Speaker unverified: belief

Transcript context

…Anyway, we’re going into history. We’re learning a lot. The perspectives differ strongly. Can we look into the, maybe a ridiculous question, but a nuclear proliferation? You already started to speak to, both of you. If you look like 10, 20 years out now, does the US attacking Iran, does that send a message, even to MBS to other Middle Eastern nations, that they need to start thinking about a nuclear weapon program? Specifically, do you think just in a numbers way, does the number of nukes in the world go up in 10, 20, 30 years? So look, I think it’s a great question. Will there be more nuclear weapons powers in the future or less as a result of this decision by President Trump? So I actually think there’ll be less, and I’ll tell you succinctly as I can. And that is, that it’s been very clear from the Saudis, from the Turks, certainly from even the Algerians and others, that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, they too want a nuclear weapon. In fact, the Saudis have gone even further and said, “If Iran is allowed to retain the key enrichment capability that they have under JCPOA, that we want that too. If there’s an Iran standard, we want the Iran standard. We don’t want the gold standard.” In fact, that’s been the subject of intensive negotiations between the United States and Saudi Arabia for the past couple of years, both under Biden and Trump, as part of the US-Saudi defense agreement, an economic agreement that has been underway. It’s very clear that there’s going to be a proliferation cascade in the Middle East if the Iranians get a nuclear weapon. And certainly, if they’re allowed to retain this enrichment capability. I also worry about, we haven’t even talked about it at all this conversation, the most important area in the world for the United States is not the Middle East. It’s China and the Indo-Pacific. And I worry that the South Koreans, the Taiwanese, and the Japanese will say, “You know what? We don’t trust any US commitments to stop nuclear weapons. You failed on Iran. We don’t trust you. We don’t trust your nuclear umbrella. We too want nuclear weapons in order to guard our security against China.” And so what you would see, I hope it doesn’t happen but I worry about, is this proliferation cascade in the Middle East and in the Indo-Pacific. Two of the most important areas for American national security, which is why I think it’s very important that Iran’s be stopped. Now, whether this attack succeeds in stopping Iran’s nuclear weapon or accelerates it, we disagree, but I think neither us know yet. Hard to predict. But what I think is absolutely certain is that if Iran develops that nuclear weapon and is allowed to retain the key capabilities to do so, you’re going to see five, six countries in the Middle East, at least three, four countries in the Indo-Pacific asking for the same capability. And then you’re going to have a club of nuclear weapons powers that will have an additional 5, 6, 7 over the next 10 to 20 years. What if they don’t? What if they’re prevented? Doesn’t that still send the same message to everybody that they should build?…

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