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Post-October 7th, Iran’s presence in the Middle East—and on the world stage—is growing stronger, many say, given its nuclear ambitions and its use of proxies in Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, most recently disrupting shipping in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. Its regional dominance is expanding, but is it also emerging as a global threat as it aligns with other authoritarian regimes? In Open to Debate’s Unresolved format and in partnership with the Council on Foreign Relations, National Security Council and State Department veterans will debate Biden’s Iran diplomacy, the country’s use of proxies in the Middle East, its nuclear ambitions, and whether Iran now poses a threat to the global order.
This debate was recorded live on January 25, 2024, in Washington D.C. at the Council on Foreign Relations.
Feature Debate Topics:
(4 RESOURCES)
(4 RESOURCES)
John Donvan
Welcome, everybody, to Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan, and for this one, we’re in front of a live audience at the Washington Campus of the Council on Foreign Relations, our sponsor and our partner in this episode, where the subject is Iran, a nation, a state, a challenge to its region, to US interests, to its own people. Before we get to the debate itself, I wanted to bring the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, Michael Froman, to the stage. We’re excited to be doing this one in partnership with CFR. It’s the inaugural debate in what’s going to be a series of debates on foreign policy we’ll do together. Michael, tell us a little bit about what this partnership means to you.
Michael Froman
As a nonpartisan institution that, uh, works to provide fact-based analytics to, to people, to help people understand what’s going on in the world, how it affects them here in the United States, um, being a partner with Open to Debate, which I know is also committed to being nonpartisan, fact-based, and really focused on public education, uh, for us we’re very excited about it. It seems like a, a good alignment of interests.
Michael Froman
Iran is just so central to a whole array of US interests, whether it’s what’s going on, uh, in the Middle East, and the instability that Iran has, um, uh, stoked there in their support of Hamas, Hezbollah, uh, the Houthis, uh, whether it’s their aspirations for nuclear capabilities, uh, which could de- destabilize, uh, the balance of power more g- more generally, um, or their support of Russia, and Russia’s, uh, war against Ukraine.
John Donvan
It’s a pleasure. Thanks. For this debate, we’re employing one of our special alternate formats, where instead of one question and two sides arguing for and against, we’re taking on three questions in a row, and we have three debaters, each of them flying solo. We call this our unresolved format, so here it is, our debate called Unresolved: The Iran Threat. And now let’s meet our debaters. First up, senior fellow and director of the Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East at the Hudson Institute, please welcome Michael Doran. Next, Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center, Barbara Slavin. And finally, Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies here at the Council on Foreign Relations, Ray Takeyh.
John Donvan
(laughs) Okay. Uh, so what we’re gonna do now is hear from each of the debaters making an, a statement, uh, explaining why they’re arguing yes or no, and after that, we’ll have some discussion on the topic, so Michael, you’re up first. You’re answering yes to the question, emphatically, has Biden’s Iran diplomacy failed? 90 seconds to tell us why.
Michael Doran
The Biden administration came in with a theory that it was possible to reach a modus vivendi with Iran, basically a mutual non-belligerence that would be, allow them to stabilize the Middle East. I think we can look around now and we can see, uh, it very obviously, uh, has failed. Nuclear Iran is much closer than it has ever been before. They were going to pull Iran back from the nuclear precipice. Iran is within one week of having enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon. It’s within about six months of actually b- having a deliverable weaponized nuclear weapon. It’s also much, a much bigger threat in the region. Its drones, ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles have created an offense-dominant regime in the region. They can, uh, their weapons can hit. Given to their proxies, the IRGC is, uh, delivering these weapons to their proxies. They can hit the national critical infrastructure of, uh, every American ally, and they can also overwhelm the defenses of the United States. They are using those weapons in five different arenas in the region and one outside the region. That’s in, uh, that’s in, uh, Ukraine. Uh, clearly they are not contained. The policy has failed.
