00:00I flew to Washington three times in the month before, five weeks, six weeks before, and met with him in
00:06the Oval Office alone and, you know, people filing in and out with the White House chief of staff, the
00:12secretary of state, et cetera.
00:14I had lunch with him on one of those occasions, and I spoke to him by phone many times on
00:18this topic, and he would begin almost every conversation with, do you want Iran to have a nuclear weapon?
00:26To which I said, well, I'm sort of opposed to nuclear weapons. I don't want nuclear weapons. I don't want
00:29Israel to have a nuclear weapon. I don't want anyone to have a nuclear weapon. It doesn't seem like a
00:33good thing, but that's not the question.
00:36The question is, what do you do about it? And that was kind of the end of the rationale for
00:41doing this. He never seemed enthusiastic about it, ever, and I would say, well, you know, here are the potential
00:48effects of this.
00:49Obviously, the geography of Iran being the most important fact of Iran. Iran is not a military power. It's an
00:55economic power. That was obvious because it controls the greatest span of coastline along the Persian Gulf, which is the
01:00source of a fifth of the world's energy, et cetera, all well-known now and well-known to him then.
01:05And he, I think, perfectly understood the consequences.
