In January 2002, the President in his inaugural address included

Iran in what he characterized as an axis of evil. Despite that, the

Iranians persisted for a number of months in offering significant

cooperation to the United States. For instance, in March 2002, the

Iranian delegation asked to meet with me on the fringes of an

international meeting in Geneva that I was chairing on assistance

to Afghanistan. They introduced me to an Iranian general in full

uniform who had been the commander of their security assistance

efforts to the Northern Alliance throughout the war.

The general said that Iran was willing to contribute to an American-led program to build the new Afghan national army. ‘‘We are

prepared to house and train up to 20,000 troops in a broader program under American leadership,’’ the general offered. ‘‘Well, if you

train some Afghan troops and we train some, might they not end

up having incompatible doctrines?’’ I responded somewhat skeptically. The general just laughed. He said, ‘‘Don’t worry, we are still

using the manuals you left behind in 1979.’’

I said, ‘‘OK, well, they might have compatible doctrines, but

might they not have conflicting loyalties?’’ ‘‘Well,’’ he responded,

‘‘we trained, we equipped, and by the way, we are still the ones

who are paying the Afghan troops you are using in southern Afghanistan to chase down the remaining Taliban and al Qaeda elements. Are you having any difficulty with their loyalty?’’ I acknowledged that insofar as I was aware, we did not, and I said I would

report the offer back to Washington.

Now, this offer struck me as problematic in detail but promising

in overall implications. Despite the general’s assurances, I could

foresee problems in having Iran and the United States both training different components of the same Afghan army. On the other

hand, Iranian participation under American leadership in a joint

program of this sort would be a breathtaking departure after more

than 20 years of mutual hostility. It also represented a significant

step beyond the quiet diplomatic cooperation we had already

achieved. Clearly, despite having been relegated by President Bush

to the access of evil, the Hatami government wanted to deepen its

cooperation with Washington and was willing to do so in the most

overt and public manner.

I went back, I reported these overtures to Washington. There

was no apparent interest in discussing them, and as far as I am

aware, the Iranians never got a response. There were, however,

continued discussions with the Iranians, and a year later, in the

aftermath of the American invasion of Iraq, the Iranian government again came forward with an even more sweeping offer, one

that the witness sitting next to me will, I think, be able to talk

about in a little more detail.

Now, it is not a coincidence that both of these Iranian overtures

came in the aftermath of an American intervention on their borders. In both cases, those American moves left the Iranian regime

both grateful and fearful. They were grateful that the United

States had taken down two of their principal regional antagonists.

And they were fearful that they might be next, seeing as they did

American troops to their north, based in central Asia, to their east

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in Afghanistan, to their south in the Gulf and to the west in Iraq.

They were surrounded.

Unfortunately, if the Iranian regime was feeling grateful and

fearful, the American Government, and frankly not just the Government, people, Congress as a whole, were feeling supremely selfconfident. In late 2001, we had overthrown Mullah Omar in a lightning campaign and then in 2003, we had done the same thing with

Saddam. We were on a roll, acutely conscious of being the world’s

only superpower. There seemed nothing America could not accomplish. I suspect that the administration, therefore, saw no rush in

responding to these Iranian overtures.

As Afghanistan was stabilized and Iraq was democratized, the

American position could only grow stronger. In good time, Washington could deal with the Iranian regime. Tehran’s offers were becoming steadily better; why not wait for another year or two? Of

course, events did not move in that direction. Since the last Iranian

overtures of 2002, it is Tehran’s position that has strengthened and

hardened. In contrast, Washington’s position has weakened and

hardened. America’s difficulties in Iraq are the principal cause of

this shift.

Americans are fond of chararacterizing the Iranian regime as a

fundamentalist theocracy. The truth is more complex. Iran isn’t

Switzerland, but it is rather more democratic than Egypt and less

fundamentalist than Saudi Arabia, two of America’s most important allies in the region. Iranian women vote, drive automobiles,

attend university in large numbers and lead successful professional

lives. Iran’s parliament and president are popularly elected. Elections take place on schedule. The outcomes are not fore-ordained.

The results do make a difference, perhaps not as much of a difference as we would like, but enough to make the process worth

understanding a good deal better than we do.

Even the supreme leader is elected to a fixed, renewable term by

a council of clerics who are in turn popularly elected by universal

adult suffrage. The last election to that body was a setback for

President Ahmadinejad. Presidential elections produce even more

meaningful swings as can those in the parliament. Yes, the system

is rigged, but not to the point that it becomes a complete sham, as

in the case with many other Middle Eastern elections when such

are held at all.

In my judgment, Mr. Chairman, it is time to apply to Iran the

policies which won the cold war, liberated the Warsaw Pact and reunited Europe; policies of detente and containment, communication

where possible and confrontation whenever necessary. We spoke to

Stalin’s Russia; we spoke to Mao’s China. In both cases, greater

mutual exposure changed their system, not ours. It is time to speak

to Iran, unconditionally and comprehensively.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ambassador Dobbins follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ambassador.

Our second witness, Ms. Hillary Mann Leverett, directly participated in negotiations with Iran on behalf of the U.S. Government

from 2001 to 2003. Shortly after 9/11/2001, she was tapped to serve

as the Iran expert on the National Security Council. She is a career

Foreign Service officer. Her service includes positions at the National Security Council with the U.S. mission to the United States

and as special assistant to the U.S. Ambassador in Cairo, Egypt.

From 1996 to 1998, she was a terrorism fellow at the Washington

Institute of Near East Policy and has in the past been a Fulbright

scholar and a Watson fellow. She speaks Arabic and has a great

academic background as well.

Ms. Leverett, would you care to address us for 5 minutes? Ms.

Leverett, just before you start, I am going to ask unanimous consent of the committee that Mr. McDermott be allowed to sit in and

participate under the committee’s rules as well. Without objection,

so ordered. Thank you.

STATEMENT OF HILLARY MANN LEVERETT

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for

inviting me here today.

Iran’s geo-strategic location, at the crossroads of the Middle East

and Central Asia, and in the heart of the Persian Gulf, enormous

hydrocarbon resources and historic role, make it a critical country

for U.S. interests. However, since the advent of the Islamic Republic in 1979, Iran has worked against U.S. interests on a number of

fronts. As a result, every U.S. administration since 1979 has sought

to isolate and contain Iran.

Yet Iran’s undeniable importance in the Middle Eastern balance

of power and in many areas of importance to the United States has

prompted every U.S. administration—Reagan, George H.W. Bush,

Clinton, and George W. Bush administrations—to explore some

kind of opening to Iran, either through tactical cooperation or by

testing the waters publicly. I was directly involved in the Bush administration’s efforts to engage Iran over Afghanistan, al Qaeda

and Iraq, both shortly before and after the 9/11 attacks. I will get

to that in a moment.

What I want to emphasize at the outset of my testimony is that

Iran’s tactical cooperation with every U.S. administration since

1980 was fundamentally positive in character. Iran delivered much,

not all, but much of what we asked. Furthermore, and especially

with regard to post 9/11 cooperation over Afghanistan, Iran hoped

and anticipated that tactical cooperation with the United States

would led to a genuine strategic opening between our two countries. In most cases, however, it was the United States that was

unwilling to sustain and buildupon tactical cooperation to pursue

true strategic rapprochement.

I will spell out this argument through the prism of my own experience in the current Bush administration. In late spring 2001, I

was a U.S. Foreign Service officer at the U.S. mission to the U.N.

in New York responsible for dealing with Afghanistan. In that capacity, I was authorized to work with my Iranian counterpart as

part of the Six Plus Two diplomatic process that had been set up

by the United States to deal with the threats Afghanistan posed to

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the international community, even before 9/11. My Iranian counterpart and I worked openly and constructively on a wide range of Afghan-related issues, including the enforcement of an arms embargo

on the Taliban regime, counter-narcotics initiatives and humanitarian relief for Afghan refugees, 2 million of whom were in Iran.

On 9/11, I was scheduled to meet with my Iranian counterpart

to discuss how to make sure that counter-terrorism was the centerpiece of a draft statement of principles for an upcoming Six Plus

Two Foreign Ministers meeting at the U.N. in New York. Instead,

the World Trade Center was attacked, and I was evacuated from

my office at the U.S. mission. My Iranian counterpart called to express, in his words, his horror at what he thought was an al Qaeda

terrorist attack on the United States. Without hesitation, he said

the Iranian people and the Iranian government would be condemning this horrible attack on the United States and the entire civilized world.

Within days, the Iranian government did come out to strongly

condemn the attack, and thousands of Iranians took to the streets

in Tehran in candlelight vigils to mourn those who had perished

in the United States. Even Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei,

took the extraordinary step of unequivocally condemning al Qaeda

and its attack on the United States in a Friday prayer sermon that

was broadcast to tens of millions of Iranians and Shiite followers

throughout the Middle East.

For the first 2 months after 9/11, I worked openly and intensively with my Iranian counterpart to establish a framework for

U.S.-Iranian cooperation in Afghanistan. My Iranian counterpart

said that Iran was prepared to offer unconditional cooperation to

the United States. Iran would not ask the United States for anything up front in return for its cooperation with Afghanistan.

As I document in my written testimony, in the months after 9/

11, Iran provided tangible support to United States and Coalition

military operations in Afghanistan and robust support to U.S. efforts to stand up a post-Taliban political order, culminating in the

Bonn Conference, which my colleague, Jim Dobbins, lead the U.S.

delegation to. Following the Bonn Conference and my transfer from

the U.N. to the National Security Council to become Director for

Iran and Afghanistan Affairs, the United States launched an ongoing channel of monthly meetings to coordinate our efforts on Afghanistan and related issues. I was one of two U.S. officials who

consistently participated in those discussions, which lasted for 17

months. The other was Ryan Crocker, now Ambassador in Iraq.

As I document in my testimony, the Iranians provided considerable assistance to bolster the pro-American Karzai government in

Afghanistan and on counter-terrorism, including deporting hundreds of al Qaeda and Taliban figures seeking to flee Afghanistan

to or through Iran. The Iranians skipped one monthly meeting to

protest President Bush’s public condemnation of Iran as part of the

axis of evil in January 2002, but otherwise they came to every

monthly meeting over the 17 month course of the talks.

It is important to emphasize that in the monthly meetings, my

Iranian counterparts repeatedly raised the prospect of broadening

our common agenda, both to achieve a strategic rapprochement between the United States and Iran, as well as to provide tactical

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support to a prospective U.S. attack on Saddam’s Iraq. The prospect of rapprochement with Iraq had been explicitly rejected by the

President and his senior national security team. Whether we could

have subsequent discussions to coordinate on Iraq became subject

to whether Iran would turn over the remaining handful of al Qaeda

operatives they had detained in Iran.

But the Iranians first expressed an inability to find the remaining al Qaeda suspects we identified without any information from

us as to their whereabouts. And later, the Iranians expressed an

unwillingness to relinquish these last ‘‘cards’’ without assurances

from us that we would not use the Iranian opposition group, the

MEK, and its armed forces in Iraq, against Iran. Although we provided Iran with assurances about the MEK in January and February 2003, after all, they were a designated terrorist organization

by the U.S. Government. The Iranians were still concerned by the

words and actions of senior Pentagon officials and later U.S. occupation forces in Iraq who not only refused to disarm MEK forces

in Iraq but also designated the United States as protected persons

under the Geneva convention in order to prevent their deportation

by the Iraqis to Iran, even though the MEK had been designated

by us as a foreign terrorist organization.

Therefore, by the spring of 2003, the dialog was at an impasse.

It is in this context that one should evaluate the Iranian offer to

negotiate a comprehensive resolution of differences with the United

States. With the bilateral channel at an impasse, Tehran sent this

offer in early May 2003 through Switzerland, the U.S.-protecting

power in Iran, as Secretary Rice and former administration officials

have acknowledged. In the offer, everything would be on the table,

including Iran’s material support for Hamas, for PIJ, for Hizballah

as well as its nuclear ambitions and role in Iraq. But the Bush administration rejected this proposal out of hand and cutoff the bilateral channel with the Iranians less than 2 weeks later.

From an Iranian perspective, this record shows that Washington

will take what it can get from talking to Iran on specific issues, but

it is not prepared for real rapprochement. From an American perspective, I believe this record indicates that the Bush administration cavalierly rejected multiple and significant opportunities to put

U.S.-Iranian relations on a fundamentally more positive and constructive trajectory. This mishandling of U.S. relations with Iran

continues to impose heavy costs on American interests and policy

efforts in the Middle East, on the Iranian nuclear issue, nuclear

issues in Iraq and Afghanistan and Lebanon and in the ArabIsraeli arena.

I want to note in closing that the White House has gone to extraordinary lengths, including outright abuse of executive powers,

to keep me from laying out the full extent of the Bush administration’s mishandling of Iran policies since the 9/11 attacks. In December 2006, I co-authored an op-ed for the New York Times on this

topic, using material that my co-author had previously cleared

through through the CIA and had in fact published with CIA approval in several different places. When we submitted our joint oped draft for pre-publication review, my co-author was informed by

a member of the CIA’s pre-publication review board that the draft,

in the CIA’s judgment, contained no classified material. Similarly,

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I was informed by a career officer at the State Department involved in the review process that in the State Department’s judgment, the draft contained no classified information.

However, my co-author and I were told by the CIA and the State

Department that the White House had complained about my co-author’s previous publications criticizing the Bush administration’s

Iran policy and insisted in censoring whole paragraphs of the prospective op-ed. The pre-publication review process is supposed to

protect classified information, nothing else. But in our case, the

White House abused its power to politicize that process, solely in

order to silence two former officials who can speak in a uniquely

informed way about the Bush administration’s strategic blunders

toward Iran.

