Transcript: Well I think actually Americans can understand Middle Easterners much more than they think. I mean you know Europeans don’t believe in religion in that sense. I mean religion is not a big part of European politics. It’s a big part of American politics. I think we’ve come in the past years to try to explain everything through Islam too much. Islam does matter, but so does Christianity in America. But you cannot explain everything in America – even in the South, even among religious groups – by just a religious explanation. You definitely cannot say, “Well that’s what the Bible says.” Or, “The Bible makes them that way.” It is too much, I think, in public discussion in America a lack of . . . a deliberate lack of sophistication in trying to understand and analyze the Muslim world; trying to reduce everything into the language of religion; trying to say well, you know, everything is about religion. And I think that’s an imbalance that hurts us, because it’s very easy to gloss over real issues; and then, you know, sort of end up in these culture explanations that to all of us appear to be unbridgeable. And then it makes Americans basically to throw up their arms and say, “We just don’t get it. We don’t understand.” But I think they do. I think actually . . . And it’s the same problem in the Muslim world. I think Muslims would understand Americans a lot better if they didn’t also look through a cultural, civilization lens; and they looked at Americans and American policy in terms of interest and aspiration that also drives them all the time. You know when you talk about dialogue, it’s not really about, “Let me understand your religion and you should understand mine. I pray five times a day, you go to church, but we both believe in the same God.” That’s not the useful dialogue. Dialogue really means trying to understand the other sides interests and behaviors in terms of how you would have operated in a political arena as an individual.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well there are different things we try to achieve. Within the narrow confines of academia, you strive for intellectual excellence. We’re all interested in complex issues. We’re driven by the life of the mind. We enjoy the intellectual give and take. And we like to learn more and shed more light on what we work on, be it theoretical issues or issues about countries we’re interested in. But also, at least in my own case, I strive to make the Middle East much more understandable to a broader American public. Because I think at this particular juncture in time, it is the one relationship we have in the world which matters much more than any others to our future security, prosperity, our position in the world – in ways that it didn’t only a decade ago. And I think there is a dearth of knowledge. There is a huge vacuum of knowledge in the United States about fundamental issues, and our relationship with the Muslim world and the Middle East. And therefore I think engaging in the public discourse of the kind that we’re actually doing now for a broader audience is an important service. As an American and as a Muslim; as somebody with an origin in the Middle East, I see it as an important duty to help create that bridge in the public arena.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Question: What forces have shaped Israel?

Transcript: Well I talk not as a . . . sort of an expert on Israel, but as an outsider to this topic. But I do think the whole experience of the Holocaust, the discussion in Europe in the 19 . . . from the 1930s onward about the fact that Jews needed a homeland of their own in order to be safe; that only in a Jewish homeland would there be a level playing field and would maybe secure are extremely important. Particularly because at least for a very long period of time all the way ‘til the 1980s, a large number of Israeli leadership actually were born in Europe, had experienced the Holocaust. Their families had experienced the Holocaust. For them it was something very, very real. We are only now beginning to see the rise of a second generation of Israelis who, you know, regardless of knowledge of Holocaust, their personal experience may be quite different. Also for a good chunk of Israel’s early history it was a quite still insecure, vulnerable country. I think in reality a major turning point came with the war of 1967 when Israel was able to actually defeat the Arab armies, capture Jerusalem, feel much stronger. I think both of these sentiments, in my opinion, are there. I mean a sentiment of insecurity and vulnerability. But also underneath it there exists a certain degree of confidence, and sometimes maybe overconfidence on the side of Israel. I mean Israelis are aware of their weaknesses, but they’re also quite aware that they’ve beaten the Arabs every single time, particularly since ‘73 onwards. There is no Arab army to stand up to them. And I think there is a kind of, if you would, a paradox in Israel that the psyche of . . . the security and psyche of Israel is driven by simultaneous fear of the collapse of the sea of hostile Arabs, but also with confidence that Israel can take many, many different actions to protect itself. And that’s exactly why Iran creates such an anxiety. Because an Iranian nuclear program can take away some of Israel’s sense of confidence in being able to protect itself.

