LEACH: We'll now hear from the private witnesses, all of whom are experts on Iran and who are kind enough to appear and offer their views today. I will introduce them in alphabetical order and call on them in the same order. And I ask unanimous consent that all of your statements be made part of the record in full and ask that you present them in about five minutes, after which members will be recognized to ask questions.

Our first witness on this panel will be John C. Hulsman, who is a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. At Heritage, Dr. Hulsman examines European security and NATO affairs, the European Union, U.S.-European trade and economic relations, the war on terror, Iraq, Iran, and the Middle East peace process. Dr. Hulsman was involved, as he notes in his prepared statement, in a Track II effort to find a common ground between the United States and the European powers on what to do about Iran.

Michael Ledeen is an expert on U.S. foreign policy and the current Freedom Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His research areas include state-sponsors terrorism, Iran, the Middle East, Europe, U.S.-China relations, intelligence and Africa.

A former consultant to the National Security Council and the U.S. State and Defense Departments, he has published several books and countless articles on foreign policy.

Gary Milhollin is the director of the Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control. The Project carries out research and public education designed to inhibit the spread of nuclear weapons. It operates in Washington, D.C. under the auspices of the University of Wisconsin, where Professor Milhollin as been a member of the law faculty since 1976.

Our final witness will be Dr. Abbas William Samii, who is a regional analyst and coordinator at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Dr. Samii is a veteran of the United States Army Special Forces. At Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, his primary task is writing the weekly RFERL Iran Report and contributing to the RFERL Newsline, both based on open sources.

Dr. Samii is recognized as one of the nation's top analysts of the Iranian domestic politics.

Dr. Hulsman, we'll begin with you. Please proceed. And all of your statements, as previously noted, will be placed fully in the record.

Please, Dr. Hulsman.

 

STATEMENT OF

JOHN C. HULSMAN
Senior Research Fellow,
The Heritage Foundation

 

HULSMAN: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As you said, I have a much fuller statement. This is an incredibly complicated issue. And the first thing we have to do is not to make it simple, not to look for silver bullets.

I agree with almost everything Ambassador Burns said, but I don't find looking at the internal Iranian regime a parlor game. I look at it as fundamentally important. Because if we don't look at things, if we see everything as broadly the same -- he brought up George Kennan and the (inaudible) thing. And Mr. Kennan said an interesting thing after looking all those years of looking at the Soviet Union -- and by the way calling the split between China and Russia.

He said, "There seems to be a curious American tendency to search at all times for a single external center of evil, to which all our troubles can be attributed, rather than to recognize that there might be multiple sources of resistance to our purposes and undertakings and that these sources might be relatively independent of another," which is not something we've been very good at of late, I might add.

One of the things is we see this all as a repository of evil and don't look at it -- people talk about Islamo-Fascism, not noticing the differences between a Baathist reality that is pan-socialist, pan- secular and pan-Arabia versus Persian nationalist versus people wanting to have a caliphate, though they may agree in certain circumstances, they disagree about more than they agree about.

It's the equivalent of suggesting that in the Europe of the past, Communism, Catholic conservatism, fascism, and Russia czarism were all basically part of the same movement, because they were all hostile to liberal democracy; a suggestion that would render most of modern European history completely incomprehensible if you took that approach.

Somehow we don't think of the last part of the Czar Nicholas II facing a Communist firing squad was, "Oh, this is so unfair. Actually, I've always agreed with Lenin." Any Arab scholar who suggested this as a theory of European history would be laughed and scorned by Western historians. Let's be very careful not to do the same thing to their region.

Starting with that moment of caution, I'd like to just move to the question that I was asked and try to actually answer them. I know it's not always in the spirit of hearings to try to answer them.

First, were the E.U.-3 talks a waste of time? I'm going to answer that last, because I think that's the key point -- and should the administration have supported it?

The big question I was asked is: Is the U.N. Security Council cannot reach a consensus on effective sanctions? Which at the moment I think we have to say it's unlikely to do. The Chinese signing an $100 billion possible gas deal, the timing on that I found somewhat suspicious; let's put it that way. The Russians, goodness knows what they do. But don't assume the Chinese, as someone mentioned this morning, might not break their record and actually veto.

They've never done that on their own before. Don't assume that $100 billion and the access to natural gas and oil won't change that. That's lazy thinking. I think we have to at least prepare for a China veto.

If there is a veto, can we impose effective sanctions if Russia and China continue?

Well, first, I'm all for a humpty-dumpty sort of Brechtian approach here. I want the Chinese and the Russians to go on record in open session saying with a straight face, "Iran is not a problem." Because by doing that we will get all the other serious people in the world -- and they are legion -- to begin to work together, particularly the Europeans. It's the only way that effective sanctions can be managed.

A point not mentioned this morning is the huge demographic bulge within Iran. Most of the Iranian population don't remember the Shah. A very young median age is 24 or 23 for Iranians. They have to create some incredible number of jobs per year to make things go -- that's whoever's in charge.

Again, that doesn't relate to anything else. And I think that's a very important point. Where are they going to create these jobs? Well, they need investment? And who's likely to give them investment?

We'll turn to it, but particularly Germany, which is who I've worked on my Track II approach for, seeing that that would be a very important country -- although not a nuclear country, economically the largest power in Europe, still the third largest economy in the world, and one that would like to do a lot more investment with Iran than it currently is, and a huge trading source for Iran.

HULSMAN: I mean, you've got to hit people where they live if you're going to do it.

