Good morning im the director of the middle east program and we are delighted to welcome you to what i think will be a fascinating program on us policy and strategy after the Qassem Soleimani strike. First in the unlikely event we need to evacuate the building i will tell you where to go. I dont think that will be a problem but i will direct you. Also thank you for those who have supported todays activity. They have done it in a way that is exemplary for the way a policy discussion should do so to set up a conference so there is no responsibility for what we say but but it is an issue of significant broad interest we are grateful for the support. Looking at what has happened in the gulf there is a broader National Debate if the us should be digging in or pulling out. Iran is perceived to be a threat. Even within the chump Administration Even how the us should deal with that threat the us increasingly has been facing asymmetrical threats and responding with conventional tools that has been expensive and affected limited effectiveness january 3rd gave us a punctuation mark to look at what us strategy your policy is in the gulf as a sign of increased commitment and the us trying to handle this from afar. Was this the beginning of the end of the us presence in iraq . And then great power conflict if a more energy the United States should care still importing much of its energy from the gulf but even the allies in asia but how should we think of you a strategy Going Forward . Im delighted to help kick this offer to people i have tremendous affection and respect for John Mclaughlin to your left day distinguished practitioner in residence at Johns Hopkins previously served as the acting director as the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence with the cia Deputy Director and vice chair with the National Intelligence council to help found the sherman can school he had a career at the cia lasting three decades focusing on eurasian issues. And what i value trying to figure out a way to recategorize things nobody knows more than John Mclaughlin. To your right is the director of National SecurityDefense Center she was the under secretary of defense at the Us Department of defense serving for strategy and special assistant to the president and senior director at the Security Council before entering the Obama Administration she was my colleague here. And she has the advantage of being very smart so there are two terrific people to help us think conceptually what are we trying to do . What should we be trying to do and then well have a discussion over the policy implications. Good morning everyone i apologize in advance i have a cold if i sound a little raspy. I largely agree with johns assessment of the region and how we got here and where we are. So i will just try to add a few observations on top of that. I spent most of my time in the Defense Department and i am firmly in the camp that those who believe that we need to be at the grand strategy level focusing on the competition with china and to do that effectively we have to make adjustments in terms of that level of emphasis we are placing on the middle east as a region. I believe our interest in the region are changing. Among other things as john mentioned, we dont have the same Energy Dependence we did 20 or 30 years ago. We certainly still have interest there but for 20 years the region has been our focal point and we really need to take some clear steps to change that if we want to compete successfully with china and that will have a military dimension but the soft power dimension that is much more important. So i dont want to suggest the competition is all military that we need to deinvest in the middle east to invest in asia im not suggesting that. But certainly there will be a military dimension of the competition that we have been so heavily invested in the middle east for so many years that i think if we are going to be successful in the next 20 years at the grand strategy level we have to make more changes. The thing i really worry about right now with the strategic culdesac it is second, u. S. Strategy toward iran in particular, i think has lacked coherence since trump came to office. Yes, we know that he and his key aides deplore iranian behavior, that clear. No ambiguity about that, but its never been clear how they intend to deal with it and what their ultimate goal is and how they intend to get there. And third, compared to five years ago, today we have to Pay Attention to, perhaps be concerned with Great Power Competition in the gulf at a measure that is greater than five years ago, certainly ten years ago. So those three things, big strategic, contextual issues that frame the problem. So, lets look now at how we got here, and then look second at whats our competition and third, lets think a little bit about where could this go over the next ten to 20 years. First, how did we get here . Well, just about every middle east problem you encounter always has a chicken and egg phase, meaning, how did we get in this mess, which came first, the chicken or the egg . Well, in the case of the current problems in the gulf, im afraid that the u. S. , this is my view, is both the chicken, and the egg, and what do i mean by that . Well, to be sure we didnt create a historic animosity between persians and arabs, that clear, thats not our responsibility or our fault, but pulling out of the iran nuclear, we added fuel to a fire that was always on simmer or approaching boil. And we set off a