00:00Let me just lay the predicate here. Iran's desire to build a nuclear weapon was going to be built, was
00:07going to be effectuated behind a conventional shield.
00:10They were going to build for themselves so many missiles, so many drones, so many conventional weapons, including a navy,
00:18that at that point there's nothing you could do about it.
00:21What they tried to do is they were going to try to build a conventional shield and hide behind that
00:25conventional shield and basically say to the world,
00:27if you come and do anything about our nuclear program, we will overwhelm you with missiles, we will overwhelm you
00:32with drones, and we will overwhelm you with our navy, and you will not win.
00:36You will not be able to do anything about it. They were seeking that point of immunity, which is why
00:40the president chose to act, to deny them that point of immunity.
00:43Operation Epic Fury, some of you didn't like it, some of you did, was highly successful in achieving its military
00:49objectives,
00:50which is dramatically reducing the defense industrial base of Iran, the ability to build these missiles and to build these
00:57drones,
00:57especially the missiles program, substantially degraded.
01:00A substantial percentage, and I'll leave the exact numbers to the Department of War because I'm not a general and
01:05I'm not here to speak as a military planner,
01:07but a substantial degradation in the number of launchers that they have as well.
01:10They still have a lot of drones because these are easy to make.
01:13We all know it's not an Iran challenge, this is a global challenge, and it's playing out every single day
01:18around the world.
01:18I mean, Mexican cartels are using UAVs against each other, and we should imagine at some point they may even
01:24use it against our own, against our interests.
01:27So this is a pervasive problem around the world. The economics of it is something we have to solve for.
01:32But nonetheless, even their drone building capability has been eroded.
01:36Today there is no Iranian navy. There is no such thing.
01:39There's a bunch of Boston whalers with machine guns on them, but there is no navy.
01:43There is no Iranian navy. It lies at the bottom of the ocean, and we'll assume, within a number of
01:48years, be prime fishing spots because they'll turn into reefs.
01:51So my whole point is that the Iranian conventional shield has been substantially eroded.
02:00Now, in the aftermath of that, two things have happened.
02:03The first is they entered into a ceasefire.
02:04They agreed. We agreed to stop.
02:06But part of that agreement is that they would reopen the straits.
02:09They did not, at which point the president decided, and I think appropriately, we can't have a world in which
02:15Iran, only Iranian ships get through the straits.
02:18And so if they're going to shut down the straits for everybody, we're going to shut down the straits for
02:23them.
02:23And we have done that through a very effective blockade and, by the way, through the seizure of sanctioned ships
02:29in the Indo-Pacific as well.
02:30The cost to Iran every single day in lost revenue is in the hundreds of millions of dollars that they
02:37are losing in lost revenue that they're not generating as a result of that.
02:41Now, we are in talks, and I say talks because talks with Iran are not like talks with Switzerland.
02:46They're very different.
02:47They require the use of intermediaries, unfortunately.
02:50But there is the prospect before us, which could happen today, it could happen tomorrow, it could happen next week,
02:55that for the first time, certainly in my memory,
02:59they have agreed to negotiate aspects of their nuclear program that just a month ago or just a year ago
03:06they were refusing to even mention, much less enter into discussions about.
03:10That is not a guarantee that ultimately it will lead to a deal that's acceptable to the Senate or acceptable
03:14to the American people.
03:16But we'll be able to engage them in a process to truly test the proposition of how far they're willing
03:21to go.
03:22Complicating that process, unfortunately, is their internal regime is somewhat fractured in the sense of it takes days to get
03:28responses from their system.
03:29We can go into more depth in your follow-up questions.
03:32But we're hopeful that something like that could happen in which the straits would reopen, we would enter into a
03:38period of negotiations on very specific topics,
03:41delineated negotiations, in the hope of reaching an outcome that's acceptable to us and something they would be able to
03:47do as well.
03:48If it doesn't work out, then obviously we still have a problem with respect to their nuclear ambitions.
03:54But what they won't have is the conventional shield behind any longer.
03:58We'll see you next time.
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