Rex Tillerson in meeting with US diplomats
Remarks at Town Hall
Rex W. Tillerson
Rex W. Tillerson
Dean Acheson Auditorium
Washington, DC
December 12, 2017At a town hall meeting in the Washington DC, US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson discussed a wide ranging issues after 11 months in the office.
Mr. Tillerson said he wants to take a quick look at the year in review and all that the State department and USAID has accomplished during past year.
Among the a long list of topics, Secretary Tillerson talked about one of the most important issues during past year, Iran.
He said as I’ve gone through this long list, I don’t know how I could have missed this one, Iran. So when we kind of took up our post earlier in the year and we did an assessment of the Iranian relationship and the policy, the policy, in my judgment and I think the judgment of others who worked on this here in the State Department with me, was the Iran policy was pretty narrow. It was very narrowly defined around one thing, the nuclear agreement, the JCPOA agreement, and that so much effort over the last two or three years of the prior administration had been put into that agreement that little attention had been paid to the rest of Iran. And I don’t say that as a criticism, I just say it as an observation.
And so our approach has been how do we use the nuclear agreement to achieve its objectives, which is to have Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon. And our assessment of the agreement is it has some weaknesses, and those weaknesses need to be addressed. And so our early on policy engagements were with the other parties to the agreement, and it didn’t start off great, because we saw it one way, and obviously they were very heavily invested in that agreement because many of them had been involved in the negotiations as well. But it’s been through just a very open and honest dialogue with them about how do we use the agreement to achieve the ultimate objective, use it fully, fully enforce it, be very demanding under the agreement. Because the truth of the matter is Iran received significant benefits up front before any compliance had been confirmed. And so there were a number of elements of how the agreement was even implemented that it is what it is. That’s water over the dam, as they say; not going to do anything to change that. But it doesn’t change the fact that we have concerns about whether that agreement’s going to deliver on its objective. But for the time being, we’re in the agreement. As you know, the President made a decision to ask the Congress to take a look at this agreement and express their views on it through our domestic law, INARA. And the Congress is examining the agreement to see are there things they’d like to ask us to do – additional requirements – to strengthen the U.S.’s view of this agreement. In the meantime, we’re very actively participating in the Joint Commission. Our representatives are there at every meeting, and our representatives are actually leading the effort to be more demanding of Iran under the agreement. And we’re getting good support from our European partners.
In the meantime, we have examined all the other elements of the Iran relationship. And the things that worry us most are their ballistic missile programs, their export of weapons that are destabilizing Yemen, their export of weapons to terrorist organizations like Hizballah, their export of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. Iran is just a destabilizing force in the region and a lot of these conflicts are fomented and they’re kept alive because of Iran’s involvement. We want, along with partners in the region but also in Europe, to engage Iran on those behaviors and those activities.
So we have taken action unilaterally on our own to impose sanctions on certain Iranian individuals and entities that are responsible for this destabilizing behavior, all the while maintaining our commitments under the JCPOA. You can separate the two. And we’re engaged with our European partners now, and they are interested too because they have the same worries about these activities of Iran as we have. We’ve had a number of engagements with them, most recently last week when I was in Europe. We had a meeting of the Quad – our European counterparts in the JCPOA – to further talk about how do we work together to achieve a more stable situation in the Middle East, and Iran is a big issue that we have to address together. So those activities continue as well with great support from teams here and a high level of engagement with our counterparts around the region.
Washington, DC
December 12, 2017At a town hall meeting in the Washington DC, US Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson discussed a wide ranging issues after 11 months in the office.
Mr. Tillerson said he wants to take a quick look at the year in review and all that the State department and USAID has accomplished during past year.
Among the a long list of topics, Secretary Tillerson talked about one of the most important issues during past year, Iran.
He said as I’ve gone through this long list, I don’t know how I could have missed this one, Iran. So when we kind of took up our post earlier in the year and we did an assessment of the Iranian relationship and the policy, the policy, in my judgment and I think the judgment of others who worked on this here in the State Department with me, was the Iran policy was pretty narrow. It was very narrowly defined around one thing, the nuclear agreement, the JCPOA agreement, and that so much effort over the last two or three years of the prior administration had been put into that agreement that little attention had been paid to the rest of Iran. And I don’t say that as a criticism, I just say it as an observation.
And so our approach has been how do we use the nuclear agreement to achieve its objectives, which is to have Iran never acquire a nuclear weapon. And our assessment of the agreement is it has some weaknesses, and those weaknesses need to be addressed. And so our early on policy engagements were with the other parties to the agreement, and it didn’t start off great, because we saw it one way, and obviously they were very heavily invested in that agreement because many of them had been involved in the negotiations as well. But it’s been through just a very open and honest dialogue with them about how do we use the agreement to achieve the ultimate objective, use it fully, fully enforce it, be very demanding under the agreement. Because the truth of the matter is Iran received significant benefits up front before any compliance had been confirmed. And so there were a number of elements of how the agreement was even implemented that it is what it is. That’s water over the dam, as they say; not going to do anything to change that. But it doesn’t change the fact that we have concerns about whether that agreement’s going to deliver on its objective. But for the time being, we’re in the agreement. As you know, the President made a decision to ask the Congress to take a look at this agreement and express their views on it through our domestic law, INARA. And the Congress is examining the agreement to see are there things they’d like to ask us to do – additional requirements – to strengthen the U.S.’s view of this agreement. In the meantime, we’re very actively participating in the Joint Commission. Our representatives are there at every meeting, and our representatives are actually leading the effort to be more demanding of Iran under the agreement. And we’re getting good support from our European partners.
In the meantime, we have examined all the other elements of the Iran relationship. And the things that worry us most are their ballistic missile programs, their export of weapons that are destabilizing Yemen, their export of weapons to terrorist organizations like Hizballah, their export of foreign fighters into Iraq and Syria. Iran is just a destabilizing force in the region and a lot of these conflicts are fomented and they’re kept alive because of Iran’s involvement. We want, along with partners in the region but also in Europe, to engage Iran on those behaviors and those activities.
So we have taken action unilaterally on our own to impose sanctions on certain Iranian individuals and entities that are responsible for this destabilizing behavior, all the while maintaining our commitments under the JCPOA. You can separate the two. And we’re engaged with our European partners now, and they are interested too because they have the same worries about these activities of Iran as we have. We’ve had a number of engagements with them, most recently last week when I was in Europe. We had a meeting of the Quad – our European counterparts in the JCPOA – to further talk about how do we work together to achieve a more stable situation in the Middle East, and Iran is a big issue that we have to address together. So those activities continue as well with great support from teams here and a high level of engagement with our counterparts around the region.
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