Chain Reaction that we havent been able to really control, shape or direct. Now, we have been through this Iran Nuclear Agreement dozens of times, most of you have talked about it as endlessly as i have so i dont want to flog a horse again. Lets make an additional point it was not at all a perfect agreement, but it did two important things. It brought some precious temporal space with which to work on other aspects of irans behavior with some assurance that the Nuclear Issue would be at least under control for a fixed, predictable period of time. And second, it was a rare instance of something on which a coalition of u. S. Allies and adversaries would agree. Everyone from our European Partners to china and russia. And, it was a platform from which the u. S. Could plausibly bring multilateral leverage to bear on other golf issues. Thats all gone now. In fact, i would argue that our unilateral action started the sequence of events, three imposition of american sanctions, irans gradual return to Nuclear Activity over the past year, its response to the u. S. Maximum Pressure Campaign and actions that lead, ultimately, to the targeting of general soleimani. And now that iran has lifted the restrictions it had agreed to out of the nuclear agreement, we could in a matter of months, certainly with in the year face the conditions in iran that last decade led the u. S. And israel to actually considered military action before we reached the agreement that i just referred to. But, think about it now. Heres where i was leading us trump doesnt want a mid east war, thats pretty clear. And if its a regime change he wants in iran, theres no clear path to that either. So, i see u. S. Strategy on this issue stuck in a culdesac which i think is evident in everyone in the gulf, that intern affects how they think about us. This came through for me pretty vividly in comments by the omani foreign minister, Youssef Abdullah at the Munich Security Conference where i was a week ago. Its this gathering of people from all over the world the last 50 years to debate every issue imaginable. There was a session on gulf security and i attended that. At the end of a discussion among himself and Foreign Ministers from kuwait, qatar, turkey and the uae on efforts to bridge the gulf between the golf between saudi arabia and iran, he omani said bluntly that any progress would have to await the u. S. President ial election. This doesnt mean the omanis are not quietly building bridges they are not telling us about between oman and saudi arabia, it means to say there is no crossing them for another nine months. And by the way the optics of that session that i referred to in munich with the Iranian Foreign minister zarif and the Saudi Foreign minister were both scheduled to speak but they would not appear together. And they insisted their appearances separately be bridged, be separated by this panel of other Foreign Ministers which also included u. S. Senator chris murphy so with rogue delegations marching in and out proving the route between twoo points in the middle east is seldom a straight line. So what is our competition . I will try to zip through this quickly. In the gulf our competition comes from many countries, but the europeans, the russians, the chinese, but primarily we need to think about china the best way to describe their expansion and strategy is by three things. Energy, the growing belt and Road Initiative the plan to connect china with the middle east and europe. Literally from xinjiang province up to the English Channel and into the gulf with infrastructure and so forth. And finally a determination not to get caught up in any of these gulf disputes. C at this point they are primarily a financial, economic actor but over the last dozen years it has grown to 83 billion at around 20 or 25 billion but the bulk of that, 63 billion at focused on saudi arabis and the uae has focused on primarily Energy Related issues. Every gulf country has signed a partnership now of some sort with china and china has not neglected iran as part of this even if its not a part of the gcc. 11 of chinas oil imports comes from iran from a recent fiveyear period. I wont go into the belt and Road Initiative in more detail but that includes iran as well with the gulf countries. Russia is not operating on the scale but its dependence on the Global Oil Market that means it rose in diplomacy and then just to summarize russia quickly one focus with the gulf Oil Officials and in talking to them they mention russia now, not a member of opec, sits in on meetings as an observer and has tended to start chairing the meetings. I just came back from russia in january and i can tell you they know how to run a meeting. So thats just a window and how they think about the middle east. For the record, the former u. S. Ambassador to the gulf laughed at that. Russias focus has been mostly on saudi and the uae where it signed agreements in the range of one to two billion dollars and energy, advanced technology and health centers, and thats also true for arms markets. The saudis are interested in the s400. Im going to wrap up now but you wanted to talk about soleimani. You posed the question of whether we, this panel would have made the same decision about soleimani some, maybe, if there was unassailable evidence of an imminent attack on americans, in that case, that has not been made publicly, that judgment, not persuasively and even in that case it wouldve been difficult, important to consider whether the same result