As I was preparing my remarks today, I was reminded of a story about the pre-history of the CFR. The Council, as some of you may know, grew out of a project begun by President Woodrow Wilson shortly after the United States entered World War I. President Wilson's idea was to assemble some of the best and brightest minds from academia, to advise him about what the shape of the postwar order would be and what role America should play in it.
This initiative included a working group on precisely the subject I would like to discuss this afternoon -- the future of the Middle East. The group gathered at Princeton University and consisted of ten distinguished academics, including an acclaimed historian of the Crusades, two professors of ancient Persian literature, and a specialist on Native American tribes. What the group did not include, however, was anyone who knew anything about the contemporary Middle East.
According to one account of the initiative's work, "Many of the researchers did no more than summarize the information they found in an encyclopedia [about the Middle East]. Many delved into questions of literature and architecture... [and] few of the reports had any bearing on the question of American national interests."
With this history in mind, I want to preface my remarks this afternoon by assuring all of you that you will not be subjected to any attempts at literary criticism on my part. No encyclopedias -- not even Wikipedia! -- were consulted in the making of this speech.
In fairness to your predecessors, and mine, I must say it is also significantly easier today than it was in Woodrow Wilson's time to identify America's national interests in the Middle East. In fact, it's hard to miss them.
The United States has never been more engaged and invested across the Middle East than we are right now-from the Straits of Hormuz to the wilds of Yemen, and from proliferation to the peace process. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine a day in the life of an American President in which the Middle East does not figure prominently.
This did not happen overnight. Rather, it reflects a set of real American interests and critical American commitments in the Middle East that have developed in recent decades under both Democratic and Republican administrations. This has happened because successive American Presidents have recognized that developments in the Middle East have a direct impact on the physical safety and economic security of our own nation and its citizens.
And yet paradoxically, despite our unprecedented engagement in the Middle East today, I have been struck as I have traveled in the region in recent months by what seems to me to be a heightened uneasiness about the future of American power there. Behind closed doors, one hears an unmistakable uncertainty about our resolve and staying power.
I can think of four possible reasons for this paradox and these concerns. First, it may actually reflect just how indispensable and integral American leadership has become in the Middle East.
Despite the frustrations and resentments in different groups in the region that America seems to provoke, we are also looked to and counted on -- as a partner and guarantor for security - as an honest broker in diplomacy and politics - and as a voice for human rights, basic liberties, and democratic change.
Second, the global financial crisis and our national fiscal deficits have aroused fears in the Middle East, as they have elsewhere in the world, that America might be tempted to turn inward -- unwilling or unable to sustain our global commitments.
Third, the anxieties in the region about America's staying power also undoubtedly reflect some of the setbacks we have encountered in pursuit of our goals in the Middle East - from the mismanagement of the early years in postwar Iraq to the inability of successive administrations to secure the comprehensive regional peace that we have repeatedly tried to achieve.
But fourth and probably most importantly, I believe, the major geopolitical driver for the heightened anxiety about America's staying power in the Middle East is the Islamic Republic of Iran - more specifically, its determined push to become the dominant power in the region and tilt the balance of governance there towards Islamist extremism - and whether the United States has the will to stop that push.
The Iranian regime's pursuit of a nuclear weapons capability cannot be separated from its long-term campaign of unconventional warfare, stretching back decades, to destabilize the region and remake it in its own Islamist extremist image.
Through use of the IRGC Qods Force and its terrorist proxies, the Iranian regime has sought to neutralize the conventional military advantages of the United States and its allies and overturn the balance of power. It is also responsible for the murder of hundreds of Americans. The same strategic logic is driving its pursuit of a nuclear capability.
If Iran succeeds in acquiring a nuclear weapons capability, it would severely destabilize the Middle East, a region whose stability has been an important long-term American national and economic security goal.
It would also damage America's ability to sustain the commitments we have made in the Middle East: our commitment, dating back to the Carter and Reagan administrations, to prevent the domination of the Persian Gulf by a revisionist or extremist power; our commitment to secure lasting peace and security between Israel and its neighbors; and our commitment to deter, disrupt, and defeat state-sponsored Islamist extremist groups, who would suddenly be able to wage attacks from under the protection of Iran's nuclear umbrella.
It goes without saying that Iran's illicit nuclear activities implicate broader global interests of the United States as well -- foremost the international nuclear nonproliferation regime. As President Obama has repeatedly warned, a nuclear Iran could drive other states in the region to seek to acquire their own atomic arsenals. And, have no doubt: the more nuclear-proliferated the Middle East becomes, the greater the odds that nuclear weapons will fall into the hands of terrorists who will try to use them against the U.S.
