Couldnt put it down it was interesting. If you havent read it after this evening im sure you will try to get the book if you havent already but i would urge you to try to read it. Its fascinating, very wellwritten and researched. There is a narrative flow to it and its very troubling i have to say that that is the perk of the book i think. I would like to announce that our events in two days with ambassador dennis ross is unable to come to College Station and the family emergency. Kim ghattas is an Emmy Awardwinning journalist and writer thaawriter that covered e east for bbc in the financial times. She reported from iraq, saudi arabia, syria, lebanon and the war between israel and hezbollah earning an emmy for International News coverage. On the state department and american politics regularly traveling with secretary of state including Condoleezza Rice cominrice, elderly clinton and n kerry, and is currently a non resident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in washington. Her first book was a New York Times bestseller and regularly speaks, continues to speak on American Television and radio and was born and raised in lebanon, that she now lives between beirut and washington, d. C. If you have questions, please write them on the cards. The Bush School Ambassadors that have their glazers on what up and down the aisle they will continue to do that and then once you write the questions, pass them to the aisle and they will pick them up, give them to me and i will go through them after ms. Kim ghattas speaks. We will sit up here and i will ask some questions and ca then e your questions from the cards area to pleas please join me ing kim ghattas to the stage. [applause] good evening, everybody. Its a delight to be here this evening. Thank you for the very generous introduction and for. I see in the front of my good friend. Thank you for helping to make this happen. I am really delighted to be back in texas. I havent been here in a very long time and i must complain about the weather but this gives me a good excuse to return. As any bucket is the result of the journey and every writing endeavor is a journey many of you im sure have written books this is a journey more of the writing. As the combination of body experience growing up in the region as a child of war and in beirut. I wanted to write a story about that region that isnt a typical story about the region. Experts sitting here this evening. I wanted to write our story because i had questions that ii did not find the answers to in the books that were out there. Why is it the way it is. From our perspective from the region because i do think that what is out there at the moment is not enough to explain why we got to where we are and it doesnt do justice to the people of the region that have tried as well very hired to find a different path forward. The way i do my talks and reading as i try to make it accessible to as wide an audience as possible. Many of you here tonight are experts on the middle east i hope that even for the experts i can bring some different answers and perspectives as to why the region is the way it is today. What drove me to write this book is i found out there wasnt much out there that really addressed what i found at the core of the problem coming and it took me a while to even put my finger on what it was that was the core of the problem or what was the point at which things have changed. But i wanted to as a starting point actually give you the conclusion coming and i know that the long way around that i do think that it is important because i think that what i try to do with my writing is to go against some of the preconceived ideas people have about the middle east because of the kneejerk coverage because of headlines and because of just the intensity of the news that comes at us from the middle east so i want to tell you some of the things you know about the middle east are wrong and i hope that you will allow me to talk about that. Despite the headlines and things that indicate that its always been like that saudi arabia and iran have not always been rivals. Theyve always been enemies. There was a time when iran and saudi arabia were twin pillars to counter communism in the region. They were friendly competitors, allies in that endeavor and you visits exchanged between the royals and the two countries. They called each other is that they were not the closest of friends but they were friendly but its the assumption they make these its always been like that between iran and saudi arabia, and it wasnt. Another is muslims have always called each other so its going to be like that and in particular you will hear sunni and shia have always called each other. Its like the catholics and protestants, sunnis and shia are the two sectors of islam that split after when some people saw that the air should b error shoe closest relatives and those that some people thought should be the closest confidante and those became the sunnis that even in the first few decades following, those identities were not as clearly defined. They evolved over time so that is another preconceived idea of conception people have about the region even when presented obama said he had been tell each other for millennia and they will it s be like that and we would like to point out that it has not always been like that and therefore it also doesnt need to be like that forever. And that is part of what drives the writing in this book is to remind us that there was a pass and therefore there can be a different future. The final