couldve being obtained without hardening vulnerable targets so i started off skeptical and im not sure where i would come out, but let me just say one thing about eminence. In a talking about the imminent attack, we tend to think of a time to talk and place. Sometimes a attack can be judged rightly to be imminent even if you dont know those things and since, that is what 9 11 was. If you went back to that period, the cia was saying we have an imminent attack but we did not the time, target or place. And had weve been able to find bin laden at that point it might have made a difference. This is a hard call but fundamentally i would have started off skeptical about this. Now, ive talked to my israeli friends, some of them. In the corridors of munich. They all think that this was an important thing to do. That it has had a deterrent effect on the iranians and to be clear, the irgc, republican guard, seem to be off balance at losing some public support so we just have to watch this one. Final comment. Im going to stop because ive gone on too long but john asked where were going to be in 20 years. Just skip to this point. If you believe our former treasury secretary, in 20 years, i guess he would say 30, but in that time range, in all likelihood chinas economy will be twice the size of ours, unless there are some major discontinuity in china that were not anticipating, and youd be surprised, but project forward in a linear way, that is what you get some so i think in 20, years expect beijing to have gone beyond, economic investments, to weigh much more heavily in middle eastern calculations long. I one way for the u. S. To prepare for this is to use what i think is our superior soft power to help the region with educational and social policies to prepare for that day. We will definitely not be able to spend our way to the front of the pack. Lets see what the next panel says but i think diplomacy, soft power and alliances is our formula for the decades ahead in this part of the world. I will stop there. Thank you very much. Good morning everyone i apologize in advance i have a cold if i sound a little raspy. I largely agree with johns assessment of the region and how we got here and where we are. So i will just try to add a few observations on top of that. I spent most of my time in the Defense Department and im firmly in the camp that those who believe that we really need to be at the grand strategy level focusing on the competition with china and to do that effectively we have to make adjustments in terms of the level of emphasis were placing on the middle east as a region. And i believe our interests in the region are changing. Among other things, as john mentioned, we dont have the same Energy Dependence we did 20, 30 years ago. We certainly still have interest there but for 20 years the region has been our focal point and i think we really need to take some clear steps to change that if were going to be able to compete successfully with china and i think that will have a military dimension but the soft power dimension is much more important. So i dont want to suggest the competition is all military, we need to deinvest militarily in the middle east to invest in asia, im not suggesting that. But certainly theres going to be a military dimension of the competition and we have been so heavily invested in the middle east for so many years that i think if were going to be successful in the next 20 years at the grand strategy level, we have to make more changes. The thing i really worry about right now is because of the strategic culdesac were in, its hard to make those shifts. To be able to really rebalance the portfolio across the globe, we have to be able to find some places where we can have some economies in the middle east. I dont think we can do that safely in terms of our own National Security if we dont figure out a more strategic approach to the region, and it feels like maximum pressure strategy to have a misalignment under the Current Administration and the ways and means which dont seem to me to be in alignment with what the administration is trying to do. So my sense is we as a country we need to escalate those deescalatetensions in the region and the next panel will be much better position to have good ideas about this but it seems to me we have to find a way to articulate what do we think a reasonable deal would be quirks one coming of different voices of the administration saying slightly Different Things about the policy but certainly secretary pompeo has laid out a set of conditions to my ears requires iran to fundamentally change as a regime and i dont see that happening. So the conditions we have laid out dont seem to be realistic. We have to find a way of saying, what do we really want as a country . Can we build a coalition as the Previous Administration did with friends of the region and countries in europe quirks so whether that tries to reenter the deal and broaden that or craft the outline of a brandnew deal, we really have to be successful, we have to revisit the fundamentals of our current iran policy and revisit that in a structured, deliberate set of discussions where we review the policy and think about the second and third order effects. I dont see that deliberate discussion taking place right now. So a core piece would be revisiting the iran policy and figuring out what we can realistically do to try to bring greater security and get iran back into a position where they are not restarting their nuclear program, essentially. I