[Senate Hearing 110-552]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 110-552
ADDRESSING IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT
INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES, AND
INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
HOMELAND SECURITY AND
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED TENTH CONGRESS
SECOND SESSION
__________
APRIL 24, 2008
__________
Available via http://www.gpoaccess.gov/congress/index.html
Printed for the use of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
42-750 PDF WASHINGTON DC: 2008
---------------------------------------------------------------------
For Sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office
Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; (202) 512�091800
Fax: (202) 512�092104 Mail: Stop IDCC, Washington, DC 20402�090001
COMMITTEE ON HOMELAND SECURITY AND GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
MARK L. PRYOR, Arkansas NORM COLEMAN, Minnesota
MARY L. LANDRIEU, Louisiana TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri JOHN WARNER, Virginia
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
Michael L. Alexander, Staff Director
Brandon L. Milhorn, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Trina Driessnack Tyrer, Chief Clerk
FEDERAL FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, GOVERNMENT INFORMATION, FEDERAL SERVICES,
AND INTERNATIONAL SECURITY SUBCOMMITTEE
THOMAS R. CARPER, Delaware, Chairman
CARL LEVIN, Michigan TOM COBURN, Oklahoma
DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii TED STEVENS, Alaska
BARACK OBAMA, Illinois GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio
CLAIRE McCASKILL, Missouri PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico
JON TESTER, Montana JOHN E. SUNUNU, New Hampshire
John Kilvington, Staff Director
Katy French, Minority Staff Director
Monisha Smith, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
------
Opening statements:
Page
Senator Carper............................................... 1
Senator Coleman.............................................. 10
Senator Coburn............................................... 12
Prepared statement:
Senator Obama................................................ 55
WITNESSES
Thursday April 24, 2008
Hon. Arlen Specter, a U.S. Senator from the State of Pennsylvania 1
Hon. Dianne Feinstein, a U.S. Senator from the State of
California..................................................... 5
Patricia McNerney, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau
of International Security and Nonproliferation, and Jeffrey
Feltman, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary, Bureau of Near
Eastern Affairs, U.S. Department of State...................... 13
Hon. Dennis Ross, Counselor and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow,
Washington Institute for Near East Policy...................... 34
Stephen G. Rademaker, Senior Counsel, Barbour Griffith and
Rogers, LLC.................................................... 38
Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and
International Affairs, and Douglas Dillon Professor of
Government, Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of
Government..................................................... 41
Jim Walsh, Research Associate, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology..................................................... 43
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Allison, Graham:
Testimony.................................................... 41
Prepared statement........................................... 127
Feinstein, Hon. Dianne:
Testimony.................................................... 5
Prepared statement........................................... 74
Feltman, Jeffrey:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 77
McNerney, Patricia:
Testimony.................................................... 13
Prepared statement........................................... 77
Rademaker, Stephen G.:
Testimony.................................................... 38
Prepared statement........................................... 121
Ross, Hon. Dennis:
Testimony.................................................... 34
Prepared statement........................................... 90
Specter, Hon. Arlen:
Testimony.................................................... 1
Prepared statement........................................... 56
Walsh, Jim:
Testimony.................................................... 43
Prepared statement........................................... 132
APPENDIX
Question and Responses for the Record from:
Mr. Ross..................................................... 150
Mr. Allison.................................................. 152
Mr. Walsh.................................................... 159
``A Study of USG Broadcasting into Iran Prepared for the Iran
Steering Group,'' submitted by Senator Carper.................. 164
ADDRESSING IRAN'S NUCLEAR AMBITIONS
----------
THURSDAY, APRIL 24, 2008
U.S. Senate,
Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management,
Government Information, Federal Service,
and International Security,
of the Committee on Homeland Security
and Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 9:31 a.m., in
Room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Thomas R.
Carper, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Carper, Coburn, Coleman, and Collins.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR CARPER
Senator Carper. The Subcommittee will come to order.
Welcome, Senator Specter. And very soon we will be joined by
Senator Feinstein and a number of my colleagues. I want to
thank you for joining us today, and our other witnesses who
will be coming in the moments ahead.
I am especially delighted that Senator Specter, ranking
member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and former chairman of
the Senate Intelligence Committee, and Senator Feinstein, a
member of both the Intelligence and the Judiciary Committees,
can join us this morning to kick off this hearing. Thank you
both for your willingness to share your informed views on what
the United States should be doing in relation to Iran. If now
is a time for creative, courageous ideas, your voices,
colleagues, should figure prominently in that discussion.
Senator Specter, your entire statement will be entered into
the record. Feel free to summarize it, however you wish. But we
are delighted that you are here, and we thank you for your
leadership on this issue and, frankly, for encouraging us to
reach out openly to other countries with whom we do not always
agree. Thank you.
TESTIMONY OF HON. ARLEN SPECTER,\1\ A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF PENNSYLVANIA
Senator Specter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I begin by
complimenting you for starting on time. I note the presence of
all the other expected participants, but it is a unique
practice in these hallowed halls.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Specter appears in the
Appendix on page 56.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I compliment you, Mr. Chairman, and the Subcommittee for
undertaking this issue because it is of such vast importance
that it ought to be considered by a broader range of Members of
Congress in trying to move a realistic policy toward Iran.
All of the major issues confronting the world are tied up
in the U.S.-Iran conflict: Terrorism, military nuclear
capabilities, energy, Iraq, the Palestinian dilemma, the
presence of Hamas and Hezbollah, as destabilizing forces. And
in this context, for some strange, I think inexcusable reason,
at least in my opinion, the United States refuses to engage in
direct bilateral talks with Iran.
Two propositions span centuries but articulate what I think
are the sensible approaches. Sun Tzu's advice was to ``keep
your friends close and your enemies closer.'' President Ronald
Reagan said, on November 21, 1985, in an address to Congress
following the U.S.-Soviet Geneva Summit, ``We agreed on a
number of matters. We agreed to continue meeting. There is
always room for movement, action, and progress when people are
talking to each other instead of about each other.''
Perhaps not relevant, but the first assignment I had as an
assistant district attorney decades ago was to interview
inmates under the death sentence at the Pennsylvania State
Prison. My job was to get their views as to why they ought to
have the death sentence changed to life imprisonment. And I
found that they were people like anybody else--thugs, violent
criminals, reprehensible, but human beings.
The experience I have had in my work on the Senate Foreign
Operations Subcommittee and the Intelligence Committee, which I
chaired during the 104th Congress, has led me into contacts
with some of the world's reportedly unsavory people: Syrian
President Hafez al-Assad; his successor, President Bashar al-
Assad; Palestinian Chairman Yasser Arafat; Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein; Cuban President Fidel Castro; Venezuelan
President Hugo Chavez; and Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi.
I have found that there is an ingredient which runs through
all of these discussions, and that is the ingredient of
civility and courtesy in dealing with people and not to demean
them. I think it is a great act of foolishness to try to tamper
with somebody else's pride. And I think that is what we do with
Iran when we take the proposition that we will engage in
bilateral talks on the condition that they cease enriching
uranium.
Well, that is the object of the discussion. So how in good
faith can there be an insistence that the other party make the
concessions sought in the dialogue, in the negotiations, as a
precondition to meeting? It seems to me it is exactly wrong,
and I have asked the Secretary of State and the Deputy
Secretary of State on the record that question recently and
have gotten a very unsatisfactory answer.
In discussions that I have had with Hafez al-Assad on many
visits to Syria since 1984, I think it is not an overstatement
to say that perhaps there was little influence on Assad. He was
totally opposed in 1991 to attending the Madrid Conference
unless all five superpowers participated. He wanted to have
four allies with the United States being Israel's only ally.
And he finally relented and sent representatives to Madrid with
only the United States and the U.S.S.R. I had early
conversations with him about letting the Jews leave Syria, and
he was opposed to the idea. They were Syrians and they ought to
stay in Syria. Whatever factors ultimately led Hafez al-Assad
to change his mind, he did, and he let the Jews leave.
There has been no blacker thug terrorist in history than
Muammar Gaddafi. Maybe others could challenge him for that
title, but I do not think any could exceed him, and I doubt
that any even equaled him. He blew up the discotheque in
Berlin, which resulted in the killing of American soldiers;
brought down Pan Am 103, which he has later conceded; has made
reparations, has decided that he wants to come back into the
family of nations; and he stopped his activities on developing
nuclear weapons. And if you can talk to Gaddafi and you can
make a deal with Gaddafi, you can make a deal, I think, with
anyone.
Regrettably, the jury is still out on North Korea, but
there have been promising developments, but only when the
United States was willing to, in a dignified way, negotiate
bilaterally with North Korea. And I think that is an
illustration of where you have to maintain the multilateral
talks, because I think we must continue with multilateral talks
with Iran. But there is no substitute for direct, dignified
negotiations.
Two more brief points. You have been very generous, Mr.
Chairman, in not starting the time clock, but I will not abuse
the courtesy.
One is a comment which was made to me by Walid al-Mouallem,
who is now the Syrian Foreign Minister. When he was the Syrian
Ambassador to the United States, a position he held for about a
decade, he said to me, ``We like you because you do not hate
us.'' I thought that was a most extraordinary statement. Such a
modest, really low threshold for acceptance. Why should it be a
unique mark for one man or woman not to hate another man or
woman? But that is what he said to me. And when I wrote a book
8 years ago, I wanted to put it in the book, but before I did
so, I asked Walid al-Mouallem if it was acceptable to him to
put it in the book. But that is the level of courtesy which is
sub-minimal.
The final point on the Iranian-U.S. relations is what I
think is the importance of developing the idea by Russian
President Putin to have Russia enrich Iran's uranium, and that
way there could be certainty that the uranium was not being
used for military purposes. And that idea has gotten very
little publicity. And when Secretary of State Rice was before
the Appropriations Committee a couple of weeks ago, I raised
the issue with her. She thought it was a good idea. And I urged
her to develop it.
I think we put Iran on the defensive, justifiably, on that
point. They have no reason, aside from national sovereignty and
pride, which is insufficient reason in the premises, not to do
that.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. Senator Specter, thank you for an excellent
statement.
We have been joined by Senator Feinstein, and just before I
recognize Senator Feinstein, let me just ask two quick
questions of you, Senator Specter. And we are just delighted
that you are both here today. Just delighted.
Senator Specter, you were a member of the Senate for, I
think, the final decade of the Cold War. You have alluded to
that in your statement. Let me just ask what parallels can be
drawn between that conflict and the current impasse that we
face with Iran. What lessons should we take from our experience
in the Cold War and apply those to the formulation of our
policy today with respect to Iran?
Senator Specter. I believe there is a close parallel and a
great lesson to be learned; that is, to note that President
Reagan declared the Soviet Union to be the ``Evil Empire,''
just as President Bush has declared Iran to be part of the
``Axis of Evil.'' And then President Reagan promptly initiated
bilateral direct talks, a series of summit meetings, and the
quotation I read was the agreement on many matters, and the
agreement to continue talking, which President Reagan
recommended. And he is a pretty good role model for the current
Administration, I think.
Senator Carper. Thank you. How do you respond to the
argument that Tehran is at fault for the absence of a U.S.-
Iranian dialogue as the Bush Administration has, I believe,
offered Iran bilateral discussions but Tehran has turned the
offer down by not first suspending their enrichment and
reprocessing efforts?
Senator Specter. To offer bilateral negotiations with a
precondition is no offer at all, in my judgment, especially
when the precondition is the object of the negotiations. Beyond
that, Mr. Chairman, I would be more direct and say that it was
insulting, which I think characterizes a good bit of U.S.
foreign policy, which has earned us the title of ``The Ugly
America.'' But it is not a one-way street. Iran does pretty
well on bilateral insults. The object is to try to move from
that level of discourse to civility.
Mr. Chairman, as I told you before, I have to excuse
myself. I will follow what Senator Feinstein has to say, as I
always do. But I am ranking on the Judiciary Committee, and I
expect to have some civil but fiery dialogue on the
confirmation issue in 15 minutes.
Senator Carper. As you prepare to take your leave, again, I
thank you. I have been in the Senate for 7 years. I have very
much admired both of you, the work that you do, and most of
all, I appreciate the partnership that you have shown in
providing leadership for the rest of us on a wide range of
issues. That certainly includes the issue that is before us
today. So, Senator Specter, thank you so much. We will see you
later on the floor today, but much obliged.
Senator Specter. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. Senator Feinstein, welcome. We are
delighted that you have come. Thank you. I know you had to
adjust your schedule, but it means a great deal to me that you
are here, and we welcome you. Whatever statement you have for
the record, it will be included in its entirety. You are
welcome to summarize as you wish, but thanks so much for
joining us.
TESTIMONY OF HON. DIANNE FEINSTEIN,\1\ A U.S. SENATOR FROM THE
STATE OF CALIFORNIA
Senator Feinstein. Thank you very much. I thank you and
Senator Coleman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Senator Feinstein appears in the
Appendix on page 74.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
For many years now, I have been interested in trying to be
a constructive force for peace and stability in the Middle
East, which I think most of us regard as the ``powder keg'' in
which nations and values collide.
I have watched as the Iraq War continues, Israeli and
Palestinian peace remains elusive, Iran begins to exert itself
in the region, and Sunni nations grow more and more concerned.
Iran, today--isolated and belligerent--constitutes both a
present and future challenge to the stability and security of
many concerned nations, as well as our own.
Last year, the United States indicated its alarm about
Iran's supplying of weapons and tactical support to Shia
militias, and the Administration has called Iran ``public enemy
number one in Iraq.'' Also, Iran's support of terrorist
organizations, particularly Hezbollah and Hamas, remains of
deep concern and continues unabated. And, finally, the
government of Iran's intransigent hatred of Israel and its
willingness to deny Israel the right to exist is unacceptable
and a major hurdle to peace and security in the region.
So it is within this context that we must understand the
number one question of the day: Does Iran seek nuclear weapons
and for what purpose?
In November 2007, the U.S. intelligence community released
a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), on Iran's nuclear
program. It was an eye-opener and the source of major
controversy.
The NIE's first conclusion, front and center, was that the
intelligence community judges, ``with high confidence that in
the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program. .
. .'' This signified a major shift from the judgments of past
intelligence reviews. I serve on the Intelligence Committee. I
have reviewed both the classified and unclassified versions. To
my knowledge, they have never been contraindicated.
A footnote in the NIE made clear that a nuclear weapons
program has three parts: One, the enrichment of fissile
material; two, a ``weaponization'' program to make that
material into a weapon; and, three, a means to deliver the
weapon.
Now, the halt refers specifically to the weaponization
part. The other two parts--the enrichment of fissile materials
and the making of a delivery system--remain serious concerns.
But equally as clear, the NIE judged--again with high
confidence--that until the fall of 2003, Iran was pursuing an
illegal, covert nuclear weapons program.
This was the strongest intelligence statement to date--it
is backed up with evidence in the classified text of the NIE--
that Iran had, in fact, a program and that Iran's leaders in
Tehran could turn that program back on at any time.
Finally, the NIE made a statement that is central to the
question of whether and how to approach Iran diplomatically. It
said, ``Our assessment that the [nuclear] program probably was
halted primarily in response to international pressure suggests
Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue than we
judged previously.''
The NIE, in essence, suggests a window of opportunity to
begin to engage Iran in discussion, and with the help of
European and other allies, to see if Iran can be moved toward
positive engagement with the Western World--on this vital
question, as well as other issues of concern.
So this NIE, in my view, presents the first opening for
real engagement.
How should we proceed with Iran? I believe we should begin
to pursue a robust, diplomatic initiative with Iran on all
issues and, like Senator Specter, without preconditions.
Working with our European allies, the United Nations, and
the International Atomic Energy Agency, we should put together
a package of carrots and sticks that will serve as the basis
for discussion with Iran.
The goal would be to convince Iran to: Permanently abandon
any intention to re-start a nuclear weapons program;
Second, to allow the International Atomic Energy Agency
inspectors full access to all Iranian nuclear facilities and
suspected nuclear facilities;
Third, to comply once again with the additional protocol to
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty for intensified
inspections by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).
Iran had actually accepted this in 2003 and then suspended
compliance in 2005;
Fourth, provide an accounting for all past nuclear
activities and allow full transparency to international
inspectors;
Fifth, cease its support for the terrorist activities of
Hamas and Hezbollah worldwide; and
Sixth, promote stability and cease lethal support to
militias in Iraq.
The key is this: We can recognize that Iran has a right to
a peaceful, civilian nuclear energy program, but not to nuclear
weapons programs.
Now, of course, there is no guarantee that these talks will
succeed. It is likely to be a long and difficult road. But we
are sure to fail if we do not at least try.
One proposal that deserves a closer look is one which was
described to me by Iran's former Ambassador to the United
Nations. It is similar to one made by Ambassador Bill Luers,
Secretary Thomas Pickering, and Jim Walsh. Mr. Walsh is on the
second panel today.
The basic premise is this: Establish an ``on-the-ground 24/
7 International Consortium'' to manage and monitor all aspects
of nuclear activity. This is something that Iran might actually
consider--as long as there is an openness on the part of the
United States to discuss other issues as well. In other words,
no preconditions, an open table, come in, and both sides
present their views. Participants could include the United
States, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, China, Russia, the
United Nations, and the IAEA.
