00:00Mr. Zimmerman, can you explain to me how it works, why it is considered to be intelligent for the
00:07president day after day after day to keep saying that Iran has agreed to things that very clearly
00:14they have not agreed to, which then becomes obvious to the entire world within some 24 to 48
00:19hour time period? Help me out here. What is the strategy of the president standing up and saying,
00:25we have defeated them, the war is over, they've agreed to everything? I mean, doesn't that just
00:30make us look like a bunch of clowns past a certain point when it becomes obvious that that's not the
00:35case? Congressman, the president's willingness to act decisively to protect Americans and our
00:44partners and allies has advanced U.S. credibility. It has not sunk U.S. credibility. Well, but
00:50addressing this specific issue, we could have that debate in a different direction, but
00:54he has repeatedly said that Iran has agreed to things that they obviously have not agreed to.
01:00And let me ask the question this way, is the president misinformed? Are people doing a bad
01:06job of informing him about what's going on? Is he that ignorant about the circumstances? Or is he
01:12just making it up as part of some, I don't know, six dimensional stress, sorry, chess strategy here?
01:18So why? The president has the best information available to any head of state. Why does he keep
01:26getting it wrong then? The president does not keep getting it wrong. The White House is leading these
01:32negotiations to find a long term solution. I'm sorry, you have 20 seconds left here, but he doesn't keep
01:39getting it wrong. He says, literally, the strait is open. Iran has agreed to give up their nuclear
01:45weapons. Iran has agreed to give up their ballistic missile programs. That's your basic question. Is
01:50the Strait of Hormuz open? Has Iran given up their nuclear weapons? The Strait of Hormuz is a complex
01:56situation right now where you have a severely degraded... Look, I hope you look back at this and understand how
02:04bad this is making you look. I mean, look, you can answer the question, you can challenge
02:09me in a thousand different ways, but to just pretend that reality isn't reality and say it over and over
02:15again in a public hearing. I'm sorry, that's not helping our credibility. Thank you for the indulgence, Mr. Chairman. I
02:20yield back.
02:21And then finally, just to give an update on the Iran negotiation, the Iran situation. I just talked to the
02:26president very briefly before I came out here. It's actually a very simple proposition here. There are two options, two
02:32pathways we can go down when it comes to the Iran situation. So step back for a little bit. What
02:38the president
02:38United States has said is number one, Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. And I think it's important for
02:43the American people and all of you to appreciate that when we say that it's not just that Iran cannot
02:48have a nuclear weapon, it's what would happen if the Iranians did get a nuclear weapon. We know that a
02:53lot of nations all across the Gulf would then want their own nuclear weapon. And then a lot of nations
02:58all across the world. And what has been a very effective bright spot of American foreign policy really for the
03:05last 20 or so years would disappear overnight. If you have
03:08every country in the world scrambling to try to get a nuclear weapon, it would make us all much less
03:14safe and Iran would really be the first domino and what would set off a nuclear arms race all over
03:20the world. That's very, very bad for the safety of our country as the father of three young kids. I
03:25don't want them to inherit a world where 20 additional regimes, half of them very dangerous and very sympathetic to
03:32terrorists have nuclear weapons. We want to keep the number of countries that have nuclear weapons small. And that's why
03:38Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon on top of all the other things that we might be worried about, that
03:43they themselves could use it, that they could use it in leverage and economic control or economic negotiations. We just
03:49don't want them to have a nuclear weapon. Now, what we did here is that we effectively degraded their conventional
03:55military capability. That has been done. That has been successfully done. You could always do a little bit more. But
04:00where we are now is the president has asked us, has told us to aggressively negotiate with the Iranians. Why
04:07did I go to Islamabad
04:08Pakistan? Why did I spend, I think, probably 22 hours on a plane going there, 24 hours coming back and
04:14then 21 hours on the ground negotiating with the Iranians is because we wanted to show a sign of good
04:20faith. The vice president of the United States is willing to cut a deal so long as the Iranians are
04:25willing to meet us again on that core issue of never having a nuclear weapon. We think that we've made
04:31a lot of progress. We think the Iranians want to make a deal. The president of the United States has
04:35asked us to negotiate in good faith. And that's exactly
04:38what we've done. So we're in a pretty good spot here. But there's an option B. And the option B
04:44is that we could restart the military campaign to continue to prosecute the case, to continue to try to achieve
04:51America's objectives. And we could talk a little bit about what that looks like. But that's not what the president
04:55wants. And I don't think it's what the Iranians want either. We have an opportunity here, I think, to reset
05:00the relationship that has existed between Iran and the United States for 47 years.
05:04That's what the president has asked us to do. And that's what we're going to keep on working at. But
05:08it takes two to tango. We are not going to have a deal that allows the Iranians to have a
05:13nuclear weapon. So as the president just told me, we're locked and loaded. We don't want to go down that
05:18pathway. But the president is willing and able to go down that pathway if we have to.
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