Reluctant in its waning months to launch a full-frontal assault on Iran but convinced of its leaders’ incorrigibility, the Bush administration has advanced, and its allies in Congress have proposed, a variety of escalating pressures against the Islamic republic. Among them, argues Col. Sam Gardiner in a new paper for The Century Foundation, are covert operations through proxy groups inside Iran. How well matched are U.S. goals to the various means planned or in place? And how do these new pressures expand or limit the choices of new leaders taking office in Washington—-and perhaps Tehran—-in winter and spring 2009. Join this panel discussion on escalating pressures on Iran and what that means for the new administration. The discussion is on the record. The Century Foundation released a new report by Sam Gardiner, "Dangerous and Getting More Dangerous: The Delicate Situation between the United States and Iran," at this event- The Century Foundation
Bio
Geneive Abdo
Geneive Abdo is the Liaison for the Alliance of Civilizations at the United Nations.
Her work has been featured in The New York Times, the Washington Post and the International Herald Tribune. Ms. Abdo has been a commentator for the BBC, NPR, CNN and PBS.
Samuel Gardiner
Sam Gardiner is a retired U.S. Air Force colonel who has taught strategy and military operations at the National War College, Air War College, and Naval War College. In 2004, he conducted a war game organized by the Atlantic Monthly to gauge how an American president might respond, militarily or otherwise, to Iran’s rapid progress toward developing nuclear weapons. He recently designed and conducted a series of war games on irregular warfare in Malaysia, Singapore, Australia, and Poland for the U.S. Air Force. He has been involved in planning and facilitating recent State Department strategy reviews on Burma, Kosovo, Haiti, Bangladesh, The Democratic Republic of the Congo, Zimbabwe, and Nepal. He has been supporting the Brookings Institution on simulations focused on U.S. strategy for Cuba. He is the author of The Century Foundation Report, The End of the “Summer of Diplomacy”: Assessing the U.S. Military Options on Iran (2006).
Hillary Mann Leverett
Hillary Mann Leverett is chief executive officer of Stratega, a political risk consulting firm. From 2001-2003, she served as director for Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council. In that capacity, she was one of a small number of U.S. officials authorized to negotiate directly with senior Iranian officials over Afghanistan, al Qaeda, and Iraq. She spent over ten years working for the State Department, including as Middle East expert for the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, political adviser on the Middle East, Sudan, and Central Asia at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, and in U.S. embassies in Egypt, Israel, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. She also worked as an Associate Director on Middle East issues at the National Security Council from 1993-1994 and as a Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. She is a graduate of Harvard Law School with more than 20 years of academic, legal, business, diplomatic, and policy experience working on Middle Eastern, Central Asian, Russian, and African issues. She has published Op Eds on Middle Eastern, Russian and South Asian issues in The New York Times, The National Interest, The Wall Street Journal, al Hayat, and Salon, has appeared on news and public affairs programs on BBC, CNN, and MSNBC, and Al Jazeera. She was profiled in a feature story in the November 2007 issue of Esquire magazine. She has spoken at the Middle East Institute, the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, and the New America Foundation in Washington, DC and provided expert testimony to the U.S. House Government Reform and Oversight Committee.
Amb Thomas R Pickering
Thomas Pickering has had a diplomatic career spanning five decades.
He has served as U.S. ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Pickering held the personal rank of Career Ambassador, the highest in the U.S. Foreign Service.
The new americans foundation are the masters of overthrown governments,after all they overthrew the U.S. government and put in their warmongers. World order is the game. Israel policies in our nation is proven to put all Americans in Danger. When in fact millions of Americans refuse to accept israel and it's aggression to the middleeast.
member. 