Such a proposal deserves serious consideration and could go
a long way toward building confidence on both sides. Remember,
we have not talked to Iran in 30 years. Our military does not
talk to their military. Isolation, we should have learned well
by now, is a very dangerous posture to push a Nation into. We
saw it with North Korea, and it is happening with Iran as well.
I believe that an Iranian policy based on a military
solution makes little sense. Only by talking and bringing to
bear the best efforts of diplomacy can real progress be made.
The next Administration must evaluate anew our Nation's
approach to this Middle Eastern arena and evolve a new
approach--one based on robust diplomacy, rather than constant
threat of war. The process is likely to be difficult--we all
know that, but the rewards may well be significant. And one
day, it could lead to a more stable and peaceful Middle East.
Thank you very much.
Senator Carper. Senator Feinstein, thank you for an
excellent statement and for thinking outside the box, as you do
in so many other arenas.
Do you have time for one quick question from me?
Senator Feinstein. I do.
Senator Carper. And I know you have your Judiciary
Committee that is about to begin its work as well.
Just thinking again about the proposal that you have laid
on the table, a question I would ask, not just rhetorically but
just ask, what do we have to lose in pursuing what you have
just prescribed? What is the downside?
Senator Feinstein. We do not have anything to lose, and I
think there is a very limited understanding of the Iranian
Government as well. The President, Ahmadinejad, this is not his
arena. It is the arena of the Supreme Leader. And the need is
really to develop contacts that run to the Supreme Leader and
try to open a floor for constructive dialogue.
There have been some back-channel negotiations among
certain Americans and Iranians. I think there is reason to
believe that there are many Iranians that do not want their
country to have a nuclear weapons program. There are many
Iranians that see that peace and stability and economic upward
mobility of their country offers their citizens much more than
a belligerent stance does, and that isolation is not to the
benefit of Iran. It is not to the benefit of other nations as
well.
And as we watch Iran extend its influence, as we watch the
Revolutionary Guard buy properties in Iraq, set up businesses
in Iraq, extend their influence into Iraq, coming to grips with
Iran becomes more and more important if we ever want to effect
a stable region.
Senator Carper. Thank you.
Senator Feinstein. You are very welcome.
Senator Carper. Senator Coleman, would you like to ask a
question of Senator Feinstein?
Senator Coleman. No. I know that the Senator is busy. I
appreciate it. The Senator is one of the most thoughtful
members of this institution. I have perhaps some different
perspectives on some of this, but I always greatly appreciate,
as you talked about, the out-of-the-box thinking and very
thoughtful approach, and hopefully we will figure out some
common ground and a way to move forward. But I thank the
Senator for her presentation.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you, Senator. I appreciate it.
Senator Carper. Thank you so much.
Senator Feinstein. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. I am going to go ahead and give an opening
statement. It is going to run a bit beyond 5 minutes, and I
would just beg your indulgence of my colleagues, Senator
Coleman and then others who have joined us.
Before we welcome the first panel, let me just say that
Iran is considered the world's most active state sponsor of
terrorism. We know Iran is behind Hezbollah, Hamas, Palestinian
Islamic Jihad, as well as militant Shia elements in Iraq. Our
first two Senators have already indicated as much in their
statements.
In his Senate statement and testimony on April 8, General
Petraeus stated that Iranian armed militias are the biggest
threats to stability in Iraq. Furthermore, Iran has started
arming the Taliban. Iran is a formidable threat. Obviously, a
nuclear weapon makes it even more so by giving Iran the
confidence to frustrate U.S. policy objectives without fear of
U.S. reprisals.
Although military strikes against Iranian nuclear sites
should remain on the table, they would prompt widespread
retaliation throughout the region, would lack international
support, and would, therefore, be ill-advised presently.
In fact, our Secretary of Defense said at a meeting that we
had several months ago with a number of Senators, when asked
what the practical effect would be of a military strike by the
United States against the Iranian nuclear targets, he said they
are a lot smarter than the Iraqis were. The Iraqis, they built
their nuclear facilities out in the open, above ground, almost
like you put a bull's eye around it and said come and get us.
The Iranians are smarter. They have dispersed their nuclear
activities. They have put them underground. And Secretary
Gates, I will paraphrase what he said. He said, ``one thing--I
am not so sure that we would be effective in taking out their
nuclear facilities. One thing I know for sure, we would rally
the Iranian people to the support of their President in no
other way that I could think of.''
But, anyway, there was little evidence that deterrence has
or would work. Regime change after Iraq is no longer viewed as
a realistic short-term option, even to those in the Bush
Administration.
Given the lack of good alternative options, a more robust
diplomacy, to quote Senator Feinstein, which would include
comprehensive talks with the Iranians that address both its
nuclear program and its support of terrorism, might be better
than the not-so-good options presently before this country.
The December 2007 National Intelligence Estimate stated
that Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons development program
in the fall of 2003. And although the NIE's release led some to
question the immediacy of the Iranian threat, it affirmed
Iran's continued enrichment of uranium and its simultaneous
pursuit of ballistic missile delivery capabilities.
As former Under Secretary of State Nicholas Burns recently
said, ``The straightest avenue to nuclear weapon capability is
not weaponization but enrichment and reprocessing.''
Given that the production of fissile material is the most
challenging aspect of the process of building a nuclear weapon,
Iran's continued enrichment of uranium is cause for real
concern and warrants the continued action by the United States
and the international community.
While there is a shared view among most observes to prevent
a nuclear Iran, the primary goal of the Bush Administration's
policy, there is vigorous disagreement about how the United
States should try to achieve that goal. I called this hearing
for that purpose: To examine what the United States and its
allies must do to develop a more effective Iran strategy and to
discuss specifically what actions we should consider taking in
light of what we learned last December.
I believe that the way to stop or at least to mitigate
Iran's enrichment activities is to present Iran with an
enhanced set of carrots and sticks not unlike those suggested
by Senator Feinstein in order to change its cost/benefit
analysis of the issue. Hammering out those incentives and
disincentives is the challenge that is before us.
To its credit, the Bush Administration has shifted rather
significantly in recent years from rhetoric centered on regime
change to a more pragmatic approach in dealing with Iran
through multilateral talks with other permanent members of the
U.N. Security Council--China, France, Russia, Britain, plus
Germany.
Part of this diplomacy included a package of incentives
that the United States offered Iran in 2006 with the stated
objective that if Iran suspended its enrichment-related and
proliferation-sensitive activities, our Secretary of State,
Condoleezza Rice, would meet directly with her Iranian
counterpart to discuss anything, but Iran refused.
Two years of respectable but inadequate diplomatic efforts
and four U.N. Security Council resolutions later, the last
three of which imposed sanctions on Iran until it suspends its
enrichment-related and reprocessing activities, have not let
Iran to do so. Nor do many experts think that this path will
prevent a nuclear Iran from emerging. In fact, some now assume
a nuclear Iran as their starting point for how the United
States should approach Iran.
I am not of that mind-set and agree that it should be U.S.
policy to prevent a nuclear Iran. Add to this the Iranian
President's April 8 pronouncement that Iran's scientists and
experts have started to install 6,000 new centrifuges at
Natanz, the uranium enrichment facility. These are in addition
to the 3,300 that the Director of the International Atomic
Energy Agency said are already operating there. Furthermore,
Iran has stated that it will move toward large-scale uranium
enrichment that will ultimately involve 54,000 centrifuges.
Finally, last week's talks in Shanghai by the permanent
members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany and the
European Union, which focused on incentives to get the Iranians
to stop their nuclear program, ended with no clear outcome.
These disturbing facts lead to a series of urgent
questions. First of all, last weekend Secretary Rice stated,
``This is not the time, I think, to expect major changes'' in
terms of either incentives or sanctions. What, therefore, will
the United States do in the short term, say between now and
January 2009, vis-a-vis Iran? And how further along down the
nuclear road, will Iran be?
Although I continue to be a believer in progressively
ratcheting up sanctions on the Iranian regime, which is why I
cosponsored S. 970, the Iran Counterproliferation Act, can we
expect the relatively low impact sanctions of the U.N.
resolutions to ultimately force Iran to cease its enrichment
activities? If not, what are we aiming at?
Why does the United States continue to insist on
preconditions to negotiations with the Iranians? What other
changes in U.S. policy should be considered that may alter the
Iranian decisionmaking calculus with regard to its nuclear
ambitions? To what extent would a position that allows Iran to
continue enrichment work while negotiations on a final
settlement are proceeding undermine the four U.N. resolutions
that demand that Iran suspend uranium enrichment? Should the
next Administration consider direct talks with Iranians without
preconditions? Realistically, what would direct talks
accomplish? How should those talks be structured?
What lessons can we learn from our involvement with North
Korea and Libya? And are any of those lessons applicable to
Iran? And, finally, how do we prepare for the possibility that
our best efforts might not persuade Iran's leaders?
Today, with those questions in mind, I want to try to do
the following: First of all, to accurately assess to date the
diplomatic efforts of the Bush Administration; and, second, to
discuss the most effective or least bad strategic policy option
regarding Iran; third, to analyze the pros and cons of specific
proposals about how to approach Iran; and, fourth, to review
what lessons, if any, can be gleaned from the U.S. involvement
with North Korea and with Libya and how those actions might be
applicable to Iran; and finally, to solicit ideas about how
Congress can play an active and effective role in the path
forward.
Again, we welcome our witnesses. We thank you all for
joining us today and for the time and energy that you put into
preparing for your statements and your responses to our
questions. Senator Coburn is going to be joining us shortly. I
am delighted that we have been joined by my colleague from
Minnesota, and I would be pleased to recognize Senator Coleman
for whatever statement he might wish to make.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COLEMAN
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I do not have a
formal statement. I want to make just some observations. And it
is dangerous because I do not have notes on this, but I want to
respond a little bit, just at least to set the stage and then
listen to the witnesses and inquire further with them.
But I do appreciate the thoughtful presentations of my
colleagues, and I appreciate the thoughtful manner in which you
approach this. And these are complex issues. This is not easy
stuff.
What do we have to lose without preconditions moving
forward? I would suggest that particularly if you look at the
North Korean example, what we have to lose, if not done
correctly, is the support and confidence of our allies in the
Middle East. As the ranking member on the Near East
Subcommittee, I can tell you that the Iranians are of deep
concern to the Saudis, to the Jordanians, to the Egyptians. The
greatest threat facing stable governments in the Middle East is
terrorism. It is Hamas. It is Hezbollah. It is a threat in
Syria and Lebanon.
And so if you look at the North Korean experience where we
actually pulled together the Six-Party Talks, because we
understood that direct negotiation was unlikely to yield any
fruitful results due to the prior history with North Korea, it
needed others in the region who have a stake in this. The
reality is that Iran is not just the U.S.'s problem, and it is
not just Israel's problem. Iran is a threat to the House of
Saud. Iran is a threat to Abdullah in Jordan. Iran is a threat
to stability in the entire region. And I do not think that it
is asking too much when we say negotiate without preconditions.
Iran right now is engaged in what I would call--and I am going
to say this very straightforward--acts of war against this
country. They are killing American soldiers. There is no
question whatsoever that there is Iranian support for the
Revolutionary Guard, the Qods Force support of terrorist
organizations in Iraq, supplying them with the most modern
explosively formed projectiles. They are actively involved in
killing coalition soldiers. In other times, that is an act of
war. And I do not think it is asking too much as a precondition
to sit down and talk about the larger issues. I agree certainly
with this issue of the nuclearization, which is the big issue.
That is the 800-pound gorilla. But before you sit down with
someone to say as a precondition for us to have a fruitful
conversation, we would like you to step back from supplying
weapons that are killing our soldiers; we would like you to cut
off your training of terrorists in the region, then we could
talk to you. Because I do believe, Mr. Chairman, that we need
to be ratcheting up the talks at a higher level than they are
now. There is just no question that I think we are missing
opportunities.
There are talks going on--I think this is public
information--at the sub-ambassador level. But I do believe that
it is reasonable in international diplomacy, before you sit
down with someone, particularly if they are involved in killing
your soldiers, to have that kind of conversation. And my fear
would be that if we did not, the way we would be looked at in
the region would undermine our entire ability to move forward
with promoting stability in the entire region. Talk to the
Saudis. Talk to the Egyptians. Talk to the Jordanians. Talk to
the Kuwaitis.
And so this is a complicated area. We have to have levels
of discussion beyond what we have now. The threat is real. The
NIE talked about Iran suspending weaponization, but not uranium
enrichment, which we know they are doing in violation of U.N.
resolutions, and not the delivery capacity, which we know they
are doing. The easiest thing to re-start is weaponization. And
our intelligence only goes back to 2003. We do not know what
they are doing today.
And so I applaud your efforts at pursuing a rational kind
of conversation about how we move forward, but I would suggest,
Mr. Chairman, that there is an affirmative answer of what we
have to lose if done incorrectly, and what we have to lose is
an undermining of our efforts to promote stability in one of
the most dangerous regions of the world. And so I look forward
to the witnesses, and I look forward to the conversation, and I
appreciate your leadership on this matter.
Senator Carper. Thank you so much. Dr. Coburn.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR COBURN
Senator Coburn. Thank you. Mr. Chairman.
The real principle here is reconciliation. Where we find
ourselves is alienated. But the real practical matter in the
world today is we have no means of containment with which we
can deal with the situation in Iran. And before we give up and
lose all leverage with Iran in terms of high-level talks, you
have to have some other leverage somewhere. And I know I missed
part of Senator Coleman's talking points, but as I look at how
we handled North Korea and how we are, in my thoughts,
regrettably handling it today, with no accountability and no
transparency, we send a signal to the Iranians to stand ground
because we are never going to do anything any different.
So I am adamantly opposed to how we are handling North
Korea today because I think it complicates our ability to deal
with Iran. They see weakness rather than strength. They see
delay as their asset. They see lack of unity on our part. And
what you hear from their leaders is statements about the
destruction of one of our allies. And it ought to be U.S.
policy that if you attack Israel, you have attacked the United
States. And that ought to be our policy, and that ought to be
first and foremost our policy. And then we stand on that, and
then we act in regards to that.
So the rhetoric does need to calm down. Our statements
against Iran or about Iran have nothing to do with the Iranian
people because they have what I would consider a despot
government that does not reflect the true values of the Iranian
people that I know and their desires for a future.
So I look forward to our hearing, and I look forward to our
testimony. We have a big problem in front of us, and it is not
just this country that has a big problem. The entire world has
a big problem because uranium enrichment in Iran means uranium
enrichment in multiple other places throughout the Middle East.
You can deny that if you want, but that is what is going to
happen. And we need to be prepared for that. We need to be
unified in how this country stands. And there is a place for
reconciliation, but reconciliation has to be built on trust, it
has to be built on verification. And there is none of that now
in terms of true verification and true trust.
And so one of my biggest concerns is that we have failed in
terms of our diplomacy through things such as Voice of America,
through Radio Farda, through presenting the options in a
standard way, with a complete view of our viewpoint, one that
directs our respect and love for the Iranian people but
expresses our disdain for the statements that have been made by
the Iranian leadership.
This is a different area, not just for this country, and I
have some concern over our allies in terms of the--we have
three United Nations resolutions on sanctioning, which are not
effective, obviously, since we continue to see enrichment. And
if we are not going to push for more sanctions, then what we
have said is that we, in fact, are going to allow enrichment to
continue. And if we are going to allow enrichment to continue,
then we are going to allow enrichment throughout the whole
Middle East. And we need to recognize that as the endpoint in
this game, and then see what we have done, i.e. that we have no
more nonproliferation treaties because we will have had
proliferation throughout the entire Mideast.
Thank you.
Senator Carper. Dr. Coburn, thank you very much.
I am going to invite our first panel of witnesses to join
us, and as they come to the table, I will introduce each of
them.
Jeffrey Feltman is a career member of the U.S. Foreign
Service currently serving as the Principal Deputy Assistant
Secretary in the Office of Near Eastern Affairs, previously
served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Lebanon. He also
headed the Coalition Provisional Authority's Office in the
Irbil province of Iraq. He spent much of his career in the
Eastern European and Near East Affairs. Welcome.
Joining Mr. Feltman is Patricia McNerney. She is the
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the International
Security and Nonproliferation Bureau, acting head of that
bureau.
We are delighted that you are here. Your entire testimony
will be entered and made part of the record. You are welcome to
summarize it as you prefer, and with that, Mr. Feltman, if you
would like to kick it off, and then we will turn to Ms.
McNerney.
Ms. McNerney. We had arranged that I would set it off and
then turn to Ambassador Feltman.
TESTIMONY OF PATRICIA MCNERNEY,\1\ PRINCIPAL DEPUTY ASSISTANT
SECRETARY, BUREAU OF INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND
NONPROLIFERATION, AND JEFFREY FELTMAN, PRINCIPAL DEPUTY
ASSISTANT SECRETARY, BUREAU OF NEAR EASTERN AFFAIRS, U.S.
