前美防长：真主党是美伊协议的搅局者

Wanna turn now to Mark Esper. He serves the twenty seventh defense secretary during president Trump's first term in office. Mister secretary, great to speak with you on this morning when there is so much breaking news. And I wonder if we could start with the Strait Of Hormuz and just get your read on the the the state of play in that region. We've heard one thing from the Iranians, one thing from the Trump administration, and this is not novel or new.

We've lived through many weekends where there's kind of been dueling narratives about what's what's going on. But your sense of the openness of that straight now and and indeed the the role The US should be playing in that region as its focus is also squarely on what's happening in Switzerland. Right. Good morning, and great to be with you as well. So, look, we know the MOU was signed on Wednesday by the president in in Geneva.

At this point in time, it seems that traffic is flowing. The central command reported on Friday, I think, that 55 ships have passed through the strait as of that date. But we know that the prewar level of transit by ships was anywhere from a 135 to a 150 ships a day. So I think it's gonna take some time to see whether it truly opens up in the sense that the shipping insurers, the ship owners, the ship captains, the ship crews feel comfortable enough going through the strait.

And I I think that's gonna be a day by day thing. We know that, you know, yesterday, Iran threatened that they were closing the strait again. It doesn't appear that they've done that. But this is gonna continue to rattle many of those those shippers, those shipping companies before they truly up open up, and we see prewar levels. You know, you you just described, the first day of negotiations. Clearly, they're sitting down and talking.

That is a good thing, but we have a long road ahead of us with regard to sustaining the current MOU, the agreement with Lebanon as a spoiler. And then secondly, I think big picture is getting to the nitty gritty on the details of the nuclear deal, if you will, and what that eventually looks like. I I wanna ask you about that. I mean, what is your take? Because we had this MOU, and then we had vice president, Janet Yellen, at the end of last week, kind of talking about, well, this is a starting point and and laying out where the aspirations would be, which were much, much tougher than what was laid out in the MOU and kinda pushed back against some of that even Republican criticism that Iran was getting the better end of the deal.

Do you think the MOU as written favors Iran over The US, and do you think it's possible to get to something more substantive given all those issues you just talked about within that sixty day window? I have a lot of concerns and questions about many parts of the MOU. Much of it talks about what Iran gets, such as, sanction free sale of oil, the unfreezing of assets. And there's only one paragraph that speaks to the nuclear piece of this deal.

And and within that, it only says that Iran agrees to a degree of dilution or down blending of its current enriched uranium, through a minimal process of down blending. But, well, that leaves a lot of questions on the table. Down blending from what to what? What is the stockpile? The amount of material that we allowed to keep in country. Will they be allowed to enrich? What about the status of the nuclear infrastructure?

What about inspectors? What about SNAP inspections? So there are a lot of unanswered questions here, which which get to the, you know, the hard part of this deal going forward, that that had to be answered. And and none of that, other than what I already mentioned, was really addressed in the MOU. Why do you think that was? Why do you think they were those issues were left out? Well, I think those are the the those are the tough issues.

Right? That's what why the Obama administration labored for nearly two years to get what they got out of it. And I think as the Trump team looks at this, they know that they have to do better than what the j c JCPOA brought to the table and and put into into force. And and, again, those are really tough technical details that you have to dig into. You need the experts at the table to negotiate that. My understanding is those type of experts will be going to Geneva or wherever the talks move to to have those discussions.

But, you know, you're looking at a page and a half framework, 14 points, very general, and certainly very, very shallow with regard to the nuclear part. There just wasn't time to get into any of that type of detail. Mister Secretary, you mentioned a moment ago Lebanon as a as a spoiler here, and I'm curious how you're thinking about the role that Israel has played is playing as these talks unfold. So, as I noted, Israel doesn't have a seat at the table for these talks.

Israel not a signatory to that memo of understanding. Is that a misstep? Do you think this this was a war waged by by both countries at the beginning at least? And then I wonder sort of what level of controller influence The US has over Israel as they try to have these talks in good faith with with the Iranians. Look. It would have been best if they were at the table. Alright? That said, I hope they were consulted. But, they Israel has different interests here.

You you know, we may have started off with similar goals, but at this point in time, Israel wants to see regime change. Israel sees Iran and Hezbollah as existential threats to the country. Hezbollah continues to attack Israeli soldiers and Israeli communities in Northern Israel. So, nothing you you know, that's those are not the situations we face here in The United States. So Israel has a right to defend itself. As long as Hezbollah continues to attack, they will respond.

And I I think that's gonna be, again, going forward an important item. There's been so much talk about, you know, Israel withdrawing, Israel, you know, not responding. I think much, much more pressure needs to be put on Hezbollah by Iran to kinda step back and to and to stop provoking, stop attacking Israel and Israeli soldiers. Are you optimistic that's gonna happen here? No. I mean, the history of the conflict is that they don't.

I mean, in my view, we should go back to the 2006 UN Security Council resolution 17 o one that said that Hezbollah was supposed to withdraw north of Lutani River. They were going to disarm. The Lebanese government was gonna take over, and we've had that deal not implemented for some time and various versions of that deal have come up at times. Hezbollah is gonna continue to be the spoiler here despite the fact that, you know, securing a deal ultimately could benefit them because Iran could divert anything they get from this deal such as, you know, oil sells money, unfrozen assets back to Hezbollah to rearm Hezbollah.

So this is a very complicated thing, and Lebanon's gonna continue to be the spoiler out there. And that was one of the criticism this president had of the original Iran nuclear deal. I do want to address some of the other things that are not in this deal, including Iranian proxies like Hezbollah and, the ballistic missiles program. I wanna play you some sound from the president on that issue from earlier in the week.

If other countries have them, it's a little bit unfair for them not to have some. A ballistic missile is not the same thing as what we're talking about, what we're talking nuclear. But if Saudi Arabia and Qatar and they all have some, I would say, in relative proportion, I think it's okay. That's what I mean. I think given the pretext from this administration on going into the war, that felt like quite the change from the from the president.

I'm wondering what your take is on that and at this point, what the US can do if you think the US will do anything to try to curtail that program. Yeah. Look. Iran is an international pariah. They are a foreign state sponsor of terrorism. It's a it's a terrorist regi

原文超出正文长度上限，此处截断——上游还有内容，完整版见上方「原文 ↗」。