Neither my co-author, who is sitting beside me, and is my husband, nor I will disclose any classified information. I have not done

so today and I don’t think he will either. But neither will we be

intimidated by a White House acting in a fundamentally un-American way to silence criticism of its policies. It is in that spirit that

I have come forward to testify before you today.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Mann Leverett follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. And I think it took some courage on your behalf

to do that, and I appreciate it. The committee appreciates it and

we want to thank you for that.

Our next witness is Dr. Flynt Leverett, who served as Senior Director of Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council from

March 2002 to March 2003. He has also served as the Middle East

expert on the Secretary of State’s policy planning staff and was a

Senior Analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, focusing on the

Middle East for 9 years. Currently, he also publishes articles on

the strategic implications of energy market trends, particularly in

the Middle East, and studies the implications of structural shifts

in global energy markets and develops analytical frameworks for

thinking about energy as a foreign policy issue.

Dr. Leverett, we would benefit from 5 minutes of your testimony

as well.

STATEMENT OF FLYNT LEVERETT

Mr. LEVERETT. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Shays,

for the chance to speak to the subcommittee today.

As you were kind enough to allude in your introduction, I worked

on Middle East issues in the U.S. Government for 11 years, from

1992, the last year of the George H.W. Bush administration, until

2003, the year in which the United States, under the current Bush

administration, invaded Iraq. During those 11 years, I watched

U.S. standing and influence in the Middle East decline from the

dominant, indeed hegemonic position that we enjoyed in the region

after the first Gulf war to the, I would say, floundering and ineffective position that we occupy today.

There are many reasons for the decline in America’s standing

and influence in what is arguably the world’s most strategically

critical region. Since walking out of the Bush White House in disgust in 2003, I have said and written publicly that I believe the

Bush administration has made profound strategic blunders in its

conduct of the war on terror, blunders for which we will continue

to pay a price in the Middle East for many years to come.

But I also believe that the Clinton administration, during its tenure, made profound strategic mistakes that contribute to our current rather parlous strategic condition in the Middle East. And I

would note for the record, I am not working for anyone’s Presidential campaign in this electoral cycle.

While there are many factors that contribute to the decline of

American standing and influence in the Middle East over the last

15 years, as I look at the record during that period, it seems to me

that perhaps the single most important factor for our decline in

this part of the world is a policy framework toward the Islamic Republic of Iran that is dysfunctional for U.S. interests on virtually

all of the region’s key security, political and economic challenges.

Getting Iran policy right will not fix everything that is wrong with

America’s position in the Middle East. But I would argue that if

we don’t get Iran policy right, there is going to be little or no strategic recovery for the United States in this strategically vital region.

Over the last couple of years, I would say there has been a growing recognition that our current policy toward Iran is dysfunctional,

33

that we need to step up engagement with Iran. A growing body of

politicians, distinguished foreign policy experts, and eminent persons groups like the Iraq Study Group, have all made this argument.

In almost all these instances, recommendations for stepping up

engagement with Iran take what I would call an incremental approach. In this approach, the United States would identify particular areas where American interests presumably overlap with those

of Iran, such as post-conflict stabilization in Iraq, and would engage Tehran on those specific issues. If things went well, and a certain level of confidence were established, the range of issues under

discussion could be gradually expanded.

That kind of incremental approach seems prudent and relatively

non-controversial, except perhaps to those, I would call them strategically autistic opponents, of any kind of engagement with Iran.

Unfortunately, incrementalism is not going to work at this point to

produce sustained, engaged improvement in U.S.-Iranian relations.

Advocates of incrementalism ignore an almost 20 year history of

issues-specific engagement between the United States and the Islamic Republic, as my wife and former NSC colleague, Hillary

Mann, documents in her testimony.

In each case where issue-specific engagement was tried, it has

essentially been the United States which declined to sustain that

cooperation or to use that cooperation to explore possibilities for

broad-based strategic opening with the Islamic Republic. Today the

United States is pursuing extremely tentative issue-specific engagement with Iran over Iraq. The Bush administration has also

indicated a highly conditional willingness to engage in multilateral

talks with Tehran over Iranian nuclear activities.

However, given the record of U.S.-Iranian tactical engagements

since the late 1980’s, at this point Iran is not going to offer significant cooperation to the United States, whether with regard to Iraq

or the nuclear issue or anything else, except as part of a broader

rapprochement with the United States that addresses Tehran’s

core concerns. This would require the United States to be willing,

as part of an overall settlement, to extend a security guarantee to

the Islamic Republic of Iran, effectively, an American commitment

not to use force to change the borders or the form of government

of the Islamic Republic, and to bolster such a contingent commitment with the prospect of lifting U.S. unilateral sanctions and normalizing bilateral relations.

This is something no American administration has ever offered,

and it is something that the Bush administration has explicitly refused to consider. I should note in this regard that some Iranian

diplomats and academics say both publicly and privately that the

Islamic Republic does not need security guarantees from the

United States. However, when one asks those diplomats and academics what the Islamic Republic does require from the United

States, they routinely talk about American acceptance of the Islamic Republic and recognition of a legitimate Iranian role in the

region. It is precisely American acceptance of the Islamic Republic

and recognition of legitimate Iranian interests that is the core of

what I mean by a security guarantee.

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From an American perspective, it has to be acknowledged that

no administration of either party would be able to provide a security guarantee to the Islamic Republic unless U.S. concerns about

Iran’s nuclear activities, its regional role and its support for terrorist organizations were definitively addressed. Addressing only one

or some of these issues would not provide a politically sustainable

basis for real rapprochement between the United States and Iran.

That is why at this juncture resolving any of the significant bilateral differences between the United States and the Islamic Republic inevitably requires resolving all of them.

Incrementalism will not work. A comprehensive approach aimed

at negotiating what I and others describe as a grand bargain between Washington and Tehran in which all the major differences

between the United States and Iran would be resolved in a package

is the only strategy that might produce meaningful results. Implementing the reciprocal commitments entailed in a U.S.-Iranian

grand bargain would almost certainly not be implemented al at

once. But the commitments would have to be all agreed up front

as a package, so that both sides would know what they were getting.

Really what we need at this point is a reorientation of American

policy toward the Islamic Republic of Iran that will be as fundamental and comprehensive as the reorientation of U.S. policy toward the People’s Republic of China that took place in the early

1970’s under President Nixon. Barring that, any kind of incremental diplomatic effort that is not cast on that kind of scale will fail,

and U.S.-Iranian relations will continue in their current dysfunctional condition and indeed on their current trajectory. I would suggest that without that kind of fundamental improvement, we are

looking at an eventual military confrontation between the United

States and the Islamic Republic of Iran.

This is really a time when sound policy requires fundamental rethinking. It is really a case, at this point, of all or nothing. Ether

we are prepared to put everything on the table with Iran and negotiate or else we are headed, at some point in the near to medium

term, to some kind of military confrontation. I believe that the biggest loser in that confrontation in terms of strategic standing in the

Middle East would be the United States, and not the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Thank you very much.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Leverett follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Doctor. We appreciate your testimony.

Our next witness is Lawrence J. Haas. He is the vice president

of the Committee on Present Danger. He also served as a visiting

senior fellow at Georgetown University’s Government Affairs Institute. He was the White House communications strategist, an

award-winning journalist, has been a communications director and

press secretary for Vice President Al Gore. He previously was communications director for the White House Office of Management

and Budget. He served for 2 years as director of public affairs and

special assistant to the president of Yale University, where he led

Yale’s communication efforts. And from 2001 to 2005, he was senior

vice president and director of public affairs at Manning, Selvage

and Lee, one of the world’s largest public relations firms.

Mr. Haas.

STATEMENT OF LAWRENCE J. HAAS

Mr. HAAS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member Shays, members of the subcommittee, thank you very much for the opportunity to appear before you today. I appreciate the fact that my full prepared testimony will be inserted into the record, because I feel like in the 5-

minutes allotted, I am going to go over it far too superficially. But

perhaps we can get into more depth during the question and answer period.

As you will see, I have a different view of things. Part of it has

to do with a different interpretation of some recent events. But

really, more of it has to do with a different focus that I want to

take, so let me get to it.

Mr. Chairman, I understand the desire to strike a grand bargain

with Iran, as Flynt just mentioned, alluded to. I just don’t think

such a deal is there. Moreover, our efforts to strike one could hurt

our national security, enabling Tehran to make more progress on

its nuclear program while we negotiate, and driving away an Iranian population that hates the regime, supports democratic reform

and thinks favorably of America. We are in the 28th year of our

crisis with Iran. Perhaps we all agree on that. During that time,

the regime has not changed in any significant way. It is aggressive,

expansionist and rabidly anti-Western, and a growing threat to the

security of the United States and its allies. In fact, it is growing

more extreme.

President Ahmadinejad subscribes to a radical strain of Islamic

ideology that predicts the return of the 12th Imam, the so-called

Mahdi, a Messianic figure from the ninth century who supposedly

will reappear to signal the end of history and bring Islamic justice

to the world. Ahmadinejad and others believe a violent confrontation with the west will be a harbinger of the Mahdi’s return, and

that Iran can speed that return by provoking that confrontation.

This ideology, by the way, is shared by many hard liners in his cabinet, across the government and, very importantly, in the Islamic

Revolutionary Guard Corps. I need not tell you what the implications of this would be were Iran ever to be able to develop nuclear

weapons, of which I will talk about in another moment or two.

Now, advocates of a grand bargain, as we hear, often say, and

I think I heard an allusion to this a few moments ago, often say

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we can apply the cold war’s containment policy against Iran. But

containment assumes that the two sides at that time share the desire for life over death. That analogy makes no sense with a regime

that seeks a violent confrontation with the West to bring about the

end of the world. The fact is, Iran has been at war with the United

States, which it calls the Great Satan, for 28 years. Rabid hostility

is built into the DNA of the regime, serving almost as its raison

d’etre. Iran’s history of murder and mayhem against Americans directly or through its terrorist clients continues to this day, with

Iran responsible for a growing share of American deaths in Iraq

and Afghanistan. There is more detail of that in my prepared testimony.

Iran is planning much more. Chants of ‘‘death to America’’ pervade its parliament and speeches by its top officials. Ahmadinejad

has spoken of a world without America that is ‘‘attainable and

surely can be achieved.’’ I would just ask the members of the subcommittee to remember the words of Abba Eban, the former Israeli

diplomat, who said ‘‘It is our experience that political leaders do

not always mean the opposite of what they say.’’ Those who advocate a grand bargain should explain, with all due respect, why earlier efforts failed so miserably. Every White House, as we have

heard, has sought to normalize relations with Tehran.

But also, Great Britain, France and Germany spent 3 years negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, offering a host of economic incentives. That is between 2003 and 2006. Iran is not interested in economic carrots or normalization, I would submit. Now

we are in a race against time. Ahmadinejad has just announced,

and I mean just within the last 24 hours announced, that Iran has

3,000 uranium enrichment centrifuges running at Natants. The

continual running of those centrifuges for 1 year will produce

enough enriched uranium for one nuclear bomb, which means that

Iran could have a bomb by next fall.

Fortunately, the story need not end there or with the choice between acquiescing in an Iran with nuclear weapons or military action to destroy or slow its program. We have other options. Iran’s

leaders are vulnerable economically in at least three ways. First,

Iran has loads of oil, but it can’t refine enough to fulfill its needs.

It imports 40 percent of its annual gasoline consumption. We surely can squeeze the regime through tactics such as an embargo on

gasoline imports.

Second, Tehran requires $1 billion a year of foreign direct investment just to maintain the refining capacity it has. We should make

it harder, as we are trying to do, for Iran to find that investment.

Third, economic power resides most prominently with the extended

family of former President Rasfanjani, with the foundations run by

the supreme leader and with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard

Corps. Sanctions can restrict their ability to participate in the global marketplace, and of course, we have gone somewhat down the

road in that strategy as well.

Iran’s leaders, I also would like to point out, are vulnerable politically. Seventy percent of Iranians, according to a poll, favor better relations with the West. Two-thirds of Iranians are under the

age of 35. They are restive and dissatisfied, and they can bring

democratic change to Iran. There is plenty of stirring of democratic

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activism in Iran under horrendous conditions. We must strengthen

our ties to these young activists, this younger generation, as we

pressure the regime.

And by the way, a grand bargain with the regime, in the unlikely

event that we could secure one, I would suggest to you would move

us in exactly the wrong direction when it comes to this next generation. They would view it as a U.S. betrayal of their hopes for

a democratic future. We must not forget the long-term consequences of our activities.

So we need a strategy that capitalizes on public disgust with

Iran’s regime, the vulnerability of its economy and our potential

partnership with the Iranian people. While tightening the economic

noose on the regime, we should talk directly to the Iranian people

through TV, radio, the internet and other means of communication.

I want to emphasize that I am separating our treatment of the regime from our outreach to the Iranian people.

And one final point: many policymakers express alarm about

tougher U.S-led sanctions because they view them as a precursor

to war with Iran, and we saw that with the recent round of unilateral sanctions announced by the Bush administration. I have a different view. Sanctions are not a precursor to war if done correctly.

They are an alternative to war. If we want to avert military action,

and I think we all do, we must give a comprehensive program of

economic pressure on the one hand and public outreach to the Iranian people on the other hand a chance to work.