DEPARTMENT OF STATE
Ms. McNerney. Mr. Chairman, Members of the Subcommittee, I
very much welcome the opportunity to speak with you today, and
I look forward to your questions. I request that our full joint
statement be placed in the record.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The joint prepared statement of Ms. McNerney and Mr. Feltman
appears in the Appendix on page 77.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Carper. It will be, without objection.
Ms. McNerney. Iran presents a profound threat to U.S.
national security interests. The radical regime in Tehran
threatens regional and international security through its
pursuit of technologies that would give it a nuclear weapons
capability, obviously its support of terrorist groups and
militants in Iraq and Afghanistan, its expansive regional
ambitions, and its lack of respect for human rights and civil
society.
From its location at the crossroads of the Middle East and
South Asia, a nuclear-armed Iran could threaten U.S. national
security interests on three continents, and even U.S. homeland
directly. The international community's failure to prevent
Iran's acquisition of such weapons would additionally imperil
the international nonproliferation regime, as Senator Coburn
had indicated, by casting doubt on our collective ability and
commitment to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction
abroad.
Our goal is to convince Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons
program and urge Tehran to become a partner in bringing peace
and stability to the region. The diplomacy to which we remain
committed is the best course of action, we believe, in
pressuring the Iranian regime to change its behavior.
However, to respond to the range of challenges presented by
Iran, the Administration has stressed the use of a range of
diplomatic tools available: Multilateral diplomacy, support for
the IAEA, financial measures, counterproliferation actions such
as interdictions, and, as a final resort, hold available the
threat and use of military force.
The U.S. diplomatic strategy toward Iran consists of a
dual-track approach in concert together with the permanent five
members of the U.N. Security Council--China, France, Russia,
the United Kingdom, the United States--plus Germany (the P5+1).
These tracks are mutually reinforcing and complementary. The
first is the incremental escalation of pressure on the Iranian
regime to help prompt a revision of their strategic nuclear
calculus, specifically, a decision to abandon once and for all
Iran's long-term nuclear weapons ambitions. The second track is
an offer to negotiate a generous package of incentives that
cover the gamut of political, economic, technological, and
social benefits that would accrue to the Iranian people were
the regime to resolve international concerns with its nuclear
activities. As part of this offer, Secretary Rice announced in
May 2006 that, should Iran create the necessary conditions for
negotiations by meeting its U.N. Security Council obligation to
suspend all uranium enrichment and reprocessing activities, the
United States would be willing to meet with Iran at any time,
any place, to discuss any issue.
Ambassador Feltman will provide some introductory remarks
addressing Iran's regional behavior and U.S. civil engagement
programs, but I would like to discuss the nuclear front by
noting that we seek to present Iran with an increasingly stark
choice between two paths: Confrontation and isolation, or
cooperation and reward.
While we believe we are having an impact, we have yet to
achieve our objective of persuading Iran to step off its
current nuclear course. No one tool can succeed on its own.
Iran's past behavior shows that it can be responsive to
international pressure. This dual-track approach is our best
tool for making clear to Iran the costs and benefits for its
defiance and dissuading the Iranian regime to take a different
path.
At a minimum, these sanctions are limiting Iran's access to
sensitive technologies and goods, with the possible impact of
slowing Iran's nuclear and missile development. These sanctions
are also impairing their ability to access the international
financial system, to fund its weapons programs and terrorist
activities, and to secure investment for its strategic sectors,
as many States and firms no longer wish to associate themselves
with the Iranian regime. The sanctions keep Iran on the
defensive, forcing it to find new finance and trade partners
and replace funding channels it has lost--often through more
costly and circuitous mechanisms.
Major banks such as Commerzbank, Credit Suisse, and HSBC
have decided that the risk of doing business in Iran is too
great and have ended or limited their relationships with Iran.
The effects of Iran's growing international stigma may, in the
end, be as substantial as the direct economic impact of any
sanction. Losing the ability for a single Iranian bank, such as
Iran's Bank Sepah, to conduct business overseas is painful to
the Iranian economy. Having major international financial
institutions refuse to do business with Iran because of the
legitimate business risks that such trade present is even
worse.
The sanctions are also having a psychological impact. Iran
has demonstrated its desire to assume the economic and
political role it believes it deserves in the region, and to be
seen as a legitimate player in the international community. But
the series of U.N. resolutions has shown the world and Iran
that it is isolated by the international community and will not
be tolerated as an irresponsible actor.
In addition to sanctions, a key element of our strategy is
to work with the International Atomic Energy Agency in its
ongoing investigation of Iran. As the main international
institution with responsibility for verifying the non-diversion
of nuclear materials and providing credible assurances of the
absence of undeclared nuclear activities, the IAEA's work in
Iran is essential.
Press reports have indicated that many States are sharing
more and more information with the IAEA to further its
investigation; we look forward to the IAEA's continued efforts
to uncover the true extent of Iran's nuclear weapons-related
work and ambitions. We will continue to lead strong
international consensus that Iran must make a full disclosure
of any nuclear weapons-related work and allow the IAEA to
verify that it has stopped. Anything short of a demand for full
disclosure would undermine not only our efforts to provide
international verification that Iran is not developing or
preserving a nuclear weapons option, but also would undermine
the integrity of the IAEA safeguards regime worldwide.
Mr. Chairman, I will yield to my colleague to address some
of the regional aspects, and I look forward to your questions.
Senator Carper. Thank you, Ms. McNerney. Mr. Feltman.
Mr. Feltman. Thank you, Chairman Carper, Dr. Coburn,
Senator Coleman, for this opportunity to discuss U.S. policy
options regarding Iran.
As Ms. McNerney has described, we are taking many steps to
address the challenges posed by Iran on the nuclear front, but
we are also deeply concerned by Iran's overall behavior, both
in terms of Iran's malign influence in the region as well as
Iran's oppression of its own people.
Iran poses multiple threats to U.S. interests, as your
opening remarks have indicated. It destabilizes its neighbors.
It is the world's No. 1 state sponsor of terrorism, continues
the oppression of Iranian civil society, and I would add
Iranian-funded militias and Iranian-funded weaponry are killing
our troops and diplomats in Iraq.
I had the honor to serve as U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon for
3\1/2\ years, and I saw every day the malign Iranian influence
in Lebanon in terms of Iran's support for Hezbollah--Hezbollah
that, with Iranian support, dragged Lebanon into war with
Israel in 2006; Hezbollah, which continues to try to undermine
legitimate institutions of the government of Lebanon and seeks
to create a state within a state there.
Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force continues to
bolster Hezbollah financially as well as rearming the group
with rockets and other weapons, which are systematic violations
of multiple U.N. Security Council resolutions.
Iran also supports other terrorist groups, including
certain Shia militant groups in Iraq, Palestinian Islamic
Jihad, and Hamas. Farther to the east, Iran seeks to
destabilize the Karzai government in Afghanistan by sending
lethal assistance to the Taliban, once Iran's enemy.
Through its malign influence, Tehran undermines the elected
Government of Iraq and endangers our soldiers and diplomats by
providing lethal support to Iraqi militants. The President has
made clear that Iran has a choice to make. It can choose to
live in peace with its neighbors, enjoying strong economic,
religious, and cultural ties, or it can continue to arm, fund,
and train illegal militant groups, which are terrorizing the
Iraqi people and, in fact, turning them against Iran. America
would welcome a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq,
but make no mistake: The United States will act to protect its
interests, our troops, and our Iraqi partners.
In terms of the nuclear file. Ms. McNearney has already
outlined our dual-track strategy towards Iran and our approach
to the challenges posed by Iran's pursuit of nuclear
capabilities. But let me emphasize that the United States
remains committed to finding a multilateral diplomatic solution
to address the threat posed by Iran's proliferation-sensitive
nuclear activities and its overall destabilizing influence in
the region. As Ms. McNerney outlined, we are working closely
with our P5+1 partners to both pressure the Iranian regime and
offer it incentives to revise, as you said, Chairman Carper,
the cost/benefit analysis that Iran has. The P5+1 package of
incentives covers the gamut of political, economic,
technological, and social benefits, including active
international cooperation to help Iran develop state-of-the-art
civil, peaceful nuclear energy technology and obtain an assured
nuclear fuel supply for a genuinely civilian nuclear energy
program.
In addition to that offer, Secretary Rice has said multiple
times since May 2006 that, should Iran create the necessary
conditions for negotiations by suspending all proliferation-
sensitive activities, including uranium enrichment, she
personally would sit down with her Iranian counterpart any
place, any time, to discuss any interest--an issue of interest
to Tehran, to discuss all of the multiple issues that you
addressed in your opening remarks, Senators.
Let's talk about human rights for a second. Iran's foreign
and nuclear policies are only part of the challenge Iran poses
to the world. The regime's record of human rights abuse remains
abysmal and has only grown worse over the years. The regime
regularly commits torture and other forms of inhumane treatment
on its own people and restricts the basic freedoms of
expression, press, religion, and assembly in order to
discourage political opposition. The regime has purged liberal
university professors, threatened, imprisoned, and tortured
dissidents, journalists, labor leaders, and women's rights
activists.
The regime also denies its people the freedom of expression
and press by cracking down on bloggers, closing independent
newspapers, censoring Internet use, and blocking satellite dish
ownership--all in an effort to control access to information.
Secretary Rice noted at Davos earlier this year that the
United States has no desire to have a permanent enemy in Iran,
even after 29 years of difficult history. We have no conflict
with the Iranian people. An important component of our Iran
strategy is to build bridges--bridges directly to the Iranian
people--through official exchanges and civil society
development programs. We have grave problems with Tehran on a
range of issues, but we have the greatest respect for the
citizens of Iran, their culture, and their rich heritage.
Through official, professional, educational, cultural, and
athletic exchanges, we are attempting to strengthen mutual
understanding of our two peoples. Additionally, we are trying
to provide the Iranian people with a better understanding of
American foreign policy, our society, and our culture through
our Persian language television and radio broadcasting on Voice
of America and Radio Farda, as well as through the Internet and
other media.
The United States stands with the Iranian people in their
struggle to advance democracy, freedom, and the basic civil
rights of all citizens.
In closing, I would note that we have presented Iran an
option. The regime can continue down its current path toward
isolation and further sanctions, or it can choose to reengage
with the international community, opening up opportunities for
better relations and a brighter future. Should Iran comply with
its U.N. Security Council obligations to suspend all
proliferation-sensitive nuclear activities, including
enrichment, and cooperate with the IAEA, the Secretary has
said, ``We could begin negotiations and we could work over time
to build a new, more normal relationship, one defined not by
fear and mistrust, but growing cooperation, expanding trade and
exchange, and the peaceful management of our differences.''
The choice is Iran's. The challenges posed by Iran are
daunting, but we are confident that our current approach,
working in concert with the international community on the
nuclear and other issues, will move us toward a peaceful
resolution to the problems posed by Iran. Thank you.
Senator Carper. My thanks, our thanks to both of you for
your testimony and for your service to our country.
Let me just start off with a question to both of you, if I
could. One of the underlying points of the NIE was that Iran
responds to pressure and calculates the costs and the benefits
of certain actions that we might take against them. The idea is
that Iran stopped work on designing a nuclear weapon because of
the perceived costs internationally of pursuing such work.
First of all, has the Administration done an assessment to
determine the magnitude of economic pressure needed to dissuade
the Iranian Government from continuing to pursue all the
unacceptable elements of its nuclear program, including
enrichment?
Ms. McNerney. Well, I think as we review that question,
partly you have to understand what the regime itself is willing
to bear in order to continue pursuit of these weapons--or this
nuclear path.
We have seen some polling and sort of calculated that the
Iranian people as a whole, believing that their program is for
the civil nuclear purposes, indicate that they would like to
pursue the nuclear path. But when you ask them a different
question, which is what costs are you willing to take for
pursuit of that path, the calculus starts to change, and public
support starts to diminish in terms of the support for what
they believe to be a civil nuclear path.
So our goal is to start to have an impact to such a degree
that you start to change that popular support for the path the
regime is on. We believe we are starting to have that impact.
We do not believe there is sufficient pressure yet in that
direction. Obviously, we have been trying to do this in a
multilateral way so it is--sometimes working through the United
Nations is a little more painful, a little slower. But over
time it is the accumulation of these impacts. And as I
mentioned in my testimony, the additional downstream impact of
businesses themselves choosing to withhold investment and look
elsewhere for their business are all ways that we are looking
to increase that pressure and change that calculus.
One of the things, too, looking back to the 2003 decision,
there were no sanctions at the time, but there was obviously a
lot of activity happening in the region. So the mix of
pressures is beyond simply the sanctions, but also
international scrutiny, that was the time that the programs
were revealed, the covert nature of these programs; obviously a
build-up in Iraq in the region. And so there is this really, I
think, broad set of tools and pressures that we want to bring
to bear.
Senator Carper. This is for either of you. Do you have any
idea of the level of pressure that we need to apply to the
Iranians, in order to succeed in our goal of no nuclear weapon
capability? We have these three U.N. Security Council
resolutions. We have imposed unilaterally additional sanctions
of our own. They appear to be having some effect.
Unfortunately, since the promulgation of the NIE, it looks like
some other countries, particularly the Russians and the
Chinese, have decided that they need not be as stringent, I
think, in adhering to pressure on the Iranians themselves.
Ms. McNerney. I do not think we have--there is no sort of
magic ``this is the amount'' that sort of tips the balance. But
I think if you actually look to the Libya situation, it
actually took some 10-plus years to really get to that balance.
We do not believe we have that kind of time and----
Senator Carper. I do not believe we do either.
Ms. McNerney. Yes. And so the question is how do you get
there quicker, and, obviously the high price of oil has really
helped this regime weather some of these sanctions in a way
that they might not have otherwise?
Senator Carper. Although I am told that their ability to
pump oil drops each year by about 500,000 barrels.
Ms. McNerney. Yes, I am no oil expert. I understand that is
the case.
Senator Carper. And, meanwhile, their consumption of oil
continues to rise.
Ms. McNerney. But the price that they get for what they do
pump continues to rise as well. So some of the other things
that work in our favor are that the actual economic management
of this leadership is particularly weak, so that also
exacerbates some of the sanctions as well.
But, again, I do not know that we know what is that magic
number or amount of economic isolation.
Senator Carper. Mr. Feltman.
Mr. Feltman. I would echo what my colleague has said. We do
not know exactly at what point that cost/benefit analysis will
start turning, the cost/benefit analysis that you referred to
in your opening remarks, Mr. Chairman. But we are going to
continue to pursue this dual track multilaterally, that we will
look at how we, ourselves, can impose unilateral pressure in a
variety of ways on Iran, and we will work through the P5+1 and
through the IAEA to see how we can impose international
pressure.
The Security Council resolutions, the three Chapter VII
Security Council resolutions, have had an increasing number of
sanctions of punishment and penalties on Iran, and I do not
believe we have seen the full impact of those yet.
Senator Carper. When are we likely to?
Mr. Feltman. Well, right now we, ourselves, are bringing
our own system into compliance with the most recent resolution.
The European Union is doing the same in adopting resolution
1803 into their common policy. The European Union is looking at
making some autonomous sanctions beyond resolution 1803. We are
doing the same. We are doing this all in coordination
multilaterally because I think all of us recognize that the
danger is multilateral and that the sanctions also have to be
multilateral to have this sort of impact. But we do not know
the exact point where the cost/benefit analysis will start
switching in the way we want.
Senator Carper. Ms. McNerney, Libya is a lot smaller, as we
know, than Iran, and it does not have the oil reserves that
Iran enjoys. So if it took Libya--what did you say?--7 to 10
years in order to, if you will, change their course, according
to your calculation how long do you think it is going to take
for the Iranians to change their course? And do we have the
luxury of waiting that long?
Ms. McNerney. The point I was making is just that sometimes
over time these pressures build. I do not think we have that
kind of luxury. But I also think that Libya was a little
different in the sense of perhaps relishing that isolation in a
different way than Iran. As a country, the people are very
certainly used to traveling globally, used to visiting Europe,
used to a very different kind of life, I think, than perhaps
you would compare to the Libyan people, and certainly have a
more robust kind of society. So, there are some differences.
I think the original--one of the values of the U.N.
Security Council process is not only these economic sanctions
but the fact that the entire Security Council unanimously
continues to line up against the Iranian pursuit of nuclear
weapons capability. So all these things we believe can have a
larger and more direct impact on the civil society kind of
impact.
Senator Carper. All right. Dr. Coburn.
Senator Coburn. Thank you for your testimony.
I am concerned about the time frame that Senator Carper
mentioned, and you mentioned, Secretary McNerney, further
sanctions may be needed. How do we know when further sanctions
are needed? And why wouldn't we put the full press of all the
sanctions that we can now? You have in the press and stated by
the President of that country that they are adding 6,000
centrifuges right now. They intend to go to 50,000 centrifuges.
Is there a real nuclear need for power in that country when
they have the world's second largest reserves of natural gas
that can generate power for 500 years if they needed to? If
there are further sanctions that are needed--and I have some
concern that Secretary Rice has signaled that no further
sanctions are going to be brought before the United Nations in
the near term--where is the balance there?
Ms. McNerney. Well, I think her statement was just to
suggest that we are not going to move away from the policy that
we are following. We do intend to continue working the U.N.
