Frankly there is some question as to whether these would be workable. You can think for example of the [???] whose wealth comes from a shared gas field with the Iranians who think of Dubai and whose livelihood to a large extent is dependent on trade with the Iranians. There are lots of things here to suggest that such sanction to be extremely difficult to enforce. Second part of this will be military and there have been [???] this in the past, secretary of state, Clinton last summer spoke of an umbrella over the gulf this time around and in some of the their statements officials have talked about a defense umbrella over the gulf, but this undoubtedly will be something that will be negotiated individually with countries and that currently US defense the Gulf is organized around what might be called hub and spoke arrangement that is individual ties of countries, the United States is the hub for coordination and I think that probably would be delayed, would be organized with all sorts of special niches carved out as need be. But this is a little big dumb [???] because we haven’t quite reached that channel. The third thing that I would like to say is and this is not necessarily part of the administration’s plan but this is the sort of longer term approach. The question is will the administration sort of give up the idea of or shift from current respect for the regime in Iran to question a regime change. Basically a brief history, the outreach originally by the new administration was an offer to trade recognition for the Islamic nature, the Islamic Republic of Iran in term for negotiation.
Well at this point the Iranians don’t want and the Obama administration does want to give [???] but could this lead to a policy of regime change? My guess is no because I think Obama will want to make clear that we will want to negotiate with the Iranians, and we want to have the open hand to the Iranians if and when they are willing to talk on terms that are suitable to us. I have to tell you regime change doesn’t mean going into Iran as we did into Iraq. It was official policy for example of the Clinton administration during this last year, last part of it to how regime changed in Iraq, but we didn’t do anything about. So I would not expect regime change be part of all of this. I don’t expect military attacks. Admiral Mullen has been very clear on several occasions, the phrase that he uses is to accomplish anything successfully would be and I quote, ‘very, very difficult and the consequences for the region would be very, very difficult.’ These are the phrases that he has used again and again. The part that I mentioned earlier that it is not part of policy, but I think reflects several settlements in the region is the idea of maybe setting up something modeled on the conference on security and cooperation in Europe a CSCE, a regional organization that maybe will not produce anything for 20 or 30 years, didn’t in Europe, but could open the doors for example the foreign minister of Bahrain has made such proposals on couple of occasions. Right now I think it is pretty clear that the Iranians probably would say no, but I think that there is a long term need to put in place something like that so with those comments I would be glad to take questions.
Speaker1: Okay alright so we will open it up for questions, yes sir.
Speaker 3: Candy Yates with the Jefferson Waterman. Recently I had the opportunity to help a member of parliament from Iraq on a visit here in the US. He is the leader of the Ahrar party, which is a liberal party in –
Speaker 2: Which party?
Speaker 3: Ahrar, his principal point when he was here that he made again and again was that the threat to the Iraq now is from Iran and that the Iranians including Ahmed Chalabi are gradually infiltrating into the fabric of Iraq. He pointed out for example that most of the products on store shelves in Iraq were from Iran and nowhere else. They have set a commanding lead on the commercial side, they have commanding lead according to him on the political side. Any coalition that could be put together in Iraq would have to take account of this effect. He is a mullah trained in [???] he had left during the Sadaam regime and went off to Syria for a while, then ended up in [???] studying Islam. Comes out he is a black turbaned Imam.