The Future of Iran:
Mullahcracy, Democracy, and the War on Terror

May 6, 2003

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT

10:00	Panel 1: Iran Today--A Reality Check
	Moderator:	Meyrav Wurmser, The Hudson Institute
	Panelists:	Guy Dinmore, Financial Times
		Uri Lubrani, Israeli Defense Ministry
		Ladan Boroumand, Abdorrahman Boroumand Foundation

2:30	Panel 2: Iran Tomorrow--Freedom vs. Mullahood
	Moderator:	Michael A. Ledeen, AEI
	Panelists:	Reuel Marc Gerecht, AEI
		Bernard Hourcade, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
		Morris Amitay, The Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs
		Rob Sobhani, Georgetown University

Proceedings:

MS. WURMSER: Good morning, and thank you for coming this morning.

This conference was put together with a sense of urgency and concern, representing three institutes, the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

We decided to talk about Iran because we are all worried about the future of post-Iraq American policy. If our policy does not now focus on confronting what Michael Ledeen calls the terror masters, especially the regimes in Teheran and Damascus, then we are in danger of taking the American victory in the war and turning it into a political failure.

Our fight against Iraq was only one battle in a long war. It would be ill conceived to think that we can deal with Iraq alone. Our victories in Afghanistan and Baghdad will not, in and of themselves, end terrorism and will not destroy the institution of tyranny in the Middle East. We must move on, and faster.

It was a grave error to send National Security Council's top man in Iraq to secret meetings with representatives of the Iranian government in recent weeks.

Likewise, I think it was a mistake to send our Secretary of State to Syria, even if under the pretext of sending a warning to the regime, rather than having the Syrian president come crawling to Washington to beg for his regime's survival.

These are errors because in the political language of the Middle East, such acts signal weakness and confusion, and rather than coming as victors who should be feared and respected rather than loved, we are still engaged in old diplomacy, in the kind of politics that led to the attacks of September 11.

Such policies send the wrong message to the people of the Middle East, especially those who hate their tyrannical regimes and love America. When we talk to the representatives of the Iranian mullahs or go all the way to meet with the tyrant of Damascus, we are betraying those who seek freedom in the region, the very people who, as President Bush himself realizes, are our true allies.

This panel deals with those people. Our focus is on the situation in Iran today, which largely means the growing number of Iranians who resent the regime and who dare to dream of freedom.

America is those people's greatest hope, and it's time we realized that they are our greatest hope to fundamentally transform and liberate the Middle East.

With that, let me now present our first panelists. Ambassador Uri Lubrani. Ambassador Lubrani is advisor to the Israeli Minister of Defense. Previously he was appointed by Prime Minister Shameer to head the Israeli task force that planned and executed Operation Solomon, which airlifted the largest part of the Jewish community of Ethiopia from Addis Abbaba to Israel.

Ambassador Lubrani also served as government coordinator for Lebanese affairs and chief Israeli negotiator for the release of Israeli hostages and prisoners of war.

His ambassadorships include head of Israeli mission to Teheran, Iran; ambassador of Israel to Ethiopia; and ambassador of Israel to Uganda, Ruwanda and Burundi.

Ambassador Lubrani has also served as head of the private bureau and political advisor to Prime Minister Kohl and advisor on Arab affairs to Prime Minister ben Gurion.

Thank you.

[Applause.]

MR. LUBRANI: Good morning to you. I'm very pleased to be here. I'm here primarily because of the fact that I spent seven years of my life in Teheran. I came to meet with the people of Iran. I came to appreciate the history of their culture and their mores. I came to love the country and I left Iran on the eve of the revolution, not quite when Ayatollah Khomeini arrived, but a few weeks before, knowing that this country -- feeling that this country is about to go into a tremendously powerful, almost cataclysmic upheaval.

I would like to share with you possibly my frustration before I go into what I want to say. At the time, about a year before I left Iran, I began to sense that there is something in the offing. Don't ask me why. I have a number of reasons, but basically gut feeling told me that something is amiss. It was, I have to tell you, at the height of the relationship which we had with the former regime of the Shah, and at that time my foreign minister was the late Moishe Dayan, the prime minister was Menachim Begin, and I went to see Dayan and told him, look, we are almost umbilically tied with Iran. We have 95 percent of our oil coming from Iran to Israel. We have to think of alternatives. And Moishe Dayan, with his blazing eye, looked at me and thought this Lubrani has outstayed his usefulness.

[Laughter]

MR. LUBRANI: And something has happened to him. With my friends, my family's friends, his family, I mean he knew me and he thought something very bad has happened to me. And so he said, well, why don't you go back and go back to Teheran and, you know, just think it over again. And I went back to Iran. I became more and more convinced that what I'm feeling is going to happen, and if I have time, if you ask me, I'll tell you also why later on. But then I came back and I said it's going to happen. And he said to me, put it in writing.

And, you know, when an ambassador is asked to put something in writing, it means that he's putting his signature on a document which a historian in 50 years, in a hundred years' time, will take as something very authentic.

So it took me another three or four weeks before I mustered enough courage to write it, and I wrote a memo in which I said what I felt, and in which I gave a sort of blueprint of what I thought had to be done in order to anticipate this.

Now Moishe Dayan, whom all of you must have heard of, he was a very courageous military and political leader. He didn't want to become prime minister because he didn't eventually basically want to be the last, where the buck stops, where the responsibility lies. So he took my document and he distributed it to our cabinet, and he also, I think, related it to some of his American friends, and he said this came from what he termed to be a usually reliable source.

[Laughter.]

MR. LUBRANI: And this document found its way on the lists and so forth, and it was returned. I mean there was a reply, and the reply said that this usually reliable source doesn't know anything about Iran at all. Nothing is going to happen between the next 10 to 15 years.

When I came back to Tel Aviv at that time, my good colleagues at the foreign ministry looked at me in a rather strange smirk, I should say, saying, I mean, look, you were off the beam completely, I mean, and they showed me what they wrote. And while I was pondering on what to do and how to react, things began to move in Tabriz first and then other parts of Iran.

Then by that time I became notorious. How the hell did this bloody Lubrani know about this. He must have had some very, very good sources to -- well, not to Allah, but to a representative. And I'm telling you, this has been sort of following me for a very long time, and I must say that it has created even -- it has strengthened my bond with this country because ever since I left Iran, this bug which is deeply embedded in me of a people who are -- which is undergoing such a terrific revolution, upheaval and so forth, is going through tribulations which in the end will end in the period of Khomeini, will go into history as a period of darkness in the history, I believe, of the Iranian people.

Now I'm here to tell you that in my career, I began to watch Lebanese affairs in 1983, one year after the war of Lebanon, and from the moment I began to see reports, I saw the first fingerprints of Iran in Lebanon. And then since Iran, since 1983, when Iran ordered its agents in Lebanon first to bomb the marine headquarters in Beirut, killing 250 marines, or 256, I think the number was, and then blowing up the Israeli headquarters in Tyre, where over 60 Israelis lost their lives, I understood that that regime in Iran has declared war both on the United States and on Israel.

They did not want to have American presence in Lebanon. They wanted the Americans out, and they got them out very quickly, because after the massacre with the marines, I think it was a very quick decision on the part of the United States just to -- and then, of course, there came the embassy and the hostages and a whole series of acts on behalf of Iran which really accelerated the impetus of America abandoning Lebanon as a base for American presence in the Middle East.

I have to mention one person who in particular I was concerned for him, and this is Colonel Higgins, who was serving with the United Nations on a peace mission at the time, and he was assassinated by Hezbollah at the behest of Iran.

Now while I was working and seeing how Iran was trying to penetrate, I understood, of course, everybody did, the rationale of this business. The majority of the Lebanese people are Shiia, and therefore this is the most inviting fertile ground for the expansion or the export of the revolution in Iran. Something has to be done to take control. Money has to be invested, people have to be trained, and so forth. All this was done without much delay, and one saw how the Irani presence there was designed to reach a point, and it still is, and a matter of fact, I don't believe it ever will be consummated, but they wanted to be at the top of the Shiite community, to call the shots there, to be predominant there, so that when the Shiaa community democratically takes over Lebanon, which was not the case at the time because the Lebanese constitution did not cater for that. But when it does, Iran will call the shots, be influential at the top of the pyramid of the Shiite community. That was their aim, and they have been very consistent about it, very, very able about it, and sophisticated about it.

So this was a -- I was for almost 20 -- until we pulled out of Lebanon, I was following this, and I was -- we had running debates and conferences and brainstorming of how to deal with this phenomenon, and in the end Iran made us pull out of Lebanon in a fashion which I was not at all happy about. We should have pulled out of Lebanon much, much sooner, but we should have done it in a different way, in a more orderly way, in a way which we did not afford or did not give Hezbollah a reason to claim that they have pushed us out, that they have chased us out of Lebanon, which in fact what has happened has given them.

So I have been following those, and I came here to tell you as I watch what things are evolving into in Iraq and concerning Iraq, I see very similar, very, very similar signs. One has to -- well, it's a matter of fingers, feel the sense in the tips of the finger, what Irani really are up to, but they have come to the conclusion, as my friend and mentor Professor Lewis mentioned, they have reached the decision that they have to be troublesome, and they are going to be troublesome. They began to be troublesome. They prepared themselves to be troublesome. They want to, first of all, in my view -- and I'm saying this -- I'm not an expert, I don't consider myself an expert. The only edge I have, perhaps, is I have been following this on a daily basis for many years, so I have this gut feeling. They first of all want to take charge or to achieve predominance in the Shiaa community in Iran, which is the majority. They want to do that. They know they have to do that by taking over, as it were, and making sure that they will have a hub there from where to spread out their ideology and their policies, and they have been training cadres. Once they have this predominance, they believe that they will take over. They want to take over, they need to take over, because what they don't want is to have American bases, the bases of that country whose culture they abhor.