So I think the U.N. has to be shown not to work. I don't think that means the United States has failed. I think we've made a good faith effort. And sometimes you're going to disagree in the U.N. And, quite often, you're going to disagree in the U.N.

But, going the extra mile, you actually gather allies to do the sanctions regime that is absolutely necessary.

In line with our Track II plan, we started assuming a U.N. no vote. And we talked to Germans who are now in the coalition on both sides, the SPD (ph) as well as the CDUCSU people. And we had a broad- based bipartisan group in America.

And our point, basically, was, if this goes to a "no," you don't get to take your ball and go home. You don't get to say: Well, the diplomatic approach has been tried, found wanting, and now we're going to move on.

They have to go to the E.U. level -- if that doesn't work, the E.U.-3 plus Italy, the economic powerhouses, France, Germany, the U.K. and Italy. And if you add all those together, that would make a significant dent in what's going on there.

Would that change Iranian opinion? Perhaps no, perhaps yes. But in line with boiling the frog, with ratcheting up diplomatic pressure, you want to have as much flexibility as you possibly can.

You don't just turn it to scalding. You move this along. You start with these smarter sanctions that are mentioned that inconvenience the Iranian regime.

Then you move on to broader sections. You do things with PSI, as the ambassador suggested. You work on that strategy. You see if that makes any difference.

And, if it doesn't, you leave the option on the table for military force. And, in this case, that would involve air strikes, not ground troops, of which we can talk more about later.

I think we have to be very straight up about what we're talking about. But this is the Cuban Missile Crisis. There aren't good options, as I think you yourself, Mr. Chairman, mentioned.

Doing nothing will cause great damage; for one thing, an arms race in the Middle East. And it doesn't strike me as Israel's style to sit there and say: Well, gee, I'm going to trust the international community to trust (ph) the balance of terror to make my life OK.

I think that that is a factor. Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia would all be candidates for a nuclear weapon. There's no doubt.

But if we do things, we have to remember there will be a price, too. Any hope at democratization in the region, I think, goes out the window and the seemingly pro-Western regimes -- the king of Jordan, the king of Oman, the king of Morocco -- if you look at what happens, we could get -- worse, Wahhabists running Saudi Arabia. We could get A.Q. Khan or bin Laden's people running Pakistan.

We have to keep that in mind. There aren't good options, but this calls for seriousness.

LEACH: Thank you, Dr. Hulsman, for a very precise statement in a time frame that was very well received.

Dr. Ledeen?

 

STATEMENT OF

MICHAEL A. LEDEEN
Resident Scholar,
The American Enterprise Institute

 

LEDEEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I think that future historians will be baffled at the intensity and tenacity with which successive American administrations have refused to deal seriously with the obvious and explicit threat from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

From the first hours of the fanatical regime of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, Iran declared war on us in language it seems impossible to misunderstand.

We are the Great Satan. They are the representatives of the one true faith, sworn to combat Satanic influence on earth.

And they have waged unholy war on us ever since. They created Hezbollah and Islamic jihad -- created them not supported them, as we heard earlier this morning.

And they support almost all the others, from Hamas and Al Qaida to the popular front for the liberation of Palestine general command.

Iran's praxis range from Shiite to Sunnis to Marxists, all cannon fodder for the overriding objective about which they make no secret, to dominate or destroy us.

Iran tops the State Department's list of state sponsors of terrorism and we know that Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the titular head of Al Qaida in Iraq, created a European-wide terrorist network in the latter years of the last century from his stronghold in Tehran.

We know this from public sources, in documentation presented by the German and Italian governments in public trials against terrorist arrested in their countries.

The evidence presented includes intercepts of phone conversations between terrorists in Europe and Zarqawi in Tehran.

We also know from abundant battlefield evidence of the intimate working relationships between terrorists in Iraq and the regimes in Tehran and Damascus.

Just the day before yesterday, ABC News broadcast a story about the discovery of very powerful bombs being sent from Iran into Iraq. And on that broadcast, Richard Clark said, quote, "I think it's very hard to escape the conclusion that the Iranian government is knowingly killing U.S. troops," unquote.

Invariably, there are still those who believe that somehow our differences can be reconciled and we can yet reach a modus vivendi with the Islamic Republic.

The Iranians' behavior proves otherwise. This is a war we can either win or lose. And no combination of diplomatic demarches, economic sanctions and earnest negotiations can change that fatal equation.

The nuclear question now dominates all discussion of Iran, as if nothing else mattered. Numerous Iranian leaders have said that they intend to use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel. And we should take such statements at face value.

A nuclear Iran, as was said earlier, would indeed be a more influential regional force. And its missiles would directly menace the West.

Indeed, nuclear devices could be provided to terrorists or even launched on missiles from the soil of Iran's new strategic allies, Castro, Chavez and Morales.

But they don't need atomic bombs to kill large numbers of Americans. Hardly a day goes by without chest-pounding speeches from the mullahs warning us about the wave of suicide bombers headed our way. The obsession with the nuclear question often obscures the central issue: that the Islamic republic has waged war against us for many years and is killing Americans every week, nukes or no nukes.

They will continue to do that even if their nuclear program is shut down, and they will do it because it is their essence to do it. It is what they are. So the nuclear threat is inseparable from the nature of the regime.

If there were a freely elected, democratic government in Tehran instead of the self-selecting tyranny of the mullahs, we would not feel such a sense of urgency about the nuclear program. And so I believe the most important thing is to support democratic revolution in Iran. The demographics certainly favor radical change. About 70 percent of Iranians are 29 years old or less.