Barbara Slavin
I say no, it has not completely failed, because we are not at war with Iran, and we are still able to pass messages to the Iranian government. Just recently, I read that the US actually sent a warning to Iran, that there was about to be a terrorist attack on the city of Kerman. Iran, yes, has advanced its nuclear program significantly, but I don’t put the blame for that on, uh, the Biden administration. I put it on the Trump administration, which stupidly withdrew from the Iran Nuclear Deal, which, uh, would have prevented Iran from making these kinds of advancements for at least 15 years. Biden made a good faith effort, I think, to restore the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the 2015 Nuclear Deal, uh, and I think might have gotten there if Russia had not invaded Ukraine and suddenly became, uh, less helpful, shall we say, in the negotiations with Iran, to try to get them to come back into compliance, uh, with the JCPOA.
That said, there was an understanding that was reached over the summer. Uh, Iran, uh, agreed to curb its accumulation of 60% enriched uranium. It agreed to free five American dual nationals who had been held unjustly for many years, one of them for almost a decade, and there were not all of these incidents tit for tat between Iranian-backed militias in Iraq and Americans in Iraq, and in Syria. All of that had been tamped down. What nobody could have known was that Hamas was going to attack on October 7th, and that changed everything.
Ray Takeyh
Yes. Uh, there were a certain set of assumptions that have guided Iran policy for 20 years, two in particular. One was that the nuclear issue can be segregated from all other areas of concern and resolved on its own terms, and two that escalation of economic pressure, ideally multilateralized, could produce a reliable arms control arrangement. Think about almost any other issue from 2005, your assumptions toward Russian Federation, China, international commerce, international… All those assumptions have changed. These assumptions have been proven durable not because they’ve been successful across administration, but because we can’t think of anything else to do, and I’m not exempting myself from that particular indictment.
Ray Takeyh
We’re at a policy paralysis because we’re at intellectual impasse, and at this particular point, everybody’s trying to figure out what the next steps are while we’re still being anchored by a set of assumptions concocted in the early 21st century, persisted throughout the administration, persisted through everything that has changed, including a very difficult situation in Iran itself that has changed. So, I, I would say the Biden administration suffers from the same set of maladies as its predecessors did.
John Donvan
Thank you, Ray. Michael, so, um, I want to, I wanna pick up on a point that Ray just made, that no administration really has a good idea. Barbara is making the case that whatever, uh, Biden was doing, to the degree that it bridges a continuation with the Obama policy is better than what Trump was doing. Do you have a better idea-
Michael Doran
Oh yeah, absolutely. The, the core problem is the offense-dominant regime that the Iranians have. The missiles, the ballistic missiles, and the drones, they’ve distributed them to all of their allies. The United States is offering its allies and its own, its own troops purely defensive measures. You have to go on offense. So we have to use classical deterrence, which has been around since the Greeks. We have to take things from the Iranians that they hold dear. Every administration has given Iran itself a pass in this regard.
Ray Takeyh
I have a way out, uh, but I will say the following. Why haven’t the Iranians crossed the nuclear threshold? My speculation is as follows. The unsettled domestic situation that they have at a time of transition to a new succession, but un- unsettled domestically, and the fear of foreign reprisal at the time when your domestic situation is so unsettled, is acting as a restraint.
Michael Doran
I don’t see restraint. I see, I see steady motion toward a nuclear weapon. One of the reasons why the Biden administration does not want to escalate is it fears that, uh, Iran will rush to a bomb. We have to prove to Iran that we are actually willing to take from it things that it holds very dear.
Ray Takeyh
[inaudible
Barbara Slavin
Within the system, uh, I think Ali Shamkhani, the former national security advisor, is one. You hear, uh, you hear people like Javad Zarif. You hear others. It doesn’t always bubble up, uh, you know, into, into public discussion, but if you look at their actions, Hezbollah has not been unleashed.