I'm talking about ayatollahs only. Don't make any mistake. I'm not talking about the Iranian people. I will come to that in a moment. The ayatollahs abhor -- I mean American culture is tantamount to heresy of the first degree. I mean they don't want that to happen to them in Iraq. And how to go about it.

Well, if I were to put myself in the shoes of the Iran headquarters and say how do I do it? I'll do it the same way I did with the Israelis in south Lebanon. I'll just do whatever I can to increase the number of body bags moving out of south Lebanon to Israel. Just that way, I'd like to do that in Iran. I think this is what the Irani mind thinks. And I hope I am wrong, but I think this is what they want to do.

They know the susceptibilities of the American public opinion. You know, they know how seriously casualties and lives are being considered in the United States, as they are all over the democratic world, and they know that by this, they can really hit at the heart of decisionmaking, political decisionmaking in the United States.

Now I think that this is what they are up to, and I came here to tell you of my fears, and I'm not coming here as an Israeli to give advice to the United States. The United States is big enough, strong enough, knowledgeable enough, diverse enough to know its own way, and I have to tell you I take this opportunity to tell you that all of us in Israel -- and, you know the Israeli attitude to its army, the idea we are this and we are that. We all have been humbled by the excellence, by the superb planning and execution of the campaign in Iraq. Israelis were absolutely stunned by the way this was done. And we have to learn a lot, a great deal from the United States of how to deal with the new realities of warfare.

So as I come here to you, I tell you this is what I feel, this is what I see, and here I come to the other side of the equation.

I have been watching and hearing and listening and meeting many Iranis over the years, and I have great respect for the way they have been trying to conduct their affairs inside Iran.

You may know and you may have noticed how careful they are to avoid bloodshed in their infights. The big student demonstrations, there always is this fear that there will be bloodshed. Both sides, by the ayatollahs on the one side, and the public on the other, are doing what they can to refrain, because they know that bloodshed is the trigger for a much bigger convulsion and, therefore, they are very careful. But what has happened is that the majority of the Irani public, the majority has come to the sad conclusion that there is no hope for them within the rule of ayatollahs; that not only are they unable to make ends meet economically, but their souls are incarcerated, and their mouth being shut.

They want to express themselves. The Irani people have a tremendously diverse, colorful set of opinions. They are not allowed to do that. They have got to conform. Some of them tried; they were put in prison.

I'll just give you one example of a man who is not very well known in the United States, more in Europe, Amir Antezam. He was a deputy prime minister in the first government of Prime Minister Bazargan. He was appointed by Khomeini. He left the government and he became a dissident, and he became a dissident and then was put in prison, and all his request over all those years is try me. Put me on trial and tell me what my crime is, and I'll be satisfied. I'll sit in prison.

He has never been tried. He is still in prison.

And there are other examples of that sort, and people don't seem to realize how many flouting of human rights are taking place almost daily in Iran. I know I will always, in my activities, I always wondered sometimes I saw the Secretary of State of the United States go to Beijing because one Chinese dissident was incarcerated because he was openly criticizing the regime in Tianemen Square, and I haven't heard a really resounding protest from the United States as to the human rights which are being flouted in Iran for a very, very, very long time. I have heard the Secretary of State asking for pardon, yes, for something which Kermit Roosevelt did in 1953, but I haven't heard anything -- yes, I did hear and I was very, very gratified and surprised, I have to say, having Iran included in your president's axis of evil. That was, I think, a dramatic development, and a very welcome and an extremely powerful one. But this spirit has to be continued, and it has to be continued in an accelerated phase because time is now of essence.

As long as these ayatollahs will be in power, they will not want you either in Iraq or succeeding, fully succeeding in Afghanistan. They don't because your culture, the American culture, western culture is anathema and has to be kept out from the heartland of Iran.

I hope to God that the United States will find its way to deal with this situation at the pace and at the force which it requires. I think the Irani people deserve that.

Thank you very much.

[Applause.]

MS. WURMSER: Our next speaker is Guy Dinmore. Mr. Dinmore is a diplomatic correspondent in Washington, D.C. for the Financial Times. He joined the Financial Times in 1997 in Belgrade as a Balkan correspondent where he covered the entire Balkan region, including the war in Kosovo.

In April of 1999, during NATO bombing, he was expelled from the region by the Serbian government. In October of 1999, the Financial Times bureau in Teheran was reopened, and he covered events in Afghanistan and northern Iraq.

Previously Mr. Dinmore covered Africa and the Middle East for Reuters in postings such as London, Vienna, Warsaw, Beijing, Hong Kong, and Nicosia.

[Applause.]

MR. DINMORE: Thank you very much for this opportunity to speak.

I'd like to thank Ambassador Lubrani for reminding us of the events of 1979 because it's good to remember as we try and ask ourselves what is going on in Iran today, that actually Israel, through Ambassador Lubrani, was one of the few countries in 1979 that actually saw the revolution coming, and there was a great misunderstanding of what was happening in Iran then, and I would wager that there is a great misunderstanding of what is happening in Iran now.

It's a very confused and mixed picture in Iran, but the prevailing view in America seems to be that the reform movement going on in Iran is making no headway at all, that all the clerics are identical, and that there really is no way forward, and that the entire people of Iran are just waiting for someone to come onto the streets to remove their regime. There is some truth in this, but there are a lot of misconceptions as well.

I won't speak for too long. I'm just going to describe a few snapshots of life in Iran that might help you understand what is happening there.

But first of all, I would like to declare a financial interest. I'm not trying to start a trend here, but who knows. Three years ago I invested $1,000 in the Teheran stock market. I thought I would come clean on that.

[Laughter.]

MR. DINMORE: I mention this not just to remind you that I might have a financial interest in what I'm saying here, but also it's actually quite interesting as an indication of the changes that are taking place in Iran.

First of all, you might think three years ago in Iran, investing in an emerging market at the height of the bubble, this man must be mad. Well, actually, as Wall Street has plummeted in the past three years, the Teheran stock market has done extremely well and, in fact, last year I understand -- I think the Teheran stock market was for like a third year running the second or third best performing stock market in the world, and my $1,000 invested three years ago is probably closer to $2,000 now.

The fact that I as a foreigner was actually able to invest $1,000 in the Teheran stock market is also interesting in itself. Economic reforms have been launched in recent years. It is now possible for foreigners, although it's rather difficult and bureaucratic, but it is indeed possible to invest in the Teheran stock market.

Last summer there was a German company, Henckel, which makes soap powder -- I don't know if you're aware of Henckel -- completed the first takeover of an Iranian company through the Teheran stock market. They bought a majority share in an Iranian household products company.

I just want to give this as an example of how the economy is opening up; not in a dramatic way. The stock market capitalization in Teheran is very small. It's only about $1.5 billion. There are many things on the stock market that reflect the problems of the economy as a whole. Accounting procedures are not very vigorous. You can say that of the state budget. Insider trading is very rife. The attitude of most investors on the Teheran stock market, which also reflects a greater problem in Iran, is to try and get a short-term profit and get out quickly, and there has been a general failure on the Teheran stock market to try and handle the process of privatization which Iran is going through.

Nonetheless, if you go down to the floor of the Teheran stock exchange in Hafez Street, you will see crowds of people there, women, men, old people, young people, watching these giant electronic billboards, watching the prices going up and down, holding copies of -- not exactly the Financial Times, but sort of the Iranian equivalent, which is also pink, I hasten to add, and exchanging information.

The reforms on the Teheran stock market are a reflection of how the administration under President Khatami is trying to slowly move the economy away from a statist economy to more private enterprise, and how they are trying to bring more transparency and accountability to the economy. They haven't had a great success, but I think they have actually made considerable progress.

You may know that Iran last year issued two Eurobonds, and I think it is testimony to the fact that that Iranian economy is not in that bad shape, at least when it comes to external finances. These two Eurobonds were very successful.

Iran used to have a plethora of exchange rates, but as of just over a year ago, Iran now has one exchange rate, and the rial, thanks to Central Bank intervention and generally large oil revenues, has actually appreciated against the dollar. So going back to my investment on the stock market, not only do I make a profit on the stock market, but in those intervening years the rial has actually appreciated against the dollar; not by a huge amount, but slightly.

One last area where Khatami is trying to introduce some more transparency to the economy is an oil stabilization fund that was set up to try and channel oil revenues away from secret accounts and propping up the state budget in ways that were no longer accountable into a special fund. These are sort of revenue-surplus-to-budget projections. This has actually been quite successful.

I'm a bit out of touch with Iran. I haven't been there, I left about four months ago, but I think this oil fund has over $10 billion in it now, and Iran's foreign exchange now probably amounts to well over $20 billion which, given the size of its economy, is very, very large.

This is not to say that the economy is a completely rosy picture. Unemployment --

TAPE CHANGE TO SIDE B

. . . the economy as a whole. There are social problems, drugs, abuse of women, housing, and all the rest. Iran is a very big country. Its population is rapidly growing. It's nearly 70 million, and it really is very stretched. But I just wanted to illustrate in a few ways how there are reforms going on in the economic sector which do have an impact more broadly.

Now if you will bear with me, I'd just like to give you a couple of anecdotes of how I would argue, giving you this slight reality check, that there is a process of democratization and reform going on in Iran, and that if the U.S. administration is thinking about trying to influence the events in Iran, then at least it should be more aware of what is actually happening.

A few of my friends here will have heard a couple of these anecdotes before, so I apologize, but bear with me.

I want to describe a trip I made to Mashhad a couple of years ago. Mashhad, as you know, is the most religious city in Iran, although Qum holds the distinction of being a theological center, but really Mashhad is the sort of spiritual heart of Iran because of the shrine of Imam Reza. He is the only one of the imams to actually be buried in Iran.

Mashhad has something like a million pilgrims passing through the city, I think, every month or every week it is. An extraordinarily huge number. And you really feel it when you go to Mashhad, this great press of people.

