SEN. TOM COBURN (R-OK): The Federal Financial Management and International Security, Subcommittee of Government Affairs and Homeland Security will come to order.

I want to welcome all of our guests. I have thoroughly read your testimony, even those that have come somewhat late. I appreciate the efforts that you have made to inform this subcommittee of your thoughts and views.

We live in a dangerous time and a dangerous world. The events that are unfolding in the Middle East today are not always what they seem to be and, in fact, proxies appear to be performing for others.

There is no question that the largest sponsor of terrorism in the world is the government of Iran, without question. That not only impacts the Middle East, but the rest of the world.

There is no question that the sponsor and promoter and payer for the improvised explosive devices that are multidirectional and unidirectional in Iraq are prepared, bought and paid for by the government of Iran.

The purpose of this hearing, however, is to discuss Iran's nuclear impasse and what is to be done about it. And the evidentiary nature of the statements that have been made by their own negotiators, in that they do not intend to negotiate straightforward, they intend to buy time, as published widely and worldwide by the fact that their negotiators said they stalled the E.U. so that they could continue developing.

I think it's very important for us, and I want to thank my cochairman, Senator Carper, for having initiated this, the second of our hearings on Iran, but it's important for us to understand the seriousness of the threat to the entire world, not just the Middle East.

I also think it's very important for us to recognize the threat that the government of Iran is to the people of Iran, to the very people that they supposedly represent, because ultimately what they do is do them tremendous damage.

I have a complete written statement I will make a part of the record. And I would like to recognize my cochairman, Senator Carper.

 

OPENING STATEMENT OF

THOMAS R. CARPER
A Senator from Delaware, and
Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security

 

SEN. THOMAS R. CARPER (D-DE): Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. To our witnesses today, welcome. We appreciate your willingness to stop what you're doing in your lives to be here with us today and to share your thoughts and respond to some of our questions.

I want to thank the chairman for scheduling this hearing and our staffs for working through to prepare us for this day.

And, I mean, we have hearings and I'm sure we both participated and then you say, "Why is this relevant to what's going on in the world?" Today we don't ask that question. We know for sure why this is relevant to what's going on in the world and our lives, and certainly the lives of a lot of people in the Middle East.

For nearly two weeks, violence in the Middle East has led to more than 300 deaths, with many of those dying being civilians. Iran, through its sponsorship of Hezbollah and its willingness to back Syria, has been publicly linked to these events.

Our country has been placed in a difficult situation, a situation where we must lead our allies, on the one hand, to strategically contain the conflict between Hamas, Hezbollah and Israeli forces and, at the same time, try to help stop the Iranians from developing nuclear weapons.

The administration has entered a decision to engage in talks with Iran, multilateral talks with Iran, regarding its nuclear program. But unfortunately, the success of its path remains, today at least, in question, especially given the current situation.

Additionally, the administration has said that it will send Secretary Rice to both the U.N. and to the Middle East to discuss a solution to ending the conflict involving the Israelis and some of their neighbors.

I cannot more urgently stress the need for these visits to happen as soon as possible or the need for the United States to utilize our diplomatic leverage to urge a cease-fire to the fighting that continues to claim innocent lives.

I'm looking forward to hearing the testimony from all of you. And we look forward to the opportunity to see if that testimony may shed a little more light on both the situations that we face and a possible better path forward.

Thank you.

COBURN: Again, welcome to our panelists. I will introduce each of you and then we will recognize you. Your full statement will be made part of the record.

Because Mr. Fakhravar will have an interpreter, we will give him an additional amount of time with which to make his statement.

Amir Abbas Fakhravar is chairman of the Independent Student Movement, is an Iranian student leader that recently left Iran and came to the United States in April of this year.

While in Iran, Mr. Fakhravar was imprisoned by the regime for his writings and activities that promote a free and democratic Iran.

Next is Dr. Michael Ledeen, who is the freedom scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. His research areas include state sponsors of terrorism, Iran and the Middle East.

Mr. Ilan Berman is vice president for policy at the American Foreign Policy Council. Mr. Berman's research includes Iran and the Middle East.

Dr. Ray Takeyh is senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He has testified before this committee before, welcome back, works on issues related to Iran and political reform in the Middle East.

Finally, Dr. Jim Walsh is from the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He researches international security policy.

Each of you will be allotted five minutes, and we will be somewhat free with that time, if we can. If you don't have time to make your point, we'll be lenient in that regard. And I want to welcome you.

And to our leader of the Iranian students, there's a movie that's well known in America and a classic line from it is, "People don't follow titles, they follow courage." I want to commend your courage and offer you my admiration for your leadership, for what you're doing.

You're recognized for five minutes.

 

STATEMENT OF

AMIR ABBAS FAKHRAVAR
Independent Student Movement

 

FAKHRAVAR: Thank you very much for giving me the honor and opportunity to speak at the United States Senate, one of the world's oldest and most distinguished democratic institutions.

I assure you that very thought of being able to be with you fills me with joy and awe. You are, as your ancestors promised, a beacon of light to all nations around the world.

(THROUGH TRANSLATOR): My name is Amir Abbas Fakhravar. I am basically leader of a portion of the student movement in Iran. I have been through jails and tortured. As a result of torture, you can see the scars on my face. My left wrist was broken. My knee was broken. I am here to voice the Iranian operation, bring it to your attention, and the basic regime change model and the message is what we are here to pass on to you all.

I have four points to make here. First is the negotiation part. Is there any real truth and meaningful reason to have the negotiations with the Islamic regime?

I have lived all my life under the system, the current system in Iran, and I know the system very well. There is no way that there is any place of negotiation with these people.

You can negotiate with people who have logical minds and humanistic beliefs. The people in charge in Iran do not have either one. They are brutal and oppressive.

The crimes that they pull on the people of Iran, you can see it based on examples like stoning, cutting off the hands, eye gouging and torture.

I am not saying that the negotiations are going to be futile. However, it is not just futile, it is dangerous, outright dangerous, because you will provide them legitimacy.

The Islamic regime has no legitimacy both inside and outside of Iran. Through this negotiation, you are giving them the legitimacy, at least inside of Iran, toward the Iranian people inside.

Hezbollah Islamic regime are moving toward this movement to bring a bloody ordeal in the country, in the world. This is one of their fundamental religious beliefs.

Khamenei, Mesbah Yazdi and Ahmadinejad are all of the belief that for bringing the back 12th imam, Shiite imam, the whole world has to be in a chaotic and bloody way before they arrive.

They will do anything to disrupt the order of the world and make a mockery of the world, so they can reach to their goal of bringing their 12th imam back to life.

I am here standing in front of you to tell you that the youth of Iran, the Iranian students, do have the power to stand in front of this regime. We did show the might and the power of the Iranian student movement on July 9, 1999, protest.

At that time, we did not have a full organized group and we did not have the full education to combat this regime's oppression.

Through the means of communication, we would like to broadcast and promote democracy amongst the Iranian young and other groups, such as labor movements, women's movements and other participants, other movements.

We need communication devices, such as mobile cell phones, printers to print our magazines and our flyers. We need Web sites. Most importantly, we need radio and TV broadcasts. Both Radio Farda and Voice of America, the Persian version, can help us greatly.

The part that they have taken so far does not seem to be helping. I don't think that the U.S. taxpayers are happy to see their monies being used for propaganda against the United States.

The most optimistic ones, the analysts and all, do not even trust the reform within the regime.

People of Iran have not received accurate news for years. They do need to hear accurate news and accurate analysis. With the so- called balanced view of these two media, the Voice of America and Radio Farda, they have really caused nothing but confusion amongst Iranians.

Every program should be geared toward regime change and that is what the Iranians inside of Iran wish for.

We are planning, through an organization called Confederation of Iranian Students, to organize all students once again. We can accomplish this organization. We can organize it.

However, the Iranians inside of Iran do need to know that people of the world are standing by them. Through hard sanctions, multilateral sanctions, we do believe that the Iranian people will come to the realization that the world is not supporting the regime, should not be worried about this sanction.

My younger brothers and sisters and mother are living inside of Iran. They are going through very hard economic conditions. This is throughout Iran, for everybody.

They are willing to handle a short period of hard times so they will get rid of this regime once and for all. Iran is not a poor country, but the income of the country goes basically into the mullahs' pockets and their children, their sons.

All Iranians do know that after removal of the regime, there would be foreign investments. We can use this sanction to organize and gather up people and bring them together.

And about the military, nobody is after military action, neither us nor you. All we are doing is to show that we do have the power and let you know that we can do it from inside. We would like to replace the Islamic regime with a secular democratic system, and we do our best.

The mistakes by the Islamic regime is that they are trying to prolong the time, and if they feel that there is any danger in the world, nobody's going to ask us how to deal with them. But I am sure that Iranians' interests will be considered in this.

There are two points. I know I've taken so much of your time. Twenty-six years ago, a few handful of Iranian students climbed the walls of the United States embassy. For 444 days, they held hostage the American sons and daughters. It brought shame to the Iranian student.

I promised myself, once the opportunity is available, on behalf of the Iranian students, as a leader of the Iranian student movement, to apologize for this insane crime to the people of the United States and the world.

The second point is we realize that the nuclear issue of the Islamic regime has really tied the whole world up. This is a problem for the world population, as well as the Iranian population.

But the main point in Iran is different. This shall be a big problem for the entire world, as well -- the sick mind of the regime's man in charge. They teach the children in school how to make bombs and how to kill people. Our prisons are overflowing with political prisoners, breaking (ph) human rights widely.

We hope that while you are paying attention to the nuclear dossier of Iran, these issues are not forgotten.

For security even here in the United States, you need stability in the Middle East.

COBURN: You need to summarize for us, if you would.

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I'm sorry?

COBURN: You need to summarize and complete your testimony.

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Thirty seconds, sir.

Changing the regime to a secular democrat will help the stability in the region and the world. We see what the Islamic regime has done with its support of Hezbollah in Lebanon and what crime has taken place.

Please help us to remove the Islamic regime and you can count on it that Iran will be one of the best friends and ally of the United States and the world.

Thank you.

COBURN: Thank you, Mr. Fakhravar.

Dr. Berman?

(APPLAUSE)

 

STATEMENT OF

ILAN BERMAN
American Foreign Policy Council

 

BERMAN: Thank you, Senator Coburn. That's a very hard act to follow, but I'll try.