That is why the single most important test of American power in the Middle East today is whether we succeed or fail in stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability. How we do on that test will significantly affect our standing in the rest of the world.
I have been a strong supporter of the Obama administration's dual track approach of engagement and pressure in response to the Iranian challenge - including the effort to orchestrate a new set of sanctions, in the hope that these measures will push the leadership in Teheran to suspend its illicit nuclear activities and reconcile with the international community. The White House has pursued this strategy with discipline and determination.
The result has been a cascade of new measures since this summer -- beginning at the UN Security Council, and then continuing in Congress and among responsible countries and companies worldwide, from the EU to Australia, Japan and South Korea -- that has been faster, broader, and more intensive than I expected and that the Iranian leadership anticipated, I suspect.
There is no question that the Iranian regime is under heightened pressure today, both at home and abroad. In addition to the new sanctions, the Green Movement has robbed the Islamic Republic of whatever pretense of legitimacy it ever possessed -- proving once and for all that the regime in Teheran today has become neither "Islamic" nor a "republic," but a crude military dictatorship. In the region, meanwhile, the IRGC's dream of replicating the Hezbollah model in southern Iraq was rolled back by the Iraqi and U.S. forces, while the revival of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process has put the Iranian regime on the defensive, particularly since the legitimate leadership of the Palestinian Authority told Teheran earlier this month to stop interfering in their internal affairs.
Yet at the same time, the harsh fact is, Iran's nuclear efforts are continuing forward. Despite some apparent technical difficulties, Iran's centrifuges keep spinning, and its stockpile of fissile material continues to grow.
Sanctions of course are a means to an end, not an end unto themselves. The true measure of success will not be how many Iranian banks we designate or how many foreign companies cut economic ties to Iran, but whether these actions trigger meaningful behavior change on the part of the Iranian regime - in other words, to stop its illicit nuclear activities. As of yet, they have not -- and until they do so, we must not only maintain the pressure but keep ratcheting it up.
That means aggressive and creative enforcement of existing sanctions against Iran. It means American penalties against companies that continue to invest in Iran's energy sector or sell refined petroleum to Iran. And it means that the Administration must make use of the powerful new authority granted to it by the congressional sanctions legislation, to cut off from the U.S. financial system any foreign bank that continues to do business with the IRGC, its front companies, or other illicit Iranian actors.
There have been suggestions recently that the Iranian regime may be prepared to resume talks with the P-5+1. President Ahmadinejad suggested this when he was in New York last week, at the same time he made his outrageous and insane accusation that the U.S. government was responsible for 9/11. That combination of statements reminded me of an old Connecticut political warning: "Don't spit in my face and then tell me it's raining." In his speech at the UN, President Ahmadinejad once again rejected President Obama's outstretched hand and instead slapped humanity in the face.
Certainly the door to the negotiating table should remain open to the Iranians-but it is equally certain that the Iranians must not be rewarded simply for showing up at the table.
The test is not whether the Iranian regime is talking, but what the regime is doing. As long as centrifuges are spinning and uranium is being enriched, the pressure from sanctions on Iran must keep growing.
My personal concern is that the current leaders of Iran-particularly the IRGC hardliners who have consolidated power in the wake of last year's election-are incapable of compromise on the nuclear program, no matter how much pressure is put on them, because opposition to America and the West is so integral to their very identity. If this is indeed the case, our best hope to resolve this confrontation is not for the regime to change its behavior, but for the regime itself to be changed. I am not naïve about how difficult this may be, but supporting such a change is surely the policy our national values require and the one that the people of Iran deserve.
And remember, more than once in our time, we have been surprised to see seemingly impregnable regimes collapse under pressure for freedom from their own citizens. What is likewise clear is that the current leaders of Iran spend an enormous amount of time and energy worrying about the internal opposition to their regime. They certainly take the threat from the opposition seriously, and so should we.
Our sanctions effort should therefore increasingly aim not just to add pressure on the existing regime, but to target the fissures that already exist both within the Iranian regime itself and between the regime and Iranian society.
This should include much more robust engagement and support for opposition forces inside Iran, both by the United States and like-minded democratic nations around the world. The Obama administration missed an important opportunity in the wake of last year's election in Iran. But it is certainly not too late to give strong support to the people in Iran who are courageously standing up against their repressive government.
In the comprehensive sanctions bill passed by Congress this summer, Senator McCain and I led an effort to include a provision that requires the Administration to impose targeted sanctions against individuals in the Iranian government who committed human rights abuses after the June 12 election. It is my understanding that Secretary Clinton and Secretary Geithner are, right now, announcing the first of these human rights designations. I applaud the Obama administration for taking this important action.
