Today is Professor Thermo Fisher.
He's a professor at the Economy to the Rescue, which, for those of you who do not know, is the French equivalent, as it were, to Sandhurst.
He's a historian by training, but has been involved in teaching cadets, not just French cadets, in fact, but international graduates as well.
Not just that since here but also previously the Ecole about his area of specialisation is Iraq.
In fact, I'm watching thinking that you are fluent in Persian more or less as well.
So there is linguistic competence here of a kind that some historians dream of.
His latest works on Iran or Persian negotiation culture.
And then there's another couple of other books Russia, Iran, China, a New Mongol Empire.
And finally, Iran Beyond Islamism. And the title of his talk this afternoon is Hassan Rouhani Strategy to Avoid War.
So without further ado, let's welcome the speaker. Mr.
Thank you very much for your invitation and very happy to be out of here for two days and seeing uniforms everywhere.
Even though I know there are a few fake civilians in the room, the initial lights produced by a nuclear explosion.
A nuclear explosion causes flash blindness, a wound that can last up to 40 minutes by a game of mirrors and repetitions.
The Iranian nuclear bomb has exploded virtually every day on our screens,
and we have become self-deluded and incapable of understanding the Iranian
strategies as they are so beyond artificial explosions and force eliminations.
Let us let us search for the true lights.
Dimming illuminates humour. Iranian strategies fascinate France since the Renaissance.
And if you look at this Persian lady on the French Renaissance manuscript,
and if you reverse the sheet she's holding, you will clearly distinguish a royal lady.
So France. So Iran is has been seen in France as the Eastern Mirror as the other and eastern France in the same time.
The king of France is a new David. We we have forgotten these things.
We have forgotten, for example, that the one of the heroes of Show Peru's fairy tale is the Musketeer.
GARBUS The cat is, in fact, Shah Abbas.
The current sovereign of the time. We have forgotten. But the Iranians have long memories.
And Iran currently tries to apply the old French policy of equilibrium between the great powers India, China.
The United States. What about Hassan Rouhani?
Hassan Rouhani has been elected on the 15th of June and very quickly, within a few weeks, a few months,
he has revisited the geopolitical situation of your own home in order to spare Iran from global war.
Hassan Rouhani has chosen to apply a new strategy, what we would call a soft war,
combining cultural influence, diplomatic offensives and peripheral proxy wars.
Ronnie has perfectly drawn the lessons from the current wars of subversion.
But he has gone beyond thanks to his main set imagination.
A country wishing today to overwhelm Iran should not focus on the nuclear scientists, but on the poets.
They are present everywhere, especially at the top, and Ronnie has been advised by political circles.
His strategy combines the sword and the world, the sword and the verb.
So let us raise it. Three questions, three simple questions.
What's the situation? In what situation? It is? Ronnie found Iran.
Some days after his election. What what has what have been his first steps to reverse the former situation and what are his chances of success?
So what's the situation of Iran when it comes to power?
Well, Iran is the centre.
It's the centre for for three reasons. First, it's the energetic centre.
It's the energetic heart of the world, capable of exploiting simultaneously the oil reserves of the Caspian Sea and of the Persian Gulf.
So obviously Iran is interesting for the world factories.
It used to be Germany and we might be interesting to recall the the depression followed in 1940, 42,
during which the Burma tried to seize the oilfields of the Caspian in the north and who made trying to seize the oil fields of of Iran.
Iran swarming with German agents. So this was the case in 1942, and now the new factories is China.
So we are in the same situation, except that the factory has changed.
And so now we have an offensive by sea and known for.
But but the centre is still the same.
And we have today, as you all know, that the huge maritime and terrestrial thrust of China towards the factory, up towards the the oil reserves.
Of course the sanctions have weakened Iran, but the sanctions have also stimulate stimulated the Iranian innovation.
They have been bypassed. They've been bypassed by the guardians of the revolution while smuggling goods into their private harbours.
80% of the Iranian harbours are owned by the goddess of the revolution.
Anyway, Iran is the energy centre, but it's also more importantly, it's also the historical heart of Muslim innovation.
