Transcript: The President's Interview with Print Media Columnists
Secondly, we want Syria to not be the headquarters for militant Hamas and Hezbollah, and obviously the Iraq issue –providing an avenue, to the extent they are, of money, material, and people.
What can we do? We can convince others that it's in the world's interests that Syria stop doing this and have them help us convince Syria. Diplomacy gets pretty complex until you get to the consequences. Then it gets really complex. And we are at the stage of formulating consequences. Most people now are beginning to understand. There was a moment of clarification when Hezbollah attacked Israel. It changed people's perspective. It became abundantly clear to a lot of folks that Syria – and then I told you Iran – but Syria's complicity with Iran is part of the problem.
Nations in the neighborhood now see that like they never have before. And we will work with them. I would hope that some people would support Syrian opposition leaders as a way to send a signal. Anyway, I spent a lot of time on this subject with allies including Prime Minister Blair. I worked with Jacques Chirac to get the resolution passed to get Syria out of Lebanon to begin with. That's why it happened so quickly.
So things are happening. If what you're asking me is – you are frustrated with the fact that there doesn't seem to be many consequences – well, we're working on trying to convince others to be consequential. The same with Iran.
Your question on Iran.
Q: To get your strategic thinking, as you say, on Iran, it does look as if, from my diplomacy here that Ahmadinejad has been pretty dismissive of what's happening in the Security Council. When you leave office in January of '09, are you going to allow the Iranian program to be intact when you leave office, or would you see that as a historic failure of this administration if, after eight years, the Iranian program is going ahead?
THE PRESIDENT: I would hope to have it in a place where the Iranian program is not going ahead.
[Off-the-record comments redacted.]
Anyway, back on the record.
Q: Okay. I don't know how to read that.
THE PRESIDENT: No, no. You shouldn't read anything to it at all. I just want to make –
Q: Are you saying that a military attack is not feasible?
THE PRESIDENT: I'm not saying that at all. That's important. As a matter of fact, I said in Germany, in a press conference – will you take the military option off the table? I said, no. And I meant it.
Right now, the strategy is to – you know what the strategy is – is to push other nations to understand it's in their interest to convince Iran not to have a nuclear weapon and to stop its program in a verifiable way.
I asked Hu Jintao one time, what is your biggest problem. He said, 25 million new jobs a year. That's a massive problem. And the reason I bring that up is you begin to get a sense for the varied interests involved in convincing people to believe like we believe. And we're now in the process, Charles, of making sure that the idea of Iran with a nuclear weapon is more vital than other interests. We've done a pretty good job of it, frankly.
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