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Her foreign tours include the Middle East, Europe, Africa, and several years as a roving foreign correspondent. She has covered a dozen wars and several revolutions. She most recently covered U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Post. Among several awards, Wright received the U.N. Correspondents Gold Medal, the National Magazine Award for reportage from Iran in The New Yorker, and the Overseas Press Club Award for "best reporting in any medium requiring exceptional courage and initiative" for coverage of African wars. She was named journalist of the year by the American Academy of Diplomacy, and won the National Press Club Award and the Weintal Prize for diplomatic reporting. Wright has also been the recipient of a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation grant.
Among her books, The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran was selected as one of the 25 most memorable books of the year 2000. She is also the author of Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam, Flashpoints: Promise and Peril in a New World, and In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade. Click here for her articles in the Washington Post. Interview with Wolf Blitzer, on CNN Late Edition, March 16, 2008 Transcript Coming up next, five years after the war in Iraq, what is the conflict's impact across the entire Middle East? We're going to get special perspective from The Washington Post's Robin Wright. She's the author of an important new book. BLITZER: Welcome back to "Late Edition." When the United States led the invasion of Iraq five years ago this coming week, many supporters hoped it would be the start of democracy throughout the region. That has certainly not yet happened. Robin Wright is a Washington Post reporter who has traveled to, written extensively about the Middle East over these many years. Her new book is entitled "Dreams and Shadows, the future of the Middle East." Thanks very much for coming in, Robin. Thanks for writing this book. WRIGHT: Thank you. BLITZER: Let's talk a little bit about the region right now. On Thursday, General Petraeus, the U.S. military commander in Iraq, said this. He said, no one feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation" in Iraq. What's happening there right now? Is this about to get better, about to get worse? You know the region. WRIGHT: I think we're all very disappointed that the Iraqis have not taken advantage of the surge to deal with the critical issues of reconciliation between Sunni and Shiite, to hold or set deadlines for holding provincial elections so that power is decentralized. All of this has been moving in "slow mo." And there's a real danger if there isn't real progress in the next couple of months that the Iraqis are going to just slip and slip and slip and slip. BLITZER: And so , do you see any light at the end of this tunnel that's called Iraq? WRIGHT: Down the road. But you know, I think the great problem is, because we didn't know what was happening inside Iraq in 2003, we weren't prepared for what transpired. We relied on a group of exiles, the leader of whom had not been to Iraq since 1958, and he left when he was a teenager. And one of the reasons I wrote this book was because of that failure. I wanted to go back to the region and find out what was happening inside countries, what potential there was for opening up both politically and economically. BLITZER: Here's what you write in "dreams and Shadows," among other things: "The United States had originally calculated that ousting the Middle East's most notorious dictator" -- that would be Saddam Hussein -- "would shake arrogant regimes and passive populations out of their political lethargy. It was instead quite the opposite. Everywhere I went, I heard a similar refrain from people of all political parties and religious affiliations: In Iraq, the world's mightiest democracy had undermined -- even sabotaged -- prospects for political change." Those are pretty strong words. WRIGHT: Well, I think history will look back on the invasion of Iraq as the greatest foreign-policy mistake the United States has ever made. And the tragedy long-term for us is not just Iraq. It's the colossal impact it's had across the region in scaring people about what happens when you engage in political change and the dangers of fomenting greater instability rather than providing greater opportunity. BLITZER: John McCain, who is in Iraq right now even as we speak, he keeps saying this, and I'll play a little clip of what he's saying out on the campaign trail. