There are currently 11 requests from Iran’s neighbors, European states, and America for help in protection against aggression.

We have already responded to some of these requests with specific decisions and support.

We're also setting up, as we speak, a purely defensive mission. This is a support mission, the purpose of which is to work with other European and indeed non-European states.

The purpose is to provide escorts for container ships to gradually reopen the Strait of Hormuz, which is, of course, a passage for international trade but also a passage for oil and gas, which should be able to come out of the region.

This will all take place in good order, and we've started discussing this. This is a peaceful defensive mission; it's a support mission, but indeed it is essential for our economies and indeed for the global economy at large.

Hezbollah should stop all attack from Lebanese soil because it is threatening all Lebanese nationals.

Israel should also stop its military operations and strikes against Lebanon.

Unconditional surrender means we're fighting to win. It means we set the terms.

We'll know when they're not capable of fighting.

Whether they know it or not, they will be combat ineffective. They will surrender.

There's a reason we changed our name from the Department of Defense to the Department of War.

Not because we seek war. Not because we want more war.

Frankly, we want peace.

If war is necessary, we're going to fight to win.

President Trump is right when he says we obliterated their nuclear program. He’s right. We did. We dropped those bombs exactly where they needed to be, set them back.

But that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped their pursuit.

We want the Iranians guessing and second-guessing and triple-guessing what we might be willing to do, because under Trump, we just might.

It’s not a regime change war in the conventional George W. Bush context of hundreds of thousands of troops.

I mean, in Afghanistan what I watched as a young captain was Americans thinking we were going to remake a society that was basically biblical times with AK-47s and cell phones.

The hubris of thinking we were going to take Afghanistan and turn it into a Jeffersonian democracy by building Western-style forces and Western-style institutions — it was never going to work.

This is not a remaking of Iranian society from an American perspective. We tried that. The American people have rejected that.