Weapon Program:
- Nuclear
Related Library Documents:
Related Country:
- Afghanistan
- China
- India
- Iran
- North Korea
- Russia
- Saudi Arabia
- Syria
- Venezuela
REP. TOM LANTOS (D-CA): The committee will come to order.
Good morning, everybody. And I want to welcome everybody to the first briefing of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs in the 110th Congress.
Let me just say a word about what our plans are for this year. We will have an extremely full and intensive hearing schedule this afternoon. The secretary of state will appear before us just prior to her leaving for the Middle East.
And in the next few weeks, we will have hearings on NATO in Afghanistan, the global energy future of the United States matching our foreign policy and military strength, Russia under Putin, realistic expectations concerning United Nations under its new management, the continuing tragic saga of Darfur, rebuilding U.S.- European relationships. Following the historic achievement of the India nuclear deal, we have scheduled a hearing on U.S.-India relations.
We will have a hearing on China-U.S. relations, an early hearing with former Secretary of Defense Perry on North Korea. We're planning a hearing on Syria and Lebanon, a hearing on our own hemisphere. And this is just the first 100 -- whatever.
We will have occasional hearings on Mondays and Fridays in view of the five-day schedule announced by Speaker Pelosi, and the committee will do its utmost to have the continued bipartisan and cordial and collegial atmosphere that our former chairman Henry Hyde and I tried to establish.
This era of renewed checks and balances on executive power is off to a promising start. Our panel begins holding briefings and hearings on subjects of vital national vital interest this week, even as our membership is still being determined.
And if I may digress for a moment, I will formally welcome all of our new members individually once the leadership will have completed its selection for service on this committee. At the moment, let me just welcome the new members en bloc and indicate how pleased we are to have them.
In recent years, most especially in the wake of September 11th, Americans have become more keenly conscious of the need to pay attention to foreign policy. The fact that we are getting down to the business of oversight right away is all to the good.
I am delighted formally to greet my very good friend, the distinguished ranking member of the committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida. And I want to congratulate her on taking the reins on her side of the aisle. We look forward to continuing the committee's track record of fair-mindedness, collegiality and strong bipartisanship.
Today, we hold two briefings of tremendous importance to our country's foreign policy. This afternoon, as I indicated, Secretary of State Rice will testify on administration policy toward Iraq and we will anticipate a lively conversation then.
For now, we turn to the vital and, in many ways, related subject of Iran.
Four years ago, our nation undertook a war based on information that turned out to be wrong. Regardless of the position that anyone took in authorizing the use of force, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- the main stated rationale for going to war.
Members of Congress and our compatriots were rallied in an effort to prevent that perceived threat, and in the end it may have cost us dearly in both national security and in prestige.
We will not allow our country to be drawn again into conflict under similar circumstance. We refuse to allow another debacle in a region already fraught with many risks. Our committee will meet regularly and we will seek relentlessly honest explanations from the administration, as well as the insights of the best experts and analysts available.
In the spirit of obtaining the best insights possible, we have invited two leading foreign policy experts, both with vast experience at the highest level of service to the United States government, to discuss U.S. policy toward Iran and the Iranian nuclear program.
This surely is the among the most weighty foreign-policy problems we face, for virtually the whole world now recognizes that Iran is hell-bent on becoming a nuclear-armed power. This is a problem not for any one country, but for the entire civilized world. We must end the Kabuki dance that Tehran has made of diplomacy, pretending to negotiate, only to use the time gained to accelerate its pursuit of nuclear arms.
The answer to the Iran problem is not easy to discern, but one thing is clear: We are making precious little progress towards resolving it.
Nearly three years ago, the administration responded to a letter I wrote regarding Iran by saying, and I quote, "We believe that only sustained, firm, united international pressure on Iran can persuade Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons-related efforts," end quote.
Some efforts that been made in that regard over the past three years, but with results that are totally inadequate. The international community remains deeply disunited, and the pressure on Iran is far too weak to persuade its government to change course.
Iran is growing increasingly confident, even arrogant, about its ability to deflect international efforts to bring to about a halt to its nuclear enrichment activities. Last July, the U.N. Security Council issued an ultimatum: suspend those activities within one month or face sanctions. Iran shrugged off the threat and continued with enrichment.
Nothing that happened subsequently shook Tehran's faith in its own judgment. With Russia and China raising roadblock after roadblock, the Security Council did not act to impose sanctions within one month or even two. Instead, it wrangled for five long months before producing a pathetic set of sanctions that will do almost nothing to deter Iran's reckless pursuit of nuclear arms.
Tehran has contemptuously referred to the resolution that was passed unanimously by the United Nations Security Council as, I quote, "trash paper," end quote.
This is not the first time Tehran has turned its back on world opinion about its quest for nuclear weapons. It passed up an extraordinary opportunity last summer when the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, along with Germany, offered a very generous package of incentives to suspend its military nuclear program, including unprecedented economic incentives and the opportunity for long overdue serious dialogue.
A world with a nuclear-armed Iran would be a very different world, indeed. It would be a world in which Iran, without firing a shot, would be able to intimidate and bully its neighbors, including many who are today allies of the United States.
Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would encourage and inspire religious violent Islamic fanatics around the globe and it would touch off a new nuclear arms race throughout the Middle East. It would vastly increase U.S. obligations to Middle Eastern countries and it would seriously complicate our strategic posture in the region and, indeed, the entire world.
Most importantly, it would put the ultimate weapon of terror into the hands of the world's leading terrorist-supporting state.
No one knows what the Iranians would do with their new nuclear weapon and to whom they might sell it or give it. These are scenarios too serious to contemplate.
Given the nature of the problem, it is obvious that we must use every tool in our diplomatic arsenal to deal with it, including the most basic one, which is dialogue.
I am, frankly, baffled by the debate over whether or not we should engage in dialogue with Iran. Dialogue does not mean defeat. I am passionately committed to dialogue with those with whom we disagree. It presents our best opportunity to persuade and our best opportunity to determine definitively if we have failed to persuade.
During the Cold War, we spoke with Soviet Union, even though they had thousands of nuclear-tipped missiles pointed at our population centers. So it is at best inconsistent to oppose dialogue with Iran when hope remains alive that Tehran might be convinced not to develop nuclear weapons.
John Kennedy's maxim that we should never negotiate out of fear, but we should never fear to negotiate, is as true today regarding Iran as it was when he said it 46 years ago about the Soviet Union. I see no reason to fear dialogue with Iran. In fact, I have sought my own opportunities for dialogue with the leaders in Tehran, to little avail. For the last decade, I have been requesting through a variety of channels, including the secretary general of the United Nations, to obtain a visa to visit Iran and to meet with them.
The truth is that Iran has never made an offer of true dialogue with the United States, and it is not at all clear that its radical clerical and political leadership will ever allow real bilateral talks with what some in Iran have branded the great Satan.
Paradoxically, of course, this does not represent the view of the Iranian people. Overwhelming numbers of Iranians favor dialogue and good relations with the United States, as a respected survey conclusively shows -- a survey which, by the way, landed its author in jail.
We should pursue dialogue with Iran, even as we deploy other diplomatic tools to achieve our goals of suspending and ultimately ending Iran's nuclear military program. We need to take severe economic measures that would deprive Iranian leaders of the resources they need to fund the costly nuclear program. We need to work with the Europeans and others to convince them to divest from Iran.
The administration needs to enforce the Iran Sanctions Act to make sure that companies which invest in Iran's energy sector pay a painful price in relations with the United States. Though it passed Congress by a wide margin, this law remains ignored. But thanks to legislation passed last year, that I had the privilege of cosponsoring with Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen, the administration will either have to impose biting sanctions or attempt to give Congress persuasive and compelling reasons as to why it is continuing to ignore them.
The first test case will come when and if China's state oil company begins to implement the outrageous $16 billion memorandum of understanding it recently signed to develop Iran's North Pars (ph) natural gas fields. I have called for a comprehensive closed briefing from the Department of State on this development. I can assure you that this committee will hold the administration's feet to the fire, demanding biting sanction.
Iran has inherited an ancient and marvelous culture. The value of its contributions to the world of literature and the visual arts and many other areas is inestimable. Millions of its citizens respect cultures and religions other than their own. The Iranian people deserve leaders who are worthy of their noble traditions.
We need to find a diplomatic way to resolve our problems with Iran -- not only the nuclear issue, but all others, including Iranian support for Hezbollah, Hamas and Iraqi terrorists. We need to address Iran's significant restrictions on the freedom of its own people.
Our witnesses today have given considerable thought to these issues and we hope their views will help guide us to some useful insights.
Now it's my pleasure to turn to my good friend, our ranking member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for any comments she may choose to make on this subject in which she has been so actively engaged.
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen?
ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN
A Congresswoman from Florida, and
Ranking Member of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs
REP. ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN (R-FL): Thank you so much. Thank you, Chairman Lantos. Congratulations on your new position. And I look forward to a strong and fruitful relationship with you as the chairman and me as the ranking member. And we've gotten along in a very strong bipartisan way and I know that that will continue even though those difficulties and the challenges that we face are many.
I will also refrain from mentioning our new members until we have formally organized, as well as our ranking members, and introduce the staff when we formally get organized. But I want to thank you for holding this briefing and thank the witnesses who are appearing before us.
Ambassador Pickering and Director Woolsey, we thank you for your service.
And indeed, Mr. Chairman, among the highest priorities for the United States is creating a long-term strategy toward Iran. The threats posed to the United States and the West by the regime in Tehran have been clear for decades. And we all agree that they are growing.
The line in the sand was first drawn in 1979 when Iranian revolutionaries took over our embassy and held American hostages for 444 days. From that moment onward, the Iranian regime continued to directly challenge the United States and the West through terrorist attacks against our citizens and our interests, carried out by its terrorist proxies.
We must, therefore, not fool ourselves into thinking that the Iranian threat will somehow go away if we simply talk to them, for that may be a path to disaster.
Diplomacy does not mean surrender. Iran is the number-one state sponsor of terrorism, enabling the murder of countless civilians and endangering international security by supplying weapons, funding, training and sanctuary to terrorists groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas.
Iran continues to supply the Shiite Islamist groups in Iraq with money, with training and weapons, such as the improvised explosive devices -- the IEDs -- that are used to target our U.S. and our coalition troops in Iraq. Iran's support for these extremist groups is a major factor in the sectarian strife and attacks that are taking place daily in Iraq.
Iran's goals include regional domination, which is an alarming prospect, as this would result in Iran acquiring control over the world's oil supply, along with undermining and overthrowing our allies and destroying our ability to protect our interests in the region.
The reach and the threat from Iran is not limited to the Middle East, however. We were reminded last fall that it has long been active in our own hemisphere. At that time, Argentine prosecutors indicted several senior Iranian officials, as well as Iran's surrogate terrorist organization, Hezbollah, for the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in July 1994.
Unfortunately, due to what some have referred to as benign neglect, Iran's influence in our backyard continues to grow. There is increasingly close cooperation between Iran and Venezuela. Iranian leaders have offered to help Hugo Chavez build a nuclear program, and Chavez, in turn, recently awarded the president of Iran one of Venezuela's highest honors.
But there's even more of an ambitious agenda at hand. Iran's self-proclaimed goal is the promotion and direction of an Islamic revolution worldwide -- one directed at the West as a whole.
The United States has taken on almost the entire burden of confronting the growing Iranian threat, but we cannot do it alone if we hope to be successful. It is essential that our allies and responsible nations understand that Iran's determination to acquire a capacity to build nuclear weapons is a threat to all.
They must be willing to make sacrifices, as the U.S. has already done, to deny Iran the technological, the financial, and the political resources to continue along this destructive path.
However, that level of commitment has been slow in coming. A generous incentives package was offered by the West to Iran, as the chairman pointed out, to suspend its uranium-enrichment program, one the entire world knows is intended to produce a nuclear weapon.
An August deadline was established by the United Nations Security Council for Iran to fulfill its obligations and comply with the request made by the IAEA and the United Nations Security Council. Months elapsed before the U.N. took any further action, and Iran has still not complied.
Regrettably, the weak international response to this deadline has thereby convinced Iran and its leaders that its behaviors will go unpunished and may even be rewarded.
If Iran's pursuit of nuclear weapons is successful, it would radically transform the balance of power in the Middle East. A nuclear-armed Iran could spur a crash program by the Sunni-majority nations such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia to develop or acquire nuclear weapons in order to defend themselves.
Last week, in fact, President Mubarak of Egypt stated that if Iran obtains nuclear weapons, his country will be forced to begin developing its own nuclear weapons.
Some have argued that the solution to the Iranian sponsorship of global terrorism and its development of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons is to engage in direct talks with the Iranian regime.
I strongly disagree, Mr. Chairman. I support the position taken by Mr. Woolsey and Senator Kyl in a recent letter to President Bush, addressing the specific recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. In this letter, they posit that the negotiations with Iran would legitimatize the extremist regime, would embolden our enemies and would allow the Iranian radicals to buy more time to develop weapons of mass destruction.
I hope there's no need to remind anyone that the U.S. policy for several administrations has been to not negotiate with terrorists. Instead, we must convince responsible nations to increase pressure on the Iranian regime and deprive it of the resources it needs to continue its destructive policies.
If our allies stop or at least reduce their investments in Iran and their support for loans and other assistance to this pariah state, we could severely hamper the Iranian regime, given their Iranians' economy's heavy dependence on oil and gas.
As part of this effort, my distinguished colleague, Chairman Lantos, and I authored the Iranian Freedom Support Act, which you spoke about, Mr. Chairman, which among other provisions, calls for sanctions on companies and individuals investing in the energy sector in Iran. The bill was signed into law in September and it is already being used for great effect.
Already, a number of foreign banks have refused to engage in investment and financing of the Iranian energy sector. For example, a Japanese company recently backed out of a $2 billion contract to develop Iranian oil fields. In addition, we are currently reviewing an agreement between China and Iran, under which a Chinese company would invest billions to develop the Iranian oil fields and gas fields.