Question: Does Israeli confidence need to be checked?

Transcript: I wouldn’t say confidence. I think it’s a matter of power balance. I mean you know clearly when it comes to defense, Israel has anxieties against Hezbollah, Iran; the fact that it’s a small country in a sea of hostile Arab world. But when it comes to also negotiating with the Palestinians and the Arabs, the fact that Israel is a victor in a war . . . in consecutive wars does not really make for a great deal of incentive to be compromising on a host of issues. And that’s exactly why you have this paradox. It makes it very difficult to move forward. Anxiety on the one hand, but overconfidence and a sense of power in Israel on the other. I don’t think there is any single thing the United States can do. I mean there are things the U.S. can do as part of a resolution to give security guarantees to Israel as well as to the Arabs. But I think ultimately there is no silver bullet here. There is not one thing that United States can do that can resolve Israeli anxieties. Or there’s not one thing that the United States can do to change Arab attitudes towards Israel. Peace after 60 years is a function of gradually getting to know one another, trying it out, and building on it. I mean hostility right now is the attitude. A handshake is not gonna take it away. You have to spend time with one another. Memories of bad things have to fade, and memories of positive things have to . . . have to become stronger. There has to be cultural, social, people-to-people interactions before peace will become reasonable. And I think . . . And that’s why. The most important thing the United States can do is to keep the process going and to move it forward; and try to make this much more systematic and much more engaged. But that’s not easy either, and that’s why I’m not hopeful that in the next five to 10 years we necessarily are going to see a grand resolution. If we looked at Northern Ireland, even after the United States became wholeheartedly involved through Senator Mitchell, it took still 10 years of really, really difficult negotiations – 10 years of one track. I mean Oslo lasted a few years, then we were going to start something else. But it requires something like what happened in Northern Ireland for us to get past this

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well because historically it’s been involved for a very long time.  It also is a major supporter of key Arab governments and Israel.  It is not as if the United States has no role in the Arab-Israeli issue, and all of a sudden getting involved in mediation is a major step.  The United States provides military support to Israel, financial support to Israel.  It also provides military support and financial support to Jordan, to Egypt, to Palestinian government, to other Arab governments.  So the United States is part of the picture.  The only question is does the United States use its participation to also get the protagonists together.  Now there are benefits for the United States, because in terms of the perception in the Muslim world, the Palestinian issue matters.  For whatever reason after, you know, 60 years, it has become the signature issue in American relations with the Middle East and the Muslim world.  It is a corrosive issue.  I don’t think peace with the    . . . a resolution will change larger issues in the Middle East, such as Iran’s power, such as U.S.’ other interests in the region.  But it will have an enormous amount of symbolic value.  Let’s put it this way.  Not trying at all was quite detrimental to American image, much more so than trying and failing.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: I would. I think there is no harm in talks. There is plenty of evidence historically that you may get much more from talks than not talking. And if not talking also means . . . You have two options. You either let Iran go nuclear, or you have to get into a war with Iran which can open the gates of hell in the Middle East essentially. Now if those are your only options I think talking should be given its chance, even if that chance is very little. I think direct talking with Iran can change the context of every issue that’s on the table. Well you have to let the Iranians decide who their __________ is. But the reality is that it’s not a very good idea for the United States to try to choose factions in Iran _________ wants to talk to. This is as bad an idea as foreign governments trying to decide they only wanna talk to Democrats, or only wanna talk to Republicans. And I think in the past, I think during the Clinton administration one reason things didn’t move forward was because Washington basically made it clear it only wanted to talk to reformists. So you talk to the Iranian state, and at the level . . . Initially the talks do not need to be at the highest levels. I mean you . . . Just having serious talks by people who are representatives of the states is all that matters. I think the personality of talks are not as important right now as a decision in America by President Bush, and in Iran by the Supreme Leader, not by the Iranian president. Because the head of state in Iran is a Supreme Leader. The decision by these two men – the Supreme Leader and the President of the United States – that they want a different U.S.