For further reading, please see the CFR In Brief “Trump’s Iran-Saudi Arabia Dilemma” by Philip H. Gordon, the CFR blog post “Scale and Nature of Attacks on Saudi Oil Makes This One Different” by Amy M. Jaffe, and the CFR quiz “See How Much You Know About Saudi Arabia.”

As the Syrian conflict extends into its ninth year, risks to international security and regional stability remain. Our panelists discuss U.S. policy toward Syria, including military, diplomatic, and economic initiatives and multilateral efforts to bring the conflict to a close. SHANKER: Well, good afternoon to all of you and welcome to today’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting. The topic is Syria: State of the Conflict and U.S. Policy. I’m Thom Shanker. I’m an editor with the New York Times Washington bureau. And I’m completely thrilled and honored to be here with a blue-chip panel, as always. Whenever the Council convenes on these important questions they get just the absolutely best people to elevate a conversation with all of you today. Just a couple quick housekeeping things. If you have cellphones, please silence them. I’m sure you know that already. We’ll begin with a half-hour discussion here on the stage, and then I’ll move to your Q&A. We will end at 1:30. I lived five years in the Soviet Union, so I run these meetings Stalinist efficiency—(laughter)—and all of you with busy schedules will be out at 1:30 sharp, I promise. And most importantly to me, and many colleagues in the journalism profession, this discussion is on the record today. Our panel includes Gayle Lemmon. She’s adjunct senior fellow for women and foreign policy here at the Council on Foreign Relations, and the author of a couple outstanding books, I highly recommend them, Ashley’s War and The Dressmaker of Khair Khana. Welcome. We have Mouaz Moustafa, executive director, Syrian Emergency Taskforce. We have Michael Mulroy, who’s deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East. And we have Joel Rayburn, deputy assistant secretary of state for Levant affairs, and special envoy for Syria. Thank all four of you for being here today. Everything important in life I learned from two sources, Johnny Cash and the United States military. And the military is relevant today because when you look at complex problems like Syria, the military breaks them down into strategic operational and tactical to try to understand. And I thought we would guide our conversation today along the same lines. So I’ll start at the top with a strategic question for all four of you, please. As a nation, we’ve learned since 9/11 that militaries can’t win wars. Militaries can defeat other militaries, but it’s up to the rest of the government, NGOs, and others to actually win the peace. So as you look at the very complex situation on the ground in Syria today, it’s a civil war. There are terrorist safe havens. There’s international meddling. Very complicated relations with neighbors. Walk me through, if you could, what is the route to peace and stabilization? LEMMON: (Laughs.) So I should start with a Johnny Cash song I Walk the Line in giving this answer. I think I’m very keen to hear from the other panelists. It’s delightful to join all of you today. I do think that we have a moment where there is a chance. There is a sense that the Iraq War is the ghost that hangs over every decision that has been made on Syria. And a sense on the ground, certainly when you’re in the northeast, that there actually is a moment, there is something to protect. Because, having had the privilege of traveling in and around the northeast six times in the past two years, I will tell you that it is a story of progress, and very fragile, very endangered, but very real gains that moms and dads are fighting for every single day. And so in this one corner you have a by, with, and through that actually has done its job, and perhaps done too good a job because no one wants to pay attention to it. There’s another Johnny Cash song, It Ain’t Me, Babe, you’re looking for. Everybody’s sort of trying to drop the hot potato and walk out. And I do think that there is a fragile progress that is worth protecting. And then you have the question of how do you get to a diplomatic endgame, and where is the pressure going

Prime Minister Imran Khan discusses the current state of U.S.-Pakistan relations, recent developments in the disputed region of Kashmir, and Pakistan’s relationship with India, Afghanistan, and other neighboring countries.

President Barham Salih discusses the challenges facing Iraq, its role in the region, and its relationship with the United States.

Following the United Nation’s 2019 Climate Action Summit, panelists discuss the actions cities and countries can take to strengthen climate resilience.

Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad discusses his tenure as Prime Minister and Malaysia’s relationship with the United States.

Our panelists discuss the humanitarian and political situation in Yemen, and the state of U.S. involvement in the conflict. AMIRFAR: Good afternoon and welcome, everybody. It’s a real pleasure to be here this afternoon with you here at CFR for “An Inside Look at Yemen.” So, again, good afternoon. My name is Catherine Amirfar. I’m a partner and co-chair of the Public International Law Group at Debevoise & Plimpton here in New York City. And just I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion. And we’re extraordinarily lucky to have this group of four esteemed experts. And with their prior permission, I’m going to grossly truncate their amazing profile and qualifications because you do have it in your materials and I want to spend as much time as possible engaged in a discussion with them. So we have Radhya Almutawakel, who is here with us and co-founder and chairperson of Mwatana for Human Rights; Gregory Johnsen, a fellow at Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies; Priyanka Motaparthy, human rights lawyer and advocate; and Peter Salisbury, senior Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group. So, again, welcome. And just a reminder to everyone that this is an on-the-record conversation. So let me start, Gregory, with you, for the unenviable task of getting us started by really setting the stage. You’ve written extensively on the situation in Yemen and how we got here. So tell us a bit your perspective of how we got here, and including an overview of the current contours of the conflict and the various factions involved. JOHNSEN: Right. Yeah, thanks to—(laughter)—for that enviable task. To set the stage, I think the most helpful way to look at Yemen is to think about it—what we talk about as one war in Yemen, I think it’s much more helpful to think about as three separate wars. So you have the U.S.-led war on al-Qaida and ISIS. The al-Qaida portion’s been going on, obviously, since September 11, maybe even going back to the USS Cole. That’s one war. That’s sort of this broad war on terrorism. You have the war that we always think about, this regional war, which is a Saudi-led war against what they consider an Iranian proxy. So this is Saudi Arabia and the UAE against what they consider an Iranian proxy in the Houthis. And then underlying that you have a longer-lasting and I think a much messier civil war. And this brings in a variety of different actors, from the Houthis up in the north, President Hadi’s government in the south, the Southern Transition(al) Council, al-Qaida and ISIS are both a part of this, as well as a variety of different militia groups and tribal groups spread throughout the country. And I think there’s a couple important things to remember. One is that this civil war has been going on longer than the regional war, the Saudi-led coalition war which started in 2015, and this civil war will likely go on long after the Saudis and the Emiratis eventually go home. I think if I could just add, when we look at the trend lines going forward, Yemen has what I would call a Humpty Dumpty problem; that is, it’s broken and there’s simply too many groups with too many guns for any one of them to ever impose their will upon the entire country. But at the same time, all of those groups have enough power and enough guys and enough guns that they can act as a spoiler to any sort of reconciliation process. So this means that the longer this regional war—this Saudi and Emirati war against the Houthis—goes on, that the more bloody, the more violent, the more fragmented Yemen will become in the civil war which will take place after that. And so I think right now we’re looking at a situation—if you sort of project forward in looking at how this conflict is going to unfold, we have a situation in which the idea of a unified Yemen is really a fiction. And I think that the country has broken not into two pieces, but into multiple little statelets. And that’s going to raise, I think, very serious policy questions for the United States, region

Neel Kashkari discusses U.S. economic growth, monetary policy, and the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. The C. Peter McColough Series on International Economics brings the world's foremost economic policymakers and scholars to address members on current topics in international economics and U.S. monetary policy. This meeting series is presented by the Maurice R. Greenberg Center for Geoeconomic Studies.

President Duque discusses Colombia’s response to the political and humanitarian crisis in Venezuela, the economic prospects for the region, and the future of relations with the United States.