Going back a hundred years, the Viceroy to India visited Masshad and one thing he noted was, apart from this great press of pilgrims and a sense of life in the city, was how prostitution was also widely prevalent, and prostitution and pilgrimage in Iran have gone hand in hand for decades, and in a sense you could even say that the religious hierarchy sanctions this process through the process of issuing what they call temporary marriages, which in some respects, with some prostitutes, anyway, gives a kind of legitimacy, both legal and spiritual, to what they're doing. Prostitution is still a great problem now.

The reason I went to Mashhad was that there was someone going around killing these prostitutes, and he was strangling them with their chadors and dumping them in the street. He was a serial killer, and as the weeks went by, it was very clear that the authorities were either not trying hard enough to catch him, or were unable to.

In Mashhad, I interviewed the editor of Horizon newspaper. He's a cleric. I grew to like him a lot. He had a real news sense. This was a man who really knew a good story when he saw one. In fact, his newspaper broke the story of what they came to call the Spider Killer. His local newspaper, which was in fact founded before the revolution, has gone through sort of many changes, led a local campaign to track this killer down and stop the killings.

Now you should understand that in Mashhad there were a lot of people who, for religious reasons, thought it was quite good that there was someone going around cleaning up the city and killing the prostitutes, but Horizon newspaper took the attitude that no, one should follow the rule of law. If you get rid of prostitutes, it's done properly; you can't go around just sort of murdering them.

It was largely through his efforts that the police chief in Mashhad who was in charge of the operation was actually changed, and the new man was sent from Teheran, and in the end the serial killer was caught, and he admitted to what he was doing. This is awful. He killed about 18 women, if I recall correctly.

This newspaper, in breaking the story and pushing it through, broke a lot of taboos in Iran. Under Khatami, the president, things like prostitution, AIDS were aired more publicly, but it was really thanks to newspapers like Horizon and this editor who were willing to sort of push hard on this agenda and sort of keep it in the public eye. There were suspicions that there was a coverup and that the murderer would be released, but in the end -- and I think it really was due to a lot of pressure from this newspaper and other circles -- in fact, the killer was brought to trial and he was actually executed. I'm not saying that execution is a good thing or not, but the due process of law was followed in Iran and he was executed.

My second and last anecdote, if you will just give me a few more minutes, a few months ago I made a trip to Hamadan in western Iran, and I was actually looking for one of the wives of Osama bin Laden. I had heard that she had been spirited through Iran out of Afghanistan and was sheltering in Hamadan, waiting to leave the country, possibly to go back to Syria, because I think it was bin Laden's first or second wife was Syrian, or possibly it was one of his younger Saudi wives, and she was on the way back to Saudi Arabia. We never found out. And I never found out either because we couldn't find her. But I did actually uncover the news that bin Laden's son had been in Iran and had been detained and returned to the Pakistani authorities who then handed him over to the Saudi authorities.

Anyway, one of my other purposes in going to Hamadan was I don't know if you recall that there was an intellectual last summer by that name of Hashem Aghajari. He was a university professor in Teheran University. He gave a speech in the small town of Hamadan last June in which he basically questioned the right of the clerics to rule. He was attacked virulently in the conservative newspapers and after about two months or so, if I remember rightly, he was arrested. He was put on trial. It was a closed trial so we don't know exactly what happened, although we did speak to his lawyer and a few other people present, and he was eventually sentenced to death, and this was the man who sparked the student protests in Teheran and other cities last November and which the ambassador referred to, and it was notable that in those protests the authorities did try very hard to stop the bloodshed from happening.

It was also interesting that by and large the wider public did not join in these protests, although I'm sure that they supported them in their hearts, and they felt a lot of sympathy for the students, but people were generally too afraid to come out into the streets to join them.

My point about my trip to Hamadan was that I met the university and high school association of teachers who had invited Hashem Aghajari to go to Hamadan to speak last June, that fateful speech. And these people described to me what happened. They regularly would invite sort of reformists, modernists, intellectuals from Teheran and other cities to speak to students in their sort of political gatherings. And when Aghajari made the speech, what so often happens in Iran happened, that the speech, before it could be concluded, was broken up by Islamist militia, whatever you want to call them, Hezbollah, and the meeting sort of broke up in chaos and a few people were beaten.

These university teachers who organized the meeting explained to me that this is just about what happened to them every time in Hamadan that they would organize a meeting, someone prominent would come, they would get attacked by the militants, who are very actually strong in Hamadan. Hamadan is a sort of center of senior people in the intelligence network and the security network. And these meetings were always broken up. But these people keep doing it. These university teachers and these university students and the high school teachers keep organizing these meetings and they keep getting beaten up. And I think it's testimony to an amazing process that's going on in Iran that people around the country are persevering with this and not giving up.

I asked them their view of Khatami and whether he was really matching their expectations and meeting the needs of the people. The general view, I think, which is widely expressed in Iran, is that Khatami is hugely respected. I would say he was even worshiped by quite a lot of Iranians. He is certainly a very charismatic man. But he is sort of constrained by his lack of authority and more powerful people around him, and either the process is going to take an extremely long time to come to fruition or, indeed, at some point everything will snap and there will be the upheaval that many people are expecting.

But the point I wanted to make is that there are a lot of people in the meantime who do not want bloodshed, they don't particularly want another revolution, they want change to happen from within, if it can be done, and more people need small towns like Hamadan or editors of Horizon newspaper who are part of that process, a bit like people in the stock exchange who have the confidence to invest their money. They want to go down that path.

Thank you.

[Applause.]

MS. WURMSER: Thank you, Guy.

Our last, but by no means least, speaker is the very wonderful Ladan Boroumand of the Boroumand Foundation. Ladan is a visiting fellow at the International Forum for Democratic Studies. She is a historian from Iran with a doctorate from the Graduate School of Social Sciences in Paris. She is the author of "La guerre des principes" in 1999 and an extensive study of the tension throughout the French Revolution between the rights of men and the sovereignty of the nation.

Ladan.

[Applause.]

MS. BOROUMAND: Thank you so much, Meyrav.

When you invite historians, they have the bad habit of putting the current event into a historic perspective, so I hope you will bear with me and I will try to talk about Iran in a historic perspective.

To assess the future of Iran and the prospect for democracy, we need to have a clear idea of what Iran has experienced in the last 25 years. The Islamic Republic's propaganda machine, together with some observers in the West, assert that the Islamic revolution and the regime it created are deeply rooted in Iran's culture and religion.

Some analysts in the West advocate the engagement with the Islamic regime and the support of reforms that would take place within its framework. In the same way, some Western journalists, taking the liberty of speaking on behalf of the Iranian people, tell us that these people want an Islamic democracy.

Today I shall not speak on behalf of the Iranian people, for I have no mandate to do so. But as an Iranian citizen, a historian, and a prodemocracy activist, I would like to examine the religious and cultural authenticity of the Islamic Republic. Then I shall focus on the current public debate that is taking place in Iran, for this debate strongly points to a collective yearning for the establishment of a secular democracy.

By way of conclusion, I will reflect on how the outside world could help the prodemocracy movement in Iran.

On the authenticity and the Islamic nature of Iran's revolutionary regime, allow the historian to reminisce on some of the characteristics of the Islamic Republic.

Iran's putative return to Islam's original purity was possible only by means of a modern revolution. Lest these be thought a controversial point, it should be pointed that the leaders of the Islamic revolution themselves have openly acknowledged the modern nature of their endeavor.

It is precisely these revolutionary phenomenon that poses a problem, since it finds no precedent in the words and deeds of the Prophet. It would be a mistake to interpret the Islamic revolution as an outcome of Shiism, for the revolutionary ayatollah was an innovator in religious affairs. Once in power, the one-time opponent of land reforms and women's suffrage became progressive. He launched a massive program of nationalization and expropriation. He recruited women for campaigns of revolutionary propaganda. His policy of terror, revolutionary tribunals and militia, administrative purges, cultural revolution, and accommodating attitude towards the Soviet Union point more to Stalin and Chairman Mao than to the Prophet Mohammed or the Imam Ali.

Not surprisingly, the revolutionary leaders alienated their fellow clerics and instead gained the active support of the Moscow-aligned Communist party.

Ayatollah Khomeini was transformed by the revolutionary miracle into an infallible authority that embodied both the truth and the people. He ended up legislating for and on behalf of God. Khomeini did not hesitate to abrogate the Sharia's injunction in the name of the regime's superior interest, a supreme leader whose will expressed the truth in history as the common denominator of modern totalitarian regimes.

A totalitarian regime seeks to recreate man in accord with its own truth. In doing so, it denies God's transcendence. This denial is clearly demonstrated by its judiciary. As in fascist and Communist regimes, the Islamic judiciary is founded on the denial of due process that protects the juridical and moral person of the accused. When the revolutionaries order the rape of young girls before execution, because a virgin might go to Heaven, they seek to enact God's will by determining His judgment. Ultimately, through this act, they abolish God's transcendence.

When they decide to murder secretly thousands of prisoners because they refuse to profess the regime's ideology, the Islamists demonstrate that ambition to possess the individual's soul and mind. By refusing to acknowledge the death, the regime negates the existence of those who resisted in the name of free will and freedom of conscience.

In sum, the Islamic Republic rebels against God's will by denying the existence of the very individuals He created.

Revolutionary Islamic justice is alien to the spirit of traditional Muslim jurisprudence. Rather, it is closer to that of the French revolutionary tribunal of 1794.

The revolutionary character of the Islamist regime enabled Khomeini, the president of the Islamic Republic, who later became its supreme leader, to laud the achievements of the Chinese and North Korean atheist revolutionary regimes without contradiction. The president said that the elements that brings the Islamic regime close to North Korea are the common revolutionary character and anti-Americanism.