We know from the regime's own public opinion surveys that upwards of 73 percent of the people want a freer society and a more democratic government. And they constantly demonstrate their hatred of the regime in public protests, in the blogosphere in both Farsi and English, in strikes, the most recent of which is the ongoing action by the Tehran bus drivers' union. And from time to time in violent acts against officials on the ground.

In response to recent demonstrations in oil-rich (inaudible), the regime sent in members of the Badr Brigade from Iraq and of Lebanese Hezbollah, which suggests to me, at least, a lack of confidence in the more traditional security organizations. Yet many (inaudible) the possibility of successful democratic revolution, a pessimism which I find as bizarre as it is discouraging.

We empowered a successful democratic revolution in the Soviet empire with the active support of a very small percentage of the population. How hard can it be for a revolution to succeed in Iran, where more than 70 percent of people want it? The mullahcracy is not likely to go away on its own. Most revolutions, including our own, require external support in order to succeed.

And there is a widespread relief among Iranians that democratic revolution cannot defeat the mullahs unless it is supported by the United States. They have been waiting. They are still waiting for concrete signs of our support. Support means, above all, a constant critique by our leaders of the regime's murderous actions and constant encouragement of freedom, freedom-fighters and democracy.

The Iranians need to see that we want an end to the Islamic republic. We need to tell them that we want and show them that we will support non-violent regime change in their country. We also need to talk to them very specifically about how such revolutions succeed. We should greatly expand our support for private radio and television broadcasters, and we need to get serious about using our own broadcasts as revolutionary instruments.

We are not competing for market share, and we are not in the entertainment business. We should be broadcasting interviews with successful revolutionaries from other countries, and we should present conversations with experts on non-violent revolution. The Iranians need to see and hear in detail what works and what does not. They need to see and hear the experiences of their revolutionary comrades.

And finally, we must provide them with the wherewithal for two vitally important revolutionary actions: build resources for a strike fund and get the modern communications instruments. Workers need to be able to walk off the job and know they will be able to feed their families for several weeks.

And democracy advocates need modern tools to communicate between cities, which is very difficult and dangerous today. There's a lot that's praiseworthy in the Iran Freedom Support Act, Mr. Chairman. I think it could be improved by openly embracing a policy of regime change in Iran and allocating an adequate budget that demonstrates our seriousness in this endeavor.

It's what the act says anyway. People are just afraid of coming out and using the language. You can't have freedom in Iran without bringing down the mullahs. So what are we talking about? I heartily endorse the suggestion that the president appoint someone responsible for our Iran policy, and who will advise the president to report to the Congress.

The choice of that person will be very important because the Iranians will be encouraged by someone who they believe to be firmly on their side, and they will be discouraged by someone who has participated in the failed efforts to formulate a serious Iran policy. I hope these thoughts will be useful to you and your colleagues, Mr. Chairman. I believe this is the most important question we face in the Middle East and in the war against terror, and I wish you wisdom, patience and good humor in your labors.

LEACH: Thank you, Dr. Ledeen.

Mr. Milhollin?

 

STATEMENT OF

GARY MILHOLLIN
Professor, University of Wisconsin Law School and
Director, Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control

 

MILHOLLIN: Thank you very much. It's a pleasure...

LEACH: Well, is the green light on?

MILHOLLIN: Oh, OK. Sorry. I'm grateful for the opportunity to discuss today the steps that we, the United States, might take next to deal with Iran's nuclear efforts. As the committee knows, the dispute with Iran has now reached a turning point. The Iranians have resumed research that will enable it eventually -- enable Iran eventually to produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

And Iran has also announced that it will start installing a cascade of 3,000 machines late this year. That many machines operating successfully will produce, or could produce enough enriched uranium for one or two bombs per year. Actually two or three bombs per year, according to my calculations.

So, we're looking at a ticking clock. And it's very important for us to formulate a policy that's going to have some beneficial effect within the time we have remaining. That means that we have to start acting as if stopping the bomb in Iran is truly at the top of our priority list, which I don't think we're doing at this time.

Putting Iran first would mean a number of things. It would mean first that we would have to start figuring out how to get sanctions in place at the U.N. in time for them to work in the time we have remaining. Second, it would mean putting on hold the strategic partnership with India that is now being considered until the Iran crisis is over, or at least that long. And third, it would mean telling the government of Dubai that it must stop serving as a smuggling hub for Iran and Pakistan if it wants to operate an American port.

These questions are all being treated separately by the media, but in fact, they're all related. First, let's look at sanctions. I think we're looking at a four- or five-year time frame for an Iranian nuclear weapon. We are also looking at an incremental process at the U.N. planned by our government that is going to be, consist of first exhortations, then deadlines, then debates on what to do when the deadlines expire. This is a sound strategy, but it can't drag on long enough so that the Iranians have time to get most of the way to the bomb before sanctions are actually adopted.

If we adopt sanctions, what kind of sanctions should we ask for first? The simplest and, perhaps, most effective sanctions to ask for first would be to suspend the sale of any nuclear item, including dual-use items, to Iran and to suspend the sale of any military or military dual-use item to Iran.

Iran is now in violation of its obligation. It's up to the world. The world, it seems to me, has an obligation not to facilitate Iran's nuclear, missile, chemical, biological efforts. And that should be a position taken as soon as possible. It would stop Russian aid to the (inaudible) reactor. It would stop the kind of dual-use equipment being imported that the IAEA is still looking for in Iran, and that Iran hasn't really accounted for.

