Confronting congress and the nation. The purpose of the program is not to provide or advocate for any particular political positi position. It is nonpartisan. It is intended to inform policymakers and the public about the sorts of issues they are dealing with. I want to first give a few thanks first to the Melon Foundation for providing the funding that makes these briefings possible. I also want to thank our assistant jeffrey who is outside this room for helping to make the arrangements. I want to thank the office of Jerry Connolly which booked the room. And i want to remind or explain why there were index cards on your seats and why i passed other index cards around. What we will do after the presentations by the speakers we will get questions, answer questions, but we would like you to write those questions on the index cards rather than ask them in front of the audience. Keep your index cards ready and jot down questions when they come to mind. And so now i will turn this over to matthew to offer introductions. Thank you, dane and jeff and everybody who helped arrange this event. Everyone out there who supports the National History center and the American Historical Association and all of the other professional organizations and networks that help historians thrive, and thank you all for coming to the event. Well have to get you information about professional organizations like schaefer. Panel rooms are full like this every june when that organization meets. What were talking about today is the history of u. S. iran relations. Thats our theme. And this binational relationship as with most, history is a matter of perspective, how one defines it. To some we need to understand why Thomas Jefferson had books about cyrus the great in his library. To others we might need to study the arrival of american missionaries in iran in the 1830s and study the work and education and Public Health that they continue to do through the mid20th century. Some would contend this early history was displaced by the official u. S. Presence in iran which arguably began during the Second World War and came in the form of tens of thousands of troops. Others would point to dates like 1953 when an Anglo American coup overthrew a democratically elected government of iran at the height of the cold war. Still others are interested in the more contemporary past that began in 1979. It was in that year that the near 40year rule of a u. S. Ally came to an end. The monarchy was replaced with the republic of iran which just commemorated the 40th anniversary of its revolution this past february. So we have the deep past, the kind of cold war period and then the more contemporary post79 era. Regardless of the period one studies its an exciting time to be studying the history of u. S. iran relations not because of daily headlines but because of developments within the profession. Today we have a range of methodologies that can help us better understand the past. Despite meth methological diffes between transnational trends in this rich inpterpretive declassification of documents or through the reinterpretation of old documents through the lenses of race, culture, gender, and emotion to name just a few. In addition to these historical subfield, other disciplines helped drive the conversation. If one comes from the iranian studies or middle east studies background, these are inherently inner disciplinary areas of inquiry. One could borrow from Political Science, for instance, is always helping to move the conversation about u. S. iran relations forward. Thats what brings me then to the introductions. We have two speakers today. One is mark gasiorowski, a professor in the department of Political Science at tulane university. I will not read his cv to you all here, but you have plenty of biographical information on the program. Many of us probably have read his book u. S. Foreign policy and the shah published in 1991 in addition to his articles on u. S. iran relations. John ghazvinian is our second presenter. He is the associate director of the middle east center at the university of pennsylvania. He also has a very long list of publications, but i would just alert you to one. Its forthcoming and is titled iran and america a history. You can pick that up in the coming months or year or so when its published. With that, ill turn the floor over to professor gasiorowski. Thank you, matt. Thanks to dane and the National History center for inviting me here. Im going to talk about or give a sketch, thats about all i can do in 15 minutes, give a sketch of u. S. Policy toward iran since the revolution 40 years ago. The u. S. Has really shifted a lot and cycled back and forth between different approaches toward iran. To simplify things a little bit, i would say that u. S. Policy toward iran has sort of cycled through three main postures toward iran in the 40 years since the revolution. First, a posture of engagement in which the u. S. Uses primarily diplomacy toward iran and toward third parties to try to reach a comprehensive settlement of outstanding differences with iran rather than just specific narrow issues. And also engagement usually is aimed at bringing about some kind of domestic change in iran, although certainly peacefully, mainly encouraging moderates. The model for engagement or at least a very good model for engagement is, say, u. S. china in the 1970s when the u. S. And china went from being extremely hostile toward each other toward a much more cooperative relationship. So engagement is one posture that the u. S. Has taken from time to time. Secondly