Mr. Chairman, Mr. Ranking Member, members of the subcommittee, that concludes my testimony. I look forward to the

questions and answers at the appropriate time.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Haas follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Haas. Thank you very much.

The ranking member gives his apologies, he had to leave to go

to the floor and speak, but he will be back. He apologizes to you

for missing a part of your remarks, and to Dr. Maloney as well.

Dr. Maloney has served as a public policy planning staff member

at the U.S. Department of State from 2005 to 2007. She also was

Project Director on the Independent Task Force on U.S.-Iran Relations on the Council on Foreign Relations from 2003 to 2004, and

Middle East advisor to ExxonMobil from 2001 to 2004. Dr.

Maloney, can we please hear your testimony?

STATEMENT OF SUZANNE MALONEY

Ms. MALONEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee. Thanks very much for the opportunity to participate in this

discussion today on what I think is a very important issue. I think

this is a rare opportunity to have a serious and probing discussion

on an issue that is too often the subject of a lot of tough talk, all

heat and no light. So I am glad to be here and glad to have the

opportunity to talk to you today.

Since 2005, the administration has sought to devise a comprehensive approach toward Iran to deal with multiple areas of

U.S. concern. The U.S. strategy was intended to present Tehran

with a stark choice between moderation and isolation. Until relatively recently, Washington enjoyed unprecedented success in persuading a wide coalition of allies and international actors to support its efforts. Iran, of course, greatly contributed to uniting the

world against it, particularly since the election of Mahmoud

Ahmadinejad in 2005.

Despite achieving this unprecedented international consensus,

the latest U.S. strategy on Iran has borne very little fruit. More

than anything, the failure of the current U.S. approach to Iran to

achieve its aims reflects how complex and intractable this problem

is. It has frustrated American officials from both sides of the political aisle for nearly 30 years.

But the failure is also a product of the disastrous diplomacy of

the Bush administration toward Iran and toward the broader Middle East, informed by a set of mistaken assumptions. Understanding where we have miscalculated and more importantly, why it is

important to ensuring that we avoid repeating or perpetuating

flawed policies.

Chief among the issues that have frustrated our strategy is its

inherent inconsistency, particularly since 2005 and the beginning

of this overture to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program.

The administration’s efforts have been sabotaged by the impossibility of balancing this belated interest in diplomacy with a fundamental rejection of the Iranian regime’s legitimacy. The bottom

line is that no regime is likely to bargain away its ultimate deterrent capability so long as it perceives that the ultimate objective

of those negotiations is its own eradication.

In reviewing some of the missed opportunities that my colleagues

here have discussed, I think it is important that we avoid constructing a narrative that places responsibility solely on Washington or even this administration for the perpetuation of the estrangement between the two countries. Engagement can be a powVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:51 Jul 08, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00058 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\50111.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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erful tool for dealing with Iran, but there is really no evidence at

this time that Iranian leaders have ever been prepared, fully and

authoritatively, to make epic concessions on key areas of U.S. concern.

It is also important that we not perpetuate the idea that U.S.

policy bears responsibility for the rise of Ahmadinejad and the

other unfortunate trends that we have seen within Iran domestically over the past few years. We couldn’t have saved the reform

movement from itself. Really, Iranian hard liners are responsible

for its ejection from the front lines of Iranian policy. Ultimately,

American policy can’t transform political dynamics within Iran

today.

But with the wisdom of hindsight, it is very clear that the Bush

administration’s miscalculations that have been based on a misreading of Iran’s internal dynamics have forfeited perhaps the best

opportunity in history to generate real momentum for at least beginning to solve some of the deep differences in the problems that

we have with Iranian policy and actions. These miscalculations

continue today.

The key, as I said before, is this idea that the regime is either

on the verge of crumbling, or that we, through our efforts, our diplomacy, our programming, have some capacity to take it down. It

is an understandable presumption, and I am happy to get into

some of the reasons why I believe it not to be the case. But I think

we have certainly seen it borne out. Every time we expect the next

revolution is imminent, we find ourselves disappointed yet again

here in Washington. This idea that the regime was on its last legs

I think has informed a number of the episodes that have been discussed today. Specifically, the administration’s decision in May

2003 to suspend its dialog with Iran over Afghanistan that, as I

understand it, had begun to deal with issues involving Iraq as well.

It also informed the decision not to pursue the facts to offer a

grand bargain that appeared to be an overture for mid-ranking Iranian officials that came somewhere around the same time in 2003.

I would also suggest that this belief in regime change informed

the administration’s decision slowly but very dramatically in the

past 2 years to embrace a very high profile program for democracy

support in Iran that has proven to be very ineffective and in fact,

has been resented by many of the Iranian advocates who it is intended to support.

I will not spend an inordinate amount of time on the specific historical episodes. My colleagues on this panel were there and participated in them and I think have already spoken in depth about

those episodes. But I would highlight this Geneva track, or the dialog on Afghanistan, as potentially the most important miscalculation that the Bush administration committed. These talks were

really unprecedented and important on two distinct levels. This

was the first sustained officially sanctioned dialog between American and Iranian officials since the revolution. Second, as my colleagues have suggested, they really did produce some concrete results. This path, it seems to me, might have offered the best prospect for moving forward toward a less contentious relationship between Washington and Tehran in dealing with many of the key

issues of our concern.

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It is tempting to talk mainly about the past here. But I would

like to spend a few moments focused on the path forward. Because

ultimately, that is really the challenge before us today. While I

don’t have a fully comprehensive offer, and I tend to be a skeptic

on the issue of the possibility of pursuing a grand bargain, I would

like to lay out a couple of principles that I think can usefully inform a future policy toward Iran that may bring us more benefits

than what we have seen from the Bush administration’s approach

to date.

First, I think we have to start with the acknowledgement that

diplomacy is our only effective tool. We simply do not have viable

military options toward Tehran, either in dealing with its nuclear

program or eliminating this regime. Anything that we might attempt would certainly do more to undermine our interests across

the Middle East than it would to advance them.

Starting with that, I think it is important to reaffirm the importance of engagement as an appropriate and effective tool for addressing our differences with Tehran. Many of those who favored

engagement have become a little less vocal in recent years. It was

a lot easier to talk about engaging with Tehran when the people

that you were talking about talking to were potentially more palatable individuals than a man who denies the Holocaust and threatens to wipe the State of Israel off the map.

And yet I think the best argument for engagement never constituted one that focused on who we might be talking to, but really,

one that focuses on the seriousness of the issues at stake between

us. The aim of diplomacy is to advance the interests, not to make

friends or endorse enemies. Engagement with Tehran is not an

automatic path to rapprochement, nor should it involve a unilateral

offer of a grand bargain. But it would simply return to the longheld position that really was axiomatic in American policy until

2003 that the United States is prepared to talk with Iranian leaders in a serious and sustained way in any authoritative dialog as

a means of addressing the profound issues of concern that we have

with Iranian policy.

Let me also just speak, third, to another principle that I think

is important that we appreciate when we look toward formulating

an effective policy toward Tehran. And this is that modest steps

are unlikely to bring about revolutionary changes in Iranian policy.

I say this because everywhere I go these days, there is a lot of interest in the financial measures that the administration has taken,

particularly the banking restrictions that have begun to constrict

Iranian access to the international financial system as a whole.

We know these measures have had some bite and have caused

great inconvenience to Tehran and raised the cost of doing business. They can potentially begin to change the strategic calculus.

They will not produce a u-turn, and certainly will not do so in the

near or medium term, simply because Iran, so long as it continues

to export oil, will bring in approximately $70 billion a year in revenues. That is enough to cushion this regime for the foreseeable future. So while I think it is important to look toward what incremental steps we can take to pressure the regime, we should be

careful not to put our eggs in a basket that is unlikely to produce

the result we are looking for.

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Fourth principle is simply that we need a broad coalition for

dealing with Tehran. This gets back to many of the other steps

that some of my fellow panelists here have proposed. There is often

a debate about whether sanctions that are applied narrowly but

that are stiffer are more valuable than those that are applied

broadly but might be of a lesser common denominator value. I

would suggest that Iranians are very averse to being isolated, and

they feel the nature of their isolation very keenly. At this stage,

those sanctions that involve only the departure of European companies, even Europeans, the Japanese and others, only create new opportunities for actors from particularly China and Russia to fill

that gap. So I would suggest that measures that sustain the international coalition, rather than those like the designation of the

Revolutionary Guard Corps, that are likely to create new frictions

with our allies in China and Moscow on this issue are the ones we

have to be pursuing.

Finally, and here I set myself apart from my neighbor here, I

would argue that containment is a viable alternative strategy. Of

course, it is second best. But no careful study of Iranian foreign

policy would suggest that Iran is somehow a suicidal state. And

containment promises the considerable virtue of being an achievable aim of U.S. policy. We have in fact contained Iran over the

past 28 years, except insofar as where we have created opportunities, particularly in Iraq, for Iran to expand its influence, simply

because it was very well predisposed and pre-positioned to do so.

I think the prospective choice for the international community,

as articulated recently by French President Nicholas Sarkozy between an Iranian bomb and bombing Iran is a false one. That kind

of rhetoric only obscures the dimensions of this critical dilemma

and narrows our options unnecessarily. The real challenge for

Washington is devising a strategy that maximizes our leverage for

negotiating with Tehran, while restoring confidence in our capacity

and that of our allies to manage the Iranian regional challenge.

Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Maloney follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

I want to thank all of you for your testimony. I think it really

crystallizes the history but also what we are looking at here and

what the choices are.

I am going to start the questioning. I have three areas that I am

probably not going to get to finish in my short time, but hopefully

we will get another run at this. I want to talk about a little of the

history and the lost opportunity, because I think there are some

issues I want to flesh out. I want to talk about going forward, the

use of sanctions and whether or not we ought to focus intently on

Mr. Ahmadinejad as opposed to Iranian people who might be in

that position from time to time. Then I want to talk a little bit, Ms.

Leverett, about the White House politicization of some of the things

around that op-ed. I think that is important for us to get into.

Let me start, Ms. Leverett, by asking you, on page 6 of your testimony, you give a little bit of history, you go from page 5 to 6,

which I thought was fascinating, of all the opportunities that you

experienced in your own life of ways that we might have reached

out or accepted a hand that was reached out to us on that. On page

6, the one that I think strikes us today, given what is going on in

Pakistan, as it impacts Afghanistan, you say that in December

2001, Tehran agreed to keep Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, the brutal proTaliban warlord, from returning to Afghanistan to lead jihadist resistance, so long as the Bush administration did not criticize it for

harboring terrorists.

But in his January 2002 State of the Union address, President

Bush did just that in labeling Iran part of the axis of evil.

Unsurprisingly, Hekmatyar managed to leave Iran in short order

after the speech. I would just make note that Mr. Hekmatyar is

now giving us conniption fits in what he is doing in Afghanistan,

and he is a very serious player in Pakistan and Afghanistan right

now.

Can you expand on those lists of things that you think were opportunities and the importance that they play? Tell us, I don’t

think you fleshed out, had the opportunity or time to tell us some

of the other things that were possible with the Iranians, give a list

of individuals who were associated with al Qaeda and so on.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. That was an

important moment. Gulbuddin Hekmatyar is and was a vicious,

brutal warlord, anti-American but also anti-Taliban. And because

he had been anti-Taliban, he had been allowed to have refuge in

Iran. But the Iranians were never comfortable with his presence

there, and did assure us that they would prevent him from going

back to Afghanistan, as long as we didn’t accuse Iran of harboring

terrorists. Because he certainly would be considered one.

That was a serious miscalculation on our part, in my view. The

Iranians not only seemed interested and willing to cooperate and

coordinate with us with the likes of Hekmatyar, but other people

that were seeking to come into Iran. The border between Iran and

Afghanistan, or the triangular area between Iran, Afghanistan and

Pakistan is porous, it is infested with criminal gangs, drug traffickers, all sorts of terrorists and spies from the various countries. It

is a pretty lawless area. Iran frequently told us that it was difficult

for them to patrol that area, but that in the interest of working

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with us and in support of the United States after the 9/11 attacks,

they would do what they could to patrol that border.

And in February 2002, the then-Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran

presented the U.N. Secretary General with copies of 200 passports

of suspected al Qaeda suspects that had come into Iran, that Iran

had picked up and deported. Iran was interested in talking to whoever would talk to them about others that had come into Iran but

that Iran did not have a relationship with the country of origin for

some of those terrorists. Let me give you an example, more of a

theoretical example here, that Iran and Egypt don’t have diplomatic relations, and they don’t have intelligence cooperation or any

kind of contacts in that regard and certainly didn’t then.

Many of these, or some of these, people could have been from

Egypt, and Iran did not have a way to deport them to Egypt. But

they did deport others: the Saudi foreign minister and interior minister came out in June 2002 and publicly said that Iran had deported suspected al Qaeda suspects of Saudi origin to Saudi Arabia.

So there is also public documentation of those.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Ambassador, on page 5 of your testimony that you didn’t have a

chance to speak to orally, you tell, I think, of an interesting meeting. You had a conversation with Secretary Powell about your experiences and the overtures made through you. Secretary Powell suggested you bring that to then-National Security Advisor Rice, who

then held a meeting with you, Secretary Powell, National Security

Advisor Rice and Secretary Rumsfeld. Would you go into that a little bit in detail?