Unfortunately, to get this kind of a sanction in place, there's a hitch. These sensitive items are exactly what the United States now wants to sell to India under the new India deal. In order to cut off these exports to Iran, our diplomats are going to have to convince the rest of the world not to sell -- that we should, at the same time be allowed to sell the same things to India.

I think that is going to be a difficult task, and it's one that we don't need to put on ourselves. So rather than face the prospect that India and China can then ask us basically for the same kind of treatment for Iran that we're asking the rest of the world for for India, we should just shelve this deal.

There's another downside to the India deal, and that is that it bolsters hardliners in Iran who favor nuclear weapons. This group believes that such weapons are in the country's interest, and that developing them will bring only limited short-term penalty. They can argue now, in light of the India deal, that they are proved right.

Once a country succeeds in getting a bomb, the lesson is that the United States will give up on sanctions and pursue its interest in trade. That is exactly what we're trying to get China and Russia not to do with respect to Iran.

Sanctions also need to be implemented. If there are countries willing to flout sanctions in the world, it doesn't matter whether we have sanctions or not. These countries include not only those whose firms are supplying Iran directly, but countries who are serving as retransfer points.

Which brings us to Dubai. For decades, Dubai has served as one of the main, if not the main nuclear smuggling hub in the world. India, Pakistan and Iran have all fueled their nuclear programs through Dubai. And this activity did not cease after September 11. In October 2003, Emirates customs officials, over U.S. protests, allowed 66 high-speed electrical switches, ideal for detonating nuclear weapons, to go to a Pakistani businessman with ties to the Pakistani military.

I have an affidavit signed by a U.S. official in the commerce department, our commerce department, which shows that the director of customs in Dubai, or in the Emirates, refused to detain the shipment, even despite a specific request by a U.S. customs agent. So, when we think about the Dubai ports issue, we may be focusing on the wrong aspect. I would say that the biggest threat to our security is not what might come through a U.S. port managed by a Dubai company.

The real threat is what's flowing through Dubai's ports to countries that are making nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles. Once these countries, or even a terrorist organization, can get what it needs through Dubai and make a bomb with it, it's going to be too late to stop the bomb at our borders.

The time to stop the bomb is before somebody can make it into a successful device that can be put into a container. So, I would say that Dubai is a present security risk to the United States, and that it won't be possible to curb the Iranian program, even with sanctions, unless Dubai cleans up its act.

We need to tell the government of Dubai that if it wants to be considered for important contracts in this country, that it needs to stop being a hub for nuclear smugglers. I would recommend to this committee that it ask the State Department formally for a statement from the State Department whether Dubai has an export record that we would expect a good U.S. ally to have. That is, question, does Dubai's export record so far justify confidence in that government, as a good U.S. ally and a government we can trust?

The Russian deal has already been discussed. It's in my testimony. I won't go through it. I'd just like to conclude by saying that the overall goal of our policy has to be to persuade Iran that it would be better off without nuclear weapons than with them. A number of other countries have come to that conclusion recently, so this is not an impossible task. Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Kazakhstan, South Africa, Ukraine and Belarus all decided that they would be better off without the bomb than with it. They decided that their relations with the rest of the world were more beneficial than the cost that they would incur by getting a nuclear weapon.

Everybody wants Iran to make the same decision, but that won't happen unless the cost to Iran is high. So how do we make it high? The answer is, not just the United States but lots of other countries are going to have to make sacrifices. China and Russia, in particular, have large trade interests in Iran. We don't want to see higher oil prices throughout the world.

But we can at least predict what the cost of such events would be. That is, we can predict to some extent, at least, the cost of these sanctions. But who can predict or quantify the cost of an Iranian bomb? Who can tell whether a conflict between Iran and some other country might cause nuclear weapons or nuclear threats to fly back and forth? Who can tell whether Iran might supply a bomb to terrorists or help other countries make one?

And who can tell what will happen to the Iranian arsenal if its unpopular government falls, as it probably will someday? We seem to be faced with a choice between threats we think we can live with and ones we can't. So if you look at it in this light, I would say that sanctions, though expensive, appear to be our best alternative, and we should work hard to get them in place as soon as we can.

LEACH: Thank you, Mr. Milhollin.

Mr. Samii?

 

STATEMENT OF

DR. WILLIAM SAMII
Regional Analysis Coordinator for Southeast Asia and the Middle East,
Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty

 

SAMII: Thank you, sir, for giving me this opportunity to speak today. The views I express today are solely my own, and not those of Radio Free Europe Radio Liberty. Coming after younger Iranian hardliners dominated the 2003 municipal council elections and the 2004 parliamentary contest, the victory of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the 2005 presidential race represents a seemingly unstoppable political juggernaut.

Yet within weeks of Ahmadinejad's inauguration, the legislature demonstrated that it would not be a rubber stamp by rejecting four of his cabinet nominees. In the following months, the legislature expressed its dissatisfaction with many of Ahmadinejad's personnel appointments, his economic measures and his annual budget.

Meanwhile, Tehran also finds itself dealing with economic disturbances in the northwest, the southwest and the southeast. Ahmadinejad's international political initiatives, his call for the destruction of Israel and the United States, his denial of the holocaust and his administration's obstinancy on the nuclear issue also have earned him a great deal of criticism at home. These aspects of Iranian politics have implications that are relevant to our discussion today about U.S. policy, and they shed light on the cleavages in the Iranian body politic that are open to exploitation.