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) MCCAIN: If we set a date for withdrawal and withdraw immediately, as Senator Obama and Senator Clinton keep saying they want, then I believe that Al Qaida will prevail and tell the world they beat the United States of America. And I believe that conflict will be spread, and I believe we will be back with greater sacrifice of American blood and treasure. (END VIDEO CLIP) BLITZER: What do you think? WRIGHT: Well, I think we have to be very careful how we withdraw from Iraq. We went in with a kind of steamroller momentum. We were naive about what we anticipated and what could be achieved in a very short period. The danger is, Americans are tired of Iraq, and there's a real danger if we do anything hastily, that we set ourselves up for actually having to go back into Iraq down the road, in the same way we had to go into Afghanistan a second time. Clearly, the region would like to see American troops out of Iraq. So would I, but there is a danger that we have to do this thoughtfully. BLITZER: And there is now enormous fear about Iran, what might happen in Iran. This past week, all of a sudden, the commander of the U.S. forces in the Middle East, the Centcom commander, Admiral William Fallon, announces he's resigning amid suggestions he was deeply concerned about where the president and others in the administration were moving toward Iran. What's happening on that front? WRIGHT: Well, I think the administration is still limited. Whatever happened with Admiral Fallon, it's going to be very difficult for the Bush administration to justify any kind of military action against Iran, given what the National Intelligence Estimate said late last year, that Iran had stopped a weaponizing nuclear program. The danger, of course, is it's still enriching uranium, so Iran still has the potential to develop a capacity. BLITZER: They could start weaponizing. If they haven't yet, they could start weaponizing very quickly. WRIGHT: They could down the road. That's correct. BLITZER: Here's what you write in your book, Page 15: "Jordan's King Abdullah warned me about the danger of an emerging Shiite arc or crescent stretching from Iran through Iraq into Syria and Lebanon, the kind of domino theory that once scared the West about communism." How prevalent is that fear among the Sunni Iraqis like Jordan's King Abdullah? WRIGHT: I think it's common among the leaders. I'm not sure it's common among the people. After all, there are many communities throughout the Middle East where Shiites and Sunnis have lived together peacefully. Iraq opened a Pandora's box and, because of the transfer of pourer, because it was not done in a more inclusive way, because the Sunnis were not brought into the process early on, they felt excluded. And it fomented a kind of tension that plays out to this day. BLITZER: One of the really insightful -- there are a lot of insightful parts of the book, but one was the new hope that you see for the region despite all of bad news that's coming out there, and we listed a few of them -- we'll put it up on the screen -- why you say you have some new hope. There's the YouTube generation, no single truth, unexpected allies, soccer moms, moderate Islamists. Elaborate a little bit why you're not as gloomy on the future of the Middle East as some other observers might be. WRIGHT: Well, I've been covering this region now since the 1973 war, and I'm normally pessimistic about it and therefore normally right. But what I found in going back and spending a year, going to all 22 countries, as well as -- the Muslim countries as well as Israel -- was that there is, within societies, a budding culture of change. There's a tension of change, a crisis of change. It's not going to be easy, and it's only beginning, but the fact is that a lot of people inside these societies have become taking action themselves, carving out whole new political space, challenging autocratic regimes. It's clear that most of the leaders in the region are now out of sync with their people, and that the majority -- all of public opinion polls, all the anecdotal information indicates that people really are interested in greater opportunity, in greater participation in political systems, and will take the actions required to get it. BLITZER: The book is entitled "Dreams and Shadows, the Future of the Middle East." The author, Robin Wright. Robin, thanks for, a, coming in, b for writing the book. WRIGHT: Thank you so much. TRANSCRIPT OF CHARLIE ROSE SHOW MARCH 17, 2008 CHARLIE ROSE: Robin Wright is here. She is a diplomatic correspondent for "The Washington Post." She's been reporting from and on the Middle East since the early 1970s. She wrote one of the of the first books on militant Islam, "Sacred Rage," and has written extensively about Iran. She has a new book out. It is called "Dreams and Shadows: The Future of the Middle East." I am pleased to have her back at this table. Welcome. ROBIN WRIGHT: Thank you. It's always nice to be here. CHARLIE ROSE: Let's talk about the title. It comes from Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. And I'm just going to read it, and then you can tell me why you chose it. He said, "Neither sentiment nor illusion must influence our policy. Away with dreams and shadows. They have cost us dear in the past." ROBIN WRIGHT: Double entendre. First of all, there are dreamers in the region, and there are also enormous shadows that are shaping the future. But it also refers to the difficulty of aspirations in that part of the world and the troubled history of trying to achieve them. CHARLIE ROSE: Has it gotten different? I mean, it seems to me like as much as the Middle East changes, it still in many ways stays the same. ROBIN WRIGHT: You know, I thought so, too, but I think I was struck by the fact that since 2005, when we saw the Arab Spring and a lot of openings -- the purple ink-stained finger became famous and a million peaceful demonstrators pushed the Syrians out of Lebanon after a three-decade-long occupation, that we saw the potential for change. It was quickly quashed by autocrats and theocrats and extremists. So I went back to the region to see if we're back