The West that the Iranian regime identifies with Satan is not, therefore, a geographical and cultural entity, for the Islamics owe to Western thought most of the concepts governing their actions. The regime's anti-Western rhetoric is rooted in its rejection of liberal democracy in general and human rights in particular. The Islamic Republic's anti-Americanism is best understood as a reaction against a precise definition of body politic. This definition admits no other truth than the existence of an autonomous individual pursuing his happiness.

Not surprisingly, the failure of the revolutionary ideology and the fall of the Soviet bloc have created a major crisis of legitimacy within the Islamic regime. This crisis has become a matter of public debate among the ideologs of the Islamic republic. To analyze it, they refer neither to Iranian history nor to the canonical religious and political texts of Muslim words. Instead, the regime's ideologs try to make sense of their own situation by looking into the Soviet and Chinese experiences.

Indeed, the regime tries to understand their own political identity by referring to political literature of the modern West. Akbar Gangi (phon.), a middle-ranking official of the regime, is the emblematic figure of a generation of young Islamist militants. His intellectual itinerary is crucial in that it uncovers the erosion of the regime's ideology. In his study examining the writings of major Shiite jurist council, Gangi first shows the discrepancy between their traditional world view and the experience of the Islamic Republic. He eventually refers to a long citation of Benito Mussolini on fascist ideology to explain Iran's political system.

For Gangi, the story of the Iranian revolution is one of a faction identifying with modern revolutionary left that allies itself with another faction inspired by European far right revolutionary movement. A modern Islamic revolution was the outcome of this alliance.

By reading Gangi, one realizes that in effect the revolutionary regime was sustained for a decade by the Iranian equivalent of the Nazi, Soviet nonaggression pact. Only with the fall of the Soviet bloc did the pact dissolve, revealing the chronic tension between the reformist's left and the conservative rightwings of the ruling oligarchy.

From this perspective, one can understand the title Gangi chose for the article that made him famous in Iran, "Satan Is the First Fascist." This title curiously echoes the official rhetoric that identifies the United States as the Great Satan. In the true depiction of Satan, one recognizes the two antagonistic dimensions of modern political culture, liberal democracy and totalitarianism.

Hence, the Islamic Republic has no root in Iran's culture, tradition, and religion. It is nothing but a variation on the theme of modern totalitarian regime.

The truth is that in 1979, the Iranian people favored a totalitarian option instead of a liberal democracy that was made available to them by the last prime minister of the monarchy, Dr. Baktiar (phon.).

For the past 20 years, Iranian intellectuals and public opinion have been asking themselves why they rejected the democratic option in 1979. This introspection is beginning to bear fruit. For more than 20 years, Iranians have experienced the absolute negation of the individual. Perhaps it is this very negation that has made them understand the existential relevance of modern individualism and human rights.

For that reason, human rights are at the heart of today's public debate in Iran. Lawyers, students, and university professors refer to human rights as a universal heritage. This is precisely what distinguishes the prerevolutionary era from today's Iran.

A strong trend of antitotalitarian ideas prevails among the Iranian elite. To illustrate it, allow me to quote yet another ex-Islamist militant and writer, Ebrahim Nabavi. In an open letter to President Khatami, he writes, I quote:

"I hate old, big photographs. I do not know why. It is only in Syria, Iraq, North Korea, and Iran that one sees this huge pictures. I would like to see all the wars that bear the pictures of Saddam, Castro, Kim Yung be demolished by American tanks. People around the world want liberty. Liberty is a necessary condition for human life."

End of quote.

Never before in Iran's modern history had we seen the ideological unanimity that we can observe today. At the two ends of the political spectrum, one can mention two important texts that were published in Iran and in the United States in the recent months.

The first, Republican Manifesto, is by a son of the Islamic revolution, Akbar Gangi. The second, Covenant With the People, is by the pretender to the throne of Iran, Reza Pahlavi.

The former is the legatee of a violent totalitarian tradition, whereas the latter is heir to an autocratic tradition. Gangi criticizes revolutionary thought and pleads for a secular democracy founded on human dignity and the rights of man. Reza Pahlavi implicitly, perhaps too implicitly, objects to the lack of popular participation during his father's reign and calls for a modern and democratic form of monarchy based on the principles of unalienable individual rights and government by the consent of the governed. Human rights and secularism are the common denominator of both texts.

Students are eager to learn about democracy and to understand its premises. In the last six years they have come to grasp the importance of a democratic constitution. They have realized that it is neither logically nor tactically possible to pretend to create a democratic system under the control of an authority who is endowed with an absolute power. They know now that playing one faction of the ruling elite against the other does not bring them democratic reform.

Allow me to quote the statement by the students of the University of Zanjan (phon.). I quote:

"The students' movement should abound in the sterile political strife between reformists and conservatives. It should concentrate on theoretical questions to remedy its own weaknesses. It must focus on the study of key concepts such as democracy, republicanism, and human rights. This theoretical work must enable the students' movement to take up the challenge of substituting a man defined by his duties by a man defined by his rights."

End of quote.

In a poignant open letter, written in the prison where they are being held, two prodemocracy students called on the Iranian people to boycott the municipal elections. The spectacular boycott of this election is yet another sign of the Iranian society's political awareness.

As time goes by, more and more people want a referendum to be held on the nature of the political regime in Iran. On April 19th, for instance, the Islamic Association of the University of Hojazan (phon.) published a communique which strongly advocates this referendum. The Kabil University (phon.) Web site has organized an electronic opinion poll in which the voters are asked to choose one of the three following referendums:

One on the reestablishment of diplomatic relations with the United States.

The second on the reform of the electoral laws.

And the third on the very nature of the political regime.

According to the web site, 85 percent of the voters favor a referendum on the nature of the regime as the best way of leading Iran out of its impasse.

A totalitarian regime creates and propagates a fictitious version of reality in order to hide their moral and political failures. If such a propaganda remains unchallenged, totalitarian rulers can all too easily atomize their societies and isolate their citizens. Communism greatly benefited from the Western democracies' ideological naivety. The Islamic Republic, for its part, has been able to survive for a quarter of a century by relying on the same stratagem. The West could help by challenging the official propaganda and acknowledging the demands of the Iranian people. This would be simple to do and would carry little risk. Yet it would probably give a huge moral and psychological boost to prodemocracy forces within Iran.

For almost two decades, Western democracies viewed Iranians as believers mystically united by a supreme political and spiritual leader. The West refused to acknowledge that this false united front was made possible and lasted because of an exclusionary dynamic that pitted insiders against outsiders. The insiders were a small minority. The outsiders were the majority of the Iranian people who were kept at bay by a ruling elite using terror.

Today the regime promotes the idea of Islamic democracy and claims that this system embodies the will of the Iranian people. To truly identify the will of the Iranian people, however, one needs only to look at the demands that are most often put forward in the public debate: Freedom of speech, assembly, and association. Freedom of conscience and worship. The separation of religious authority from political power. And freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention. These demands correspond to the model of a secular democracy.

In her brilliant memoir, the Iranian dissident writer Orzel Nafati (phon.) reminisces how one day she woke up in Teheran only to realize that as a human being, a woman, a citizen, and a scholar, she had become irrelevant in her homeland. She had become nothing but a figment of an ayatollah's imagination. Ironically, the Iranian secularist, prodemocracy, human rights activist shared her experience in the heart of Western democratic societies. They, too, felt irrelevant for 20 years. They, too, became a figment of Western policymakers' and journalists' imagination, who decided that Iranian prodemocracy activists were not authentic precisely because they were advocating democratic values.

Perhaps the first step to help Iran's democratization is to acknowledge the very relevance and centrality of prodemocracy activists both inside and outside Iran.

Thank you for your patience.

[Applause.]

MS. WURMSER: Thank you, Ladan.

I would like to open the floor to questions. Yes.

PARTICIPANT: [Inaudible question.]

MR. DINMORE: I was dreading questions like this, to be honest. I don't really feel in a position to sort of advise the American government what to do, quite honestly. I would like to remind the American government that the history we show that U.S. intervention in Iran for the last 50 years or so has been fairly disastrous. If you go back to 1953, the overthrow of Mossadegh, to the support of the Shah's regime, which then led to the revolution, to a support of Saddam Hussein in the war against Iran, and which obviously alienated a lot of popular Iranian support, and clearly the Iranians very upset about the way the Iraqis were supported by the West in that war. It is only now, for example, the Americans are waking up to the fact that in 1988 Saddam used chemical weapons, and at the time there was a certain effort in this part of the world to actually deny that it had happened, at least for a while.

So given all the mistakes of the past, I would sort of really hesitate about how to advise a government on how to correct those mistakes of the past and also the future. Most of the foreign meddling around in the last century or so has been fairly disastrous. So to be honest, I don't really want to answer that question. I'm sorry.

[Laughter.]

MR. DINMORE: I'm not going to.

MS. WURMSER: Question?

PARTICIPANT: [Inaudible question.]

MS. WURMSER: Is there any evidence -- if so, what -- that the people who would like to replace the present government in Iraq would actually be in favor of a separation of church and state, or is that just our wish?

MS. BOROUMAND: If I understood your question correctly, your question is do we have any evidence from within Iran that people wish for a separation of religion and politics and state? Yes, we do. I mean most of the things I either summarized or read to you are from Iran, and students are -- I mean there is a unanimity on the necessity to separate the state from the clergy. Definitely.

MS. WURMSER: Uri?

MR. LUBRANI: I guess I just want to add and say that from what we have been engaging over time, the young people, there is a tremendous generation confrontation. The young people want freedom and they want separation from -- the meaning of (unintelligible) which means that they have a religious leader who is all powerful, which he calls the shots, is total anathema to them. They want it totally removed.

I mean these are the two basic requirements of the people. They want freedom and they want separation of state from religion.

MS. WURMSER: Yes. Please identify yourself.

PARTICIPANT: I would like to take issue with Dr. Boroumand's statement about the young government, the fascist state. I am always very afraid of modeling, especially when it comes to the police in countries. For one thing, the Iran government is not efficient enough to be fascist. It frankly is too clumsy to be fascist state, because fascism, for one thing, must be efficient in mobilizing people, so on and so forth.