If the Chinese company is found to be in violation of the bill that Chairman Lantos and I authored, my colleagues and I in the Congress will seek to ensure, as the chairman had said, that the Chinese entity is penalized to the fullest extent of the law.
And equally disturbing is this week's signing of a multibillion dollar deal between Iran and Malaysia to develop Iran's southern gas fields, as well as the recent reports of new investment by France's Total and ongoing developments in the construction of a gas pipeline from Iran to South Asian nations with a possible extension to China.
In order to maintain the pressure on Iran, I plan to introduce two bills in this Congress. The first would target Iran's energy sector by encouraging public and private pension and thrift-saving plans to divest from U.S. and foreign companies that have invested $20 million or more in that sector.
The second bill would seek to make Iran pay for what they did to our former hostages in Iran and would ensure that these brave Americans would be able to pursue the resolution of their judgments in U.S. courts by seeking to remove the restrictions that were placed there by the Algiers Accord of 1981.
I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to secure passage of these bills in the near future and develop additional measures to tighten the stranglehold on the terrorist regime in Tehran.
We might have hoped that with the passage of time, Iran's leaders would gradually moderate their policies and seek to reconcile themselves with the international community, but they have not. The rhetoric alone demonstrates that they may be in the process of becoming even more radical. The regime has called for Israel to be wiped off the map, continues to refer to the United States as the great Satan, and hosted an appalling conference aimed at denying the Holocaust.
Ultimately, a country must be measured in terms of not only of its actions, but in terms of its goals as well, and these strike at the very heart of our security. The challenge cannot be wished away or negotiated away. It cannot be bought off nor ignored. There are no magic words to be uttered at the U.N. Security Council that will deliver us. We have few allies.
These are unpleasant facts, but we have no real choice but to accept them and meet them, for the alternative is to surrender the shaping of our future to a mortal enemy.
I look forward to receiving the remarks, the insight and the recommendations of our panelists for the next steps of U.S. policy, a policy that will not just delay and contain the threat, but compel Iran to permanently and verifiably stop its support for terrorism and its pursuit of deadly, unconventional weapons.
I'd like to thank, again, the chairman for this opportunity.
LANTOS: I want to thank the distinguished ranking member for a comprehensive and substantive statement.
I will now yield three minutes each to the incoming chair and ranking member of the Middle East and South Asia subcommittee, Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Pence, and the incoming chair and ranking member of the Terrorism, Nonproliferation and Trade Subcommittee, Mr. Sherman and Mr. Royce.
We will then entertain one-minute comments from other members who so desire. All members may submit their statements for the record.
Mr. Ackerman?
ACKERMAN: Thank you.
Mr. Chairman, before I begin my statement, on behalf of all of us, I'm sure, I want to express our congratulations to you on becoming chairman of the committee.
Whether you believe in fate or preordination or destiny or prayer or luck and hard work, those of us who know a little bit about your story cannot help but marvel at somebody on a journey -- having been on a train to Hitler's death camp -- was able to get off and wind up, after a long journey, as the chairman of the committee that has oversight on foreign policy in the greatest country in the world.
And we're also so happy to have your bride, who was with you then and always, here to witness your first day as chairman.
Congratulations.
(APPLAUSE)
And also on behalf of all of us on this side, especially, we want to congratulate Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, with whom we have had the pleasure of working for so many years on a very nonpartisan basis to accomplish so many of the things.
It's very, very pleasing to see you in your position, especially as the ranking member...
(LAUGHTER)
Congratulations.
Mr. Chairman, thank you for scheduling today's hearing on what is among the most pressing problems confronting us in the Middle East. I'm sure many of us remember the movie "Groundhog Day." Bill Murray gets up in the morning and relives the same day over and over and over again.
Well, that's what the Bush administration's policy towards Iran reminds me of. We get up every day and relive the same Iranian nightmare over and over.
In this movie the nightmare goes like this. The guy who plays Ahmadinejad issues a statement in which he denounce the West, calls for Israel's destruction and then redoubles Iran's effort to enrich uranium.
The guys who play the European Union wring their collective hands, expresses their secure regret over Iran's Holocaust denial and asks for further negotiation.
The guys who play Russia and China stand mute.
And the United States condemns the Iranian leadership, expresses great love and support for Israel, and presses for further sanctions.
And then nothing happens.
But we wake up the next morning and go through the whole thing again and again and yet again.
The problem is that while we go through the motions, Iran enriches uranium. While the E.U. calls for more negotiations, Iran enriches uranium. While Russia and China stand like statues, Iran enriches uranium. And as the United States demand sanctions, Iran enriches uranium.
The only one who's making progress in this movie is Iran, and it is progress towards a nuclear capability that we cannot afford.
In Iran we have exactly what we thought we had in Iraq: a state with enormous wealth from oil, significant WMD capabilities with the means to deliver them, and an addiction to terrorist organizations as an instrument of state policy.
But what has amazed me most over the last six years is the stunning lack of urgency in which the Bush administration has approached this problem.
I'll be the first to admit that our policy options towards Iran are unappetizing at best. We have little diplomatic leverage since we generally don't talk with them and an invasion is likely beyond our means.
Even targeted air strikes would have only marginal effect on Iran's nuclear program since we don't know where all of it is and we wouldn't know how much damage we had done. Besides, such attacks would dissolve what is left of our national reputation and prompt Iranian retaliation against us in Iraq.
So we're left with the option of multilateral diplomacy, which I believe is the right course, but that is a game for which the Bush administration has shown little talent or appetite.
If a nuclear-armed Iran is very destabilizing, as the president has said, then he needs to make that much, much clearer than he has to both Russia and China.
In short, Iran needs to become urgent for the president before it will become urgent for anybody else. Only concerted, sustained, multilateral pressure has any chance of convincing Iran to change course and only the president can make that happen.
The key here, Mr. Chairman, is concerted, sustained and effective sanctions, something which the administration has recently started to deliver with financial transactions, but which the most recent U.N. Security Council resolution has thus far failed to deliver.
And so as the deadlines approach and then pass for Iran to comply, we will all wake up at the beginning of another Groundhog Day.
I thank you, Mr. Chairman, and look forward to hearing from today's very distinguished movie critics about how to stop reliving the same Iranian nightmare.
LANTOS: Thank you very much, Mr. Ackerman.
Mr. Royce?
ROYCE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and I look forward with working with you and with our ranking member on these critical issues, including Iran, in the 110th Congress.
I think that this committee has forged a bipartisan consensus and approach in pressuring Tehran. And I think this is a very important mission that we're undertaking here.
Because, as pointed out, the extremist government in Iran has accelerated its attempts to seek nuclear weapons, accelerated its support for Hezbollah, and is destabilizing Iraq. And as reported by the Treasury Department this week, Iran's oldest and fifth-largest bank has been facilitating the acquisition of missile components from North Korea.
I think it's important as we approach Iran to understand that Iranian society is not monolithic. We saw in the recent elections the reality of the frustration of the Iranian people. Unemployment is over 20 percent, the inflation is over 20 percent. And, frankly, 50 prominent economists inside Iran have written an appeal -- open letter -- to the president asking him to cease his command-and-control reorganization of the economy that is bankrupting -- that is destroying, in their view -- the economy of the country.
It is because of this that we'll have to be creative in our approach to this problem. And there are a number of different avenues we can use to keep this reactionary regime in check, and one avenue is the financial lever.
I think that as the West realizes the magnitude of the economic shambles that Ahmadinejad is creating in the country and begins to -- as we watch the financial institutions pulling out as they suspect the economy is going to implode -- it's going to be harder and harder for Iran to move hard currency around the globe. And the result of this is it's going to force this regime into more expensive alternative financial markets.
This week the German bank -- Commerce Bank (ph) -- second largest in the country -- announced that it will cease clearing large volumes of Iran's dollar transactions. This is nothing new. Banks all over Europe and Japan are pulling out of Iran.
We should be looking at all options in the West for squeezing Iran economically. We know it is having an effect.
Last month, Iran's oil minister admitted that this financial pressure has stunted its oil industry. It now has to import 42 percent of its refined gasoline.
Now, as economically the West reacts rationally to this, we see China taking a difference course. CNOOC, in China, has signed a memorandum of understanding that, if it comes to fruition, would bring Iran $16 billion worth of Chinese investment, which is very disturbing.
This is not an action responsible countries take. And this concerns our relationship with China and should concern every member of this committee.
So I look forward to hearing the recommendations of Mr. Woolsey and Ambassador Pickering. And I look forward with working with the chairman and ranking member to further forge a bipartisan coalition and approach to how we're going to handle this major challenge.
Thank you, again, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: Thank you, Mr. Royce.
Mr. Sherman?
SHERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to working with you in the years to come as chair of this committee. Mr. Ackerman commented on your inspirational past. I think we have a great and exciting future as this committee I think, in the future, will play its proper role in helping to form U.S. Foreign policy.
I also look forward to serving with the ranking member, who I think will help this committee achieve its proper importance and role, and I think she could serve in the role of ranking member year after year after year in that capacity.
Mr. Ackerman commented on "Groundhog Day." I would point out that in that movie, Bill Murray learns something every Groundhog Day, gets better and better and eventually achieves his objective. I only wish that that was true of how we're handling Iran.
Preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons should be the primary objective of American foreign policy. A nuclear Iran has -- its program has already sparked region-wide efforts at proliferation.
If the Iranian government were close to being overthrown, and I hope that day comes, it could smuggle a nuclear weapon into the United States and explode one either in a hope that that would make it more popular to its home audience or in the idea that if they're going to go out, they want to go out with a bang.
A failed Iraq posed less danger to America than a nuclear Iran. While talking to Iran may very well help our image around the world, I don't think it will change Iranian policy.
We can change Iranian policy on its nuclear program only with extreme Security Council sanctions. The mere adoption of such sanctions would have a political impact on Iran. It would also have a dramatic economic impact, building on the points that Mr. Royce mentioned. A ban on selling refined petroleum products to Iran would dislocate its economy.
Now, for the hard part: How do we go from a situation in which the Security Council has adopted the most pathetic sanctions over the most extreme Russian and Chinese opposition to the kind of extreme sanctions that would dislocate Tehran or at least bring them to the negotiating table?
Only a dramatic change in Russian policy, along with the acquiescence of China, will allow extreme Security Council sanctions.
Now, we can try to get Russia to change its policy by what we have been doing, "Groundhog Day" style. We can beg. We can lecture. That hasn't worked. But bargaining probably would. Because Russia cares enormously about issues in its own region -- Chechnya, Abkhazia, the route of Caspian oil pipelines, the pipeline situation through Belarus and the Ukraine, and the treatment of Russian-speaking peoples in Moldova, Latvia and Estonia.
The national security of the United States depends upon our ability to gain Russian support on the Iran issue in return for reasonable accommodations on issues in Russia's region.
The State Department bureaucracy is strongly prejudiced against linking Russian policy on Iran with our policy on issues in Russia's region. First, the State Department is a bureaucracy. They've got a bureau on Moldova. They've got a bureau on Abkhazia. And those bureaucrats will scream loudly if their pet issue is sacrificed for a greater national security concern.
Second, there are those in the administration with such a high estimate of our national power that they can believe we can achieve all objectives simultaneously and do not need to prioritize.
And finally, many American foreign-policy experts grew up in the Soviet era, strategizing how to encircle and weaken Russia. And, unfortunately, Mr. Chairman, old habits die hard.
LANTOS: Gentleman's time has expired.
SHERMAN: I thank you.
LANTOS: Mr. Pence?
PENCE: I thank the chairman for the opportunity to make an opening statement, and I wish to congratulate the chairman on this first hearing. I am honored to be a part of the committee. And while still smarting from the outcome of Election Day 2006, I know that the dignity and the principle and the leadership that you'll bring to this committee will serve our nation.
To the ranking member, I am very grateful for the opportunity to serve on the committee again, and I'm especially humbled to have the opportunity to follow in your footsteps as the ranking member of the Middle East Subcommittee.
I hope to bring to that role and to my second turn on this committee the kind of practical common-sense Midwestern conservatism that my mentor in the Senate, Senator Lugar, has brought to these issues for many years. I know these witnesses are longtime associates of Senator Lugar, as well as the leadership of this committee. And other than the interests of the people of eastern Indiana and the values that they represent, standing with our cherished ally Israel and expanding our tent pegs in this troubled region of the world, I have no higher priority. And I'm very humbled to be a part of this committee and this hearing and yield back.
LANTOS: Thank you, Mr. Pence.
I will give an opportunity now, as I indicated, to every member of the committee to make a one-minute opening comment if he or she chooses.
Mr. Berman?
BERMAN: Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. And congratulations both to you and Ileana. And I look forward to the next two years.
What I'm hoping -- at the point where we eventually hear the witnesses -- is we have two very different views at the table from two very eminent people. Ambassador Pickering throws out the notion of the grand bargain. And his testimony and his earlier writings on this subject have laid out a sort of multifaceted and well-thought-out proposal.
I'm curious about Jim Woolsey's reaction to that proposal, and I'm curious about Ambassador Pickering's reaction to Jim Woolsey's suggestion that efforts not so different made perhaps during the Cold War to destabilize through assertive radio, through support for dissidents or reformers and democratic forces within Iran, is a more effective way to achieve a goal, I think on a bipartisan basis, we all share.
I'm also curious for each response to the Iraq Study Group's proposal. Can you discuss opening up a dialogue with Iran just on Iraq or are you ultimately forced as an administration to determine whether you are ready for the grand bargain before there's any likelihood that such a dialogue is going to produce anything?
LANTOS: Gentleman's time has expired.
BERMAN: And I would be curious about those issues.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: Thank you.
Mr. Smith?
C. SMITH: Thank you. Congratulations again, to you, Mr. Chairman, and to Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. I know this will be a true bipartisan committee with great leadership from the both of you, so I congratulate you.
Mr. Chairman, the threat of Iranian nuclear weapons is among the most urgent, dangerous and vexing issues the United States and the world faces today. This briefing today will shed some insight on what prudent steps have and might be taken to mitigate this emerging threat.
I believe that Iran's obsession with the acquisition of nuclear weapons, however, is a symptom, not a cause, but a symptom of a regime that systematically violates fundamental human rights.