Let me talk a little bit from the American perspective. The one thing that I think we should emphasize here is that right now the United States is at a crossroads. We have a situation where the State Department's negotiating offer over the Iranian nuclear program, the one that was proffered in late May, has effectively ground to a halt.

Certainly, the Iranian regime is trying to extend the timeline that they've been given, but for all intents and purposes, this effort has failed.

So what we have now is a moment of reckoning, when we need to look again at all of the policy options that are available to the United States for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program and the Iranian regime itself.

So what's, I think, useful to note is a little bit of historical perspective. The State Department's offer, the one that was presented in late May, is actually the third such effort over the last decade. What we had between 1994 and 1997 was a process called "critical dialogue," under which we tried to alter Iranian behavior through economic and political inducements. That failed spectacularly.

Between 2003 and 2005, you had what you could charitably term "critical dialogue redux," which was when the E.U.-3, France, Great Britain and Germany, tried to do the same, specifically on the nuclear issue.

And now you have this latest offer, abortive offer coming out of the State Department. All of these offers failed because they fundamentally misread the political will of the Iranian regime to become a nuclear power. And future offers that neglect to understand this are going to meet the same fate.

I think it's useful to note that they also did not account for Iranian perceptions. I recently had the opportunity to travel to the Persian Gulf and have meetings with Iranian officials, both current and former, and I was astounded by what they told me.

They told me that, "under no circumstances will the Iranian regime do a deal," that was their words, not mine, "do a deal with the U.S. government," because they do not believe that American worries over the Iranian nuclear program are legitimate.

Instead, they think that the nuclear issue is a foil that the Bush administration is using to promote regime change within Iran. As such, they have little to no incentive to actually come up with some sort of negotiated settlement, because after all, if the nuclear issue is gone, there's going to be other issues.

And the third thing I think that's useful to note with regard to the negotiating track is that there's a lot of opportunity costs that are associated with doing this.

What we've really done by offering, for the first time in 27 years, direct negotiations with the Iranian government is send two messages. The first is to the Iranian leadership, and the message is as follows: "We are so concerned over your nuclear effort, we're so concerned over your atomic program, that the other elements of your rogue behavior, your interference in Iraq, your support of terrorism in the Israeli-Palestinian, now Israeli-Hezbollah conflict, all fall by the wayside."

This is not an encouraging or a moderating sort of message to send.

The second message that we have sent is to the Iranian people themselves, which is that our concern over one aspect of the Iranian regime's rogue behavior is so great that it's chilled our support for their desire for change.

On the opposite end of the political spectrum, we have the idea of military action. And I certainly would second Mr. Fakhravar in saying that this is something that neither the Iranians nor the American people truly desire, for no other reason than the fact that it is likely to be profoundly self-defeating.

First of all, we have to account for the fact that there is likely to be a very grave asymmetric response from the regime because of how it is positioned in the region and because of the tools of their terrorist proxies and the tools that they can marshal to do so, to retaliate.

But more than anything else, what you have is a situation where military action will likely create a rallying around the flag effect that is likely to be profoundly self-defeating because it will strengthen, not weaken, the Iranian regime.

So that leaves us with what I'd like to call a triple-track approach, and I think all of these should be pursued simultaneously.

The first is economic pressure, and there are really three pressure points that we can bring to bear upon the regime. The first is foreign direct investment. The Iranian regime is dependent on foreign direct investment for continued oil production. They require about $1 billion annually to continue output at current levels, 2.5 million barrels a day export, and a $1.5 million to increase that capacity.

That's not a lot of money, and I think that should be understood. Iran has signed a contract worth dozens of billions of dollars with foreign powers over the last several years. With China alone, they signed two massive exploration and development deals worth $100 billion over 25 years. $1 billion is a drop in the bucket.

But we can, through measures like multilateral sanctions, complicate their access to foreign direct investment and force them to dip into their hard currency reserves to continue their program. So we can slow it somewhat, but we cannot change the political will of the leadership itself to continue pursuing this program.

The second is the economic hierarchy. Right now in Iran you have a situation where the vast majority of government funds and of government resources rest in the hands of very few people. And through measures like targeted sanctions, like travel bans, like asset freezes, we have the ability to take a large chunk of this money out of commission and really capture the conscience of the behind-the- scenes decision-makers that we're serious.

Again, we can't change their political will, but we can certainly telegraph to them that we are serious.

The third, and I think the most promising, economic point of vulnerability is commodities. Iran right now requires close to 40 percent of its annual consumption of gasoline to come from abroad. This is at a cost of about $3 million a year.

Moreover, Iran does not have a strategic gas reserve. Iran only has, according to authoritative estimates, about 45 days worth of gasoline in country, after which it becomes vulnerable. And that means that freezes on foreign exports of gasoline to Iran have the ability very quickly, much quicker than normal sanctions would, to affect both the ability of the regime to maintain their vast state subsidies on gasoline which currently exist, and also, potentially, these sort of commodity restrictions could create a situation where you have substantial social unrest in Iran.

For the sake of brevity, I won't touch upon democracy promotion, because my colleague, Dr. Ledeen, can certainly touch upon that for me. But what I would like to talk about sort of as a concluding point is public diplomacy.

Neither the nuclear effort, which, right now, retains a large amount of domestic popularity, nor the idea that the U.S. stands with the Iranian people in their desire for change can be telegraphed without an effective public diplomacy mechanism.

And right now we have a situation where the tools of U.S. public diplomacy towards Iran, effectively, Voice of America, Persian service and Radio Farda are simply not doing the job.

You have a situation where $56.1 million, at last count, is heading toward the broadcasting board of governors with no effective oversight. And the corporate culture that exists in those mechanisms today, ineffective programming, lack of strategic clarity, and sometimes even ineffective, mixed or downright dangerous messages about American intentions are likely to be amplified as a result of those funds if there's no governmental oversight.

I don't think -- and certainly, I'll be less diplomatic than my colleague -- but I don't think it's unfair to say that if we're talking about regime change, that regime change in U.S. public diplomacy toward Iran needs to happen, and it needs to happen because the stakes are so high.

All of these efforts are interdependent. The nuclear issue is the most pressing one. But over the long term, the only people that can ensure that an Iran armed with nuclear weapons is not a threat is by changing the finger on the trigger, by changing the character of the regime itself.

Thank you.

COBURN: Thank you, Dr. Berman.

Dr. Ledeen?

(APPLAUSE)

 

STATEMENT OF

MICHAEL LEDEEN
American Enterprise Institute

 

LEDEEN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Senator Carper, Senator Dayton, if he returns.

Sadly, recent events and most notably the Iranian-sponsored war against Israel have made this discussion more urgent than ever. But that's what happens when successive administrations for nearly three decades avoid dealing with a serious problem: It gets worse. The cost of dealing with it becomes more and more burdensome.

The theocratic tyranny in Tehran is a very serious problem, and it is becoming graver. It has already cost a great number of American lives and an even greater number of innocent Iranians, Iraqis, Israelis, Lebanese, Argentineans and others around the world.

Now, they are literally hell bent to become a nuclear power. The Islamic Republic of Iran has been at war with us for 27 years, and we have yet to respond.

Fanatical Iranians overran the American embassy in Tehran in 1979 and subjected diplomats to 444 days of confinement and humiliation. In the mid-1980s, Iranian-supported terrorists from Hezbollah killed hundreds of Americans in our Beirut embassy and six months later, killed 241 Marines in their barracks there.

A couple of years after that, Hezbollah took other Americans hostage in Lebanon, from the CIA station chief in Beirut to Christian priests, to a distinguished military man who had served as General Colin Powell's military assistant in the Pentagon. The priests were eventually ransomed. Mr. Higgins and Mr. Buckley were tortured and murdered.

They have waged an unholy proxy war against us ever since the revolution. They created Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. They support most all the others, from Hamas and Al Qaida to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command.

Iran's proxies include Shiites, Sunnis and Marxists, all cannon- fighter for the overriding objective to dominate or destroy us.

It's no accident that the weekend before the two fronts' attack on Israel, there was a security summit in Tehran involving all of Iraq's neighbors, at which Iran's infamous president, Ahmadinejad, issued one of his trademark warnings to Israel. Perhaps he had a hint of what would soon explode.

There are still those in Foggy Bottom, Langley and academia who believe that somehow we can sort out our differences with the Islamic Republic. I wish they were right, but it seems to me that the Iranians' behavior proves otherwise.

Religious fanatics of the sort that rule Iran do not want a deal with the devil. They want us dominated or dead.

There's no escape from their hatred or from the war they have waged against us. We can either win or lose, but no combination of diplomatic de marches, economic sanctions and earnest negotiations can change that fatal equation.

It's not our fault. It's their choice.

A few months ago, the CIA concluded that Iran could not produce nuclear weapons in much less than a decade. But given the history of such predictions, we should be very skeptical of that timeline.

Some Russian experts reportedly think it could be a matter of months, and they probably have better information than we do.

Numerous Iranian leaders have said that they intend to use nuclear weapons to destroy Israel, and contemporary history suggests that one should take such statements at face value.

A nuclear Iran would be a more influential regional force and since its missiles now reach deep into Europe, it would directly menace the West.

I'm the last person to suggest that we should not do everything possible to prevent the emergence of a nuclear Iran. But the nuclear question simply adds urgency to the Iranian threat, which is already enormous and which should have been addressed long ago.

The mullahs don't need atomic bombs to kill large numbers of Americans. They've done it with conventional explosives. And they've long worked on other weapons of mass destruction and they have an imposing network of terrorists all over the Western world.

I'm afraid that the obsession with the nuclear question often obscures the central policy issue: that the Islamic Republic has waged war against us for many years and is killing Americans every week.

They would do that even if they had no chance of developing atomic bombs, and they will do it even if, by some miracle, the feckless and endlessly self-deluding governments of the West manage to dismantle the secret atomic facilities and impose an effective inspection program.

The mullahs will do that because that is what they are and it is what they do.

The nuclear threat is, therefore, 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, in all likelihood, be dealing with a pro-Western country that would be more interested in good trade and cultural relations than in nuclear warheads.

