00:00And he's committed a lot to it personally, and it's something we appreciate and acknowledge.
00:07Omani Rodzi, next question.
00:09Yes, I believe in the center, Ms. Gaziz.
00:14Thank you very much.
00:15Olivia Gaziz with CBS News.
00:20Two questions for you, Mr. Secretary.
00:22See, they always cheat.
00:22My American people, though, you guys ask one question, and they always ask two.
00:26They get one, but they ask two.
00:27Go ahead.
00:27There's a lot of news in the world.
00:28They're always cheating.
00:28We've got to do a rule here.
00:30Maximalists.
00:31I know you are both well-versed in fielding press employees.
00:32Well, sometimes it's three. It's not even two. It's three.
00:34So she's being reasonable. Go ahead.
00:36Thank you very much.
00:37Mr. Secretary, yesterday the Vice President said that Iran needed to do something meaningful to its nuclear enrichment capacity.
00:44Is that to say that the U.S. is now open to an enrichment capacity above zero in Iran?
00:49I don't think it means that.
00:50This is my second question, if you don't mind.
00:53If I may.
00:53Amid increasing congressional scrutiny of Ambassador Guilfoyle's tenure here, I'm wondering, Mr. Secretary, if you've personally reviewed some of those
01:02allegations and are confident that all is in compliance with State Department ethics.
01:07If you'd like to answer, then I can pose the question to the minister.
01:10Pose what question to the minister?
01:12I'll just do the third question to the minister.
01:14That is to say the only question to the minister.
01:16Well, I'm...
01:17The second...
01:17Excuse me.
01:18Look, on the second question, this is not the forum where we're going to address that.
01:22It's as simple as that.
01:23Suffice it to say, our embassy here is doing a great job.
01:26Our ambassador has been a strong ambassador here.
01:28The questions you're asking me, we're not addressing those at press conferences in Greece with a foreign minister and in
01:32another country.
01:33That said, on your first question, look, it's very...
01:37I don't understand what the confusion is about the nuclear program.
01:39Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.
01:41Simple period and end of story.
01:42I'm not going to go into, you know, into the details about what would be acceptable or not.
01:47I can tell you this, that they're not going to ever have a nuclear program.
01:50And anything they agree to that would be acceptable to the United States has to be something that ensures that
01:55Iran will never have a nuclear weapon.
01:57That is what our position is.
01:58That is the reason why this began.
02:00And it's important to understand, and I've raised this multiple times, I'll raise it again.
02:04What Iran was trying to do was build up a conventional capability so massive that they would become untouchable.
02:10In essence, they would come to the world in a year or two and say, you can't attack us.
02:15We're going to build a nuclear weapon and there's nothing you can do about it because we have so many
02:19missiles and so many drones
02:20that if you try to do anything about our nuclear program, we will wipe out every country in the Middle
02:25East.
02:25We will drive the U.S. forces out of the region.
02:28We can do whatever we want.
02:30That is what they were trying to achieve.
02:32The President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, was never going to allow that to happen.
02:35He just wasn't.
02:36He addressed something that had been ignored for far too long.
02:39And so he destroyed their drone program, their drone manufacturing capability.
02:44He destroyed their missile capability.
02:45He severely eroded both of those capabilities in terms of current launchers.
02:50He destroyed their Navy.
02:51He destroyed their Air Force.
02:52They are far less powerful militarily today than they were.
02:55And that line of immunity they were trying to hide behind has been erased.
02:59They will never have a nuclear weapon, period.
03:01Not as long as President Trump is in office.
03:04And that to us is the bright line.
03:05Now, how you achieve that and so forth, you know, I think they've had multiple opportunities in the past to
03:10reach agreements on those things.
03:12They have failed to do so.
03:14Now they're facing crippling sanctions.
03:16Their economy is in total and complete free fall.
03:18I'm happy that for the first time even the media in the U.S. is beginning to cover what a
03:23bad situation Iran faces.
03:24The Straits of Hormuz are open.
03:26There's almost as much oil flowing out now as there was before this conflict began.
03:31So they've lost complete control of the Straits.
03:33And their economy, and it's not only in free fall now, the Iranian economy is about to reach a place
03:39that few countries in the world have been in terms of how bad it's going to get.
03:42And it's all the fault, all the fault of the radical Shia clerics that make the decisions in that country.
03:48They are the ones that have put the poor people of Iran in the situation that they're in.
03:52Because every dollar and every penny that that regime gets, they don't spend it on roads or bridges or helping
03:58improve the lives of the Iranian people.
04:00They spend that money on Hezbollah and Hamas and militias that fire rockets out of Iraq and the Houthis.
04:06That's who they spend their money on.
04:07They should have spent their money on their people.
04:08And instead they spend their money on terrorism and on weapons.
04:11So hopefully that will change.
04:13But, yeah, they'll never have a nuclear weapon.
04:16Thank you very much.
04:17To the foreign minister, if I may.
04:17To the foreign minister.
04:18Excuse me.
04:19Now, I believe you had your first air.
04:21We need to proceed with the next questionnaire.
04:25Unless my minister.
04:26Thank you very much, Mr. Foreign Minister, for taking the question.
04:29As President Trump weighs the potential of renewed strikes on Iran, is consideration being given in Greece to support those
04:35strikes from Souda Bay,
04:37especially in light of the events at Fairfield that demonstrated increased Iranian threats to U.S. assets in Europe.