The U.S. Department of State and numerous human-rights organizations have chronicled with chilling detail the pervasive abuse of fundamental human rights. Pope John Paul II once said, "If you want peace, work for justice." And I would be interested in knowing what our distinguished panel would suggest how human rights might be more effectively promoted in Iran.
Both of our witnesses know so well that the demise of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact nation was facilitated, in large part, by the promotion of human rights. Thus far, the newly constituted Human Rights Council hasn't raised, nor has it investigated, Iran's egregious human-rights record, and I think that's appalling.
And finally, I'd like to underscore the importance of dialogue. I met with President Khatami when he was in town in September. I raised the issue of the Holocaust denial, which is outrageous. I raised a number of human-rights issues, especially political prisoners. And it was a give-and-take.
We can't expect, you know, great things to happen from dialogue, but I think it is an important component to any means to the important end, and that is an Iran that is a democracy and does not pose a threat to its neighbors or the world.
Yield back the balance of my time.
LANTOS: Thank you very much.
Mr. Payne?
PAYNE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me congratulate you on this great achievement, and to the ranking member on her great record.
Mr. Pickering, it's good to have you here. Your background is exemplary and we look forward to hearing from you, if that happens today.
And then, Mr. Woolsey.
Let me just say that I agree with the chairman that we ought to have negotiations with people. It's difficult to try to get things accomplished without having a conversation.
But I also hope as we move -- and I commend the chairman for such an aggressive schedule -- as we look at our position in the world, we are losing every day. We have to change courses because we are the strongest, the greatest, the best country in this world.
But when we look at the axis of evil that were talked about -- Iran, Iraq and North Korea -- we're in the worst position with all of them. Look at the newly independent states -- they're going the wrong way. If we take a look at what's happening in other areas, we are not progressing the way that I would hope that we would.
So I look forward to working with the chairman. I would like to understand policies where we have attacked three so-called Al-Qaeda operatives in Somalia. They've been there for 10 years, it was decided two weeks ago, I guess, that we should go after them. And we have 450,000 people dead in the Sudan, where we simply asked, why don't we have a no-fly zone just to prevent these murderers in Sudan from continually killing innocent people?
And so, I'm still trying to get some semblance of our foreign policy...
LANTOS: Gentleman's time has expired.
PAYNE: ... which seems chaotic.
Thank you.
LANTOS: Mr. Rohrabacher?
ROHRBACHER: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.
It is symbolic that our Congress has, as leaders of our committee that oversee American foreign policy, two individuals who personify the relationship that our country has for the cause of human freedom.
Mr. Lantos and Ms. Ros-Lehtinen are individuals who both trace their roots back to -- what? -- an America that provides refuge for people who are victims of Communism and, yes, victims of Nazism before that -- victims of tyranny. The United States plays a special role in this world. And if we don't play that role correctly and we don't have strength and courage to stand up to those principles of justice and liberty for all, which our founding fathers set down for us over two centuries ago, then we are doing a great disservice to humankind.
And I personally want to thank both of you and congratulate both of you. And I look forward to working with you in confronting the challenge that freedom faces today -- the challenge of radical Islam, especially as exemplified by Iran.
We will do what we have to do because we are Americans and America has a role to play in this world. If we fail, humankind will go into darkness and individuals like yourselves -- families around the world who look to America for hope -- will have no hope at all.
So, thank you, Mr. Lantos, Ms. Ros-Lehtinen. I'm looking forward to working with both of you and meeting these tremendous challenges our generation faces.
LANTOS: Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher.
Mr. Wexler?
WEXLER: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I want to echo the accolades that we have all heard with respect to the chairman and the ranking member, both of whom I hold in the highest regard.
Mr. Chairman, I think the president made the correct decision in the winter of 2005 when he went to Brussels and endorsed the effort of the E.U.-3 in terms of their negotiating with Iran.
I think the president made yet another correct decision when he endorsed the Russian proposal, which would have enrichment occur in Russia rather than Iran. I think the president made another correct decision when he endorsed the European effort to offer incentives.
We all know that all three of those efforts have essentially failed, but they led to the first round of multinational discussions at the U.N., which led to the first round of sanctions -- granted, a minimal level of sanctions.
The question before this committee and before the country, I would respectfully suggest, is whether or not direct negotiations with Iran at this point in time would enhance or detract from America's national security interests and whether or not it would enhance or detract from our ability to dissuade, persuade, force -- whatever word you like to use -- the Iranians from developing their nuclear program.
And, respectfully, for those who categorically reject a degree of dialogue with Iran, history is replete with examples where America has engaged with our enemies, engaged with those in which we disagree with, and we, as a result of engagement, have enhanced our security interests.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: Thank you.
Mr. Chabot?
CHABOT: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll be brief in my remarks.
I would first say that since Iran is one of the most serious challenges that this nation and this Congress face in the upcoming years, I think it's appropriate that we're having this as our first hearing.
And I would note that I welcome and look forward to the chairmanship of Mr. Lantos and also look forward to the ranking member. Both of them have very gripping personal stories and we look forward -- we've had some very distinguished people both chairing and ranking, from Henry Hyde and Ben Gilman and Lee Hamilton, and now, Mr. Lantos and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. And so, I think we have tremendous leadership.
And I would just conclude by stating for the record that there is no one I would rather see chairing this committee other than Mr. Lantos -- other, of course, than any other Republican. So, thank you.
(LAUGHTER)
LANTOS: Mr. Engel?
ENGEL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And I, too, want to congratulate you. I can think of no one in the entire Congress who's more qualified to be chair of this committee than you.
And I'm personally delighted, having worked with you so many years, and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen as well. She and I introduced the Syria Accountability Act and we worked very hard to get it passed. And I know of her great work. And she'll be a great ranking member of this committee.
I believe that, other than perhaps North Korea, Iran poses the greatest threat to world peace. And I think that it is certainly something that we really need to focus on.
The sad thing is that the Iranians know that we are bogged down in Iraq and they have acted accordingly, and we need to respond.
I am delighted with both witnesses here. Ambassador Pickering has a long and distinguished record, and I've followed his statements for years and years and I look forward to his testimony.
And I also want to say to Mr. Woolsey -- I've worked with him on the Set America Free Coalition to make the U.S. energy independent, and I admire his good work as well.
So I'm going stop because these poor gentlemen have to listen to all of us before we listen to them and I'm very eager to hear what they have to say.
LANTOS: Thank you very much.
ENGEL: Thank you.
LANTOS: Mr. Paul?
PAUL: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
So far the comments I've heard are rather frightening. I'm afraid we're going in the wrong direction.
I sense that there's a bit of gross overreaction to the concerns that we have about Iran. I think everything I've heard today about Iran could be applied to Iraq. What about a nuclear -- I'm sorry, to Pakistan. We have a nuclear Pakistan. Pakistan is run by a military dictator. He's vulnerable to overthrow. He took over by ousting an elected leader. And some claim -- and it's reasonable to assume that they're sympathetic to the Taliban. And who knows, Osama bin Laden may well even be in Pakistan.
So I think this is gross overreaction, considering the fact that we created most of the problems anyway. It was in 1953, it wasn't in 1979 when this problem started, it was '53 when the United States went in and put in their own dictator, the shah -- a ruthless dictator.
So we have to look at the entire history to realize how we contribute to some of our problems. And this is some blowback that we're getting -- the unintended consequences. And it's the overall policy that, I think, puts us in such great danger.
And all the arguments used by the same people to generate this excitement about going into Iraq are doing this to Iran. We have to consider some negotiations and talking because even today we're considering what day will we be bombing Iran, tragically.
LANTOS: Gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Meeks?
MEEKS: Thank you, Mr. Chair. And I want to join the chorus in congratulating you and Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen. I think that this committee is uniquely, now, situated with your leadership to really establish foreign policy from the House of Representatives.
I think it's appropriate on multiple levels that we're here today to discuss the U.S. relationship with Iran on the heels of President Bush's speech about the costs he will pursue in Iraq and the reported raid on Iranian consulate by U.S. troops in Iraq last night.
Unfortunately, what I heard from the president yesterday is an unwillingness to change strategy in Iraq. Escalation is the polar opposite of what the majority of informed Americans want to see happen in the Iraq war. The mistakes are obvious to the American people, and that is precisely why they no longer consent to this failed, stay-the- course strategy.
This briefing and the series of hearings to come are critical to our moving forward and informing the committee and the American people as to what can work to our best interests in our nation's foreign policy. It is my hope that we can determine what it will take to get beyond our policy failures and develop proactive strategies for engagement in the Middle East.
I have contended for some time that the challenges we face with Iran should be at the top of our most pressing national-security issues. In fact, I stated that I thought we should be focused on Iran as opposed to Iraq some three and a half to four years ago.
Now, with the deteriorating situation in Iraq, it is even more imperative that we turn our attention in a meaningful way to the question of Iran's nuclear program and Iran's role in the Middle East region and in Iraq.
I welcome the opportunity to hear from our witnesses today, particularly on enforcement of the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1737, imposing mandatory sanction on Iran, and the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group that suggests we must include Iran in regional and international diplomacy efforts to stabilize it.
LANTOS: Gentleman's time has expired.
Mrs. Davis?
DAVIS: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I'll reserve my time to hear the witnesses.
LANTOS: Mr. Sires?
SIRES: Mr. Chairman, I just want to say it's an honor to serve on this committee. I look forward to working with you and the ranking member, and I just really want to hear what they have to say.
LANTOS: We are delighted to have you with us.
Mr. Wilson?
WILSON: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Thank you, Ambassador.
Thank you, Mr. Woolsey, for being here today.
I look forward to your briefing us on this extraordinary important situation of Iran.
I, too, want to commend the chairman on his assuming chairmanship. He's my next-door neighbor here in Washington. And so I want you all to know he works tirelessly. He's in and out all the time.
Finally, on our ranking member, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, I want to thank her. She has been my mentor from the moment I got here. And so for five years she's been a dear friend and a stalwart for good government in our country.
As we approach what we're doing, we've got a chairman and a ranking member who, I think, share the optimism that I have, and that is that we are living in a world with a lot of challenges. But we should recognize there is a greater spread of democracy and freedom today than in the history of the world. And so I would rather that we approach, as a positive way, the future rather than dwell and be perpetually in a feeling of funk.
Thank you, again, for being here today.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Ranking Member.
LANTOS: Thank you.
Mr. Boozman?
BOOZMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Woolsey, I appreciate you, in your testimony, talking about the importance of the equivalent (ph) of Voice of America, again, and how important that is. In traveling that region and visiting with various countries, my impression is, in fact, they very bluntly say that they don't feel like it is credible. It seems like that, you know, we've got a number of problems to deal with, but that is a doable problem.
And I hope, Mr. Chairman, that that's something that the committee can very aggressively hold accountable, that we really do have a good program that is well thought of in the region. Thank you.
LANTOS: Ambassador Watson?
WATSON: Thank you, Chairman Lantos.
And I, too, join the chorus of commending and congratulating you and my good friend, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, for your leadership of the new Foreign Affairs Committee.
In my opinion, the crisis in Iraq has preempted other critical world issues. It's given Iran time to do a resurgence. And I just was given a bulletin just a few minutes ago that talks about a raid by U.S. troops on the Iranian consulate in Iraq. And that's Iranian land. And we captured five personnel from the embassy.
So I would like to hear from both the ambassador and the director. And I thank them for coming and waiting through all of our comments. But I'll be looking forward to hearing your comment on the raid that took place while the president was making his statement on a forward approach to Iraq.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: Thank you.
Mr. Barrett?
BARRETT: Congratulations, again, Mr. Chairman. I'll reserve my time for the witnesses.
LANTOS: Mr. Inglis?
INGLIS: Congratulations, Mr. Chairman, and to Madam Ranking Member. And I'm very happy to be on the committee and looking forward to hearing from the witnesses.
LANTOS: Thank you very much
And I want to extend my apology to our distinguished witnesses, but this is the first hearing of the committee and I thought it was important every member have an opportunity to say what was on their mind.
To address the range of difficult issues facing our policy toward Iran, we are extremely fortunate to have a panel that encompasses the best wisdom and foreign policy experience that Washington has to offer.
Ambassador Tom Pickering is one of our most brilliant diplomats. His diplomatic career spans more than four decades and includes, among many others, positions as undersecretary of state for political affairs and ambassador to the United Nations, to the Soviet Union, to Russia, to India, to Israel, to Jordan, to Nigeria and to El Salvador. And I saw him in all of those places.
He held numerous other positions at the Department of State, including executive secretary and special assistant to Secretaries Rogers and Kissinger.
He retired with the personal rank of career ambassador -- the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service. Following his departure from our Department of State, he became the senior vice president for international relations at Boeing, a position from which he retired last year.
And Ambassador Pickering, we are honored to have you.
PICKERING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And if it is not a breach of protocol, let me, if I may, congratulate you on your assumption of chairmanship...
LANTOS: Go ahead and breach protocol.
(LAUGHTER)
PICKERING: ... and to congratulate the ranking minority leader, Mrs. Ros-Lehtinen, on her important and responsible role.
THOMAS PICKERING
Former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs,
U.S. Department of State
And let me begin by saying I'm very pleased to join with Jim Woolsey here on this panel.
I'm honored to have been asked to provide testimony this morning on what we can do to deal with Iran and the challenges which that country presents for our policy both in the region and beyond.
As requested, I will focus mainly on the political aspects of the issue and on a possible diplomatic solution or solutions, as well as the attitudes of other states toward possible solutions.
The key issue, which you have all pointed out, separating the United States and many other states from Iran, is Iran's nuclear program. The International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors has found Iran in violation of its obligations of the Non- Proliferation Treaty. A number of states have joined the United States in its serious concerns about Iran's nuclear program over the fact that it may well be a project for developing nuclear weapons capability.
I don't intend to rehearse all that information here this morning, but as a result of having reviewed it, I begin with the presumption that we should have a well-founded concern that Iran's interest in nuclear development is for the purpose of acquiring weapons, despite their public professions to the contrary.