Security Council track, including additional sanctions. At the
same time, we are also trying to renegotiate this package of
incentives, and Dan Fried led meetings in China last week, and
they are continuing to work among the P5+1 to redevelop or
refresh that package of incentives.
Additionally, the United States has had a complete embargo
on Iran for many years. What we have been trying to do with
this strategy is really broaden that, especially to our
European allies, as well as some of the key Asian economic
powers. And that, we believe, is where we need to continue to
ratchet up the pressure. Thus, the importance really of
maintaining this U.N. Security Council track to increase--many
of those countries are much more comfortable doing these
sanctions with the U.N. Security Council mandates.
Now, when we work with them, you use that as a starting
point, but it also is an opportunity to expand beyond the
strict requirements of the U.N. Security Council resolutions.
So when the EU reviews its sanctions package in the coming
weeks, they intend to go beyond the strict requirements of the
U.N. Security Council, and we believe that is an important
avenue as well. So we do not want to simply suggest that the
U.N. track is the only way to do sanctions.
Senator Coburn. Should we believe the President of Iran
when he said there are not any incentives that they would ever
accept? Is that posturing?
Ms. McNerney. I mean, when it comes from him, I do not want
to pretend to know what he is thinking.
Senator Coburn. Well, I mean, it is a fairly
straightforward statement: ``There are no incentives you can
offer us to stop us from our nuclear enrichment program.''
Ms. McNerney. Well, I think they have made statements in
the past that they will not do things, but then if you look at
how things have evolved, they were not going to talk to the
IAEA about nuclear weapons issues. They did announce this week
that they will, in fact, be doing that next month. Now, whether
they do that in any real way or in any substantive way, that
remains to be seen. But, some of these statements certainly can
be posturing.
I do think, as I mentioned before, that the Iranian people
actually can put pressure on their leadership in ways maybe in
a country like a North Korea would certainly not even be an
element.
Senator Coburn. There is no question it is difficult to get
consensus on the P5+1. Obviously, it has been a hard road to
get there.
What if you cannot get consensus for the next step? What
are we doing in terms of building relationships for containment
given the ultimate plan which most of our leaders think is
nuclearization of Iran? What are we doing in terms of building
containment?
Ms. McNerney. The U.N. path and the P5+1 path is one
element. We reach out regularly through dialogues and through
our embassies to countries, particularly in the Gulf Region, to
countries in Asia--Japan and Korea and China--Russia is
obviously difficult in the U.N. Security Council context, but
they every step of the way also have agreed with this policy
that we need enrichment and reprocessing to stop in Iran and
that there is a threat posed by Iran to international peace and
security. So, whether the P5+1--that is one element of our
strategy, but certainly part of containment is maintaining a
coalition, and that is a key element of what we are doing.
It was mentioned earlier, the Russian plan for an
enrichment and reprocessing facility in Russia, we think that
is part of the P5+1 package and remains a viable avenue for
allowing Iran to get the benefits of nuclear energy without the
know-how that can bleed into the nuclear weapons capability.
Senator Coburn. In 2007, the State Department gave half of
the 2007 Iran democracy promotion funding to the Broadcasting
Board of Governors. Much of this money was diverted from
democracy promotion to general infrastructure--half of it, as a
matter of fact. The BBG also claims its mission is not to
promote democracy but to balance news between the U.S.
perspective and regime propaganda. Farsi-speaking BBG
whistleblowers and a 2006 National Security Council report said
the BBG many times fails to balance the regime's propaganda
with the truth.
In light of this, does the State Department plan to divert
any of the 2008 Iran democracy funding to the BBG?
Mr. Feltman. Dr. Coburn, the short answer to your question
is yes, but I would like to talk a minute about the
broadcasting part of the overall strategy, because the
broadcasting part has two goals: One is to be able to allow us
to send messages directly to the Iranian people, not through
the filter of their government, and not through the filter of
their state-controlled media.
Senator Coburn. I understand that.
Mr. Feltman. The second is to provide an example of what
would a free media look like. If they were not living in this
oppressive regime under this dictatorship, under this crazy,
autocratic regime, what would a free media look like? And a
free media has a wide variety of views expressed in it.
Now, at the same time, we have discussed the issues you
allude to with the Voice of America, Radio Farda, and
Broadcasting Board of Governors officials. As you know, there
is new leadership now. There is new management. They are
changing personnel. They are looking at the content. They are
addressing some of the concerns that you have raised, that we
have raised. But the important thing, I believe, is that we
have now increased the broadcasting to Iran. Voice of America
is now 24 hours a day, up from 8 hours a day. The original
Persian language content----
Senator Coburn. What is the content in the Voice of America
broadcasts?
Mr. Feltman. The content is now--there is original content
that is now up to 6 hours a day; it was only 2 hours a day. It
is news.
Senator Coburn. How do we know what it is?
Mr. Feltman. We have a constant discussion with the new
leadership of VOA, with the BBG, about the content because----
Senator Coburn. They have nobody on the board and nobody in
the leadership that speaks Farsi. They have no idea what they
are broadcasting because we cannot get translation from the
State Department about what they are broadcasting. We do not
know what they are doing, and we know what they have done. And
it is not about a balance. It is about giving oftentimes, in
many instances, where we give credence to what their own
government is saying in an unbalanced fashion.
And so the only way to see if we get that is to have
translation services of what we are promoting. If we are going
to use the people of Iran as a tool for freedom, then we ought
to know what we are saying. And we have an absolute refusal to
present to this category and the American people what we are
broadcasting into Iran. And based on the track record of the
2006 report plus the track record of whistleblowers, what we
know is it is not what the Secretary has suggested. It is
oftentimes supportive of the regime.
If we are going to use it as a tool to help the Iranian
people see what a free democracy is about and have a true
balanced point of view, not one that supplants and supports the
leadership of Iran, we have to have transparency. And there is
no transparency now because nobody at BBG knows, because none
of them speak Farsi. How will we know? How do we know that we
are effective in the tool that you want to use to promote
freedom and liberties inside Iran through Voice of America and
Radio Farda? How do we know?
Mr. Feltman. All I can say, Dr. Coburn, is that the
Secretary is using her position as an ex officio member on the
BBG in order to have these sorts of conversations directly with
the leadership, the new leadership of VOA and Radio Farda,
about these issues. This is an important part of our strategy,
and the Secretary and those below the Secretary are engaged
with the BBG on these issues.
Senator Coburn. Well, it would just seem to me that if we
are going to use that as a tool, the State Department ought to
know what we are saying. We ought to know what we are saying to
see if it is an effective tool. It is called a metric, and it
is called transparency. That is the only way you get
accountability. And, quite frankly, based on what we have heard
from whistleblowers inside Voice of America, inside BBG, is
they do not know, and oftentimes the message is not what we
want to send.
So the only way to do that is if you require transparency,
then they are going to know that we are going to know what we
are saying. To me it is unconscionable that we would use a tool
and not know whether the tool is working and not know whether
it is the appropriate tool.
Senator Carper. All right. Your time has expired.
Let me just say for the record, Dr. Coburn and I have a
different take on this issue. I think one of the important
things is if we want people in these countries to listen to
what is being reported on in the news, we have to provide fair
and objective reporting. People in these countries do not
listen to their own radio--their own media because they do not
believe it. They know it is propaganda. And one of the best
ways for us to make sure they do not listen to our stuff is for
them to be convinced that we are putting out propaganda as
well.
Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just one addition
to this discussion, and that is, in terms of democracy funding,
Iran also blocks access to the Internet. What we have seen in
this country is bloggers are very effective for us in getting
at independent voices. Are we focusing on the prospect or
opportunity to unleash the voices of the people in Iran through
some blogging and other things? Are there some technological
things that we could be supporting with democracy funding?
Mr. Feltman. Senator, thank you. We actually do have an
active blogging program. That is part of our program. In fact,
we have an active website. We are using technology as best we
can, and the number of hits we get is actually quite
impressive. I am not a technological expert myself, but those
that are tell me that they can trace back that most of the hits
that we are getting, something over 4 million hits last year,
are from Iran itself on our website. So we are using the
blogging tool.
Senator Coleman. In addition to our website, what I am
talking about is technological strategies that unleash the
potential blogs in Iran itself--in other words, the capacity of
Iranians to tap into that. The voice of the people of Iran is
the voice that should be heard, and certainly that presents an
opportunity.
Let me get back to you, Ms. McNerney, you mentioned the
Russians and, one of the concepts that this Administration has
talked about that the President has been supportive of is the
Russian concept of we can go in there and we can work with the
Iranians and oversee that their nuclear capacity is for
civilians, civil and not weaponization means. My concern is
with the Russians and about Russian behavior, and the problem
we have right now is that, on the one hand, it would be one
thing if that is all the Iranians were doing, but, on the other
hand, they are doing enrichment. They are doing delivery
systems. And so we are talking about giving them, on the one
hand, opportunities to develop a nuclear capacity, and yet we
know that they are not listening, not responding to IAEA
requests, not responding to Security Council resolutions.
Let me just talk about the Russians for a second. It has
been my understanding that the Russians continue to assist the
Iranians in a long-range missile program, and again, there are
three parts to having a nuclear weapon: The enrichment,
weaponization, and delivery. So the delivery part is a critical
part. And, by the way, that would put a significant portion of
NATO under the threat of Iran having a nuclear weapon.
Have we certified that the Russians have ended their
support of the Iranian long-range missile program?
Ms. McNerney. Without getting into, obviously, intelligence
judgments, my understanding is that the part we are still
concerned about with Russia is not in the ballistic missile
side, but in these defensive missiles, like the SA-15 and
things of that sort. We believe that Russia should not be
selling any kind of weapons system to Iran given the situation.
They have continued to supply, however, these defensive kinds
of missiles which are below any threshold for the U.N. Security
Council resolution list of conventional weapons.
So that is our area where we believe they continue to
cooperate, but, again, that would not be in the ballistic
missile side.
Senator Coleman. It seems to me that it is inconsistent to
push for a American-Russian nuclear civil cooperation
agreement, which I understand will be signed in several weeks,
and I can tell you that I plan to send a letter from numerous
colleagues to demonstrate there is a real concern with Congress
over this deal, and that it undermines our diplomacy with
respect to Iran. Now, we have got the Russians, who are,
whether it is below the level or not, they are involved in
developing Iranian missile programs. In January, Moscow made a
final shipment to the nuclear facility with the massive power
reactor at Bushehr, so that will give the Iranians the capacity
to produce enough near weapons grade plutonium for roughly 60
nuclear weapons. Russia has been involved in this assistance
for a period of time.
Russians have refused to limit conventional arms sales to
Iran, something even the Clinton Administration made a point of
demanding, as I recall, and looking at my notes here, in the
1990s as a condition of U.S.-Russian cooperation. So now we
have them selling advanced air defenses that could be deployed
to defend Iranians' nuclear sites. Can you describe the logic
for reversing the policies of the Clinton Administration?
Ms. McNerney. Well, the way we have looked at the civil
nuclear agreement is in the context of working with Russia to
create incentives for Iran not to go down the enrichment and
reprocessing path but, rather, the proposal is that within
Russia you develop this enrichment and reprocessing capability.
And when we look globally at countries, there is a growing
interest in nuclear with the energy shortages and greenhouse
gases. Many countries around the world are beginning to look at
nuclear energy. What we have been encouraging is they do that
in a way that does not create this enrichment and reprocessing
technology.
And so Russia really is the key to having this ability to
produce the fuel and also take back the spent fuel. And so the
whole approach with Russia is to further that kind of approach
and make it a contrast to Iran. For example, we have reached
some memorandums of understanding with UAE, Bahrain, Jordan,
and it is all done with the explicit requirement that there not
be enrichment and reprocessing capability development. So we
are getting the benefits of civil nuclear without some of these
nonproliferation problems.
Similarly, the Russian relationship with Iran on Bashehr is
not with the enrichment and reprocessing side but simply with
this light water reactor technology and the fuel--and there is
an agreement that there be IAEA safeguards and also a takeback
of the spent fuel.
So all this in the context of creating the right way to do
civil nuclear and receive the NPT promises, the benefits of
civil nuclear, but also to limit or redirect some of the desire
to have this enrichment and reprocessing.
Senator Coleman. And I understand what the goal is. My
concern is that you cannot deal with this in kind of an
abstract sense, so you have got a goal of saying if we could
get a nuclear program with all the safeguards, that would be a
very good thing. And if the Russians could take back the spent
fuel, that would be a very good thing. But at the same time,
you have the Iranians ignoring U.N. Security Council
resolutions. You have the Russians providing support for Iran
when part of our efforts are to cut off Iran, not to do it
unilaterally. This is a country that needs to import 40 percent
of its gasoline. This is a country that needs hundreds of
billions of dollars of investment to maintain its oil
infrastructure. And we have the Swiss and Iranians doing a gas
deal worth 18 billion euros and 27 billion euros over a 25-year
period.
So, on the one hand, you have this laudable goal, but the
circumstances in which it is being implemented cause a lot of
concern, and so in the end, it is very easy to move from
civilian--dual purpose, to civilian to military purposes. And I
know my time is up, but I just want to reflect on something
that my colleague Senator Coburn said earlier on. The fact is
that if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon, the Saudis are going
to buy one. The Egyptians are going to buy one. And we are
going to live in a world in which I am not going to sleep well
at night because we will have lost all ability to contain
proliferation in very unstable areas.
And so it would just appear to me that those efforts, if we
are really looking to put pressure on Iran economically and a
country that we believe is susceptible to that pressure, then
we need to have a little more support from our ``allies,''
including the Russians, and the idea of us moving forward on a
Russian-U.S. civilian civil nuclear arrangement I think is
counterproductive in light of the Russian relationship and
trade and other things that they are doing with Iran.
Ms. McNerney. Well, I think the way we have looked at it,
actually this agreement creates more leverage for us to
continue to put pressure on Russia to do it the right way. We
have the Bush-Putin initiative where they talk about doing
broader civil nuclear cooperation around the world, but with
these nonproliferation requirements and fencing around it. The
creation of this enrichment center in Russia would allow for
less of the proliferation of that kind of technology. It keeps
me up at night as well to worry about Saudi Arabia and Egypt
and others starting to go down the nuclear weapons path.
So what we are trying to do is create a different way of
approaching this so that Iran really is isolated as going down
the wrong path and that countries around the world instead are
looking at a different way to get the benefits of nuclear
energy. A light water reactor obviously still can be abused,
but much less. The problem with a lot of the enrichment and
reprocessing capability that we worry about is once you develop
that knowledge, you can take it underground and take it out of
the public eye, and our ability from the intelligence
standpoint to detect that activity is much more difficult when
you are talking about some of these other paths to nuclear
energy.
Senator Coleman. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. I want to talk with you just a little bit
about who calls the shots in Iran. I think I understand for the
most part how government works in this country, although every
now and then I get illuminated that I did not have it quite
figured out. But they have recently had parliamentary elections
over there, but instead of having a multi-party system, if I
use an analogy, it is like we permitted elections for the
Congress here and only one party could run candidates, but only
the extreme wing of that one party could run candidates and
nobody else could. And in spite of that kind of situation, they
have gone through where a lot of people who used to be members
of parliament are not allowed to run, and folks who would like
to run were not allowed to run unless you happened to be at one
extreme end of the spectrum in their political thinking. Those
folks got to run and some of them got elected, but apparently
they are having a run-off here in the next week or two. What is
going on?
Mr. Feltman. Mr. Chairman, the short answer of who is in
charge, it is the supreme commander more than the president. In
terms of the parliamentary elections, yes, parliamentary run-
offs are tomorrow, in fact, for the seats that have not yet
been decided. Iran went to extraordinary lengths this year in
manipulating those parliamentary elections. Even by Iranian
standards, they went to extraordinary lengths in disqualifying
a record number of candidates, in manipulating the information
that was available to voters. They claimed that there was a 65-
percent turnout of vote. We estimate it was more like 50
percent, and those people probably turned out in large part
because they wanted to make sure that their voter registration
card was stamped because that stamp is important for university
registration, for the equivalent of food stamps, things like
that.
But basically the system went to extraordinary lengths to
manipulate the parliamentary election to produce the result
that you said, which is that the parliament is in control of
the extremist wing of one party there.
One wonders why they had to go to that--the analysis that
is interesting is why did they go to that extreme this year. Is
there a sense of desperation? Is there something happening
inside that we need to know, that we need to be evaluating? We
do not have a diplomatic embassy in Tehran for all the reasons
we know, so we do not have some of the normal diplomatic tools
to look at Iranian society. So the analysis is still out, and
we will see how these run-offs go.
But I think you have seen a shift in who runs the country
away from the sort of traditional clerics who ran it with the
onslaught of the revolution 30 years ago to much more of the
sort of Revolutionary Guard type force. There are more and more
people who are coming out of the Iran Revolutionary Guard in
positions of influences. This is not a healthy development.
This is not a good development. The Revolutionary Guards are
not just some rogue criminal element that is carrying out
terrorism through the Qods Force outside of Iran. They are part
of the system inside. The IRGC is doing economic projects. They
are controlling the black market. They are expanding the Tehran
metro. They are mentioned in the Constitution of the Islamic
Republic. But the Revolutionary Guard and the Qods Force as one
of the five pillars of that Revolutionary Guard seem to be
playing an ever more prominent role in reporting directly to
the supreme commander.