-Iran relationship, and they want constructive talks, that’s all that is required for talks. Who actually sits at the table is much less important than getting that level of commitment. That’s what happened with China. I mean the opening came when two men – Mao and Nixon – decided. They didn’t know where they were heading. They didn’t know who was gonna say what and what the talks would be. But they made the fundamental decision that they’re going to give engagement a serious chance.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript:  Well this is not a problem between Christianity and Islam, even though it’s increasingly being made into one.  And partly because both countries, now some of the most engaged and hard line political groups tend to be religious.  There’s the evangelicals and fundamentalists in the U.S., and the fundamentalists and hard liners in the Muslim world.  But in reality this was not a problem that arose out of theological disagreements between Christians and Muslims.  It is not like the disputes that the Vatican now has with the Orthodox church that requires the Pope to go to Istanbul and have a one-on-one discussion with the patriarch and resolve it.  The problems, even though they are put in the language of Islam in the West, really come from policy disagreements.  The core of this is that the United States, however way it perceives its interest in the Middle East, has gone about protecting and promoting in a particular way that has run into trouble on the ground and has run into resistance.  And ultimately it’s about policy options.  It’s not something that the U.S. says here or there.  It’s about what U.S. will do here or there.  It’s whether the U.S. will continue.  I think the most significant issue is whether the U.S. will continue to look at military options as the primary vehicle for protecting and promoting its interest in the Middle East and the Muslim world or not.  Whether it continues to define the war on terror in a language of a war that then presupposes all kinds of civilizational, cultural conflict as opposed to much more of a law and order issue.  I mean these are debates we can have domestically about handling crime.  And you know I think it’s the . . .  It is not that our interests are gonna go away.  It is not that our interests are always gonna be respected and received in the Muslim world with a welcome.  They will not.  But the contingents come because of the particular policies that we have adopted in terms of pursuing them.  I mean if we looked at the Muslim world right now, the United States in the past five years has invaded two Muslim countries.  It is poised to invade a third one, Iran.  Its level of military funding and direct involvement in other countries – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Lebanon – is on the rise.  And that is, right now, the most contentious issue.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well you know the rhetoric . . . The saber rattling rhetoric has gone up, has gone down. But the reality is that the U.S. is . . . has large number of forces sitting in the Persian Gulf with capability to at least conduct an air war against Iran. And the reality is that the administration and many western countries – including also Russia, and in this case also China – have said that Iran’s nuclear . . . a nuclear Iran is not an option, is not acceptable. Now if that’s the case . . . If there is no change of attitude there, then the only issue is how are you going to prevent that? Because the current strategy over the past four or five years has not worked. In other words there have not been successful negotiations. Subcontracting U.S. foreign policy to Europeans has not worked, and Iran has continued to expand its capabilities. So either the United States has to adopt a completely different diplomatic approach, believing that the current diplomatic approach is insufficient . . . adopt a completely different diplomatic approach; or it has to prevent Iran otherwise, which means that through some kind of use of force. And the current trend of this administration, in my belief, is that the U.S. is not . . . never been really serious about talking to Iran. There is talk of talking to Iran, but there has not been really serious engagement of Iran. And when it’s happened, there’s been ad hoc like in Afghanistan in 2002, with successful engagement; but then the U.S. suggested it didn’t want to continue and put Iran in access of evil. On Iraq it has been very limited engagement. On the nuclear issues there’s been no engagement. And as a result, you know, you could see that this administration is beholden to the goal of no nuclear Iran, and does not really wanna think about any other . . . any option that involves a more serious diplomatic engagement. So the conclusion is that it’s probably gonna go down the path of escalating tensions. Now whether it comes to war is contingent on many things – domestic politics, elections, international support, etc. But we’re not seeing progress in a positive direction here.