U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Zalmay Khalilzad called the future of the Middle East “the defining issue of our time” in a Dec. 7 speech to approximately 220 audience members at the Law School.

“All countries have an interest in establishing a stable, lasting peace in the region,” Khalilzad said in the talk, organized by the Law School student group Stanford International Law Society (SILS).

Ever-increasing demand for oil, especially among rising economic powers China and India, is just one reason for the importance of Middle East stability, Khalilzad noted. Other factors include the existence of substantial Muslim populations in Central Asia, China and European countries such as France and the presence of nuclear weapons in Israel and Pakistan.

“There is a struggle going on for the future of the region,” the Afghan-born ambassador told attendees as at least three diplomatic security personnel stood guard around the lecture room. “This struggle between moderates and extremists is about what it means to be a Muslim.”

After serving as ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005, Khalilzad — whose son is a student at the Law School — headed the American embassy in Baghdad. He assumed his current position in April 2007.

halilzad, the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush Administration, laid out a seven-point strategy for regional American action in his forty minute speech which focused “not just on the immediate issues, but on long-term strategies.”

The points embraced political, military and economic spheres both in the region and within the United States. At home, Khalilzad called homeland security “an enduring new mission” which includes both border control and continued efforts to reduce America’s reliance on Middle East oil.

We have only begun to take advantage of the benefits from conservation,” he said.

ithin the region, Khalilzad highlighted the importance of diplomacy in resolving regional tensions, especially the long-festering Israel-Palestine issue. He cited France and Germany — longtime enemies whose reconciliation after World War II inaugurated a new age of European stability — as an example to emulate.

He expressed hopes for the peace process in the wake of the Nov. 2007 meeting between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas in Annapolis.

The Annapolis conference was a new beginning for the process of achieving the goal of two countries living side by side,” Khalilzad said.

The ambassador also said the United States must “respond to Iran’s bid for regional hegemony.”

Iran is an historic nation, a major regional power, and a revolutionary state,” which “views its neighbors as rivals” and its political-religious systems “as models to be exported,” he said. Even if Iran’s nuclear arms program were inactive, as reported in a national intelligence estimate released last month, Khalilzad warned that the country possesses “enormous resources in conventional weapons.”

According to Khalilzad, the American response must include continued efforts to hold Iran to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and a “willingness to engage” with Iran under certain circumstances. High-level diplomatic contact, Khalilzad said, should come only if Iran agrees to suspend uranium enrichment.

He also called for continued military action against American enemies, but only with surgical precision.

We should define the enemy as narrowly as possible,” he said. “We should distinguish between terrorist groups at war with the United States and those who are hostile to us and our allies.”

Although the crowd filled the lecture hall to capacity and forced some attendees to watch Khalilzad on a closed-circuit broadcast in a nearby room, few undergraduates were present for the speech.

The low undergraduate turnout reflected SILS’s strategy for publicizing the ambassador’s visit, which was targeted at the Law School and research centers like the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and the Hoover Institute.

"What we strived to do,” said SILS co-president Eli Sugarman, a second-year law student, “was advertise the event to groups and centers on campus with a particular interest in international relations and foreign policy.”