In other words, it's all about the regime. Change the regime and the nuclear question becomes manageable. Leave the mullahs in place and the nuclear weapons directly threaten us and our friends and allies, raising the ante of the terror war they started 27 years ago.

What should we do?

The first step is to abandon the self-deception that we will be able to arrive at a negotiated settlement. It can't be done. The Iranians view negotiations as merely tactical enterprises in support of their strategic objectives.

As you mentioned, Mr. Chairman, a few months ago, Hassan Rohani, the mullah in charge of nuclear negotiations with the Europeans, bragged in a public speech that Iran had duped European Union negotiators into thinking it had halted efforts to make nuclear fuel, while, in reality, it continued to install equipment to process yellowcake, a key stage in the nuclear fuel process. It could hardly be clearer, or so one would think, the negotiations were merely a tactic.

Nor is there any reason to believe we can count on the United Nations to impose the rules of civilized behavior on the mullahs, either on nuclear issues or terrorism. The supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, has told his associates that Iran now has a strategic relationship with Putin's Russia and that China is so dependent on Iranian oil that it is highly unlikely Beijing would vote against Tehran in the Security Council.

That leaves us with three courses of action, none of which is automatically exclusive of the other: sanctions, military strikes and support for democratic revolution.

I don't know of a single case in which sanctions have produced a change in behavior by a hostile regime. Moreover, sanctions aimed against the national economy seem to me misconceived, because they harm the people who are highly likely to be our best weapon against the tyrants, while leaving the oppressive elite largely untouched.

We should want to punish hostile regimes and help the people. Big-time economic sanctions or embargoes cannot do that, but very limited sanctions and other economic and financial actions can, although nothing is as effective in this case as the Iranian leaders themselves -- Iranian debt has just been downgraded two levels to BB- minus, putting Iranian paper now at the level of junk bonds.

But I'm very much in favor of the seizing the assets of the Iranian leaders who have stolen billions from their oppressed and impoverished subjects. That money properly belongs to the Iranian people, whose misery grows from day to day. We should hold it for them and return it to a freely elected government after we have helped them overthrow their oppressors.

I also support a travel ban on the leaders, because it shows the Iranian people that we consider the mullahs unworthy of acceptance in the civilized world. Iranians know it better than we do, but they need to see that we have taken sides, their side, and the travel ban is one good way to do that.

Military action -- nobody this side of the yellow press is talking about an invasion of Iran. But there is considerable speculation about limited strikes against nuclear facilities.

I don't know enough to be able to offer an informed opinion on this matter. I would only point out that our intelligence about Iran has been bad since before the revolution of 1979 and you'd have to be very optimistic to base a military plan on our current intelligence products.

That leaves us with revolution. Iran has had three revolutions in the 20th century and boasts a long tradition of self-government. The demographics certainly favor radical change. Roughly 70 percent of Iranians are 29 years old or less.

Non-Iranians want an end to the Islamic Republic. We know from the regime's own public opinion surveys that upwards of 73 percent of the people would like a free society and a more democratic government, and they constantly demonstrate their hatred of the regime in public protests.

Oddly, just as it was generally believed that there was no hope of a peaceful overthrow of the Soviet empire, today the conventional wisdom intones that there is no hope for democratic revolution in Iran and even if there were, we would no longer have enough time for it. As if one could fine tune a revolution.

This pessimism strikes me as bizarre as it is discouraging. We empowered a successful revolution in the Soviet empire with the active support of a very small percentage of the population. In Iran, revolution is the dream of at least 70 percent of the people. The regime is famously vicious, but the KGB was no less vicious and tyranny is the most unstable form of government.

Nobody knows with certainty whether revolution can succeed in Iran or, if it can, how long it will take. But we do know one very important thing: In recent years, a surprising number of revolutions have toppled tyrants all over the world. Most of them got help from us, which should not surprise Americans. We got plenty of help against the British.

The Iranian people now await concrete signs of our support.

Thank you.

COBURN: Dr. Takeyh?

TAKEYH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for inviting me back to the committee. I'll try to confine my remarks to the allotted five minutes, so as to not tax the patience of the...

COBURN: (OFF-MIKE)

 

STATEMENT OF

RAY TAKEYH
Council on Foreign Relations

 

TAKEYH: Thank you. What I'll try to do in the time that's allotted to me is discuss the internal factional opinions within the regime on the nuclear issue, whether there are debates, disagreements, and what that implies for the future, of course, of the nuclear diplomacy that it is at hand, and, finally, what is to be done at this late date.

And I'd like to begin with two cautionary notes. First of all, there is a considerable degree of opacity over Iran's national security decision-making, particularly on issues as sensitive as nuclear issues. So there's much that we don't know. And much of what we say is speculative, but hopefully is informed speculation.

Second of all is as we proceed down that track, we have to be cautious that perhaps Iran's nuclear ambitions may not be subject to diplomatic mediation. There might not be a deal out there that is satisfactory to the international community and the standards that we have set, namely, no enrichment capability.

But having said that, let me just outline the opinions, as I understand them, given the limits that we have at our disposal.

Today in the Iranian regime, I would suggest that the debate is between two factions and you can call them the hardliners and real hardliners, in the sense that this is a debate that takes place on the margins of the extreme right.

For the real hardliners that are represented by the president of Iran and individuals in the security services, the Revolutionary Guards and so forth, I suspect that their approach to the nuclear issue is conditioned by a mixture of wariness and nationalism.

Their bitter experiences at the Iran-Iraq war, for which many of them were participants, at that age, have led to cries of never again, uniting the veterans-turned-politicians behind a desire to achieve not just a credible posture of deterrence, but potentially a convincing retaliatory capability.

After decades of tension with America, Iran's reactionaries perceive a conflict with the United States as inevitable and that the only manner by which American can potentially be deterred is through the possession of strategic weapons, the nuclear weapon.

Given their suspicion and their paranoia, the hardliners insist that America's objection to Iran's nuclear program doesn't stem from the proliferation. And I think some of that was mentioned by the previous speakers. But it's the opposition to the character of the regime.

They argue that should Iran acquiesce on the nuclear issue, then it will be another issue with which America will try to coerce and punish Iran.

Therefore, given such views, there appears limited incentive to compromise on such a critical national issue, since acquiescence will not measurably relieve American pressure.

So there's that core suspicion by which they approach the United States on issues of the nuclear diplomacy.

The second faction, which, for lack of a better term, one can call less ideological and more realist, but certainly is hardline, is, curiously enough, led by one of the more curious individuals within this regime, the head of the Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijani.

For Larijani and many other sort of the hardline realists, the Islamic Republic is offered a rare and perhaps a unique opportunity to establish its sphere of influence in the Persian Gulf. For a century, Iran's monarchs and mullahs perceived that given the country's demography, civilizational achievement, historical position, they had a right to become the preeminent power in the Gulf, but due to machinations of the global empires and certainly other hegemonic powers, those ambitions were unjustly thwarted.

Today, as Iran's hardliners or politicians look at the Middle East, they perceive an America, a crestfallen America, eager for an exit strategy out its Iraq predicament, an Iraq preoccupied with its own sectarian conflicts and the Gulf princely class more eager to accommodate rather than confront Iranian power.

Therefore, they suggest a judicious Iran, a less provocative Iran, can achieve its long cherished aspiration of dominating the critical waterways of the Persian Gulf.

A careful examination of Ali Larijani's speeches reveals, strangely enough, his suggestion of India as a potential model for an aspiring regional power. India's reasonable relationship with America has allowed it to maintain both its nuclear arsenal and also dominate its immediate neighborhood.

In contrast, a Russian federation that is, at times, at odds with the United States, finds that its aspirations to control, near or abroad, are often checked by a skeptical America.

So if you're aspiring for which regional power you want to be like, maybe India offers a better model.

Although the United States presence in the Middle East is bound to diminish, for Iran's hardline realists, American power can still present a barrier to Tehran's resurgence.

Although this faction does not seek normalization of relations with the United States, and I don't think any faction does, it does sense that a less contentious relationship with America may ease Washington's distrust, paving the way for projection of Iranian influence in the Gulf.

As such, for the realists, the nuclear program has to be viewed in the larger context of Iran's international relations and regional aspirations, once more, India, being a model of a country, that it should improve its relations with the United States, it may obtain American approbation of its nuclear ambitions.

Although they are disinclined to dismantle their nuclear edifice, and I don't think we can get to no enrichment capability, they do sense the need for restraint and the necessity, at least for now, of adhering to Iran's longstanding NPT obligations. And NPT is a treaty that allows you to do much within its restrictions.

What is to be done? It's a question that is often asked. It's almost impossible to answer satisfactorily, and it's not going to be answered with any degree of satisfaction from me.

May 2006, Secretary Rice took a step in revising America's approach to Iran. In a unique step, she proposed direct talks with Iran over its nuclear program. The administration, in my view judiciously, insisted on suspension of nuclear enrichment activities as a precondition for those talks.

Despite the fact that this is a bold re-conceptualization of American policy, it tends to miscast the disagreement between Iran and the United States as a disarmament dispute.

The only manner of resolving this issue is through comprehensive discussions that deal with the totality of American and Iranian concerns. The United States and Iran both need to move one step further and discuss negotiations that encompass not just Iran's nuclear ambitions, Iraq terrorism.

To me, it's impossible at this point to have any degree of negotiations with the Iranian regime that are segregated and limited to the nuclear issue, given what has transpired on the Lebanese- Israeli border.

Iranians have their own concerns -- sanctions, frozen assets -- and those should also be on the table. As both parties become satisfied with the content of the negotiations, satisfied that they encompass all their concerns, then perhaps an agreement can be reached.

The diplomatic framework that I'll outline views the nuclear issue as a symptom of a larger U.S.-Iranian malady and tries to address the root cause of those animosities. Only through a fundamental transformation of U.S.-Iran relations can we arrive at a satisfactory solution to Iran's nuclear imbroglio.

But this is a dynamic issue. As it moves forward and Iran's program crosses successive thresholds, it may be impossible to reverse. And therefore, we should proceed with caution, if not alacrity.

And I'll stop right there. Thank you.

COBURN: [OFF-MIKE]

 

STATEMENT OF

DR. JIM WALSH
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

WALSH: Mr. Chairman, Senator Carper, it's an honor to appear before you today. My comments will focus on the nuclear issue. And let me offer to you, if you have, following this hearing, additional questions that you would like me to respond to in writing, I'd be happy to do so.