And let us not reduce innovation to mere technical improvements.
Innovation goes some of the way in poetry, irrigated by spirituality.
So what frightens us is not the Iranian nuclear bomb.
What frightens us is the capacity of Iran to innovate.
We are frightened by poetry, and that's Iran's best asset.
In fact, that's the way in which Iran has resisted for 1000 years against foreign invasions.
Thanks to literature. And thirdly, Iran is the centre obviously because it is the key to three main conflicts Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan.
Iran has been confined. What has been the response of Iran to confinement?
Well, Iran has decided to. Iran has invented a new alliance with China and Russia in order to counterbalance confinement.
Iran has moved closer to China and to Russia. This alliance is based on the Sino Iranian axis.
It is marked by mutual geopolitical support.
By cooperation. By cooperation with the Russian hinterland.
And it's also marked by a dissemination of a vision of the world which challenges our own stereotypes.
Does Iran wish to build a new Mongol empire? You have on this map the borders of the employ of Genghis Khan in blue.
And obviously the three countries are gathered today in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation,
1.2 billion people, 26 million square kilometres, 50% of the world uranium 40% of the world coal.
Joint military exercises. Exchanges in the fields of nanotechnologies and in cyber defence.
But this new empire and the alliance into which running has found Iran has three main weaknesses.
The first is demography.
Iran, China and Russia are marked by a demographic decline with a simultaneous decrease in the birth rate and increase in the death rate.
And the consequences of this demographic decline.
With that would be a sharp decline in innovation and also that countries would
have to increase productivity in order to make up for the manpower shortfall.
Secondly, weakness in contrary to the 13th century, these three countries have not integrated the island off of Turkish,
Mongol and Turkish civilisations, which once brought them together.
They have rejected Turkey and the Turkish inheritance.
The Chinese have problems with the ego and young the the Iranians in the north and the Russians around the Caspian Sea,
so that they have rejected the only civilisation capable of uniting them.
Well, I think united in the past that this this this is a weakness.
And third weakness, of course, the naval deficit. We have a we have an.
We have the nightmare of America with a Continental Alliance.
Good. And this explains, uh, the will of Russia, China and Iran to increase their naval potential.
Potential, because it's their main weakness rushing to the sea.
That's the Russian map in which you see the new Mughal empire in under another perspective.
Uh, it's, it shows that through social networks in the world.
Uh, so you see Facebook in blue and you see that distinctively the Russians, the Chinese and the Iranians have different social networks.
So it's another way of looking at this reality.
Um. What's the Iranian vision of the world when Hassan Rouhani becomes president?
Well, Iran Hassan Rouhani presents Iran as an anchor of stability in the notion of regional instabilities.
And Rouhani identifies the United States as the main factor of structural violence.
And I quote Rouhani Iran condemns the establishment of a monologue at the level of international relations.
He condemns the diffusion of the propagandistic discourse, encapsulating imaginary threats such as the Iranian threat.
So Ronnie points out an American state produced conspiracy theory Iran conspiring against the world.
But simultaneously what's what's what's the vision of the world that the Iranians have for the Iranians?
The United States feels that they are a declining empire.
They feel that the the economy, the factory of the world is quickly being deported to to China and India.
And for the Iranians, the strategy of the United States is to separate the new factory of the world from the main oil and fuel tanks.
To separate China from your own. As a consequence, for the Iranians, the United States must operate in three in three areas in the Persian Gulf.
They must open the Persian Gulf. And this explains their strategic alliance with some Emirates.
The invasion of Iraq and the containment of Iran.
So opening of the Persian Gulf. That's the first move. Secondly, the Americans must prevent Russia from seizing the Caspian oil fields.
And this explains the alliance of the United States with Turkey and the Republic of the Southern Caucasus.
And thirdly, and most importantly, the Americans must disseminate the chaos between China and Iran for the Iranians.
The Americans have won the war in Afghanistan not because they have been able to establish peace,
but just the reverse, because they have been able to export the Pakistani's civil war into Afghanistan.
They've been able to diffuse the chaos. And as a consequence, they have developed instability.