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: First of all I think there is a big difference about American secularism or European secularism. I mean American . . . I mean American definition of secularism is not that they expect religion to die, or to rid people to be personally secular. But that there’s a belief that there should be an observation of separation of church and state into equal domains; that religion ought to be protected from politics, and politics ought to be protected from religion. In Europe it’s a very different definition. Secularism, first of all, means that state will rule over religion. It will control religion. It will appoint its clergy. It will control the revenues. It will control the institutions, etc. It will legislate for religious activity. But also in Europe it goes beyond just separation. There’s an expectation that society . . . that God would not exist in society; that religion would be a matter of very strictly private practice, and people’s religious views would be private to them. And on top of it, that religion itself actually would reform in a manner to secularize from within. So some strands of Protestantism, reformed Judaism, or the Vatican to reforms in the Catholic Church were all sort of reflections of this kind of pressure. Now the question is which one are we talking about in the Muslims? And I don’t think Americans are clear. It looks to Muslims that the Americans are not asking for a separation of church and state. They’re asking Muslims to be more secular personally than Americans are, and that’s part of the whole problem. I mean when you . . . and this might be a misperception, but Muslims say who are the favorite Muslim thinkers of Americans? It’s always somebody who’s talking about reforming Islam. Or now it is somebody who is actually a Muslim who is anti-Muslim. That tends to be the most popular . . . the most popular books. And also the perception that . . . that America actually wants to “destroy” Islam is more than destroying Islamic institutions or Islamic power. It also is a perception that what America really wants from Muslims is not to believe in Islam; that a good Muslim is one that doesn’t believe in Islam. And this . . . This has to do with a perception that the West really believes that the problem is not just separation of institutions of church and state, but Islam as a religion is a problem. It’s pro-jihadist extremist. It’s anti-democratic. It’s misogynist, etc. And therefore Muslims should really stop being Muslims. So I think the whole discourse, the whole discussion about what is it that we mean by secularism in the Muslim world has been itself extremely corrosive to U.S. relations in the Muslim world. And partly because it’s not properly defined in America as to what it is that we mean by secularism.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well this is a multi-tiered way of analyzing. There is a militant extremist tendency, even though that it’s a very small minority. But like all extremist movements, because of the force that it’s able to project; because of the way it can interject itself into the political process; because of acts of terror it carries out, it may be much more important. There is a political, social level of participation. You have political parties. You have syndicates. You have unions. You have civil society organizations that ___________ a . . . what is called a “fundamentalist line” – believe in a form of government that is based on religious law or Islamic government, wants much more religiosity in the public life and politics of the Muslim world. Sometimes they’re powerful. Sometimes they’re not. In some countries like Iran they rule. In other places they don’t. In some countries they are hard line like in Pakistan, or with Hamaas or the like. In some countries they have softened up considerably – best example being Turkey, but also in Malaysia. In Morocco a lot you have much more “liberalized” interpretations of fundamentalism. And then there is a level higher in that, which is the fact that the Muslim world is no longer a secular place, if it ever was. At least its public arena is not secular in the same sense that America is no longer a secular place. I mean you look at the public discussion in America. People are not, you know, in the streets chanting with fists clenched. They are not killing. They are not doing . . . But that . . . Religious values in a very prominent way is in the public arena, which means that issues such as, you know . . . that . . . such as gay marriage, right to life, prayer, euthanasia, etc. – anything that borders on religious values are now hot button political issues. And there is actually a very strong pressure even in the United States to much more blur boundaries between church and state – prayer in school, having tablets with the Ten Commandments in courthouses, etc., etc. This would not have happened in the ‘60s and in the ‘70s in America. Something happened. Either America became religious, or religion was there and it just came into the public life. That’s also what’s happening in the Muslim world. And partly fundamentalist parties are riding on that tide, because yes it’s true that they benefit from being anti-American. Yes it’s true that fundamentalists benefit from corruption, dictatorship of their governments. Yes it’s true that they take the high moral ground of being the rejection force against America, Israel, and their own government. But they also benefit from being . . . from speaking the language of politics that many Muslims sympathize with in the same way that many average Americans listen to certain politicians and they just like what they hear. The fact that when President Bush in a presidential campaign said, when he was asked who was his favorite philosopher, he said Jesus Christ. It got him enormous amount of votes. He didn’t have to talk policy. His language of politics resonated with pious voters, and the same is also true in the Muslim world. So you have political Islam for organizational and political reasons. But the mood in the Muslim world is not sympathetic necessarily to secularism in the way in which we think of secularism.