Senator Carper. Do we have a pipeline to the supreme
commander, direct or indirect?
Mr. Feltman. No. Our channel, our official channel to the
Iranians is via the Swiss. We have used the Swiss for almost 30
years now to convey information. Much of what we use the Swiss
for is consular related. There are many American citizens who
are either living in Iran or have connections with Iran. And so
we use the Swiss for our official communications.
On the subject, though, of talks and of communication, I
think it is worth looking at the example of where we do have an
official means of communication, and that is Iraq. There are
trilateral talks in Iraq that we are doing at the request of
the Iraqi Government. The Iraqi Government asked us to go into
these talks. We made the decision to say yes in order to help
support the Iraqi Government. So there is a history of direct
communication with the Iranians via these trilateral talks.
There have been three sessions since April of last year--two
chaired at the ambassador level, one was chaired on our side by
the political military counselor in Baghdad, Ambassador Marie
Ries. And, frankly, I think that it was clear from the
testimony given by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker a
few weeks ago up here that it has not been a real encouraging
example of the sort of talk that many people would like to see
us engage in, because we have had these three things, and the
Iranians at the same time have continued to supply, fund the
special groups that are basically killing our troops, killing
our diplomats, firing into the international zone, and trying
to destabilize the Iraqi Government.
So the one area where we do have direct talks with the
Iranians, which is the tripartite talks in Baghdad, has not
been an encouraging example.
Senator Carper. All right. In the testimony of one of our
other witnesses, they talked about one of the things that the
mullahs fear is the economic destabilization, the deterioration
of the economy, where people's earning power, standard of
living continues to deteriorate. Rather than Ahmadinejad being
able to deliver on his campaign promises, actually things are
getting worse, not better, and one of the other witnesses says
that is something that they fear.
How do we make that even worse for them? Not that we have
it in for the Iranian people. I have a lot of affection for
them, and I think if they were actually able to vote for their
parliament and vote for their leaders, we would probably have a
pretty good relationship with those folks. But how do we
ratchet up the economic pressure? And one of the ways, it seems
to me, to ratchet up the economic pressure is it is not enough
for us to put in place our unilateral sanctions, which we have
done and which we are doing; it is not enough for us to work
with the British, Germans, French, and others, and hopefully
the Russians and the Chinese. But there are too many leaks in
the sanction, there is too much give in it, and we have to be
able to make it tighter if we are going to have any success
here.
One of the thoughts that comes to mind for me is as much as
I admire what Secretary Rice has said, ``Stop enriching your
uranium, your fissile materials, we will meet you anywhere,
anytime, talk about anything.'' That is a pretty generous
offer. It has not worked, and in the meantime, the Iranians are
doing more bad stuff than they were before.
If we were to say we will meet you anytime, anywhere to
talk about anything without preconditions, how does that
strengthen our ability to go out and get the Russians to stand
shoulder to shoulder, to get the Chinese to stand shoulder to
shoulder with us, and some of these other countries that are
going around our back and continuing to have activities with
the Iranians that tend to take away the economic pressure that
the mullahs apparently fear?
Ms. McNerney. Well, I think we made the same judgment, that
is the fear. You saw the gas rationing and sort of the impact
it had in terms of certainly the uprising by people. We are
looking to figure out ways to obviously have these kind of
economic impacts.
One of the practical reasons why talking without them
stopping enrichment and reprocessing is important is if that
activity continues while we are doing the talking, if you look
at the North Korea example, for example, it was about 4 years
before we got them to shut Yongbyon. So 4 years of talking and
4 years of developing enrichment and reprocessing technology,
it is pretty clear that they could potentially, according to
the NIE, have the capability and master that enrichment and
reprocessing----
Senator Carper. That is a good point, but let me just
interrupt you. Whether it is 4 weeks or 4 months, certainly 4
years is unacceptable. But something has to happen during that
period of time during which those open negotiations are being
offered, the invitation for those open negotiations are being
extended, and that is, the other countries that are not
supporting the efforts of a number of us in clamping down
economically on the Iranians. That has to kick in on a much
higher level than is currently existing, and that has to happen
a lot sooner than 4 years from now.
Ms. McNerney. Well, that was going to be my next point. If
you look at how internationally they tend to react in terms of
sanctions, when there seems to be some engagement, some
softening, the ability to get countries to actually impose
those sanctions will only diminish. We see that in the case of
North Korea. We have seen that in other examples.
So this notion that somehow if we started talking we would
be able to increase the pressure that other countries would put
on, I just do not think that is the way things tend to operate.
And so, again, part of the practical reason for this condition
is that we need that activity to stop so that we can talk and
deal with these issues in as long or as short a time as we need
without Iran basically using that process to, in fact, develop
their capability.
Senator Carper. Thanks very much. Dr. Coburn.
Senator Coburn. Thank you. I would like unanimous consent
to put the NSC 2006 report on Radio Farda and Voice of America
in the record.\1\
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The study referred to appears in the Appendix on page 164.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Senator Carper. Without objection.
[The information follows:]??? WAITING FOR COPY
Senator Coburn. And with all deference to my good friend
and Chairman, I do not want us to have propaganda either. I
want us to have the truth. So I will spend one second on this
and get off it, the BBG.
I would like for you to answer in written form why the
American people shouldn't have transcribed to them what is
being broadcast into Iran, both from Radio Farda and Voice of
America, why the American people shouldn't know what we are
saying, and as a check. Transparency creates accountability,
and so tell me why we should not do that. And I will stop with
that.
We are having some hearings today in other aspects of the
Senate on the nuclear facility in Syria, and there is no
question that there was involvement from a couple of countries
on that. One was Iran and one was Korea. What do we know about
Iran's involvement in that facility that you can speak about at
this hearing?
Ms. McNerney. Senator, I think I will have to defer to the
experts to do it in these other briefings, and they will be
providing some of that information through all the committees.
I do not think you will find that there is an Iranian
angle, except to the degree it really highlights the
destabilizing influence of these covert activities, nuclear
activities, and the importance of really rallying international
support to put the pressure on Iran to stop its ability,
because as I said, once they develop this enrichment and
reprocessing technology, unlike the plutonium-based example you
will be hearing about, the enrichment and reprocessing effort
can quickly go underground and be almost undetectable.
Senator Coburn. But does it say anything about
proliferation? We have been spending all this time talking with
North Korea, and at the same time they are building a nuclear
facility in Syria, and we are going to a point where we have
limited verification.
Ms. McNerney. I think it really speaks to the significant
challenges. Obviously, we have been very cautious and promising
good results from North Korea given the record and what we saw
in the 1990s and their ability to talk to us and do one thing,
and then obviously quietly be also engaged in an enrichment and
reprocessing program.
One of the key elements that we are talking about now in
the next phase is verification, and having North Korea come
clean and actually open up, declare its facilities and open
them up will be a key challenge of that next process. I do not
want to pretend that I would guarantee that North Korea is
being completely honest with us, because I think their record
says otherwise.
Senator Coburn. Do we have any knowledge that during all
this discussion that this was initiated in Syria at the same
time they were negotiating with us about nonproliferation?
Ms. McNerney. I think we will just have to defer to the
other briefings for now.
Senator Coburn. OK. I want to go back a little bit where
Senator Coleman was, in terms of the proliferation to Iran, and
in terms of nuclear material. If we look the other way with
Russia on this one aspect, does it not send the wrong signal to
other countries that might be helping Iran proliferate? In
other words, basically they are sending the material in there,
but they are on our team. We are saying, OK, there are no
consequences to that that we can actually do something about
right now.
Ms. McNerney. Well, one of the things, their activities are
allowable under the U.N. Security Council resolutions. What is
not allowable is cooperation on enrichment and reprocessing and
the heavy water reactor. And so, obviously, we would prefer no
cooperation with Iran, but at the same time, it can be a
counter example of civil nuclear, light water reactor versus
these real concerning proliferation----
Senator Coburn. So does the United Nations sanctions trump
U.S. law?
Ms. McNerney. Well, I think it----
Senator Coburn. It is not allowable under U.S. law now to
promote and ship enriched uranium to Iran.
Ms. McNerney. Are you talking about the fuel for the----
Senator Coburn. Yes.
Ms. McNerney. But that is low-enriched uranium versus
highly enriched.
Senator Coburn. I understand, but they are building the
capability to build highly enriched.
Ms. McNerney. That is through the enrichment and
reprocessing, which are separate, obviously, nuclear pathways.
Senator Coburn. So there is no question it is difficult to
bring everybody together with a common purpose. What is your
hope, you and Ambassador Feltman, as you look at where we are
today and where we are going, what is your hope 2 years from
now, a year and a half from now, what do you see in terms of
the sanctions, the ongoing process? Where do you think we are
going to be?
Ms. McNerney. I guess I would look at a couple places. I
would hope that we could continue to build increasing support
within Europe, within Asia, within the Gulf countries and other
Middle East countries to continue to really apply these
resolutions not only strictly, but also the spirit of the
resolutions, which is to hold Iran accountable for violating
its Security Council obligations. The other, obviously, in
terms of Iran, we hope that they will realize that this is a
path that is going to continue. The isolation will only
increase. And we need to find a way to start talking about this
under a baseline that not only the United States but the entire
international community has laid out for them, which is to stop
enrichment and reprocessing activities.
And with that, obviously, then you can have a fullsome
conversation because you do not have these nuclear activities
continue. But, I think Ambassador Feltman may talk about this a
little more, but obviously that is just one aspect. They are
shipping arms to the Taliban, to Iraqi insurgents. They are a
destabilizing influence through Hamas and other organizations.
Again, all of that is important to a broader dialogue.
Senator Coburn. Ambassador Feltman.
Mr. Feltman. I will not touch on the nuclear side because I
will let Ms. McNearney's words stand for themselves. But our
agenda with Iran is enormous. We want Iran to realize it is
unacceptable to be killing our troops, our diplomats--and
destabilizing Iraq. We want Iran to realize that they must stop
funding Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. They
must stop shipping arms to the Taliban. The agenda is huge. And
we are working unilaterally and multilaterally to try to change
Iran's behavior across the board, not simply on the nuclear
file. The nuclear file is the trigger for the possibility of
direct talks on these things, following up on Secretary Rice's
initiative from 2 years ago. But it is certainly not the only
issue and it is not the only important issue.
Iraq is an interesting venue to watch right now because
there are some signs that perhaps the Shia Iraqis are disgusted
with what Iran has done in funding Shia militias in Iraq. This
is almost a parallel to the fact that the Sunnis are disgusted
to see the Sunni militia activity. And Iran must be noticing
that there was a revulsion in Iraq against what the Iranians
were doing in terms of providing arms.
Senator Coburn. OK. Thank you.
Senator Carper. Thank you. Senator Coleman.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
I want to ask perhaps a little philosophical question. One
of the things that frustrates--not frustrates me, but I
listened to some of the discussion about conversation with
Iran, and I do believe that we need to ramp up and be more
aggressive. But my concern is that there is almost a sense that
every--let me step back. We often get criticized for some of
our actions, for instance, in the Middle East by saying we do
not understand the culture, we do not understand tribal
culture, we do not understand what is going on, and we do not
understand the forces that kind of hold things together in the
Middle East. And at the same time, we have folks who are
saying, if we just sat down and had a conversation, did not
have any preconditions, and just walked in there, that somehow
we could make this better. And to me, I think there is a
conflict there. The fact is that not everyone perceives with
Western thought that flowed from the Enlightenment, Rousseau,
to where we are today, and analyzes things the same way.
I would suggest from my certainly more limited knowledge
than the witnesses and others, but strength is something that
is measured in the Middle East. And weakness has great
consequences; perception of weakness has consequences. I am
going to say this: President Carter's conversation with Hamas;
I am shocked by it. I think Hamas is a terrorist force,
committed to the destruction of Israel, has killed Americans.
And I think it sends a signal, one that gives legitimacy and
kind of sends almost a sense of weakness that I think we pay a
price for.
Mr. Ambassador, you have said a number of times, it's
unacceptable to keep killing our troops. Iran is killing our
troops. They are supplying weaponry. They are killing American
soldiers. If we were to simply walk in and say we are going to
sit down and without any preconditions, including a
precondition that says stop killing our soldiers, if you want
to expand economic opportunity, if we want to work out a
resolution to this very complex issue of the nuclearization
with understanding the consequences of failure to resolve it,
stop killing our soldiers, stop having Qods Force supply
advanced weaponry to terrorists, and by the way, maybe while
you are at it, put a little hold on Hezbollah and sending
rockets into Sderot and maybe step back a little bit on Hamas
and have a little stability in the Palestinian areas.
President Abbas is in town today. He is being undermined by
Hamas. He is being undermined by Iran. And so Iran is--we
actually have this unique opportunity in the Middle East now
that you have many other Arab nations looking at Iran as the
enemy. Not the Jews, not Israel, not the United States, but
Iran.
If we were simply to walk forward--the question the
Chairman raised earlier--into a discussion without
precondition, the most significant being stop killing our
troops, would that be perceived by the Saudis, the Egyptians,
and others as a lack of strength? And would that have the
potential to undermine some of the influence and stability that
we are seeking in the region?
Mr. Feltman. Senator, you addressed this in a sort of
philosophical way, and I will say that when we hear the
discussions about talking to Iran, it is at one level a
philosophical issue. Some say that we should be talking without
preconditions, we should simply try it, what do we have to
lose? Others will say, my gosh, the conditions you put on
suspension of enrichment and proliferation-sensitive activities
is not sufficient given everything else that is going on, we
need to have more conditions, not less conditions. So it is a
philosophical question.
But if there is ever a decision to talk to the Iranians,
even if the Iranians would meet the Secretary's requirement,
there needs to be a serious conversation with the Gulf Arabs
and other allies so that they understand what it is that we are
doing. You mentioned this in your opening remarks, and I could
not agree more. Again, having served in Lebanon for 3\1/2\
years, I can guess how the Lebanese would see it perhaps better
than I can guess how the Gulf Arabs would see it. But they
would want to understand what it is we are doing, why we are
doing it, and that we are doing it from a position of strength,
that we are not doing it from a position of weakness.
If we are talking philosophically, I have to ask myself
just based on my limited knowledge of what happens in Iran, do
the Iranians really want to talk to us at the leadership level?
Because if they did want to talk to us, I would think that they
would be sending us different signals that would be
unmistakable. Regarding the tripartite talks in Baghdad that I
mentioned earlier, if they wanted us to see that talking
actually work, you would think that they would stop shipping
arms, and stop funding the Shia militias that are attacking us
in Iraq.
You are probably aware of the American citizen that
disappeared on Kish Island more than a year ago, in March of
last year. I met with his wife and other family members on
March 6, about the 1-year anniversary of his disappearance. We
have sent numerous notes via the Swiss, numerous messages about
help investigate, and help find what happened to this guy in
Iran. We do not find the answers or the lack of answers to be
credible from Iran. There are signals they could be sending us
if, in fact, they were interested in talking to us. I am
expressing my personal view from looking at the information.
Our policy is the Secretary's offer remains valid. If they
suspend enrichment and proliferation-sensitive activities--
which is an international obligation. It is not simply a U.S.
condition; it is an international obligation on Iran--we are
willing to talk. But if we get to that point, I agree with you
100 percent, we need to have a serious talk with our Gulf
partners and others, and we need to be talking from a position
of strength.
Senator Coleman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. This has been illuminating, and I much
appreciate it. We appreciate your being here today, the service
you have provided for our country, and your responses to our
questions. There may be some follow-up questions that we will
ask for the record, and others that are not here, and we would
appreciate your prompt response to those questions.
Mr. Feltman. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Ms. McNerney. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. Thank you very much.
Now we welcome the second panel. I am going to go ahead and
ask our panelists to take their seats, and I am going to begin
the introduction of each of them while they do that.
Ambassador Dennis Ross is Washington Institute's Counselor
and Ziegler Distinguished Fellow. Ambassador Ross played a
leading role in shaping U.S. involvement in the Middle East
peace process. He was the U.S. point man on the peace process
in both the Administration of George Herbert Walker Bush and
President Clinton, where he was awarded the highest State
Department honor. He was instrumental in helping the Israelis
and Palestinians reach the 1995 Interim Agreement, brokered the
1997 Hebron Accord successfully, and participated in the 1994
Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty.
Stephen Rademaker joined Barbour Griffith and Rogers. Is
that Haley Barbour, Governor Barbour?
Mr. Rademaker. He was one of the founders.
Senator Carper. Mr. Rademaker joined Barbour Griffith and
Rogers in January 2007. He previously served, I understand, as
Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control and
the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation where
he directed nonproliferation policy toward Iran and North
Korea. He also recently served as policy director for National
Security Affairs and senior counsel for our colleague, former
Senator Bill Frist. And rumor has it you may have spent some
time in Delaware. Did you grow up in Delaware? Where did you go
to high school?
Mr. Rademaker. Newark High School.
Senator Carper. Well, welcome. We are glad that you are
here. It is not every day we have a Yellowjacket to come by and
share some thoughts with us. We are glad that you have come
here. Thank you for joining us.