In fact, I don't find any particular model applicable to the Iran system. In my research last year in Iran, I found out that actually the greatest opponent of the regime among the students is actually the large bureaucracy of Iran. Believe it or not, about 2 million people in that bureaucracy, and they are filled up with inefficiency of the mullahs. I found it quite interesting. I had a lot of interviews with them.

One thing that you need to understand about the Iranis is they are protodemocracy rather than protofascists, because it has had two or three elections and it is a form of democracy. What is really tyrannical is the social policies. So you have to divide these into two factors.

In fact, when you say the Iranian government doesn't have any root in this culture -- well, look, fasicsts have a pretty deep root in mythology, or at least utilize that; 75 to 80 percent of Germans supported a fascist state. I don't think that number of people support the Iranian government.

Thank you.

MS. BOROUMAND: I think you have raised a very real issue, and you are right, because Iran is quite bizarre. When you read the conservative literature, it is very much inspired by the fascist ideology, the cult of leadership and, you know, the very, very dictatorial and hierarchical vision of things.

But, on the other hand, Iran is an exceptional situation because the Islamic Republic is based on an alliance between two factions that have allied against democracy. One has a leftist leaning and the other has a fascist leaning. This creates a sort of forum that you can see, a kind of pluralism, and that is what distinguishes the Islamic Republic both with a purely Communist regime and a purely fascist regime.

As to what you referred to, the Nazis referring to Teutonic traditions, precisely. That is a very good point because the Nazi, as well as the Italian fascists -- and Michael Ledeen is here -- referred, one, to the Teutonic, pure, tribal values, the other to the Roman Empire's values and revival of the sacred Roman Empire. But both were a nationalist regime. I mean they were modern nationalist regime. They weren't a tribal -- I mean Germany was not a tribal system, nor was Italy, you know, an ancient Roman Empire.

So they used this ideology in order to create a very modern entity that never existed before.

MS. WURMSER: Yes, the gentleman there. Please identify yourself.

PARTICIPANT: Johns-Hopkins School of International Studies.

This question is for Guy. I hope you will answer this. If not, perhaps Ladan wants to help out.

There was a mention earlier on that the people in Iran, especially the students, are very much looking forward to change coming from inside, and now Senator Brownback has introduced an amendment that would allocate $50 million to different organizations in the United States as well as the TV channels in Los Angeles and elsewhere.

My question is, do you think that people in Iran are looking towards those channels as an inspiration for democracy? Would it be disadvantageous for them to actually get funding from the U.S. government, mindful of the fact that the Iranians are very independent minded. Would it be bad for them to have that type of a monetary connection to the U.S. government?

MR. DINMORE: Yeah, I would say your suspicions are well founded, actually. I know there is a very much alive reformist movement going on in Iran, and they are doing quite well, thank you very much for that, a lot of outside help. I think any writer, TV station that is sort of openly associated with U.S. funding or backing by outside political groups is going to be viewed with a fair degree of suspicion.

As Ladan has said, there are enormous numbers of Web sites now in Iran run by students, dissidents, and all sorts of people. The newspapers, even though so many have been closed down, a lot have actually opened as well. There is quite a remarkable public debate going on inside Iran, even publicly, about the nature of and the extent of clerical rule.

My perception in Iran was that a lot of people do watch satellite TV. I mean numbers are hard to gauge, but -- and some people in Teheran suggest it for that, 15, 20 percent or so, so that's a fifth of 10 million people. That's quite a lot. But most of those people watch foreign TV for movies, sport, and music, rather than political messages.

MS. WURMSER: Ladan and Uri, did you want to say something?

MS. BOROUMAND: Well, about your question, I mentioned the student movement, and I think most of them have despair from any change from within the regime. And one of the major student movements has decided to come out of the structure of the political regime and become an opposition to the regime. Officially they have decided. And when you listen to them and read them on a regular basis, you see that they don't believe any more in Khatami's ability to change, but more than that, they don't believe in the capacity of the regime to reform. So they think that this should be -- that is why a referendum has become such a major, major issue.

PARTICIPANT: [Inaudible question.]

MS. BOROUMAND: Oh, I see. As for the Brownback bill, I think it is very important. I mean it is very difficult, as you said, to advise the U.S. policymakers, but there is two sides to this story. One thing is that the United States, since the Second World War, has not helped democracy in Iran. The 1953 coup was a disaster for Iran's history, and what they did -- but, ironically, those who benefited from the 1953 coup, I mean Khomeini and his friends, were those who supported this coup. No one says that, that Khomeini was followed and held by the Fedayeen Islam (phon.) who were a protagonist of the 1953 coup. And after the coup, the head of the Fedayeen Islam was invited by the Shah to participate in the post-coup parliamentary election.

So that must be clear, and that is why we were so angry when the Secretary of State demanded pardon to a regime that was actually issued or had a complicity with the coup. If there is apology to be made, it should be made later, mutually, between the Iranian and the American people, not a regime like this. So that is a very important point.

Now for the money, if the money goes to a specific person or political group, that might effectively, you know, be a problem. But creating and strengthening a public forum, because what we lack in Iran, it is true that we have a lot of Web sites that we can see what the public opinion can -- you know, we can more or less evaluate the public opinion. But it is also true that not many people have access to Internet in Iran, and educated people are very, very, very few.

So this big television or even the radios -- the radios didn't wait for the United States to start, you know. The Los Angeles radio has started. Its quality leaves much to be desired, but it has nevertheless created a forum that people call from Iran, constantly. I mean people are all from the beginning of the revolution, they listen to the radio. BBC, Voice of America, Radio Israel, and now the Iranian radio, people listen to it.

So creating a strong public space, safe for the people to talk and interact, could help the prodemocracy movement. Not only it could help, but also the United States engaging or, you know, investing something in prodemocracy movement after all these years of betrayal, I must say, could have a symbolic and psychological positive effect for Iranian prodemocracy movement.

MS. WURMSER: Uri?

MR. LUBRANI: I just want to add two things. I think one at this juncture has to be less finicky about this business of being, as it were, branded as pro-American.

Let me tell you, in my experience, in my humble experience, young people to whom we have access, all of them, for them everything American is the best. The best cars, the best soap operas. I have met young people who are able to tell me what the end of the soap opera. I never saw it in my life, but they know exactly who is going to marry whom and who is going to kill whom in three months' time because their friend in Los Angeles has been informing them.

I mean this is a mania in Iran. So I wouldn't be too finicky about that.

Now, number two, I think that the Iranian dissidents -- and I call these dissidents as opposed to reformers who want to reform the regime inside. Dissidents are the people who want the regime out, in my view.

Now the dissidents need encouragement. They will have to do whatever they want to do and whatever they aspire to do, but they need encouragement. They were encouraged by the statesmen. They are going on strike on the 9th of July, and note that this is a student day, and they are planning a strike, and I think they ought to be encouraged, but with this strike it is vitally important for them, in my mind, to know that the nation of the United States is supporting them.

And maybe last, but not least, I have been discussing with friends of how to formulize and I think institutionalize this tremendously powerful dissident movement. It crossed my mind that the term which has rung so deeply into the hearts and minds of people in Europe, solidarity, can be applied to the people in Iran. I mean there can be an Irani solidarity movement, and I think such a movement should and could be very well supported. And these people are not looking from where the support comes, whether it's American money from that source or the other source. This is something, I'm throwing an idea. I don't know whether it's feasible or it's possible. But I would think that solidarity movement of Iran would be a very meaningful step forward.

Thank you.

MS. WURMSER: Ladan.

TAPE CHANGE TO TAPE 2, SIDE A

. . . other people, secularists, or less known people, or less educated people, the movement, most of the time, are not visible. What this American or Western solidarity could do is to bring visibility to their action.

I remember when they killed the two secularists dissidents. One hundred thousand people poured onto the street following the coffins. It was a major, major demonstration against the regime. We saw this --

MR. LUBRANI: Explain how they killed them.

MS. BOROUMAND: Yeah, they were knifed in their houses, only because they had interviews with foreign radios and they were promoting the democracy and human rights in Iran. I mean the Islamic regime has killed all the leaders in the Iran, what the Shah never did. So again one other point for America to apologize to the killers of the movement for the coup in 1953.

Anyway, people poured onto the street. There was not a single picture of a cleric. They had the pictures of Dr. Moussad there, and the pictures only of (unintelligible). They burned the flags of Iran, the Islamic Republic, they crossed out the emblem of the Islamic Republic.

So if this had been covered by the BBC Television, by the Financial Times, by the CNN, believe me, that that would have created a momentum, and perhaps the prodemocracy movement would have been much, much further now on its way.

So visibility is extremely important for prodemocracy activists.

MS. WURMSER: The lady up front.

PARTICIPANT: I have a question for --

MS. WURMSER: Please identify yourself.

PARTICIPANT: I have a question for Mr. Dinmore.

First of all, I want to truly thank you for informing the Iranian-American on the wonderful reformist regime of Iran, but regarding your reference to the relevance of the rule of law and the legal system and all that, I just want to know, what legal system and what rule of law are you referring to? Are we talking about the same legal system that is not written and is an interpretation of the Koran? And, you know, that doesn't respect the right of the imprisoned, that stones women? Are you talking about the same regime? The same system of law?

[Applause.]

MR. DINMORE: I think maybe I didn't express myself very clearly before, or you misunderstood me. I wasn't trying to defend the legal system in Iran. When I mentioned the legal system, what I was saying was that the editor of this newspaper, when dealing with the subject of prostitutes being killed or murdered in the streets, which was being sanctioned by some officials, he would prefer that, A, the murdered be brought to justice; and B, that if one is to remove prostitution from the streets of Mashhad, you try and do it through legal ways rather than through terror.

That's the only point I was trying to make.