Let me begin by way of background. I was invited, I think, to speak here today, in part, because over the past two years, I've been engaged in a series of track two discussions, between Americans and Iranians, mostly being held in Europe and mostly focused on the nuclear issue.

I returned just this past Saturday from Stockholm where a group of American, mostly former officials and Iranians, were meeting to discuss the events that confront us. Between those meetings and my own travel to Iran, I've spoken to or met with over 100 Iranians. Most of those are from the conservative and technocratic class.

And let me just briefly summarize that point of view, because it's important, as the previous speakers have pointed out, to realize that there are many factions in Iranian politics and factions with different agendas and different points of view.

The conservative technocrats that I mostly speak to dislike U.S. policy and they dislike the policy of President Ahmadinejad. They hope to avoid what they perceive as a lose-lose conflict between the United States or the West more generally and Iran. They see that there will be costs to a confrontation, but they think costs will be borne by all parties and they hope to avoid that.

They believe that escalation of this crisis actually increases the risk of nuclear weapons development, that as feelings harden and as the domestic politics of this issue play to the pro-nuclear side, that it gives more leeway for those who are advocates of nuclear weapons to be able to pursue that policy in a more overt manner.

And they have deep mistrust and suspicion of U.S. government motives. They think that the U.S. is about regime change. But they have affection for the American people and most of them studied here or have relatives here.

With that as background, let me speak more specifically to the nuclear ambitions and nuclear decision-making. And I endorse all the comments of the previous witness.

One of those comments he made is important, and that is that there are multiple players here with multiple ambitions. There's the supreme leader, who I think, by consensus, most would agree, is the most important policy actor. It is not the president, but the supreme leader who is the final arbiter of nuclear weapons policy.

The most active person on nuclear weapons or nuclear policy, I should say, rather, nuclear weapons policy, is Ali Larijani from the Supreme National Security Council. He's the person who's working on it day to day. The president has weighed in and at times appropriates that issue and speaks publicly on it, I think for his own domestic political purposes.

He is, for the most part, a domestic president, elected on populism and economic issues, not foreign policy issues, but he will play to these and the Israel issue as he sees that it benefits him politically.

He is tied to the Iranian Republican Guard, which is broadly seen as being more pro-nuclear weapons, but there's very little data on this. And then, finally, there's the nuclear bureaucracy itself, the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran.

And if nuclear history tells us anything, the history of nuclear weapons decision-making, it's that these bureaucracies often have an important role to play. And I'm sure that's the case here, although the data is limited.

The common policy denominator for all these players with all these agendas is they want a complete fuel cycle.

Now, I think that they are willing to see restraints on the 164 cascade or some research level of centrifuges, but they want to have something, and that's their new -- well, it's not new, but that's their bottom line. But I think they're willing to compromise on the parameters of that and the environment in which that small cascade functions.

This program, as I see it, is driven primarily by national pride and bureaucratic and domestic politics, not security. Therefore, closer to, historically speaking, to nuclear programs in France and India, which, again, were driven by national pride and bureaucratic politics, less like the programs of Pakistan or the DPRK, where there is a security component.

Nuclear technology is, unfortunately, a priority for the regime and for the population now, but it's not their most important priority. They really seek recognition on the world stage and economic development.

And there are multiple sources of power in play, from the grand ayatollahs to the Majlis, to Rafsanjani and his residual influence, to public opinion, and as my written remarks indicate, public opinion is often the least understood of those power centers.

As to the nuclear negotiations themselves, I think Secretary Rice's initiative has improved the U.S. position and the president deserves credit for it. And polling data suggest that American people are happy with this policy, perhaps happier with this policy than any other foreign policy of the president.

Unfortunately, Iran appears to have missed the significance of the Rice proposal, that based on discussions that I've had. They focused more on suspension as a precondition and missed the larger statement about U.S. willing to join the talks and some of the other elements of the proposal.

My hope is that those are being communicated to policy circles in Iran now.

The Iranians want to keep some face-saving level of enrichment. In their ideal world, they would have a full, complete fuel cycle, but I think they recognize that they can't have their cake and eat it, too. They can't achieve their economic and prestige objectives and at the same time, have a provocative nuclear program.

Will the talks succeed? I think it's too early to say. I do expect an announcement on August 22nd. The announcement by Larijani today, as you probably saw in the newspaper, does not forebode a negative response. The Iranians that I've been speaking with recently suggest that Iran will respond by either accepting the proposal, offering a conditional "yes," a "yes, but," or a conditional "no," a "no, but."

But in any case, the answer's likely to set the stage for future negotiations.

As for policy options, we all know what they are. We can try to coerce them or isolate and contain them, that's basically what we've done through the Clinton and Bush years, and to, I think, little effect. We can use military force, but I think that will be extremely costly, for reasons described in my testimony, and will put in jeopardy the number one U.S. policy goal today, which is success in Iraq.

If we strike Iran, we will have to put more U.S. soldiers in Iraq for a longer period of time.

And so that leaves very little in the way of alternatives, other than negotiation, but my hope is that we will improve the negotiation track by focusing more on the issue of national pride, by seeking to identify and win over particular bureaucratic and internal constituencies, and that if we're going to say that all options are on the table, then all options need to be on the table, and that includes direct talks with some distant possibility for normalized relations.

Finally, I think we need to approach these problem, as all the witnesses agree, not as an issue by issue, but in a broader strategic context. That is, I think, the only way out of here.

Let me conclude with comments about the role of Congress. I believe that one of the reasons why I'm so happy to be here with you, Mr. Chairman and Senator Carper, is I think the role of Congress will be critical.

If there is a negotiated settlement, Congress will have to act on issues of sanctions and legislation and funding. If there isn't, Congress will be needed just as much.

As we go forward, I think Congress can, in addition to its normal duties in terms of information collection and oversight, which are critical, I would suggest that it can be a policy innovator, as well.

And, in particular, two things, briefly. One, smart engagement. Many of the Iranians I spoke with in Iran want to come to the United States. They tend to be the youngest and the most conservative who come up to me and complain to me after I give a speech in Iran and, you know, come up and hector me about the U.S. and then sort of classically say, "Oh, and by the way, is it possible to come and study in the U.S.?"

But people who want to come to the U.S., who want to take advantage of opportunities to come and to study and whatever, feel they can't take advantage of current programs that are labeled under a category of regime change that puts them at personal risk if they do that.

So we need smart engagement that gives people the opportunity to come to the U.S. and us to go there in ways that don't taint them for having taken up that opportunity.

And, finally, I would like to propose to you that you consider legislative to legislative contacts, contact between the U.S. Senate and the Majlis. I know that the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has explored this in the past and Iran has refused to respond to that initiative.

I am told that views are changing on that and that in the near term it may be possible for members of the Majlis and the Senate to meet together to talk about what divides us and also areas for potential cooperation, and I would encourage you to take that opportunity if it does develop.

Thank you very much.

COBURN: Thank you.

Mr. Fakhravar, Dr. Takeyh's testimony claims that the regime of Iran entertains debates across the political spectrum, from his written testimony regarding Iran's nuclear program.

What has been your experience with trying to freely dialogue and debate the Iranian regime's quest for nuclear weapons or any other political topic?

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): There is nobody to negotiate with the regime in Iran. That's their tactic, has been. So you don't know whom you're talking to.

You have seen the negotiations and the nuclear dossier of Iran, and there are several of them and none of them have the final say. That's exactly their tactic.

COBURN: More specifically, when you discuss, as a student activist, these issues, and you raise the questions, what's the response from the regime when the students raise the questions, whether it be about this or any other political subject?

INTERPRETER: I'm sorry, Mr. Chairman?

COBURN: Whether it be about nuclear issues or any other subject, what is the response of the regime to the students who raise questions or question the policies?

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): When the students and people of Iran learn that there is a possible negotiation between the U.S. and the regime, the entire people will consider the U.S. is betraying them.

Let me put it bluntly. If you can play chess with monkeys, then you can negotiate with the man in charge of the Islamic regime.

COBURN: Thank you.

One of our policies, and this is addressed to anybody on the panel who wants to answer it. In the 1990s, we followed a negotiation stance with North Korea and all during that period of time when we were negotiating and had agreements, the fact is those agreements weren't being honored.

Progression on nuclear weapons development continued regardless of what we did.

Can anybody think of a time where negotiations have proved successful in terms of hostile regimes, in terms of bringing about the desired result, on nuclear weapons or other results?

Go ahead, Dr. Walsh?

WALSH: Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Let me offer, first, a direct answer and then maybe a slightly different view of the DPRK issue, something I've spent some time on. I was in Pyongyang last summer.

Certainly, the Soviets were a hostile empire, and certainly, we can point to any number of arms control agreements with the Soviets, most notably, the treaty preventing ABM, the ABM treaty the Soviets followed, and that enhanced the security of the United States, in part, because it allowed the United States and the Soviet Union to avoid the more dangerous aspects of the arms race and to provide some predictability and stability to it.

I would argue the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty has been one of the most successful treaties in human history. The rate of proliferation has declined since the 1960s, not increased, declined. And the number of states that are interested or seeking nuclear weapons today is smaller since any decade since the 1940s.

Let me conclude by saying, on the DPRK, my view is that the agreed framework was a success. That agreed framework is about 3.5 pages long and when you read it, you see that neither side followed through on their original commitments, but that program was frozen. There were no new nuclear weapons built under the agreed framework. That ended, and that has no longer been true.

North Korea did go behind the back to the agreement to engage in procurement activity related to an HEU plant, but the CIA nor any other U.S. intelligence agency, none of them have concluded that the DPRK built an enrichment plant.

And during the period of the agreement, that plutonium reactor was frozen and there were no new nuclear weapons being built during that period.

COBURN: If I recall my history correct, it was Reagan walking away from the negotiations that broke the back of the Russians' nuclear development. It wasn't negotiating it. It was walking away from the negotiation and, if you'll recall the history, the criticism that he received.

Dr. Takeyh, you want to comment on that?

TAKEYH: Well, first of all, I want to clarify the portion of my testimony that you alluded to. What I was trying to suggest in that is in terms of the nuclear deliberation, all political tendencies, the reformers and others, are brought in to the table, the leadership of the different factions, even those which are not necessarily in power today.