and third misconception people have particularly because of the constant droning on at the of te headlines that are focused on tyrants and dictators is the regents have always been in the throes of violence and intolerance. Its part of what defines the region and i would like to tell you that it hasnt always been like that. And again, that means that it doesnt always need to be like that. We would like to give you a very different approach because the question does haunt us in the arab and muslim world. From my own country of lebanon all the way down to pakistan and saudi arabia to syria. For us it is a different country. Its one that isnt mired in the horrors of the sectarian killings and more vibrant place without a crushing intolerance of religious zealots. The past wasnt perfect. The future did still holds much promise. The question perhaps today in the region that didnt occur to those that are too young to remember when vibrant Tolerant Society was the norm and those are the ones whose parents didnt tell them. The debating into beirut or riding your bike on the banks of the river tigris. All of these things that seem impossible today but i think especially the question that surprise to those isurprised tht assumed it has always been as it is today. Its a complicated thing that makes us think that the cast was perfect. Past was perfect. I know sometimes in the United States there are people that forget the things that were wrong at the time because they tend to idealize the past, and that isnt what drove me. I wasnt idolizing the past, but i wanted to understand why things had unraveled. What was the starting point and without people really noticing what was happening around them anand then it took on an unexpected force in the last decade or 15 years. There are many turning points that explained what happened and many turning points in history whether it was the end of the Ottoman Empire and fall of the last islamic caliphate after world war i people would say that this is the moment some people will point to the creation of israel and the subsequent defeat of the war in 64 and 67 as the moment there was a real fissure in the psyche of the arab and muslim world, and others look directly at 2003 into the invasion of iraq is the moment where everything became worse that have already been like that. Sunni and shia killing each other and at each others throats and people will, therefore, because of the headlines of the past two decades or so en vogue that its always been like that, its inevitable, its internal, but apart from the eternal, none of these explanations are completely correct and the eternal part is totally wrong. I insist on underlining that. But none of these explanations about the turning point in the region really gives you a complete understanding of why we are where we are today. A lot of you will remember that they are as the year of the hostage crisis. It was of course also the year of the iran resolution and at the same time as the hostage crisis in tehran you have another typhad anothertype of hi arabia and mecca when they got the latest siege. Later that year in november or december on christmas eve, you had the soviet invasion of afghanistan. Now those three events coming into focus on the three iranian resolution to as a result of that in some respects but the iranian resolution, the siege of the holy mosqu mosque and the in of afghanistan were seemingly independent events of one another and they were completely intertwined in the combination of all three is toxic. First of all, from this confluence was born to saudi iranian rivalry. As i mentioned, the two countries were friendly rivals and there was no reason they should have become the enemy is right after there was no apparent reason they should have become enemies were rivals for the iran resolution except for the fact that they pride themselves as leaders of the muslim world and the sites of mecca and medina but ayatollah maney who landed in 1979 also had grand ambitions beyond just iran, beyond just even the community in his own country and we had two countries, one sunni, saudi arabia, one of shia, iran suddenly vying for leadership of the muslim world and thats whats not only changed the geopolitics of the region but started the slow growth of the sectarian language and identities as both countries yielded those identities and their efforts to dominate the region and rally the people to their site. And in that battle they exploit religion and the pursuit of something very simple that any world leader would understand, and that is raw power but that is a constant from 1979 to this day. It is as deeply and fundamentally as the events of 1979 and the way that started after those events and other pivotal moments undo hawaiians as thalliance isthe end or star. They bring in and or see the beginning of a political ideology. But 1979 changed the geopolitics of the countries. They started using religion as a tool. It had an impact on society and culture and so what 1979 davis make a process that tried to form the society and altered cultural and religious references. The dynamics that were unleashed in 1979 changed who we are in the region and hijacked our collective memories. And that is why i was very keen to have the word collective memories in the title because i think its important to understand the process that is unleashed by events like that when they ripple across not just years but several decades over time peoples memories of what came before and a lot of people in the United States forget