Ambassador DOBBINS. I was asked to recount my conversations

with the Iranians, which I did very much along the lines that I

have recounted them here, their offer to participate in an American-led program to train and equip the new Afghan army, clearly

under an overall American umbrella. After a few minutes of silence

at the end of my presentation, nobody took up the issue. And as

far as I know, the Iranians never received a response.

Mr. TIERNEY. Go ahead, Ms. Leverett.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. I just wanted to come back again to the

issue of al Qaeda. Because I think in particular Dr. Maloney has

testified that she thinks that the continuation of the dialog of Afghanistan to expand into other areas would have been useful. The

al Qaeda issue is critical in that regard. The Iranians did do a lot

on the al Qaeda issue, they did deport, or they presented evidence

of deporting hundreds, 200 al Qaeda operatives. We then had the

public confirmation from other countries like the Saudis. But we

did claim that there were a handful of al Qaeda operatives that

were still in Iran. And we made that a test of the dialog, for it to

continue and for it to move into cooperation and coordination on

Iraq.

Whether or not the Iranians could or didn’t want to meet that

test is an open question. First they said that they couldn’t meet

that test, because as I laid out, this area was not only porous,

criminals, drug traffickers, anti-Iranian government elements in

this area, but they said that it was hard for them to track down

really a lot of people in that area, and they needed help from us.

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They needed more information from us, any information from us

that was not forthcoming from our side.

We took it as a test. If they were really serious, they would send

in whoever they needed to send in to ferret out those guys and

hand it over.

My view was that we should have, and we could have, provided

some information to them, or whatever they needed to make them

successful in fighting al Qaeda. But instead, we decided to turn it

into a test, and that is the problem with pursuing this kind of tactical operation on very narrow issues, that you can get bogged

down, as every instance has, since the Reagan administration,

every one of these Presidents has tried an opening, has tried tactical cooperation and has gotten bogged down on an important

issue. Here the dialog was at an impasse. We could not get past

the issue of whether or not Iran was just unwilling or unable to

hand over the remaining al Qaeda operatives.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. Platts.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I thank all the witnesses

for being here and participating in this important hearing, and

thank the chairman for continuing the process of reviewing our Nation’s best approach with Iran.

I want to start with a question that we talked about in our hearing last week regarding the designation of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group and the Senate vote. I think I am

correct in saying, Dr. Leverett and Ms. Mann Leverett, that you

both believe that would be, is an error for us to do so. Is that correct?

Mr. LEVERETT. I certainly think it is counter-productive as a

matter of policy. It is not going to accomplish anything constructive

for U.S. interests. I think it will make it harder down the road to

engage Iran seriously. The Revolutionary Guard is roughly

125,000, 130,000 people. If you count their families you are probably easily talking more than a half a million people. It is in many

ways fairly broadly representative of Iranian society. Singling them

out for this kind of treatment is not going to make it easier for the

United States to engage Iran.

Mr. PLATTS. So it is not that you don’t think they are a terrorist

group to meet the definition, but how it impacts our broader negotiations with Iran, is that accurate?

Mr. LEVERETT. That is right. I think in too many instances, we

impose unilateral sanctions on Iran, not because it is actually going

to help us achieve some policy objective, but because it makes us

feel good to do that. There is no evidence that these kinds of unilateral designations will do anything to advance our policy agenda toward Iran.

Mr. PLATTS. Does that apply then to other terrorist organizations

around the world, or other nations that are sponsoring terrorism,

that it is meaningless and actually hurts our interest to properly

designate an entity that is engaged in supporting terrorism?

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Let me say, I think it is analogous in some

ways to the decision to disband the Iraqi military after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In this situation, you are talking about

at least 125,000 armed, trained, well-funded people in Iran, and

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their extended families, who are dependent upon these Rev Guard

members for their entire livelihood. We want something from them.

They are not like al Qaeda that we don’t want something from. We

want something from the Rev Guard. We want them to deliver in

Iraq so that our soldiers are protected and so that we can succeed

in Iraq. We want them to deliver on the nuclear issue, to be able

to come clean and at least have that program fully monitored, if

not disbanded. We want them to deliver in terms of their support

or their connections to Hamas and the Islamic jihad. We actually

want something from them.

So it is analogous to disbanding the Iraqi military under Saddam

Hussein. I wouldn’t have said, I don’t think many people would

have said, that these are nice people or good people. But we needed

that military force in Iraq after 2003, just like we are going to need

to work with the Revolutionary Guard if there is going to be any

kind of resolution to our disputes with Iran.

Mr. PLATTS. But there certainly—I am trying to get what approach we should take of when we should designate an entity a terrorist group, when we shouldn’t. And there are others that we want

something from in the sense of changing their actions to improve

peace in a region or directly with us that are either sponsoring terrorism, or again, terrorist organizations themselves. It seems that

we should not designate anyone a terrorist group or a terror-sponsoring nation, because that may make us feel good, in your words,

but it is not going to help us achieve a broader good.

Mr. LEVERETT. There may be practical reasons to designate nonstate organizations as terrorist organizations in order to help with

various kinds of enforcement efforts against them. I would say, in

terms of the state-sponsored designation, I can’t think of a single

instance in which designating a state as a state sponsor of terrorism has actually helped to get that state out of the terrorism business except possibly in the case of Libya, where we were prepared

to put it on the table that if you were willing to get yourself out

of the terrorism business, this designation could be removed. We

have never made that kind of offer to the Islamic Republic of Iran.

We have never made it to Syria. It is hard to see what that designation is actually accomplishing in terms of advancing American

interests.

In the case of the Rev Guard designation, I would suggest this

is the first time that we have designated part of a sovereign government not just as a sponsor of terrorism, but actually as a designated global terrorist. If you believe that is going to advance our

agenda, that is fine.

Mr. PLATTS. And I don’t mean to cut you off, because we are

given 5 minutes, Mr. Chairman, can Mr. Haas respond to that

same question? If that is OK. Thank you.

Mr. HAAS. We have been, through the State Department, designating state sponsors of terrorism for quite some number of

years. I think there is a certain value in clarity. I think it is important that the State Department tells the American people who is

doing what around the world. It is the case that the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is an arm of the Iranian government. It is

at this very moment supplying the weaponry that is killing our soldiers in Iraq.

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To the extent that we have an ability, through designation and

then followup steps to put pressure on the IRGC and try to convince them to move in a different direction, I think that is something that we should try. I think the problem, frankly, with a lot

of what we have tried to do is that we have had, as I think Ms.

Maloney said before, a kind of disjointed effort where we have been

only partially serious when we have tried to do something. We

have moved through pressure to diplomacy to pressure to diplomacy.

But I must say, I am, No. 1, not morally offended by the idea

of designating states or groups that do things and clarify what it

is they do. And I am not terribly sympathetic with the idea that

this Corps of 125,000 people, which is right now engaged in killing

American soldiers, should somehow take a back seat to the fact

that if we designate them, they won’t be able to feed their families.

Mr. TIERNEY. I don’t think that was an acceptable response, what

he said about feeding their families or whatever, but that is just

one person’s impression on that.

Mr. PLATTS. Well, Mr. Chairman, it was repeated by both witnesses who answered that was part of the reason we shouldn’t, the

impact on the families that provide their total livelihood——

Mr. LEVERETT. The issue is what will work and what won’t.

Mr. TIERNEY. I am sorry, Dr. Leverett, what?

Mr. LEVERETT. The issue was not one of feeding families. The

issue is, what is the impact of this designation going to be inside

Iran and is this going to increase the chances that we will be able

to advance our policy agenda, or will it in fact decrease the chances

that we can advance our policy agenda. It is not about whether this

is morally justified or not. The issue is what is going to work for

American interests.

Mr. TIERNEY. Ambassador.

Ambassador DOBBINS. If the Revolutionary Guard were a rogue

force that you wanted to single out, if it was a rogue force that was

acting independently, then there would be a logic to singling them

out, because otherwise they wouldn’t be covered. We have already

singled out Iran. The Revolutionary Guard is acting, not as a rogue

force, but as an instrument of Iran.

Mr. PLATTS. Not according to the government of Iran. They are

not acknowledging that they are part of their government in the

terrorist-supporting activities.

Ambassador DOBBINS. But they are also arguing that they are

not doing it. So I mean, I think that Iran is not trying to disassociate itself from the Revolutionary Guard. They may be trying to

disassociate the Revolutionary Guard from terrorism.

So the issue of whether you need to go beyond designating Iran

and also designate a subordinate element of Iran really is a pragmatic one. You have solved your moral problem, you have designated the terrorists. It is the state of Iran. Do you want to go beyond that and sanction a particular component of that government

in an effort to affect its policy?

So it is a question of, do you think you are going to get less terrorism or more terrorism as a result of this. Everybody can make

their own judgment. As another witness has noted, we are at the

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end of 28 years of a policy of sanctions and no or little communication. That particular policy mix hasn’t been working very well.

Mr. PLATTS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Yarmuth is recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thanks, Mr. Chairman, and thanks to all the witnesses.

I mentioned the story in Esquire that featured the two of you

last week, so I am very pleased that you are here today.

Something has been troubling me ever since reading the story in

Esquire, and I hope somebody can explain this to me. If we are engaged in back-channel communications with a company that we are

publicly saying we are not talking to, what is the purpose of saying

publicly that we are not talking to them if they know that we are

actually behind the scenes talking to them? Who is that aimed at?

Ambassador DOBBINS. In some cases, it can be designed to protect the government. In other words, there have been occasions on

which the Iranians wanted to talk to us, but weren’t prepared to

admit that they were talking to us because of their own domestic

opinion. So there have been occasions in which this has been kept

quiet in deference to their public opinion, rather than ours. I suspect mostly it has been mutual, though, that is, communication has

been controversial in both societies, and therefore both governments had some interest in keeping it out of the newspapers.

Mr. YARMUTH. I guess I would followup, Ms. Leverett, if you are

going to answer this, in this particular case, what would have been

our Government’s purpose in doing that, in maintaining that public

posture?

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. First of all, not all the communication was

back-channeled. The cooperation and the coordination on Afghanistan, particularly in the Six Plus Two process was open, was public, was constructive. The ministers met, Secretary Powell met with

Foreign Minister Harzai as part of the Six Plus Two in November,

I think it was November 10, 2001. We were actually, we were in

the basement, in a meeting room in the basement of the United

Nations when one of, an American airline actually crashed in

Queens and there was a lockdown at the U.N.

The Pakistani minister was late, he didn’t get there, the building

was locked down. We were there with Foreign Minister Harzai,

Secretary Powell, Secretary General Annan, Barheimi was there as

special representative, Jim Dobbins was there, others were there.

Harzai, the Foreign Minister of Iran at the time, had his prepared

remarks, but then he hand-wrote into his prepared remarks that

he was horrified by what could be yet another attack on the United

States and that Iran stood with the American people against this

kind of terrorism. One of his aides brought it to me and I had it

passed to Powell.

So people saw that. These were things that were open and public. The meetings that we would have with the Iranians in Paris

and Geneva were not secret. They weren’t advertised, but they

weren’t secret. Then in terms of why that would be the case, I

think that Jim is absolutely correct, that there are a lot of hesitations and divisions on the Iranian side.

But I think even more importantly, they are because of divisions

and consternation that would be caused here in the United States.

74

First and foremost, from what I experienced were divisions within

the administration, I think that people at the State Department

were much more willing and interested in having clear, transparent talks with the Iranians. But people at the Pentagon and in

the Vice President’s office were absolutely against it. They thought

that even the idea of talks, whether they be back-channel or public,

would be some sort of reward for the Islamic Republic, and would

put an imprimatur on the Islamic Republic that it was somehow

legitimate, that the United States would legitimate this Republic

for another generation, and that itself was not moral. I was in the

room when the President said that as well, that kind of, that the

United States could put that kind of imprimatur on the Islamic Republic and legitimate it. That was not something he was prepared

to do publicly.

But then even a little bit more broadly, I think the biggest thing

was within the administration, the deep, deep divisions within the

administration. But then I think this administration probably, like

other administrations that I document in my testimony, this isn’t

the first time. The Clinton administration had talks also with the

Iranians over arming the Bosnian Muslims to prevent ethnic

cleansing there.

Similarly, those talks were cutoff when the presumptive candidate Dole in 1996 learned of them and was going to embarrass

the administration. We have had this happen, Iran Contras is a famous example of that. Immediately, whenever there is any idea

that it could be, the American public could know that the United

States may want to engage Iran, the United States cuts those talks

off. There is, I think, an idea that within the U.S. body politic, they

would not be sustainable. So for very political and in my view crass

reasons, every administration, Reagan, Clinton, George H.W. and

this George W. Bush have cutoff talks with Iran that could have

been productive because of both political reasons here and because

there is no broader strategic context to have the talks.

I think for most people to be having talks with Iran or with any

group that is actually against U.S. interests, if you are having

those talks and then there is a bombing, like there was on May 12,

2003 in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, and that could somehow be connected to Iran, and we are sitting with them at a table, that is seen

as unsavory. You need to have, as Flynt has laid out, the grand

bargain in order to have these kind of narrow tactical talks. It is

very difficult to be sitting and talking with the Iranians or whoever

else it is when there are bombings going on at other places and

people could be, rightly or wrongly, accusing the Iranians of being

behind those bombings. We need to have the strategic context

where we are also talking about terrorism, we are also talking

about the nuclear issue, other issues, so that in each one of these

narrow dialogs, they are protected from the next suicide bomber

who is going to literally drive a truck through those talks.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Ms. Leverett.

Mr. Lynch you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. LYNCH. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to thank you and

the ranking member for putting this together. I want to thank our

witnesses for helping the committee out with this problem.