also think we need to look at other ways to deescalate tensions in the region, it was an important step in the uae looked at its approach in yemen. I think we would be wise to encourage the saudis to bring that conflict to an end. I think we need to be working carefully with the government of iraq. There is a lot of diplomacy that needs to be done there. It is in the u. S. Interest for them to be stable and secure. I worry about the Qassem Soleimani strike where we are with the government of iraq. I am hopeful there are conversations going on right now with the government of iraq to keep the us presence in the Coalition Presence in iraq so we can continue to work with the Security Forces but the Qassem Soleimani threat made that complicated set of discussions even more complicated. So continuing to permit the government of iraq in a position where they have to choose between iran and the United States and to manage that puts them in a very difficult position. So i think we need to find ways to rebuild our relationship with the government of iraq, do some confidencebuilding measures, try to deescalate the conflicts, whether its yemen or the dispute with qatar and that would help the United States to be in a better position to reallocate its military presence in the region. I think secretary esper as i understand it has called for all of the regional combatant command to have a review of our military presence of the major theaters. With one of the goals being to identify these places we can make changes to enable the military to put more emphasis on the indopacific theater. This is a Good Opportunity to look back at what kinds of adjustments could we wisely making our posture of Central Command and i think there are some changes we could make here. Melissa dalton at csis yes and those that have done some good thinking about how we might be able to change our posture. I remember when i was in the department as early as 2014 during the quadrennial defense review we were looking can we think our headquarter structure . What kinds of capabilities did we need in the region ten or 20 years out . We need missile defense, naval maritime capabilities, isr, special operations command, and if you believe those are the capabilities we need to deal with the security challenges, looking that what we currently have with countries that are strong enough, and then we could transition to that approach it feels like a smart said steps to be taken and that is an opportunity for d. O. D. But the concern that i have there is so much instability because of strategic incoherence that you may not time where you can identify in a blue sky kind of way with that reallocation. That strategic incoherence may not allow us to move forward on those kinds of changes at this time. So the first step is to look carefully at our grand strategy level to the approach of the middle east, ideally make adjustments, but again that may not happen until we are on the other side of this election but then perhaps dod might be able to come to, if there is a change of administration, bring some ideas to the table what the d. O. D. Posture might look like. There is a lot of richness there. Before we Start Talking about the 20 year prospective which i know you want to get to, you both identified iran as a place where the u. S. Has pretty Ambitious Goals and pretty and limited tools that its been willing to deploy and to me, the difficult moment was the aftermath of the strike on the Saudi Oil Facilities on september 14th, which presumably were executed by some combination of iranian forces, to which there is a quite limited response, which reportedly prompted the saudis to send signals to the iranians they want to reduce tensions, which followed an effort by the emeratis in june after the attack on some ships in the gulf that they wanted to reduce tensions. How should the u. S. Have thought about the response to iraq . Was that an opportunity to say, in the longer term, we are going toward trying to have something thats more sustainable. We understand that irans ability for mischief is persistent. We have to lower the temperature. Was it an opportunity for the u. S. To reassert its deterrence against iran . Was this a time when the u. S. Had to move closer to the gulf states to get them to support the maximum Pressure Campaign and reassure them the u. S. Was there . That was clearly an opportunity for something. That was clearly a time of focused gulf governance thinking about what the future would look like. Given where you think we are going, what should we have done that moment to try to move things in a constructive direction . Thats a tough question. I think the problem is in that moment a bit of what christine alluded to, the absence of tools. In other words, i dont think that we had a mechanism but or a forum for reaching out to both the saudis and the iranians simultaneously because of the situation that we had gotten ourselves into with iran after withdrawing from the agreement and giving the maximum Pressure Campaign so for us to perform, this is a major problem. Typically in this part of the world, the middle east, if you went back 20 years, we could function as a sort of honest broker in parts of this region. We could come into a room and say, all right, everyone in the room sit down and stop talking. Not so easily with the iranians publicly and so forth. We have reached out to everyone and we did not, we were not perceived as, in quite the way we are now i dont think, we didnt