I wasn't suggesting that the Islamic Republic puts its nuclear decision-making on for a referendum or having a sort of bought-in activist. So it's more of an elite debate, but nevertheless, it's the elites from across the political landscape.

In terms of negotiations that are successful, as Jim was suggesting, in the 1970s, the United States negotiated several arms control agreements with the Soviet Union, SALT I, in particular, and also, the Reagan administration negotiated the INF agreement in 1986, which was the first agreement that actually did not regulate the size of a nuclear arsenal, but suggested elimination of a certain class of weapons.

But when you're dealing with nuclear negotiations, it's important to suggest that they cannot be segregated from the overall relationship between then two adversaries.

When U.S.-Soviet relations were reasonable during the period of the detente in the 1970s, then nuclear negotiations actually expedited and there was agreement on a variety of issues.

When the relationship was not necessarily good, as it was in the early 1980s, then actually the arms control negotiations always break down.

So you have to situate nuclear negotiations in the larger context of relations between the two countries. That's why I don't believe the United States and Iran, at this particular point, can easily reach a nuclear accord, barring dealing with other areas of concern that they have, that we have and they have.

So the canvas has to be broadened in order for negotiations to be successful.

COBURN: Would you comment on the fact, in your testimony, you related to India. India is not a theocracy.

TAKEYH: Sure.

COBURN: And the fact is India's leaders don't threaten death to anybody that doesn't believe the way they believe or the so-called "us infidels," that we should die.

So the context of nuclear weapons in the hand of somebody whose axiom is that, "If you're not with us in terms of your religious beliefs and your behavior along those religious beliefs, you obviously should perish," according to a theocratic viewpoint.

It is hard. And I guess the further point to my question is can that not be understood in terms of the decision-makers among the Iranian elite or the hardliners and very hardliners, as you described them, can that not be understood that we would have trouble in having a rational basis for understanding, that there might be a motivational difference between those that were running the Soviet Union and those that are presently leading Iran?

TAKEYH: Yes, I agree with that. I think that the analogy that the regime uses or some of the regime uses that Iran can potentially follow the model of India is wrong, for all the reasons that you suggested. But nevertheless, it's the rationale that they embrace.

Iran is not India, and I wasn't suggesting that they're analogous. India is a democratic regime. It's largely peaceful in terms of its intentions and Iran is neither of the above.

However, when certain members of the regime look at India and they see the way an aspiring regional power can have influence in terms of its region is to negotiate a different type of a relationship with the United States.

Now, there's a contradiction in that. I don't believe -- there's a huge contradiction in that in the sense that the India model applied to Iran fails not only because of the domestic complexion of the Iranian theocracy, but also because it is unlikely that any American administration would be sanguine about the possibility of Iran having that sort of nuclear technology at its disposal and edging closer to the weapons program.

So I don't think the India analogy works, but it's the one that I was suggesting certain members of the Iranian elite hierarchy tend to embrace.

COBURN: But who are not in ultimate control.

TAKEYH: Well, they can be in control, but they're part of the landscape. But I don't believe Iran is going to follow the model of India in terms of its domestic politics, in terms of its democratic processes, no.

COBURN: It's my understanding that Amir Fakhravar will have to be leaving here shortly. Do you have any questions for him, Senator Carper?

CARPER: I do.

COBURN: OK, why don't we let you have an opportunity to do that before he leaves, and I'll defer my further questions.

CARPER: Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. Fakhravar, thank you for your testimony today. The United States Congress has provided almost $100 million for democracy promotion in Iran over the course of the last three years, I believe with the largest installment of funding coming in the current year.

There have been calls in Congress for this funding to be provided to democratic organizations within Iran. However, in the past, some of those groups have actually ended up on our State Department's terrorist list.

There's also the concern that giving the United States' money to authentic groups would lead them perhaps to be targeted by the current regime in Iran. Lastly, it's also being said that Iran is not ripe yet for change and so giving its money to groups could simply be a waste of money.

You've previously stated that you are only one of many individuals to fight for more open society in Iran. Based on this assertion, I have several questions relating to prospects for change in Iran.

And let me just ask these questions -- and I will ask you to respond very briefly, because, apparently, your time is limited and because we'd like to ask questions of other witnesses.

The first question is how do you visualize an ideal Iran? What would be the structure of its religious, its economic, its social and governmental institutions? Is there anyone else in Iran with economic and political power that holds the same vision for Iran as you see it?

And, again, I would ask that you just respond briefly.

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): First of all, thank you and let me close the discussion down here about the negotiations.

North Korea is way off the area, the strategic, both India and North Korea. Iran is not, and I highly suggest those who consider negotiations to do consider these facts. None of these two nations are after wiping Israel off of the face of the map. Where they want to negotiate, please pay attention.

Allocating funds is something and using it is another thing.

The system that we wish for Iran, future Iran, is secular democratic. It's not important that it's going to be a republic system or a constitution.

It is important for the Iranian population that it would be secular. The majority of Iranians are Muslim. I, too, am a Muslim. But I'm not a terrorist. People of Iran are not terrorists. But the Islamic regime, the people in charge of the Islamic regime are.

CARPER: OK, thank you. Thank you.

Can you tell us who or what organizations or people are currently leading the fight against the current regime in Iran? And can you provide us with an estimate of how many people or what percentage of the population that might be?

COBURN: I'd like to interrupt here. You should be very cautious, you're in a public hearing, in how you answer that question, because you may put some of your compatriots at risk.

CARPER: I'll say the question again. Can you tell us who or what organizations are currently leading the fight against the current regime in Iran and can you provide us with an estimate of how many people or what percentage of the population that might be?

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): The first front line is comprised of the Iranian students. It's mostly youth, and we have 70 percent under the age of 29-30.

Sixty-four percent of the movement, the next group is in the women's movement, which is 64 percent. Their rights are violated and they're abused.

We'd like to take these two movements and bring them together, unify them. There are many groups right now, but what we are planning to do is to bring all the groups together. For that purpose, we are organizing the Confederation of Iranian Students, so it will bring this together, this unification.

CARPER: All right, one last question for this witness. And, again, we thank you for your testimony and your response to our questions.

You stated that you'd like to see the United States provide a variety of things. I believe you mentioned laptops, cell phones, workshops for training resistance support, both outside and within Iran.

What would be the expected outcome of such assistance and how soon might we expect to see some change as a result of that assistance?

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): The Iranian population are very bright, but they don't receive accurate news. We need to talk to our people. Certainly, we can make them aware of the news in the world.

Eight months to a year is the time limit, I would say. Eight months to a year.

CARPER: Do the Iranians have access to the Internet?

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): Very limited, in big cities. We need to expand on that.

CARPER: OK, thank you very much.

COBURN: Amir, I want to wish you Godspeed. I know you're going from here to meet with President Bush. He has great esteem for you and your courage and we wish you Godspeed and good luck.

FAKHRAVAR (THROUGH TRANSLATOR): I thank you and the great nation of the United States.

COBURN: Would you like to continue on with your questions, Senator Carper, of the other witnesses?

CARPER: If I could, thanks.

COBURN: We'll come back, and then you'll be next.

CARPER: Thanks very much.

I would just ask, just very briefly, of each of our witnesses, could you just take a moment and describe your visits to Iran in the last, say, decade, their frequency, the duration, how long you were there, the nature of the exchanges, who you met with, that sort of thing.

Dr. Walsh, we'll start with you, if you would, please.

WALSH: Well, Senator, most of the track two discussions I have with Iranian officials, academics and think tank personnel occur outside of Iran, usually in Europe, in Italy or in Sweden, and I've participated over the past several years in four to five of those track twos.

In February, I was in Iran for 12 days, where I met a variety of people, mostly, as I said in my testimony, people who fall into the conservative technocratic class, people who probably voted for Rafsanjani rather than Ahmadinejad. And I will be returning to Iran in the fall.

And all told, as I indicated in my testimony, I've probably met or spoken to about 100 Iranian officials, former officials, academic and think tank types.

CARPER: Thank you.

TAKEYH: I would suggest mine is similar to Jim's, in the sense that they've been a lot of former officials, in track two settings. In my case, there are some family members that I have, of course, being of Iranian descent.

And I was supposed to go working on a trip to Iran this August. So we'll see if it comes through or not.

CARPER: Thank you.

Mr. Ledeen?

LEDEEN: I've never been to Iran. I have met with senior ayatollahs from this regime in the mid-1980s and with no end of Iranians since then, from all walks of life, some pro-regime, some anti-regime, most recently in Rome in 2001.

CARPER: Thank you.

Mr. Berman?

BERMAN: Like Dr. Ledeen, I've never been to Iran, but I have traveled many times to the Middle East. Most recently, I traveled to the Persian Gulf three weeks ago, to Oman, to attend an international conference, at which I had the opportunity to meet with Iranian officials, both past officials of the Khatami government and current sitting officials from the Ahmadinejad cabinet.

CARPER: Senator Coburn and I were privileged to be in a discussion earlier today with some of our colleagues and others, and had an opportunity to talk about the administration's proposal for multilateral talks with the Iranians and to the extent that they're willing to give up on their desire to enrich uranium, that we'd be willing to enter into those multilateral discussions.

And I understand that when that offer was presented to the Iranians, it was presented with a number of incentives and with the understanding that there would be disincentives or sanctions if the Iranians chose not to accept it.

Let me just ask you, again, your views. Was that an appropriate thing for the administration to do? Was it the right thing or was it a mistake?

Dr. Walsh?

WALSH: I think it was very wise, very prudent, for two reasons. If you think that negotiations have a shot, the only way they're going to be successful is if the U.S. sits at the bargaining table one way or another.

We cannot outsource our foreign policy to others. Iran is not going to take as credible promises of incentives unless the U.S. is directly part of that process.

One of the problems with critical dialogue that the Europeans carried on in the past is that the U.S. was not at the table and it was clear they were skeptical of the process.

So you need to be able to make credible threats and credible promises. If you don't make a credible promise, the other side isn't going to play, because they figure you're just playing them for a fool, and a lot of Iranians are deeply suspicious.

But if you don't think negotiations are going to work, Secretary Rice's announcement was still a wise move because diplomatically, it put her in a stronger position to get the Russians, the Chinese and others on board.