75

We talked about, I know a number of you mentioned the opportunity to use sanctions might be an alternative to something more

serious. I wanted to talk about that. There were some remarks in

today’s testimony that suggest that the Oil for Food program,

which was a sanction, a limited sanction, was a workable model.

But to be honest with you, from my standpoint, I know that Saddam ended up with about $8 billion that he should not have had

under that sanction.

Looking at Iran, looking at the fact that I think there are 1,700

German companies in there doing business right now, Italy is its

third largest trading partner, India has interests there, there are

a whole lot of folks that rely heavily on Iranian oil and have other

relationships there. The effectiveness of any sanction program will

depend on the willingness of our international partners to help us

to implement that. I just have great doubt of the effectiveness of

a sanction program. I have noted it in several versions of the testimony here today, so I just want to throw that out there. Tell me

I am wrong and tell me how we can actually put in an effective

program of sanctions that might help bring them to the table.

Mr. LEVERETT. Mr. Lynch, I think your skepticism is very wellfounded. As I suggested earlier, I don’t think U.S. unilateral sanctions have accomplished anything of strategic significance in regard

to Iran, and that would include the more recent rounds of unilateral financial sanctions that have been imposed. I think frankly,

the multilateral sanctions that have been imposed through the Security Council so far have also not had any kind of strategic impact

on Iranian decisionmaking.

I think you are exactly right, the chances of our managing to

muster enough international support for a multilateral sanctions

which might in theory put that kind of pressure on the Iranian regime, frankly, I think the 12th Mahdi is more likely to return than

for us to get that kind of support for multilateral measures. We

have to face the reality that there have been some very, very important changes and structural shifts in global energy markets.

Iran has the second largest proven reserves of conventional crude

oil in the world, it has the second largest proven reserves of natural gas in the world. U.S. policy at this point is that oil and gas

should stay in the ground until we, for reasons that will have nothing to do with the global energy balance, decide it is OK to bring

it out. In this day and age, that position is simply not sustainable.

It means that if we think either unilateral or multilateral sanctions

will solve this problem for us, we are dreaming.

Ambassador DOBBINS. Could I talk a little bit about that, Mr.

Lynch?

Mr. LYNCH. Certainly.

Ambassador DOBBINS. I think the record of sanctions is a little

better than Flynt or you have suggested. First of all, the sanctions

on Iraq were remarkably effective, probably the most stringent and

effective sanctions regime in history, as the administration’s own

reports done after the invasion have demonstrated. They meant

that the Iraqi regime could not reconstitute its WMD programs.

They meant that its conventional military became weaker year

after year.

76

Eight billion dollars in assets is certainly a problem. But Iraq ex- ports about $60 billion a year worth of oil, and you had 10 years

worth of sanctions. That is $600 billion of which he got $8 million

and he didn’t get $592 billion. So with oil at $100 a barrel, Iran

is going to have a significant degree of latitude. But it is compared

to what? In the absence of sanctions, Iran would be enjoying a

much higher level of prosperity.

Mr. LYNCH. Ambassador, you have made a fair point. I just don’t

want it to gobble up all my time. I have one other question, if I

may. That is this, well, there are important differences. We went

through Iraq pretty thoroughly during the Gulf war. We haven’t

been through Iran. So I don’t think sanctions would work effectively in Iran.

But let me just ask you this. A number of you said about the delicacy of negotiating or even opening a dialog with Iran or moderate

elements within Iran. It is a sensitive issue. We have been approached, members of this committee have been approached by

members of the Bundestag and some other groups that say, let’s

start dialog at some level. From your own experience, how the heck

does that happen? How do we have a quarantine sort of——

Mr. TIERNEY. Excuse me, which one of the panelists would you

like to answer that, because we really——

Mr. LYNCH. Ambassador Dobbins——

Mr. TIERNEY. Ambassador Dobbins, could you respond to that?

Mr. LYNCH. Ms. Leverett actually addressed this point in her remarks, so why don’t I ask her. How does that happen, if we are

trying to be brought into this dialog, how does that happen?

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Basically an inter-parliamentarian dialog,

essentially, between the House and Senate, House or Senate Members and Iranian parliamentarians. Senator Biden actually proposed that in, I think it was the spring of 2002, and brought it to

the White House to see whether he could get some support for it

or permission for it or something like that. There was the kind of,

by this point, it is probably well known, some ideological opposition

in some quarters to that kind of dialog. Then there was just the

kind of logistical idea, how could this work, how could it work with

visas, how could it work with herding cats, in a sense, was the idea

on both sides.

Between 2002 and 2004, I thought it was an incredibly important

idea, and I advocated for it within the White House. At that time,

actually starting in the year 2000, the Iranian Parliament, between

2000 and 2004, had the freest, most contested elections that it has

had in some time. The parliament had a significant number of

reformists in it, particularly the committee that dealt with foreign

affairs and national security issues was a very robust, vigorous

committee.

Let me give you an example. If you recall, in January 2002, right

before the President’s State of the Union, where he designated Iran

as part of the axis of evil, there was an incident called the Karin

A shipment, probably about 50 tons of weapons that were said to

have shipped from Iran going toward Gaza and headed toward Yasser Arafat. It was a little bit strange, because the Iranians had

never supported Yasser Arafat. They have always supported

Hamas or PIJ or other Islamist organizations, not Arafat himself.

77

But still, this was out there, and the President and Secretary of

Defense were making public statements about how terrible it was

that Iran would be arming, would be trying to get this type of

weaponry to Arafat.

This committee in the Iranian parliament looked into this, and

they chose to investigate. There were press items at the time coming out of Iran that the committee had hearings, questioned people.

One of their findings was that the ports on the coast or Iran were

not all that well managed, were not all that well regulated, and

perhaps this ship could have left from Iranian waters, even though

the Iranian government actually denied that it authorized the shipment. Now, dealing with Iran, this is a really important issue. You

have the government of Iran, officials saying we didn’t authorize it,

it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. And we have the same situation

today with Iraq, whether they are authorizing IEDs to go into Iraq

or not, these weapons are getting there. So this is an important

issue.

The parliament and parliamentarians looked into it, and they

made their recommendations of perhaps how they could deal with

it. It would have been very useful for members of this committee

and others to be able to meet with those Iranians and give them

the support they needed to take those ideas further. Unfortunately,

the new parliament in Iran is not nearly as forward-leaning. But

I would still say that as you all know, from being elected, you have

constituents at home, I would say that most Iranians probably do

not want their country to be attacked. They do not want to have

a bad relationship with the United States. It would be something

worth pursuing. It is a difficult environment, but I would pursue

it if you can.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Leverett.

Mr. Shays, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. SHAYS. I thank you all for being here. I was on the floor because of the debate on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act.

This is a hugely important issue. I sense that we have four people who see one way and one person who sees it a different way

who happened to work with Vice President Gore, which makes it

all the more interesting. I want to say first, it is a stunning thing

that a country would take and seize diplomats and hold them for

444 days. That is a stain on Iran that is palpable. Even in times

of war, you exchange your diplomats. And it is palpable to me that

Iran basically funds or trains Hamas, funds Hizballah and has

been incredibly active in Iraq killing American soldiers.

So I believe in dialog, but I don’t want to look like fools in the

process. I don’t want us to have a view that says the more you attack us and the more you hurt us, the more we want to talk to you.

It seems like a strange incentive.

But at the same time, I happen to think there should be embassies at every country. There should have been in Iraq. We should

have one in Cuba, we should have one in North Korea and we

should have one in Iran. I believe that very strongly.

What I would like to know is, I would like a simple answer from

each of you: do you believe, and I will start with you, Ambassador,

that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons?

78

Ambassador DOBBINS. I believe Iran is seeking to develop the capability to develop nuclear weapons, whether they have made a decision to go beyond——

Mr. SHAYS. But the point is, once they have done the capability,

they could do it in months if they had the capability.

Ambassador DOBBINS. They would be at the position to——

Mr. SHAYS. So you believe they want to develop the capability for

nuclear weapons. I just want to know. I want to know where you

are coming from.

Ms. Leverett.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. I would agree with Jim Dobbins. I do think

they are trying to have a breakout capability. I would point out——

Mr. SHAYS. I only have a few minutes and you have had plenty

of time to talk. Dr. Leverett.

Mr. LEVERETT. I would agree with Jim Dobbins and my wife.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you. Mr. Haas.

Mr. HAAS. Well, I absolutely agree, and you may have been out

of the room before when I mentioned this, but Ahmadinejad just

announced that he has 3,000 centrifuges fully working in Natants,

and if those are working and running——

Mr. SHAYS. See, I don’t really believe him.

Mr. HAAS. Well, that is fine, but the IAEA also estimated that

he would have about 3,000 around this time of year.

Mr. SHAYS. But the bottom line is, you believe he is wanting the

capability for nuclear weapons, right?

Mr. HAAS. Not just him. I think the upper echelon of the government of Tehran shares that hope.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Maloney.

Ms. MALONEY. Yes, I would agree with all of my fellow panelists

that Iran is seeking capability for nuclear weapons. Whether they

have made the decision to weaponize at this stage I think remains

an open question.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me start with you. Do you believe that Iran is

providing IEDs to militia and al Qaeda in Iraq?

Ms. MALONEY. I believe that Iran is supporting Shia and other

militias in Iraq with munitions as well as financial support.

Mr. SHAYS. Not IEDs?

Ms. MALONEY. Munitions as well as financial support, yes.

Mr. SHAYS. Mr. Haas.

Mr. HAAS. All sorts of weaponry and funds as well, I agree.

Mr. SHAYS. Dr. Leverett.

Mr. LEVERETT. Iran has been supporting Shia militia groups in

Iraq for more than 20 years. I am not surprised they are continuing to do it.

Mr. SHAYS. Is the answer yes?

Mr. LEVERETT. Whether or not it is specifically IEDs, I have seen

no public evidence of that.

Mr. SHAYS. You have seen no evidence that the weapons that we

have taken apart are not connected? You need to be, it seems to

me, as candid with me as you are about things you want to be candid about. You do not believe that Iran has provided IEDs to various elements with Iraq? You do not believe that?

79

Mr. LEVERETT. I said that Iran has clearly provided munitions

and other kinds of support to Shia militia groups. Whether that extends specifically to IEDs, I don’t——

Mr. SHAYS. So you don’t know if they have provided IEDs?

Mr. LEVERETT. I have not seen what I consider persuasive——

Mr. SHAYS. Do you believe they have or not?

Mr. LEVERETT. It is entirely possible.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you believe they have or not? I want to know

what you believe. You either believe they have or you believe they

haven’t. Which is it?

Mr. LEVERETT. I am saying I don’t know whether they have provided IEDs specifically.

Mr. SHAYS. OK. What do you think, Ms. Leverett?

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. I also don’t know. I know the history or the

20 years support. So I wouldn’t be surprised, but I don’t know.

Mr. SHAYS. What do you think, Ambassador?

Ambassador DOBBINS. I think they have. I think it is a small minority of the IEDs we have encountered. But some of the more sophisticated ones——

Mr. SHAYS. Let me explain to you why it wouldn’t be the small.

There are two types basically. There’s just the munitions that they

grab up and explode, and then there are munitions, IEDs that they

can direct and they are extraordinarily sophisticated and they are

made by the Iranians. There is no question in the mind of anyone

I have spoken with who cares to know it that they have provided

it.

Ambassador DOBBINS. I am not arguing that.

Mr. SHAYS. It is not an argument that we shouldn’t have dialog.

Ambassador DOBBINS. Right.

Mr. SHAYS. But it is surprising to me, both Mr. and Ms. Leverett,

that you do not have a sense of what they have done and yet you

are real experts on Iran. I would think you would care to know. I

would think you would seek out to know and it is surprising to me

that you don’t know.

Now, let me ask you another question. Your basic point is that,

with you, Ms. Leverett, that under the Bush administration we

missed opportunities. And you said, well, other administrations

have as well. Tell me an opportunity the Reagan administration

missed, tell me an opportunity the Bush administration, the first,

tell me an opportunity the first Clinton administration missed.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Sir, I wouldn’t necessarily characterize

them as opportunities missed. I think that each administration did

look for and participate in an opening, trying to have an opening

with Iran. Of course, during the Reagan administration, it is well

known what came to pass in the Iran Contra scandal. There of

course were openings, there were talks, there was a visit to Tehran

and there was the sale of missiles to Tehran in order to divert

those proceeds to the contras in contravention of Congress. That

was during the Reagan administration.

During the first Bush administration, George H.W. Bush, there

were contacts in order to get U.S. hostages released from Lebanon.

There was a pledge by President Bush at the time that goodwill

would beget goodwill. One of the Iranians that I was charged with

talking with as part of the dialog under this Bush administration

80

had a very strong memory of that and had felt that Iran had done

what was asked of it and did not receive any reciprocal moves in

return from the first Bush administration.

During the Clinton administration, another one of my interlocutors that I was charged with meeting during this Bush administration was a high-ranking Iranian official serving in the Balkans. He

said that he had talks with his American counterpart in Bosnia,

and that there was an agreement for Iran to be able to get weapons

to the Bosnian Muslims to avert further ethnic cleansing. He said

that he thought it was worthwhile to have talked to the Americans

and to have gotten those weapons to the Bosnian Muslims, but that

their talks, that effort was cutoff precipitously in 1996. He took a

lesson from that it was hard to deal with the United States. That

was the Clinton administration.