that actually, the iranian revolution didnt begin as an effort to bring theocracy to the country. It was an effort where a lot of the modernists were involved except the Ayatollah Khomeini came out on top. The year 1979 a 1979 and the for decades that followed. When it went beyond geopolitics and into this constant effort to show who was the real leader of the muslim world and for legitimacy and cultural domination in the changed society not only in saudi arabia in a more subtle way that also in countries that extended all the way from egypt to pakistan and beyond. I couldnt include everything in this book because i really tried to write it as a story, as a narrative as you mentioned and its hard to keep the narrative on track if you include too many details and to many countries and many places. And i know that you will see that pakistan isnt part of this i havent forgotten in my geography, bu thats what i wand to really do is to show how the dots are connected across countries and even continents because theres a tendency to look at them as only the middle east and to look at pakistan and that dynamic has suffered. The history is very connected to events in the middle east not only because of the jihad against the soviets in the 80s that began after the invasion of afghanistan in which of course pakistan played a crucial role in of course everyone remembers were shut remember that as the war the u. S. Backed as well and pakistan is central to the narrative. Theres a tendency to look at the iranian resolution the next day in isolation had affected iran or how that affects the role in the region but theres not enough effort to look at how it rippled across the region and how the sunni world reacted and interacted with it and other countries because initially they were not all negative. A lot of people admired for some people admired how he managed to rise on top and bring a theocracy to power in iran. The fact that i have pointed out 1979 is the crucial turning point was i found everywhere i asked a question told me about 1979 account of the reactions were very much to my thesis because i was met with a flood of emotions. When i asked people in pakistan or egypt tell me about 1979. Out came all their memories and emotions and everything that they kept almost bottled up. This was a question that no one asked them before because it isnt easy when you are living in such a people to really come to terms with and analyze what youre going through. So so many people thought yes, 1979. Let me tell you about 1979 and how that wrecked my career or my marriage or my childrens education, why i had to go into exile at halftime or how i had to lose my job after 1979 and by. There is a beginning of an understanding in the region about what that fear has done to us. It felt a little bit like i was conducting natural therapy in peoples studies were their living rooms as they sort of poured their hearts out to me. I am a journalist. Im not a historian or academic but this is more than the reported narrative i dont only rely on my interviews with people in these countries. We dug deep into the archives with my research assistants. We look that old footage and we read academic articles written at the time because it is very interesting to see how the perspectives change when you look back at economic articles after the iran resolution or to see the assessment at the time and read about it now. When you put it all together you get a Virtual Library of the history of the region. I had 19 binders full of printed papers that told the story because i thought it was important to be able to see in front of me the pictures, the writings, the articles, the headlines. Imagine finding a headline from february, 1979 when the saudi arabia initially welcomes the iranian resolution because although they are sort of sorry to see them go, he was their friend and they were initially very concerned about the possibility that there would be a communist takeover of iran because those were the trends of the time, political islam wasnt the dominant story. When they saw the guy rising to the top was somebody they could kind of related to even though he was a very conservative man, he wanted to bring the kerr koran to the basic understanding of how it should be applied to society so when you look at these events and details and put it all together, you put together a puzzle of known events, forgotten, overlooked and when you have the puzzle in front of you, it gives you a very different understanding and reading of the last four decades of history. I go from egypt to pakistan, iran, saudi arabia and lebanon and it shatters some of those accepted truths that we have in the region because i can tell you that even sometimes we forget they havent always been killing each other. I grew up in the civil war in lebanon and they were never really used. It wasnt that kind of conflict. But today its accepted in our collective memory that they forget what it was like before. And that rivalry evolved and mutated over time with consequences that really no one could have foreseen in 1979. Now there has been a lot written about the middle east. I know that, but i am trying to present a different approach. You will find a lot of poetry and literature and cultural references in this book because i think it is important also to remember the richness of the region and humanize the region that has been so void of context so this isnt a book about buddhism, it isnt about about al qaeda or crisis. It isnt even about the dangers of fundamentalists pose