00:00Well, good morning, everybody, and let me say a couple of notes of appreciation.
00:04First of all, to the Prime Minister of Pakistan and to Field Marshal Muneer, who were both incredible hosts.
00:12And whatever shortcomings of the negotiation, it wasn't because of the Pakistanis who did an amazing job
00:17and really tried to help us and the Iranians bridge the gap and get to a deal.
00:23We have been at it now for 21 hours, and we've had a number of substantive discussions with the Iranians.
00:31That's the good news. The bad news is that we have not reached an agreement.
00:35And I think that's bad news for Iran much more than it's bad news for the United States of America.
00:39So we go back to the United States having not come to an agreement.
00:43We've made very clear what our red lines are, what things we're willing to accommodate them on,
00:47and what things we're not willing to accommodate them on.
00:50And we've made that as clear as we possibly could, and they have chosen not to accept our terms.
00:57Questions?
00:58Sir, Nick Robertson from CNN.
01:01Precisely what have they rejected here?
01:04Can you help us understand it a little bit?
01:07Well, I won't go into all the details because I don't want to negotiate in public
01:11after we've negotiated for 21 hours in private.
01:14But the simple fact is that we need to see an affirmative commitment
01:18that they will not seek a nuclear weapon,
01:21and they will not seek the tools that would enable them to quickly achieve a nuclear weapon.
01:25That is the core goal of the President of the United States,
01:28and that's what we've tried to achieve through these negotiations.
01:31Again, their nuclear programs, such as it is,
01:34the enrichment facilities that they had before, they've been destroyed.
01:39But the simple question is, do we see a fundamental commitment of will for the Iranians
01:45not to develop a nuclear weapon, not just now, not just two years from now, but for the long term?
01:50We haven't seen that yet.
01:51We hope that we will.
01:52Jen?
01:53Was there a framework on anything, and also did the Iranian frozen assets come up,
01:57and did you reach any conclusions on those frozen assets?
02:00We talked about all those issues, Jen, and we talked about a number of issues beyond that.
02:05And so certainly those things came up, but again, we just could not get to a situation
02:10where the Iranians were willing to accept our terms.
02:14I think that we were quite flexible.
02:15We were quite accommodating.
02:16The President told us, you need to come here in good faith and make your best effort to get a
02:21deal.
02:22We did that, and unfortunately, we weren't able to make any headway.
02:27Preston?
02:28Mr. Vice President, how often did you communicate with President Trump throughout the negotiations?
02:32There were reports that there were multiple rounds where there were breaks in between negotiations.
02:37How often did you communicate with the President throughout those rounds,
02:40and what was he saying as you were going through these negotiations that you said fell short?
02:44Yeah, obviously, we were talking to the President consistently.
02:47I don't know how many times we talked to him, a half dozen times, a dozen times over the past
02:5121 hours.
02:52We obviously also talked to Admiral Cooper, to Pete, to Marco, to the entire national security team.
02:57We talked to Scott Besson a number of times.
02:59So, look, we were constantly in communication with the team because we were negotiating in good faith.
03:04And we leave here, and we leave here with a very simple proposal,
03:09a method of understanding that is our final and best offer.
03:15We'll see if the Iranians accept it.
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