PARTICIPANT: You have to have a legal system to do that in a legal way.

MR. DINMORE: Well, absolutely. I agree. Well, there is a legal system, but yes, it's a very unfair, intolerant and dangerous system. But I would also try to argue that, you know, some things are changing in Iran, just to be brief about it.

At least Hasham Aghajari did go on trial for apostasy. It's true that he was found guilty and he was sentenced to death, but his case is now going to appeal.

I agree, this is a country that stones women to death, which is appalling, but there are moves within the system to try and stop that.

PARTICIPANT: But when you say he goes on trial (inaudible), are you saying he had an attorney? Do you know if his attorney was paid by the government to (inaudible)?

MR. DINMORE: Well, let me -- okay, let me explain.

PARTICIPANT: (Inaudible.)

MR. DINMORE: Okay. Let's try and clarify a few points here.

I did not say the system and the rule of law in Iran is fair at all. Yes, Hashem Aghajari did have a lawyer, and I did meet him, and the trial was not fair, as I mentioned. It was closed. And as I mentioned, he was also sentenced to death for exercising his right to free speech.

Having said that, there is an appeals process that's going through, and if I had to wager any money, I would say that his sentence would be commuted.

I'm still not saying that it's a perfect legal system. It's far from being perfect. It's a very draconian legal system. I would repeat that many times.

MS. WURMSER: I know Ladan has something interesting to say.

MS. BOROUMAND: Yeah, I have something to your point that Gangi, all these are insiders, and as such insiders, they have privileges that the others do not have. There was a trial for apostasy, and he was supported by his fellow -- his friends who are in the government, whereas (unintelligible) were not given the possibility of expressing themselves and being tried. They were knifed. That is the difference between what is happening in Iran is precisely we are knifed. They have trial. So there is a very aristocratic regime in a sense.

I would like also to add although we all defend Aghajari's rights, because we defend all rights, because rights are universal, but Aghajari also came out and boosted the success of the reformist propaganda machine that enabled the Iranian regime to get at the U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights of a special report on Iran. That is also Aghajari's point of view. He was very proud of the achievement.

MS. WURMSER: The gentleman up here.

PARTICIPANT: Thanks. I'm Bill Samuel with Radio Free Europe. I have a question for Mr. Dinmore.

I have seen a lot in the press recently about the supposed great outpouring of separatist tendencies among Iran's Zari minority, and I think the only place I've seen this is in the Western press. Whereas there are other ethnic communities in Iran, the Kurds, the Baluccis, and the Turkomen, et cetera, and whereas I see the call that supposedly the Zaris are really upset about their lot in life, they are actually incorporated into the system. They are very much part of the system, whereas it seems to me that the Baluccis have many more grievances against the state, since they are the poorest province in the country, and they have no schools, et cetera.

Now you have done a series of articles, you have visited, I think, back about a year ago, and I was wondering if you shared that viewpoint or if you think ethnic concerns are greater elsewhere.

MR. DINMORE: You have raised a very interesting point, because one of the great fears of the regime in Iran is the sort of Soviet outcome where Iran sort of splinters off into lots of different provinces and factions and ethnic groups.

The situation on the Baluccis is truly terrible. A large part of that is due to the drought which began to break within the last six months or so. Ironically, the drought has sort of perhaps quelled the discontent in the sense that a lot of people just simply had to leave the province. I mean there's been an enormous depopulation of Baluchistan and a lot of these people have sort of gone to other areas because it's impossible to live there anymore.

I had the impression that the central government in Baluchistan exercises a fair degree of control over the towns, but has much less support on the sort of border areas. But I don't think there is a very sort of coherent voice for the Balucchi people. As a province, it's also quite mixed. It's got a big Shiia population in Baluchistan also. It's not overwhelmingly Sunni.

As for these areas, there is quite a strong movement amongst the Zari people for sort of national television, which I don't know if they had local channels, but not national TV for their language and universities. When Khatami visited Arumia (phon.) about two or three years ago, he got a very tough message from the Zarians that they wanted more political rights.

So it's a very mixed picture around the country. The Kurds, for example, there is a lot of discontent, but I would argue that compared, say, with Turkey, also and Iraq, the Iranian government managed to combine sort of ruthless, brutal suppression in the '80s with, I'd say, recently a rather more enlightened policy.

So to that extent that they've got the situation there sort of fairly under control, I would say.

MS. WURMSER: The gentleman up front right there.

PARTICIPANT: Thank you. Can I ask Professor Lewis a question?

MS. WURMSER: Sure. If he's willing to answer.

PARTICIPANT: There's a lot of discussion lately on the need for separation of mosque and state, and that's gained momentum after the war. I wanted to ask you how feasible is it to even talk about it, and given the fact that the separation of church and state took a rather long time and was dependent on various conditions, historical circumstances, most of which have not perhaps happened in Islam at large and certainly not within the Shiia movement of Islam, and it looks like there's not even been a protestant movement that's been successful within that. But the reason I ask this is that a lot of the idea of implementing liberal democracy from the top in some of these societies I think depends primarily on this basic issue on whether church and state -- or, rather, mosque and state can be separated.

PROFESSOR LEWIS: Thank you. I am grateful to you for giving me the opportunity to address this question.

There is no conspiracy involved.

Yes, the question you raise is a very important one. Now in the past it was always argued that this business of church and state is only a Christian problem. It arises from the distinctive history of relationships between religion and government from Roman times onwards, and that it has no parallel, no equivalent in Islam, where the Prophet Himself did not suffer the disagreeable fate of the Founder of Christianity.

It was argued that separation of church and state was a Christian remedy for a Christian disease, and therefore of no interest or relevance to Muslims.

I think by now more and more people are beginning to say that this is no longer true, and that having contracted a Christian disease, they might consider a Christian remedy.

[Laughter.]

PROFESSOR LEWIS: And the separation of church and state, I would remind you, is intended to protect both; not only to protect the church from interference by religious people, but also to protect religion from misuse by the state. And more and more people in Iran today, according to what I am told, among the press, even among the religious hierarchy, are concerned that what they see as a real danger to Islam which is being misused, degraded, and discredited by their activism in the present regime.

In a sense what we have seen under the ayatollahs is the Christianization of Islam. Using that word not in any moral or doctrinal sense, but in a functional and institutional sense. They have created something which never existed before in Islam, the functional equivalence of a papacy, a college of cardinals, a bench of bishops and, above all, an inquisition, and Inshallah, they will soon have a reformation, too.

[Applause.]

MS. BOROUMAND: If with your permission I could add something to what you said. I think from the very first day of the revolution, major ayatollahs kept their distance with this revolution. I remember when I went to Iran, it was a week after Khomeini went to Iran, and I was in the street and I worked actually with the third channel of the French Revolution and the one that interviewed the prime minister at the time in prison. And during the first week of the insurrection, in all their spontaneously organized revolutionary committee, we had the two pictures of Khomeini and Shariat Madhuri (phon.) Ayatollah Shariat Madhuri was a major figure, way higher religiously than Khomeini at the time, and he had a lot of following in the country, especially in the Turkish region of Azerbaijan, and people have forgotten precisely that the first armed insurrection against the Islamic Republic was led by a major ayatollah figure, Shariat Madhuri. They took over Tabriz, they took over the radio, and the issue was precisely the Islamic constitution.

So Khomeini's regime was never able to mobilize the support of the Iranian clergy, Shiite clergy. One of the reasons we are extremely worried for Iraq is that we see with the killing of the son of Ayatollah Hori (phon.), they are implementing precisely the same technique they did in Iran, killing one or two, intimidating the rest, and because the Shiite tradition is the quietest tradition, the mullahs will be quick to keep silence and then they take over and implement their own policy. That is what is worrying us a lot in Iraq right now.

MS. WURMSER: Last question will have to be this gentleman. I'm sorry, we are out of time, and we do have to eat lunch.

PARTICIPANT: There is some mention about the solidarity of the Iraq-Iranian regime, both totalitarian, and with some revolutionary characteristics. Both countries allegedly dropped the weapons of mass destruction programs, especially nuke programs. I have two questions at this point.

One question is to what extent Iranian dissident students, the public, have been told of this matter, and to what extent they are concerned about this program.

Secondly, what is the most likely reaction from Israel, including a possibility to make a surgical strike on the nuclear if this turns out to be a real threat.

MR. LUBRANI: Well, I didn't -- if your question about Israel was referred to me, I -- would you repeat the question? I didn't get it quite straight.

PARTICIPANT: Yes. If the Iranian nuclear program turns out to be a real threat, what is the most likely reaction from the Israeli government, especially that surgical strike is the likely reaction?

MR. LUBRANI: Well, obviously you don't expect me to tell you what exactly Israel is going to do about the threat. But let me tell you, we are very, very deeply concerned that this particular regime in Teheran will have is finger on the trigger of an atomic weapon. This is a very, very, very real source of concern to us.

Now what are you going to do about it? We'll see.

[Laughter.]

MS. BOROUMAND: Shall I answer? I think part of the question was for me. For what we read from the students' communique and writings, they don't mention precisely these issues, but they constantly blame the government's, you know, reckless foreign policy that goes against Iran's national interest. And they want the government to be more understanding towards the United States and open up and not pursue, for instance, a policy in Afghanistan or Iraq or in Lebanon.

One of the interesting demonstrations of the teachers a year ago, I think, or a few months ago, one of their slogans was forget about Palestine, think about us. So that is something you can feel in the public opinion. They think instead of constructing, building their country, they are wasting Iran's wealth outside for, you know, international Islamist causes.

MS. WURMSER: Uri, Ladan, and Guy, thank you all very much.

[Applause.]

MS. WURMSER: Thank you for being here. I apologize for all of you who did not get to ask questions. We are simply out of time, and I invite you all for lunch.

[Whereupon, Panel 1 was concluded.]