at square one, and discovered, in fact, that there are openings in the region shaping -- people carving out new political space because of the young, because of the soccer moms, because of rebel clerics in places like Tehran, because of the young techies in Jordan. There is a budding culture of change. There is a beginning, and it is only a beginning. But I'm not sure it's the same old Middle East that you and I have covered for so long. CHARLIE ROSE: Just -- what will be, do you think -- or is too early to tell -- the impact on the region of the Iraqi war, regardless of how long it takes to reach some kind of - whatever conclusion? ROBIN WRIGHT: It's the question of the week, isn't it on the fifth anniversary. I think the lasting legacy of Iraq will be, for the United States, that we can't get engaged in imposing either militarily or through political and economic pressures the future of the region, determining who is going to rule and how. I think for the people in the region, the lasting legacy is their fear of democracy, that it will open systems in ways that divide populations rather than provide new opportunities. That there are fears that the costs are not worth the benefits. CHARLIE ROSE: Now, would that have happened anyway, regardless of what happened in Iraq, that may have been democratic impulses that would have led to results that scared everybody? ROBIN WRIGHT: No. I think that, in fact, Iraq has been the singular issue, the singular flash point that has turned public opinion around about the potential for Democratic openings. But I think the thing that is so surprising is that even despite this disillusionment, with the idea of democracy and political openings, even the anger with the United States, that there are an extraordinary number of people that are still out there trying to change the system and open them up. They are doing it on their own. They don't want the United States involved. They are taking the initiative into their own hands, in sometimes really striking and -- striking ways and at great personal risk. CHARLIE ROSE: Where are we with respect to the Israelis and the Palestinians, where the president has said he is hopeful that something will change before he leaves office? ROBIN WRIGHT: I would -- if I were a betting woman, I would not put my money on either Bear Stearns or peace in the Middle East by the end of the Bush administration. I think there's not enough energy, direction, momentum. Not enough ideas, not enough follow-through. Sending the vice president to the region is not going to convince either the Arabs or the Israelis to move forward. CHARLIE ROSE: Because they view him as what? ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, they view him as largely responsible for Iraq and for some of the troubles and the missteps by the Bush administration. CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think with respect to the Israeli/Palestinian issue, are they making any progress? Because if you look at what is happening in terms of the Gaza, it's going from bad to worse. ROBIN WRIGHT: Pitiful. Something like 70 percent of the people need daily sustenance in the form of food aid and other things just to survive. Clearly, the formula for peace has become much more complicated because you have no longer just two parties. You have basically three of them, one of which doesn't recognize Israel. So that's far more complicated. What's interesting is that the polls all indicate that on both the Israeli and the Palestinian side, that the majority of people still want peaceful coexistence and a two-state solution. So, there is still the potential there. CHARLIE ROSE: Does Hamas still want a two-state solution? Or ever wanted a two-state solution? ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, you know, Hamas is like the old PLO used to be, that there are a number of factions within, and there are those who are willing to have a hudna (ph), a cease-fire, while there are others who are like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and say the Jews can stay, but it has to be one state and they all have the same vote. And with the demographics, that means that it's no longer a Jewish state. CHARLIE ROSE: When you look at -- lots of people -- I mean, I just did an interview last week with Admiral Mullen, Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs. And he said that the biggest challenge, the biggest fear he has of some conversion -- in other words, that people, part of some radical fascism, as he would describe it, sometimes Islamic fascism, but terrorism would get its hands on nuclear weapons. Where is this battle between terrorism and forces who want to stop it? ROBIN WRIGHT: The thing that strikes me the most about the Middle East today is that seven years after 9/11, the majority of people, overwhelming majority of people, are disillusioned with the extremists like al Qaeda. They see that these people can destruct but not construct, and that they offer no tangible, concrete alternatives to the questions of daily life, be it jobs, education, health care, sanitation. And there's a turning away from al Qaeda. Now, it doesn't mean that they are turning away from groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, which do provide social services, and, in fact, have gone through their own evolution from being al Qaeda-like -- underground, clandestine cells engaged only in suicide bombings and hostage-takings, and that they have, in order to survive... CHARLIE ROSE: Participated in the governmental process. ROBIN WRIGHT: Yes. CHARLIE ROSE: And outside of it. ROBIN WRIGHT: Run for office. They have the two faces. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. And so where are they, though, in terms of, where is the strength of those Hezbollah and Hamas in terms of their relationship, or in terms of, in a sense, creating adherents, who are opposed to the United States and Israel? ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, I think they are both very strong. In fact, there's a story out of Gaza today indicating that the Israeli strikes on Gaza have actually made the Hamas leadership more powerful. Look, Hamas is not providing answers either. People in Gaza are in real trouble. The question is, who do they blame for their problems? If they blame Hamas, that begins to turn people against them. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. ROBIN WRIGHT: If they blame Israel, that ends up being channeled into support, greater support for Hamas. That's the hard challenge for Israel to decide, what is going to turn people against an enemy? CHARLIE ROSE: And there is always the country that fascinates both you and me... Iran. Where are they, and, you know, what changes are going on? They just had an election over there. ROBIN WRIGHT: The elections brought more hard-liners to power, but including some of those who are opposed to Ahmadinejad's economic policies. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. Which have been a failure. ROBIN WRIGHT: Which have been a terrible failure. CHARLIE ROSE: And that's what got him into office in the first place. ROBIN WRIGHT: Right. Well, what got him into office -- and this was something we in the West don't often understand, is the debate in Iran is between the turban and the hat, the religious and the secular. And for the first time, people voted against the clergy because they see them as corrupt. That election was pivotal in breaking the stranglehold of a generation in the same way that voting for Hamas was voting against a party that was 50 years in power and against a leadership that had not allowed others to have any real say. CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. A vote against Fatah's corruption, in part. ROBIN WRIGHT: And if you look at it in terms of history, this is a moment where people are rejecting the old guys, the ones who have dominated the political system for a long time. We don't happen to like who was elected as the alternative, but in Iran's presidential elections, as you know, they are often two or three weeks long. People don't really know what the detailed policies are, and they are voting more for imagery. And they were voting against former president Rafsanjani, who was widely seen as corrupt, and voting for someone who had been appointed a mayor, had only been in power two years. And they really didn't know him. It will be interesting to see what happens next year when he has to run for reelection. But what strikes me about a place like Iran is there you have a Supreme leader who is the infallible political pope. He can reject legislation, overturn judicial decisions. He is commander in chief, and he can rule what the president decrees as, you know, folly, and say we're going to go a different way. In Iran, there's a young cleric called Hadi Khamenei. And he stormed the country challenging the whole idea of a supreme leader saying no one should be above the constitution. He's been -- he wrote editorials. He tried to run for office, disqualified even though he was a clergyman because of his opposition. He was often beaten up for his opposition. What makes him so interesting is that his older brother is Iran's supreme leader. So there is diversity even in a place like Iran and even within a single family. CHARLIE ROSE: So what's the future? ROBIN WRIGHT: Well, I think like the whole region, you're going to see the three "crats" competing for power -- the democrats, the fledgling democrats with limited resources, little experience, pitted against the autocrats, who don't have any intention of ceding power, and the theocrats, who believe they have a mission from God and a flock of the faithful to tap into. It's going to be an uneven battle in each of these countries. And it's going to take longer than change anywhere else in the world. It will be more turbulent. But as you know Iran, there is -- the changes within the last three decades have been quite amazing in opening up society. And we focus on what their policy is on nuclear weapons and on Israel and aid to Hezbollah. What's important to most Iranians is what is happening inside the country. And people are trying to carve out new political space. The women activists are amazing. CHARLIE ROSE: But why aren't they winning elections? ROBIN WRIGHT: Because they are not allowed to run. And at some point people have enough. We've not reached that critical mass, and it may be a long time before we get there. CHARLIE ROSE: Because it is often said, you know -- and I forgot who first articulated this first -- but there's the notion that some of the regimes whose leaders hate us the most, the people like us the most. And the regimes which like us the most, the people hate us the most. The example of that frequent is Iran, on the one hand, and