coercion where the u. S. Also is trying to bring about big, comprehensive change in irans behavior but in a much more hostile way using economic sanctions or military action of various kinds, various levels, to try to intimidate iran into backing down across the board or really what the preference usually is using these kinds of hostile measures to carry out regime change in iran, to try to bring down the islamic regime or at least change it very substantially. Thirdly, containment. Repeatedly the u. S. Has sort of returned to a posture of containment toward iran where we try to limit irans objectionable behavior but without any great hopes of achieving big change. Sometimes in periods of containment the u. S. And iran have made limited transactional agreements that are mutually beneficial. But containment is mainly aimed at just that, containing iranian influence, limiting it particularly limiting its geographic spread in the region, very much like u. S. Containment efforts towards the soviet union throughout the cold war. So im going to very briefly sketch through what i would call ten distinct periods in u. S. Policy toward iran since the revolution. The early ones im going to skip through pretty quickly because theyre not so important for today. Theres an awful lot written about this. Johns forthcoming book probably will be very good. Another one that i would recommend that came out five or six years ago, a very good book by david chryst called the twilight war, which i think youll find quite fascinating. Ten periods in u. S. Policy toward iran. First of all, the first ten years after the revolution, 1979 until about 1989, the u. S. Really bounced back and forth between different approaches. The Carter Administration before the u. S. Hostages were taken in november of 1979, the u. S. Embassy in tehran was seized by iranian radicals. Before then the Carter Administration made extensive efforts to try to encourage moderates and try to swing the iranian revolution in a moderate direction. Of course this didnt work. They did to some extent continue this after the hostages were taken, but very quickly the Carter Administration was consumed with trying to get the hostages released. And iran was in this process of rapid radicalization, and it just made impossible any efforts by the u. S. To achieve change with iran. So the Carter Administration was a time of engagement. This was entirely frustrated by growing radicalization in iran. Second time period, basically the first Reagan Administration, 81 through 84, you might think this was a period of hostility and coercion toward iran. There was a certain amount of hostility but this really was not a phase of coercion. I would really score this as a phase of containment toward iran. And quite surprisingly given there were major clashes between the u. S. And iran especially in lebanon in the early 1980s, iran was backing basically groups that were precursors to hezbollah of lebanon, and they did a lot of very fasty things, killed several hundred americans in terror attacks. Took about 15 american civilians and a few government personnel hostage. Some of them were tortured to death. There was a lot of severe hostility and attacks by iran toward the u. S. Despite that the Reagan Administration was pretty restrained and, in fact, didnt retaliate for most of this stuff. So the early reagan period i would score as containment. And relatively effective in this regard. Iran became rapidly became isolated in this period of the early 1980s. The second reagan period is the period of the irancontra affair which is pretty fascinating little detail but its ancient history at this point. 19851986 the Reagan Administration tried, number one, to get hostages in lebanon released but also the irancontra affair was aimed at, number two, trying to initiate with iran that hopefully would snowball and lead to comprehensive change and moderation on the part of the iranians. This, of course, didnt work. Once again radicals in iran very much torpedoed this initiative. I would score irancontra as an effort at engagement but it, too, did not work just like carters efforts. After irancontra the last two years of the Reagan Administration basically this was a period of reversion to containment. There was a lot of tension between the u. S. And iran in this period, military clashes between the u. S. And iran in the persian gulf, the iran iraq war and various other kinds of tension not really coercion but certainly far from engagement. Soap the first ten years cycling back and forth between engagement and coercion, engagement and containment, nothing really working very well. The First Bush Administration coming into office in early 1989 at least initially sort of gave a look of pursuing rapprochement with iran but never got anywhere. The Bush Administration, the famous phrase in bushs inaugural speech in early 1989 was good will begets good will. If iran shows good will to the u. S. And this mainly meant getting their friends in lebanon to release the remaining american hostages in lebanon, if iran shows goodwill, we will reciprocate. One problem was that it took three years for the remaining hostages in lebanon to be released, so it was not until december 1991 that they were released, by which time things had changed quite a bit. And, secondly, u. S. Priorities shifted rapidly after the desert storm war, the madrid Peace Process began, the bush the First Bush Administration was very invested in that. Pushed it very hard. Iran was very much an opponent and that really soured the prospects for better relations. So