And that's a victory for the Iranians. But for the Iranians, the United States has a problem.
And it's the same thing for the European states. It's the debt.
And one of the problems is that the United States or Western countries could
become could become the mercenaries of their creditors of Saudi Arabia or Qatar.
They could be placed in the situation of the French Knights at the beginning of the 13th century, who would not enough money to pay the Venetians.
And having become the indebted head to head to storm Constantinople instead of of waging war in Syria.
And for the Iranians, the United States are clearly declining and declining and poised,
as we know, are marked by desperate, offensive and chaotic foreign policies.
So this was my first point.
The situation in which Hassan Rouhani has phoned Iran, I'm now going to examine the strategy of Rouhani, the strategy of softball.
Rouhani wishes to transform the confined island into a regional leader.
The press has described running as a reformer.
But contrary to what we may think, the distinction between reformers and conservatives is not very efficient in Iran.
The proof is that amongst the six candidates, the six candidates for the elections, five were described as conservatives by the Western press.
So statistically speaking, mathematically, the Iranians had 83% of chances to elect a conservative.
But we tend to forget that Iran has been haunted for centuries by a dream which is not conservative,
and this dream is namely the reform of the Muslim world.
And this underground dream haunts most Iranian statesmen, but it faces two obstacles.
The Iranians are not Arab. They are not Sunni.
Sue incapable of uniting the Muslim world.
The Iranians are caught between two two trends either a shift towards the West,
the consulate consolidation of the ties with with the reopening of the relations
with Europe and the United States or the consolidation of the ties with Asia.
The Iranians see themselves things in themselves as Westerners.
They believe we are their Western cousins.
But they have been forced by the sanctions to develop links with China and Russia, but also with India.
So the question is not a debate between the conservatives and the liberals.
The question is who is wrong between the oceans?
Supporters of a reconciliation with the US maritime power and the judge's keenness want to tighten the links with Russia and China.
In fact, the Iranians have chosen a third party. The Iranians wishing the return of a strong regional power.
Hassan Rouhani embodies the Iranian ambitions. So his political aim is to transform the confined island into a regional leader.
He has competitors at the regional level Saudi Arabia, but also Turkey and Israel.
But in order to gain influence is Iran must transform the Israeli twin into an ally unless Israel magically adopts the attitude of a new Iran.
And it's maybe what's happening today. The Iranians describe the strategy as of Rouhani as generally a soft war.
And this is soft war is also a strategy of the West.
When the West has tried to contain Iran, thanks to financial penalties, the manipulation of medias, cyber attacks,
the targeted elimination of adversaries, the soft war is discrete, and the number of losses due to the limited number of losses it causes.
This covert war brings about little public opposition, and in the same time, it's a cheap war.
It accommodates with the usual cuts in times of crises.
And this explains why soft wars multiply. Of course, this soft war has energetic aspects.
As we know, there's a competition in the pipeline projects to get the gas of the Persian Gulf through the north or through through Syria.
So Ronnie's looking for appeasement to loosen the sanctions.
The first rule is to loosen the sanctions. And constructive talks were held since October with Iran.
The discussions have been constructive. That's the that's what the Iranian thinks.
But that's also what the West thinks.
So one of the questions in our discussion might be the first question could have been with what the French what was the abuse?
What is the attitude of Fabius different and why has Fabius blocked the negotiations?
The interpretation of the Iranians is that Fabius is making the game of Israel.
I am not quite sure that this is true.
The interpretation of the French is that you have successfully prevented America from from from from a reconciliation with a dangerous ally.
I am not perfectly convinced of this argument.
We must not forget that when Obama came to power and Sarkozy simultaneously went and became president,
there was a switch in the attitude of the United States and France towards Iran.
France adopted a tough attitude on Iran, whereas Obama still Obama tried tried to invert its relationship with Iran.
And the United States has exerted pressure on the French enterprises to get out of Iran, the oil companies, the car companies.
So one of the explanations could be that Fabius is currently negotiating one part of the cage.
And maybe mysteriously in a few weeks, Fabius will say that the Iranians and the Americans have become suddenly very wise.