Now, early on, the -- last summer, Iranian officials held a meeting at which they tried to indicate that regardless of who the president is, who's elected, they're all united on their nuclear policy. But the president's diplomatic gaffes have already caused concern at home. And as Iran faces isolation over the nuclear issue, some officials are suggesting that it is time to engage with the United States. Iran's leading officials and political figures are united in a desire to master the peaceful use of nuclear energy, but there is much less unity over Tehran's diplomatic efforts.

After the IAEA governing board voted to report Iran to the U.N. Security Council in early February, the Iranian government issued an advisory saying the media must not portray it as unsuccessful or say that the country suffered a loss. Warning against discouraging the Iranian people, the advisory called for stories that avoid stirring fear or worry, and that in no way suggest diplomatic efforts had reached a dead end.

That advisory wasn't very effective, and soon thereafter, officials stepped up their criticism of the government's diplomatic efforts. By early March, as the nuclear crisis worsened and negotiations with Russia and Europe fell through, more voices suggested that it is time to engage directly with the U.S. One member of parliament said that Iran may as well get rid of the middlemen, i.e. the Europeans and Russia, and speak directly with Washington.

He also explained that the Europeans and Russians are just exploiting the lack of negotiating alternatives. Another member of the legislature, using the terminology that we're all quite familiar with, said it is better to negotiate with the Great Satan than with Little Satans. He explained that Washington is acting as -- or, excuse me, Moscow is acting as Washington's proxy anyway, so we might as well deal directly with Washington.

Now, there are a number of internal Iranian disputes taking place as well, and these also show the weaknesses that Ahmadinejad has encountered. His new cabinet members had a great deal of trouble getting confirmed. His appointment of provincial officials has met opposition from the legislature and from local officials. His annual budget has met resistance for a variety of reasons. And then there are the ethnic cleavages and ethnic clashes that I mentioned earlier. We're familiar with the bombings in southwestern Iran, where most of the oil comes from. Ethnic groups there are demanding their constitutionally specified rights.

Kurdish activists in the northwest have been rounded up and executed by the government. Others have been imprisoned. Demonstrators have been shot down by the security forces. These have led to complaints from actual members of parliament who are Kurds, asking President Ahmadinejad to do something and provide answers.

Obviously, there has been a lack of unity in the Iranian government on the wisdom of engaging with the United States. And at times, this issue has been used against people in sort of continuing political disputes. Contact with the U.S. continues to be a sensitive topic, as Mr. Burns said earlier. There are channels for interaction: the Swiss channel, the Algerian channel, and then on specific countries, specific issues, the embassies in Baghdad and Afghanistan.

But in Iran, still, anything but the most overt hostility can create a backlash. I believe that if the current trend continues, though, with Iran's isolation increasing and with Mr. Ahmadinejad's political position weakening, it may be Tehran that initiates the negotiations. Thank you.

LEACH: Thank you very much. Mr. Hyde, do you wish to speak? Ask any questions? OK.

Mr. Royce?

ROYCE: Thank you. I'd like to ask a question, Dr. Samii, of you, and of Dr. Ledeen. And what it goes to is the fact that after the Cold War was over, many of us were interested in how people were weaned off of a belief in a totalitarian system and brought to the belief that democracy and freedom represented and answer.

And in listening to speeches by Vaclav Havel and Lech Walesa, they laid out how this happened in eastern Europe. By debriefing former enthusiasts for a totalitarian system, we found out the thought process that went through their minds as they listened to Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty about what was actually going on inside their country, about the repression.

But then as they were also introduced to concepts formerly alien, maybe, to the teachings of their youth -- tolerance, political pluralism, you know, the very concepts of freedom, market economy -- I wonder how much of this kind of education goes on in Iran.

And given the fact that upwards of 70-some percent of the youth already seem to feel the oppressiveness of being under the control of the mullahs and not having the freedom, not event having the opportunity -- and I think this is key, the opportunity to go out and find gainful employment because of the controlled economy, because of the nature in which the licensing is all done through those who are well-connected. There isn't a market there that gives people the ability.

If we were to look at the lessons learned in Russian and the East Bloc, what type of programming would we be doing, and what types of support would we be giving? You saw all the ingenious ways in which the Reagan administration was able to give support in the East Bloc to groups that wanted freedom, from Solidarity on throughout the -- how would we be going about this, if I could ask you both?

SAMII: I have to be sort of careful what I say about broadcast activities per se, but...

ROYCE: If you would like to defer on that point, I could have Dr. Ledeen or others answer that.

SAMII: I can go to it. Well, first of all, the regime controls most of the -- well, the educational system, and there is no private media in Iran. Iranian people don't buy everything the regime tells them. They therefore go to the Internet. They listen to radio. Radio (inaudible) is very popular. It's one of the most trusted news sources in the -- for Iranians. And of course, there's the popularity of satellite TV.

And these are venues that can be used, should be used. And there's things that people trust and listen to. Clearly, they don't buy everything the regime tells them. But when the regime is able to monopolize to a great extent the information sources, it will continue to hold a great sway over public attitudes.

ROYCE: Mr. Ledeen?

LEDEEN: Thank you, Congressman Hyde. Well, in terms of what kind of support we need to get to them, I tried to indicate that in my summary. And it's at somewhat greater length than my prepared testimony. I like very much your model of the Cold War. I view Iran in that context. I was involved in designing policy for getting help to dissident groups in the Soviet empire. During the Cold War, it turned out to be much easier than anybody thought it would be.

As it turned out to be much easier than anybody thought it would be to bring down that regime. I mean, we need to remind ourselves constantly, people are unduly pessimistic about the great revolutionary force of the American example and of American action. When America moves, the entire world shakes. What's important is that we move successfully and rationally, and that we time our motions to our policies.