have that capacity at the time of the strike. If you went back to may of 2018 or 2017, secretary pompeo had made a speech in which he laid out 12 demands of what we wanted from iran and i think as christine was suggesting, if you looked at those demands, it meant fundamentally regime change. It meant change everything about the way you operate in the world. And instantly it was apparent that none of that was going to happen, that it was an unrealistic set of demands. And so in that atmosphere, i think the administration has left, a case of Something Like this, with very little other than the military option and there you run up against president trumps understandable desire not to get sucked into the confrontation in the middle east and i think, reading his mind a little bit, thats why he held back. If you go back and if you look at the period one day it would be, we are going to do something then we are not so sure, so there was a kind of wobbly approach to it, so i guess what ive said is there are things we should ideally do that are not equipped to do in that instance. I saw a bit of the separation thats grown up between the saudis and the iranians in munich, not just optically but minister zarif from iran said after the Soleimani Killing, the saudis send a message. They didnt say what it said but presumably if not a sympathy at sympathy at least one of acknowledgment and concerned this was a serious and painful thing and he said, we immediately responded to saudi arabia and we never heard back. He said, i think we didnt hear back because the u. S. Were probably persuading the saudis not to respond. I dont know if thats true, but thats the way they think about the two of us now. So i would stop there. I think we didnt know what to do after that. Didnt have the tools. So let me ask christine the hard question. If you want to reassert the honest broker role, reassert the influence, but in the intermediate and longer term say were going to have a wider footprint, were not going to sustain the dominant role, how do you build credibility and confidence with partners in the gulf if its part of a longer term effort that you described of, we cant remain preoccupied, we have other things to do, we have to lower the temperature so in fact we are trying to negotiate from a position of strength while we are, in the mind of many, on our way out the door. How do we handle that . I think thats a good question and certainly something the Previous Administration struggled with quite a bit. Obviously, the Obama Administration was trying to pivot, rebalance, whatever you want to call it, to asia, and it was viewed by many as disengaging from the region and hence having difficult relations with some of the countries in the region. In my mind, theres a difference between being an honest broker and being a kind of power player in the region, if you will. I think where the United States needs to go for its own interests and maybe is going to go anyways, because of some of the things john pointed to, the fact that our influence in the region is declining over time, i think we are moving to, you, know we are at a moment in time where the International Order that was developed in the wake of world war ii and all of the institutions and the forums and the United States playing a very Important Role in that, we are in the position of flux and change and you know, that order i think is evolving to something that is not quite as u. S. Centric as it has been for the last two decades and i would argue that the United States can still be, and i think, can usefully be an important player in the middle east, rather, but does not have to be, you know, kind of the sole security guarantor, sort of main player that we have been over the last two decades, so i dont see that and again theres a difference between being an honest broker which is more about trying to look more dispassionately and evenly at the set of challenges we have in the region. To me it feels right now the United States has shifted to a place where we are allin with saudi arabia and allin with israel in a way that we havent been for the last ten years and that, i think, is one of the reasons i think we are not seeing as much of an honest broker as we used to be. I think we are also not seen as much as an honest broker because were quite unpredictable and going to your question about the cycle weve been in, part of deterrence is continuity and being consistent and its harder to avoid miscalculation at this miscommunication when you are not being consistent in what is important to you and what your interests are and thats something weve been quite inconsistent about. So i dont think we are going to be able to shift both our Strategic Center of gravity and much less our footprint in the region, we are not going to be able to shift to asia and be the center in the middle east. You cant necessarily have your cake and eat it, too. I also think making adjustments means the United States would have nothing to say and no useful role to play in the region. I think this is something we have to try to do gradually overtime, you know, i think under the Previous Administration there was a sense that we were embarking on something, a gradual shift but the Current Administration has come in and take, and i think, a very different approach. John, you rightly identify the strike on the Saudi Oil Facilities as a big deal. I dont recall the exact percentage of the field it took out. 50 of production. 