Iran's internal politics, which bear on this, resemble a puzzle inside a mystery wrapped in an enigma -- a phrase which Winston Churchill famously used to describe the Soviet Union.
Few, even among Iranians, I think, have clear consistent insights.
But how does this question of the opaqueness of Iran's internal politics play out regarding the potential for a negotiation with the United States, a question which you and others have asked.
An Iranian friend of mine once summarized the issue in the best way I have yet heard: When the United States has been ready to talk, Iran has not been, and the opposite is also true. Right now, it seems that the United States is not ready for talks. His conclusion is that Iran is. My approach below is to try to find the right way to test that conclusion.
There are, in addition to the nuclear question, a number of other issues to be contended with from America's perspective -- Iran's support for terrorists in the region, Iran's opposition to Middle East peace, Iranian activities inside Iraq, Iran-Syrian cooperation on many of these issues, Iran's mistreatment of its religious and other minorities, the human rights concern.
Others in the region share these concerns with us about Iran's power-projection intentions with respect to the region.
Iran, too, has raised concerns about American policies and activities, including U.S. public professions of support for regime change and a stated interest of some in the U.S. to use force against Iran; the failure to reach a full and complete settlement in the proceedings at the Hague on outstanding reciprocal financial claims; and U.S. military activity against Iran, including the shootdown of an Iranian civil aircraft and attacks against Iranian oil platforms in retaliation, I might add, for Iranian mining and other activities in the Gulf in the past years.
As with most of these issues, there are a number of options. Setting aside merely standing by while Iran develops a military nuclear capability -- something that I believe we can all join in being against -- I see two serious standout opportunities that offer prospects for change.
One is the use of force. Such an action or a blockade might be carried out by both the U.S. or Israel. Were we to do so there would be important advantages and important reactions.
First, many doubt that our intelligence is currently accurate enough to know with a high degree of certainty about all the potential nuclear targets. As a result, military action short of a full-scale invasion -- which has it own problems and which seems, for the moment, to be beyond contemplation -- could not be counted upon to be effective in halting a military nuclear program, and particularly one being pursued clandestinely by Iran.
Setbacks might be achieved. Would they be worth the price? Many have pointed out the deleterious consequences related to Iranian potential responses to such an attack, which I think help to answer that question. That seems to make the risks markedly greater than the potential value of an attack that it might have in stopping or slowing down Iranians' military nuclear programs.
These risks include a public decision by Iran to undertake development of nuclear weapons in response to the attack, increased Iranian use of Iraqi Shia militias, insurgents and others to attack and complicate our interests in Iraq; wholesale negative Islamic and Muslim reaction around the world against the U.S. and its citizens and our interests to what might appear to them to be, at least, an unprovoked attack on Iran for carrying out activities which are now, in my view, unfortunately permitted by the Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Retaliatory attacks by the use of Iran's Hezbollah surrogates against Israel from South Lebanon and elsewhere, as we have recently seen this summer. Iran stopping it own oil exports and seeking to interrupt Gulf oil exports by sea by blockading the Straits of Hormuz with missile, maritime and air attacks. Increased support for terrorist attacks against the United States around the world. And probably a serious negative reaction in Iranian public, which on the basis of a short visit, but many other reports, I found to be one of the most pro-American publics I've seen around the world.
The other serious alternative to this is diplomacy. There's no certainty, of course, that diplomacy can make a major difference, but it is not yet clear to me, at least, that all possibilities in the area of diplomacy have been tried.
The purpose of diplomacy is to amass the maximum amount of leverage. At the same time it opens the largest number of mutually acceptable doors for Iran to walk through for a solution.
As a former diplomat, despite the unlikely possibilities of the use of force alone in resolving the problem, I would be loathe to give it up before it could be used to play a role as a quid pro quo in developing, through negotiations, an acceptable solution to the nuclear question.
Indeed, in my view, it would be hard to see, given the high level of mistrust between the United States and Iran, how the issue of the use of force could be credibly removed from the table by the United States in any event short of a full diplomatic agreement.
The Iranians, I don't believe, would accept any such offer or proffer in advance of any particular full agreement as being a trustworthy proposition by the United States.
So let me turn to what are the diplomatic possibilities? There are, for purposes of simplicity in presenting them to you, four possible bundles of diplomatic carrots and four bundles of sticks that could be employed to increase Iranian interest in successful negotiations.
The central strategic purpose of such an effort is to face Iran with the starkest of choices. When outlined earlier this year in another hearing on Capitol Hill by an old friend and colleague -- Ambassador Frank Wisner -- Iran should be made to face the choice between full and complete international isolation on one hand and a nuclear program without enrichment and reprocessing, but which, through international cooperation, fully and continuously meets all of Iran's expressed needs for civil nuclear power without weapons development on the other.
Many potential tactical combinations exist on how to hold these kinds of talks, and I won't get into those in detail.
Several new departures in American foreign policy would be required -- important compromises, including a willingness at the end of the day, to give up the use of force and regime change against Iraq in return for a fully acceptable Iranian civil nuclear program -- that is to use carrots and sticks in a diplomatic process.
Secondly, a willingness on the part of the United States to engage the international community and particularly the other five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council early and often in this process to assure that the maximum amount of pressure and reward are introduced into the diplomatic scenario.
And a sense that an Iran without nuclear weapons has a future -- indeed, in my view, a potentially important role to play in the region and, indeed, in the world beyond.
So what are these carrots and sticks?
The first bundle of carrots, if I could call it that, relates to the most important issue -- the Iranian nuclear program. An approach here, on my view, should be based on a willingness on the part of the world community to give broad support for a full civil nuclear program in Iran, except for enrichment and reprocessing. This is, in effect, an approach that provides Iran with all that it needs without everything it currently says it wants or must have.
It will be important here to have an answer for Iran's expressed concerns that if it doesn't independently possess enrichment, it will not be able to assure full continuous use of civil nuclear power.
The answer is through new international efforts to assure that not only Iran, but all other states which need low-enriched uranium fuel for civil nuclear reactors will have continuous uninterrupted access to such fuel under international, and as a last resort, United Nations IAEA auspices, as long as they maintain their nonproliferation obligations.
Such a reproach (ph) would be built on internationalizing the Russian insistence that Russia should provide the fuel and take away the spent fuel for the reactor which it is building in Iran at Bushehr. The new international regime would eventually be used by all states to acquire fuel for producing civil nuclear power.
It would, thus, close the loophole in the Non-Proliferation Treaty which allows for the acquisition of enrichment and reprocessing technology as part of the civil nuclear fuel cycle technologies which we all know have serious potential in allowing states to develop nuclear weapons.
The five permanent members of the Security Council should play the key role in the creation of this regime. They might also well become the principal producers and vendors of fuel for civil purposes.
To assure competitive pricing, a minimum of at least two, and hopefully more, ought to be part of this program. A permanent facility for the storage of spent fuel from all sources should be set up on the territory of one of these states and arrangements made to facilitate the transportation and long-term storage of spent fuel with the cooperation of the IAEA.
Russia, in the past, has indicated an interest in undertaking such an activity and this might be an added inducement for more cooperation.
As an added assurance of permanence of supply, the IAEA might well also become the vendor of last resort. The enriching states should assure that the IAEA has access to a significant supply of fuel, perhaps stored in a neutral state, where the only criterion exercised by the IAEA for continued supply would be full compliance by the recipient with its nonproliferation obligations.
Accompanying such a regime should be, instituted under the IAEA, a new improved inspection system. This system ought to be based on that recommended for Iraq in United Nations Security Council Resolution 1441. An inspection system which provides for wide and immediate access is needed to assure that all programs in a non- nuclear country receiving civil nuclear fuel are peaceful and that no non-peaceful programs are present.
As an extraordinary measure, further to assure Iraq and others of the certainty of the operation of such a regime, it might be useful to place up to five years' worth of civil reactor fuel under IAEA control inside Iran on a continuous basis.
Were there to be any failure to provide new fuel to Iran when needed for civil purposes, except for reason of a finding by the IAEA of a violation by Iran of its nonproliferation obligations, this might open the door to Iran proceeding with enrichment on its own. This is a calculated but, in my view, important risk for us to take.
I would also suggest that over a period of time -- say 10 years -- with Iranian full compliance with its NPT obligations and with any subsequent arrangements including inspection, Iran, too, might become a participant in the international fuel regime with the possibility of enrichment, but under full international supervision taking place on its territory.
In return, I hope that the U.S. would be willing, in the respect of such an arrangement, to set aside the use of force and regime change as part of U.S. policy. But I would set aside these two aspects of U.S. policy only if and when a fully acceptable nuclear agreement had been reached.
The second major carrot concerns U.S.-Iranian bilateral relations. The purpose here would be to put on the table at the outset a willingness on the part of the U.S. to open direct talks with Iran on all outstanding issues, as long as Iran was willing to do the same on the same basis. There would be no preconditions for either side, or more specifically, no other preconditions, and everything would be on the table. However, it would be the first item of business in such talks to deal with ongoing enrichment activities by Iran.
The suggestion has been made by some that the U.S. and other sanctions on Iran, as well as all Iranian enrichment activity, could be frozen for a period of time as the first item on the agenda of the talks, and to facilitate further discussions toward agreement in the talks.
The central purpose of the U.S.-Iran bilateral activities would be to resolve the outstanding issues of bilateral concerns between the two states and to work toward the resumption of full diplomatic relations, including the eventual opening of embassies and exchange of ambassadors, probably carried out over time and in steps and stages.
The third basket would involve regional security and efforts to improve stability and security in that region.
The first issue, in my view, which ought to be addressed by the regional states, including Iran's neighbors and probably the permanent five members of the Security Council, should be the issue of nuclear guarantees.
Here, a major step might well be an offer of guarantees for all non-nuclear states in the region against nuclear threats or blackmail from any source, offered by the five nuclear powers recognized under the NPT. This would supplement the guarantees already available to such states under protocols to the Non-Proliferation Treaty against aggression. It would also be the kind of step that would be worthwhile taking even in the event of a failure to curb Iranian nuclear military ambitions, by reassuring the regional states of future protection against Iranian pressures and actions against them backed up by Iran's possession of nuclear weapons.
A second step might involve the formation of a regional security coalition or organization whose purposes would include the settlement of outstanding disputes, especially border differences, as well as the adoption of security measures or steps in the areas of arms control or disarmament.
The fourth bundle of carrots or steps could well be determined the anti-sanctions basket. This might include, as the talks make real progress, and only if they do, the removal of sanctions or other limitations being imposed on Iran currently as an encouragement to further progress.
One such step could involve the eventual opening up of the region to the possibility of oil swaps at the Caspian Basin. Oil from the Caspian Basin might be delivered to Iran for its domestic use in northern Iran, against the delivery of a similar amount of oil for international trade at Iranian Gulf ports. And other steps could include, as incentives for further negotiating process, the loosening of restrictions imposed by the U.S. on the investment and the development of oil and gas in Iran, but as I say, only if, as in when the progress in the negotiations were being made.
Now, what about the other important part of this diplomacy -- the critical question of pressures and sticks?
If talks can make progress without them, there might be no need of these. But as we have seen, that seems highly unlikely.
To be realistic, there would have to be advanced agreement on a four-stage series of sanctions, in my view, among the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. This would be in consideration of the willingness of the United States and others to go ahead with the full program of carrots that I've described.
Putting the carrots on the tables without the sticks means undertaking negotiations where there are no consequences for Iran of intransigence, and where intransigence could be well-used to stall for time, as a number of you have pointed out, for Iran to achieve a military nuclear capability.
These sanctions might well be spaced some six to nine months apart in the Security Council and involve an escalating series of steps. And this timing fits with current publicly expressed expectations by a number of key governments that Iran is not likely to achieve a military nuclear capability before 2009.
While the full content of each step would have to be worked out in the Security Council, prior agreement among the P-5 to include four categories of sanctions is critical. A simple outline of these sanctions would be the following.
The first stage would be something along the lines of U.N. Council Resolution 1737, which has already been passed. Weak, and in my view, not nearly as effective as we will eventually have to have, it begins the process with some smart sanctions and some efforts to bring home to Iran that there is more to come.
This might be complemented, as well, by bilateral steps, including a number that have been mentioned, dealing with Iran's continued capability to deal with financial transactions internationally.
The second step would be the adoption by the world community of international sanctions roughly equivalent to what the U.S. now has in place bilaterally.
Step three would be a cutoff of all trade with Iran, except for oil and gas, and with the provision for access for Iran to a continued supply of food and medicine for its people.
Step four would include a cutoff of oil and gas trade.
The time phasing would allow both a reasonable period for Iran to contemplate its failure to make progress on far-reaching proposals on the one hand and permit the international community the time necessary to take these steps to adjust to the loss of Iran's oil and gas exports, in particular on the other.
Such adjustments would have to involve undertaking a full series of measures by the world community with serious international cooperation and determination, from the improvement of efficiency standards to the development and production of additional oil and gas resources around the world, to the need to substitute, as well as the need to draw on stocks and reserves to meet immediate requirements.
I have discussed a number of the problems with this proposal. Some of them include the question of, "Would the Russians and the Chinese seriously join in?" I don't know, but it is possible. They say they share concerns about Iran's nuclear program, and they remain -- at least they say they are -- committed advocates of the use of diplomacy.
We would not be bound to continue with the broad, far-reaching and generous diplomatic offer I've described if they were not bound to continue with a full program of sanctions.
Also we should remain open to any other ideas they have to propose diplomatically. So far, they've had none to offer. But the decision not to go ahead would then become theirs to take, and they would be responsible and would have to bear a significant share of the burden of Iran's movement to nuclear weapons, something they seem to want to avoid at present.
They would have to contemplate seriously the fact that their unwillingness to work with us might then compel the use of force, including blockade, however uncertain the offend (ph) effect of that might be.
For China, such a step could well result in significant worldwide scarcity in petroleum and much higher prices, something that it is urgently seeking to avoid through its oil investment in Iran and elsewhere around the world.
For Russia, a nuclear Iran under heavy external pressure could well become an additional center of Islamic fundamentalism, one with which Russia, with its millions of Muslim citizens and the ongoing conflict against Islamic fundamentalists in Chechnya, would have to contend in its own domestic policy and activities for the long-term future.
