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You have been involved in numerous negotiations around the world. Why should people have any confidence in your capacity to succeed here? You were involved in the Gaza negotiations, but Gaza remains a wasteland. There's been real no progress there. Iran, you were involved in those negotiations. The war is still going on. You've been involved in several rounds of negotiations. In this conflict, it's only getting more intense. So you're relaunching negotiations now. What's the likelihood they will succeed when other negotiations you've been involved in have not? So, Richard, first of all, it's nice to actually see you in person. I've seen you on television for years, but I guess we're usually more domestic, so I don't see you in the flesh. First of all, I think these are some of the hardest problem sets in the world, and I think that you have to try and you have to bring to it. Obviously, Steve and I bring different approaches to these things, but we work very well together as partners. But we're not bringing our approaches. We're really representing President Trump, and we're doing it the way that he wants to see these things done. And working with President Trump in the first term, obviously, we achieved a lot of unthinkable things, whether it was achieving the Abraham Accords, which nobody thought was possible. We achieved the USMCA, the biggest trade deal in history. We made a great deal with China. And the list just goes on and on. We just celebrated the World Cup in America. That was a deal that I led on President Trump's behalf to win for America. The same thing with the Olympics that'll be coming up. So you have to take on hard things. You mentioned Gaza. Right now, a year ago, that war was going on. There were 20 live hostages there and 28 bodies of dead hostages there, and a war that nobody thought was going to be achieved as well. It took a long time. Steve and I worked very hard on that for a while, and then when we found the opening, we were able to use the work that we'd been able to do, both building the relationships and then creating different frameworks for how to achieve that. And then we were able to take advantage of that and drive it to a conclusion, which really ended it. The work that we've done since then, which again is Gaza has not worked for a very, very long time. It was basically built by NGOs and terrorists. And it's been a dystopian place for a long time. And so we've taken our time. We've built an incredible team, again, under President Trump's leadership on the Board of Peace. Now we have a plan to go forward. We've got a UN resolution that put forward progress for that. And there's a new government, a Palestinian technocratic government, that's neither the PA nor Hamas that's built a plan to go forward. You can't go in if there's guns, right? You can't send the government into a place. By the way, we're now starting to understand the scope of the militarization of Gaza. It is beyond your comprehension. And so demilitarizing it is not going to be easy. We worked with Hamas for over four months. You talk about interesting people to be working with. And they signed an agreement saying they were going to demilitarize. We're working through some political issues in Israel. I think we agree with them on the end state. They just have a crazy election. And that makes them a little irrational in certain regards. But we're very determined and we're working through these things. We've also, over the last year, surged more humanitarian aid into the former war zone. I mean, now, in Gaza, we changed the way the aid was done there. Before, I mean, they spent three times the amount per person in Gaza at the UN that they did in Syria for aid. Why? It's because it's become this whole industrial complex of aid. And a lot of it was being stolen to fund a terrorist organization. So we changed the way the aid was done. We flooded aid into Gaza. And now it has one of the lowest malnutrition rates in the world. And so we have a plan to rebuild it. These things take time. These are some of the hardest conflicts. And so the tone of your question was a little bit like, why haven't you done every single impossible thing possible? We are very honored to be able to have the opportunity to work on these under President Trump's leadership. And we're very committed to giving it everything we can. And I think President Trump has a track record of doing impossible things. I think the last administration, they didn't go to Russia. I mean, I think they had one visit with the CIA director. But there's a war. I mean, every day, there are soldiers on the front line from both sides and they want to go home to their families. And there are people in these cities who have bombs dropping and their lives are very disrupted. And they want to see that put to an end. And so if the answer was simple, then somebody would have solved it. But I think President Trump's general framework is that if something is worthy and important, it will have a big impact. He doesn't matter how much he'll get criticized by people in the press or different critics. He wants to go after it. And he's asked Steve and I to do that on his behalf. And obviously with Marco and with the whole team, which we work really very lockstep with. And we'll do our best to try to get an outcome. And so I know that if we don't try, we will not succeed and nothing will change. And it's just important to try. And that's what we're going to try to do. So I can't guarantee that there will be success. But what I can promise you and promise everyone here in Ukraine and even everyone in Russia is that on behalf of President Trump, Steve and I are going to be doing everything we can. We have been doing everything we can to try and find a way out of a mess that was created before President Trump's time, which has had a huge toll. And so we're going to do our best to try and make progress. Steve, do you want to answer that too? I couldn't say it better, Jared. Thank you.