So all around, I think it was an excellent move. And as I said in my comments, it's a move that has the support of the American people.

CARPER: Mr. Takeyh?

TAKEYH: I would largely agree with that. I would actually, however, if I was to critique the negotiating track, as I mentioned in my comments, to suggest that the issues under consideration should be broader, in the sense that the totality of American-Iranian disagreements tends to exceed the nuclear issue. There's issues of terrorism. There's issues that they have with us that are not exclusive to the nuclear issue.

Beyond that, I think where the administration was in the spring of 2006 was that they were in a situation which was untenable in the sense that the negotiations at the U.N. had stalled and it was unlikely to go further without some sort of an American measure. And that measure was quite a momentous measure in the sense that it revised not just Bush administration policy, but 27 years of American policy.

So I think that aspect of Secretary Rice's rather remarkable re- conceptualization of U.S. foreign policy toward Iran has often been neglected.

Now, where it goes from here is hard to read, because I think ultimately we're settling into a number of redlines. The Iranians have a redline that calls for them to have some sort of an enrichment capability. Americans, at this point, we have a redline that they should not have that. Whether that difference can be bridged in the next several months will reflect the ultimate success of these negotiations, but it remains to be seen.

The other criticism I would make is that the offer of negotiations may have come a little late in the sense that, you know, in 2002, if these negotiations had taken place, there was no enrichment capability and perhaps we could have gotten the no enrichment deal.

But the nuclear program, as Jim knows very well, is a dynamic issue, and as countries develop those technologies, they, in essence, become, in some cases, irreversible.

So earlier would have been better. It's late, but it may not be too late.

CARPER: Thank you.

COBURN: Senator Dayton?

LEDEEN: May I?

COBURN: Yes, I'm sorry. I thought...

COBURN: Dr. Ledeen?

LEDEEN: I'd like to make two comments on the question of negotiations. The first is you should not believe that there have not been negotiations. There have been talks endlessly. Most of them have been secret, let's call them.

State Department people have talked to counterparts in Iran. CIA people have talked to counterparts in Iran. All through -- at least to my knowledge, all through the first term of the Bush administration, talks were going on all over the place, because there were people in the State Department, primarily Richard Haas, who believed that we were on the verge, we had an historic opportunity, we could reach a grand bargain with Iran, and this was the moment to do it.

And so talks were going on. They have been going on.

If you read Pollack's book, "The Persian Puzzle," which was written by a person who spent a long career in diplomacy and in CIA, he says there, categorically: We have tried everything. We have tried intimidating them. We have tried threatening them. We have tried cajoling them. We have tried offering them. And they have rejected it all.

And the conclusion he came to, and this is a person who labored all his professional life to accomplish some kind of an agreement with Iran, and, believe me, broad issues, they talked about everything, he said they don't want it.

It is really baffling to me that after 27 years, it is impossible for serious persons to say they have declared war on us. They declared war on us 27 years ago. They have been waging war against us for 27 years. They are killing us today as often and wherever they can.

Those IEDs that blow up our soldiers in Iraq, they come from Iran. Those intelligence officers from the Revolutionary Guards, they're Iranians. They're doing everything in their capacity to do that.

So we've had talks all along, and I don't see where it's going to go.

The real question, if you'll permit me, is where is American policy on it? We don't have a policy. We yet have no Iran policy. We have a nuclear issue policy.

All the talk is about nuclear this and that. All the talk is about will we permit the Iranians, are they going to stop enrichment and so forth? And along those lines, I believe the Iranians will never give up their nuclear program because it's not an enrichment program and it's not for national prestige.

It's a weapons program. And they want it to be able to defend themselves and to launch aggression against other countries. They concluded, and we know this, in 1991, that if Saddam had had nuclear weapons, we would never have dared do to him what we did in the first Gulf War.

And they said, "We don't want that to happen to us. Therefore, we must have nuclear weapons." And the program that started then was a weapons program. And I believe it's still a weapons program, and I think even by now ElBaradei knows that it's a weapons program. And one of his assistants just quit in a rage and went to the press and said, "They won't let us in to any of the military facilities that we want to see." And it's obvious that it's a military program.

What we've got is a negotiation on an issue that distracts our attention from the central issue between the United States and Iran, which is they are waging war against us.

Thank you.

COBURN: Thank you.

Mr. Berman?

BERMAN: Thank you, Chairman Coburn. Just a couple of points. And I would say the following: that negotiations, whether or not they're a good idea or a bad idea, depend entirely who you are talking to.

And what I think it's useful to remember here is that the vast majority of Iranians themselves -- and as Dr. Ledeen pointed out, there is a democratic bulge, the vast majority of Iranians are very young. They've lived most or all of their lives under the Islamic Republic and very well know that the Islamic Republic is not doing the job, the economic job, the political job, the civil society job that they need.

Our negotiations with the Iranian people are a good idea, but any negotiations which demonstrate to the vast majority of Iranians that want change that the U.S. is so preoccupied with a tangential issue that we have articulated limits to our support for their desire for freedom are dangerous.

And I would say this, and I'd specifically say this to you, Chairman Coburn, because you are a medical doctor. I think diplomacy should be pursued from a "do no harm" standpoint.

And in this context, the negotiations that were proffered by the State Department may have had tactical benefits, but over the long term they were very damaging.

COBURN: Senator Dayton?

DAYTON: Mr. Chairman, I thank you and the ranking member for holding this very, very important hearing. I regret, analogous to your other profession, I hold afternoon office hours with a stream of Minnesotans who want to see me, and I try my best to honor that, but it's one of those times where I scheduled all that well in advance of knowing about this hearing, and I regret not being able to here.

I thank you for convening it. I'm not going to risk redundancy of either testimony or previous questions, but I will review the transcript of the hearing. And I thank all of you for your participation, for your patience.

We don't have many witnesses who speak even longer than senators, but that's something we practice here, and it was very informative. I don't mean it in any way disrespectfully, but I notice you all being very respectful in your patience.

So I want to acknowledge that and thank you for bringing your expertise to us. I'm sorry more of us -- I'm supposed to be at three different places simultaneously right now, in addition to here, and I think my colleagues share that difficulty. And so I apologize on their behalf for that, regret that, but thank you again for your expertise.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

COBURN: I have several more questions.

In Dr. Walsh's testimony, he testified that it would not be the end of the world of Iran obtains nuclear weapons, despite the fact that the Iranian regime has saying it intends to use those weapons against Israel, and the quote is "to wipe Israel off the map."

We have good knowledge that Iran is behind the recent attacks against Israel and the roadside bombings, for sure, that are killing our soldiers.

Should the U.S. take Iran's statements seriously or not in regard to their long-term goals of nuclear weapons or nuclear proliferation, nuclear development?

I've heard what Dr. Ledeen said. I'm interested in your response to that.

WALSH: Yes, Senator, thank you. And thanks for quoting my testimony and I appreciate the care with which you...

COBURN: I started reading it at 5 o'clock this morning because I didn't get it until late last night.

WALSH: Well, I appreciate it nonetheless. And as you know, in the rest of the testimony, it goes on to say I've spent all of my adult professional career working to try to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons and I do not welcome them.

COBURN: Let me make it clear -- let me make clear, we are very happy with the quality of the people that are testifying and we doubt none of your motivations. But these are legitimate questions that the American people are going to ask.

When, in fact, the president of Iran says that he intends "to wipe Israel off the face of the map" and is involved in a nuclear development program that will ultimately end up in nuclear weapons, it is not a long step at all to conclude that those weapons are intended for Israel.

And so that's the facts of what is being presented. Whether that is the behind-the-scenes truth, we don't know. I suspect you don't know.

WALSH: I think that's right, but let me speak to that. First of all, obviously, as everyone has said so far, it's not the president that calls the shots on nuclear policy. It's the supreme leader and, under him, Larijani, that make nuclear policy, not the president.

The president, I assume, will be a one-term wonder and is here as primarily a president elected on economic populism, not foreign policy.

Moreover, I think the...

(UNKNOWN): Be careful what you say about one-term wonders.

(LAUGHTER)

WALSH: Let me also point out that Iran is more than aware of the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons, that the United States would not allow Israel to be threatened with nuclear weapons, but Israel has its own nuclear deterrent.

The other thing to keep in mind is, as John Negroponte has pointed out, the timeframe here is not tomorrow, it's not next month. It's sometime between the middle of the next decade or the end of the next decade.

So this is not an imminent threat to U.S. national security and it's not an imminent threat to Israeli national security.

COBURN: Well, could you give me some of your history? North Korea's development of nuclear weapons proceeded at a slower pace than what is expected to be from Iran. Is that correct?

WALSH: Well, the North Korean program started in the mid-1980s and most intelligence estimates are they completed their first device sometime between 1990 and 1994. That's when the CIA said they had somewhere between zero and two nuclear weapons.

COBURN: And is it wrong that the Pakistanis did that in a shorter period of time?

WALSH: Well, the Pakistani program began in roughly 1972 and they did not test until 1998, and most of my colleagues think they had nuclear weapons in the late 1980s.

But let me speak directly to the point of Iran. The puzzle about Iran, given the neighborhood that it lives in, given the fact that there's a nuclear Pakistan on its border, a nuclear Russia, all these states, Israel, is that it's surprised us that they haven't done more in the nuclear era.

They started their program, whatever that program may be, by most accounts, sometime in the mid-1980s. It is now 2005 and they have a 164-centrifuge cascade. That is not swift progress in 27 years.

COBURN: That we know about.

WALSH: Well, that the IAEA believes is the case.

COBURN: But the IAEA talks about them violating the -- no reporting obligations for 18 years, and the testimony we've just had is we don't know.

WALSH: Well, I think the IAEA -- I mean, I agree with you. My view is that we should follow what the IAEA says. And on this, I think they're pretty clear that their centrifuge capacity is perhaps -- they have parts for a 1,000 -- whether they have all the parts for a 1,000 more centrifuges is unclear. But no one thinks that they're going to have a bomb tomorrow or anytime soon, even if they made a command decision to do so and that, of course, is the judgment of the top ranking intelligence officer in the United States.

TAKEYH: Let me just, if I can say two things about this, Senator. I don't think we can be sanguine or complacent about Iran's nuclear motivations or ambitions.