Finally, Mr. Chairman, I think a few conclusions about what principles in general might guide the diplomatic dialogue are in order.
Iran will be interested in an understanding with the U.S., which its regards as its principle threat. Engagement will have to be put in place first from the top down, even though it is conducted through emissaries. All issues will have to be on the table, and that will need eventually to include regime change in return for an acceptable nuclear program.
Iran's domestic order is not our top priority. If we can agree to engage, then we can find the right diplomatic forum or fora to carry out that engagement. And successful diplomacy is based on the concept of reciprocity, and we will need to apply that in dealing with Iran.
Diplomacy itself is never a magic answer. It involves tough work and a serious and deep commitment. But as we have found out from some of our more recent experiences when we have forgotten diplomacy and turned to force for a single, magic-bullet solution, this approach might be close to Winston Churchill's famous description of democracy -- the least worst of all other alternatives.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.
LANTOS: Ambassador Pickering, I know I speak for every member of this panel in expressing our deep appreciation. I look forward to reading, again, your statement tonight. There is an enormous amount of very significant material that you have given us and we are most grateful to you.
PICKERING: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: I'm delighted to call on our second very distinguished public servant. Director Woolsey had a remarkable career in the service of the United States. He is former director of the Central Intelligence Agency. He's a former undersecretary of the Navy, general counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Armed Services, among many other positions.
In fact, Mr. Woolsey held presidential appointments in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. For the past five years, he has been a vice president at Booz Allen Hamilton, where he works with the firm's global resilience clients.
We are deeply grateful for your joining us, Director Woolsey, and the floor is yours.
WOOLSEY: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. If it's acceptable, I will enter my statement in the record and speak informally from it as talking points within the time available.
LANTOS: Without objection.
JAMES WOOLSEY
Former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
WOOLSEY: And let me echo my old friend, Tom Pickering's, echoing of Congressman Ackerman's and others' eloquent statements about you and the ranking member. Congratulations.
In a sense, Mr. Chairman, the Iran crisis that is the title -- included in the title of these hearings -- now enters, at least, its 28th year. And one may even say, in a sense, it does go back to 1953.
There has, periodically, been enthusiasm about the possibility of moderates running things within the Iranian system. And for a much longer time than I think that was justified, that attitude prevailed in much of American public opinion and government opinion about President Khatami.
In fact, about a year after he was elected -- and he was elected only after dozens of real Iranian reformers were excluded by the ruling mullahs from the electoral system -- there was a terrible crackdown in the spring of 1998 on dissidents, newspaper editors, students and the like. Many were imprisoned and killed. And as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Khatami was never an effective moderate or reformer.
Today, the sort of false mantle of moderate has passed from Mr. Khatami to Mr. Rafsanjani. I think if one made some loose analogies to the Cold War, one might say that whereas Mr. Khatami might be compared to Prime Minister Kosygin, in the Soviet Union, a man who was reasonably pleasant, but still very much a part of the system, Mr. Rafsanjani, who is the alleged moderate or pragmatist in the system today is, in fact, I think, more comparable to Mr. Andropov, the former head of the KGB.
Mr. Rafsanjani has threatened the destruction of Israel. He is responsible for many deaths of many decent people in Iran. And he is famously corrupt.
In short, I don't believe there is any reasonable chance for moderation, in any form, to seize control of the government of Iran. And even more seriously, the current ruling circles who are quite close to Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi, in the holy city Qom, including President Ahmadinejad himself, are of an even more difficult, shall we say, persuasion.
Recently, the Islamic Republic of Iran broadcasting Web site has begun to assert that the world is, in its, quote, "last days." And Mr. Rafsanjani has echoed some of these statements. They are focused on the idea that Iran's leadership believes that it is important to be willing to, quote, "martyr" -- its words -- the entire Iranian nation, if by doing so one could find a way to accelerate an inevitable apocalyptic collision between Islam and the West.
We are, in short, as far as I'm concerned, not dealing with an ordinary authoritarian or dictatorial state for whom normal diplomatic carrots and sticks have relevance.
First of all, for a stick to be used effectively as a stick, it must be stout, not a blade of grass. And secondly, for it to be effective, that government with which one is dealing needs to be concerned about the stick.
With the ruling circles of Iran today, in my judgment, even deterrence is questionable, much less arms-control agreements.
The Iranian regime does not restrict itself to hideous speech. As President Bush noted last night, the regime's assisting terrorists to infiltrate into Iraq and is providing material support for attacks on the U.S., including the particularly sophisticated improvised explosive devices. They aren't improvised that much anymore. They're manufactured in Iran with very deadly shaped charges. And they have been responsible for the deaths of many Americans and many Iraqis.
I think the chance, quite frankly, of halting the Iranian regime's nuclear weapons program is about as close to zero as matters come in international relations. Over the years, directly, and through controlled assets such as Hezbollah, Iran has killed or murdered hundreds of Americans in Beirut -- the Khobar Towers -- and large numbers of Israelis, French, and Argentineans as well. Torture has frequently been part of the picture.
Now, the Persians invented chess, and if I were to characterize Iran's international behavior today in those terms, I might call their nuclear weapons-development program their queen -- their most lethal and valuable piece -- and note that they are utilizing other pieces -- subordinate pieces -- to protect her.
You might characterize Hamas, Hezbollah and Muqtada al-Sadr's forces in Iraq as pawns. Syria possibly rises to the level of being a rook, since it is a nation-state and has a mutual defense treaty with Iran. But Iran moves when it feels it needs to move in order to protect its nuclear weapons program by deploying and utilizing these other subordinate entities.
Furthermore, it is an equal-opportunity terrorist-sponsoring state. The Iranian regime, going back to the training of the extremely Shiite Revolutionary Guards before Khomeini's takeover in Tehran by Yasser Arafat's secular Fatah, has proven itself quite willing, over the years, to work with terrorist organizations, including Al Qaida, that have all sorts of different ideological DNA.
There has been, from time to time, expressed a view by some in the intelligence community -- many in the press and otherwise -- that a regime that is so ideologically Shiite and extremist as the Iranian regime would never really work with secular organizations or states or Sunni ones.
But it was conventional wisdom 70 years ago that since they came from different ideological backgrounds, although both were totalitarian, that Communists and Nazis would never cooperate. And that was largely true for a time -- until the signing of the Hitler- Stalin pack in 1979.
The Iranian regime does not just appreciate, but it more or less lives the old Middle Eastern saying, "Me against my brother, me and my brother against our cousin, me, my brother and our cousin against the stranger."
Now, given the nature of the regime, what should we do?
First of all, I agree that this is a difficult matter. There are no easy answers. There are no silver bullets, and so on. But since I'm convinced that the Iranian regime is fundamentally incorrigible and since I'm not yet ready to propose an all-out use of military force to change the regime and halt its nuclear program, in my judgment, the only option really left for us is to try to bring about finally, nonviolently, a regime change.
I admit that the hour is late since, from my point of view, we have wasted much time in being uncertain about how to deal with Iran and toying with the notion of negotiations which never go anywhere.
I am convinced that the least bad option for us is to state that we clearly support a change of regime in Iran because of the irremediable theocratic, totalitarian nature of the current regime, as it has been demonstrated for nearly three decades, together with its interference with the peace and security of its neighbors, currently especially Iraq and Lebanon.
I also believe that restiveness among Iranian minorities -- Arab, Kurdish, Azeri and Baluch, which together comprise over 40 percent of Iran -- and the sullen opposition of many young people indicate that there's some chance of success in stimulating regime change.
In a poll taken at the behest of the Iranian government some three years ago, over 70 percent of those polled said they wanted improved relations with the United States. The Iranian government, of course, imprisoned the pollsters.
To implement such a policy, I suggest that we begin by rejecting the recommendation of the Iraq Study Group that we should try to, in quote, "engage the Iranian regime constructively, i.e. propose formal negotiations with them."
As Representative Ros-Lehtinen mentioned, Senator John Kyl and I wrote just over a month ago in an open letter to the president that opening negotiations with Iran would legitimate that regime, embolden it and its affiliated terrorist groups, help the regime buy time for their nuclear weapons, and create the illusion of useful effort and, thus, discourage more effective steps.
I hasten to say that there are many ways countries may speak with one another without opening formal negotiations. For example -- and who, presumably, if confirmed by the Senate, will hold Tom's old job of U.N. Ambassador -- I believe speaks Farsi as well as Arabic -- senior intelligence officers can have lunch together in Geneva. There are many ways in which countries can communicate with one another without formally opening negotiations.
I had the opportunity to discuss this matter with my co-chairman in the Committee on the Present Danger, former Secretary of State, George Shultz, the other day. And he said, "It seems to me you ask for negotiations when you've got some leverage."
What leverage do we have today against Iran? I would submit that our leverage is very, very slim, indeed.
The view I've expressed is not limited, I think, to those of what might be called a more conservative stripe with respect to foreign policy issues. A very, I think, middle-of-the-road and able analyst of these matters, Kenneth Pollack of the Brookings Institution, wrote recently in his book "The Persian Puzzle" that Iran is simply not ready for a meaningful relationship with the United States. I quite agree with Ken.
Iran defines -- the Iranian regime defines itself in terms of its willingness to lead the destruction of Israel and the United States. This is not a policy. This is its essence.
Now, I do believe we should engage with Iranians, but with the Iranian people, not the Iranian government. Along the lines of some recommendations that the Committee on the Present Danger made a year and a half ago, I believe we should target sanctions -- and much tougher ones than we are now utilizing or are being -- certainly much tougher than the tepid ones being utilized under United Nations auspices -- and target them on travel and in financial interests of Iranian leadership itself, not the Iranian people.
My problem with sanctions in terms of oil and gas trade is, like the sanctions we imposed on Iraq, those tend to bear heavily on the Iranian people. I would like to keep the focus on the dictators, not on the people.
I think that one possibility is to bring charges against President Ahmadinejad in an international tribunal for violation of the genocide convention, which I believe he clearly did when he called publicly for Israel's destruction. A precedent would be the charges brought against Charles Taylor while he was president of Liberia for crimes against humanity before a special international tribunal in Sierra Leone.
Now, certainly, Iran's protectors in the United Nations -- saliently, Russia and China -- would, doubtless, block the establishment of any tribunal. But clarity and principle have a force of their own. Natan Sharansky and other Soviet dissidents who were there in the Gulag people have told us of the electrifying effect of President Reagan's declaration that the USSR was an evil empire. In short, that ultimately, we were committed in one form or another to regime change in the Soviet Union. And through, in part, that moral clarity, we brought it about.
We should also engage, I think, in ways similar to those techniques that we used in the 1980s to engage with the Polish people in Solidarity, by communicating with them with new communications technology and the same with Iranian student groups, labor unions, other potential sources of resistance. This type of effort has had some positive effect in the Balkans, in Georgia, and particularly, in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine.
I think we should abandon the current approaches of Radio Farda and the Farsi service of the Voice of America and return to the approach that served us very well in the Cold War.
Ion Pacepa, the most senior Soviet bloc intelligence officer to defect during the Cold War when he was acting director of Romanian intelligence, recently wrote that two missiles brought down the Soviet Union -- Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.
We have today, in our current broadcasting, something that is a far cry from Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty's marvelous programming of news, cultural programs, investigative reporting in the Eastern bloc and satire. As an example of what might be done with satire, I have attached to this testimony an article published some months ago by me and my family about one, admittedly, quite unorthodox possibility.
Finally, Iran's economy is driven by oil exports. And we have, indeed, begun to have some effect on its oil production by our efforts, although they could well be intensified to dry up its oil and gas development.
Deputy Oil Minister Mohammad Hadi Nejad-Hosseinian recently said in an interview that if the government does not control the consumption -- the Iranian government -- of oil products in Iran, and at the same time, if the projects for increasing capacity of the oil and protection of the oil wells will not happen, within 10 years, there will not be any oil for export.
At some point during, perhaps, a crisis with Iran, if such should come aback, we could, I believe, effectively move toward a step that Tom mentioned, which, although drastic, is potentially very effective rather quickly -- namely, cutting off Iran's imports of refined petroleum products. Because it hasn't built any refineries in many years, it has to import around 40 percent or a little more of its gasoline and diesel fuel.
If the committee will recall, a few years ago, there was a strike in Britain of tank car drivers. And within a little over a week, the British economy was practically brought to its knees because the filling stations couldn't pump any diesel or any gasoline. Something similar happened in France, a period of time of time before.
That sort of undertaking, I think, in a crisis would be far preferable to trying to cut off oil or gas exports from the country as a whole.
And finally, we need to move decisively toward technology that can reduce substantially the role of oil in our own economy and that of the world's other oil-importing states. We need to deprive oil exporters -- Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Venezuela and others -- of much of their leverage in international affairs. That leverage has vastly increased as a result of the price of oil. As Tom Friedman puts it, "The price of oil and path of freedom run in opposite directions."
I've attached an op-ed piece of mine published in the Wall Street Journal a week or so ago, Mr. Chairman, that notes the possibility that plug-in hybrid vehicles soon will make it possible for consumers to get around 500 miles per gallon of gasoline, since most all of the propulsion of the vehicle would come from quite inexpensive electricity and renewable fuels.
A friend of mine suggested that this was an extraordinary number when he saw the article and, perhaps, quite unbelievable. And then, last Sunday, when General Motors joined Toyota in a plug-in hybrid race to market and unveiled its new Chevrolet Volt, one of its executives used a figure of 525 miles per gallon of gasoline for the Volt -- 525 miles per gasoline gallon should give Minister Nejad- Hosseinian and his colleagues a bracing degree of concern.
Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: Thank you very much, Director Woolsey.
We are deeply in your debt. You have given all future witnesses before this committee, along with Ambassador Pickering, an almost impossible task of reaching the level of intellectual excellence and substance with which you have provided us.
Before turning to questions by my distinguished colleague, the ranking member, there is only one item I would be grateful if you would clarify, Mr. Woolsey.