Ray Takeyh
Uh, and even Mike was talking about killing people in Yemen. So long as the Iranian territory remains unmolested, which it will be, because the imperative in this situation today is, quote-unquote, “Not to expand the war.” This has been a brilliant proxy strategy, as it helped evict the United States from Iraq. It helped sustain the Assad regime. It’s-
John Donvan
We’ll be right back with more questions and discussion on the Iran threat, right here on Open to Debate, after the break. Welcome back to Open to Debate. I’m John Donvan. We are live in Washington, DC, at the Council on Foreign Relations, taking on three separate questions relating to Iran with three different debaters, Michael Doran, Barbara Slavin, and Ray Takeyh, and we’re just about to move into our second question. Ray, I’m gonna come to you first. The question is can Israel live with a nuclear Iran?
Ray Takeyh
What is the Iranian case for extinction of Israel? They talk about it all the time. How do they propose to do it? They do talk about how, namely that you continuously put stress on Israeli society by, and therefore divide its politics, emasculate its military, estrange it from the international community, and provoke the exodus of the best and the brightest. That’s the case they make for how to deflate and therefore exting- uh, cause the extinction of Israel. I don’t buy the case, but that’s the case. Nuclear weapons will help further intimidation and further stress the Israeli society in that respect.
Second of all, you know, uh, the, the possibility of two nuclear arms adversaries getting out of hand is real. I don’t think the Iranians want nuclear weapons to attack Israel with. I don’t think Premier Khrushchev wanted to attacklaughs) the United States over Cuba. Things have a way of getting out of hand in these situations, where you have two adversaries who view each other in such existential threats, do not communicate with one-another, and have caricature perceptions of each other.
Barbara Slavin
Yeah. Uh, Israel has 90, at least 90 nuclear warheads. It has a second strike capability. It can survive if Iran also acquires nuclear weapons, and I think we’ve seen very graphically, that the real threat to Israel comes from its occupation of Palestinians and denial of their rights, and the in- the contradictions within Israeli society between ultra-Orthodox, ultra-right, settler, uh, uh, these are the real threats to the state of Israel. People are leaving the country, some are leaving the country because of what happened on October 7th. That was all done, uh, with the crudest of tools by Hamas. Uh, so nuclear weapons, uh, uh, uh, I don’t this, even if Iran were to, to get them, and I’m not convinced that they will, um, I, you know, they wouldn’t be used, because, uh, Israel would be able to respond and, and destroy Iran.
Um, I, I just don’t… I, I think Israel would have to live with it. I would agree with one thing that Ray said, though, and when I was writing my book, uh, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies, um, I had a quote from a man named Ifrahim Sinay, who was a very senior Israeli. Um, and he said that the reason that Israel was afraid of Iran getting nuclear weapons was not because they thought Iran would use them, uh, but because it would make Israelis… It would make Jews not want to move to Israel. They would feel more vulnerable. So I do agree with that, but I think (laughs) Israelis have plenty of reasons to feel vulnerable now that have nothing to do with nuclear weapons.
Michael Doran
Yes, a- a- absolutely. I just got back from Israel. Israeli society is more united than at any time I’ve, uh, since I’ve been going there. You’ve got the, uh, religious and secular working together, uh, desiring to defeat their enemies, which includes not just the Hamas, but also Hezbollah. The north of the country, along the b- the Lebanese border, has been depopulated because of the threat from Hezbollah. This is the conventional threat due to their ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, which they get from the, uh, uh, from the Iranians. If the Iranians were to get a nuclear weapon, the offense-dominant regime that Hezbollah has established in the north will become a super-offense-dominant regime, because they will be under an Iranian nuclear umbrella. It’s absolutely intolerable for the Israelis. The situation as it exists now on the northern border is absolutely intolerable for the, uh, for the Israelis-
Michael Doran
Intolerable means that the populatio- It’s been depopulated. It’s been depopulated, and Iran and Hezbollah have changed the rules of the game in the border. Between 2006 and yesterday, they feared an escalation by the Israelis if they were to attack Israel. They’re now attacking Israel on a daily basis, and they’re hiding behind an American guarantee to Iran, one of the messages that America is sending is we do not want the war to expand. We are doing everything we can to restrain the Israelis, because that-
Barbara Slavin
You know, look. Israel has used cyber attacks. It’s assassinated nuclear scientists. Every time Israel does something to the Iranian nuclear program, the Iranians redouble their efforts. The reason Iran is enriching to 60% now is because the Israelis assassinated a man named, uh, Fakhrizadeh, just at the end of the Trump administration [inaudible]-
Ray Takeyh
Um, I would imagine… I’m, I’m not an Israeli military planner, but I would imagine they would try to disable the Iranian nuclear apparatus as far as they can identify it, and, and, and presumably set the program back. I don’t know if they have the logistical capacity to do that, but I would guess that’s, that’s, they have thought about this. I would say I don’t know… Every Israeli I have met, and I haven’t met as many as Mike and Barbara, they, uh, use the word existential. I didn’t know what the word existential meant so, ’til I got to college.