for the best. This has been everything that youve already read some everything youve already seen on television and in the headlines with all due respect to my colleagues even i sometimes because that is just the nature of the business and thats why i wanted to take a step back and write this book. This is the story of those that havent been silenced because they continue to fight against the intellectual and cultural darkness that has involved us. They are intellectuals, poets, lawyers, young progressives, arabs, iranians, pakistanis and, men and women with an equal number of women and characters becausin charactersbecause we d. They are mostly developed. The characters are mostly develop. They pray, fast, go to the mosques and go to the separation of church and state to be a secular muslim, it isnt an oxymoron. You cant believe in the separation of mosques and states. These are progressive thinkers that present a very vibrant Pluralistic Society that are still bare underneath the black wave. They suffered immensely at the hands of those that yield power and are relentlessly intolerant of other people. Like my friend and colleague youll find the story in these pages starting from one of the first chapters and 1979 when he returned to the u. S. From his days as a student in the u. S. Theres a few chapters after that again when he returned to saudi arabia and the narrative after 9 11 its by one of his fellow writers criticizing the very creed of islam that is practiced in saudi arabia. It was a twist to the tale that i was telling about the rivalry one i didnt expect but on thatt i do think is described in that rivalry. The connections were not clear as to why this was part of the story, but it really was. Now, ive given you the conclusion and the ending in thiandthis last chapter but of e this isnt a novel although i am being told that it reads thriller but we know how it ends to some extent we know where we are today, and it is not in a great place, but we dont know how it is because i do believe that there is a Better Future ahead of us. I believe that because i look at the people protesting in iraq and iran and lebanon today who are again facing the bullets and continue to take to the streets including the women and lebanon that stand as a defensive line because they believe they will be attacked less quickly than the men standing behind them. The women in the square in baghdad are just absolutely incredible and how they are taking to the streets and blocking the politicians call for the women to return home and the call for segregation in public spaces between men and women you want to take us back to a century in 2020. Now, ive given you some of the conclusion that this tale begins just a few years before 1979 on the shores of the mediterranean in the non in my own country which plays many times an unfortunate role in the development of the region and today at him as well but a few years before 1979 on the shores of the country there there is e known episode that plays a role setting the stage for the resolution and i like to start the book with that because there is such an irony to the fact that this revolution that turned iran from the kingdom to a theocracy and that was organized by the secular leftists and modernists as you are reminded of how the irony is that the revolution that brought the fundamentalist ayatollah to power to the two cities, beirut and paris and paris the city of the enlightenment its not for the freedom in both of these countries, Ayatollah Khomeini may have i forgotten in the holy city in iraq. Im not going to tell you to much mortoomuch more about how y unfolds, but what i loved about the research that i did for this because i learned a lot about the region. I found a lot hidden in the pages of our history. The fact that the Muslim Brotherhood which is a coward to be reckoned with and to some extent some of these countries but was still in many ways a Political Force of the Muslim Brotherhood to the success fault perhaps we can do this here and they went to visit him. I think its important to go back because its important to look back at the different pieces of the puzzle to understand why we got to where we are today. But as i mentioned, the characters are not the key that drive the narrative. They are really at the heart of this book. The stories overlap in times, some of them dont, some cross paths, perhaps not that they are all fighting for the same thing, fighting for a more progressive and more Tolerant Society. The stories are contained with other figures and so what you end up with is that eastern geopolitics. Id like to say that the story is not over. As i was writing this book i really went back and forth between. One of the reasons why i grew up in the civil war we waited for it to end you have to start from scratch somewhere else. Its hard to leave your savings behind your belongings so we stay in the hope things would one day get better and that is the hope that i see still today in the region when i look around me. I know that a lot of people in the United States have given up on the region but i would urge you not to because progress takes time. We have a lot of factors that work against us. The arab uprisings are not over and they are not a failure. They are only the beginning. And the United States took some time to become what it is today. After the french revolution, democracy was not the instant results the day after. It takes time and so i settled on hope because i look around me in the region i look at young people, younger