In terms of broadcasting, I think in many ways that (inaudible) has been an improvement to what we had before. Iranians do tend to like it. It's still not clear to me how many of them actually get to listen to it. I am alarmed when I hear stories from time to time that people want to do more television and less radio, because I think to watch television is dangerous for an Iranian, whereas to listen to the radio is easy. You can have a portable radio with you almost anyplace. To get satellite television, you have to put a dish on your roof, and they will know it, and they can come after you.

But I think basically, Iran is a place where the revolution of the spirit against this kind of theocratic fascism has already taken place. It's done. They don't like it. They want to be free. And it's a country which has a long tradition of self-government and constitution-writing, and a long tradition of revolution. They had three revolutions in the twentieth century alone.

ROYCE: Thank you, Dr. Ledeen.

Thank you, Dr. Samii.

Thank you, panel.

LEACH: Mr. Berman?

BERMAN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Dr. Ledeen, am I correct in assuming that your analysis of Iran and the Islamic Republic of Iran would have been the same if Khatami were still the president, in terms of its resolve to take on the United States, the West? The change in the office of president is not what has forced your, compelled your analysis?

LEDEEN: Right. I think it's been like this for 27 years.

BERMAN: Right.

LEDEEN: Whatever president.

BERMAN: I'm struck by your notion that sanctions, all this other stuff is less important than focusing on fundamentally inspiring a, in your words, a non-violent democratic revolution in Iran. And part of your central argument for why that can work is, look what happened to the Soviet Union. But there's something about what happened in the Soviet Union. Not that anybody, except maybe Daniel Moynihan and you predicted it, but what happened in the Soviet Union, it was a country whose leaders had a certain level of rationality.

While Marxism-Leninism may have been a religion, it didn't lead to suicide bombings and sort of what matters in this life isn't that important. It had a change of leaders that opened up the space a little more. It had people who stood on tanks and sort of kept the military from using its force to keep the old guard in power. Why is it going to happen like that in Iran? I hear about Ahmadinejad and the Republican Guard. We know about the sort of religious nature of this -- how they see the United States and the West.

Why isn't the brute force of an authoritarian state going to come down on the forces that would create this democratic revolution so viciously that it will be aborted in its tracks? And maybe just because my time will expire, I am curious after you answer that, Dr. Hulsman spun out how every option was bad, but he didn't address your option, particularly as opposed to the option that involves force or strikes and all that would happen in terms of democracy promotion, potential toppling of neighboring regimes, the total mess and chaos that might follow from that.

He didn't address this focus on democratic, internal democratic non-violent revolution and how that would play in the larger area. Thank you both.

Dr. Ledeen?

LEDEEN: Thank you, Congressman. Obviously, we could spend days discussing your question. It's not an easy question. And the answer may be complicated. But I think it can be reduced to a very short answer. And that is that at the end of the day, if you put a million Iranians in the public square of Tehran, (inaudible), chanting, out, out, out, the revolutionary guards and the regular army are not going to open fire on a million of their own sisters and brothers. And the regime knows that. And we can prove that by looking at the way the regime behaves.

Look at what they did in (inaudible). And there are many other cases. They are afraid because they do not trust -- even the revolutionary guards, who are supposed to be the most fanatic and the most loyal, or even the (inaudible), for example. They don't use them. They use them less and less for these purposes. And that's because they don't trust them.

They know that their people that, every time somebody, some normal citizen walks down the main street in Tehran and look up at a lamppost, they're asking themselves, how many mullahs could I hang from this lamppost. They know that people with turbans in the streets of the major cities, in order to get a taxicab, have to take off their religious garments and pretend to be a normal person because otherwise the taxi's not going to pick them up.

They know their people hate them. They know the clock is ticking. That's why they're shipping out all these billions of dollars. And there's Dubai again. If you want to see just how insecure that regime is, just ask our friends in Dubai how much money has come in in the last couple years. They know they're coming down.

In many ways, I think some of them are surprised they are still there. And it's the same sort of thing. They know they are illegitimate. They know their people have contempt for them. And that, at the end of the day, is what brought down the Soviet Union. But the Soviet Union was catalyzed by a great western leader, by many great western leaders who spoke to them and said, don't be afraid. Bring it down. And we have not said that to the Iranians.

Listening to Secretary Burns and Joseph this morning, you will notice that they get right up to that -- they get right up to it. And they say, well, you know, we want the Iranian people to be free. So why don't you say, we want regime change in Iran. Why are they so afraid to say it? Why is it that for all these years, all these years, people have been afraid to come to grips with Iran, which has been all along the central issue in the Middle East?

You can't get at any of the so-called important questions in the Middle East today without going through Iran. You can't solve the Israeli-Arab question without going through Iran, because Iran runs the terrorists. You can't deal with the security of Iraq. We could never win a defensive war in Iraq as long as the mullahs are in power in Tehran. They can't let it. They can't permit that.

They have to go all out to drive us out. Anyway, I don't want to have to i discussion. This is not the right format. But I thank you for your terrific question, and I hope that helped.

HULSMAN: Yes, thank you, Congressman Berman. I'm writing a book with (inaudible) about your one question, and Random House will be delighted that you picked it up, and I'll send you a copy. But I will get into this on democracy. I'm dubious of all silver bullets. I'm dubious of all forms of utopianism -- which is what this is to believe this. Rousseau ended up in an insane asylum for a reason. I'm dubious of the French Revolution, which led to Robespierre and the Russian one.