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Obama cut the nuclear deal and then delivered to Iran an enormous amount of cash and turned a blind eye basically to the proxies and the missiles and drones. So if you think of Iran's defense posture as being a triad of the nuclear program proxies and disruptive military capabilities, we got in one leg of the triad we got temporary and reversible restrictions and then a complete green light to the Iranians to develop everything else. So that was I think a huge mistake in American strategy and Donald Trump has reversed that and he has returned deterrence and the credible threat of military force to the equation. And for that alone I give him an A. I give him an A+ for that. It's absolutely necessary. You can hear a lot of arguments especially when talking to our European friends, they say that the Strait of Hormuz was open before the war, now it's closed, the problem hasn't been solved, it's just been worsened and so on. And my answer to that very simply is what was your plan to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon? What was your plan from stopping Iran from putting its nuclear program behind a wall of missiles and drones that was going to exact that if allowed to continue to develop was going to exact such a high price from the United States if it attacked them that we would never be able to use them, we wouldn't have the military option. So I think that what Donald Trump did was absolutely necessary if he hadn't done it, what the Americans and the Israelis together did was absolutely necessary, if he hadn't done it then every American base in the region was under threat and we were going to have a nuclear armed Iran in very short order, the price of doing anything about it was going to become prohibitive and we also had an Iran that could be the proxy of China in the event that we were to go, that China was to make a play for Taiwan, it would be able to close the Strait of Hormuz and the Baba Mandeb and so on. So I think we need to also see it in that global level. So I give him very very high marks for taking this on and expending the political capital that it took to do it.

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A photographed or screenshotted newspaper opinion column from The Washington Times, headlined "The grand strategy behind the Trump-Vance Iran deal" by Alexander B. Gray, with subheading "The president has displayed uncommon vision." The article argues that the Trump administration's Iran deal (following "Operation Epic Fury") achieved Trump's long-stated goal of preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, credits Trump for reorienting U.S. grand strategy away from the Middle East and toward great-power rivalry with China, and praises his handling of Iran policy since 2015 as strategically sound. Below the article is the Washington Times masthead listing publisher and editorial staff.