50 of production. It was not a small event. I think you asked the question because it was strikingly large in that part of the world and indeed for the National Energy market. I think the reason, we if you had to boil it down to its essence, the reason we didnt respond more strongly is that we were, and you always have to go back to the moment, we did not know what we know now and i think we are still confused about this but at that moment i think we were concerned about the escalatory cycle that could follow. In other words, had we done something militarily, where would that have gone . In that moment i wouldve said you are on an escalatory cycle here that could get really rough. The capabilities of the Iranian Military in the gulf, elsewhere and their ability with proxies like hezbollah. I think that wouldve been the discussion, had when taken place at that time. Jumping ahead to the Soleimani Killing, most of us thought that would provoke a more immediate retaliatory response than it has and we may not be seeing it yet because iran may respond quietly, gradually overtime. We dont know where that is going yet but the instant analysis from a lot of people is, not much happened so, i think we are left uncertain about how the escalatory cycle really works with iran in the circumstances that have emerged over the last two years and i think thats going to continue to make it hard for us to make decisions about how to interact with iran when they do something that is dramatically offensive to us. We just have a few minutes left. I still want to go to the audience for a few questions but there is something that keeps bothering me and i hope that one or both of you will put my mind at rest. We keep responding in fundamentally conventional ways to fundamentally asymmetrical of threats. We keep fighting forces that are infinitely weaker than we are and the perception is we are not winning. What do we need to think about differently that we get out of the trap but of flailing with overwhelming conventional force and showing were still being vulnerable to unconventional force because of the things youve talked about. Void, you really ask tough questions but i think to me, the answer to that is orchestrating all of the instruments of u. S. Power simultaneously not just thinking of the military instrument, which is not all that useful to you in some of these situations. Our diplomacy is not particularly vigorous at the moment. I am so diplomatic, i mean, diplomacy, practiced heroically, a phrase i always use, can be enormously powerful in the United States and we are orchestrating that arm of our u. S. Government with for standing behind it in the way that we normally do. Thats one way to think about it and dealing with asymmetric threats. Another comment i have to make is we dont really know what to do symmetrically against asymmetric threats. Im no longer in government but we need to engage in hybrid warfare of a sort, seeking to influence countries overseas through means that arent always visible, including cyber. Again, im not revealing anything here im just saying the u. S. Has capabilities. You may not be seeing how we are using all of these capabilities, but i think the fundamental problem is, particularly in this administration, how are orchestrating all the aspects of u. S. Power to head off these problems when they occur, to dampen them and deal with them, deter them, and i think our understanding of deterrence is mixed up right now. I would completely agree and double down and say what has historically been our strengths . Its been our soft power and diplomacy. And just at the moment we should be leaning into that, we are decreasing the staff at the embassy in baghdad. We have cut funds for reconstruction in places like syria and backing away from Security Cooperation assistance and also another huge strength for the United States across the board globally as our relationships with allies and partners, our network of alliances. That is the strength we can bring to this, but at the time when you are punching the europeans in the face, and i do very much frankly think we need to be concerned about this from a security perspective, that it is not a surprise to me that we are having a hard time finding places of agreements with our european allies and friends to deal with these problems when we have so much friction so thats something also we should be handling in a very different way that we shouldnt kid ourselves. The middle east is a complex region and there are many of you in the audience to know more about the complexities than i do but we are leaving some of our tools off the table right now. I hate to keep harping on the Iran Nuclear Agreement, but in that situation, if you could have orchestrated a combined response that might not have happened if we were still in that agreement but if we were in the something comparable happened you couldve had the tools to orchestrate the response that would have involved russia, china and frankly all of our European Partners. The chinese, in their dealings with iran, at one point even conditioned what they were willing to do with iran on its compliance with the Iran Nuclear Agreement, so even though the current circumstances, we can probably worry china and russia may be helping iran circumvent sanctions, prior to that by and large they were assisting in pressuring in iran with that agreement, so i think its enormously controversial anytime you talk about it someone will stand up and make the case that it was a terrible agreement. That