Then under this administration——

Mr. SHAYS. Well, I think you were clear, and I am not disagreeing with your points. I wrote down ‘‘crazy.’’ I think you saw opportunities that this administration could have seized. I have seen the

same thing with Syria. In dialogs that I have had with Syria, it has

been a bipartisan kind of craziness, in my judgment, that I think

you are very legitimate in sharing with us. The challenge I have

is that as we keep waiting to have dialog and things get worse, it

almost is a perverse incentive. The more you do, the more terrible

things you do to us, the more we should be paying attention to you,

and so we are going to start to.

What I sense with this administration, when it was with Syria,

they missed an opportunity when there was the opportunity for dialog, and then Syria started to do some things that really were outrageous, in our judgment. I had the Ambassador come to me and

plead with me to see if we could have some interaction. I said, well,

it is because you are doing things in Iraq. And he said, you know,

tell us whatever we are doing wrong, we will stop. Whatever we

are doing wrong, we will stop. We said, yes, we know three things

you are doing wrong, stop that, we want you to stop the other

seven. The problem is, we give grief about what they do and they

act like we don’t know that they are doing it.

So I mean, what I wrestle with is with this administration having failed to seize the advantage when there was an opportunity

and it was lower level, and now things are hotter, do we then say,

OK, let’s do it because then it seems to me we have just said to

them, the more outrageous you become, the more we are going to

deal with you.

Maybe, Mr. Haas, and I would have others respond to my point.

I wrestle with this.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Can I please, I think it is only fair——

Mr. SHAYS. Hold on 1 second. With all due respect.

Mr. TIERNEY. We will see that you get time.

Mr. SHAYS. I will make sure you get time. But I get to decide

who answers questions. You have answered most to 90 percent of

the questions.

Mr. Haas.

Mr. HAAS. I certainly would not question any of the back and

forth that they have been more involved in than I have. But I

would suggest to you that there is a very big difference between

81

temporary marriages of convenience between enemy states who see

it within their joint interests to do something together at any one

particular moment, like remove the Taliban, for instance, from Afghanistan, clearly in both nation’s interests. And this question of

a grand bargain, where we both are going to set aside all our differences, I differ, I suspect, with my colleagues, because I go back

to those more basic questions of the embassy seizure, the Hizballah

bombing of Marine barracks, sanctioned by Iran, Kobar Towers,

and things going all the way up to the present with the weapons

and the money in Afghanistan.

Mr. SHAYS. But the question that arises, had we jumped in sooner, would those further things have happened? Could we have done

something to change the direction of this country?

Mr. HAAS. I believe that the Iranians have taken a series of messages from us that have been unhelpful, not responding as strongly

as we might have with regard to the embassy takeover, certainly

our response to the Marine barracks bombing, where we redeployed

out of Beirut was a signal to the Iranians. I tend to agree with you,

I think we are showing great tolerance, although some of the rhetoric has changed, we are showing great tolerance to what the Revolutionary Guard, and I suspect with the approval of the highest

level of the government is doing to our troops in Iraq.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. I do want Mr. Welch to get a chance

to ask his questions, Mr. Leverett and Ms. Leverett, so would that

be fine with you, Mr. Shays? They will respond but then we will

move to Mr. Welch.

Mr. SHAYS. Yes. I would like for Dr. Maloney to respond as well.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Leverett.

Mr. LEVERETT. I would like to just ask a question. Let’s assume

that in fact, everything that is claimed by some is true about the

supply of IEDs by Iran to Shia militia groups in Iraq. Let’s assume

that is true.

Mr. SHAYS. I don’t have to assume it. I have seen them.

Mr. LEVERETT. Fine. Then in 1972, when President Nixon made

his trip to China, people like Senator Webb in the other House

have said that at that time China was supplying weapons to the

Viet Cong and to the North Vietnamese army, and that Senator

Webb and his comrades were being shot at, hurt and killed by that

weaponry. Was President Nixon wrong to go to Beijing under those

circumstances?

Mr. SHAYS. No, but he wouldn’t have denied that they were doing

it. And you would have more credibility with me, both of you, if you

had said, of course they are doing that, but we need to deal with

it in a different way. That is where you would have had more credibility.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Shays, I am just going to interject for a second.

In the hopes of helping us all out here, with respect to that issue,

I have somewhat of an advantage, from serving on the Intelligence

Committee as well, things that I can’t talk about directly. But what

I will recommend to you with respect to the certainty or uncertainty of whether or not those IEDs, where they are manufactured,

where they are delivered and who is in charge of sending them out,

delivering them, I suggest you and I jointly send a letter to

CENTCOM at the Department of Defense asking which U.S. casVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:51 Jul 08, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00085 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\50111.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ualties are from IEDs linked to Iran to determine whether or not

they actually know.

Mr. SHAYS. And Iraqi——

Mr. TIERNEY. Exactly. But I think it would be instructive and

helpful to you on that particular issue, and somewhat I think those

questions do exist. I think it is important for everybody to know

that.

Ms. Leverett.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. Thank you. I want to take issue with the

idea that I wouldn’t care to know. I think that is unfair. I do care

to know, I do read and study and watch this very closely. General

Peter Pace, for example, someone who I have worked with at the

White House, who I have enormous respect for, publicly came out

and questioned the administration’s case when it was first laid out.

I read that and I took it seriously.

People should have had more skepticism as well before we went

into Iraq on the issues of whether there were WMD, a nuclear

weapons program in Iraq. I don’t think it is worthwhile to jump to

judgment on something that I don’t know, but I don’t think it is

right to say something about me not caring to know. I certainly do

care to know. I take it seriously. Any American soldier who has lost

his life because of anything that has to do with Iran I think is

wrong.

My policy prescription may or may not be similar to yours, but

it is not fair or right to say I don’t care.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough.

Mr. TIERNEY. Mr. Welch, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. WELCH. Thank you very much.

I am just reacting to the good grilling that my friend from Connecticut gave everybody and thinking about what your answers

would have been in March 2003 when the administration assured

us with 100 percent certainty that there were weapons of mass destruction and that was a known fact. So I for one, anyway, appreciate the old Reagan maxim of ‘‘trust but verify.’’

Mr. Haas, I am interested in this question, whether you agree

with Dr. Maloney, which I understood your testimony, Dr.

Maloney, was that there is an option of dealing with the nuclear

proliferation threat in Iran, serious threat, the military force is not

a practical option.

Mr. HAAS. I am not a military expert by any stretch of the imagination. But I would suggest that it does depend on what it is you

are trying to accomplish through a military option. If I could just

stipulate that I am not advocating a military option, if I could

please stipulate that, because I know that is a subject of some sensitivity for everyone involved in this debate. I would suggest to you

that I don’t know that there is a huge amount of doubt that the

United States alone or working on concert with its allies could slow

the nuclear program down, could complicate the nuclear program

in Iran. I don’t know that there is great doubt about that.

Now, that leads into questions of regime change, which is not

anything that I am advocating. I do think at the end of the day,

we are going to have to decide as a country, hopefully after we try

all sorts of other things more seriously than we have tried them,

like sanctions and public diplomacy and outreach and encourageVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:51 Jul 08, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00086 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\50111.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ment of democratic change, we are going to have to decide as a

country whether it is more dangerous to acquiesce to an Iran with

nuclear weapons or it is more dangerous to actually try to slow or

end that program. That is really for you to decide. I do have a perspective. I don’t know that I know of anything more dangerous

than I can envision as this regime with nuclear weapons.

Mr. WELCH. So the unanswered question, because you say you

don’t have enough information, is whether the use of military, the

military option would be effective?

Mr. HAAS. It would be at least, I am confident that it would be

at least somewhat effective in the sense of slowing the program

down. I do not know that it would eliminate the program.

Mr. WELCH. And what would be the collateral consequences of a

military strike if we were to pursue that as a way of slowing it

down?

Mr. HAAS. There is great debate on what the reaction of the Iranian people would be. They clearly do not——

Mr. WELCH. Here is what I want to ask you. We have a problem,

and that is, nuclear weapons possibly being in the hands of Iran.

That is a threat.

Mr. HAAS. Right.

Mr. WELCH. OK, agreement on that. And this is not a moral or

philosophical or theological question. There is a practical decision

that has to be made where none of the choices that we will make

are particularly good. In this sense, I don’t see there to be a difference in you and Dr. Leverett. You might come down on different

sides of what is ‘‘practical.’’ But everyone up here would prefer to

have a non-nuclear Iran.

There is a significant drumbeat that we use the nuclear option

to slow or stop the threat to the extent it is there. If you make the

decision to move ahead with the military, then you have a responsibility, not you, but all of us, to No. 1, have a very clear and informed conclusion, opinion, really, about will this work. No. 2, what

are the consequences. Obviously, people did not go through that

process in the whole Iraq war. There were collateral consequences

to toppling Saddam that we were not prepared to deal with.

So the question I have is, assuming we did use the military option in some form, and most people are talking about an air strike,

what would be the collateral consequences, those being the reaction

in the Muslim world, the reaction in Iran, the threat to the security

of our troops in Iraq, the intensification of Iran’s support for

Hamas or other third parties that would attack American interests

in other parts of the world? And if you are even, not you individually, but if one is entertaining the military option, I believe you

would agree with me that they have to have answers to those questions. I am asking you for your position.

Mr. HAAS. Certainly. Let me say a few things. First, I would

agree that to the extent that there is any reluctance on the part

of Iran to unleash its terrorist clients in more aggressive ways, I

would have to conclude that reluctance would disappear.

Having said that, with regard to the region, I would like to point

something out. There is great fear throughout that region about

the Iran nuclear program. For many years, those nations in the region assumed that Israel has nuclear weapons. I think there is a

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general assumption that it does, although it has not admitted it.

None of those countries, other than Iraq, had a nuclear program in

the past. Right now, we know that at least 10 nations in that region, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey, have announced that they will have a nuclear program, although they have

said it is for peaceful purposes, but nobody believes it. They are

worried about the Iranians.

I would suggest to you that the reaction in the region may be one

of quiet relief if we slow down that program. Having said that, I

would expect there to be some level of turmoil from the simple fact

that there is military action in that region and it is by the United

States. I would expect there to be some turmoil. But at the end of

the day, Congressman, it is a tradeoff. What is more dangerous,

the turmoil that you create or the regime with nuclear weapons?

I worry, I suppose, a bit about the latter.

Mr. WELCH. Which we all do.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Welch.

Mr. Moran from Virginia, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Tierney.

I would like to focus for the time being on Ambassador Dobbins.

I had to go over and speak on the bill on the floor. Has anybody

grilled the Ambassador yet?

Mr. TIERNEY. He has gotten off pretty easy, but he has had some

good comments to make.

Mr. MORAN. Well, now, it is his turn, then. I know you know, Mr.

Chairman, that Ambassador Dobbins has phenomenal experience,

they send him to just about every troubled area no one else in their

right mind would want to go to: Bosnia, Kosovo, Haiti, Somalia,

you name it. And Afghanistan is one of those. I read the article in

Esquire by Mr. and Mrs. Leverett, I was extraordinarily impressed.

So I don’t know that I need to ask them questions.

But I would like to pursue something with Ambassador Dobbins,

and I am obviously going on here as I am looking for the right

questions. First of all, some yes and no answers would be appropriate. The Northern Alliance were our allies when we went into

Afghanistan, in fact, the leader of the Northern Alliance was the

guy that we were anticipating working with, because he was very

much allied with the United States. Was Iran helping the Northern

Alliance?

Ambassador DOBBINS. Yes.

Mr. MORAN. They were? Did Iran contemplate going to war with

the Afghani Taliban?

Ambassador DOBBINS. At one point, when some of their diplomats were seized and killed.

Mr. MORAN. So they were in the same position as we were, that

the United States was, but before the United States in terms of

recognizing the repressive policies of the Taliban. Did our special

forces work with Iranian troops or agents in Afghanistan in the Afghan war when we went to war with the Taliban?

Ambassador DOBBINS. Not directly that I know of.

Mr. MORAN. Did they coordinate in any way?

Ambassador DOBBINS. I don’t believe that there was good diplomatic coordination. There was some intelligence coordination. I

don’t believe there was any direct military coordination.

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Mr. MORAN. Were they of any consequence in our prevailing in

that war against the Taliban?

Ambassador DOBBINS. I think that their contribution was on the

one hand, having sustained the Northern Alliance for most of a

decade, and continuing to sustain it, to pay it, to train it, to support it during the conflict, including after 9/11, and then directly

on the diplomatic side, in which they did collaborate with us quite

effectively.

Mr. MORAN. Now, after the major hostilities, and obviously they

are still going on, but we needed to put a government together.

Iran knew the language, they knew many of the people. They had

been involved more, they were a neighbor of Afghanistan. Did they

offer to help us put together a stable government that would work

with the United States?

Ambassador DOBBINS. They did, and they brokered some of the

key compromises that led to the success of the Bonn conference

where the Karzai government was selected.

Mr. MORAN. How about putting together the kind of Afghan

army that government that we would want to establish would need

in order to restore order and maintain order?

Ambassador DOBBINS. They offered cooperation, but the United

States didn’t pick up the offer.

Mr. MORAN. What was the form of that cooperation, Ambassador? What did they offer to do for the United States?

Ambassador DOBBINS. They said they were prepared to train and

equip up to 20,000 Afghan recruits under a program to be directed

by the United States.

Mr. MORAN. Did you communicate that to Washington, the decisionmakers in the Bush administration?

Ambassador DOBBINS. Yes.