Dr. Graham Allison is Director of the Belfer Center for
Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's John
F. Kennedy School of Government, where he also served as dean.
Dr. Allison previously served as Special Adviser to the
Secretary of Defense under President Reagan and as Assistant
Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans under President
Clinton. He has been a member of the Secretary of Defense's
Defense Policy Board for Secretaries Weinberger, Carlucci,
Cheney, Aspin, Perry, and Cohen. His 1971 book, which I
understand was your first, ``Essence of Decision: Explaining
the Cuban Missile Crisis,'' ranks among the best sellers in
political science in the 20 Century. I do not know what you are
going to do for an encore, but that is pretty impressive.
Dr. Jim Walsh, a research associate at Massachusetts
Institute of Technology, where my son is a sophomore in
mechanical engineering, so this is a home game for you. Dr.
Walsh previously served as Director of the Managing the Atom
Project at the Belfer Center at Harvard's Kennedy School of
Government, and he chaired Harvard's International Group on
Radiological Terrorism. Dr. Walsh has traveled to Iran twice in
the past 6 months for discussions with Iranian officials and
analysts and will return to Iran in June. He also participates
in three Track 2 projects that bring together former U.S.
officials and experts with current and former Iranian
officials.
Senator Collins has joined us. Senator Collins, welcome. We
are delighted that you are here. Actually this is officially
our second panel, but actually it is number three. We welcomed
and led off with Senators Specter and Feinstein. We are just
delighted with the people that are here. This is a great panel
as well. Would you like to make any brief statements before we
go to the panel?
Senator Collins. No, Mr. Chairman. I did have a very busy
schedule today, including a classified briefing, which is why I
am late. But I actually think I have timed my arrival perfectly
because this panel has the expertise that I really want to
hear, and I commend you for holding this hearing on such an
important topic.
Senator Carper. We are delighted that you are here. Thank
you so much for joining us today.
Senator Collins. Thank you.
Senator Carper. To our panel, I normally do not stick real
closely to the clock. We are going to start voting at 12:15. We
have a couple of votes in sequence. We want to get as much from
you and back and forth in the Q&As, so I am going to ask you to
try to stick fairly close to 5 minutes, and if you get much
over it, I will tap the gavel.
Our friend, Mr. Ross, welcome. We are delighted you are
here.
TESTIMONY OF HON. DENNIS ROSS,\1\ COUNSELOR AND ZIEGLER
DISTINGUISHED FELLOW, WASHINGTON INSTITUTE FOR NEAR EAST POLICY
Mr. Ross. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I have submitted
testimony for the record. What I am going to do is just offer a
number of observations, in part based on the testimony, but
also based on what I heard you say earlier. And, actually, I
want to start off with a question that Dr. Coburn asked the
last two panelists.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Ross appears in the Appendix on
page 90.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
You asked them what is it that they hope for in the next
year or two, and I have to say, as someone who has been in
administrations and had to testify in the past, oftentimes when
you are up here you have to say what the administration line
is. Obviously, we are free of that. And I can say given where
we are, given the path we are on right now, next year Iran is
going to be a nuclear power. The path we are on right now is
one that is going to put them there.
Certainly, it is quite possible that President Ahmadinejad
was exaggerating in terms of where they are in terms of being
able to install the 6,000 new IR-2 centrifuges which are five
times as efficient as the 3,300 that are already there. But the
fact is, they are going to be in a position where they can
begin to stockpile fissionable material, and the problem with
what we heard from the Administration witnesses is there is a
mismatch between the character of the pressure that they are
applying and the pace of the Iranian activities. So what we
have to do is ask ourselves the question: Where are we going to
be and how can we change the situation that unquestionably is
about to unfold?
There are some people who look at the path that we are on
right now, and they say, you know what? It is impossible to
stop the Iranians. They are going to become not just a nuclear
power but a nuclear weapons state. And given that reality, the
only thing we can do is let's focus on containment, let's focus
on deterrence, and let's just live with it. There are others
who say, well, the problem is you have a regime that has
messianic elements in it, and you heard Jeff Feltman say that
the Revolutionary Guard is increasingly important in terms of
the overall control in the system. True, they answer to the
Supreme Leader, but the fact is they are very heavily guided by
a spirit that they have to spread the revolution. And, by the
way, they are the ones who control the nuclear program.
So others say, well, this is not a group that can be
deterred, and even if it is possible to prevent them from
actually carrying out direct attacks and Iran with nuclear
weapons is going to cast such a shadow over the region, it is
going to produce the Saudis and others going nuclear. It will
be the end of the NPT. It will embolden Hamas. It will embolden
Hezbollah. It will change the landscape in the region. We
really cannot afford it. So not only can we not live with it,
we need to use military force against them--to forestall it.
Those are two poles in the discussion. One basically says
you can live with it. The other says you cannot. And I would
say that if each of those are going to produce outcomes that
are not particularly acceptable, we ought to look for a third
way. And what I am going to try to do here is suggest to you
that there may be a set of diplomatic options that are worth
pursuing as a third way. And even if they do not succeed, they
put you in a better position to pursue one of those two other
approaches more effectively than you might otherwise.
So let me start with what I will describe as a statecraft
approach. Having written a book on statecraft, necessarily I
tend to talk about things through that lens.
One critical element of statecraft is leverage, and the key
here is recognizing that the Iranians actually do have
vulnerabilities. It is not wrong to try and put pressure on the
Iranians. What is wrong is that we are not putting on pressure
that is going to be effective. They do have vulnerabilities
that are economic and quite pronounced, whether it is the fact
that they have very high inflation right now, very high
unemployment. The price of oil, in fact, has not changed their
economic vulnerabilities, although obviously it helps them to
some extent. The mullahs do want to preserve their power and
their privilege. They do need to be able to buy off their
publics, and that is why they use the revenues they generate
from their oil exports.
The fact is it is hard for them to continue to produce what
they are doing in the oil area and export what they have been
exporting at a time when their own internal consumption is
rising. Can we squeeze them more effectively through economic
means? Yes, I think we can, but only if, in fact, we come up
with different ways to do so.
I am not going to go through all this. Let me just sort of
encapsulate the options in the following fashion:
Option No. 1, again, focused on their vulnerabilities, is
tighten the noose. Now, that could be a good approach if you
can persuade others to join with you. It is clear that the path
we are on right now is not getting others to do as much as they
would need to to be able to affect the Iranians. And I would
also say if you are focused only on the tighten the noose
option, the problem is going to be the Iranians may also feel
this is an effort to not just humiliate them but to defeat
them; and if we are about regime change, from their standpoint
better not to give in because the consequences are too high.
Look at some of the speeches that both Ahmadinejad and the
Supreme Leader have made, and you will find that they focus
heavily on, using their language, if we concede to the arrogant
powers, they will never stop.
Option No. 2 would be some of what we have heard today,
which is engage the Iranians without any conditions. They have
great suspicions. They have too much leverage. They still have
cash to insulate them, at least for the time being. And the
fact is unless you go in an unconditioned way to them, you
cannot get anywhere, and put everything on the table.
Everything. In a sense, a comprehensive approach where what you
put on the table is responding to some of their desires, which
are they want regime recognition. They want to know that they
have a place in the region that is accepted. They want the
economic boycotts to end. They want us to unfreeze the assets
we have held since the time of the revolution. They want to be
able to have civil nuclear power. That is what they want. But
for them to get that, then the counterpoint would be, well, you
want to be accepted in the region, you want us to accept the
regime as well. Well, you cannot be engaged in terror. You
cannot be supporting Hamas and Hezbollah. You cannot be
opposing the idea of peace. You cannot be declaring that Israel
is not only illegitimate but is going to collapse imminently.
And if you want civil nuclear power, then there has to be a
kind of intrusiveness in terms of inspections to ensure you do
not have a covert program and you do not have a breakout
capability. In other words, a comprehensive approach puts
everything they want on the table, but also everything we
require in return.
The problem I have with this option, I will tell you, is
that I am a veteran of negotiating in the Middle East. I know
something about the mind-sets. Senator Coleman, you raised the
issue of sort of culture and mind-set when it comes to
negotiations. I can tell you, in my experience, what I have
found with everybody I negotiate with in the area is when they
were strong, they did not feel the need to compromise; when
they were weak, they felt they could not afford to compromise.
So the key here is in the Iranian case, if you concede up front
and there are no conditions and you are just going to engage
them, my guess is that they are going to think, OK, we have now
conceded to the fact that we are going to accept them being a
nuclear weapons state. Whatever we say, the negotiations are a
process, but eventually we will simply give in.
So that leads me to a third option, and the third option is
what I would call engage the Iranians without conditions but
with pressure. They must not think that, in fact, we have
already surrendered when we go to the table. And so I would, in
effect, say marry option 1 and 2. Marry and tighten the noose
with the engagement.
Now, one of the issues that I think one of you raised was--
the idea of talking, if we talk that will make it easier for
others to do more in the sanctions area, and I think that one
of the panelists before was saying, look, when we do that, the
fact is others just go ahead and they think they really do not
have to apply sanctions. I would actually suggest a somewhat
different approach.
I would say our readiness to talk should be, in effect,
with others conditioned on them doing more. In other words,
rather than focusing on the conditionality vis-a-vis the
Iranians, you focus on the conditionality vis-a-vis others.
With the Europeans, say to them, you know what? You want us
to go to the table. You think there is a deal there. We might
even be prepared to do that. We might even be prepared to put a
comprehensive proposal on the table along with you that goes
beyond what has been put on the table so far. But the price is
you have to cut the economic lifeline before we go so the
Iranians know it. Cutting the economic lifeline means no more
credit guarantees to your companies doing business there. You
do not do any commerce, you do not do business with any of the
Iranian banks.
With the Chinese, who frequently fill in whenever the
Europeans cut back, we focus on, yes, we are willing to talk,
but we have to do more than that.
The Saudis have enormous financial clout, and if the
Chinese had to choose between Iran and Saudi Arabia, they would
choose Saudi Arabia. Right now, just to put it in some
perspective, the Saudis and the Chinese right now are--I will
take one more minute? Thirty seconds?
Senator Carper. Thirty seconds.
Mr. Ross. All right. Thirty seconds. Just to put it in
perspective how you could use Saudi leverage if, in fact, you
are going to have a comprehensive approach where you are trying
to build the pressures even as you are prepared to talk, the
Saudis right now are filling the Chinese strategic petroleum
reserve with Saudi oil. The Chinese are investing enormously in
the petrochemical industry in Saudi Arabia. And, jointly, they
are developing and investing in refineries around the world. So
if it is a choice between Saudi Arabia and Iran, China, given
their mercantile mind-set, they are going to choose Saudi
Arabia. We have to have a strategy with the Saudis that makes
them more likely to take these steps. They are not doing it
right now.
So let me just wrap up by saying you do not want to leave
yourself with two unacceptable outcomes. Try a diplomatic
approach. But if you are going to try that diplomatic approach,
from my standpoint talking makes sense, but you have got to
have the talking take place in a context in which the Iranians
do not think they have already won and that they are under
pressure. You concentrate the Iranian mind even as you show
them a pathway that says, all right, there is a way out for
you.
Senator Carper. Thank you very much for an excellent
statement. Thank you.
Mr. Rademaker, welcome.
TESTIMONY OF STEPHEN G. RADEMAKER,\1\ SENIOR COUNSEL, BARBOUR
GRIFFITH AND ROGERS, LLC
Mr. Rademaker. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Rademaker appears in the Appendix
on page 121.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
First let me say to you, Mr. Chairman, and to Dr. Coburn
and Senator Coleman, I was very interested in your opening
statements, and I thought all of you did an excellent job
identifying the seriousness and intractability of the problem
that we face with Iran. And, Mr. Chairman, I think I agree with
your observation that the basic challenge before us is
identifying the least bad approach among the approaches that we
have available.
Broadly speaking, there are three alternatives before our
country on Iran. One is to essentially accept that we are not
going to stop Iran from achieving a nuclear weapons capability
and just plan for that eventuality. The second is to decide
that that is unacceptable and to use military force to prevent
that eventuality from coming to pass. And the third is to put
together some sort of diplomatic approach to the problem that
successfully keeps the Iranian nuclear threat under control,
that persuades the Iranians to change their current course. And
obviously, among those three options, there is no question that
a diplomatic solution that persuaded Iran to change course
would be far and away the best.
It is in that context that in my prepared remarks I spend a
considerable amount of time explaining why the National
Intelligence Estimate that came out last December was such a
damaging development for not just U.S. foreign policy and not
just Bush Administration foreign policy, but the foreign policy
of the entire international community, particularly our
European allies. And I was gratified to see that Ambassador
Ross in his prepared remarks appears to agree fully with my
assessment of the NIE and its implications, and the fundamental
problem with the NIE.
The fundamental problem is not the intelligence
conclusions. The fundamental problem is the way that those
conclusions were expressed. They were expressed in a way that
lent them to being misunderstood, misinterpreted, and thereby
undercut the prospect that the diplomatic efforts that we and
our allies have been undertaking can succeed. And that is a
most unfortunate development because to the degree the
prospects for successful diplomacy recede, the prospects that
we will have to go with one of the other alternatives--either
accepting the Iranian nuclear weapons program or using military
force--the prospects of one of those two alternatives having to
be embraced increases.
One of the observations that I make in my prepared remarks
and that I will repeat here is that with regard to the phrasing
of the National Intelligence Estimate, I simply do not know
which is worse: That the authors of that estimate did not
appreciate the implications for the international diplomacy of
the way they expressed their conclusions, or that they fully
appreciated those implications and were indifferent to them. I
do not know which is worse, but I think it is a question that
maybe someone in the U.S. Congress ought to start asking.
Now, I think one of the principal issues that is on the
mind of everyone and has figured prominently in the hearing so
far today is the question of whether we should drop the
existing precondition to direct U.S. negotiation with Iran
about the nuclear issue and engage the Iranians directly. I
make two observations about that notion in my testimony.
The first is that if we are going to engage directly with
Iran, we want our engagement to be successful. We want to be
able to reach a negotiated outcome that is acceptable to us. In
order to do that, we have to come into the negotiations from a
position of strength.
The NIE guarantees that, as of today, we are in a position
of considerable weakness. The Iranians perceive us as weak.
They perceive U.S. policy as collapsing. And I think to drop
the existing precondition, the precondition that has been in
effect for many years, will be seen by the Iranians as a
further U.S. concession, further evidence that U.S. policy, the
demands that the United States has been making up until now,
are falling by the wayside and that they are winning.
In other words, to engage successfully diplomatically, I
think we have to figure out a way to overcome the problems that
were created for us by the NIE and engage from a position of
strength.
Ambassador Ross in his prepared statement outlines such an
approach. I think he agrees with what I am saying about needing
to negotiate from a position of strength. He outlines a way
that we could try to do so. I think it is an interesting
approach to try and work with Europeans in advance of
negotiations.
I think I read into his testimony, though, that should such
an effort to get the Europeans to join with us in imposing
sanctions up front--strengthening sanctions up front--fail,
should they not be prepared to agree to do that, I think he
would agree with me that then it would not be ripe to drop the
existing precondition. I do not want to put those words in his
mouth, but----
Senator Carper. Let the record show that Ambassador Ross
was nodding his head yes.
Mr. Rademaker. The second point I make about direct
negotiations with the Iranians is we need to figure out what
outcome we are prepared to accept. Here I think the critical
question is: Are we prepared to accept enrichment in Iran or
not? U.S. policy up until now and the policy of our allies and
the policy of the U.N. Security Council as reflected in four
binding resolutions is there should not be enrichment in Iran.
Dr. Walsh in his prepared testimony says that is
unrealistic, that we are not going to achieve that, and so we
should stop demanding that and, in fact, we should develop a
fallback proposal that we think the Iranians would accept.
I am not prepared personally to agree that the U.N.
Security Council has it wrong and our allies have it wrong and
we have it wrong and we have to give the Iranians--we have to
move in the Iranian direction and allow them to enrich in Iran.
I think that would be a dangerous development because, yes,
there might be enhanced safeguards, enhanced inspections,
enhanced verification, but I think we would never have
confidence with the current regime that if enrichment was
taking place in Iran at declared locations that were under
international supervision, that there was not a parallel covert
program somewhere using some of the same equipment, the same
technology, and engaging in enrichment, producing fissile
material, without our being aware of it. I do not have the same
high level of confidence in the ability of international
verification mechanisms to detect covert enrichment at
undeclared sites that Dr. Walsh has.
Let me make one final observation and then I will finish.
Dr. Walsh also says as part of his suggestion that we need to
accept enrichment in Iran that what we should do is talk to the
Iranians, propose to the Iranians that they multilateralize or
multinationalize the enrichment facility in Iran, take the
Natanz facility and bring in foreign partners. As a former
diplomat, I do not think I would have a whole lot of trouble
selling that idea to the Iranians. I think it is an idea that
would sell itself. I would go to the Iranians and say, boy, do
I have a deal for you. You are under international sanctions.
You cannot get the technology you need. You are a pariah
because of what you are doing. Here is the bargain: We will
help you raise capital. We will bring in foreign investors.
They will invest in your plant. They will bring in expert
managers to help you run it. They will bring in foreign
technology to overcome the technical problems you have been
having. And best of all, you will get international legitimacy.