DR. LEDEEN: We will proceed to the afternoon panel, which is on the question of policy, which I suppose now is moot, since Senator Brownback has already defined policy, but on the off chance that people may have additional ideas, I have just one thought that I'd like to toss out at the beginning of this discussion.

I've spent a very long time studying the fall of evil regimes. I spent 15 years in the archives of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, and then I spent many years, both looking at and working against the Soviet empire and now these regimes.

And the conclusion I've come to, which is the sort of conclusion that historians always come to, is that there's no general rule in these matters and that each one is different and that the most important instruments and understanding the situation, as in defining a proper policy is, as Uri Lubrani said this morning, the nose. It's not so much the minds, and it's certainly not the computer, it's the nose. You have to be able to smell it out.

One of the great things about President Reagan was that he and his people smelled out the impending collapse of the Soviet Empire, and the rottenness that underlay it, and knew that it was ready to go. And so by the time we gave it a series of pushes, it collapsed.

My own feeling is that Iran today looks very much like that. It resembles a lot of these countries in the final stages of their rule. As Bernard said, he talked about Napoleon or the final stages of the French Revolution, maybe it's Thurmadore, who knows, because we don't know what form it will take, and these regimes always surprise us.

But I think I do know what the key moment is, and it's something that has always baffled social scientists because you can't measure it, you can't quantify it, and you can't even particularly see it, you just have to sense it, and that is the day when the rulers of the country get up and look in the mirror, and instead of seeing the incarnation of history, God, the revelation, the dialectic, whatever it may be, they see some guy working very hard to keep his job, and that's the thing that one must look for, and I think we are now beginning to see that.

And I take it that when a man like Rafsanjani can jump all over the map on relations with the United States in a period of a very few days; one day proclaiming us the great satan, the day after saying, Well, we've always wanted to have good relations with the United States, and the day after saying, We will destroy them and drive them out as we did to them in Lebanon, I mean, this is not just confusion, it's confusion driven by a certain lack of self-confidence.

Well, that said, we're very fortunate to have four really terrific panelists for this afternoon, and we are particularly delighted to have lured, against all, I'm sure, all recommendations concerning his personal safety, Bernard Hourcade from Paris.

[Laughter.]

DR. LEDEEN: Probably his family members and loved ones are terrified of the thought of turning over their beloved senior research fellow to the untender mercies of the American mob, but we are happy to have you with us, and I'm not going to be a rude host by asking you to talk first.

No. I'm going to ask Reuel to talk first because he's one of us, and Reuel Gerecht, who has written very widely and very well about Iran after wisely leaving the Central Intelligence Agency after less than a decade in its grips, for which we are all grateful, and the world at-large is grateful. So I will ask Reuel to talk to us first, please.

[Applause.]

MR. GERECHT: I think I'll just avoid the podium because I'm too tall for that podium. So I'll just go from here. I'll be very, very brief. I think this goes towards the central issue of policy, and that central issue of policy is whether the United States should blink in the development of Iran's nuclear weaponry. I mean, I think we all are aware, I don't know of anyone who looks at Iran anywhere who dissents, who believes the Iranians aren't working full steam at developing nuclear weaponry, that they've been doing this in a fairly serious way for 10 years and that the time line for that has now dropped to probably under two years.

Now, I am all in favor of meddling in other people's affairs as a general rule of thumb.

[Laughter.]

MR. GERECHT: I think that it's a good idea to support liberal Democrats wherever you can find them--even if you can't find them, try to support them--but I don't think the time line is terribly helpful in Iran. No matter what we do, I really do not see that regime falling apart quickly. It's entirely possible.

I think if the regime does go down, it will go down because of a series of events which haven't been seen or haven't been predicted, that it will be spontaneous combustion which will cause that regime trouble, but I don't think it will be because of a concerted effort. I think the Iranian regime has been fairly adept at handling serious dissent, and I suspect it will be so for the next 24 months.

Again, I would emphasize I have no problem, and I think we should try to figure out a means of support. I don't think, realistically, the U.S. Government is in terribly good position to do that. It wouldn't be crooked of me to talk about American covert action from the past, but let's just say that the primary institutions that are responsible for it have long been adverse to it, and I must add, given some of their track record, that's probably a good thing, at least for the Iranians involved.

I don't think that if you look at Iran, I mean, there's an Iranian friend that Bernard and I share actually, that tells the amusing story he's having dinner with a variety of Iranians, many of whom are clerics, and they're all talking about how much they hate the Iranian Revolution, and they talk about how much they hate the regime.

And my friend is listening to them talk about how much they hate the regime, and he finally looks at them, and he says, you know, he says to them, "Aren't you `un hal'?" which is what they were using. It was always someone else, "un hal," they are responsible. They are responsible. And he finally says, "Well, aren't you `un hal'? I mean, you're the clerics."

And they say, "Well, no, I'm not `un hal,' they are."

And I think this is actually a fundamental problem that we have. It's not a sophisticated political theory, but it's nevertheless true, and that is that everybody in Iran sort of hates the regime. The regime hates the regime.

[Laughter.]

MR. GERECHT: When the regime hates the regime, and everybody hates the regime, it's very difficult to gain political traction on the ground. As others earlier in the day had remarked, if you just look at the death toll, the death toll has been rather low. You do not/have not seen young men out there willing to sort of, with their testosterone going through the roof, out there killing themselves on the streets and trying to kill others.

If you would compare, for example, I think it is the biggest demonstration of recent years, in July 1999, it is, I mean, it's peanuts compared to those demonstrations that occurred during the early revolutionary years, that it just, it doesn't seem that unless you get that normative spontaneous combustion, which certainly could happen, it just certainly doesn't seem that you have enough traction there.

So the United States is going to then have to confront the issue. All right. What are we going to do about the nuclear program? Because it is I think a rule, I think one can make the assertion that everybody in Iran, regardless of political persuasion, certainly within the clerical community, is in favor of nuclear weaponry. If I were an Iranian cleric or if I were an Iranian liberal, I could make an argument for why I would want to have nuclear weaponry, and I think those arguments are persuasive for them, and they will move forward with the nuclear program regardless, which then leaves us with the determination, and I think there are two facets to that; one is the strategic calculation and one is the terrorist calculation.

Now, strategically, I think you can make an argument that a certain theory of mutual assured destruction can work with Iranians. It doesn't necessarily work well, but I think it does work, and particularly the Israeli nuclear arsenal is I think the primary check on the Iranians engaging in what you might call open, naughty, aggressive behavior because, if they are open about it, they can, in fact, be checked.

Now, the reverse is also true, and that's the one I'm certainly more concerned about, is that I think the Iranian possession of nuclear weaponry will check us. I don't think we would have gone to war in Iraq, either in 1990 or more recently, if the Iraqis had had nuclear weaponry. It just certainly wouldn't have happened.

And when the Iranians get nuclear weaponry, that is going to set off a whole different sequence of events and a different psychology towards what the U.S. can and cannot do. I would also suggest it also might provoke Turkey into certain actions. It will be interesting to see what the Turks do as the Iranians develop nuclear weaponry.

But it is, one could argue, a strategically manageable situation. It's not good. You'd rather not have it, and maybe the United States ought to do whatever it can, including the military option, to ensure that the possession of nuclear weaponry gets pushed down the road, that you move it down the road, that, conceivably--and this is the work part--because the Iranians have been very clever, they have learned the lessons of Iraq, their nuclear program is at the least twofold. It goes both with gas centrifusions and heavy water. It is hidden. It is underground.

And without casting aspersions upon my former employer, you may not necessarily want to rest assured that you have the right intelligence that we can actually take out these facilities. So it is entirely possible that we could go after it, and we could miss.

Now, what is certain is that they will rebuild. Now, whether they can rebuild on a time line which is helpful to them, vis-a-vis their own internal political troubles, is a different issue.

The second angle on that is a terrorist angle, and that is also an uncomfortable one. I mean, the Iranians, I know of no moral debate in that country, certainly amongst the clerical class, that has leaked out about them arguing about whether terrorism is good or bad. It is a utilitarian issue.

Now, I think at times the utilitarian issue argument against terrorism has, in fact, restrained the Iranians from doing naughtiness, but you don't know. It is an open issue. I think it is fairly clear, and I believe the majority consensus inside the U.S. Government is that they were responsible for the Khobar bombing, that they had an instrumental role in that, and we winked at that one.

It is very disconcerting that elements inside of the Iranian regime, and I'm not saying, because you cannot talk about that regime as one thinking cohesive unit, but certainly one element to that Iranian regime allowed members of al Qaeda to move through it after the war in Afghanistan. That was a very dumb thing for them to do because it immediately opens up doubts in your mind, and certainly there were doubts that were preexisting.

Ayman al-Zawahiri, the number two of al Qaeda, is their favorite Sunni Arab radical. He has a longstanding relationship with what you might call, loosely put, the "Khomeini faction" inside of Iran. So it leaves open that element of doubt, and certainly when you look at the President's war on terrorism and his "Axis of Evil" doctrine, one thing that I think he's saying is that he wants to close down those elements of doubt, which brings us back to that question do you want to go through with it, and do you want to strike at those facilities and not blink?

Now, I have two minds on that issue, and I'm going to stop right there.

[Applause.]

DR. LEDEEN: Depriving us, so to speak, of the other mind.

[Laughter.]

DR. LEDEEN: Now, Morrie Amitay would like me to tell the joke about the serpent and the rabbit, but I'm not going to. You'll have to dig that out yourselves. That would be rude.

[Laughter.]

DR. LEDEEN: But I will ask Morrie Amitay to speak next. Morrie is the Vice Chairman of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs. He's on the board of the Center for Security Policy. Indeed, if we were to list all of the various things he is, and does, we would spend the rest of the afternoon on it.

He is the Godfather of APEC, one of the great political minds in recent Washington history, universally admired on both sides of the aisle, dapper, charming, witty, smart, what a guy.

[Laughter.]

DR. LEDEEN: So we will ask Morrie to speak next.