Speaker X
[inaudible
Ray Takeyh
Yeah, yeahlaughs). Any Israeli you meet anywhere in Israel says existential. Uh, uh, so they s- they, it’s a s- it is a very serious threat to them, and I don’t think it should be minimized. Uh, it, it is a threat to the cohesion of their society. It is cert- The rhetoric that Iran uses… The Islamic Republic of Iran is not just anti-Israel. It’s profoundly antisemitic.
Ray Takeyh
Well, the rhetoric of the clerical estate is profoundly antisemitic. Uh, there’s nobody in the Iranian clerical, uh, leadership that believes Holocaust happened. [inaudible
Michael Doran
I wanna emphasize something that Ray said, about how profoundly odd it is to have a regime that openly calls for the destruction of Israel, uh, and that d- and that denies the Holocaust, and that delivers drones, missiles, and ballistic missiles to, uh, to all of its proxies around the region, and, uh, attacks every one of its neighbors with the exception of Turkey and Azerbaijan with these things. This is, this is not normal behavior. This is not a normal regime, and one of the reasons that the Israelis cannot tolerate it is that they are openly calling for obliterating Israel.
Michael Doran
The, the, the, uh, Iranians don’t just deliver, uh, don’t just deliver we- weapons to the Houthis. They also train them. What the slogan of the Houthis, which they have learned from the Ir- Iranians, and which is inculcated into, into Yemeni Youth, is, um, “[foreign language
Michael Doran
I think Iran, as a nuclear power, would be… Ir- Iran has already shown its cards of who it is. It’s a, it is a profoundly expansionist power. It wants to destroy Israel. It wants to drive the United States from the Middle East. It’s o- They’re not hiding it. They say it every day, openly. They’re gonna be… They are going to behave with the same aggressive behavior when they become nuclear that they’re behaving now, and then some.
Michael Doran
Uh, they will backstop their aggressive actions with a nuclear threat, which means that there will be a seri- when you have a, when you have two nuclear powers, and there won’t be just two once… Right now, there’ll be, there’ll be two, Israel and Iran. After I- after Iran gets a bomb, Saudi Arabia will get one the day after, the Turks will, will likely get one shortly after, uh, shortly after that. We’ll have a multilateral nuclear standoff in the region, with countries, uh, uh, uh, on a hair trigger. That’s the situation that-
Ray Takeyh
I- I- Iran is a revisionist state. It, it, it’s a profoundly an ideological state, and armed with such weapons. Uh, I, I think it will certainly be more aggressive in the region, because at least it’s, it will perceive its territory to be immunized from retaliation. And that gives you what Mike was saying, far more leeway to be aggressive. Uh-
Ray Takeyh
Well, I, I, I do think there is a risk of escalation between these two nuclear weapon states, Israel, and, and, and, and Iran. I don’t… If you look at the history of nuclear standoffs between the United States and Israel, uh, United States and, and the Soviet Union, it was very hazardous, and there were many times where things could have gone radically the other way, and I just think the introduction of that kind of a danger in a region as volatile as the Middle East, no one should be sanguine about that possibility [inaudible].