Your nuclear program will no longer be an outlaw nuclear
program. All you have to do is agree to some enhanced
inspections and some foreign involvement in your program, and
the future changes.
I think the Iranians would be foolish to reject such an
offer. Would we be foolish to offer it?
Senator Carper. I am going to ask you to wrap it up. But go
ahead, finish your thought.
Mr. Rademaker. President Bush in 2005 proposed that there
be a global ban on transfer of enrichment and reprocessing
technology to any country that does not currently have it. He
proposed that the Nuclear Suppliers Group adopt that as a
policy. The NSG has not yet done that, but pending that, since
2005, the G-8 members have every year agreed that they will not
transfer enrichment and reprocessing technology to any country
that does not have it.
I do not understand how, if we are going to stand up a
multinational enrichment facility in Iran, we do not undermine
this notion that there should not be transfers of that kind of
technology to any country that does not have it, because if it
is a multinational facility the foreign partners are going to
fully expect to be able to bring in the technology for the
project to succeed. And once Iran gets it, how can you justify
denying that same sort of capability to others?
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Senator Carper. Mr. Rademaker, thank you very much.
And, Dr. Allison, I think he set you up pretty well here to
come right in and say your piece. But you are recognized. Your
full statement will be made part of the record.
TESTIMONY OF GRAHAM ALLISON,\1\ DIRECTOR, BELFER CENTER FOR
SCIENCE AND INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, AND DOUGLAS DILLON PROFESSOR
OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY'S JOHN F. KENNEDY SCHOOL OF
GOVERNMENT
Mr. Allison. Thank you very much for your leadership in
drilling down on what is certainly the central challenge to
American national security going forward over the next several
years. And I think you introduced the conversation in just the
right terms, recognizing that the choices at this point are
between very bad and horrible. Those are the alternatives.
There are no good choices.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Allison appears in the Appendix
on page 127.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
I also agree very much with Dr. Coburn's earlier
proposition that the challenge that Iran poses is not simply a
challenge in itself. It is a challenge to the entire global
nuclear order and the nonproliferation regime, and I address
both of those in the testimony that I have submitted.
I also submit for you a case from the course that I teach
at Harvard that I gave to my students a month ago in which they
had to play a red team exercise as if they were working for the
Iranian Supreme Leader who wants three bombs by the end of
2009. If you are going to drill down on this, I suggest you
look at the case because you will find it interesting. It
stretches the facts of the current situation to the very worst
case. Getting three bombs by the end of 2009 will be extremely
ambitious for Iran, but just at the edge. And I think as one
goes through this, one sees a lot about the strategy that we
have been following and its consequences.
In my prepared testimony, I offered short answers to seven
quick questions, and let me go through them quickly.
First, is Iran seriously seeking nuclear weapons? Yes.
Two, is the Bush Administration's strategy of a slow
diplomatic squeeze that we heard presented today working? No.
Three, what has the Bush Administration's approach achieved
and not achieved at this point? I would say that diplomacy in
getting four Security Council resolutions has been nothing
short of extraordinary. But the fact is that Iran is 7 years
closer to its goal line than it was when the Bush
Administration came to office. So in one line, the Bush
Administration's efforts to organize diplomatic sanctions have
essentially succeeded in giving Iran more time to advance
nuclear facts on the ground.
Four, has the Bush Administration's approach missed
opportunities to stop Iran's program? Yes. The best opportunity
we had was in the spring of 2003. The exchanged piece of paper
had a list of all the things to be negotiated that needed to be
negotiated. We do not know whether we would have succeeded if
negotiations had been entered, but we know that we failed to
try.
Five, on the current track, when will Iran acquire its
first nuclear bombs? The NIE offers the best consensus judgment
that Iran will not produce enough highly enriched uranium (HEU)
for a nuclear weapons before the end of 2009, and even that is
unlikely. It is more likely Iran would have this capability
during the 2010-2015 time frame. So I would not disagree with
that proposition, and I think as you go through the exercise of
how Iran would actually seek and get a nuclear weapon, the case
that I gave you, that becomes even more plausible.
Six, responding to the question you raised in the letter
that you sent inviting us to testify, are there lessons from
the wrestling match with North Korea that provide relevant
insights for dealing with Iran? And I think the answer is yes.
The results of the Bush-Cheney-Bolton strategy, as I
characterize it, of threaten and neglect--or the quote from
Vice President Cheney says, ``We don't negotiate with evil. We
defeat it'' are in. We can now look and see what results this
produced. Kim Jong-Il: Eight additional nuclear bombs; Bush:
Zero. This is a strong statement, but look at the facts. North
Korea has eight plutonium nuclear bombs that it did not have in
January 2001. I believe this is the largest and most dangerous
failure in nonproliferation policy for the United States in
recent decades. We basically sat by while North Korea withdrew
from the NPT, ejected the IAEA inspectors, shut down the 24/7
cameras that were watching six bombs worth of plutonium,
trucked the plutonium over to a reprocessing plant and
reprocessed it, turned the Yongbyon reactor back on, and
started producing another bomb or two annually, and then
conducted a nuclear test. All this has happened. These are
brute facts.
In the aftermath of that, in what John Bolton has rightly
called ``a flip-flop'' from the prior approach, the Bush-Hill-
Rice current approach that has engaged the Six-Party talks and
North Korea bilaterally has succeeded in at least closing down
the Yongbyon reactor. The benefit of that is that North Korea
is not producing more plutonium. Has it done all the things
that we need to do about every other subject? Absolutely not.
Will they do it? Absolutely not. But is it better not to have
one or two more North Korean bombs every year? I would say it
is unseemly, it is tawdry, but it is better than the
alternative.
Finally, are there relevant historical analogies that may
offer some insight to this? I note in my testimony that the
unfolding U.S.-Iranian confrontation is like the Cuban missile
crisis in slow motion. That was the most dangerous moment in
history, 1962, Soviets sneaking missiles into Cuba. Kennedy
confronts them, demands that the missiles be withdrawn. There
follow 13 very tense days. At the end of that crisis, Kennedy
invented an option that he would not have considered at the
beginning of the week, that many of his advisers actually would
not have agreed to, but that succeeded in getting the missiles
withdrawn without war. And I think it is only when we face up
to the fact, as Mr. Ross was saying before, that the two
options at the end of this road are acquiesce and attack, and
as you analyze the consequences of each of those and see how
unacceptable each is, that we will finally get real in looking
at options that are unpalatable, tawdry, ugly, but better than
either of those two alternatives. The danger is that as we
postpone this moment of truth, we let Iran create new facts on
the ground every day.
For a long time, we said Iran would not be allowed to
master the technology of enriching uranium, and I still hear
that statement repeated today. The answer is, they have 75
kilos of low enriched uranium that they have already enriched.
So I would say their facts on the ground are moving all the
time while we have been struggling trying to figure out what
kind of option we would actually pursue. So I subscribe to Mr.
Ross' proposition that we should at this stage be getting all
of our carrots, all of our sticks, all of our allies into the
discussion.
Senator Carper. Dr. Allison, thank you very much for that
statement.
Dr. Walsh, you are recognized, please.
TESTIMONY OF JIM WALSH,\1\ RESEARCH ASSOCIATE, MASSACHUSETTS
INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
Mr. Walsh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Dr. Coburn,
Senator Coleman, and Senator Collins. It is a privilege to be
back before this Subcommittee and an honor to be with this
distinguished panel.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Walsh appears in the Appendix on
page 132.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
My focus is going to be on the nuclear issue. That is my
background, as the Chairman alluded to. But I have also through
the course of my work met over 100 Iranian officials from the
Expediency Council, the Foreign Ministry, the Atomic Energy
Organization of Iran, and I have spent 5 hours with President
Ahmadinejad and with North Korean officials as well.
After the hearing, I am more than happy to respond to
questions in writing if you have additional questions, and I
got up early this morning and wrote a brief memo on the recent
revelations about the Syrian-North Korean connection and its
implications for policy in Iran, and I am happy to share that
if there is any interest in that. But let me get to the task at
hand.
First, current U.S. policy. You have heard this morning
that U.S. policy is multifaceted, but as regards the nuclear
issue, really the core strategy is based on sanctions. I think
sanctions have enjoyed some success. For example, some people
said the United States would never be able to get any sanctions
resolution through the United Nations, but we were able to do
that. I think the big picture here, as my colleagues have said,
is that the sanctions strategy is failing.
Now, when I appeared before you 2 years ago, there were 164
centrifuges in Iran and no sanctions. Ten days after I
testified, you had the first resolution authorizing sanctions.
We have had three sanctions resolutions, and since that time
that I testified, we now have 3,000 centrifuges. That is, I
guess, about a thousand centrifuges per sanctions resolution.
And Iran have announced that they are going to build 6,000
more. I think on its face, the policy is clearly not working.
In the race between centrifuges and sanctions, the
centrifuges are winning, and even senior U.S. officials concede
that point. I think the situation is unlikely to get better,
and as the comments by the Chairman and Dr. Coburn I think
implied, what we have here is a disconnect. Sanctions are a
policy for the long term, to deal with long-term public policy
problems. The nuclear issue, by contrast, is near to a
intermediate term, and so I think even at its best--and there
is a big debate whether sanctions are generally effective--we
are dealing with a disconnect between policy instruments and
policy problems.
There are alternatives. In my testimony, I examine soft
regime change and containment, but like sanctions, these do not
work in a relevant time frame. It is a policy mismatch. By the
time soft regime change or containment and reassurance work,
Iran will have already built thousands and thousands of
centrifuges. These are post-nuclear approaches. This is not
true of military action, but I think that at best military
action would simply delay and, at worst, would create a
determined proliferator, and it would be prohibitively costly.
Secretary Gates said just the other day, ``Another war in the
Middle East is the last thing we need and would be disastrous
on a number of levels.''
So the final option that people talk about is direct talks
without precondition. There are people who simply call for
talks, and then you have others who also say they want a grand
bargain. I think the first is too little and the second is more
than is practically possible.
We have to do more than simply have talks. We have to be
able to have something to say when we talk to them. We have to
have a proposal that will advance the process. I think the
grand bargain is too much.
You will remember that in 2003 the Iranians through the
offices of the Swiss did propose at least a negotiation on what
might be characterized as a grand bargain with the United
States in which terrorism, the nuclear program, the Arab-
Israeli dispute were all on the table. That proposal, alas, was
not responded to. I think under the current leadership and the
current conditions, it is too much to ask for a grand bargain.
We can achieve progress in important areas like the nuclear
issue without having to achieve progress on everything.
What do we say to the Iranians, is this proposal that my
colleagues and I have put forth, the multilateralizing or
multinationalizing of Iran's fuel cycle. And while I appreciate
Mr. Rademaker's interest in the proposal, I think I have a
slightly different characterization of it.
I think the basic dilemma we face here is U.S. policy
insists on no centrifuges, and Iranian policy is enrichment on
Iranian territory. And there seems to be not much room in
between those two positions.
Multi-lateralization tries to do is square that circle by
saying there will be enrichment on Iranian territory, but it
will not be a national program solely owned and controlled by
Iranians. It will be internationally owned and managed. There
is a difference. The Iranians will participate, but the
ownership, management, and operation of that facility, whatever
its size and whatever its technology--which I do not prejudge--
would be done not by Iran alone, which is what we are looking
at here, but by Iran with others, eyes and ears on the ground.
I think that is better than the status quo. I think that is
better than where we are headed. I believe in a reality-based
policy, and right now we are not dealing with reality.
This proposal would call for upgraded inspections, eyes on
the ground, greater transparency. Yes, there are risks. I
review some of those risks in my written testimony. But I think
they can be minimized, and at the end of the day the question
is compared to what? And the ``what'' looks pretty bad right
now. So I think this proposal has a better chance of achieving
our objectives in nonproliferation specifically than much of
what is talked about.
In terms of lessons from North Korea and Iran, I think
there are some lessons. The general lesson is it is a mistake
to assume inevitability, that it is destiny that a country will
become a nuclear weapons state and will hold onto those weapons
forever. I think these cases and the historical record more
generally show that we can engage with countries we do not
like, that allies are important but the United States has to
engage in direct conversations with potential proliferators,
and that the other guy has to get something out of a negotiated
settlement. A proposal that is all restrictions and no
benefits--that is not an agreement that is going to happen or
going to be sustainable.
As regards North Korea, I think the lesson is that it is
not enough simply to talk. We have to have something to say.
And when you reach an impasse, it is more for more. You get
more but only if you do more--that is how you transform the
negotiation.
As regards Libya, as I say, I think it illustrates (1) how
it shows how sanctions work, i.e., they are really a long-term
proposition, (2) the importance of the United States following
through on its promises and (3) the IAEA has an important role
to play here.
Let me conclude by saying that not only IAEA but Congress,
all of you, have a critical role to play in your oversight,
information collection--this hearing is a great example of what
we need to have more of--and as a policy innovator. I think you
can develop the legislative ties with Iran if that opportunity
arises and promote smart engagement. Those concepts are
described in the written testimony.
Let me end here by again thanking you for the opportunity
to reappear before your Subcommittee.
Senator Carper. Dr. Walsh, thank you very much.
We are going to start voting, I am told, about 12:15.
Senator Coburn and I have probably about 20 minutes after that
to get to the floor and actually start voting. We are going to
have a series of votes. He and I have discussed it, and what we
are going to do is ask some questions and look for your
responses, and then we will probably be closing this down by
12:30. And I understand, Dr. Allison, you have a plane to
catch, and that works, I think, with your schedule.
Thank you for an excellent presentations. This is an
excellent panel. I want to go back to Ambassador Ross and just
ask you again to outline your third way proposal for us. Then I
am going to ask of our other three panelists to respond to that
third way suggestion.
Mr. Ross. The essence of the third way proposal is what I
call engagement without conditions but with pressure. It is an
amalgam of what I call those who say let's only tighten the
noose and others who say let's engage without any conditions at
all. And the essence of it is basically use your readiness to
talk as a device to get others who have been holding back in
terms of providing the real sanctions to do much more than they
have been willing to do. It is premised on several different
assumptions.
Assumption No. 1 is that the Europeans believe there is a
deal that can be struck, but only if the United States is at
the table because what the Iranians want is not just the
political and economic side of things, but they want certain
things from us, especially as it relates to recognition,
security, a place in the region.
Assumption No. 2 is that you have to bring the Chinese in,
but we have not been applying any leverage on the Chinese. Now,
our leverage on the Chinese can be applied in one of several
ways. One is argumentation. Don't put us in a position where
the only option left to prevent the Iranians from going nuclear
is the use of force. A second way to deal with them is, in
fact, to focus on what seems to motivate them in a pretty
consistent way. They have what I call a mercantile mind-set.
There is enormous Saudi financial clout. Find a way to bring
the Saudis into this. The Saudis will not do what we want if we
just ask them to do it, because they will not want to expose
themselves to some potential risk unless they know what is our
overall strategy and where they fit into it. Use the Saudis as
a way of affecting the Chinese.
Third, I would also try to bring the Russians in. Now,
there are multiple ways to try to bring the Russians in. I say
it in the testimony. One is they do have an interest. I heard
Dr. Coburn agreed with what Senator Coleman was saying about
the issue of nuclear cooperation with them. They have enormous
economic interest in this and use that as a potential lever;
also the issue of missile defenses in Eastern Europe. The
rationale for the missile defenses in Eastern Europe are
protection against the Iranians. This is a very big issue that
Putin has made. Say to them, look, if you really join us--and
we have to be very specific in terms of what it means--in terms
of preventing Iran from being such a threat, well, then, we do
not actually have to proceed with the missile defenses in
Europe. That is the essence of it.
Senator Carper. Great. OK, thanks.
With that outline, again, Mr. Rademaker, why don't you just
weigh in. What do you like about it? What do you question about
it?
Mr. Rademaker. Well, to the degree that what Ambassador
Ross is saying is that we should not begin direct negotiations
with Iran today, I fully agree with him, and I think the
rationale that he has is the same as mine, which is that our
position today politically and diplomatically is too weak to
successfully negotiate with the Iranians. So what this is is a
suggestion about how we could strengthen our position in order
to be able to hopefully negotiate successfully.
I think it is a creative idea, and I think it would be
worth pursuing, but I will flag two concerns I have. One, I
think part of the idea is that the Europeans impose the
sanctions before the negotiations, thereby strengthening the
pressure on the Iranians before the talks begin. The Europeans
may well say no to that idea, and then we are back to the
situation we are in today.
My second point is if we are going to enter a joint
negotiation of this sort, we are going to have to have an
understanding with the Europeans about what it is we are
seeking to achieve. What is the outcome that we want? And, in
particular, the issue that I flagged in my opening remarks: Is
the final outcome we are seeking one in which there is no
enrichment in Iran, full stop? Or is it one along the lines
that Dr. Walsh has outlined where we say, OK, we are going to
allow you to have enrichment under certain conditions? That is
a critically important decision, but there has to be a meeting
of the minds between us and the Europeans under this concept.
And I have not heard Ambassador Ross' suggestion about what our
bottom line should be.