than me but have never known or have probably never heard much about the days before 1979, and i see how they wanted to escape the ghosts of the past. They want to build a future. They want to escape the ghosts of 1979. And so, while ive written this book for people in the west in the United States and elsewhere who wonder what really went wrong in the region, i do write this book for those who remember the times before 1979 and who ask what happened to us, perhaps i wrote it especially for the Younger Generation who today ask their parents why didnt you do anything to stop what was unraveling . Why did you let this happen backs and i was amazed to see that the question posed in both saudi arabia and iran the two countries that have a very different trajectory with very different societies but in both countries people were asking their parents why. Why did you let 1979 happen to us like that. So i hope not only will the book provide you i hope not only will the book provide provide a different perspective, much richer perspective on the society but i hope that this book will also provide clues for the Younger Generation to help us find a better path forward, one that is not determined by iran and saudi arabia. It is important to look back that you can understand what happened because they said its perfectly true life must be understood. Thank you very much for listening. [applause] weve written a Remarkable Book on religious statecraft. I remember one summer coming back from vacation. I found written evidence by the leaders they never intended to take over the embassy for the logical reasons or anything. They did it because they wanted to prove to the leftists that they were not in bed with the cia or the government. Today i noted that you accused his book and i kept looking at the footnotes are the end nodes quoting the book. His gimmick it was instrumental to understanding that period. The school of economics i dont know what to do for the economy. But he orchestrated the coup that brought bashir to power in the summer of 1989. I remember when we actually took out a bottle of champagne, after hours of course, not paid for by the federal government. We had a toast because they finally got rid of the democratically elected government which had stonewalled the relief efforts and a quarter of a million southerners died as a result of that so we were finally rid of this. I should have remembered the statement of brent scowcroft. Using theres light at the end of the tamil is usually a train about to run you over. I learned that very painfully because as time went on, we realized that he was a very dangerous guy and two and a half Million People died while he was president. So why didnt you mention this because it fits into the narrative perfectly. His gimmick it does and im trying to find the line where i do mention it. [laughter] rifling through the book very quickly because it is very interesting. Theres a technical reason why. Its like writing fiction where you have to keep the reader engaged and if you have too many side notes and detours, it is hard to keep your reader engaged and hanging on. Thats why you couldnt put it down, right . [laughter] i will take that to the bank now. Its true though i felt terrible that i couldnt write more about yemen. Yemen is another one of those stain on our conscience of humanity that we could let this happen. I felt terrible if i only had one chapter on this syria but i was falling on an agenda, dont get me wrong there wasnt a specific story i absolutely wanted to say by ignoring other parts of the story, but i was looking at the trend lines across the four year 40 years ay trying to pinpoint the key moments either cultural, religious or social and pin them down in tha a specific country e they happened to the rise of the militancy and the sunni shia killing and the first moment that happens in modern times because remember i said they hadnt been killing each other forever and that over the course of history they told each other must than catholics and protestants in the headlines today the moment where it happened was in modern times pakistan it wasnt even in the middle east come as a catalyst n is a chapter i focus on. Its a turning point or issue i explore but its all in the narrative. I have a cork board on the wall where i had the countryside explorer in the four decades, and i had posted with the variouto post it with thevariouh of the countries and the different eras to detect the trend lines. Trying to fight back of this rise from 1978 for those from the Muslim Brotherhood and he pushed back against them in a public debate once where he said i would never accept that to be insulted i am a muslim brickle you can insult communism or socialism but not islam. He is progressive but then he said when you ask for the Islamic State, which one are you suggesting exactly as a model . There were no successful examples. Saudi arabia and sudan have been failures so the islamic thinker and intellectual pushing back against more conservative thinkers point to me one successful Islamic State in modern times and goes on to say why this sudden of session after 1300 years since the First Century only 1 percent of people have advocated for a religious state 99 percent have advocate for what we call for which is a civil state. It is a key turning point where a man is mourned as a martyr of the nation when he is killed by radical extremists. Twenty years later the same thing happens in pakistan where a governor is declared for defending a christian woman and is