case must lurk in the audience somewhere here, but its my view that it was a realistic, pragmatic approach to a difficult problem that gave us leverage we threw it away, and that plays in every one of and every one of these things were now talking about. If we can take two very quick questions from the audience and well ask them together, is there a second question as well . Barbara sitting from the atlantic council, and i heartily agree with your analysis. I wonder if the accidental shootdown of the iranian airliner, sorry, the ukrainian airliner, was not what basically put a stop to the escalatory cycle at that point because iran had to deal with the shock of that and the protests that emerged in society after that and its one of those what ifs, and a circuitous about that. So, one question, a question right here. Andrew gilmore, john, i guess as my old boss im going to ask you this question, looking at the architecture, the systemic architecture of the region, lots of regional powers asserting themselves in ways we are not used to, is it possible that the way for the u. S. To conceive of its strategy before any great power strategy is necessary is to start working in that multi polar environment with those different powers and starting to leverage the fact that we can do things within a system that is characterized by lots of opposing regional powers, and we can on the outside begin to balance some of that and assert our interests by managing the environment of competing regional powers . Im happy to do a quick take on both of these. Barbaras question is really interesting because ive had the same feeling that you know, when the irgc shot down the ukrainian airliner, i think it was on the 8th of january, im losing track, certainly thats what i remember but it was the same day, or within a 24hour cycle that they had rocketed the american base in iraq. My suspicion is, having been around wars, that this was a fog of war issue. In other words, they were expecting retaliation. They stupidly made a mistake and hit this plane, and that by all accounts has really diminish their prestige in iran. I think the iranian public is torn between objecting to the Soleimani Killing and being appellate of being conference of the irgc and that is the first time i can remember anything like that with regard to that institution in iran so i think youre right, i believe it did interrupt the escalatory cycle. The question is, for how long . Will all of this sort itself out . I mean, i have followed, as you, have iranian protest movements over many years. And they are always put down and i have wondered the cause of the willingness of the regime to be brutal if this is a different cycle and i dont know the answer to. That it is different in some way because of that factor because strikingly to me. The most striking thing was that members of the iranian broadcast network, i have never seen that before, the state network, because they did not want to be putting out false information. That is a big deal so i dont think its going to turn out to be different. Most iranian experts who follow this even more closely say it will normalize again and we will be right back to where we were. Put 10 doubt in that. On andrews point, i think that is kind of what i was driving at and we will see what the next panel says on that because we have historic relationships with these other countries. Youre talking about other major powers in the region. Egypt, i mean when you talk to gulf ease, they dont just talk about, excuse me, gulf people here, i call you gulfies, when you talk to people about the, golf going back to my discussions in munich, the panel of Foreign Ministers was discussing libya. They think outside of the gulf region and so we have historic relationships with all of these countries that we could this is our power in that region. Its the ability, and none of these countries are seeking to be allies of china. They are quite willing to negotiate with china over Economic Energy initiatives. 20 years from now china might be a softer power than it is today. Right now, it is soft power but it is great. That is an issue, whether it could be developing an intern of model that is appealing to people but yes, if we properly staff our embassies with the very best professionals, if we could, you know, my friend ryan crocker, you know, one of the great ambassadors, always uses the word engagement which seems like just a simple idea but engagement means being in their face all the time with relationship building. Were good at that so i think we can check chinas influence in that way, back to the kind of military points christine is talking about and we have 13,000 troops in kuwait and qatar and three to 5000 scattered elsewhere. We dont need a lot of troops in that area, just a presence. Its hard to underestimate the effect of american presence. When i was in latvia, there was one company of american infantry there in camouflage uniform and as i was coming out of the defense ministry, one of the officials looked over this young trooper and said, tripwire. In other words, just the presence of american forces, they have to be they dont have to be enormous, just their presence and engagement with a country makes a big difference. Thank you to both john and christine for a very lovely and thought provoking start. We have some coffee and refreshments in the back. If we can take ten minutes and come back at 10 15 for the next panel i would be grateful. Please join me in thanking the panelists