Text in image: The grand strategy behind the Trump-Vance Iran deal The president has displayed uncommon vision By Alexander B. Gray The Trump administration's deal with Iran accomplishes the objectives set by the president at the outset of Operation Epic Fury, and it represents the culmination of his continuous strategic policy focus to prevent Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Most important, though, it begins the process of reorienting American grand strategy away from the Middle Eastern conflicts that have characterized the first quarter of the 21st century and toward the great power rivalries that will likely define the next. Essentially, President Trump obliged to use decisive military force against Iran to disengage from a region of peripheral concern to long-term U.S. interests. Since announcing his first campaign for president in 2015, Mr. Trump has been unequivocal that Iran cannot acquire a nuclear weapon. In 2018, he withdrew from the fatally flawed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action negotiated by President Obama — a deal that paid Iran large sums of cash in exchange for flimsy promises not to acquire nuclear weapons. Instead, the first Trump administration imposed substantial economic pain on Tehran and maintained that pressure until Mr. Trump's last day in office. The Biden administration almost immediately proposed further negotiations with Iran. Mr. Trump, returning to office in 2025, addressed the threat posed by the mullahs' unrepentant march toward nuclear weapons. He launched Operation Midnight Hammer in June 2025. Iran's weapons program was largely destroyed. Operation Epic Fury achieved the limited goals set by Mr. Trump. Tehran's leadership was destroyed, its missile program was degraded, and its economy and supply chains were profoundly disrupted by the U.S. Navy's successful blockade. The Iranian regime is at its weakest since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Although Mr. Trump has expressed hope that the Iranian people will ultimately choose a different future, regime change was never a goal of Epic Fury. Rather, Mr. Trump has clearly understood the core American interest at stake with Iran: preventing a fanatical regime from gaining a nuclear weapon and preventing the disruption of a region that still supplies substantial global energy resources. In the process, Iran's myopic decision to militarily target U.S. Gulf Arab allies will solidify those states' efforts to increase their own defense while demonstrating the fallacy of the entreaties by China that proliferated during the Biden years. The United States will emerge from the Iran deal having met (and in some cases exceeded) its modest strategic goals for the region. Epic Fury's success will ultimately rest on America's ability to execute Mr. Trump's 2025 National Security Strategy, which prioritizes the defense of the U.S. homeland and the Western Hemisphere, as well as the projection of American power into the Indo-Pacific to deter China's attempt at hegemony. Although every administration since Mr. Obama's has promised some form of "pivot" or "rebalance" to the Indo-Pacific, only the Trump administration has done the difficult statecraft needed to position the U.S. for that strategic shift. Unlike every previous post-Cold War president, Mr. Trump has been honest about the trade-offs required to meet a challenge as formidable as that posed by the Chinese Communist Party. Mr. Trump's National Security Strategy identifies regions of greatest U.S. interest and directs resources accordingly. His conduct of Epic Fury and the accompanying peace deal reflect the realization of this strategy. By recognizing that, without American leadership, Iran will continue to divert U.S. attention and resources away from our most significant priorities, and acting accordingly, Mr. Trump displayed uncommon vision. His willingness to wage war for limited ends and to conclude a peace that serves core U.S. national interests will satisfy neither hawks nor doves, but it will place the U.S. in a better strategic position. The Trump-Vance administration approaches its second half with enviable strategic flexibility. The proposed $1.5 trillion defense budget would begin to reverse the steady erosion of the military balance between the United States and China that has threatened deterrence in the Indo-Pacific. Continued investments in American energy dominance at home make de-prioritizing the Middle East a realistic possibility. The president's agenda for American reindustrialization is bearing fruit, reviving the U.S. defense industrial base and encouraging the U.S. private sector to dominate the frontier technologies of the future, including artificial intelligence, quantum computing and fusion energy. America is on track to emerge from Operation Epic Fury in a far stronger position to win the competition that will define the remainder of the 21st century. Alexander B. Gray, a nonresident senior fellow at The Atlantic Council, served as deputy assistant to the president and chief of staff of the White House National Security Council from 2019 to 2021. The Washington Times Published by The Washington Times LLC THOMAS P. McDEVITT, Chairman CHRISTOPHER DOLAN, President & Executive Editor NEWS CATHY GARDNER, Managing Editor ANN WOG, Managing Editor Digital JOHN BOURANTAS, Assistant Managing Editor STEPHEN DINAN, Assistant Managing Editor S.A. MILLER, Assistant Managing Editor MARIA STAINER, Assistant Managing Editor JOSEPH SZADKOWSKI, Assistant Managing Editor BUSINESS RAYNARD BOLDING, Chief Financial Officer TORY HILL, Advertising Director DESHONDA MURRAY, Director of Human Resources and Building Operations JORGE CARRASQUILLA, Information Technology Director

Described automatically. The words above are a machine's reading of the picture, not Trump's.

President Trump got the 5% last year in the Hague which powers us forward. He said you did it sir, you did it. I don't know of any American president in the modern era who could have made this possible. And what we accomplished last year in the Hague now has to turn into real capabilities. The United States is leading the way and we expect others to follow us and follow our lead. And no other president is going to do what I'm doing. Ultimately the summit for NATO is going to be the first report card after last year's meeting in the Hague. The United States will be here but we also need our allies to be here. We cannot do it alone and the American taxpayer should no longer bear the burden. You're watching history, so buckle up.

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