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4 | the Washington Institute in action
THE 2008 SOREF SYMPOSIUM
Our twentieth, and perhaps our finest ever.
Many ingredients go into a successful symposium—first-class
speakers, compelling issues, seamless organization, and a powerful rationale
that makes our efforts meaningful and important. This year’s
Soref Symposium—which included a special tribute to the Soref and
Breslauer families for their two decades of selfless support—had all of
those ingredients in abundance.
The rationale came from the urgent need
for America and its allies to confront one
of the most serious and sobering threats to
our common security: the prospect of a nuclear
Iran. Indeed, the challenge of preventing
Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons
hovered over our event—from the opening
keynote speech by the deputy head of the
U.S. intelligence community, Donald Kerr,
to the closing address by Israel’s deputy
prime minister, Haim Ramon.
“We’ve got a reasonable chance to continue
to advance the cause of democracy . . . the
rule of law, civil society, [and] institutions
of public reason . . . including in the parts of
the world where they are most absent—Central Asia and
the Middle East.”
—R. James Woolsey, former director of central intelligence
Former CIA director R. James Woolsey
and Ambassador Dennis Ross both underscored
the seismic implications of a
nuclear Iran—including the potential for
“Any compromise [with] ‘evil’ will ensure
failure, making strategy and morality
inextricably linked. Morally, Israel shares
beliefs in democracy and national
identity with the United States, and is strategically at the
forefront of the war against fundamentalism.”
nuclear terrorism, nuclear blackmail, and
nuclear proliferation throughout the Middle
East—and offered a series of practical
suggestions for how Washington could
lead international efforts to increase pressure
on the Iranian regime.
—Natan Sharansky, former Israeli minister and human rights advocate