defenses of vaish and provide equipment to both the saudis and the uae. second, to ensure the free flow of commerce through the strait. and third, to ensure we protect and defend the international rules-based order. and try and convince the iranians to get back on a diplomatic path. but the deployment of these kind of assets can often take days and weeks. should we expect any other kind of more immediate response from the united states? the united states has a robust presence in the gulf already. we bolstered it further in may, so we feel quite capability quite confident in terms of our own defensive posture and our ability to do anything else as necessary. but that s nowhere we are right now. right now we re focused on helping the saudis improve their defenses of that infrastructure. last question, nancy? mr. secretary, chairman dunford, you mentioned that the international community should get involved, but i know some allies have questioned whether the attacks were, in fac
we re not going to discuss any operational details at this time. barbara? either of you, does this now represent a full u.s. commitment to defend saudi arabia and to defend the oil infrastructure of saudi arabia and for general dunford in particular, what is your concern about the iranian ability to launch swarms of drones at very great distances without any air defense detection of this incoming attack? so, what i would say, barbara, in terms of what we re doing is we re contributing to saudi arabia s defense. we would be looking, as the secretary said, for other international partners to also contribute to saudi arabia s defense. and with regard to dealing with a specific threat like you just spoke about, you know, no single system is going to be able to defend against a threat like that, but a layered system of defensive capabilities would mitigate the risk of swarms of
devastate iran but that will serve no one s interest. you described something that we haven t seen trump do yet give them something that will save face is a complicated diplomatic mission and then bring them to the table which requires an attention and a focus that donald trump hasn t displayed. and just today in the clip we showed and the clip we read, he and mike pompeo not singing from the same song sheet. who does that difficult work that you just described, general? well, i ve served in three administrations and watched the national security process in action and now it s gone. so there s literally no coordinating mechanism and as you have seen it in the national security council in the white house basement where you bring together diplomatic military intelligence economic tools to act in concert where you examine objectives and alternatives that s gone. this is mr. trump impulsive all the time and therefore, you know, i don t think right now general dunford,
chairman of the jcs who s got weapons experts on the ground in saudi arabia understands what the options could be we could go after their air defense system, the submarines, the irgc fast boats. we could definitely take military action. very few americans would be at risk and we might probably would ignite a shooting war in the gulf no one thinks that s a wise outcome. michael crowley, your colleague david senger with the front page piece in your newspaper this morning before this disparity between donald trump and mike pompeo. and it would just seem as if donald trump was trying to give us exhibit 11,000 or 12,001 in terms of that credibility problem that david senger who has written about this region including the one in which i served writes about. what is the sort of state of awareness of exactly what david
secretary and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, another four star marine and friend of mattis, came out for a pentagon press conference for the first time in a year. both men said they wanted to have a good relationship with the media, so they were coming out to answer questions. but one of the things dunford did not want to talk about is what mattis had written. he was adamant that he would not talk about politics and not talk ever in uniform or retierped about president trump and how he performs as commander-in-chief. this is one of the big issues in the military right now. if there is so much political churn in the country, how is it affecting the troops. the big question is whether this era is is now fundamentally changing the character of the u.s. military and how it relates to u.s. society. dunford was adamant that in their view, there is no place