murdered in cold blooded daylight no one dares anymore to come out to mourn him and declare him a martyr. That is how fast this unraveled. One thing that is curious but interesting is the shia only make up 10 percent it is not 5050 or even two thirds or one third its 10 percent versus 90 percent. May be a little bit more but not very much. And most of the shia the majority countries, 20 percent of pakistan is shia muslim. The largest shia population is in pakistan. And i actually brought up the leader of the sect within the shia islam really they said he is a heretic and i brought it up to a saudi diplomat he started to yell at me they are not muslims and on and on. So even within each of these great traditions, there are subsets of course like when i walked into a mosque in morocco 15 years ago i thought the chanting of the men was very similar to the church. Its very beautiful very mythical. As part of the reconstruction. Exactly. So how is it a country that makes up only ten or 15 percent are such a formidable threat to saudi arabia . If you talk to King Abdullah in jordan there is a huge threat of iran. It is a small percentage of the arab world but then there is a fear in the muslim one. It is two factors in a nutshell. One is after 1979 the Ayatollah Khomeini wanted to appeal to the wider muslim world not just the iran or shia leader but appeal to the wider world and he did two things. He challenge the saudis as the holy fights of islam until recently still called for a joint body of the holy sites that drives the saudis crazy because that is where they derive their legitimacy and power and their money as well. It is very lucrative to be the custodian of these two holy sites. At the time right after 1979, as part of the preparation for the revolution the at the Ayatollah Khomeini identified the palestinian call as one that would give him appeal among the shia community. So this begins in the book where i explore that alliance between khomeini and the palestinians by the loss in 1967 against the israelis and feeling betrayed trying to make moves toward peace with the israelis so now who will help me . There are connections made with a radiance in lebanon who are working toward the fall of the shaw and many are trained in lebanon and that is how the connection unfolds but khomeini had identified the cause as a way to transcend iran to take over to appeal to people across the region as the man to come in as the arabs have failed to potentially liberate jerusalem. Yes. But it is about power. They had no problem to breach khomeini he is the first foreign leader to visit immediately after the revolution. The first foreign dignitary who landed one week after the revolution and was greeted as a hero by people in iran they said today i ran. Tomorrow jerusalem. But what happened in the interim is that iran has worked doggedly and strategically to maintain its appeal to outside of the shock community really they only paid a lipservice so the backers of hamas and the Palestinian Militant Group part of the Islamic Revolutionary guard it was named after jerusalem the arabic word but the iran expeditionary expansionist force around the region was headed until very recently intel Qassem Soleimani who was killed us drone strike january this year on the orders of President Trump and those meant to liberate jerusalem for the palestinians and the muslim nation but Qassem Soleimani saw the road went through beirut with untold devastation along the way. So the fear and the reason why of of iran is the expansionist policy and it appeals to a lot of people in other ways it does not because in the American Camp americas and the antiterrorist camp but i will say one thing both of these countries at this point need each other so to some extent they need for the benefits to see iran continue to be a negative player in the region that is americas best friend in the region. You mentioned general Qassem Soleimani so i will raise that side of your book because it happened after your book was published. He is in the book but the killing is not. The last page of the last chapter is a description of a video animation put together by some saudi outfit that shows saudi forces liberating the iraq regime and Qassem Soleimani on his knees giving himself up to the saudis. In real life they had to leave it up to the americans to do it. You were one of the most two most thoughtful articles after his killing that i saw were one that you wrote and i cant remember where i saw it. It was in the atlantic where you describe what the us needs to do now you did not advocate for Qassem Soleimani but if you leave it this way it will be a problem you need to follow up to send additional messages. What is the effect of Qassem Soleimani death on the calculus . We know there were demonstrations to get out of iran now to get United States out of iraq. He also visited riyadh. I think that its important to remember Qassem Soleimani did run a network of murderous militias around the region from new york one from syria to yemen so to think wilderness between a war between the us and iran in a sense it is already constant war and violence and there were a lot of people in iraq and syria that celebrated his demise and in iran because we have seen the footage of people coming out in morning but also a lot of people were very relieved that this man that would do the crackdown against Peaceful Protesters that this man was finally gone. But what is happening in the region now all those that are a proxy militia of closer allies jockey for physician