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.

Yeah, the peace negotiations on Ukraine under American leadership, let me just say, we got involved, okay, because we were told we were the only ones that could do it, we were the only ones that the Russians and the Ukrainians would talk to. So we got involved. They were not fruitful, unfortunately, that's the point.
We stand ready to continue to play that role, despite leaks that are not true, despite stories out there about us forcing the Ukrainians to take this position or that position, which are not true. If we see an opportunity to pull together talks that are productive, not counterproductive, and that have the chance to be fruitful, we're prepared to play that role. There are no such talks occurring at this time.

But we hope that will change, because that war can only end with a negotiated settlement. It will not end with a military victory by one side or the other, at least from a traditional standpoint of how military victories are defined. So it will have to lead, and if we can play a role in making that happen, the President is very much interested in doing it.

We just, over the last few months, just sort of sensed that there wasn't a lot of progress being made, but maybe dynamics will change, and if they do, we stand ready to play whatever constructive role we can play. If someone else would like to handle it, they should. But it doesn't appear to be anybody else in the world right now that can handle it.