I think Iran's nuclear danger is acute and growing. I think should Iran cross a nuclear threshold in violation of its NPT obligation, that essentially ends the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which, in my opinion, has been a very beneficial treaty in terms of preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and dangerous nuclear technologies.

I think it will have a destabilizing impact on the region. Namely, it could spark an arms race in a region that should devote its economic resources to its people, to benefits of the health care and public schooling, is likely to divert it to further build-up of conventional arms, at least, and quite possibly divert scarce resources to building up nuclear programs.

So this is not something that we can look for with any degree of ease. This is why I do believe that diplomacy has to be energetic, comprehensive and imaginative. I think sitting around wishing the Iranian nuclear program away, talking about how more radio broadcast is going to make it away is not the way to go.

A radio broadcast is not a judicious counter-proliferation strategy. I can't think of any time that radio broadcasts have worked in terms of effectively disarming a country.

We have to have a very effective diplomacy. I think Secretary Rice took a first step in that direction and it has to go many more steps. Otherwise, we can't potentially get to a position where we have not just only a hegemonic Iran in the Persian Gulf, where there's nothing particularly stopping there. Iraq is a broken country. The Gulf states aren't going to do anything about it.

And we are leaving the Gulf. We are leaving Iraq. That's just the reality of the situation. I think we all know that, and they know that.

So we can have a hegemonic Iran with a mature nuclear capability. That is not something that is desirable, and that's why I do believe that the diplomatic solution to this issue is urgent and quite imminent.

COBURN: Would you agree with Dr. Ledeen that we need a total Iran policy instead of focus at the...

(CROSSTALK)

TAKEYH: Yes, oh, yes, as I mentioned, I think we have to have a comprehensive discussion with the Iranians that tends to deal with issues of the nature of their support for terrorist organizations.

COBURN: I would say I'm somewhat encouraged in terms of students, because I look at Poland and I look at Ukraine, and nobody in the State Department saw Ukraine coming. Nobody saw it coming, the fact that brave leaders stood up and challenged authoritarianism and made a difference.

And so my caution is that we certainly nurture, in any way possible, the voice of a secular government in Iran, and if that's through student organization and women's organizations and union organizations, that certainly should be part of a total policy.

Would you disagree with that?

TAKEYH: No, I do think we have to have a broad policy to deal with issues of proliferation, terrorism, human rights. And Iranians will have their own grievances to bring to the table, whether it's our sanction policy, whether it's frozen assets.

I mean, everything has to be on the table, but not necessarily -- the progress of any one issue should not be linked to the other. Namely, I would not prevent negotiations or a deal on the nuclear issue if we have not reached an accord on the issue of the nature of the Iranian relationship with various Palestinian rejectionist groups.

But I do think that negotiations have to be broad and comprehensive, although not necessarily the progress of any one issue linked to the other one.

COBURN: Dr. Ledeen?

Mr. Berman?

BERMAN: Thank you. Let me just say a couple of words, because Dr. Takeyh said something I think very controversial. He said that public broadcasting has never forced a regime to give up its arms, which I think technically is true, but it's useful to remember, as I said in both my testimony and Dr. Ledeen said in his testimony, the issue is not nuclear weapons.

The issue is the character of the regime that will ultimately wield them. And public broadcasting and public diplomacy were responsible, at least in part, for the single largest totalitarian collapse in modern history.

So let's not underestimate the effectiveness of these tools.

On the issue of the question that you asked Dr. Walsh, let me just chime in here for a second, because I think what we're really talking about is at the end of the day, if Iran does go nuclear, can we have some sort of modus vivendi with them?

I would argue very differently than Dr. Takeyh and Dr. Walsh, because it seems to me that it may have been true a year ago to say that the Iranian presidency is an empty office and the supreme leader calls the shots. It's far less clear that that's the case today.

What we've seen over the last year is the rise of what Dr. Takeyh has called in other publications a "war generation," embodied by Mr. Ahmadinejad and, also, his systematic consolidation of power, to the extent that the president has now emerged, at least in part, as an independent foreign policy actor in his own right.

And I think that's very important, because a year ago, five years ago, we could have said that the supreme leader holds all the cards. The supreme leader can escalate or de-escalate the nuclear issue at his will.

I'm not sure we can say that anymore. I think it's true that the supreme leader can escalate the nuclear issue, but I'm not at all sure that the new power centers that are emerging in the Islamic Republic will allow him to de-escalate, if, in this game of nuclear chicken, he all of a sudden decides to blink.

COBURN: And I would also note that the supreme leader and his belief in the 12th imam might benefit from the utilization of nuclear weapons, as well.

Dr. Ledeen?

LEDEEN: Well, the question of who is Ahmadinejad and what does he represent reminds me a lot about the good old days of the Soviet Union, when people used to say, "God, Molotov's such a good fellow to work with, it's a pity that Stalin is always in the way."

I think that the only person who matters on any serious question facing Iran is the supreme leader. That's why he has that name. It's what it means. He is the supreme leader. He determines policy.

And I do not think, to mildly disagree with Ilan, I don't think that Ahmadinejad is any more an independent actor or any more representative of a new class and a new force or independent political movement inside Iran than was the opposite of Ahmadinejad, who was Khatami, for nine years before Ahmadinejad.

Then people ran around and said Iran is in the grips of a reform movement and is moving toward reform. Well, in nine years, there were no reforms. Now everybody's saying Iran is in the grips of a super- fanatic religious nut case named Ahmadinejad.

But his statements are canonical. In regimes of this sort, I do not believe that the president would be permitted to go around saying things that are not approved by the supreme leader, and I think that we can take what he says as an expression of what the supreme leader and his henchmen want us to hear and want us to believe.

And as for what they -- that does not necessarily mean it's what they really believe. I mean, it's a whole culture based on deception, after all, and a delusion. We should not forget this.

The one thing that's a reliable basis for analysis in terms of what Iran might do, when and if it gets nuclear weapons, is their religious convictions and is the doctrine of the 12th imam and the end of days and where the world is seen heading and the world as they see it.

And from time to time, I've been fortunate enough to get what I think are very accurate minutes from high level meetings in Iran, and I've published them. And their view of the world is that what they're doing is working, that we are bending to their will, that we are ready to be driven out of the Middle East and elsewhere, and that in relatively short order, they're going to dominate and they will then use their nuclear weapons.

On the question of what they have and what they don't have, I will only say again what I said at greater length in my prepared testimony and that is that we have always been wrong on estimating how long it takes country A or B or C to develop nuclear weapons. We have always been surprised.

We were surprised when the Soviets did it. We were surprised when the Chinese did it. We were surprised when the French did it. We're always surprised. We were surprised when India and Pakistan tested nuclear weapons during...

COBURN: And we were surprised when they told us they weren't and then the students revealed they were.

LEDEEN: Yes, well, I mean, we're not -- you know, intelligence isn't perfect, and CIA excels at imperfection. What can we say?

COBURN: I would also put forward that Natan Sharansky said that the linkage of human rights to military and economic issues is the very thing that did break the USSR -- and that's somebody that was on the inside the whole period of time that that was going on.

Dr. Takeyh, in your testimony you start out by saying, "The current generation of pro-regime Iranians are not preoccupied with the U.S., but are looking eastward."

But it seems you contradict this by saying that the same people are paranoid about the U.S., that their drive for nuclear weapons is deterring for what you call "superpower bullying."

Which is it? Are they looking to the East or are they looking to the West?

TAKEYH: I think in terms of economic opportunities, increasingly, there are many within the Iranian regime that suggest they should look eastward to China, Japan, India, Russia, and essentially reorient Iran's trade toward those countries which are not as concerned about Iran's proliferation tendencies or, for that matter, human rights abuses, so essentially trade packages that don't come with conditions about internal practices.

COBURN: No strings.

TAKEYH: That's right. And this has to do not just with energy deals, but also technology transfers.

In terms of the second portion of my testimony that you alluded to, I'm not quite sure. If you can give me the context, maybe I can give you a more informed assessment.

COBURN: Well, the reference was to superpower bullying.

TAKEYH: Yes, yes, I think I know. There are those within the Iranian regime that suggest that this is not -- the United States is not particularly concerned about Iran's proliferation tendencies, but is concerned about the character of the regime.

They don't have to make concessions on this, because they're being picked on not because of their treaty violations or treaty provocations, but because of superpower bullying.

So essentially there's a suggestion that U.N. processes and U.N. resolutions and IAEA resolutions that have come about are politically contorted.

COBURN: How do we change that? That's obviously a misperception. You would agree with that.

TAKEYH: Yes, yes, yes.

COBURN: And we all in this room understand that's a misperception. So how do we change that perception or is that a convenient misperception on their part?

TAKEYH: Well, it's a misperception that we have already changed, in a sense, that much of the international community agrees with the United States.

COBURN: I'm not talking about the international community. I'm talking about the leaders of Iran.

TAKEYH: I understand that. Much of the international community agrees that Iran stands in violation of its NPT obligations and therefore, there should be multilateral pressures on it, if it does not cease its objections and its objectionable activities.

However, it is the same international community that suggests the United States should go an extra mile in terms of the negotiations before they sign off to any level of multilateral pressures enacted through the United Nations.

And I think, ultimately, that's the type of pressure that can work, multilateral measures through the United Nations, adhered to by the international community over a persistent period of time. That may hamper the regime's ambitions in that particular realm.

But I don't think this is something the United States can achieve unilaterally, whether it's unilateral economic concessions, unilateral economic coercion or any sort of a military program.

COBURN: One other thing. We had some comments in terms of regime change and support for the students and in terms of the Voice of America and is it Radio Farsi?

TAKEYH: Farda.

COBURN: Farda. Any comments about the effectiveness of the tools that the U.S. is using today in terms of trying to accomplish that goal?

And I'm not talking about whether you believe that's an effective tool. But given the fact that we are using the tool, are we doing it effectively?

TAKEYH: Well, there is, in my view, an analytical challenge here, because the notion that has been presented is that Iran is an information starved society.

I don't know how that's possible in a global village that we live in in an era of globalization. There's 24-hour Persian broadcast into Iran every day. It's called "BBC Persian Service."

(UNKNOWN): What's it called?

TAKEYH: "BBC Persian Service." It's 24 hours a day. It's on radio.

