U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu deliver statements to the press at the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, October 28, 2019.
Transcript
Hello Steve.
Mr. Prime Minister, it’s always a pleasure. It’s great to be here.
Wonderful, wonderful to see you. Please.
Thank you.
Good afternoon. Welcome Secretary Mnuchin, Steve. This is, I don’t know, which is it, I’ve stopped counting? In Israel since you’ve took office and our relationship and our alliance has never been stronger. The first thing that I want to do is congratulate President Trump, the Armed Forces of the United States and the American people for the successful action against Baghdadi and it’s good that this murder has met his fate. We do know that we still have an ongoing battle against terrorism both of the extremist Sunni’s lead by Daesh but also the extremists Shiites led by Iran that is making a plunge for everything and everywhere in the Middle East. Iran is seeking to develop now precision guided missiles that can hit any target in the Middle East with a circumference of five to 10 meters. They’re developing this in Iran, they want to place them in Iraq and in Syria and to convert Lebanon’s arsenal of 130, 000. Statistical rockets, two procession guided ammunition’s, they seek also to develop that and have already begun to put that in Yemen with a goal of reaching Israel from there too. We view Iran as the greatest threat to peace, stability and our security and the security of many others. They’ve fired into Saudi Arabia, they’ve interfered with international shipping lanes, they’ve attacked Americans and they’ve killed Americans throughout the last ten years in Afghanistan and elsewhere. Iran is the single greatest threat to stability and peace in the Middle East. That doesn’t mean that there are no others there are, the Middle East is rich with several things and one of them is terrorist exporting nations and groups. So while there is a tremendous achievement yesterday in the action against the leader of Daesh, there still remains a massive effort against the other forces of terror and the terrorist state of Iran. We have enjoyed great support from the United States in this effort twice, one in the military assistance that the United States generously gives us and second, in the effort that you and President Trump lead all the time which is the increase of sanctions against Iran. You’ve recently added the anti-money laundering sanctions which apply to the banks, that’s a very powerful tool in addition to others that you’ve put forth and I encourage you to put even more. Iran’s capacity, we see this very clearly, to launch it’s aggression to develop it’s weapons of death, to purvey it’s menacing ways that capacity is diminished to the extent that you can tighten your sanctions and make their availability of cash more difficult for them. We see this in every part of the Middle East, so I want to thank you for what you’ve been doing and encourage you Steve to do more, more, more, a lot more. And thank you for your friendship.
Thank you.
Welcome to Jerusalem.
First of all, it is a pleasure to be back here and thank you for hosting us and welcoming me and our entire delegation. This is now my fourth official trip here since I’ve been treasury secretary. As usual this is my first stop on my tour this week across the Middle East. Nobody is a better partner to the United States than Israel and you Mr. Prime Minister. I want to personally thank you on behalf of the President for everything that you’re doing with us. As it relates to Iran, we have a shared view as to the threats that Iran poses to the region and to the world. We have executed on a maximum pressure campaign for sanctions, they have worked, they are working, they are cutting off the money. We are not doing this to hurt the people of Iran, we are doing this so that Iran stops their bad activities and exporting terrorism looking to create nuclear capabilities and missiles. We will continue to ramp up more, more, more as you said. I just came from a very productive working lunch with your team, they gave us a bunch of very specific ideas that we will be following up. I just want to also mention because our national security partnership is very, very important but our economic partnership is also very important. We have very strong two-way trade with Israel, Israel is really a leading center of technology throughout the world in innovation. I look forward to meeting with a bunch of those companies tomorrow and we just finished our economic partnership in Washington D.C. So, thank you for your leadership and everything you’ve done.
Thank you, thank you Steve, thank you, please.