Barbara Slavin
Yeah, no, it would certainly lead to more proliferation. The Saudis have made it very clear they would get a bomb, uh, one way or the other if, if Iran does, which makes me even more uncomfortable. But I think the Israelis should come clean on their nuclear arsenal. I think that would be very healthy. And then we can have a broad arms control discussion about the whole region.
Michael Doran
The Iranians are, um, w- about six months away from a, a… If they went, if they went, uh, uh, gangbusters, a wholehearted effort, uh, to, to build a w- a, a, a deliverable weapon, they could do it in about six months. If they tried to do it, um, in a slow, gradual, clandestine way, they could do it in about, in about two years.
Michael Doran
Yeah, because it’s been driven home to the Is- The, the war in, in the north in particular, le- Gaza less, but the, but the war in the north with Hezbollah has driven home to the Israelis the depth of the problem, because if they were to go to war with Hezbollah now, just with the conventional weapons that, that Hezbollah has, it can, uh, the, the, um, the, the, the devastation in Israel will be significant. Israel will win that war. It will win it, but it will come at a very, very high cost to Israel. They calculate that if Iran got a nuclear weapon and they had to have that war, it would be much more dangerous.
Michael Doran
… uh, I, I don’t see how we can possibly make any of these assumptions. Well, on the basis of… On, uh, again, on the basis of the behavior that we see. The Houthis just shot, for the first time, a, in the world ever, a, a surface to, uh, ship ballistic missile. No power in the world has ever done this. This was delivered to them by, uh, uh, by Iran. The Houthis, which are, are otherwise a ragtag militia with no significant, uh, indus- industrial base, have this weapon that, that only first-tier military powers, uh, have. Iran has shown absolutely no restrictions whatsoever in handing these weapons to its, uh, to its a-
Ray Takeyh
[inaudible
Ray Takeyh
Uh, uh, global… It, it, it is not a global power, doesn’t seem to have global pretensions, but I will say one thing, and that should be cause for concern. It is now part of a global alliance, uh, with Russia and China alliance that has been cemented recently in a really fundamental way. And the Iranians have, despite the rhetoric of self-depend- self-reliance, they have searched for allies, great power allies. And now they’re part of that. Uh, but with great power allies come responsibility or requests. Iran, today, is involved in a war in Central Europe. It’s involved in the war on Ukraine. It’s implicity at war with NATO. There are no ideological, or practical, or national interests at stake here. They’re only doing it because the Russians want them to do it. So, Iran is not a global power, but it’s nefarious aspects of its behavior may find global imprint because of the alliance that it has become a junior partner to. I yield the remainder of my time to-
Michael Doran
You see, uh, the, uh, they, they are, uh, they’re absolutely a threat to the global order because of what Ray said at the end. They are, they are a partner with the Russians and the Chinese against the American, uh, against the American order. Um, the, uh, we know now that the, the Russian-Iranian alliance is there for everyone to see, and it s- it started as an alliance in Syria. Now it’s an alliance in Ukraine. The, um, the, uh, technological advantages that the Iranians are getting from, uh, from their defense cooperation with Russia is making those disruptive military capabilities, I’m talking about their, again, their conventional capabilities, that much more, that much more significant. They’re also being built up by the, the, the Chinese, somewhat surreptitiously, somewhat, uh, uh, uh, out in the open, ’cause the Chinese realize that by, by strengthening the most disruptive, uh, element in, in the region, they are driving the allies of the United States toward China in order to balance, uh, uh, in order to balance Iran. We see it, uh, uh, perversely, even our, in our own policy. It was reported yesterday that the, um, that the Biden administration has turned to Beijing to try to convince the Iranians to convince the Houthis to stop, to, to stop attacking, uh, uh, global shipping. They, they have shut down, the Iranians, simply through sh- uh, shooting missiles at, at, at, at ships-
Barbara Slavin
Yeah, I don’t see them as a, as a global power. I see them as a regional power, and a very potent one. Um, uh, I see Iran sort of like a, a porcupine. You know, it, it, it projects antagonism. It stirs up, uh, i- it stirs the pot in countries that have their own internal problems. It finds horses it can back, creates militias, arms them, and so on, but inside, I see it as quite vulnerable. Um, and I probably agree with Ray on this. I think there are some any internal problems. This country, it’s about to, to mark-
Barbara Slavin
Um, and as Ray pointed out, they, they will at some point have a succession from Supreme Leader Khamenei to another supreme leader or some other form or fashion of government, and, uh, I think that, you know, the alliances that they’ve developed, these are all… It’s f- They call it forward defense, these proxies are forward defense, to prevent other countries from attacking Iran. Remember, Iran is a country that has been historically invaded over and over and over again. They have no love for the Russians. This is purely tactical.