Saudi Arabia on the other. ROBIN WRIGHT: And Egypt. This is a man who's been our ally now since 1981. CHARLIE ROSE: Hosni Mubarak. ROBIN WRIGHT: Hosni Mubarak. Ruled longer in Egypt than in the 6,000-year history. CHARLIE ROSE: And most people believe if there was an election today, the Muslim Brotherhood would win. Or not? ROBIN WRIGHT: I'm not sure. CHARLIE ROSE: Who would win? ROBIN WRIGHT: I think that they would do better. But I think that -- that, you know, it's hard to tell. We haven't had a free and fair election. And Muslim brothers never put anyone up for -- as a candidate. The democratic candidate... CHARLIE ROSE: Well, it's hard to do that because the party was outlawed, wasn't it? ROBIN WRIGHT: Right. Well, and -- Ayman Nour was the leading candidate against Hosni Mubarak in the last presidential election. And what happened to him? The minute the election was over, he's arrested. And he has been in jail ever since. CHARLIE ROSE: All right. Is democracy as we had hoped for, as the Bush administration hoped for, a dead issue with respect to the emphasis that the president gave to it and the secretary of state gave to it? ROBIN WRIGHT: The irony is, no. CHARLIE ROSE: The policies that failed in order to make it happen, the idea is still strong? ROBIN WRIGHT: The idea is still strong even though the policy failed abysmally. And the Bush administration really dropped the ball. I mean, there was some good language in 2003 in the president's speech holding specific countries like Saudi Arabia, like Egypt, to account. And then they did -- they followed it with absolutely nothing. The people in the region though, I think, because of the Internet, because of satellite television, because of access to information, a sense of history, because of a desire and an understanding of globalization, that in some places even is better in term of what's happening worldwide than the average American's sense of the transformation of the world. They want to be part of it. They don't want to be excluded. CHARLIE ROSE: You quote Paul Salem. "Any real election in the Middle East today is likely to produce an anti-American government. That's just the mood now. If you push the Egyptians to have a fair election, you would probably find the new government abrogating thepeace treaty with Israel, and then we'd all be back in a different universe." ROBIN WRIGHT: That's certainly a possibility. And that's one of the prices, I think, both of Iraq and of siding with autocrats in the region for so long who repressed the liberals, the Democrats, and the nationalists--exiled them, put them under house arrest, put them on trial, detained them indefinitely, and in some cases executed them -- that there is no body of people available to offer alternatives that we have tolerated, rulers who represented the last bloc of countries to hold out against the democratic tide. So, we are blamed as much as some of the autocrats. CHARLIE ROSE: OK. What is a wise policy on the part of the United States and the next president in order to enhance and enlarge that moderation that exists in the region? ROBIN WRIGHT: Very good question. At the end of the day, the United States is going to have to step back because of Iraq and our failure to create the kind of model that we had hoped. And because of fears of what the Iraq experiment meant. And going to have to let a lot of the change that transpires emerge indigenously. Let people take actions in their own hands. We can do things by shifting our aid so that, instead of providing for the security, military aid, security equipment, and so forth, to regimes who use them not for their own security, but kind of to repress their own people, and channel it instead into non-government organizations, to provide computers for people to get access to information, to be part of the 21st century. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. ROBIN WRIGHT: We can -- scholarships, educational opportunities. This is the kind of thing that was so critical in creating good relations between Iran and the United States during the Shah's era. We both know people who are still of that generation and have that American experience. That there are ways -- there are alternative ways of fostering change where we provide tools and let them carry out the actions. CHARLIE ROSE: You can go to most -- and I've been to all of them, and so have you, including Iraq, including Iran, including all of them -- Kuwait, Syria, Lebanon -- you can go to all those states and find a whole cadre of young people who were so anxious to join, for the lack of a better word, modernity, modernism. ROBIN WRIGHT: Exactly. CHARLIE ROSE: Understanding its power to change the quality of life. I mean, that's sort of a reality that's there. And how big it is, I don't know. Maybe it's just a group of elites or not. But it's there. You -- speak to that. ROBIN WRIGHT: Oh, I couldn't agree more. But it's not elites. That's what's so striking anymore. It used to be that there were elites either on the end of the extremists or on the kind of westernized elites who were in power. The reality is that you find an enormous body of people now, 100,000 people turning out in the streets of Jordan after the three hotels were bombed in anti-al Qaeda demonstrations shouting, "Burn in hell!" about al Qaeda. CHARLIE ROSE: Right. ROBIN WRIGHT: These are not rent a crowds like they used to be in