One size does not fit all. Finding one motive force of history, which surely democracy is, does not mean you've solved all the other problems that go with it, and Iran is a great example.

Let me try to go into this. I was listening, too, to Ambassador Burns, and kept wondering if anybody was going to mention -- and Iranian polling is totally imprecise. You can find a poll to what you want. Let's be honest about that. But they do like their nuclear program.

There is no doubt that in all semi-official polls, around 60 to 65 percent of the people favor a nuclear program. Does that mean nuclear weapons? Not clear, but they surely believe, around 80 percent of those polled say they were opposed to halting nuclear activities. Even if the West or the international community did so. And they still hate the regime. But it can carry on...

BERMAN: But is Iran with a new regime India?

HULSMAN: They see that, and the comment made by Mr. Milhollin is right, to the extent that the Iranians that I meet in Europe when I've been doing this Track II thing say: We'll be India. You'll come around. We'll have a bad decade, but you know, we'll get there in the end. We're a major country. We're a 4,000-year-old civilization.

I have a classics degree, and people say, (inaudible), John, the Athenians, John, the Athenians. That was us. And, you know, we'll be here. And you will change your mind. I think that is a very important point -- democratic point. The primary issue is Persian nationalism. They're a great power. They're surrounded by American satrapis, from their point of view. They're surrounded, and I thought Ambassador Burns did a very good job in three hours of testimony.

The one thing he said that was, I think, patently wrong: Iraq and Afghanistan, if you're a Persian nationalist, are a problem. You're surrounded by American satrapis. America has made you the dominant power in the Gulf. That was not our intention. Undoubtedly, Iran is the dominant power in the Gulf. The Saudis, there are not enough of them. They've got their own problems internally. Iraq we know the problems with.

Indeed, who's running Iraq? Jaafari, who probably will be the new prime minister, though he's wobbling? Why did he win the Shia vote bloc by one vote? Who put him over the top? The followers of Muqtada al Sadr.

That is not victory. That is not a democratic outcome that I'm happy with in any kind of way. So to assume that this is simple, this is easy, one more push and we're there, given what's just happened with Chalabi, he went around town fooling everyone, when he was last in Iraq when the Dodgers played baseball in Brooklyn.

I think we've got to be a little bit more cunning about this. It's 4,000 years old, and Iranians say if upstarts like North Korea and Pakistan can have the bomb, why can't we as a significant civilization? They know that they're part of the axis of evil. They know that we talk that way about them. They know they're on the list, and they're surrounded by American satrapis.

You don't have to be a mullah to rationally say, gee, if I have a nuclear weapon, like Russia, you can lecture us about (inaudible) and we can do what you want. On the other hand, if you're Saddam, if you're Milosevic, you go to the Hague. That's the lesson of the '90s. That is a nondemocratic answer to what goes on.

I'm not saying democracy-promotion doesn't matter, but it takes (inaudible) it's more complicated than what goes on. And we need to have a tiny bit of humility.

Thank you.

LEACH: That was an extraordinary question and an extraordinary answer.

Mr. Delahunt?

DELAHUNT: It was an extraordinary answer.

And I have to say to Dr. Hulsman, I thought it was brilliant and I agree with him. Maybe that's why I think it's brilliant, because there is no silver bullet. And you expressed in your statement the concerns that I have.

Have any of you been to Iran or Tehran?

Just you, Dr. Samii?

SAMII: I lived there for eight years when I was a little boy.

DELAHUNT: Have the three of you been there in the last decade?

You know, when I travel and go through a nation, one that particularly has strained relations with the United States, and what I hear here and what I see there are just so disparate. It's really good to kick the bricks occasionally.

Dr. Ledeen, I have great respect for you. I'm aware of your reputation. I wish it was that easy.

I just think that, Dr. Hulsman, you're correct. I have grave concerns.

What I don't want to do -- and, Dr. Samii, I really appreciate your testimony. I mean, I was unaware that there are at least some dissent in Iran; within the official organs of that state, that there is some unhappiness, if you will, with this president.

I thought what was interesting -- you might have heard what I said earlier on the CRS, you know, that the supreme leader said it just kind of reeks that they're getting concerned with this guy. They think he's a wacko, OK, out there running around the world, causing them problems. And clearly he has within Iran some support and I presume his base is very strong and very disciplined.

What I don't want to do here in this Congress is I don't want to unify them, because of that Persian nationalism that you refer to. I would like to try to take advantage of the differences that in reality exist within Iran and see, you know, our government design a policy that isn't a parlor game. And I don't think that the secretary was just dismissing it.

I'm hoping that something's going on where there's considerable thought going through to a strategy that utilizes the kind of distinctions and the realities that you point out, Dr. Samii.

The last thing we need is another Chalabi leading us down the road. You know, a colleague of mine, on this side of the aisle, says we ought to be grateful to the MEK. I mean, I'm reading our own State Department review of this terrorist organization. It mixes Marxism and Islam. It conducted anti-Western attacks prior to the Islamic regime. They supported the takeover. I mean, there's nothing there that tells me it's anything more than a cult.

I mean, we've really got to be careful whom we get into bed with. The reality is that there's a growing anti-American sentiment. You've already heard -- I think it was you, Mr. Milhollin -- about India and Iran. It appears to the rest of the world that we're being hypocritical.

We go into Iraq -- and I voted against that because I think it was a significant mistake -- but then we end up in bed with Islam Karimov from Uzbekistan and Turkmenbashi from Turkmenistan. You know, how do you reconcile all that in terms of how we generally want to bring the benefits of freedom and liberty and democracy to the rest of the world?