John Donvan
I’m John Donvan. This is Open to Debate. More of our conversation when we return. Welcome back to Open to Debate. We’ve just heard our opening arguments on the question, does Iran pose a challenge to the global order, and now our discussion is going to resume on that topic. Michael, I know you’re, you’re ready to go on this one (laughs)-
Michael Doran
The American policy, by failing to support our allies against Iran, or, or offering them only purely defensive measures, is actually pushing them to Beijing to moderate Iran. We are strengthening the axis among Beijing, Moscow, Tehran, and North Korea. If we want to pull Iran away from that alliance, we have to hit it, and we have to hit it hard. There’s a kind of paradox in, in Iran. Iran is weak internally, but their aspirations are global. The supreme leader sees himself not just as the leader of Iran, but as the leader of the entire Islamic world. The Iranians are in Venezuela. The Isra- The Iranians are in N- are, are, are working with North Korea. They’re working with China. They have shut down 80% of the shipping r- uh, going through the Suez Canal. It’s, it’s ridiculous for a superpower to tolerate this from a-
Ray Takeyh
He’s, he’s not wrong by suggesting that they’re, they are menacing the region, interfering with global commerce as, as, in, in, as in the Gulf and the Red Sea, uh, violating all kinds of norms in their support of various, uh, secessionist forces and elsewhere. In terms of interfering with maritime shipping, that is a global threat. In terms of being members of this alliance with Russia and China, they have alr- they’re already playing a role in Europe, uh, which is, as I said, makes no sense from a practical perspective, from an ideological perspective, from an Islamist perspective. This is one of the disadvantages of being part of a great power alliance. The advantages are considerable. They have economic cushion from the Chinese. They have probably deepened military cooperation with the Russians. And also, should Iran develop a nuclear weapon after successive American administrations have said this is unacceptable-
Barbara Slavin
It, it, it is a much more… It’s just a much more nuanced picture, and the Iranian government has to pay some attention to sentiment in the country. People hate the regime. They hate its restrictions. They hate the corruption. But they don’t want to be embroiled in a war. They don’t want massive instability. They don’t want terrorism attacks. They don’t want to be Syria. They don’t want to be Yemen. They don’t want to be Iraq. And that’s something that the regime can, can, can play with. It makes them inherently cautious in some ways, and I still think there is a chance to convince the Iranians not to go all the way to nuclear weapons. I just don’t see them as a global threat. As a… You know, they had a, they have a very, uh, difficult relationship with the Russians, and-
John Donvan
Barbara, let me, let me j- Can I jump in with a question? Um, we haven’t really defined world order, but you know, the, the reference to maritime trade and the maritime system certainly would fit in any definition of the world order, and both of your partners are saying that they are effectively disrupting this piece of the world order. Does that not give you pause in terms of the-
Barbara Slavin
I agree totally with you, and I think that Iran’s strategy, which is meant to defend Iran, has actually failed in many respects. I mean, the, the groups that it supports are often not very popular. They’ve, you know, they’ve created, they’ve either played in failed states or created failed states. I think Iran is opportunistic. We were stupid enough to invade Iraq in 2003 and get rid of Saddam Hussein, who weak as he was, was a buffer against Iran. And they moved right in. You know? They took advantage of the Arab Spring to move into Syria. Lebanon, of course, we know the Israeli invasion in 1982. They wanted to get rid of the PLO. They got Hezbollah.