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript:  Well in the long run democracy has to be the answer.  I mean you know I may be wrong, but everything I’ve been taught in the ivory tower; or everything I’ve learned from reading about the rest of the world will tell you that authoritarianism ultimately is not tenable.  It’s a Band-Aid strategy.  It will work for two years, five years, 10 years; but end of the day it’s inconceivable that the Middle East can continue to grow in terms of demography; to continue to open up to the world and learn things about Internet technology, modern society, etc.  And yet and the gulf between aspirations of the people and the government that they have becomes wider and wider, and nothing will happen.  Logic will dictate to you that ultimately authoritarianism will not last.  And we do see breakdowns.  Look at Pakistan in the past year or so.  We thought that the story in Pakistan is about moderation versus extremism.  This is what we try to market, and the Pakistanis said, “Wait a minute.  That is not the story.  The story is about freedom and rule of law.”  So we have the bizarre epi . . . pictures on New York Times of policemen with long beards beating up on lawyers in suits.  That’s the opposite of what we assumed would be . . . who should be beating whom.  But the reality of it is that we will see more Pakistans happening.  We cannot gauge it.  We have to realize that in the short run, authoritarian regimes may serve short run security stability interests of the United States.  But in the long run, at some point in time, authoritarianism will no longer be the solution as we saw in Pakistan, will become itself the problem.  The dilemma for U.S. foreign policy is that our . . . what we know is right morally; and what we know what should happen in the long run is one thing.  And our short run needs are different.  And our short run needs does not serve things that we know ought to be true in the long run.  And we have never been able to bridge this gap.  In fact the Bush administration was probably the first one which, at least at this level of rhetoric, tried to create a bridge between what is good for the Middle East in the long run and say, “Well that’s good also for the United States in the short run.”  But it bungled the whole thing so abysmally that we’re back to the old way of thinking with a vengeance.  Nobody . . .  Everybody says yes, in the long run we shall all live in the nirvana of democracy; but in the short run our friends are the dictators.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well you know we made a . . . We made a bargain with Musharraf way back in 2001 where we actually . . . We were holding all the chips and he was a lot weaker. Well we made a very bad bargain. We basically gave away everything to him and we got very little in return. The contribution . . . The Pakistan military has helped with the fight against terrorism, but not wholeheartedly. And it’s actually quite uncooperative when it comes to Afghanistan. In fact the Taliban would not be possible . . . The Taliban surge would not have been possible without very explicit Pakistani support. For very strategic reasons, Pakistan has its own interests in Afghanistan which are not the same as ours. We try to constantly focus on the security relationship, arguing that we need the Pakistan military. And we cannot get the Pakistan military to 100 percent support us; but we can get them to support us 40 percent, 50 percent, and that’s better than zero percent. And we gave Pakistan $150 million a year for the level of support we got. We got a military hardware. We elevated them to status of a close ally in the war on terror. And the result is not necessarily satisfactory. Parts of northwest frontier Pakistan are ruled by militants. The Pakistan military is not doing much in terms of gaining offensive against them. But the big problem that we . . . The big mistake we made is that politically we should have not given away the house to Musharraf. We’re giving him money for the security fight, but politically we should have said that we will not tolerate that you destroy political institutions in Pakistan; that you take the leading politicians and send them to exile, and then rip their parties apart. We will not tolerate you changing the Constitution. We will not tolerate you gerrymandering the political process. And you know it is only when he took the ultimate step and the Pakistanis stood up to him that we finally said well, you know, he’s breaking the law. We could have very easily from the beginning been much more resistant to calling him a moderate pro-democracy voice, and giving him a green light to essentially destroy the very institutions that we wanna create in the Palestinian territories or in Egypt. We’re giving millions of dollars to the Arab world to try to create minimal political structures, secular political structures that existed in Pakistan, and he has been destroying them. And I think we could have had a more balanced relationship. The fact that we didn’t structure our relationship with Pakistan very clearly got us to where we are. And the second mistake we made is that we personalize . . . And we always do this, our relationship. Our relationship should be with the military in Pakistan, not with General Musharraf.