Have you made progress today, sir, with the allies on getting the Strait of Hormuz fully back up and running?

No, that would be pretty ambitious to be able to open the straits at this meeting here today, but I can tell you that what I hope there is, this is what I hope for and this is the point I made is, we all would love to see an agreement with Iran in which the straits are open and they abandon their nuclear ambitions and so forth, uh their nuclear weapons ambitions.

That's what we'd all hope for, and that's what we're going to continue to work on, and that's what work is ongoing even as I speak to you now in that regard.

But, we also have to have a plan B, and plan B is what if Iran refuses to open the straits? What if Iran decides, 'We refuse to open the straits, we're going to own the straits, and we're going to charge tolls for it.'? Okay, at that point, something has to be done about it. And I would argue that there are countries represented here today that are more deeply impacted by this than even the United States is.

Some countries in the region provided us logistical options that we wouldn't otherwise have. And when some of those bases are denied to you during a a a conflict that we're involved in, uh then you question whether that value still is. So, that's going to have to be discussed. There's no doubt about it

.I think there's also going to have to be some focus on how, a year after the meeting at The Hague, how much progress has been made in terms of the increased contributions. There are some countries that have doubled their defense spending over the last few years, then there are others that are still lagging

.In the end, the goal is to have a NATO that is strong, and the stronger our NATO allies are, the stronger NATO is going to be.