You have made it very clear that you are opposed, for reasons you have outlined eloquently, to formal negotiations between the United States government and the government of Iran.
Does this extend to informal dialogue between members of the United States Congress and people in Iran?
I am reminded that 15 years ago, I had the privilege of being the first member of Congress to visit Albania after maybe a four-decade hiatus. Three years ago, I had that same privilege with respect to Libya. I was in North Korea as the first member of Congress. And while not all of these efforts let to results, some of them did.
And I'm wondering if you are prepared to differentiate between formal government-to-government negotiations and an informal dialogue conducted by members of Congress.
WOOLSEY: Oh, absolutely, Mr. Chairman. I spent three years of my life as general counsel of the standing committee of the Congress. And one of the last things I would do would be to suggest that the sort of dialogue you describe is unhelpful.
It frequently produces interesting leads that can be followed up on in different ways by the executive branch and the coordination between the Congress and the executive branch, where some members of the Congress can say things privately to foreign leaders that an ambassador or an undersecretary of state probably should not.
It's a very useful aspect of the relationship between the branches in the U.S. government.
And I might say that far more under executive branch -- description of exactly what it wants said and so forth -- intelligence offers also can have that effect. There would be nothing wrong with a deputy director of the CIA making a trip to Geneva and having lunch with some senior Iranian intelligence official.
I think contacts of that sort indeed are useful and available, and I believe will make possible a rather substantial trading of ideas. I have no problem with them at all.
LANTOS: I'm not at all surprised by your answer, but I'm grateful for it.
Congresswoman Ros-Lehtinen?
ROS-LEHTINEN: Thank you, Chairman Lantos. I agree with you. We've set the bar high with this first briefing. And, Mr. Chairman, you've been overly generous in allowing me the opportunity to expand on my views about dealings with Iran. And so with that, I would like to yield my time to my good friend from Indiana, Mr. Burton.
BURTON: I thank the gentlelady for yielding.
First of all, let me just say that, Ambassador Pickering, you quoted Winston Churchill. And there were a lot of other quotes that Mr. Churchill made that you didn't mention. But, in general, the tone of his comments were that you couldn't trust Adolf Hitler, and that you had to prepare militarily for an invasion, and instead of talking to him, they should have been building a military machine that could deal with him, instead of doing what they had been doing, and that was destroying all their weaponry after World War I so that there would be no more wars.
And while they were doing that -- the free world -- destroying their aircraft and their aircraft carriers and their ships -- he was buying -- Hitler was buying airplane engines from Rolls Royce to build his Luftwaffe and violated the Treaty of Versailles and created, instead of a 100,000-man army, a multimillion-man army, and used 100,000 people to create a cadre.
I equate what was going on then with what's going on right now in Iran. Iran is not going to listen, in my opinion, to anybody. They, in my opinion, if we try to negotiate with them, will see that as a sign of weakness. And they will just press ahead just like Hitler did.
When Chamberlain went to Munich and signed that agreement and came back saying, "peace in our time," that was a green light for Hitler to go into Poland. And so I think that negotiating with these people right now would only be viewed as a position of weakness.
Now, the thing that concerns me is that -- and I agree with almost everything you said, Mr. Woolsey -- almost everything expect it was 1939 instead of 1979 -- Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel.
Under the watchful eyes of the U.N. military in Lebanon since 1978, they sent 10,000 weapons in that were used in the recent war to try to destroy Israel. The U.N. was worthless. Their troops there didn't pay any attention to all those weapons being brought in, and I don't think they're going to in the future. And I don't think agreements that the U.N. may come up with is going to solve the problem.
It seems to me the only thing that's really going to solve the problem is for the United States and the free world that wants to work with us, to put every bit of pressure on Iran, up to and including letting them know that we're not going to allow them to build nuclear weaponry, even if it takes military action to stop them.
Now, Moammar Gadhafi, some time ago, was rattling his sabers and was talking about a nuclear-development program and Ronald Reagan decided he was going to put an end to it and Gadhafi changed his tune. He changed his tune because we went after him. And I think that's the only thing that these people in Iran are going to understand, especially the leaders over there.
You know, the Iranians, led by the current president of Iran, took our hostages back in the late '70s. And they held them for, I can't remember how many hundred days. And many people believe, myself included, the only reason they let them go is because Ronald Reagan took office and they believed he might use military force to go in there and release those hostages. And as a result, they let them go.
And in my opinion, that was because they understood or believed that we were going use military strength to get our hostages back. And I believe that's the only thing they understood then and I believe that's the only thing they understand now.
I think it's extremely important that behind the scenes, as you suggested, and Mr. Woolsey suggested -- behind the scenes -- that we should let the leadership of Iran know that we mean business, that we're not going to mess around with them. They develop a nuclear program -- and if we have to, unilaterally or with Israel's help, we're going to go in there and knock it out. We're not going to let them become a military power.
And as far as depending on our nuclear friends -- the Russians, the Chinese and the French -- I don't think you can count on them because they haven't been able to be counted upon in the past.
This is something, a message we have to send to them. And I know the world will sit back and say, "Oh, my gosh. There's big brother -- the big guy on the block pushing again."
But this is a situation that we have to deal with if the rest of the world won't because a radicalized regime in Iran with nuclear weaponry, trying to develop a delivery capability not only for short- range, but long-range, is a danger to the entire world. And we can't mess with those guys. We've got to let them know we mean business. And if they don't, through the back channels, get the message, then, in my opinion, we have to deliver on our promises.
And with that, I yield back the balance of my time and I thank you.
Gentleman's time has expired.
Mr. Ackerman?
ACKERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I can't imagine two more eloquent speakers -- presenters -- to confront us with two very, very different approaches to one of the most difficult issues that we're going to be discussing throughout the next two years, at least. I thank each of you for sharing with us.
Let me ask, first, a very elementary question. What is the downside to officially talking to Iran? And I might ask Director Woolsey, who said we have very thin leverage right now, I presume the sanctions are supposed to put them in an economic vice and then we'd have leverage to relieve them of some of the sanctions if they did meet what we were asking?
And could you suggest why Ambassador Pickering's approach won't work?
And, Ambassador, could you tell us why Director Woolsey's approach won't work.
WOOLSEY: I think the current sanctions are best characterized as tweezers rather than a vice, Congressman Ackerman. The ones that went through the United Nations were so watered down by the Russians and the Chinese, that they're, maybe, just this side of laughable.
And I think that will be the fate of any sanctions regime to try to go through the United Nations. And I suppose that constitutes a major part of my concern with trying to utilize carrots and sticks in the negotiation. The sticks really are the sanctions.
And Tom suggested we need, you know, advanced agreement among the Perm 5. That would be great. And if China and Russia were willing to work with us on this, it would be a possible approach. There was a window of time right around the 1991 gulf war, in which Russia and China, under the rulers at the time and the circumstances of the time, were willing to cooperate, for example, and the Perm 5 authorized and supported the gulf war of 1991. It's not impossible for such to occur.
ACKERMAN: But that time is gone. I mean...
WOOLSEY: Yes. Agree.
ACKERMAN: If we quote the Iraqi poet who said, "The moving hand moves on having writ, all our piety and tears can't lure it back to wash away a single word of it."
WOOLSEY: Right.
ACKERMAN: Omar Khayyam was fairly eloquent. But, you know, that was '91. We're in a new century.
WOOLSEY: That's right. That's the heart of the problem to me is that...
ACKERMAN: Well, what do we do now?
WOOLSEY: Well, I think that because we aren't likely to get our hands on any sticks that have any degree of stoutness at all internationally, and we can't -- we can have some effect on Iran ourselves. We're having some effect on their oil investment by our own unilateral actions here. But I think the likelihood for us to be able to bring real pressure on them today is very, very slim.
And as a result of that, I tend to move in the direction of thinking that that regime-change effort is the better way to go.
And I would close by saying that I think proposing to open negotiations, more or less as the demandeur in circumstances in which we really don't have much leverage, makes it far less likely, almost impossible really, for us simultaneously to move forward with some of these regime-change efforts -- nonviolent ones -- that I described. And that would be, really, the heart of my objection to moving forward with formal negotiations.
ACKERMAN: In a bad neighborhood, I would lock my door and try to convince my belligerent neighbors to calm down and see how I would meet their concerns. What's the downside of talking?
WOOLSEY: From my point of view, the major downside is, I think, the chances of success are so infinitesimally small, that they -- it is much less likely to succeed than even, I admit, the somewhat difficult course of action that I proposed.
The nature of the Iranian regime, the nature of the president, the nature of the relationship between the major players in Iran and their views, as I described about the end of the world and so on -- Iran defining itself as its essence is to try to destroy Israel and the United States -- all of those point, to me, toward lack of success in negotiating. This is much less possible in terms of progress than dealing the Soviet Union.
I was an adviser or a delegate or an ambassador in charge of five different negotiations with the Soviets over a 20-plus-year period. And at its worst, the Soviets, at least, were basically kind of bureaucratic thugs who would respond to some extent to carrots and sticks.
We have something very different, I think, in Iran. These are not bureaucratic, stodgy, "I want to keep my dacha" thugs. These are crazed ideologues, at least at the center of the Iranian regime -- theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal fanatics.
LANTOS: Ambassador Pickering, as one of our leading experts on bureaucratic thugs, would you care to come in?
(LAUGHTER)
PICKERING: I think both Mr. Ackerman and Mr. Burton have asked a number of important questions.
I think, Mr. Ackerman, first, if you look at the record, I think the secretary of state has already proposed negotiations with Iran on May 31st -- in a particular format, but nevertheless to open the door. The difference may be in the details.
On the issue of sanctions, I certainly admire Jim and his proposal. And certainly, I would be totally in favor of the maximum amount of leverage against Iran under any circumstances. Jim is proposing unilateral because he doesn't think multilateral will work. I am proposing multilateral, but I have not walked away from unilateral as well. I just think that the unilateral sanctions, we already have on, they're not working very well right now.
Jim, I proposed a full trade blockage except oil and gas and then oil and gas, and that goes both ways. So the fuel cutoff, I think, has the potential for making a serious effect.
I think the differences between us -- I think, first, Mr. Burton, I wasn't proposing unilateral U.S. disarmament nor turning it all over to the U.N., with all respect.
On the question of end game, which I think is very important, Jim's proposing to do away with Iran's nuclear program by a process of regime change. I suspect that regimes are slightly more maybe in this case interested in their survival than they are in their nuclear program, but it is a close-run thing.
My proposal is to maximize the amount of pressure and see, in fact, whether we can trade a nuclear program away for the regime. I don't happen to agree with Jim's rather strident description of Iran, the Iran regime and the Iranians. I don't think that they're wonderfully nice people and folks you have to see. I do think, however, they are subject to pressure and they can be brought to agreement.
Interestingly enough, the Bush Administration worked with Iran at the so-called Bonn conference. And the negotiator who participated in that made serious statements about the essential role of Iran in cooperating with the United States to develop a post-conflict government in Iran led by Mr. Karzai.
So in effect, I don't think the record is in that no negotiation is possible. I don't think the record is clear that it makes no sense to try. I think we're both trying to mobilize the maximum amount of pressure on Iran. I would like to go slightly farther, if I can, to try to increase that pressure by involving the rest of the international community. And I would like to think that ending the nuclear issue is, in my view, the most important priority, that if the people in Iran want to change their regime, all power to them. That, I hope, they could do. And I hope that succeeds.
But to end the nuclear program by trying to change the regime just, in my view, adds a degree of difficulty in time. And to try to do that with unilateral U.S. sanctions or with our close friends and allies and not, at the same time, to try to involve the full international community, however difficult that would be -- and I'm not starry-eyed about that. I'm very serious. I think it's a very tough problem that you've handed us to talk about this morning.
But to try do it more alone than with others seems to me to be repeating some of the mistakes we made about Iraq over the last few years.
LANTOS: Mr. Rohrabacher?
ROHRBACHER: Thank you very, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for our leadership. Right off the bat, here we are, right in the heart of some very important issues.
Ambassador Pickering, let me just note that you said a lot of important things, but I would like to just call you to task for one element of your testimony. And that is -- and I'd like Mr. Woolsey's analysis of this -- your testimony seems to suggest that you take seriously that the nuclear program in Iran -- that they really want to have a nuclear program in order to produce electricity.
We've had testimony here time and again with people who suggest Iran doesn't need electricity from nuclear power plants, that this is all totally based -- the entire program is based on their desire to have a nuclear weapons program. And so all of these negotiations and a large part of your testimony, which was aimed at the intricacies of negotiating about permitting them to have a nuclear power plant for electricity, is totally irrelevant.
If we are going to have a discussion with the Iranians, if we are going to have discussions and back-and-forth type of meetings with them, shouldn't it be on something that's meaningful? And again, do you believe that they honestly want to have electricity or is this just a front for wanting to develop a nuclear bomb?
PICKERING: It's a good question, Mr. Rohrabacher.
First, we tried for 15 years to end Iran's civil nuclear program as a way to get at their military program. We failed.
I was part of that process. I watched it happen. I participated in it with some enthusiasm.
The real difficulty was that we are committed, internationally, to permit states to have civil power programs and we've done it under an instrument which is less than perfect, which allows them to distort -- if I might, use the word prostitute that program to develop military programs.
My proposal, as complex as it might seem, is designed to end that kind of activity, not only in Iran, but I hope all over the world -- a more far-reaching proposal than just Iran because we'll look at others who will try to follow the same course.
ROHRBACHER: Sure.
PICKERING: You and I know that that won't stop.
So I'm totally agreed that an Iranian program should not have the two key elements that we all agree are the elements that will lead it go military -- enrichment and reprocessing. And my hope is that a program that we launch in that direction will happen...
ROHRBACHER: But if they don't want...
PICKERING: To use all of our efforts to stop a civil program, which in my view is harmless if it is, in fact, kept out of enrichment and reprocessing ,is a waste of our effort and a waste of our time. And that's why we're hear talking today about one of the most serious problems in the world that has, perhaps, gone beyond the point of no return. Certainly, you've handed us a very tough problem to talk about today in that respect.
ROHRBACHER: But if the fundamental is that they don't care about their civil program anyway...
