00:00First of all, I think the president's peace plan in Iran is already bearing real fruits for the
00:04American people. Last night, 12.5 million barrels of oil went through the Strait of Hormuz. That
00:10is a high since the beginning of the conflict. Oil prices are down nearly at their level from
00:15the pre-war conflict. Gas prices dropped below $4 a gallon today for the first time since the
00:21conflict. And importantly, they're going to keep falling further given how low oil prices are.
00:27On the military side, the Iranians for the second night in a row did not shoot at any
00:32ships in the Strait of Hormuz. So, so far, they are honoring their end of the commitment. And
00:37on the blockade, CENTCOM has allowed north of a dozen ships to go through our naval blockade.
00:41And so we're also honoring our end of the early part of the agreement. On the military side,
00:47a couple of things that are still true and will be true whether the Iranians comply with the rest
00:51of the deal or not. Number one, their nuclear program has been completely destroyed. Their
00:56capacity for enrichment, the facilities at which they were using to develop enrichment and
01:00develop a potential nuclear weapon, those facilities are still destroyed. Their conventional military
01:05is still destroyed. Their capacity to threaten their neighbors is still largely gone. And
01:10now we see whether they are willing to comply with the next step of the president's peace
01:15plan. You know, I've seen skeptics of the deal. People say the Iranians will never change
01:20their behavior. Well, maybe that's true. And if so, they don't get any of the benefits of the
01:24bargain. But isn't it worth trying? Isn't it worth seeing whether this incredibly weakened
01:29position that the president of the United States has put the Iranians under, whether that motivates
01:34them to change their behavior, not just vis-a-vis the West, but vis-a-vis the Middle East.
01:40One of the interesting things about this is, you know, the technical details of this we can,
01:44of course, get into. There are going to be any number of opinions about the negotiation,
01:49about where it's ultimately going to go. But I tend to think that you should trust the
01:52people who know the Iranians the best and who have the most to lose. What are the Gulf Arab
01:58states saying about this deal? What are they saying about this deal compared to the JCPOA in 2015?
02:04This is the Obama nuclear deal. Well, back then they hated that deal. They felt like it empowered
02:10the Iranians to be bad actors across the region. And of course, that's exactly what happened. They
02:14were right about that. What are they saying about the president's peace deal? They're saying this is
02:19an amazingly transformative thing for the region because either way, we and the broader region
02:25win. Iran is weakened, their nuclear program destroyed, their economy in desperate straits.
02:31And if they change their behavior, big things are going to happen for Iran and for the world. If they
02:36don't, no skin off our backs. Either way, we win. And that's the way the president has set up this
02:42deal
02:42and this negotiation. The part of the peace plan, the part of this MOU that I think have been most
02:48misrepresented by certain parts of the media is the idea that the Iranians get all these benefits.
02:52You will hear things about $300 billion or $24 billion or this or that number of money or amount
02:57of money. And the simple fact is that the only way the Iranians get any of those resources, not a
03:04single
03:04penny, by the way, from the United States of America under any circumstances, but the only way that
03:09they would ever get any benefit of the bargain is if they comply fully and change their behavior.
03:15And so you really have a win-win situation for the United States of America. If the Iranians don't
03:20change their behavior, their military and their nuclear program is still destroyed. If they do change
03:26their behavior, then they are going to have a transformative relationship with the Middle East
03:31and the Middle East will have a transformative relationship with the people of Iran.
03:35That's a win for the American people and for the president of the United States, regardless of
03:40which option the Iranians ultimately choose. We obviously want them to choose the right option.
03:44The interesting thing about their system, and I think it's important for the American people to
03:48appreciate this point in particular, is that there are real divisions within their country about
03:54how exactly to proceed. And what we've seen over the last couple of months is that the pragmatists
04:00within the Iranian system, the people who really do want to transform their relationship
04:03with the Middle East and with the world, those people are winning the argument. The United States
04:09wants those people to win the argument. The United States wants to have a better relationship. But in
04:14order for that to happen, the Iranians have to perform. And if they don't perform, as we've said
04:19before, they don't get any of the benefits of the bargain. So what I'd ask all of you is just
04:24to
04:24report honestly that the United States isn't giving up a cent of money to Iran and even the economic
04:31benefits, the sanctions relief and so forth that comes along with this bargain only happens if the
04:36Iranians perform. So we destroyed a substantial number of their ballistic missiles and their
04:41ballistic, excuse me, ballistic missile launchers themselves. It's not just the bullets, but it's
04:45the actual gun. And that's what we were extremely effective at in destroying during the last three
04:50months of the campaign. All the president said yesterday is that, of course, region countries don't
04:56give up the right of self-defense. Israel doesn't give up the right of self-defense if Hezbollah fires
05:01rockets or drones at Israel. The Iranians don't give up the right of self-defense in their country. But we
05:07do
05:07expect that as part of the final deal, they are not going to be able to build the kind of
05:11missiles that can
05:13broadly threaten the entire world. And that's what the president of the United States said yesterday. And look, I
05:18mean, it's very simple. You can't tell a country whether Israel or Iran, they're not allowed to have any
05:23self-defense. That's not what the president has asked. That's not what the president has requested.
05:27But as part of the final deal, what we want to see is Iran not funding regional instability,
05:33funding regional terrorism, and of course, try to rebuild their nuclear weapons program. That's
05:37the main thing. The nuclear weapons program is destroyed. It is gone. If the Iranians decided
05:43tomorrow to build a nuclear weapon, they simply don't have the capacity in order to do that. What we're
05:48trying to ensure is they don't rebuild that capacity, not just a year from now, two years from now,
05:53but many, many years from now, so that our children never have to worry about a state sponsor of
05:58terrorism having a nuclear weapon. Subscribe to One India and never miss an update.
06:07Download the One India app now.
Comments