While the President has extremely capable point-people responsible for negotiations with Iran and sanctions against the regime, there is still no one in the Obama administration-as far as I can tell-who wakes up every day "owning" the mission of helping the Iranian people overcome their government's electronic monitoring and censorship, share information, and secure the universal human rights with which all of us have been endowed by our Creator. The President needs to find his "Stuart Levey" for the Green Movement.
We have now come to the moment in this long struggle when the Iranian regime must understand that we will not wait indefinitely for sanctions to work. As my colleague in the House of Representatives, Foreign Affairs Chairman Howard Berman, warned last week, we are talking about months, not years. I therefore hope that President Obama will conduct an assessment at the end of this year-just as he did last year-to determine if the current strategy towards Iran is working. If it has not produced meaningful change in Iran's nuclear weapons policy by then, we will need to begin a national conversation about what steps should come next.
This inevitably must involve consideration of military options. I agree with President Obama that the use of military force is not the "ideal way" to stop the Iranian nuclear program. But nothing is more corrosive to the prospect of resolving this confrontation peacefully than the suspicion-among friends and enemies alike in the Middle East-that in the end, we will acquiesce to Iran's acquisition of a nuclear weapons capability. If a nuclear Iran is as unacceptable as we all say it is, we must be prepared to do whatever is necessary to prevent the unacceptable.
It is time for us to take steps that make clear that if diplomatic and economic strategies continue to fail to change Iran's nuclear policies, a military strike is not just a remote possibility in the abstract, but a real and credible alternative policy that we and our allies are ready to exercise.
It is time to retire our ambiguous mantra about all options remaining on the table. It is time for our message to our friends and enemies in the region to become clearer: namely, that we will prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapons capability -- by peaceful means if we possibly can, but with military force if we absolutely must. A military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities entails risks and costs, but I am convinced that the risks and costs of allowing Iran to obtain a nuclear weapons capability are much greater.
Some have suggested that we should simply learn to live with a nuclear Iran and pledge to contain it. In my judgment, that would be a grave mistake. As one Arab leader I recently spoke with pointed out, how could anyone count on the United States to go to war to defend them against a nuclear-armed Iran, if we were unwilling to go to war to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran? Having tried and failed to stop Iran's nuclear breakout, our country would be a poor position to contain its consequences.
I also believe it would be a failure of U.S. leadership if this situation reaches the point where the Israelis decide to attempt a unilateral strike on Iran. If military action must come, the United States is in the strongest position to confront Iran and manage the regional consequences. This is not a responsibility we should outsource. We can and should coordinate with our many allies who share our interest in stopping a nuclear Iran, but we cannot delegate our global responsibilities to them.
Iran presents us with daunting and difficult challenges. By now, I suspect, some of you may be getting wistful for the days of Woodrow Wilson when discussions about America and the Middle East could focus on Persian poetry. But before you get too wistful-also remember that those were the days when the principal strategic challenge confronting the President of the United States was a great power conflict in the heart of Europe between Germany and her neighbors-a conflict of nationalistic hatreds and geopolitical rivalries that twice ignited into world war and claimed the lives of tens of millions of people, including hundreds of thousands of Americans.
Today, by comparison, it is possible to walk from Portugal to Poland without encountering a militarized border, or changing the currency in your wallet, much less stumbling into an active conflict. A part of the world that a century ago was a strategic sinkhole for American blood and treasure, hopelessly entrenched in war, is today an unbroken field of democratic allies and a bulwark for peace and stability-so much so, that we too often take for granted just how difficult and improbable a journey it has been.
So yes, American power faces great challenges and dangerous enemies today. But we must also remember that American power is capable of achieving great things-sometimes seemingly impossible things.
This is the alternative future we must also summon the imagination to envision, and the political will to help bring into being:
Of a Middle East in which a democratic Iran assumes its rightful place as a regional power and as the modern heir of one of the world's great civilizations-an engine of prosperity and innovation that benefits its own citizens and the entire planet.
Of a Middle East in which Islamist extremism no longer inspires violence or loyalty, but joins other failed and inhumane ideologies on the ash heap of history.
And of a Middle East in which Israel and its Arab and Persian neighbors live in peace with each other as fellow democracies that respect the human rights of their citizens-and in a region where the notion of going to war against each other becomes as unthinkable and absurd as it seems today to French and German teenagers.
I thank you for your time and attention, and I look forward to your questions.