PICKERING: But that issue, I think, depends on, you know, what you believe. But in my view, that's an irrelevance. That's chasing a chimera. The chimera is the civil power program. The real issue is enrichment and reprocessing.
ROHRBACHER: You see, I think the real issue is that the mullahs hate the Western civilization and want to destroy us and that the electric program is irrelevant. You're right. We have to get down to what is relevant.
And while I agree with the chairman that we should be willing to communicate with the mullahs, let's communicate about something real and, as Mr. Woolsey talked about, let's have some leverage.
And Ronald Reagan was never afraid to talk to the Soviets. I was in the White House at that time. And what we did was we started supporting anti-Soviet insurgencies. And then, he talked with -- and promoted SBI. And then, he was very happy to talk to Gorbachev.
So let's have these discussions and let's give ourselves leverage, especially -- but the leverage isn't over whether they have a nuclear power plant in order to produce electricity. That's not leverage at all.
And let me note that in Iran, you've got Azeris, Baluchs, Kurds, Turks and, of course, as we mentioned, even young Persians who are enemies of the mullahs, yet -- and this is a question I'll lead in with Mr. Woolsey -- and you might comment on the electricity issue as well -- have we done enough -- are we doing anything to create the support for these groups within Iran which would give us leverage over the mullahs?
WOOLSEY: I don't think we've done nearly enough, Congressman Rohrabacher. For example, one of the things Radio Free Europe used to do is report in Polish to the Polish people about what was going on in Poland, including demonstrations, et cetera.
We're not doing that. And we could do a good deal, for example, in informing the Iranian people -- and broadcast in Baluch and Azeri and so on -- about what's going on inside their own country because they don't have nearly as good a handle on that. And we're not giving it to them by broadcasting bowdlerized Britney Spears and Eminem and by 10 minutes of news an hour. It's just nuts.
So one way to get a handle on getting some leverage over them is (inaudible) what Radio Free Europe did it -- educating their own people.
I think, very briefly, on electricity, I think the Iranian government reasoned backwards from wanting a nuclear weapon to needing enrichment and reprocessing to needing electricity demand as a cover story.
And I think if Tom's proposals were implemented -- if we could get Chinese and Russian support to do something like that -- and there were real sticks involved, that we would put the Iranians in a real cleft stick, which I think is certainly Tom's purpose. But I just don't think there's any reasonable chance of getting Russian and Chinese support for anything with any teeth in it, frankly.
LANTOS: Thank you very much.
Mr. Faleomavaega?
FELEOMAVAEGA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. And this being the first hearing of our committee this morning, certainly I want to comment you and our distinguished member of the minority side, my good friend Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and her leadership.
And I certainly want to offer my personal welcome to two of the most outstanding gentleman. And I've read and followed their distinguished career, their contributions to our country.
I think since we are in the business of quoting philosophy and political leaders, I thought I'd add my own -- one of my favorite statements that I have learned from the political -- poet philosopher Santayana, who said, "Those who don't remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
I kind of wanted to take it in the context not of what is currently the situation with our relationship with Iran, but I think we need to put into perspective things that have happened in the past. And, if I may, I would like to phrase my question with this approach and I certainly would welcome the response from both Ambassador Pickering and Mr. Woolsey.
Why should Iran trust us, given our set of policies in the past years that have not been very positive?
We supported one of the most brutal dictatorships. At that time, it was known as the shah of Iran and it was our policy then, at the height of the Cold War, to support dictatorships, if necessary, as long as they were friendly towards us and our allies.
Why should Iran trust us when we supported Saddam Hussein during the eight-year war between Iraq and Iran? We contributed at least over $1 billion a year. President Reagan even sent, at that time, a sent a distinguished emissary to meet with Saddam Hussein to -- it was part of our eight-year war. And the guy's name was Donald Rumsfeld. And for reasons that we wanted to get rid of the Ayatollah Khomeini for the sad experience that we faced with the student takeover of our embassy officials during the Carter administration.
Why should Iran trust us, when with our own nuclear capabilities and Israel being our closest friend and ally -- and I have no doubt in my mind that we will use nuclear weapons, if necessary, to defend and support Israel.
And this is the apprehension and the fear I'm sure the leaders of the Iranian government always have towards this problem or this complication that we now find ourselves in, in the current war in Iraq.
Leads me to my next point -- the question that the whole nuclear issue, which I believe both of you gentleman want to share with us -- the current issue of nuclear nonproliferation, situation with Pakistan and India.
Both countries went outside the purview of nuclear nonproliferation. Pakistan is not a democracy, but India is. The president has even waived sanctions against Pakistan despite the military coup that was committed by General Musharraf against a duly- elected prime minister at the time of Pakistan.
So I wanted to kind of put that in some sense of perspective, gentlemen, that we're putting all of the negatives and everything that we can say how mean and bad the Iranian people are and its leaders. But that sense of apprehension and fear towards our country because of what we've been through and our policies for the past 30 or 40 years, doesn't it give some sense of reason that perhaps there is just as much apprehension on the part of the Iranian people and their leaders towards us because of our policies in the past?
Now, we're proclaiming, as, Mr. Woolsey, you've said earlier, that you don't even want to negotiate with the Iranian people. My understanding was that Iran, one of the critical allies at the time after the 9-11 that facilitated our ability to go to Afghanistan, to go after the Taliban and Osama bin Laden -- sometimes we need to remind the American people it was not Saddam Hussein who attacked us, who attacked us in 9-11, it was Osama bin Laden. And I think we need to put that in certain perspective in trying to understand what we're here for and the situation and the crisis that we're now faced with as far as Iran is concerned.
One of the things that I read into is that we've literally given Iraq to Iran because of the current crisis that we put ourselves in with the war in Iraq. Sixty percent of the population is Shiite (inaudible) the total population in Iran is Shiite. And the complication added to this, that 20 percent of the population in Iraq is Sunni. And these are the dominant populations in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. This is how complicated the issue was and still is before and after the problems that we're faced with as far as the Iraq War is concerned.
So I would appreciate your response, gentlemen. If we're putting all these eggs and saying Iran is such a bad character, what about a perspective in saying that maybe we have some problems, too, in trying to explain to the world and maybe convince the Iranians we're not as bad as they think that we are.
PICKERING: Perhaps I might begin by noting that the litany of complaints on the Iranian side about American policy is matched, and maybe more, by the deep concerns on the American side about Iranian policy. So this argues, of course, the point you made originally -- there isn't much trust. And I would certainly reinforce that.
I've stated in my own testimony that I thought even if we attempted to tell the Iranians we weren't going to use force against them or weren't interested in regime change, they wouldn't believe us. That means, in fact, that we have to be through a demonstrated period of additional behavior.
Now, you, in part, answered one of the points of your question yourself. We took away, in the last six years, two of Iran's greatest enemies -- the Taliban in Afghanistan and Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
So in a sense, we have shown that there are areas where we can have a conjunction of views. And my view is that you cannot demonstrate a conjunction of views unless you have contacts and communication. And at the end, those have to be official, because in the end you have to be able to assure that foreign government, as we would want assurances from them at the highest levels, that they're going to behave and that the deal that we have worked out, if we're able to work out a deal, will stick.
Even then, we have seen histories in the past where people have overthrown deals. But, to some extent -- this is to borrow another expression from Winston Churchill, which Mr. Burton seems to have forgotten -- I'm sorry he's gone -- it's, "Jaw, jaw, jaw, not war, war, war," that probably is the better alternative here. And that, certainly, is the basis that I'm preceding on.
It may fail. I'm not here telling you that there's 100 percent certainty of it working. But it seems to me, by far, the better alternative than all of the obvious ones that are out here on the table.
And with deep respect to Jim -- I think Jim is halfway to where I am in terms of mobilizing all these sanctions. I'm not sure, in fact, that we shouldn't use all those mobilized sanctions to get rid of the nuclear weapons rather than to try to get rid of the Iranian government.
FELEOMAVAEGA: Mr. Woolsey?
WOOLSEY: Congressman, it's a very good question. I recall shortly after 9/11 I was in a taxi in D.C. Instead of reading about public opinion polls, I talk to cab drivers. I find it's a lot more interesting and a lot more insightful. And there was former President Clinton, at that point, had been in Washington and given a speech that was a pretty straightforward speech reported in the press. But the last paragraph of the story said that he had said at one point that 9/11, in a sense, was a payback for our treatment of the American Indian and for American slavery.
And I was reading the paper and I asked the cab driver if he had seen the paper. And he said, "Oh, yes." He said, "I read that story." And I said, "What do you think about it?" And he said, "These terrorists, they don't hate for what we do wrong. They hate us for what we do right." And I think that was quite an insight.
What they hate is women being able to be educated, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press. I don't think anything we could possibly do would convince Ahmadinejad or Rafsanjani or Khamenei that we were somebody they could get along with.
They define themselves as the instrument of God in destroying us. That is what they believe they are, not a view they have. It is a little bit like saying, What could the Jews have done in the 1930s to convince Hitler that they were OK?" The answer is nothing.
And I think the answer for us, with respect to the kind of totalitarian hatred that this regime manifests, particularly now, is there's nothing we can do.
We ought to do what's right. The 1953 decision was a bad one. The CIA was involved, but since I was in the 6th grade, I don't take any particular responsibility for it. And I rather think the decision to support Saddam in the 1980s was not a good decision either.
But, you know, countries make their call at the time. They make mistakes. Things go on.
I don't think it's really the mistakes we've made that are the essence of Iran's problem with us, and it's not the Iranian people. The Iranian people, I think, largely think we're fine. Bernard Lewis says that Iran is probably the only place in the Middle East where the United States is almost universally popular.
And the reason we're popular is because the regime is so corrupt and so totalitarian and hates us so much, the average Iranian says, "Well, you know, there must be something good about those Americans. I don't know a lot about them, but if mullahs hate them, then they must be all right."
FELEOMAVAEGA: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Mr. Royce?
ROYCE: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Just picking up on that concept, and I am convinced, Mr. Woolsey, that what you've laid out, especially with regard to public diplomacy, is the strategy that changed things in the East Bloc. I know Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa have spoken to this issue.
And I'm also convinced that you're right when you say our inability to do the type of broadcasting that we did with Radio Free Europe is part of the problem.
Ideas have consequences. The ability to broadcast and discuss ideas -- when you say that what people are being taught is to hate the concept -- that democracy represents an affront to God. That's an official position. You know, the idea that they hate freedom of religion. They hate the concept of the rights of men or, worse yet, the rights of women, the idea of freedom of the press.
All of that, these ideas need to be discussed in Farsi on an ongoing basis in that society along with news about what's really happening in the society and happening to the victims of society. And enough of that has the type of catalyst effect that you saw in the East Bloc in the former Soviet Union.
I wanted to ask you for your judgment on a couple of questions. One, the president asserted last night on the question of Iran's meddling in Iraq. I know last month we took into custody several Iranians. Two of them were involved in transfer of IED technology from Iran to the insurgents in Iraq. And I wanted to find out from you, what degree do you think actually the government in Iran might be dictating insurrection in the Shia areas, whether or not you think that's credible?
I know that American forces raided an Iranian consul office in northern Iraq early this morning. And so I'd ask you for your judgment on that.
Also, our overall intelligence capabilities -- something that I think is of concern to a lot of us -- can we gauge Iranian society correctly? Do we understand, really, where we are on the nuclear program or support for terrorism coming out of Iran? Do we have good intelligence on that?
So I'll start with those two questions.
WOOLSEY: I think Iran is doing a good deal more than meddling in Iraq, Congressman. I think they are manufacturing these very sophisticated IEDs, shipping them, spending a lot of money in the Shiite areas. I think they have a major hand in orchestrating the actions of Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi Army.
Sadr, I believe, could best be regarded as sort of the head of Hezbollah for Iraq. And Hezbollah is, effectively, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Iranian government.
So I think that this -- I don't know what happened and I didn't see the press story before I got here about this raid on the consulate that occurred this morning, but as I understood, the earlier incident where they took several people into custody, having had intelligence that something about IEDs or whatever was going on -- there was one person who had diplomatic immunity -- one or two -- and they were released. There were several Iraqis who didn't have diplomatic immunity and they were kept.
And then, there were these one or two men who, apparently, were Iranian citizens. And it turns out, at least if some of the reports on the Web are correct, one was very senior in the IRGC, the Revolutionary Guard Corps, and they were kept for several days, apparently, and then given back to the Iraqi government. And they were released back to Iran.
So it was sort of a confused situation.
I think that part of our problem with intelligence in that part of the world is that there is a cultural attitude in the CIA that one should talk to controlled assets -- that is, people you have recruited and are paying and are informing you -- and you should talk to foreign intelligence liaison services -- Jordanian intelligence officers -- to find out what's going on, but not to too many other folks. And those are a pretty small share of humanity.
Journalists sometimes laugh about ASKINT (ph) being useful instead of HUMINT or SIGINT, just ask people, just talk. You may get lied to, but it's useful to know what people across a broad range say.
And because he was so frustrated with this cultural propensity in the CIA, Allen Dulles, when he was director, would help teach a course to incoming intelligence officers to tell them at one time when he should have talked to someone who was not a controlled asset or a liaison service representative and didn't.
He was a young Foreign Service officer in Switzerland in World War I. And one Sunday in 1917, a guy came to the embassy and wanted to see an American officer. And Dulles had just dropped by to pick up his tennis racket. He had a tennis date with an attractive young woman.
So he said, "Tell the guy to come back next Monday. I'm going to play tennis."
And the fellow never came back. Dulles, to his great credit, told this story on himself all his life.
He said, "After a few months, however, I began to wonder what it had been that Lenin had wanted to see me about just before the Germans put him on the train to the Finland station."
(LAUGHTER)
Now, would Lenin have become a controlled asset of the United States? No way. Was Lenin he a foreign intelligence service officer? Well, not exactly. He didn't have a state yet. Would it have been interesting to know what he wanted to say to the United States? I'd say so. And Dulles would go through that story in order to tell young intelligence officers, "Talk to everybody."