Mr. MORAN. And what was the response?

Ambassador DOBBINS. There was no interest in picking up the

offer.

Mr. MORAN. I guess you wouldn’t be necessarily one to ask, but

since you are aware of this, which most people don’t seem to be,

would that have made a material difference in terms of the stabilization of Afghanistan?

Ambassador DOBBINS. I think they could have made a contribution. Our own efforts to train the Afghan national army stumbled

rather badly that first year. We had to start all over again a year

later.

But I think that the offer was even more important for its symbolism, for a willingness to come out of the closet and work overtly

with the United States in a practical way on a military to military

level and in a clearly subordinate position.

Mr. MORAN. We went into Afghanistan because al Qaeda attacked us. Did Iran express an interest either by words or by actions in defeating al Qaeda or in showing solidarity with our objectives against al Qaeda?

Ambassador DOBBINS. Yes. They issued supportive statements

after 9/11 and indicated a willingness to cooperate with us, both in

a military campaign and in diplomacy.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Moran.

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Mr. MORAN. Thank you, Mr. Tierney. I have one further question.

Mr. TIERNEY. Go ahead.

Mr. MORAN. Who was aware of the fact that in terms of the decisionmakers, we would recognize who knew that Iran was helping

to restrain al Qaeda, to defeat al Qaeda, really?

Ambassador DOBBINS. I believe the administration as a whole

was aware of that.

Mr. MORAN. When you say the administration, could you name

anybody in particular that you know was briefed on that fact, on

Iran’s positive role in Afghanistan?

Ambassador DOBBINS. All of the NSC principals, Secretaries of

State, Defense, National Security——

Mr. MORAN. Secretary Rumsfeld, Secretary Rice, Secretary Powell?

Ambassador DOBBINS. Yes.

Mr. MORAN. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Moran. Thank you for joining us

today.

Mr. McDermott, you are recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having this

hearing.

In an article on Sunday in the McClatchy Washington Bureau

entitled ‘‘Experts: No Firm Evidence of Iranian Nuclear Weapons,’’

Mr. ElBaradei is quoted as saying, ‘‘I have not received any information that there is concrete activity, active nuclear weapons program going on right now.’’ Now, everyone sort of jumps at that

‘‘right now.’’ The press also has been for the last 3 or 4 months,

6 months maybe, carrying reports of special forces operating inside

of Iran. Do you know about whether that is true, if it is, under

what kind of a finding or what is the basis for us operating in Iran

with any kind of military operation?

Ms. MALONEY. Can I just speak to that, as the person who has

most recently served, at least at the State Department? I think

that is a question that is obviously best asked to the administration and probably in another sort of setting than this one.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Does anybody have anything to say about it?

Mr. LEVERETT. I won’t duck that one, Congressman. I obviously

know nothing by way of classified information on this, or I couldn’t

speak about it in this setting. I, like you, have seen the press reports about U.S. military personnel operating in Afghanistan. It

has long been the approach——

Mr. MCDERMOTT. In Afghanistan or Iran?

Mr. LEVERETT. In Iran, I am sorry, I mis-spoke. In Iran. It was

certainly the policy of the Defense Department under Secretary

Rumsfeld that U.S. military forces could be used for such purposes

without requiring the normal kind of covert action finding which

would under normal circumstances have to be briefed at least to

the oversight committee on the Hill.

Whether that is in fact what is happening in the case of Iran

today I don’t know what the facts are, but it is certainly plausible

to me that U.S. military forces could be operating inside Iran under

the rubric of collecting intelligence or some other similar rubric. It

87

would be the position of the Defense Department, unless policy is

changed, that action would not require a covert action finding.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. And who would make that decision, that it

didn’t require a covert action finding? Would that be the Secretary

or the President?

Mr. LEVERETT. I would assume at a minimum that the theater

commander and the Secretary of Defense would need to sign off on

that. Whether it goes higher, I couldn’t say.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Is there any basis on which they could be in

there without the committees of the Congress, the Intelligence

Committee or whatever, being made aware that they are collecting

data on targets for an air war?

Mr. LEVERETT. I believe that the Defense Department could and

might have made a claim that under those circumstances, collecting intelligence, preparing the battlefield, that covert action findings are not required. Therefore, it wouldn’t have to be briefed to

the oversight committees.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. I ask the question because it is very strange

what is going on in Syria, where there was an attack and the

American Government doesn’t want to say anything and the Syrians don’t want to say anything and the Israelis don’t want to say

anything. But the stories are coming out now that there were in

fact operatives on the ground directing the bombing that occurred

there. Is that a tactic that is used?

Mr. LEVERETT. Certainly my understanding is that for tactical

air operations of that sort, from a military standpoint, the accuracy, the effectiveness of those operations is improved if you can

have on-the-ground spotters. Whether or not that is actually what

happened in the case of the Israeli air raid on the Syrian target,

I couldn’t say. It is because I don’t know.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. So what they do is they put a laser or something, so that laser-guided bombs will come in exactly on the spot

that they want them to?

Mr. LEVERETT. I don’t know precisely what technologies are used.

My understanding is that it increases the accuracy and effectiveness of those kinds of tactical air operations if you can have people

on the ground.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Would you give us, I would like all the panelists, if they will, to give us a percentage on whether there will be

an air attack in the next 9 months. Ambassador.

Ambassador DOBBINS. There is in fact a commercially run pool

on this. [Laughter.]

And it was 38 percent, last week, was what it was running, 38

percent that there would be over the next, I think that was over

the next 12 months.

I would put it a little lower than that, because it seems so obviously counter-productive. But what do I know? I didn’t think they

would be foolish enough to go into Iraq. [Laughter.]

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Ms. Leverett.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. I would put up for a 9-month period, over

a 9-month period, I would put it at about 50 percent, and that

would be based on my analysis that the diplomatic process is collapsing and the President will be faced with a binary choice.

88

Mr. LEVERETT. I would agree with that, over 9 months. I don’t

think it is going to happen tomorrow or next month, but as it continues to play out over a 9-month timeframe, I think the odds will

increase. I would put them at about 50/50.

Mr. MCDERMOTT. Mr. Haas.

Mr. HAAS. I don’t strongly disagree with that. I was going to say,

before they started talking, I was going to say 40 to 50 percent over

the next 9 months or so.

Ms. MALONEY. It is good to be in the position of saying something

controversial on this discussion. I would put it at about 15 to 20

percent. That is based on my experience in the State Department,

working very closely with the Secretary and particularly Under

Secretary Burns on Iran. Obviously that is a biased view, because

of course, the State Department is in the art of diplomacy.

But I would also argue that if you look at the Bush administration’s track record over its now almost two full terms in office,

what you see is an increasing reversal in its positions, particularly

on the nuclear program. So while the negotiations have obviously

gone nowhere, I think it is far more likely that the administration

will seek to find some sort of way, desperate way, to get some sort

of negotiating track underway.

I would also argue that the administration perceives itself to be

far too invested in Iraq and in recent weeks, far too invested in

some sort of prospect of restarting the Israeli-Palestinian peace

process to go the route of bombing, because of the obvious implications it would have for those two efforts. I say all those, having

been someone who in 2002, 2003 was 100 percent sure that the administration would go into Iraq.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. McDermott.

Dr. Maloney, you are the one with the most recent insight into

this administration, you were a policy planning staff member from

2005 right through 2007. So can you tell us what your confidence

level is about the current executive branch policymakers’ understanding of Iran?

Ms. MALONEY. I think that is a perennial issue. Unfortunately,

because of the lack of contacts, because of the lack of an embassy,

we simply have very little ability to understand what is happening

inside the country. Secretary Rice has acknowledged that publicly

in an interview she gave earlier this year where she said, we just

don’t know. It was shocking to me to come in in 2005 and realize

that there was effectively almost no one in the entire State Department building who spoke Persian who worked on Iran. That effectively remains the case.

I would say that one of the positive things that the administration has done is try to build capabilities in this arena. There has

been the establishment of an Office of Iranian Affairs run by competent professionals, Foreign Service officers. And there has been

the establishment of an office out in Dubai, led by people who very

much do understand Iran and have been working on this issue for

quite a long time. That office, unfortunately, described by Under

Secretary Burns at one time as a sort of Riga station, which evoked

a lot of concern among Iranians, is very much intended to serve in

some ways as a shadow embassy. It has political officers, economic

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officers, people who do public diplomacy. The officers stationed

there try as much as possible to meet with Iranians.

So we are operating at a tremendous disadvantage that is really

borne of the lack of contacts and the lack of exposure to Iran. And

frankly, the restrictions on Americans traveling to Iran, which are

really not within the U.S. Government’s purview. I think one of the

unfortunate constraints is the restrictions on dialog that have expanded under this administration. But I think any administration

for the foreseeable future is going to have a long difficulty building

back from this deficit of understanding.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

I just want to ask, I was listening to a little bit of the back and

forth here. Mr. Haas, you indicate that you are not for the military

option on this, that is, you are not recommending people go in and

bomb or have a military option. But it sounds like you are heavily

into the sanctions without discussion mode. I guess if that is the

case, you must be thinking that they are going to lead to some sort

of regime change, and that is your ulterior motive.

I juxtapose that against what I hear from others who don’t discount the sanctions, or at least it seems to me that they don’t discount the sanctions, they see them as an effective tool in our tool

kit. But you say that they must be amongst other things that we

are willing to negotiate about as we try to get some concessions out

of the Iranians.

So I just put that to the panel. You should answer first, sir, because I brought your name up first. But I would like to hear from

the others as well. Because one of our witnesses last week talked

about the importance of Iran to a host of our national security priorities, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, nuclear non-proliferation, right

on down the list.

Mr. HAAS. Well, a few thoughts. First of all, it comes down to

what you fear may happen down the road. So I start from the

premise that what I fear most is this regime with nuclear weapons.

So then dialing back from that, you say, what is it that we can try

that perhaps will avert that situation. And I think that we have

some tools that we have not used as forcefully as we could. They

include carrots and sticks. But I don’t think they are carrots to the

Iranian regime. Because I don’t think we can get a grand bargain

with them. I think they are carrots to the Iranian people where we

do not have the ties and we are not providing the support that we

can.

I would separate, as best we can, the regime from the Iranian

people, and I see sanctions and this more comprehensive strategy

as an alternative to military action and hopefully it will work if we

do it aggressively.

Mr. TIERNEY. Sir, am I correct in characterizing your position

that you would use these tools to effect some sort of regime change

by moving to the people and getting them to toss them off? That

is your end goal of your policy?

Mr. HAAS. Yes, my end goal is to isolate——

Mr. TIERNEY. You don’t want to change behavior of the people

that are in government now, you just want to change the government, and you want to use sanctions and whatever else you have

in your box to do that?

90

Mr. HAAS. If the sanctions were to lead to a situation where the

Iranian people forced behavior change, that would be great.

Mr. TIERNEY. What if they led to a situation where the acting

government now said, we will do a behavior change, we will make

the grand bargain? Is that out of your—will you say no, because

it is you that we don’t like? We are not going to tolerate that, we

just want to get rid of you?

Mr. HAAS. I am skeptical that will come to pass.

Mr. TIERNEY. I know you are, but what if it happens?

Mr. HAAS. Then, fantastic, if it were to come to pass,

obviously——

Mr. TIERNEY. Then you are not that far away from where others

are talking about. They are talking about doing the same thing, of

using these tools to change the behavior.

Mr. HAAS. Mr. Chairman, I am not for regime change for the

sake of regime change.

Mr. TIERNEY. OK, that is not what I am trying to get at.

Mr. HAAS. That is right. I want an end goal. I don’t want this

regime to have nuclear weapons.

Mr. TIERNEY. Right. That is what I was getting at. I have to tell

you, I clearly took your position first to be you just wanted to get

rid of them, because you had this belief that they would never

change. I wanted to know whether or not in fact if they did change

behavior, whether you and those that you associate with and work

with or whatever are still saying, not good enough, we just want

to get rid of you. I think you have clarified that, and I appreciate

it.

Mr. HAAS. OK.

Mr. TIERNEY. The other witnesses may want to make a comment

on that, where we are going with this thing in terms of, I don’t

know that anybody is looking to say that regime change is the idea

here, it is behavior change that we want, and there is a role for

sanctions to be used as part of the tool kit on that? Am I right in

characterizing others’ positions? Ambassador.

Ambassador DOBBINS. We have a diplomatic mission in Havana.

Cuba has a diplomatic mission in Washington. Why are we talking

to Castro and not talking to the Iranian regime? Now, I take Mr.

Shays’ point that there is a certain loss of face involved, and conceding something now that we were unprepared to concede when

they were behaving better. And the lesson I draw from that is,

don’t put yourself in that position to start with. Don’t say, I am

going to hold my breath until you agree with me, because it just

becomes progressively more difficult to sustain. And it is not likely

to make them agree.

I think we need to use the full spectrum of tools available to us.

But I don’t think we can possibly succeed unless we understand

them better, and we are not going to understand them better unless we talk to them.

Mr. TIERNEY. Ms. Leverett.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. I would point out we have had nearly 30

years of sanctions on the Iranian regime. It has not really worked.

It has not been effective to change their behavior. I think part of

the problem is, in my experience with dealing with them, both as

part of the official dialog from 2001 to 2003, and then after I left

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Government and the track two opportunities I have had to see senior Iranians, some senior Iranian officials. The problem with the

continuing ratcheting-up of the sanctions is that I think the Iranians also don’t think that it will be effective, and it cuts to the

core of what they want from us, which is essentially a version of

a security guarantee that we are not going to use force to change

their form of government or borders.

