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A: Well, China will make its own choices about this, but I think you are seeing a decline in interest in investing or certainly guaranteeing investment in Iranian oil fields because what happens is that the market and private entities act both on risk and on reputation. And when you're under Chapter 7 you are a financial risk and you're a reputational risk. Now, China may decide to go outside of that, but it's hard to imagine that that is a relationships that is going to be sufficient to supplant the need for investment in capital from the rest of the world.
Q: Did you receive assurances from China that they would think carefully before proceeding with these —
A: We are not asking people. We haven't asked people not to invest in Iran. We've made clear that — the downsides of investing in Iran.
Q: You watched from a different perch another regime that did not have support of the people that was — had all kinds of hegemonistic and militaristic rhetoric and rhetoric certainly goals of 150, 20 years ago. When you look at Iran, do you see anything similar?
A: To the Soviet Union?
Q: Yeah.
A: The Soviet Union was a global power.
Q: Old. It was old.
A: Pardon me?
Q: It was old, too. They're doing it for a while.
A: Yeah. Been doing it for a while. The one thing that I see that I do see and that it goes back to the question, people say why do you talk to the Soviet Union is that what we were able to establish with the Soviet Union was a strong position of leverage over time. Whether it was sanctions that not only were aimed at Soviet military power, but at Soviet hi-tech. I remember once saying to someone, (inaudible) doesn't have a lot of phones. You go into an office in the Kremlin, there are 10 phones on the desk. Well, it's because we have denied them the switching technology that allows you to switch between lines.
We had the strongest military alliance in history. And we talked not just with the Soviet Union but to people in Srebrenica and the dissidents and made it possible for people who wanted to challenge the system, to challenge it. I think Iran will be different. The formula for dealing with Iran, it will be different. But I do know that if Iraq emerges as a stable Shi'a-led, non-theocratic democracy, but that's a real problem for Iran. It's a real problem for its legitimacy, with Najaf being in Iraq and it's a real problem for its narrative about what it is because one thing that is common between the two is the Iranians have a narrative about Iran's role in Islam.
Q: And is the possibility of a theocratic Shi'a regime part of the danger to the — to our interests in Iraq?
A: Well, yeah, it would have been except I don't think that's likely to be (inaudible.)
Q: You're not going to worry about it*.
A: No. I think the more serious issue and it's why the President has been putting forward what he's put forward is that you get more — that you get failure — more chaos, which then allows Iran to essentially play inside of Iraq in a major way, but that's the more likely near-term danger.
Q: OK.
Q: And one more question.
A: A couple more questions... minutes.
Q: Last question on North Korea. Do you see any daylight there, any possibility of a re-start-up?
A: I think we're in reasonably good — or let me say a better position on North Korea than we've been for a while because the North Koreans' decision to test actually succeeded in rallying everybody in a very dramatic fashion. We were — I was on the telephone with the other five — the other four within hours of the North Korea testing and we were in the Security Council with a resolution by the end of the week. That's lightning speed. And the — what it really showed was the benefit of having worked this coalition over a period of a number of years because it came together just like that. That now with the North Koreans under sanctions but ready now to come back to the six-party talks I think gives us — and China — very much concerned about what the North Koreans are doing and in fact a bit — putting pressure on the North Koreans do to more. I think you've got the conditions in which we'll see. Maybe the North Koreans are going to ignore all of this. But it's certainly the best alignment of forces for a possible solution that I've seen in a while. We'll see whether or not the North Korea see it the same way.
Q: So when will you know whether they will, in fact, walk back into the six-party talks?
A: Well, I think that — well, first of all, they came back. And even though there is no outcome in those talks, there were actually some fairly beneficial discussions. And I think we've managed this pretty well. Chris Hill has been able in the context of six-party talks to engage his North Korean interlocutor without allowing it to become a U.S.-North Korean negotiation. But that engagement has clearly helped. It's helped moved things along. And so — and China's activism has been really good.
Q: Thank you.