I must say I have a certain sense of personal frustration because, as a former DCI, I sometimes get people getting in touch with me through friends of mine or whatever and say, "I've got something really important to tell the U.S. government about X." And I used to refer them out to Langley. And nobody ever talked to anybody, so after a while, I just stopped.
It would be interesting if there were, you know, some part of the U.S. government that was willing to talk to people who just wanted to talk to it. I think one would learn a good deal more than we do.
ROYCE: Thank you Mr. Chairman.
LANTOS: (OFF-MIKE)
BERMAN: Thank you Mr. Chairman.
I think, during the time I had to be at another meeting, Mr. Ackerman may have got into some of the reactions of each of you to the other's proposals. And I'll find out what you said. But rather than repeat that, let me ask you a couple of specific things that confuse me a little bit.
Mr. Woolsey, you talk about sanctions that hurt the leaders but not the people. But then, elsewhere in your testimony, you certainly sounded like you're supportive of the kinds of things that would choke off investment and put up barriers to trade.
And I mean, I remember from as far back as the South Africa debates, the people who were opposed to sanctions there said, "Ah, but that hurts the people. Don't do it."
Is this really a distinction? I mean, do we really want to be careful not to engage in economic pressures that have consequences on average people of Iran, for instance, letting refined products get back into Iran? That's not just going to hurt the leaders. That's going to hurt the people, but...
WOOLSEY: It's a good question, Congressman Berman. And I'd hasten to say that this business of distinguishing between going after the leaders and trying not to hurt the people is sort of a 60-40 proposition. Most of these things are not pristine.
But as a general matter, instead of the very weak sanctions that we have with respect to the bank accounts of Iranian leaders abroad, travel abroad and so forth, I would make those quite draconian.
And then, with respect to long-term economic sanctions, I would not clamp down on Iranian exports of oil and gas. Tom says one step in the sanctions he suggests would be to clamp down on everything else. But there's not much else. There's pistachios, which Rafsanjani makes a lot of money from.
But it's been pointed out that the 22, I guess, Arab states plus Iran have a population approximately equaling that of the U.S. and Canada. And other than oil and gas, they export to the world less than Finland, which is a country of 5 million people. And so Iran alone probably exports a rather small share of what, say, Nokia exports other than oil and gas.
So there's not much there other than oil and gas. And I think you would, in fact, trying to implement long-run sanctions by choking off Iranian exports of whatever they can produce, I think you would end up with a situation in which average Iranians got madder and madder at you.
I come out in favor, however, of trying to continue what we're doing now by way of limiting their ability to exploit their oil and gas -- investments in the oil and gas business. And the idea of cutting off their imports of refined petroleum products -- the 40-or- so percent that they have to import -- strikes me as something you do in a crisis for having a short-term and very pointed effect.
Because when you weren't here, I mentioned that both Britain and France had had strikes a year or two or three ago of truck drivers to drive the tank trucks that go to filling stations. And in Britain's case, I know that -- and after about a week, it nearly shut the country down because people couldn't get gasoline to go anywhere.
I think that's something that you keep in your kit bag to use in a crisis in order to try to provoke a general strike.
This Iranian regime has changed three times in the 20th century with general strikes. And having available something you can do to help provoke that if the circumstances and time are right -- if there are riots and demonstrations in many parts of the country and so forth -- I think that would be the case in which I'd say, Let's cut off the imports.
BERMAN: Let me interject, only because of the time issue.
Ambassador Pickering, deal with your proposal. Match that against what, it seems to me Jim Baker was saying in -- both in the report and then expanded in a meeting he had with members of Congress -- we ought to open up a dialogue with Iran just on Iraq. It won't work, but it will put us in some better position with the rest of the world. They'll look like they're being so negative.
Can an administration really -- first of all, I mean, I'm a little skeptical about whether the outside benefits are quite as great as he's hoping they would be.
But secondly, to do that without coming to grips with what you're talking about, are you really ready to get into discussing the whole ball of wax? Is there any reason to believe sort of an isolated dialogue on one issue has any realistic chance of helping on that one issue that we're concerned about, Iran's efforts to destabilize in Iraq?
PICKERING: There are two issues there, I think, Mr. Berman, one on the Iraq side. Would it help on Iraq? I think, maybe, marginally.
The real question would be, could you limit it to Iraq? Would there be efforts to introduce wider discussions? Would they pay off in Iraq?
In other words, if you were willing to talk to Iran about a wider set of questions, would Iran be more forthcoming on Iraq and is that where you want to spend your short currency?
The other side of it is, is it wise to talk to Iran only about Iraq when we have this huge problem that we're gathered here today to talk about and the where options are so few and where, at least, diplomacy doesn't offer us huge downside?
I'm totally dismissive of the notion that we have a God-given right to legitimatize states by talking to them. I never have seen it in international law and I've never seen that successfully pursued in diplomacy. It doesn't, to me, make any sense.
You talk to people because you have a national interest in trying to resolve a problem -- an issue -- or get them behave in a different way. And you talk to them because it's in your own national interest to talk to them, not because there's some side-effect you're concerned about that overwhelms the notion of speaking to them in a way that is so disadvantageous. I don't see it.
I mean, I think these are nice theoretical and philosophical concerns, but the practical application toward U.S. interests, in my view, is totally on the side of speaking in connection with Iran.
Now, I'd like to do it in a set of circumstances -- and I've struggled with this, and Jim is struggling with this in his own way -- against the best leverage we can put together, whatever that might be. Talking without leverage doesn't make a lot of sense. We have some leverage. I've suggested ways to build some more. Jim has suggested ways to build some more. I'm not opposed to that at all.
I think we ought to amass the maximum amount of leverage we can get on the table if we're going to talk, because that's the circumstance that I think will help produce the kind of results you're seeking.
And as I said before -- I don't know whether you were in your room -- these are long shots. They're not certainties. We're not here to tell you how to hit home runs. We're here to, I guess, see whether we can avoid, you know, hitting balls out of bounds all the time...
(CROSSTALK)
LANTOS: Thank you very much. I'd like members of the committee who are still with us to realize that our distinguished guests have given us an additional 50 minutes of the time that we have agreed to. But I will call on colleagues who feel that they must ask a very brief question.
Mr. Tancredo?
TANCREDO: It is just that, sir, and thank you.
Let me go from the strategic to the tactical in terms of the framework for our discussion here, both because of the time constraints and also because I think so much has been gained by the discussion to this point in time.
We've talked about the fact that the people in Iran seem to be interested in regime change themselves. I think you put it, If the mullahs hate us as much as they seem to, then there must be something good about us, is the way many Iraqi people -- I mean the Iranians -- are looking at the situation today.
So if that is the case, then I hearken back to the situation we have with the MEK. And I wonder about whether or not it would not be in our best interest to take them off of the terrorist watch list, as they are certainly hated by the mullahs. And that is the one thing about which we are sure with regard to the MEK.
There are lots of, you know, gray areas, murky areas in the past, things we're not positive about in terms of their responsibility for certain actions 30 years ago.
But in the last couple of decades, anyway, it seems to me that it is pretty clear that they are, as a political -- they are certainly not much of a military force, but a political force -- and they may not even be that to any great extent. But to the extent that they are operating as a group of people who are articulating an opposition to the present regime, they understand the culture. They understand the language.
We are protecting them in Camp Ashraf. Here's a group of people who are, in fact, on the terrorist watch list that we are protecting. Our troops are protecting them.
Wouldn't it be to our advantage to somehow use these folks in pursuit of our goals? And in order to do that, wouldn't it require their removal from that list?
LANTOS: Ambassador Pickering?
PICKERING: Yes, certainly. I'd be happy to answer the question. I think that the question is premised on the Middle East fundamental proposition, "The enemy of the enemy is my friend."
My view is that the MEK doesn't represent the kind of government we would like to see in their past actions -- and they're all documented fairly well -- in Iran. To me, it would be a bigger burden.
And if the Iranian people knew what MEK had been doing in terms of its own activities and the way it behaved, particularly towards its own people, I think they, too, would see that as a negative rather than a positive.
LANTOS: Ambassador Woolsey?
WOOLSEY: I agree with Tom. Everybody is using Churchill quotes today, one of my favorite is, "If Hitler invaded hell, I should find a kind word to say for the devil."
(LAUGHTER)
And there's a side of me that is tempted to cast about for anybody when can cause trouble for the Iranian regime. But I do think their being on the terrorist watch list at this point is a bar. And if somebody wants to look into the facts of all that and the history of it and exactly what they did and so on, it might be a useful review for someone to do. But I never have done it and I don't know how it would come out.
LANTOS: Mr. Payne?
PAYNE: Mr. Chairman, I'll allow Mr. Sherman, who has to go to a meeting to take...
LANTOS: Mr. Sherman?
PAYNE: But I'll take my time after he does.
LANTOS: Well, we won't have time. We are closing at 1:00. Our witnesses have been here for almost three full hours. And they are an hour past the time they have agreed to be here. So make up your mind.
PAYNE: Then I'll reclaim -- I'm reclaiming my time.
LANTOS: Please.
PAYNE: Sorry, Mr. Sherman.
Just have a quick question regarding the future, as these problems of proliferation will probably continue. Of course, it doesn't deal with this Iranian situation, but as Mr. Faleomavaega mentioned, there were misguided policies in the past. We have allowed countries like the shah of Iran -- we had Marcos in the Philippines. We had King Farouk in Egypt. We had Mobutu in Zaire. All people that the United States government supported.
Now, they didn't have nuclear weapons, however we did allow South Africa to develop nuclear capacity, and even though they had a very racially apartheid regime.
My question is, how do we go about determining who should and who should not have nuclear capacity in the future?
If Indonesia decided they wanted, we would maybe question that. But if Spain said maybe, you know (inaudible) that if Spain wanted to get it that might be all right -- maybe not Indonesia, but perhaps Spain.
I mean, it's kind of arbitrary. It's those who we decide are OK, even though South Africa had an apartheid -- the last regime in the world -- but it was OK for us, I guess, to allow them to have it.
And so India had never been part of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but we say that they -- we're even having a special relationship with our nuclear with India because, well, they're OK.
I think that's the flaw of this world -- who can have it and who cannot?
I mean, I don't want Iran to have it either. But if I was an Iranian, I would say, "Well, who are they to tell me?" I mean, you know, and, "Who are they?"
So could either one of you -- both of you, excuse me -- answer that?
PICKERING: Let me say that I happened to be in government and worked against the South African program. We were not successful, but we did not take a view that South Africa should have nuclear weapons.
Secondly, the NPT encompasses all but three states now. Those three states, unfortunately, have nuclear weapons and so we have to contend with them.
But my view is that our policy needs to be enforcement of NPT obligations, which all of these states have taken, that they're not going to develop nuclear weapons. And that certainly is true with respect to Iran. The North Koreans were in. They opted out. We don't consider their opt-out legal, so we still consider them part of that regime.
WOOLSEY: Congressman, I think you hit on a really key issue here. The basic problem is that the nonproliferation regime, the IAEA and the Non-Proliferation Treaty, all grows out of President Eisenhower's Items for Peace program. And it does not really clamp down on the key thing, which is, as Tom said earlier, the fuel cycle -- reprocessing and enrichment.
Once a country can, allegedly, to only, let's say, lightly enrich uranium to make it in to nuclear fuel, once it can do that, it has the capacity to enrich it further up to bomb grade. It may have to be somewhat deceptive about it, but it's effectively there.
And once you have a bomb's worth of fissionable material, you, for all practical purposes, got a bomb. Designing the bomb is simple -- the basic type of sort of so-called shotgun device.
So the current international treaty and inspection regime doesn't explicitly try to keep people out of the fuel cycle. If we want to have an international nonproliferation regime that works, I think we've got to change the regime. And we need, maybe, one international agency that helps countries move toward effective energy. And I think that would very rarely be nuclear, although sometime it might be. But very rarely do I think that would that be nuclear.
And on the other hand, we have a separate organization and a separate structure that tries to block anybody new from getting into the fuel cycle. And Tom had some good ideas about how fuel could be enriched for other countries, rather than their having their own capacity to process and enrich fuel.
I think that would give us a chance, at least, of doing something in nonproliferation. In the current circumstances, we have to do exactly what you were questioning. We have to say to the Iranians, "Well, you are," as I put it, "theocratic, totalitarian, genocidal maniacs, so you don't get the fuel cycle. But India, over here, is a perfectly reasonably democracy." Much of the world will not join us in making that distinction.
Now, the numbers of democracies in the world is rather substantial. In Freedom House numbers, you're up to just under 100 democracies operating under the rule of law and another 30 or so that have electoral democracies, like Indonesia. So you got something, over 60 percent of the world's governments that are democracies.
But even they don't vote that way. They don't really, in the U.N. or so forth say, "OK, we're going to treat fellow democracies that are much less likely to be, you know, aggressive and so forth, we're going to treat them differently than we treat dictatorships."
People just -- countries are, so far, not willing to do that. And in the absence of their being willing to do that, it seems to me the only way to begin to make this thing work is to restructure the international treaty regime so it operates in such a way as to keep new people out of the fuel cycle.
LANTOS: Ambassador Pickering?
PICKERING: I totally agree with Jim on that. And I think that was part of what I was trying to do in the presentation I made.
LANTOS: I, first of all, want to express my regret to my colleagues who doesn't get a chance to ask questions, but we are profoundly in debt of our two extraordinary witnesses for sticking with us for three hours, but more importantly for giving us a "tour de raison" (ph) of extraordinary quality. We are deeply grateful to both of you and hope to have you back soon.
(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chairman?
LANTOS: Yes?
(UNKNOWN): Not to be left out, feeling inadequate, if I could add one final Churchillian comment?
LANTOS: Please.
PICKERING: When the prime minister was introduced in London at a women's at a temperance league, the lady that introduced him said that she calculated how much he's had to drink starting from the early age that he began -- after breakfast, before and after lunch and throughout the day and into the evening -- and said, "I've made a mark on the ceiling. If we poured every drink that you've had into this room, it would reach three-quarters of the way up the wall." To which, he responded, "So much to do, so little time."
(LAUGHTER)
LANTOS: This hearing is adjourned.