We just send out these messages and we wonder why the polling data not just in the Middle East, but Latin America and elsewhere is disturbingly, profoundly disturbingly bad when it comes to anti- American sentiment that impacts us, whether we believe it or not.

Anyone care to comment on my observation?

LEDEEN: Well, I would like to say just one thing about the notion that I'm advocating a silver bullet.

I must say that I'm profoundly disturbed to hear so many people declare democratic revolution, which is the process by which this country came into existence and the central instrument of American success in the world in the 20th century, as some kind of lunatic strategy.

Well, it's in essence what you're saying, sir, and it's in essence what Dr. Hulsman is saying. It's suggesting that people who advocate it have oversimplified a complicated world and are suggesting a simple solution to complicated questions that can't be resolved that way.

That's just what you said, Dr. Hulsman. I think those were your words.

I believe in human complexity as well as the next person.

I also believe -- I'm a historian. I think there's certain moments where certain strategies work, and moments where they don't work. I think we are still living through a moment of global democratic revolution where this strategy has been proven exceedingly effective on almost every continent in the world. It also bothers me morally that we seem very happy to advocate this (inaudible) for democratic revolutions in countries from Kazakhstan to Georgia to the Ukraine to Lebanon to the Ivory Coast and yet not in Iran, or somehow it seems singularly inappropriate. And yet of all those countries, Iran is where empirically you can show the greatest support for it, people ready for it.

Furthermore, the various problems, real problems about the advance of democracy in countries have never had it, haven't experienced it, lack centuries of self-government, Iran is different. Iran has centuries of self-government. Iran has an exemplary constitution from the beginning of the 20th century. Iran does have experience in revolutionary change.

So, I mean, it just seems to me -- I don't get it. I don't understand it.

Plus, I really don't see what Ahmed Chalabi has to do with any of this. I mean, he's not Iranian. I mean, he's not involved. Maybe he played for the Brooklyn Dodgers -- I don't know.

But, I mean, nobody is holding up any person as a solution to this kind of thing.

DELAHUNT: No, I'm not talking about a solution, although he has had ties with the Iranian regime.

And according to newspaper reports, there was a question about whether he was providing the Iranians with information that had the potential to impact American military in Iraq. I don't know whatever happened to that, but it was reported.

LEDEEN: Well, it was false, so that's why you didn't hear anymore of it.

DELAHUNT: OK.

LEACH: The time of the gentleman has expired.

(CROSSTALK)

LEACH: Mr. Milhollin, if you can do it one minute. We have a problem; another hearing was to begin seven minutes ago here.

So if we could go quickly, that'd be fine.

MILHOLLIN: Yes.

I just have one point to make.

And that is, you ask about silver bullets, international support and that sort of thing. I think that we have to present to the rest of the world an image of a country that knows what it's doing and has a consistent, coherent, overall strategy and we haven't done that.

And I don't think we're doing it now. And so that's why I think we have to see the limits on Iran's program through export control. We have to see our new deal with India as a detriment to that. And we have to be willing to suffer ourselves from losing sales, and we have to ask other people to do that.

There's no way to exert economic or political pressure on Iran without collateral damage to the population. We have to take that risk.

But we seem not to be able to make a decision on these things and we present an image of a country that's confused and that's stumbling around.

And I think we -- and as I said before, I think the clock is ticking. The Iranians are closer probably than we think. There's a lot we don't know about their program.

And so I fear that -- I just hope that we will become focused and effective in the time we have remaining.

LEACH: Thank you very much.

The gentleman from California...

(UNKNOWN): Mr. Chairman, I'll be very brief, but this is just to answer one question.

There is one major U.S. polling firm that's done an exhaustive poll inside Iran, plus or minus 3.6 on the margin of error. A plurality of adults, 42 percent says that the Islamic republic's access to nuclear weapons would add to their anxiety; only 37 percent of adults indicated that it would not. The rest were unsure or wouldn't respond. Anxiety over nuclear weapons in the hands of the Islamic republic increases among younger adults going to 50 percent among 16- to 24-year-olds.

It seems to me that if we could effectively communicate one message with public diplomacy it would be to sell the Iranian people on why developing a full nuclear fuel cycle and nuclear weapons is a bad idea. It's expensive, takes away from education dollars. It's rejected by the world. It would set off a regional arms race. It's environmentally dangerous. Like South Africa's giving it up, it goes against the grain of history. There are themes here.

And lastly, in the poll, they asked: "As you know, since September 11th, the international community has been very worried about the prospects of terrorists obtaining weapons of mass destruction. Do you feel that worry is real?" Sixty percent of Iranians say yes it is.

So those are some of the objective polling data that I just thought I would share, Mr. Chairman.

Thank you.

LEACH: Appreciate that very much.

Mr. Hyde, do you want to make any concluding comments?

HYDE: I want to thank the panel for their endurance, their patience, but mostly for their scholarship.

They've made a serious contribution to a terribly serious problem and we're just beginning to plunge into it. And I'm very grateful for your assistance and we'll (inaudible).

Unfortunately for you, we shall meet again.

Thank you.

LEACH: Well, I want to second Mr. Hyde's concluding remarks and simply say as someone who's an advocate of the power of culture, I take quite seriously several of your comments about the need for certain clarity of purpose as well. And I think they're compelling observations.

Thank you all very much. This has been a very enlightening panel. Thank you.

The hearing is adjourned. In several minutes, we'll reconvene the subcommittee.

Thank you.