English transcript

Have you shared how you feel about it with the President?

Yes.

How did that go?

We have regular episodic dialogues, I mean we don't call each other every day, but we

speak about things.

I'll say this about the President with respect to this issue.

The first time I went to the Oval Office, and just for your viewers to set the scene,

what happens in those meetings is you get out of the car, you shake your hand, you walk

into the Oval Office and you're in a press conference.

So it's during that press conference, which goes on for 45 minutes and covers a wide range

of issues, that you're trying to get an assessment of, I wonder how this meeting is going to

go.

Normally, you have the meeting, then you have the press conference afterwards, so you have

some sense.

But after that, let's call it a press conference, the spray or whatever they call it in the

Oval Office, you go and have lunch with the President, Vice President, Secretary of State,

and various Secretaries.

And at the lunch, the first question the President asked me was about Iran, and what I thought

he should do about Iran.

So this is an issue that has been on the mind of this President, and I would suggest every

other one of his predecessors stretching back over five decades, more than five decades,

around that.

So now, as I say, we were not consulted, nor were any of the other allies about the specific

measures that they took, or the timing, or the nature, and I would say that the extent

to which, in the run-up to the hostilities, there were negotiations, and there appeared,

and we have broader contacts, obviously, that there was some progress that was being made.