So the continuing ratcheting-up of the sanctions I think undermines precisely the carrot that they want from us. I don’t think

that they are all that excited about WTO accession with a U.S. imprimatur on it, or the delivery of airlines parts or other kind of

small carrots that this administration has been willing to put forward. That is not enough. What they are looking for from us—and

only from us, this is not something they could get from the Europeans—they negotiated with the Europeans on the nuclear issue

for 2 years, the Europeans cannot give the security guarantee that

they are looking for. Only the United States could do that. And the

ratcheting of sanctions, I am not against them per se, but in this

case, it undermines the core need that the Iranians are looking to

have from us.

Mr. TIERNEY. Dr. Leverett, now that we have sanctions, are they

an effective tool in moving forward to the grand bargain or not?

Mr. LEVERETT. No. I don’t think they are an effective tool, neither unilateral sanctions nor multilateral sanctions of the degree

that we would be able to get agreement on is likely to have any

strategic effect on this regime. The only thing that is going to work

is to put an offer in front of the Iranians that will actually address

core interests that matter to them. We have not done that, no administration has ever done that. This administration has refused

to do that.

To document that, I would suggest that you take the incentives

package that this administration signed onto last year with the

other permanent members of the Security Council in German, put

that next to the incentives package that the Europeans on their

own offered to the Iranians a year earlier. The language on economic and technological cooperation is very similar. The big differences are on regional security issues. The Europeans on their

own were prepared to offer all kinds of implicit, explicit security

guarantees for Iran. This administration insisted that those passages in the European draft be taken out before it would sign on.

So Secretary Rice can say the policy is not regime change. But

the actions of this administration indicate to the Iranians that the

policy is in fact regime change, and the President himself has

never been willing to make the statement that Secretary Rice has

made about U.S. policy. The only way out of this is to make the

Iranians an offer that serves their interests but also serves ours.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you. Dr. Maloney, do you want the last word

on that? Then I will go to Mr. Shays.

Ms. MALONEY. I would love it, although I think I have lost track

of exactly what the question is. The effectiveness of sanctions, I

think we have seen over the past 30 years that unilateral sanctions

have only moderate effectiveness. What the administration has

done in recent months through these financial measures can have

some real bite, because it is effectively, forcibly multilateral. BeVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:51 Jul 08, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00095 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\50111.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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cause third country banks need to engage with the U.S. financial

system, therefore they are effectively cooperating and participating

in some of the restrictions on the u-turns that would enable Iran

to do business in U.S. dollars. That is no longer, increasingly no

longer the case and the Iranians are feeling the impact. I don’t believe that those sorts of measures are going to create a reversal in

the Iranian strategic calculus.

So I think what you have to ask yourself is what will, so long as Iran is getting $70 billion in oil revenues, these sorts of measures can hurt but they can’t force a full-fledged change. And we are

unlikely to get multilateral consensus around the kind of robust

measures that actually would force a change. I think this whole

question of regime change, which is to some extent a separate

question and gets to Mr. Shays’ question about how can we negotiate with this particular set of characters is also an important one.

I think the open question about where the administration stands

in terms of regime change, the ambiguities that have been left are

particularly important and need to be dealt with. The difficulty

here is that there still are divisions and also that this is very much

a complicated and difficult regime to deal with from their end.

But ultimately, we put the handcuffs on ourselves in refusing to

talk to them from 2003 and 2006. We continue to have handcuffs

on our engagement with Iran because we are trying to find some

way to make this overture with the nuclear program somehow viable. Ultimately, what we need to do at this stage is negotiations on

all issues without preconditions. That is not an offer of a grand

bargain and it is not necessarily a road to one. But it is a fresh

start, a possibility of working on all the issues that we care about.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you very much.

Mr. Shays.

Mr. SHAYS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It may not appear this way, but I really enjoy this panel, all of

you. I appreciate the incredible experience that each of you have

had. I truly wrestle with all the things you are wrestling with, but

without the knowledge that you may have.

What I want to ask is this. I had the Israelis say to me, you don’t

understand the Middle East culture, you have a Western mind set.

And for years, I wanted them to get out of Lebanon, and they said,

you don’t understand. We get out of Lebanon, and it will be a different reaction than you think. Well, they got out of Lebanon, and

it was confirmation to Arafat that they could just wear Israel

down. It had the exact opposite thing I thought the impact would

be. And the Intifada happened, and they just went in that direction

convinced, like in Lebanon, they could wear them down.

So I want to ask, is there a Middle East mind set that is different from the Western mind set? And as we dialog about how we

should just talk, I don’t mean just talk, but have dialog, does it say

something different to them than it says to us? And I would like

to start with you, Dr. Maloney. You haven’t been responding to

most questions, but you are the most recent in all this stuff. Then

I would like to go to you, Ambassador, and then ask the others.

Ms. MALONEY. I would not purport to suggest that there is a

Middle Eastern mind set, or frankly, even an Iranian mind set,

which of course would inevitably be, to some extent, distinct from

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an Arab or an Israeli mind set. I think what we know about this

particular set of leaders in Iran today is that they fear compromise.

They fear compromise, and they have said it, publicly, because they

see any sort of concession or agreement to deal with the United

States or make offers as only the starting point as some sort of future round of new pressures. Senior officials have used the phrase,

today it is nuclear rights, tomorrow it will be human rights, the

day after that it will be animal rights. Effectively, their fear is regime survival. They are a nasty group of people, there is no question about this.

Mr. SHAYS. When I heard Ms. Mann Leverett basically saying

sanctions didn’t work, I would agree that unilateral sanctions hardly ever work. But we have never seen true multilateral sanctions.

And I am struck by the fact that President Bush, Senator Hillary

Clinton, President Nicholas Sarkozy, Chancellor Angela Merkel all

said, totally unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons. Well,

I don’t know what totally unacceptable means. It seems to me you

have talk, you use sanctions or you use military. Those are the

three options. I have seen nothing that tells me that talk, well,

first off, I don’t know to what extent we have had—I don’t know

what works. But it strikes me that talk would work the least. I

thought Jimmy Carter did a lot of talking and then I saw Ronald

Reagan say, you know, we are going to treat taking embassy employees as an act of war, and they were returned right away. It

said to me that they think differently, or maybe the same in some

ways.

Ms. MALONEY. I don’t think this is a question of their thought

process, though. The problem with multilateral sanctions is that we

simply can’t get agreement on them from our international partners.

Mr. SHAYS. So if we can’t get multilateral agreement, in spite of

the fact that the Chancellor of Germany and the President of

France say, it is unacceptable, well, how the heck do you prevent

them from having it? And I just would throw out here, I am

stunned by the fact that there was an event in Syria to which

Israel appeared to have taken action, since I haven’t been briefed

on anything, don’t know it, I can at least talk about it. I am struck

by this fascination that in Syria, something happened. And it

wasn’t talk.

Ambassador, let me have you respond to this.

Ambassador DOBBINS. In my diplomatic career, I have dealt with

Soviet operatives, Somali warlords, Caribbean dictators, Balkan

terrorists, Afghan insurgents and Iranian diplomats.

Mr. SHAYS. Do you have a wife? [Laughter.]

Ambassador DOBBINS. Yes, and I see her occasionally.

Of those, I actually found the Iranians the most reasonable.

I guess what I would say is that any negotiation has to proceed

from an understanding of the other side’s perspectives, history, expectations. And they vary greatly. If you are going to deal with

Iran, you will do better if you do have a deep understanding. Some

of the points you raise are absolutely valid ones.

On the other hand, I think all negotiations are similar in other

respects, which is, they need to be based on a certain degree of mutual respect, a certain agreement about what it is you are negotiatVerDate 11-MAY-2000 14:51 Jul 08, 2009 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00097 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 U:\DOCS\50111.TXT KATIE PsN: KATIE
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ing about, and a shared sense that if you pursue this professionally

and seriously, you have a prospect of reaching your common goal.

Mr. SHAYS. Let me just go with you, Ms. Leverett, Dr. Leverett,

and then we will end with you, Mr. Haas, then I will conclude.

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. I can say in terms of my experience with

the Iranians, negotiating with them in terms of their mentality,

that I thought that when we asked them something, it appeared

that they tried to deliver on everything that we asked. As I said

in the record, their performance was not perfect, but they did deliver much of what we asked.

I don’t think that we have tried to have a serious discussion with

them about the nuclear issue. I do believe, from what I have been

able to ascertain and people I have talked to on the Iranian side,

that the pursuit of a nuclear weapons option is based on regime

survival. If it is based on regime survival, even if we were to militarily strike it, I think that would further add concern to them that

their regime, the regime survival is at risk, and it would harden

the mentality and force the program either to go underground or

further underground, depending on where you come out in terms

of where the program is.

Mr. SHAYS. Just quickly, are sanctions and talk mutually exclusive?

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. What I see as the problem, I wouldn’t unilaterally disarm from the United States. I wouldn’t say, we are

going to lift the sanctions today without having any road map or

grand bargain out there on the table.

But ratcheting up the sanctions now, like to designate the Rev

Guard, ratcheting up the sanction directly undermines the concern

the regime has about its survivability. That is the problem with

ratcheting up the unilateral sanctions by the United States at this

point.

Mr. SHAYS. Fair enough. Let me have Mr. Haas just respond

quickly.

Mr. HAAS. Very quickly to your first question. I do think there

is something important that you say about Lebanon. If you read

the literature, if you listen to the speeches from that part of the

world, you will see leaders in Iran as well as elsewhere talking

about the Israelis leaving Lebanon, the Americans re-deploying

after Beirut and the Americans in particular leaving Somalia after

engagements in which Americans were bloodied. So there is something to what you are saying.

Now, to go to the question about the tactics and the three things

that you say, talk, sanctions or military action, I would just like

to point out that we have been terribly disjointed in the messages

that we have sent. We have said, as you say, that an Iran with nuclear weapons is not acceptable. Our leaders have said it, and at

the same time, Secretary Rice, in assuring Western audiences, said

Iran is not Iraq, meaning we are not going to use military force.

My colleagues may disagree with me, but I think that when you

send a signal to someone who you are trying to get to change in

some way that the option that will really hurt them the most is not

on the table any more, it seems to me that undercuts your negotiation. I think that we have not done a very good job of making clear

that yes, we will talk, absolutely, we will be reasonable, hopefully

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we will come to an accommodation that suits both sides. But taking

options off the table or being so disjointed about the messages we

send I think makes it less effective, less likely that we are going

to succeed with those other tools at our disposal.

Mr. YARMUTH [presiding]. Thank you. I have two quick things before we adjourn.

First—I hope this can be quick—is there any example we have

in recent, well, not recently, any time during the last 25, 28 years,

in which the Iranians have conducted what we would normally regard as normal negotiations, successful negotiations with any other

country?

Ms. MALONEY. The Iranians have maintained diplomatic relations with just about every other country in the world. So in terms

of normal negotiations, they do that every day. I thin you can find

lots of examples of Iran behaving pragmatically in its foreign policy. The primary one that academics like to cite is Saudi Arabia.

The relationship between Iran and Saudi Arabia was really bitter

and acrimonious, particularly after the first decade of the revolution. Khomeini, in his will, basically castigated King Fahd and the

Saudis far more than he did America.

And yet what has happened since 1989 has been a progressive,

and even still to this day, devoted effort by the Iranians to try to

build a rapprochement with the Saudis that has maintained even

with some of the frictions that have been created by Ahmadinejad.

So that is an example.

Mr. YARMUTH. Thank you. So they do know how to do it. That

is reassuring.

Second, and this is going to be a subject, we are going to pursue

this in an additional hearing, according to Chairman Tierney, but

with regard to the censorship of your op-ed piece, you submitted

the op-ed piece after you had left Government, is that correct?

Ms. MANN LEVERETT. That is correct.

Mr. YARMUTH. Under what basis did the White House censor

your piece? What authority did they have to do that?

Mr. LEVERETT. As we said, both the State Department and the

CIA told us independently their in-house reviews said this draft

contained no classified information, but that the White House was

simply asserting that it should be classified.

Mr. YARMUTH. I understand that, but what——

Mr. LEVERETT. There was never any justification that was presented to us.

Mr. YARMUTH. I understand, but you wrote the op-ed piece.

Mr. LEVERETT. Yes.

Mr. YARMUTH. And you were private citizens at that point.

Mr. LEVERETT. Yes.

Mr. YARMUTH. And you could have sent it to the New York Times

anyway. Why would the White House, how would the White House

be able to prevent you from doing that?

Mr. LEVERETT. In my case, as a former CIA employee, I have a

continuing obligation to submit drafts of material that I want to

publish that relate to my Government service, to submit those to

the agency to ensure, after an agency review, that draft is not disclosing classified information. I have cleared 30 pieces through that

process.

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Mr. YARMUTH. So in this case, the CIA cleared it, but then the

White House said that they wouldn’t clear it?

Mr. LEVERETT. And then the White House told the CIA that they

had to become involved in the process and that they would not

clear it.

Mr. YARMUTH. The chairman has asked me to mention that we

would be examining that further.

I also wanted to announce on Chairman Tierney’s behalf that we

will continue this series of hearings on Iran next Wednesday, November 14th, at 2 p.m. The hearing then will examine the regional

and global consequences of U.S. military action in Iran.

With that, I thank the panel very much for their testimony and

without objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned.

[Whereupon, at 5:20 p.m., the committee was adjourned.]

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