Michael Doran
Uh, if I asked you, in 2008 or 2009, when we had, uh, uh, 180,000 troops in Iraq or whatever the number was, uh, what’s the chance that by, uh, that by 2024, uh, Iran is gonna be more influential in Iraq than we are, and in fact, is going to, can look, uh, can look at potentially driving us entirely from Iraq, which is a real, uh, which is a real possibility today. You’d tell me, uh, you’d tell me I was crazy. Uh, if I-
Michael Doran
… Barbara, if I had p- told Barbara just, uh, just three years ago that, um, that Iran was gonna become a major arms supplier to the Russians, and that that was gonna actually shift the balance in the war in U- Ukraine, she would have rolled her eyes, and tutted, and said this is absolutely-
Ray Takeyh
Uh, Dove, I’m not quite sure if the proxy war strategy didn’t contribute to eviction of the United States from Iraq, uh, when they lacerated the American forces. So, it’s the, and, and I’m, I’m sure if their strategy of inflaming the conflict on all of Israel’s boundaries will not help instigate the international community to impose some kind of a solution on Israel short of its objective of cleansing Gaza of Hamas. So, I, I think the strategy has been more successful than perhaps you credited. Uh, and I think by contributing to the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen, they forced the Saudis to sue for peace. So, this is not… The proxy strategy is remarkably effective, including precipitating America’s defeat and departure from Iraq.
Speaker 9
Yes, hi. Thanks very much. Just f- remembering that little statement, of, or the adage about, you know, if you forget your history, you’relaughs) condemned to repeat it. Uh, the Persian Empire, the Persian thinking, the Persian culture’s been around millennium. What lessons, if any, can we learn from history, from the way Persians have thought at the various conflicts, all those sort of things, that we can apply in today’s world? Like, what can we do now, learning lessons from even the distant past, millennia ago? Thank you.
Ray Takeyh
I tend to view, and maybe you agree, that the Islamic Republic is a fundamental departure from normative patterns of Persian h- statecraft, that actually has injected ideology into the foreign policymaking. They’re doing things that Persian monarchs of the past wouldn’t contemplate or consider, like the, this whole crusade against Israel. That is, that is an Islamic Republic thing. I think probably Mike and I view the Islamic Republic as more ideological, and Barbara views it as more opportunistic, and that’s-
Michael Doran
The, uh, the, um, uh, the thing that I think is, uh, really interesting be out the Iranians and the way they are making war, and, and the success of their strategy, um, is, uh, actually what Barbara said earlier, about their ability to, their ability to look at seams and cracks in the region and, and go and exacerbate those. I, I believe it comes from their domestic order, uh, because it’s a Persian-dominated system with all of these ethnic minorities, which are separate from each other and all, and surrounded alo- along its borders, and they have, the ethnic minorities, have, uh, deep, uh, uh, ties of affinity to all the, to some of the surrounding states, including ones that are very threatening to them. And so they become very good at setting their minorities against each other and making the minor- and making the Persians feel that, that if they go down the [inaudible
Speaker 10
… in the Hitler Germany too. The Iran is a dictatorship. We were told histori- historically we were told that Hitler would never be able to do what he was gonna do, because the German population didn’t want it. Well, see what happened. How can we be comfortable p- as you seem to be, about what the Iranian people want?
Barbara Slavin
Well, I’m not comfortable about what the Iranian government does or what the Iranian government wants. I’m tr- simply saying that I think that there are restraints on the behavior of the Iranian government because even if it is a dictatorship, it has to have some sense of, of how far it can go, uh, and what its people can tolerate. And everything it’s been doing lately suggests to me that they’re trying to avoid, uh, a widening of the conflict. I, the, the point I wanted to make with Mike… I mean, Iran can’t invent issues. It, it, it, it takes advantage, yes, but if the United States keeps bludgeoning its way around the Middle East, using military force instead of diplomacy, over and over again, we are going to lose. We lost in Iraq. We lost in Afghanistan. Pulling out of the JCPOA was a terrible mistake. We will not be able to stop the Iranians now if they want to develop nukes. We should learn from our mistakes.