Negotiations with Iran between Iran and France have not always been easy.
This is linked to all the different military cultures we have developed in France and in the West.
In general culture based on inherited, inherited from the the Greek figure, the heroic warrior who is going to sacrifice his life to save his city.
The Iranians have been invaded for 1000 years.
As a consequence, the political elites have been castrated and they have been forced to develop very refined and very soft negotiation
culture in order to ensure their political survival and to remain in power despite the occupation of Iran for 1000 years.
And this has, of course, shaped their mentality.
In the same time, we it would have been easier for us to negotiate with Iran to two centuries ago when time during
which the the the links between France and Iran wear weight tighter because of the weight,
because of several elements like the importance of conversation,
the importance of the taste for illusions, the Baroque culture, but also in the Iranian culture.
Importance of politeness of. Thought of. One of the questions today is when will these negotiations end up?
Will it end up today, next week, in a few weeks?
I think that's a false question because we are shaped by a Roman culture according to which we negotiate,
and in the end, we sign an agreement and that becomes the law and we have to respect the law.
This doesn't mean anything to the Iranians because it's meant something in the before the Islamic invasion.
But today it doesn't mean anything because in Iran you negotiate before you sign the agreement
and you negotiate once you have signed the agreement till the death of the agreement.
So the negotiations will never cease. It will never cease.
Iran exerts pressure on three military fronts in Afghanistan, in Iraq and Syria.
In Syria, Romney has condemned the pursuit of expansionist strategies, camouflaged behind humanitarian rhetoric.
In fact, just as the United States Iran supports and advises the Syrian army, this building is trained in Iran.
And these actions are likewise camouflaged under the pacifist rhetoric of Romney.
Syria is a level is a laboratory for the Iranians, a military laboratory.
And it's important for your own to.
It's very important for Iran to to be in Syria because.
Because historically speaking, Iran was strong. Although the Achaemenid empire won its mustard, the nearby seas one half of the Mediterranean,
the Persian Gulf, thanks to two two other populations of navigator.
So geopolitically speaking, Iran has been strong when it was a naval power.
This is why the Iranians are choosing the because this is why the nuclear fight with the Iranians is the wrong fight.
The only good strategy for Egypt for for Iran is to become a real strong naval power.
So Iran has not always been a besieged castle. Um.
So after these first steps of running, after these first negotiations, regrouped, raised the thoughts of the first one.
Third question Will you succeed and when will you succeed if it succeeds?
There are three problems. This is a 19th century painting of Assyria as the king of Persia, crowning Estelle as humorous.
Uh, well, there are several interpretations.
Uh, is the wedding of Louis the 14th Amendment matter?
No. Uh, but it's also, of course, the wedding of.
Of Iran and Persia in order to succeed.
Israel must not become a new year on the.
The relations between Iran and and Israel are complex.
But basically, is Israel and Iran behave as twins?
They have a long history of cooperation.
Let us not forget that the Jewish communities of Iran, of the eldest, the richest and the most numerous of the Middle East.
In the same time, tensions have developed between the two countries during the last decades.
So Rouhani is, of course, condemned the United Nations. The brutal repression of the Palestinian people in Israel.
Rouhani arouses simultaneously anxiety and fascination because behold the military and energy competition,
Iran and competition, which has been revived by the discovery of huge oil fields in the eastern Mediterranean.
Beyond this rivalry, Iran and Israel are to creative centres, cultivating this cultural singularity against the Arab world.
They both see themselves as a besieged island and more than a nuclear threat.
It was discussing it a few days ago with Professor as I was visiting us in Tokyo and he was saying to me, What?
We do not understand the Iranians very much. We never know what.
What they really think. So what Israel feels is an imaginative and unpredictable competitor able to dispute his strategic initiative.
This uranium threat is also a good way to unite artificially a very divided Israel.
So I think that Israel and Iran behave as twins.
It's either fusion or murder. But there's also a risk for Rouhani because if he's too kind in words with Israel,
there's a risk of putsch led by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The risk of a coup by the Guardians of the Revolution has always existed in Iran.
But it's it's it's it's growing, though.