My view is clear, and I state it in my prepared remarks. I
think our bottom line has to remain no enrichment in Iran,
because allowing enrichment in Iran would just be too dangerous
given the history and nature of their program. And so if the
Europeans came to us and said we will undertake this with you,
we will even impose sanctions up front, but you have to join us
in agreeing that we will settle for some arrangement with Iran
under which they are able to engage in enrichment in Iran, I
would not think that is a bargain we would want to strike with
them.
Senator Carper. Thank you, sir.
Dr. Allison, what do you like and what do you question
about Ambassador Ross' proposal?
Mr. Allison. Mr. Ross and I have talked about this before,
and I like the general idea, but I think it is somewhat
unrealistic in the short run. I think in the first instance, as
Steve has said, rightly, the Bush Administration does not know
its own mind. It does not have an agreement on what it would
accept. If you do not have a notion of what is acceptable in
the reality zone, that is one reason not to talk.
Two, it does not have an agreement with the other parties
with respect to what would be acceptable. That would be
extremely difficult to do, and in any case, the Bush
Administration cannot do it between now and then.
Three, when is ``then''? A new Administration comes,
Senator McCain or one of the other Senators. It takes 6 months
or a year to get its act together. All the time, Iran is just
there moving facts on the ground. The reality of this situation
is the facts on the ground are worsening constantly as we have
done whatever we have done. So there we are.
I think with respect to where we want to get to is
something like what Mr. Ross is proposing--a grand bargain
negotiation. I outline that in the 2004 book, Nuclear
Terrorism. Basically we take all of the carrots to the table,
and that most importantly for the Iranians is some assurance
that we are not going to attack them to change their regime by
force, and that we are not going to support groups that are
undermining them inside; and all the sticks.
I am in favor of being able to threaten attack. I like very
much the Israeli stick in the closet kind of looking out a
little bit. So I think you need a lot, a lot of sticks and you
need a lot, a lot of carrots, and you need a coherent position.
You need to sit down with the other parties as part of the
game, though the United States has to be the dealmaker because
it is the threat to the regime that the Supreme Leader thinks
he is responsible for keeping in place. It is the regime that
we threaten, credibly, when first we announced there was an
Axis of Evil and said that the solution to this problem is
toppling the regimes, and then toppled this neighbor next door
in 3 weeks, whom he had fought 8 years to a standstill war
with. So that was May 2003 when our strength was at a maximum
position. I think recovering a position of strength for such
negotiations will be extremely difficult, but not impossible.
Senator Carper. All right. Thank you.
Last word. What do you like? What do you question about
this, Dr. Walsh?
Mr. Walsh. Well, I like the idea of using it as a device to
get others to do more. You heard in the first panel one of the
witnesses said, well, if you start talking to the Iranians, our
allies will do less. I think the historical record shows that
to be absolutely wrong. It was after Secretary Rice's
announcement in May that we got the first sanctions resolution.
So I do think it is a device to get people on board.
I do agree with Mr. Rademaker in this regard, that you have
to be clear about the goal. Is it zero enrichment? What is it
you are actually going for? Again, I really doubt, for reasons
of national pride and internal politics, and now bureaucratic
politics, whether they are suddenly going to go from 3,000 or
9,000 or 10,000 to zero. I have grave doubts about that.
As for sanctions, I think that would be great. They are
useful. But I think there is a tendency to overemphasize
sanctions as if it is a be-all and end-all when actually the
record is quite mixed. Iran is a big country. For all the Gulf
states that fear it, a lot of those Gulf states are investing
in Iran, even with the international sanctions right now. And
you run the risk of repeating the North Korea syndrome, which
is you are talking to Iran, then you impose sanctions, and then
Iran pulls out because Tehran objects to the sanctions. And
then it is only once you begin to address the sanctions that
they come back to the table. But, in general--I know that
sounds negative. In general, I am positive about it with just
those observations.
Senator Carper. Fine. Thank you very much. Dr. Coburn.
Senator Coburn. How many of you all think that Iran desires
to have a nuclear weapon?
Mr. Walsh. Elements within Iran; I believe that the
government has not made a final determination to seek nuclear
weapons.
Senator Coburn. Well, how many of you all realize--or would
agree that who we are talking to indirectly now is not the
people who are making the decisions? IDRC, we are not talking
to them, right?
Mr. Walsh. Supreme Leader. That is the person who calls the
shots.
Senator Coburn. Well, but they work for the Supreme Leader.
They do not work for Ahmadinejad. Comment on sanctions. There
are sanctions and then there are sanctions. We have not had
real sanctions yet. Intriguing idea, Ambassador Ross. We are in
a pickle, and the question is: How do we get out of the pickle?
If we do what Ambassador Ross says, and it is related only
to enrichment instead of killing our troops, denying human
rights in Iran, and all the other consequences, what happens if
we fail? What happens if you think they are going for a nuclear
weapon and we say we will talk on the basis of the fact that we
have got to enhance sanctions, and the talking does not work?
Mr. Walsh. Well, I think, these policies move in sequence,
and the one thing you do not want to do is prejudge and you
miss an opportunity to resolve the problem. If we assume that
they are bound and determined to get a nuclear weapon, which is
not the finding of the NIE.
Senator Coburn. But that is based on 2003 intelligence
data. It is not based on the most recent revelations of what
has been in the press about their accomplishment with Chinese
drawings, molds.
Mr. Walsh. Well, I have always thought when you look at the
history of the Iranian nuclear weapons program that started in
the mid-1980s--we will ignore the fact that the Shah wanted it
as well. The curious thing here is that they did not make more
progress than they did--this has been a program that has been
up and down and up and down. And I think the key finding in the
NIE, as I explained in my testimony, the key finding is not
whether today they are working on weaponization or not. The key
finding is whether they are a rational actor that under
circumstances would be willing to give up their nuclear weapon
or talk about it. And the answer on that is pretty clear.
If we presume they are going to get nuclear weapons no
matter what, then if there is actually an opportunity to stop
it, we will completely blow past that on our way to other
policy----
Senator Coburn. Is it your assumption they are a rational
actor?
Mr. Walsh. Oh, definitely.
Senator Coburn. Is it your assumption they are a rational
actor?
Mr. Allison. I would say more or less. If the NIE
proposition that they respond to costs and benefits I think is
essentially correct, then I think if you look at the behavior
of the regime, it has been reasonably predictable.
Senator Coburn. How about you, Mr. Rademaker?
Mr. Rademaker. The premise of all the international
diplomacy that has taken place since 2002--the imposition of
carrots and sticks, incentives, disincentives--the premise is
that they are a rational actor and if under enough pressure
will do what we are asking them to do. I mean, it is hardly a
revelation in the NIE to say that is our premise.
Senator Coburn. Ambassador Ross.
Mr. Ross. I think generally, they have elements in the
leadership that are not, that believe fundamentally in
something else. What is the balance of forces within that
leadership? And how do you affect it so that those who are
pragmatic--when you say rational, I say those who are pragmatic
in terms of protecting their interests and the regime. So that
you affect those who reflect that mind-set, and they hold
greater power right now.
Mr. Allison. If I could, on your sanction point earlier, I
think that I agree very much with the proposition that it is
bizarre, I say in my testimony ironic even, that many of the
members of the sanctioning coalition seem readier to run the
risk of a military attack on Iran than to impose sanctions that
would be sufficiently harsh to have a chance of changing Iran's
behavior.
Senator Coburn. They behave like U.S. Senators. They are
rational to the next general election, but not to the future of
the country. There is a great correlation. It is like fixing
Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid. Well, we know we have
got to fix it, but we cannot do anything about it because it
might affect the short term.
Mr. Allison. As you said earlier, 40 percent of the
gasoline that is used every day in Iran is imported. Is it
possible to interrupt that? Yes, it is. Now, would it have an
impact on gas prices? Yes, it would. Who is in favor of that?
Not the Administration. I do not know how many Senators are.
Senator Coburn. Well, the fact is we have a big problem,
and there are a couple of coming consequences. Are we willing
to pay some of the sacrifice to have that consequence? One is
some military action at some point in time, or some cost and
sacrifice on our part to avoid that from an economic
standpoint. That is not always necessarily clear and out there
among the choices that we get to make.
I want to make one other point and see if you all agree
with it, and we have seen this be true in the past. And I want
to take issue a little bit. I think Libya came to the table
because there was an invasion of Iraq, and it did not have
anything to do with sanctions. I think they finally just said,
``I give up. I do not want this happening to us.'' I think
there was some pressure with sanctions, but the real truth of
the matter is here is this bold move and we do not think we
want to invite that. So, I think there was a big difference,
and we had testimony earlier on the fact that at the time in
2003, we did not have sanctions on Iran at the time we invaded.
And the Secretary correctly pointed out that that was a big
impact in 2003.
Can you not have uranium enrichment and still have
weaponization?
Mr. Allison. Unless Iran were successful in buying enriched
uranium from another state, no.
Senator Coburn. Well, if they have enriched uranium, if
they have that at some point in time, is it clear to you that
they would have the capability to weaponize that?
Does everybody agree with that?
Mr. Allison. Yes, if they have enough enriched uranium,
they can make a bomb, yes.
Mr. Walsh. Not 3 to 5 percent enriched uranium, but yes,
weapons grade enriched----
Senator Coburn. Yes, weapons grade.
Mr. Walsh. Over some time, yes.
Mr. Ross. Can I answer the question you posed earlier?
Senator Coburn. Yes, please do.
Mr. Ross. You said if talking does not work, what are the
choices? Well, then the choices are basically two: One is you
come up with what is a very vigorous containment approach,
which is quite visible within the region, or you act militarily
to forestall what they are doing with the message that you will
do it again if they proceed.
Those are the kind of choices you have. I would say this: I
think that the reason I prefer the third way is because I do
not really like either of those outcomes, because I can see all
sorts of consequences that are not so great. But you put your
finger on something. There is no cost-free approach right now,
and we have to decide which of the least costly or least bad
options are the ones that are available to us.
Senator Coburn. Ambassador Ross, would it behoove us to
work on containment now given the fact that our other options
are not great? In other words, plan for containment, signal
containment, put that out there as another leg in the stool?
Mr. Ross. For me the answer is yes, and for a particular
reason. Deterrence is not just deterrence at the time.
Deterrence can also be about dissuasion. And if you are trying
to persuade, again, that part of the Iranian leadership that
they are not going to gain anything, they have a lot to lose
and they are not going to gain anything, and if they think that
nuclear weapons capability is going to give them leverage in
the region, they should think again.
Senator Coburn. So that takes time, so you would agree that
we should start that process now.
Mr. Ross. I would.
Senator Coburn. Mr. Rademaker.
Mr. Rademaker. I guess I would just add one footnote to
Ambassador Ross' comment, responding to your earlier point. The
risk that diplomacy may not succeed certainly is something--it
is not an outcome we want, but that risk is not an argument for
making an offer to the Iranians that is so attractive that they
have to say yes to it. In other words, a successful diplomatic
outcome is not necessarily preferable to some of the other
alternatives.
Dr. Walsh has a statement in his prepared remarks, and I
will just read it to you because I disagree with it. He said,
``The worst possible outcome is a purely national program on
Iranian soil, whether it is unsafeguarded . . . or under-
safeguarded . . . '' I think what he means by that is basically
they continue deploying additional centrifuges, they stand up
the enrichment capability they are seeking, and we do not have
any additional international safeguards than exist today. That
is the worst possible outcome, according to his testimony.
I think that is not right, because at least today it is an
illegitimate program. The U.N. Security Council has condemned
it four times. Sanctions have been imposed. It is an
illegitimate program. Certainly one consequence of any
diplomatic settlement with the Iranians on this issue is going
to be that illegitimacy, that stigma, will be removed. The U.N.
sanctions will be lifted, the U.N. Security Council will back
away, and whatever program we sign off on will be
internationally legitimate. And if it is essentially the same
program that they are going to achieve if they continue down
the current path and diplomacy fails, but it is legitimate, I
think that is a worse outcome than them continuing down the
current path.
I think the rejoinder to what I have just said is, well,
international inspections are reliable, and if we can get as
part of a diplomatic settlement enhanced international
verification, inspections, then we can have a higher level of
comfort about that kind of outcome.
I just want to read you a quote, which I have always
enjoyed, and this is on the issue of international inspections.
``Every form of deception and every obstacle baffled the
Commission. The work of evasion became thoroughly organized.
Under civilian camouflage, an organization was set up to
safeguard weapons and equipment. Even more ingenuity was used
to create machinery for future production of war material.''
Sounds like George Bush on Iraq. It is not. It is Winston
Churchill on Weimar Germany and their evasion of the
international inspection regime that was set up under the
Treaty of Versailles. So the idea that international
inspections will save us from a bad outcome is not new.
Senator Coburn. It goes to whether or not we have rational
behavior on the part of the Supreme Leader and the IDGC.
Mr. Walsh. If I may respond, that would not have been my
rejoinder. It seems to me if the choice is between a
stigmatized on the one hand and a nuclear weapons capability on
the other, I will take stopping the nuclear weapons capability
every day of the week. An Iranian program that is nationally
owned and is not transparent but opaque. How do you feel about
minimum safeguards or Iran pulling out of the NPT, that is the
quickest route to a bomb.
Our proposal is about preventing an Iranian nuclear weapons
capability, not enhancing it.
Senator Coburn. There is nobody that I have asked in the
leadership in this country and no expert that I have asked that
does not believe that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Nobody.
What would make us think that anything other than cold, hard
consequences to that is going to work?
Mr. Walsh. Well, the nuclear age would be one. Look at the
history of the nuclear age----
Senator Coburn. But you have already answered the question
about how rational they are. The reason we were very successful
during the Cold War is, one, we talked; but two, is that there
was a rational pattern of thought that was not based on
martyrdom. It was based on survival. It was based on staying
alive. That is a consequence that has to be figured in in terms
of how we negotiate with these people and how we think about
how they think.
Senator Coleman raised that issue, and I think it is a
great issue. That is something we have not ever dealt with
before as a Nation. Ambassador Ross, you have in terms of the
Middle East in certain areas, but that is not routinely what we
see. And this assumption that survival is a guide to bring
people to the table, when, in fact, there is tremendous human
rights violations of the people who are not in the religious
leadership in Iran today and what they claim about what they
believe really mixes the common sense and logic that we could
defer from having negotiations.
Mr. Walsh. Senator Coburn, we heard the same thing about
the Soviet Union, the same sort of cultural argument from Colin
Gray and others who said the Soviets would accept unacceptable
levels of deaths, they were not the same as Americans. It
turned out not to be true.
I am not saying that the Iranians are perfectly rational.
Like Americans, they can be prideful. They can make mistakes.
They can bear significant economic costs in the defense of
things they think are important. But in the main, they have
been a status quo power. Some had thought that they had
chemical weapons after the Iran-Iraq war. Did they turn around
and attack Israel? Have they picked a big war against Israel?
No.
And on this issue of the regime, What did Saddam do when
inspectors were on the ground? He decided that he would shelve
his weapons program. This is from the Iraqi Survey Group and
from others. He would shut it down. He still had ambitions, but
he gave up the program because he did not want to get caught
when there were inspectors on the ground.
I think there is a lesson to be learned there and a lesson
that applies here.
Senator Coburn. All right. Thank you. Thank you, Mr.
Chairman.
Senator Carper. You bet. This has been just an
extraordinary panel. We have hearings every day of the week
around here. Sometimes they are pretty good. This has just been
extraordinary. And I thank you for thinking outside the box. I
thank you for making us think outside the box and for very
constructive testimony and going back and forth with one
another, I think in a most constructive and respectful way.
Is there something else?
Senator Coburn. Yes, just unanimous consent. I have several
questions that I would like to submit for the record and ask
that you answer them, if you would. We cannot take the time
here to get--I would like to spend 2 days with you all. Thank
you.
Senator Carper. The hearing record will stay open for 2
weeks. I am going to have some questions, as well.
But we thank you very much for being here with us today and
for your thought and your responses.
[Whereupon, at 12:30 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
----------
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.001
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.002
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.003
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.004
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.005
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.006
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.007
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.008
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.009
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.010
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.011
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.012
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.013
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.014
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.015
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.016
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.017
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.018
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.019
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.020
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.021
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.022
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.023
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.024
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.025
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.026
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.027
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.028
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.029
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.030
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.031
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.032
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.033
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.034
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.035
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.036
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.037
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.038
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.039
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.040
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.041
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.042
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.043
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.044
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.045
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.046
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.047
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.048
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.049
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.050
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.051
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.052
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.053
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.054
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.055
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.056
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.057
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.058
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.059
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.060
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.061
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.062
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.063
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.064
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.065
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.066
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.067
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.068
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.069
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.070
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.071
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.072
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.073
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.074
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.075
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.076
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.077
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.078
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.079
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.080
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.081
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.082
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.083
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.084
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.085
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.086
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.087
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.088
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.089
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.090
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.091
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.092
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.093
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.094
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.095
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.096
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.097
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.098
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.099
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.100
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.101
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.102
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.103
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.104
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.105
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.106
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.107
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.108
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.109
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.110
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.111
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.112
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.113
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.114
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.115
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.116
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.117
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.118
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.119
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.120
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.121
[GRAPHIC] [TIFF OMITTED] T2750.122