Speaker 11
Hi. I’m sort of piggybacking on the question of, um, learning from history. I’m curious, do you think that there’s anything we can take away from more recent history, like the Iran-Iraq War, which we supported and we looked the other way when there was chemical weapons usage? Um, if we were to take the more maximalist approach, what can we learn from that, uh, experience?
Michael Doran
Yeah, I, I, I don’t think we have to… Uh, I don’t think we have to take maximalist objectives. Uh, the, we don’t have to, we don’t have to remake the Middle East, and we don’t have to remake Iran. We just have to deter them. And that’s, that’s imminently doable. We deterred the Soviet Union throughout its whole history. What, what is remarkable about the, the policy of every administration since George W. Bush, even before, um, down to today, is how, um, is how averse the American national security establishment is to making Iran actually pay a price, even when it kills Americans.
John Donvan
I guess [inaudible
Ray Takeyh
well, I don’t, I, well, I first have to know what the objectives of a military strike are. Uh, uh, o- once you have that, you can tailor your military strategy, I would say. Uh, lessons of Iran-Iraq War, you know, that was a time when Iran was particularly feverish in terms of its ideological commitments, and over time, with the exhaustion of the population, it became less so. Uh, what I would say is the legacy of the Iran-Iraq War haunts the Iranian regime, because a lot of the reconstruction aid was not used, the corruption came about, and it essentially caused them to be relying on proxies as opposed to committing their own forces, because it became more casualty averse. But the proxy war strategy has been quite, quite brilliant.
Barbara Slavin
[inaudible
John Donvan
If the… I’m just curious. We just like to register by a round of applause, um, and there’s no pressure to actually say, “I did.” But we’re just curious on the different questions, how, how you all responded. So we’re, if we go back to the first question with whether Ira- Iran’s, Biden’s Iran diplomacy has failed, how many people changed their minds as a result of hearing the conversation? Nobody. Dead silence.
John Donvan
And does Iran pose a challenge to the global order? How many people changed their minds on that? Okay, and the last question is, despite the fact that very few of you changed your minds, did any of you hear anything that will go into your thinking about the issue that maybe you hadn’t included before, just by a round of applause?
John Donvan
But I appreciate that you did give it to us. That concludes this Open to Debate, unresolved debate, where we’ve been asking questions surrounding the threat of Iran at the Council on Foreign Relations. It’s been terrific to have the CFR as our partner, and I also especially wanna thank our three debaters for the spectacular job they did in living up to our ideals of having civil and robust disagreements in a way that c- is constructive and that actually makes you think differently about the issue than you did before you heard the arguments, so please, a round of applause to them. And again, I wanna thank our partner, Council on Foreign Relations, our founder and chairman, Robert Rosenkranz, and to you, our live audience at CFR, and those of you who are listening everywhere now. I’m John Donvan. Thank you very much, from Open to Debate.
John Donvan
This show is generously funded by a grant from the Laura and Gary Lauder Venture Philanthropy Fund. Robert Rosenkranz is our chairman. Our CEO is Clea Conner. Lia Matthow is our chief content officer. This episode was produced by Alexis Pancrazi and Marlette Sandoval. Editorial and research by Gabriella Mayer and Andrew Foot. Andrew Lipson and Max Fulton provided production support. Millie Shaw is director of audience development. The Open to Debate team also includes Gabrielle Iannucelli, Rachel Kemp, Linda Lee, and Devin Shermer. Damon Whittemore mixed this episode. Our theme music is by Alex Clement, and I’m your host, John Donvan. Thanks for listening, and we’ll see you next time.
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