to use this moment to come up on top. And then to see to become the ultimate leader in the region. So those are very good at turning moments of vulnerability a strength. After 2003 of iraq iran feared it could be next. Instead of cowering, they seized the moment as well as they cut are as much as they could and now many years later were until very recently that state of affairs from going from iraq to iran because they were ready. So now they try to turn this moment of Qassem Soleimani into a moment they can solidify the gains for whoever is in front of them to see what they can because of the protest that you see in iraq and lebanon and the stranglehold on the politics of the region. You mention the Womens Movement i might add the revolution of the uprising leading to the demise. The iconic image of the sudanese woman dressed in white standing on top of a car and chanting these are the examples. The foreign minister of sudan i just had a meeting with her. That is unheard of in sudanese politics. You mentioned women but is there some connection between young people in the middle east and the demands they are making for change for society and democracy . Democracy is under attack around the world. I try to avoid the word democracy when i talk about the region because it has become a specific us driven agenda and people in the region want to set their own agenda and we have to trust that we know what we want we want more progressive and diverse and tolerant future but democracy as the cookiecutter template doesnt work the same everywhere. You have to have variations. I do think people across the region are connected in many ways. If you listen to the chanting in the streets of beirut you will hear them say trump is wrong to beirut one revolution does not die theyre not talking about 1979 that protest taking place today that are challenging the corrupt leadership and the sectarianism. The conversation has been on iran and lebanon. But it is important to remember there have been uprising also that it is not only anti iran but a lot of people are fed up from what saudi arabia has had from although the saudis today have a conference that wants to appear as a reformer to do many things that feed into the agenda of reform they also live in fear of what the crown prince is doing and the repression on the country those activists that fought for the right to drive going on for decades a lot of the young activists have found themselves in jail right before the king because it assigned at the top to campaign my before it was granted to them. But those that are still granted by the king so yes people are also yearning for a future with cinnamon cinemas opening and jazz concerts but that is the western model of culture that they bring to the kingdom so what about our traditional culture . It is a crisis of identity. There is some evidence the crown prince is reaching out quietly to the iranians that it well and it is an interesting theory the United States seems to be pulling back even though the president ordered the killing of Qassem Soleimani many supporters say now lets get out. The United States may not be seen as central in the middle east or pivotal maybe they say its not reliable so if it does what happens does it change . In the nineties were a. To have fewer wars because they were actually on good terms. And to talk with the iranians when they feel endangered it happens during the iraniraq war when iranians were on the verge of society victory. So the saudis rush to direct the talks with the iranians and then to offer huge compensation because they did not want to see the victory those at the could not abide by and over the two holy sites to have that custody but they could not handle and then it was issued in with the 1990 goal for when the iranians were defeated dealing with saddam as they tried to find way so its not impossible. However these were used by iran to solidify the position. So while the diplomat the revolutionary guard was called deeper into areas of the region. And has been very clearly he will not be fooled again. Those are his words not by the fooled of the smiles of the iranian diplomats anymore. I think he wants the status quo to some extent and doesnt want iran to gain too much more and also worries about President Trump not being enough of an ally that he will not go to bat for the saudis. Will not necessarily come to iran. So they need to hedge their bets between the saudis and iranians i dont see i think that now with Qassem Soleimani it will require real change in behavior of the authorities in iran. Another big change i saw an article in Washington Post maybe five or six years ago in saudi arabia they said the same interest as we have. With the saudi royal family. So israel is not the threat that it was before it only saw egypt as the peace accord but you have other arab states to see israel as a counterbalance that is consistent with their own interest is a change. It is a big change it explains why they did not forcefully reject President Trumps peace plan even though they may disagree they put out a sharp statement at the arab league and it was Just Lip Service because countries like saudi arabia want to stand present trumps good side because they want this focus to counter iran and then to come to their defense they still feel this is the camp that serves the best and why they are willing to be silent on such an issue as long as i do that countering of iran in the region. To see the americans and the israelis believe to take on iran and syria and that