I think if you could remove all of the baggage - all of the ideology, the history, whatever … - Kenneth M. Pollack

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Kenneth M. Pollack

I think if you could remove all of the baggage - all of the ideology, the history, whatever else - and look in purely geostrategic terms, I think it's hard to figure out why the US and Iran would necessarily be in conflict. In fact during the shah's era, before 1979 - recognizing that there were all kinds of other problems - the US and Iran worked together splendidly at the strategic level.

1979, Era, Kind, Level, Thinking, Together

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Having a good constitution is far more important than having an immediate constitution.

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It is unimaginable that the United States would have to contribute hundreds of billions of dollars and highly unlikely that we would have to contribute even tens of billions of dollars.

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Once Iran gets nuclear weapons, they may believe that they are no longer vulnerable to either.

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The real concern is that Iran would do what Pakistan did. Pakistan wanted nuclear weapons, like Iran, purely for defensive reasons - to defend itself against India. The problem was that once Pakistan acquired the weapons, it allowed the country to be more aggressive. So they stepped up their support for the Kashmiri terrorists, and it led very quickly to the Kargil crisis in 2000, which almost sparked a nuclear war between India and Pakistan.

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Iran uses terrorism very instrumentally as an element of foreign policy; they are not just intent on just killing as many people as possible, like al Qaeda. There's no reason to believe that would change.

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