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well there are going to be areas of the world where this is easier done, and there are areas of the world where this is going to be particularly difficult. There are areas of the world where the general thrust of the interest of the population does not conflict with that of the United States, or this current administration or the next. And there are areas of the world where we have fundamental problems. For instance with Europe, the United States . . . or with China, the United States does not have fundamental conflictual relationship. There are policy disagreements, and there is lack of respect for the way in which we see the world and the way in which we’ve conducted ourselves. So you will say behavioral adjustments on the part of the United States should take this thing out by and large. Consulting Europeans; taking their thinking seriously; having a multilateral approach would . . . You know also taking issues that they like, including global warming, climate change, Kyoto agreement are very important to restoring that relationship. When you look at U.S.’s relationship with Russia or the Muslim world, it’s much more complicated. Because it’s just a matter of simple behavioral adjustment, contrary to what people say. If the United States was to change its language toward Russia, or its language toward the Muslim world, it will help, but ________ somewhat more fundamental problems at play. The United States right now has immersed itself in the Muslim world in multiple wars. It has seen conflict essentially, and its military arm of the United States as the most effective way of managing U.S.’s interests in the Middle East. It has set for itself very maximal goals everywhere you look in the Muslim world, wanting absolute democracy here; absolutely friendly government there; whereas our means and our moral authority don’t match our ambitions, and we find ourselves continuously sinking. And there is . . . We face two problems actually in the Muslim world. One is anger at our policies. The other one is now lack of respect for our abilities. And these are two different problems. It’s one thing if people don’t like you, but they really believe that they should fear you, and that you actually know what you’re doing – that you’re not a . . . you’re not mismanaging and you’re not . . . you’re not incapable of getting _________. Whereas in the Muslim world you have a combination now of lack of respect for what we want; lack of respect for what our policy is; but lack of respect for our capabilities and our wisdom; and that’s particularly bad. And the Muslim world now matters more. One is because geographically it is half the world, if you look at it – from Indonesia to Morocco. Secondly is that we ourselves have elevated the Muslim world and its problems – and particularly the problem of terrorism – to being a global problem, and to being a fundamental focus of American foreign policy. I mean look at it. This is probably the first presidential election I know where the Middle East is breaking and making presidencies; is breaking and making coalitions; is breaking and making the domestic politics in America – the rules of the game. And that means that the Middle East matters enormously to us. And it will, but we have fundamental problems in managing our interests in the Middle East and the Muslim world.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well you know within academia, American academia provides a lot of support for professors for researchers to travel outside of the United States to focus on the countries that they are interested in, go there, spend time. There are yearly scholarships like Fulbright that are a much shorter run scholarship. The problem of knowing the country you’re working on, unless it’s a country like Iran or North Korea, is not really a problem in the United States. There’s ample funding and opportunity to travel. The problem is not to get bogged down in the trees, and to keep a perspective about the forest; to have a broader perspective of where does your little country or your little area fits in much broader trends in the world. And at the same time also it’s a challenge for American academics to remain relevant. Because I think American society is not a society that values intellectuals. It’s not like France. Intellectuals are not a cherished aristocracy within society. They are sort of isolated within their own ivory tower, and it’s very easy for them to just to talk to one another through their own lectures, through their own books, through their own mediums and lose sight of well what is the relevance of what I’m doing for the broader public, for American foreign policy. We often hear this complaint that, well, the United States is planning all these grand things to do in the Middle East. And here are all these experts sitting at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, UCLA, etc., and they actually have no input into policymaking. Nobody asks them questions. And that’s a challenge. That’s a huge challenge that I think is structural to the United States. It’s structural to the way in which the establishment in America – foreign policy establishment, business establishments in New York – really don’t take American intellectuals seriously. University is for education. And then after that the professional lives don’t really interact with academia very effectively.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Vali Nasr. Professor of International Politics at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy of Tufts University. Also Adjunct Senior Fellow for the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations. And Senior Fellow at the Dubai Initiative at the Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University.