Thank you.

MR. AMITAY: Keep going.

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: Thank you. It's really good to be here at the American Enterprise Institute. Pat Buchanan recently called AEI the CENTCOM for the War Party. I think AEI can take that as a compliment, given the results that the War Party achieved in Iraq.

You've heard a lot of expert opinion about Iran, and I am not an expert on Iran. I do know a little bit about Washington. I've been here quite a number of years. He mentioned APEC. I worked on Capitol Hill. A secret known by some of my friends here is that I was also a State Department Foreign Service Officer for almost eight years.

I lobby and consult on Middle East issues and energy and defense. In Washington, you all know what a consultant is. A consultant in Washington is someone, when he leaves his house in the morning, he pats his dog on the head, and he says, "Let's have lunch sometime."

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: My views are my own and not of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, of which I am Vice Chair. What I'd like to talk about is not what should happen in Iran--I think there's been a consensus on that--but what could happen in the next year.

I'm operating on some of the assumptions that we've already heard today: that Khatami is really not in charge. He is not calling the shots there; Iran is becoming a nuclear threat; Iran supports worldwide terror, Hezbollah just one example; Iran is undermining American policy in Iraq; the dissidents in Iran are a force that should be encouraged by our country; and, finally, I'm operating under the assumption that regime change in Iran should be a high-priority goal for this country.

Who makes U.S. policy? Who will be making policy? It's obvious the administration, the White House will have a final say. Congress can have some influence, and we heard from Senator Brownback and his very positive ideas of how to encourage the forces of democracy, and then we have the public opinion, the media largely uninformed about Iran. Business interests have a stake in getting along with Iran, represented here in this country by the American-Iranian Council.

As far as the administration is concerned, I think we have to concede that from now until November of 2004, the presidential reelection will be a very, very high priority, and that having taken on Iraq, I don't think that this administration or any administration would want to undertake the use of force for regime change anywhere else in the world.

So I think what we will see is what we saw for most of Clinton's eight years, a policy of kicking the can down the road, a hoping for the rest, making tactical decisions, no really decisive, bold decisions.

The role of the State Department, then, with the White House I think paying less attention to Iran than it deserves, will be crucial. And let me say some of my best friends are in the State Department. I have two good friends here, Bob Pelletrow [ph], Bill Miller. And some of my comments do not necessarily apply to them, but I'm speaking more largely about the culture of the State Department.

Now, I was preempted by Newt Gingrich, from this very--

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: --from this very position, but I think that Newt was not tough enough in his criticism of State, and I think I can do so because of some of my own experiences.

I think at this point it's not enough to say that the Secretary of State is just a captive of the State Department. After a couple of years, the bonds have been loosened, and I think that he's basically acting a great deal on his own, and I think there's a certain mind-set in dealing with adversaries of our country that having an instinct for the capillaries is not enough. We did not finish the job in '91. Thankfully, we did so now, and I don't think the State Department distinguished itself in the run up to the war in Iraq with regard to relations with Turkey, handling the United Nations, relationship with France, et cetera.

I think one of the reasons is the advice that young Foreign Service Officers get when they come to a new assignment, and this is the advice that I got when I went to Pretoria to be a political officer at the embassy in South Africa in the late 1960s. I'm quoting the advice I got, which I call "nautical advice."

"Don't make waves, keep a low silhouette, and don't rock the boat." This is what people are told when they go to serve overseas, and what counts is access to people in the host government, no rough edges, don't report any bad news, and always be able to say having access, as the Foreign Minister said to me, "You always put the best light on what you're told, and you learn to use `weasel words' in your reporting." Apparently, it is possible that one could surmise relatively moderate, and if you're in a particularly adversarial country, and the government-controlled media describes America as a bunch of rotten, degenerate colonialists, instead of calling them murderous vermin, this is a proof of a warming in relations.

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: As Newt Gingrich put it, the State Department operates on three principles: process, politeness and accommodation. There's a recent example of that.

There was a story over the weekend of the Iranian involvement in Iraq, and in the same newspaper we read that a religious edict issued in Iran and distributed to Shi'ite mullahs in Iraq, called on them to "seize the first possible opportunity to fill the power vacuum in the administration of Iraqi cities."

What was the reaction of the Defense Department? Secretary Rumsfeld was quoted saying, "A vocal minority clamoring to transform Iraq and Iran's image will not be permitted to do so. We will not allow the Iraqi people's democratic transition to be hijacked by those who might wish to install another form of dictatorship."

State Department reaction from an unnamed diplomat: "Our impression is that they are behaving fairly well so far."

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: And I note that Khatami just offered to help Iraq establish democracy. He has made this offer, and I really don't know who will take him up on that.

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: But what is possibly worse recently is Deputy Secretary Armitage could say with a straight face that Iran is a democracy. I guess that depends on the definition of "is."

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: What he obviously meant to say is, is definitely not.

Well, Colin Powell, on Sunday, on Meet the Press, was asked to react to what the mullahs in Iran were doing in Iraq, and what he did was he called their policies "inappropriate," not unacceptable, not tyrannical, not terrorist, but just inappropriate--a bit of an understatement.

The attitude is one of laissez-faire. We can do business with you name it. You name any tyrant or despot in recent years, and the word you'll get is, "We can do business with them."

If you look at the Secretary's visit to Syria, his number one stop in the Middle East, what did he actually accomplish? Before he got there, he was quoted as saying that he expected Assad to be "a force for peace, and there should be no talk of war or hostilities." That should really work with Bashar Assad.

At the most, all he got was a promise already broken that the offices of the terrorist organization in Damascus would be closed. The offices were visited by members of the press yesterday and today, and they were told, "What closure? We're here. We're doing business."

In a state mind-set, no tyrannical regime can't be made a friend by showing our own good will, politeness, process and accommodation, as Gingrich put it.

[Tape change: T-3A to T-3B.]

MR. AMITAY: --22 million Iranians between the ages of 15 and 29. No wonder that John Bolton's bureau at the State Department is sometimes called the American interests section of the State Department.

[Laughter.]

MR. AMITAY: At State, the glass is never half empty, it's always full.

Now, you have the Congress. The Congress is more action oriented. The culture of Capitol Hill is to pass bills and resolutions, appropriate funds, and they have to face the voters. They are accountable. But Congress, because of this, they're held in contempt by people in the State Department. The worst assignment a Foreign Service Officer can get is to accompany a congressional delegation when they come visiting.

The Congress is held in contempt by the State Department. They are no nothings. They're a bunch of yahoos, and anything they do is developed as simplisma. They don't have the sophistication. Some members of Congress are flattered by the State Department as being one of us, and as we go to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee with Senator Brownback's initiatives, we're going to have some problems with some of the leading members.

Let me quote from Congressional Quarterly's Politics in America, which is very even, very nonpartisan, what they said about some of the leading members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that I believe might be problems in getting these initiatives passed.

First, Senator Joseph Biden, a Democrat of Delaware, who is the ranking Democrat. "Yet even in a chamber known for its long-winded speakers, Biden's loquaciousness stands out."

Or Senator Hagel, from Nebraska, who is second to Senator Lugar, the Chairman, "He has a polished skill and media relations, and he's there in the talk shows."

The Chairman himself is described as a "sophisticated and accomplished foreign affairs expert," and he is.

But what does Congressional Quarterly say about Senator Brownback? "He focuses more on moral principles than political pragmatists." And that's why I think he has a chance for getting some of his initiatives passed if there can be enough support behind him and if enough of his colleagues also act on the basis of moral principles.

He talked about his resolution. It has a chance, the last initiative has a chance of passage because he's actually not asking for funds, but just to redirect funds. His resolution, speaking for support for the force of a democracy in Iran has a great deal of support, a number of cosponsors on both sides of the aisle, and what we will need is more public attention and more public support for him.

Let me just make a note. I've become involved with a group called the Coalition for Democracy in Iran, the CDI, not to be confused with the Center for Defense Information. We have a website. We have a couple of notable people here at AEI who are backers, including Joshua Muravchik, Michael Ledeen, Rob Sobhani, on my left, a number of former Congressmen and Senators.

I think there should be more support for forces of change in the Congress. I don't think there's that much hope for a sudden transformation at the State Department. We can hope for more attention by the White House, even though we will be in a political season, but the only way that there can be any positive action on Iran is if we try to keep the issue on the front burner and particularly, before, as was pointed out, they do get their nukes.

Thank you.

[Applause.]

DR. LEDEEN: Sooner or later, someone will have to give an anti-State Department talk at some other place than the American Enterprise Institute.

[Laughter.]

DR. LEDEEN: Otherwise people will think badly of us. They will think that that's all we do here.

Bernard Hourcade is a Senior Research Fellow at the National Center for Scientific Research in Paris. He is a professor of geography at Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris Trois. He is the head of a well-known research team, Monde Iranien, and he is the author of countless distinguished famous essays, books and so forth, most recently a book called, "New Identities for a Republic: The Case of Iran."

He has received awards from the French Foreign Ministry and from the Ministry of Islamic Guidance in Tehran, no small accomplishment, for an atlas of Iran, not for his ideological alignment, I hasten to add.

We are delighted to have you join us today, and please enlighten us, Professor Hourcade.

[Applause.]

DR. HOURCADE: Thank you so much. I will try to go back again to Iran and to see what's going on this fantastic and sometimes crazy country.

I have been in Iran for the first time since the beginning of the '70s, and I had the opportunity, the chance or bad luck, I don't know exactly, to arrive again in Iran to spend four years in September '78, before the revolution or during the revolution. And from that time, I'm going back to Iran twice a year at least, and working there.

And recently we are doing a class of mountains, and rivers and plains, but who are the Iranians, what are they doing, what are they thinking. We are doing the same job now with Iranian colleagues in Tehran, who are the people living in Tehran. And we have done last spring, a large inquiry on 40,000 people around Iran to see who are the youth and the