There's a talk of a BBC television station. And if you want to reach the Iranian people, radio, transistor radio, particularly in provinces and so forth, is there. So there's 24-hour radio broadcast from the British Broadcasting Company every day.

As a consumer of VOA...

COBURN: Excuse me. Are those broadcasts intercepted?

TAKEYH: You can listen to it every day in Iran. They're not intercepted, blocked or anything.

As a matter of fact, one of the ironies is, many who advocate greater radio broadcasts by the United States, they say we need politically neutral broadcasts, like "BBC Persian Service," except they neglect to say there is something called the "BBC Persian Service."

I think there's Internet use in Iran, which is significant. All Iranian papers are on the Internet. As a consumer of those, as someone who listens to Iranian radio broadcasts every day, I listen to it at 3:30 in the afternoon, which is a midnight broadcast over there, they recapitulate the news.

I mean, there is a -- politically constrained, but certainly broadcast happens.

The question is why is the Iranian public not more politicized? Why is it not more passive? The fallout question is...

COBURN: You say why is it not more passive?

TAKEYH: Why is the Iranian population passive in light of it? And the answer is, well, because they lack information.

Well, they don't lack information. The analytical challenge is why are they passive despite the level of information that is available to them? Why are they depoliticized, despite the level of information that is available to them? There is information available.

COBURN: What's the obvious conclusion you would have when you have such a theocratic rule there? What's the obvious conclusion you would draw to that? Is there consequences to being active?

TAKEYH: Yes, certainly, there are.

COBURN: We had somebody that's been imprisoned, their arm broken, their knee broken. We have pictures of the union truck drivers, where they've, in fact, been beaten and tortured. There is a cost to being...

(CROSSTALK)

TAKEYH: I don't see how a regime's coercive practices are going to be relieved by radio broadcasts. So if you're concerned about the fact that the security services are effective, radio broadcasts aren't going to do much about that.

Certainly, it is a regime that is capable of, therefore, controlling its public space. It is a regime that is capable of controlling its population. That doesn't mean it can control this population forever.

But if what you're saying is correct, then there's a certain degree of coercive stability.

Now, I don't know necessarily that this situation is going to be tenable if the country gets into serious economic difficulties where it is no longer capable of patronage politics.

At this particular point, I would say the Iranian regime has roughly between 10 to 15 percent support. But it is a support that they can mobilize, it is an arms support, and it has very elaborative intelligence purposes.

And one thing we have to appreciate, that is, the Iranian regime has been very effective at separating state from society in the sense that they have effectively, at least for now, managed to depoliticize the population.

Iran exists on two separate planes. There is the state, with all its deliberations, with all its considerations, and there's the population that does what it wants.

And at this particular point, one of the clever things that the Iranian regime has done is not to have a cultural clamp-down. Iranian youth, meaning my cousins and so forth, have sort of a vast subterranean activity. They go to parties, they do things, and the regime has not disturbed that, because it's recognized that's a politically explosive thing to do.

It's a regime that is very adept at survival. That doesn't mean it will survive forever. You can never look at an unrepresentative government and say this government will survive forever.

COBURN: Care to comment on the broadcasts?

WALSH: I would, actually. I think there are two issues at play here. In my testimony, I talk about the policy options that are available to the United States.

The key commonality in all of those, whether it's military action, if it ever comes to that as a last resort, or economic sanctions or what have you, is for us to accurately telegraph what we're going to do and what we're not going to do to the Iranian people. They are the key allies in all of this.

But so far we haven't been able to do that. I'll give you a concrete example. Before February of this year, when Secretary Rice announced the request for $75 million additional dollars for democracy promotion, the annual allocation for 2005 for public diplomacy, public broadcasting into Iran was $16.4 million.

Iran is a country of 70 million people. So that's roughly 21.5 cents per Iranian per year. You can argue about whether or not we should do more, but that's clearly insufficient.

It's doubly insufficient when we think about the last time we really needed a robust public diplomacy effort, which I'm thinking about the Cold War. During the Cold War, we did more than a third of that per Soviet per year as early as 1983.

And so my argument here is that we're simply not being serious in terms of public broadcasting. We don't have the scope that we want and we also have a corporate culture that discourages articulating the message that the administration has at least implicitly said, which is that the U.S. government stands with the Iranian people in their desire for change.

Not too long ago, the director of Voice of America said publicly, at a conference, that the U.S. government is not in the business of helping the Iranian people overthrow their government.

That seems slightly at odds with what the president had said in several pronouncements. So it seems to me that while the president has a message and has articulated a message, that message could be more forcefully applied to the bureaucracy.

COBURN: Would somebody please address my question, which was whatever the level, is the level of what we're doing, the content, effective in accomplishing the purpose?

LEDEEN: Well, the short answer is it can't be effective because there is no content to communicate, because we don't have an Iran policy. And until and unless we have an Iran policy, you know, the greatest broadcasters in the world wouldn't accomplish something we don't know what it is in the first place.

I'd like to comment, if I may, on the question of why are they so passive and the question of information. As someone who's been systematically slandered by the BBC for most of his professional life, I rise to defend the view that the BBC, whatever service it may be, is not communicating information at all.

I don't speak Farsi, so I haven't listened to it, but if it's anything like the BBC English language service, I would have no trouble understanding why the Iranian regime would have no problem with it and wouldn't jam it and so forth.

But the serious question is why are they so passive -- and that's a serious question. It's almost never happened in history that a revolution was foreseen. Before the revolution broke out, everyone always said, "Boy, these people are really passive."

When I went to the Reagan administration in 1981 and we started saying, "Well, we're going to try to bring down the Soviet empire," everybody thought we were mad. They said, "Well, look at the way the people behave. I mean, nobody will take a chance on it. We'll challenge some of these obscure dissidents, one or two of them, and they get whacked up and never heard from again."

And then there was this tiny trade union movement in Poland in the Gdansk shipyards. Well, nine years later it came down, vast popular support for the overthrow of that regime. It turned out it was there. We didn't see it.

If you compare the level of protests and the level of political complaints against the regime in the Soviet Union, circa 1981-1982, with the level of ongoing political demonstration against the Iranian regime, week after week and month after month and year after year, big numbers of people, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, up to a million people three or four years ago in the streets of Tehran, there's no question that the people have a very sharp political awareness of the evils of the regime, and they don't like it.

And when Dr. Takeyh says, quite rightly, that the regime probably has 10-15 percent support, I think that's probably just about right. And the other 85 or 90 percent are not mobilized to do it. And no one is smart enough to know why, exactly. But we do know one thing, that is, Iranian culture, Iranian people believe that nothing can happen, nothing of this magnitude can happen without the support of the United States and they don't have it.

They haven't seen it. They've heard various statements from various people. I believe that a few years ago, summer of, what was it, three years ago, 2003? -- I could be wrong. I've reached an age where active memory is failing rapidly.

But they were gearing up for big-scale demonstrations all over the country when the secretary of state, then-Secretary Powell, was asked were we going to support this imminent nationwide uprising? And he said, "We do not wish to get involved in an Iranian family squabble."

And you could hear the great sucking sound as the air came out of the balloon and nothing happened. Demonstrations were canceled, movement was canceled, so forth.

When the United States moves, the world changes. And this kind of static analysis, as the economists would call it, of a country in which you don't see revolutionary activity in The Washington Post, but then The Washington Post has never reported on the huge demonstrations that take place all the time all over Iran. So we won't read about that anyway.

We don't hear about tens of thousands of people demonstrating in Balujistan. We don't hear about the general strike in the oil fields in Khusistan. But it's there.

So to say, "Why are they so passive," for me, the real question is compared to other modern and contemporary examples of successful democratic revolutions, the Iranians are superactive. They're superpoliticized. They're the opposite of passive.

And the amazing thing is that they have lost their fear of the terrible tortures to which they are subjected when they get rounded up. And there's a video of this poor man's tongue being cut out. It's not just a matter of burns on his back. And they have, for the most part, overcome that, as well.

We need a policy. We don't have one. And I think it should be a policy of support for democratic revolution.

And final point, I would advocate that, even if Iran were not the world's biggest supporter of terrorism and even if Iran did not have a nuclear weapons policy at all, because it's the right thing to do. It's what we should stand for. It's what America is supposed to be all about.

COBURN: Thank you, Dr. Ledeen.

Senator Carper's going to have to go. So I'm going to turn the...

CARPER: We're having a debate over on the Senate floor about whether or not to extend or reauthorize the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and my time slot is in about seven minutes, so I've got to run.

Before I do that, I just would say to Dr. Walsh, Dr. Takeyh, to Dr. Ledeen and is it Dr. Berman or Mr. Berman?

BERMAN: I'm a lawyer, so I'm not technically a doctor. So mister is fine.

CARPER: I just want to say this has been an interesting, it's been an enjoyable, it's been a provocative discussion, and we thank each of you for helping to make it that.

Some of you have been before us previously and we're delighted that you've come back. Some of you have come from afar, and we're delighted that you could be with us today.

Thomas Jefferson used to say, I believe, and I'll paraphrase, "When people know the truth, they won't make a mistake." And I think in Iran, to the extent that the people there actually understand what's at stake for them, we've heard -- Dr. Coburn and I have heard even today that the Achilles heel in this regime in Iran is their economy.

And to the extent that the people there actually know what's at stake, to the extent that we're able to find a combination or common ground on the issues that we want to discuss at these multilateral talks, then there's a great economic benefit for the people of Iran, and to the extent that those talks are not productive or don't begin or are not productive, there is something that's quite different.

And I think part of the challenge for us and those who would like to see a better outcome is to figure out how best to make sure that people know the truth and are in a better position to put pressure on their regime and their leaders to not make a mistake.

Again, our thanks to each of you. And with that having been said, Mr. Chairman, I'm going to head out. Thanks again for letting us have this hearing. I think it's been great.

COBURN: I want to thank each of you.

Dr. Takeyh, I can tell, you can see in your face, the pain you feel on your mother country. And it's important that your voice is heard, and I appreciate you coming and testifying before us.

I want to make a statement. I'm going to be a senator for at least four more years. And I'm going to do everything I can to see that the people of Iran, not the government of Iran, have every opportunity to express themselves through a secular government rather than through a theocracy and that's at every angle, at every appropriation bill, at every chance I get to support their right for freedom.

Thank you all for being here.