I was born in Iran. I lived in Iran until I was 15, 16 years old before I went to school in England. And then the Iranian Revolution happened in 1979. My family left Iran, and I with them. We settled in the United States in Boston. It was right about the time that I started my undergraduate studies at Tufts University. So the events of 1979 in Iran – the revolution; the explosion of Islamic politics in the Middle East at the time; the questions that Americans had about what happened in Iran; what was happening in the Middle East; why Islam had all of a sudden become so important – were very formative. Because in many ways I was impacted by that revolution immensely, and I was in American universities at a time when these questions were becoming increasingly more important.

Well my impressions were not so much shaped by my experiences in Iran, but rather experiences in England, because I went to school in England. My school was like Harry Potter’s school. It was a boarding school with all those kinds of structures that are associated with English boarding schools. And I compare it constantly – the culture of teenagers, and youth, and academia, and what I knew of England – with America. And for me the adjustment was not so much as a Middle Easterner coming to America, but as a student . . . somebody who had gone to high school in England coming to America.

Well while we were in Iran I always thought I might have a life . . . have a future in public life. My father was an academic. He was also involved in public life in Iran. But also once in America I gravitated much more towards an intellectual career. I knew from undergraduate years at Tufts that I wanted to be an academic. Intellectual questions, the idea of the Middle East, debates . . . theoretical debates within comparative politics, history, they always fascinated me. And also when you go to school in Boston, it’s very easy to lose sight of the real world, and to only think of a career that is focused on intellectual questions. And because my . . . I came also from a family of academics, it almost was much more natural for me to go down that road.

Recorded on: 12/3/07

Transcript: Well what happened in the past five, six years is that all the wars and changes in the Middle East actually strengthened Iran’s position. Iran has sort of emerged, if you would, as a great power in the region. Now there are many people who say that’s not really true. This is nothing that Iran did that gave it this status. It actually is a weak country. It has a weak economy. It has a divided society. All of that might be true, but it takes 10 minutes being in the Middle East to know that the Iranians think they are a great power, and the Arabs around them think they are a great power. And a lot of politics is about perception. The perception in the region is that the glass is half full for Iran; it’s half empty for the Arab world. But compared to 2001 or 2002, Iran’s influence in the region has expanded, and the influence of the Arab world has declined; that Iran militarily feels that it has much more elbow room if the U.S. wasn’t there. The Arab countries now feel vulnerable that Iran has effectively penetrated the Arab world. It controls Southern Iraq. It wields a lot of influence in Iraq. Iran is big player now in Lebanon, much more so than before 2006. And look, the Palestinians are now completely divided into two territories. And guess what? The Arab governments are only influential in one territory, and the Iranians are influential in the other one. Iran has a lot more influence than it had in the past. It has much more capability than it had in the past.

The other issues are really a reaction of a reflection of this. In other words the sectarian issues are becoming more important because it falls right in the middle of an Iranian-Arab rivalry. The language of the Arabs in the region is anti-Iran, anti-Shiia. And so long as the Iranians and the Arabs are in this rivalry, the Iranians are Shiias; most of the Arabs are Sunni. Sectarianism is an issue. So ________ relations is an issue. Nationalism becomes very important. The other issue is even the Palestinian issue has become now a political football between Arabs and Iranians. I mean people argue that the whole purpose for an Annapolis Conference and a new peace effort was to create a united Arab front against Iran. So Iran was really the ulterior motive; the bigger fish in the picture. Now for everybody in the region, Iran poses a challenge. For the Arab countries, this is classical balance of power issue. It’s not necessarily just about the Iranian regime. It’s a country of 70 million people – very wealthy, very large, very nationalistic with imperial ambitions going back to the _________ period. It now feels that it’s being let loose in the Persian Gulf. And any country – whether it’s Egypt, Saudi Arabia, _________ – any country reacts to a relative loss of power with anxiety. So everybody looks and says, “Can we go back to rebalancing Iran?” That’s a natural reaction. The United States has a challenge because the United States for a very long time invested in a vision of the Middle East which was based on the idea that the Arab world was the most dominant factor, and stability in the Middle East depends on stability in the Arab world. Now all of a sudden we see that Iran is much more important – from Lebanon, to Palestine issue, to particularly the Persian Gulf where everything we care about right now is over there; and to Iraq, which is our most important issue in the region. Now all of a sudden the Arab world that we invested so much in is not able to control, and influence, and shape things to the extent that was the case five years ago. We have to play catch up with reality. Now one of the ways in which the Bush administration is trying to do this is to take the clock back to 2002. That’s not gonna happen easily, bloodlessly, effortlessly. Iran’s not gonna go back in its cage easy. The question is can we cobble together a new framework for the region that deals with the reality, which is Iran is more influential. Arabs may be a little less. Come to a new balance.