i would score the First Bush Administration as really a period of containment even though there was a little bit of talk about maybe engaging in pursuing engagement but that never really got off the ground. The early clinton period largely continued this. The Clinton Administration was pursuing many of the same goals as the Bush Administration in the middle east, especially the Israeli PalestinianPeace Process which morphed into the oslo Peace Process under clinton. Also in the early clinton years, iran was carrying out a lot of terrorist attacks, especially in eur europe but also elsewhere, assassinating iranian exiles and also a couple of attacks in argentina and elsewhere. So there was a period in which iran was really being rather schizophrenic. On one hand being open to the United States in terms of its talking points, but on the other hand carrying out very nasty attacks. All of this culminated in the hobar towers bombing of 1996 backed by iran, although not carried out by iran. In which 19 u. S. Air force personnel were killed in a very, very dramatic terrorist attack. There was strong suspicion immediately that iran was behind this, but the Clinton Administration didnt get concrete proof of this for quite some time. And so the Clinton Administration chose to sort of wait until they had strong evidence. By the time they had strong evidence things had changed a lot in iran in ways ill talk about in a minute, and so the Clinton Administration never retaliated with military force though they retaliated with a fascinating covert operation called operation sapphire which you can look up on the internet and read about. Its pretty interesting. All of this changed very much, and really the beginning of, i guess, the more important period for today in u. S. iran relations comes in may of 1997 when a stunning election outcome emerged in iran, a very moderate figure was elected president of iran. He began making overtures and we began to reciprocate. Beginning around maybe the beginning of 1998 i would say that the Clinton Administration began pursuing engagement with iran. And see if they could make something of it. Unfortunately nothing really came of it. It was a tantalizing period and one of the periods of engagement the u. S. Pursued. Conditions were even a little bit more fruitful having to do with what was going on in iran in 2001, the very beginning of the Bush Administration. They never formulated its policy and had conflicting views, hardliners wanted to be tough on iran but more soft line people wanting to continue obamasa approach of engagemen. Once 9 11 came along that changed everything. For a few months after 9 11 iran was actually extremely helpful to the u. S. Especially in afghanistan. They very much facilitated the u. S. Effort to overthrow the taliban government in afghanistan and wipe out al qaeda Training Camps there and then iran was very helpful in setting up the new posttaliban government headed by karzai and the Bush Administration took advantage of this goodwill by iran but did not reciprocate. Pretty quickly the Bush Administration after 9 11 began to sort of reveal its new approach toward iran and the middle east in general. Broadly speak iing this was phrased as the global war on terrorism whose Main Objective was al qaeda but pretty quickly iraq especially was brought into this as a supporter of terrorism and iran as well. In early 2002 bush made a speech, i think it was a state of the union speech at the time, calling iran part of an axis of evil and this began a period of strong hostility toward iran and a period of coercion which continued for the remainder of the Bush Administration. Of course pretty soon the u. S. Invaded iraq, 2003. Gradually in iraq tensions heated up between the u. S. And iran with the u. S. Supporting various ethnic guerrilla and iran backing shiite militias in iraq that carried out many, many attacks against u. S. Forces. So you could say there was really sort of a low level secret war playing out in iran at least in the last few years in the george Bush Administration, with hundreds killed on both sides. Hundreds of American Military personnel killed with iranian fingerprints on their weapons and hundreds killed in terrorist attacks that seemed to have been backed by the United States, although this is kind of murky. Certainly the last seven years of the Bush Administration were a period of coercion and really the model of coercion that is out there today. Finally that brings us to the Obama Administration with the failure of the Bush Administration to achieve much from its coercive efforts obama came into office wanting to pursue a different approach, engagement, and he made a series of preaches speeches in his fir and really tried very hard, but the iranians did not reciprocate in that period. Gradually the u. S. Began further ratcheting up the economic sanctions that had begun under president bush and obama ratcheted them up quite substantially and iran really started to scream. The economy really went into a tailspin and so in about 2013 the Obama Administration launched an initiative toward iran to negotiate an end to Irans Nuclear program. John will be talking about that in a minute. And of course this led to the jcpoa Nuclear Agreement in 2015. The obama people certainly hoped that this would lead further to a broader rapprochement, and this was certainly a broad engagement effort but nothing came of that. I ran did certainly agree to limit its Nuclear Program and has been abiding to that agreement until recently. Nothing further came of it. In this sense