will serve the interest. You have a lot of stories you did not put into the book. Thats for another book. [laughter] is there a sequel . I dont know if it will be a perfect to seek well maybe in 15 years i can write what happened after this book but before that there are a lot of little gems that i found in the research to explore which would have staying power over the course of the book into where you have the most information that you can work with so using this to write a novel set in the region. There is one little incident that i like from the safari club that was the name of the Intelligence Corporation the group that brought together the saudis, irradiance it was called the safari club because they met at the safari club. Because at the height of the cold war we always wondered what do we know about this . I dont think there are very many books. Yes but it existed. There are some aspects to it i think it would be good to write an article about it. When i was the envoy to sudan i met with the intelligence chief ethiopia libya and kenya and the most interesting was four hours with him he left very quickly when the government was going down the tubes. But he is very powerful and had a map of darr for and there were 70 agents giving money and weapons out. I said wait you are just handing out weapons . And then he mentioned all the leaders i was trying to negotiate with and then i realize the oversight of american diplomacy to realize how central libya was. The best conversations i had when i wrote my history of sudan i could not mention in the notes where the information came from but it was important to understand those complex needs because it is shifting. There could be a movie afterwards. [laughter] so the moderating influence lets put some time aside because certainly the regime uses this to reignite the population and the theocracy but that will last forever. It has already ended. Yes there was a very brief moment of unity for iran to dispute the numbers of the funeral of Qassem Soleimani and the large crowds but some people have disputed the numbers. And those that come out out of fear no matter what they think of the regime they fear they are punished if they dont show up because it is run in the autocratic way so you have to show up. I dont doubt out of the sense of nationalism people warned him i am not an iranian expert i would like to make that clear i have not spent enough time there, but when you look at what is happening today after ukrainian fame when those people died iranian canadians and the hyphenated nationalities and its very clearly that revolutionary guard they very clearly lied over the course of several days or even with that reality with the outrage that people expressed on the streets that this was to say how this is riddled how brittle that was. Lasso think it would be chaotic but it is coming undone you dont know what accelerates and to what extent the regime is willing to go to , to hold onto power. But if it is not women protesting against the daily basis with the war of attrition against the regimes control or the Neighboring Movement organizing in the country because the challenges are mounting that is the regimes way to do things. This is the moderating influence in society. We have a student in afghanistan tell me that in the 19 sixties afghan women in kabul bora miniskirts the perception afghanistan that they havent made any progress is nonsense. I have seen this picture. If you look at these especially with the effects with the westernized elite minority. So at the time was more modernized it was not the elite but the expression of choices made by more than the minority. What i would like to make clear they dont have the right to wear a miniskirt maybe they dont want to but they want the right to choose if they want to wear the skirt or not and that is what we have lost is the freedom to choose which to find our society before even in iran today that women protesting a bit against the mandatory veil it with the fellow iranian women to have a choice and thats what people are protesting against but afghanistan in particular we have heard joe biden in the debate say a broken country could never be put together we take issue with statements like that. It is way too easy to dismiss the whole country whether iran or similar statements were made at the time for that is like that for millennia a way to say we cant do anything about it we will not even try. We dont want you to fix us but its easy to dismiss us. Some of those include us backing for dictators in egypt and other countries those who have preconceived ideas about the region because either the modern looking man in a suit for the fundamentalist. That is not the binary choice in the region. We are overdue so thank you for being here. We think of this as a center of the United States but the rest of the country doesnt see it this way. [laughter] we appreciate you coming all the way from washington. Thank you. [applause] in the small town around america in the rural are area, people are walking on a tight rope. If they fall there is no safety net. We have vastly over done it with personal responsibility narrative those who fall off the tight rope kevin, why is espn putting out in a Young Leaders book called fierce 44 . For the undefeated, our platform focused on culture we have a digital project in 2017 to the first africanamerican president titled the fierce 44 we had this idea lets do an all mosh lawn homage to the greatest achievement to
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