the Middle East. The number of young people -- there are over 1,000 bloggers in Egypt today. Just one of them I write about in this book, a young man named Wile Abbas (ph) who captured -- he became so obsessed with human rights issues, that he captured through other sources a picture of two police beating up a detainee and sodomizing him with the end of a broomstick. And he put this video on his blog. It was then picked up on YouTube. And there was such an outcry of anger about that this that the Egyptian government was forced to prosecute the two Egyptian police. There are new means of circumventing the state-controlled media, new means of holding governments accountable. There is -- and this is a microcosm. And he gets on his blog alone 30,000 to 45,000 hits every day. CHARLIE ROSE: What is it that this country can do in conjunction with other countries to thwart the appeal of radicalism? And how do -- what is the way to go about that other than making common ground with moderate elements within the country and within Islam? ROBIN WRIGHT: Sometimes making common ground with moderates is going to taint the moderates. CHARLIE ROSE: Yes. And so they don't want us to do that or... ROBIN WRIGHT: Right. And it's just like a lot of the democratic movements inside Iran have asked us to stop providing $75 million in aid, because that looks like anybody who is engaged in anti-democratic -- or in pro-democratic activism in Iran looks like an American agent and is vulnerable to be either detrained or tried, even if they are not receiving a penny from the United States and have never talked to anyone in the U.S. government. I think this is a time that in many ways you have to let the Islamists fail for themselves. You have to see -- look at Anbar province which is the one U.S. success in Iraq, and it has nothing to do with us. The fact is that a young tribal sheikh, Sheikh Sattar, mobilized his peers because his father and his two brothers had been murdered by al Qaeda. And they then agreed to form this first awakening council, and they recruited tens of thousands of young men to form police and army units to drive al Qaeda out of Anbar. That's our greatest success. And this shows that even in a place like Iraq, where they would have many grounds for common cause, they turned on the extremists. CHARLIE ROSE: Many of them in the region say that the United States has to adapt not abandonment, but a different relationship with respect to Israel. Not ever pulling back from guaranteeing Israel security, not ever failing to identify with the democracy that exists at the heart of the Middle East, Israel, and being the closest strategic ally, but at the same time, they say, you have to have more of a balanced attitude about the Middle East. And if you do, you might be able to bring us together. And they point to, say, Bush 41's administration and what came out of Madrid. ROBIN WRIGHT: They may say that, but I think that they would probably settle for any U.S. president who actually got out and used some muscle in achieving peace. CHARLIE ROSE: Using muscle means what? ROBIN WRIGHT: We all know -- the muscle means dealing with both sides and forcing both sides to recognize the hard reality. We have a formula on the table that everyone knows is what's going to happen, a two-state solution. CHARLIE ROSE: And some variations of the '67 borders. ROBIN WRIGHT: Right. And we all know there's going to have to be some portion of Jerusalem to the Palestinians, that the refugees for the Palestinians are not on the table, that there will be some kind of compensation package probably. That even the big issues, we know the rough outlines of a solution. CHARLIE ROSE: Robin Wright also wrote "The Last Great Revolution: Turmoil and Transformation in Iran"; "Sacred Rage: The Wrath of Militant Islam" "In the Name of God: The Khomeini Decade"; and "Flashpoints: Promises and Peril in a New World." "For my wondrous Nani." ROBIN WRIGHT: It's for my mom, who died in December. And one of the last things she said to me was, "I'm sorry I won't be here to read your reviews." And then it was on the cover... CHARLIE ROSE: Well, for you, wherever you are in heaven, wherever you sit or watch, this is one review from "The New York Times." "It is one of the chief virtues of 'Dreams and Shadows,' Robin Wright's fluent and intelligent book about the future of the Middle East, that it is not solely concerned with a won Iraq and its consequences. In describing the struggles of people from Morocco to Iran, to reform or replace existing regimes, she draws on three decades of experience in covering the region for 'The Washington Post' and other newspapers" Nani, we could go on and on and on, but that ought to be sufficient for this one day. Thank you. ROBIN WRIGHT: Oh, thank you, Charlie. CHARLIE ROSE: A pleasure to see you. Thank you for joining us. See you tomorrow night.
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As an author, Ms. Wright has been a fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Brookings Institution, Yale University, Duke University, Stanford University, and the University of California at Santa Barbara. She lectures extensively around the United States and has appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and PBS programs, including “Meet the Press,” “Face the Nation,” “This Week,” “Nightline,” the “Newshour,” “Frontline,” and "Larry King Live.’