In these debates. The it was it has been very difficult for the intelligence services to to make a good analysis of the situation,
because the intelligence services are crippled by short term analysis and by the absence of debate about Iran.
It's very difficult for them to foresee the evolutions of Iran and to foresee the next steps of running.
There are two main difficulties. First, they have a problem of rhythm.
There's obviously a gap between the slow pace of the intelligence services and the acceleration prompted by the Iranian diplomacy.
Rouhani is acting very quickly, and if we want to understand his movements,
his movements, we must have some idea of the historical and cultural background.
So most of the time, the intelligence services are drowned by forged informations.
The second problem of the intelligence services is the problem of the politicisation of intelligence.
The problem is that the notes written or corrected several times before arriving
on the desks of the ministers and the risk is obviously self-censorship.
The danger is that the intelligence comes to justify the choice of the politicians rather than to inform them of the risks.
That's the very subversion of intelligence. What about time?
What about the rhythm? The Iranians are playing with time.
As if we have, of course, a very different conception of time.
Uh, in the West and in Rome, um, we have, we have been shaped by a Roman culture of short delays,
accelerated by Christianity every moment chance to save, to make your own salvation.
So you have to be quick.
It's different in your Rome, where the elites have been have developed political inertia in order to resist against the conquerors for 1000 years.
And it's also different because this has been also reinforced by the fact that, uh, in the Islamic world you, uh, precipitation is seen as something.
Mm. Which is not not not good is sometimes dangerous.
It's so good to be slow. But if you are, you must be patient.
Patience is associated to Majesty. So Ronnie has to be patient is to show he's patient.
Time is playing in favour of your own because we have blocked your on.
Iran has developed links between with you, with China, of course, and also with India.
And he Iran is playing on the competition between Europe, between China and India.
In a few years, America won't be able to to lead an independent policy in the Middle East.
So the new choice, if Iran is still contained, would be India or China.
We could have also we could have been in the Iranian alliance.
Let us remember the Maurya dynasty, which formerly gathered India and Iran.
So difficult the very difficult when you speak Persian plus in Hindi and they are of course very tight links between the two civilisations.
So to conclude on this on this briefing, I would like to say that beyond the skill for this role,
Rouhani has had the chance to write off a good moment after years of fruitful oppositions between the United States,
its maritime allies, the United Kingdom, Japan and the new Mughal empire formed by Iran, China and Russia.
The United States have renounced an armed intervention of the three successive defeats in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria.
But the United States might have made for once the intelligent choice of dismantling the new Mughal empire with peaceful means.
This would be costly, less costly, and more efficient than the previous policy.
They might try to revert the situation to their own benefit.
The New Mughal Empire. No step. In order to open it, you have to touch Iran, the adductor muscle.
And once you've cut it, the two shows. China and Russia fall apart and you can pick up the energy pill.
And in the last months, the tensions have clearly appeared between Iran and Russia.
Iran and China. But if the Americans bet on Iran, will they have to sacrifice Saudi Arabia and Turkey?
Can they sacrifice a creditor to an ally? What about Israel?
It would it would either have to follow the United States or to become a new your own.
So if what we have seen was not an illusion, then it could be reshuffled in the Middle East.
What is sure is that in order to to transform Iran into the new pivot of international relations, Romney will have to distribute the cards.
He has already started in new direction. The the problem is to distinguish the true colours from the fake ones.
But we must also consider this problem in the long run. In 2013, the United States, the Americans.
We elect the first Latino president of the history on an isolationist, isolationist program.
They would have become less dependent from Saudi Arabia thanks to the exploitation of their own shale gas.
They will have withdrawn from the Middle East by that time.
Russia unable to hold the shores of the Caspian, we have concentrated its efforts on the north eastern maritime route.
In this context, the Middle East will undergo profound changes in the north.
Turkey will become a medium economic power. Arab states like Syria, Lebanon or Iraq will have collapsed or become failed states.
On the east, however, Iran will surely be able to exert its long lasting influence on the region,
thanks to a policy of balance between Turkey and India.
As far as Israel is concerned, Iran might be its new promised land.
Thank you very much.