For Israel the problem is very different. Israel and Iran now essentially are the two great powers in this region. The Arab world is sandwiched between. You had for a period a unipolar situation in the Middle East where Israel was conventional military, dominant; the Arab world by and large was becoming an ally of the U.S. Syria or Libya were not mattering much. Iraq was broken down by the U.S. Iran all of a sudden is emerged as the counterweight to Israel. It’s trying to shore up the __________ against Israel, _________ rhetoric against Israel – anti-Holocaust rhetoric; pro-Palestinian rhetoric; rejecting talking, etc. And it’s trying to woo the Arab world away from Israel. And Israel and the United States are trying to woo the Arab world against __________. But that means that the real power players are not the Arab world. The Arab world is the prize in a bigger fight between Israel and Iran over power in this region. Now Israel . . . Whenever you have nuclear capability, there’s always a fear about its use. But I don’t think that’s the really most important issue here. I mean look at South Asia. Pakistan and India hate one another. They have a live issue between them called _________. Ever since they’ve gone nuclear, they haven’t gone to war with one another. There is a nuclear peace in South Asia. Now but the reality is that the issue is a bit more complex. It’s not that whether Iran, the minute it gets the bomb is gonna launch it. First of all Iran is many years away from a bomb, and many years away from getting parity with Israel, which has some 200 nuclear weapons and second strike capability. The reality is that when India and Pakistan each went nuclear, they went different paths. India relaxed. It began to focus on economic growth and real things. Pakistan became much more dangerous. It became much more adventuristic. It would send jihadi fighters into _________ and Afghanistan. And even right now the Pakistanis would do things that other countries would not get away with against the United States, which is giving them money. Why? Because they believe they have some kind of immunity because of a nuclear capability. India will not invade Pakistan even though it has a bigger army. Now the question is which one will Iran be. Will Iran be India, or will Iran be Pakistan? And then the bigger question is an Iranian bomb will play the same role that American nuclear weapons played in Europe during the Cold War. The Soviets had many more tanks, many more soldiers. They could have just walked into Western Europe. We couldn’t match their numbers. But once you have the nuclear weapons in the picture, conventional superiority becomes irrelevant. Nuclear weapons are an equalizers. For in the minds of Middle Eastern countries, Israel has absolute conventional superiority. It has a fantastic military which has proven itself in war. It’s highly technologically advanced, and it has a superb air force. Now the minute you have a nuclear capability, all of that conventional superiority will become irrelevant. So for Israel, a nuclear Iran is an absolute strategic loss. I’m not convinced that there will be nuclear war. I mean one never knows, but I’m not convinced that that’s the most likely scenario, the most likely outcome. But one can be absolutely sure that once Iran has a nuclear weapon, Israel will lose its conventional superiority and the balance of power in the region will shift. Israel will not be able to, for instance, operate in Syria or in South Lebanon with the ease that it does. Many Arab countries that right now complain about Iranian nuclear weapons may actually benefit from a nuclear shield and become a lot more anti-Israeli. And you’ll end up with a much more . . . with a much more constricted Israel in a Middle East which still has many live, unresolved issued that threaten Israel’s security.

Recorded on: 12/3/07