Sec. Antony Blinken Responds To New Iran President: ‘The Supreme Leader Continues To Call The Shots’

7/20/2024

During a fireside chat at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken answered reporter questions on Iran's presidential election the new administration.

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Transcript

00:00Thank you for making the case for hope.

00:02Iran, you mentioned, stay there.

00:04They just held presidential elections of their own.

00:07What opportunities do you see with this new reform, as

00:11President Pesashkan?

00:14Well, I think we'll, of course, look to see what

00:16policies Iran pursues.

00:19But the reality is, the bottom line is, the Supreme Leader

00:22continues to call the shots.

00:24So I can't say that we have any great expectations, but

00:27let's see what he and his team actually do once

00:31they're in office.

00:32As you know, when this administration came in, we

00:35tried to pursue, again, nuclear diplomacy with Iran.

00:38Because if you can at least take one problem off the

00:40board, which is Iran potentially with a nuclear

00:43weapon, that's inherently a good thing.

00:46We had, as you know well, an agreement reached during the

00:49Obama administration that actually put Iran's nuclear

00:52program in a box.

00:53And one of the biggest mistakes that we've made in

00:55recent years was throwing out that agreement and allowing

00:58Iran to get out of the box that we put it in.

01:00So we were testing the proposition about whether we

01:02could at least recreate something that looked like

01:05that.

01:05Every time I've interviewed you as Secretary, I have asked

01:09you the same question, is US policy still that Iran must

01:13not be allowed to get a nuclear weapon?

01:15It is.

01:16Which is what you always answer.

01:17And then I always ask, so how are you going to stop them?

01:21How are you going to stop them?

01:22Well, by far, the preferable way to do it would be through

01:25diplomacy.

01:27Where we are now is not in a good place.

01:29Iran, because the nuclear agreement was thrown out,

01:34instead of being at least a year away from having the

01:37breakout capacity of producing fissile material for a nuclear

01:40weapon, is now probably one or two weeks

01:42away from doing that.

01:43Now, they haven't developed a weapon itself.

01:45One or two weeks.

01:46One or two weeks is probably what the realistic breakout

01:49time is.

01:50They haven't produced a weapon itself, but that's something,

01:54of course, that we track very, very carefully.

01:56And you put those two things together, the fissile material,

02:00an explosive device, and you have a nuclear weapon.

02:03So we're focused on that.

02:06What we've seen in the last weeks and months is Iran is

02:10actually moving forward with this program.

02:12So the first thing we need to see, if Iran is serious about

02:15engaging, is actually pulling back on the work that it's

02:19doing on its program.

02:20Second, we, of course, have been maximizing pressure on

02:25Iran across the board.

02:26We've imposed more than 600 sanctions on Iranian persons,

02:31entities of one kind or another.

02:33We haven't lifted a single sanction.

02:36And we have much closer coordination now with European

02:39partners now.

Sec. Antony Blinken Responds To New Iran President: ‘The Supreme Leader Continues To Call The Shots’

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