Im really pleased to be here this afternoon with brian hook and elliott abrams, both from the state department, to talk about two of the most pressing issues that the United States is facing today, iran and venezuela, and the next is the relationship with the evolving relationship between the two countries. Elliott abrams is a special representative for venezuela at the department of state and brian hook is a special representative for iran and a Senior Policy Adviser to secretary of state mike pompeo. He previously served as the director of policy planning in this administration at the state department. So, ive known both Brian Elliott for quite some time, and its always a pleasure to see both of you. I would like to start. I think author start with elliott to tell us a little bit about the evolution of the administrations policy, visavis venezuela, as i recall, elliott, i think it has been about a year and a half since you have been special representative. Why dont you tell us a little bit about what has been happening in that country and about u. S. Venezuela relations. Thank you. Thank, you it is a great pleasure to see you again and to be here, our office or actually next door to each other so i here through the wall. U. S. Policy has been particularly strong in the last year in a half, but in may 2018 there was a phony election and in january of 2019, when former president maduro claimed another term the National Assembly in venezuela, which is democratically elected said no, that was a phony election and the office of the presidency is vacant and as a consequence, juan juan guaido stepped in as interim president. And now many other countries to be supporting him as interim president. His policy was to provide a return to democracy, a restoration of democracy. And we do this through diplomatic pressure and economic sanctions. The sanctions, which have been strong, and a great success, although i have to admit that theyve been helped along by the unbelievable corruption of the maduro regime, what we have been trying to do is take away resources from the regime so that it could not continue its terrible deprivations, and weve been very successful with that and just a couple of numbers, in 1998, when chavez came to power, venezuela was producing three and a half Million Barrels a day of oil. They were down to 2. 3 Million Barrels a day. Today it was to be about 250,000 barrels a day, which is incredible, 95 reduction. Part of it is their own corruption incompetence, partly is sanctions meaning people do not want to buy their oil and so theyre not producing oil. What the regime is doing was attempting to dismantle institutions of democracy in venezuela. They are acting now to prevent free elections of free parliamentary elections, most recently, for example, theyve been taking over the parties, in eastern europe, where the Supreme Court rules, youre not the head of that party, and it put in some pluckiest of the party who then has control of the parties off assets, offices, symbols, branding, if you will. The worst part of the repressions is killings in the most recent report by the un high commissioner human rights talks about roughly 1300 killings already this year. Non judicial executions. The newest tie this pariah regime has is to another pariah regime, iran. I guess we will talk more about that in a few minutes but the link is not new, but it has been newly energized, the last couple of months, and that is in a context in which russia and china are actually pulling back from venezuela, and we see these two pariah states finding each other. I just finished with one more word. This is a bipartisan policy. A commanders in washington, this is one of the few that are left, but at least so far, this is an area where democrats and republicans have found a very great deal of agreement. That is an important point to emphasize, as there are a few areas, but theyre out there and i think its important that we highlight that so the title for the seminar, which we should have, i shouldve mentioned in advance, it might almost be a tale of two pariahs and so with that, brian, i turn to you. Can you tell us a little bit about, also in the same time period, or whatever you would, like in the past year and a half, u. S. Iranian policy, some briefing developments there in than i do look forward to talking about that next. Thank you, im glad we were able to do this on this private farm, working with, you put your legacy lives on in the form of the National Security. I feel like we are continuing to implement what was set up but the administration. It is especially ironic know what we are seeing now is this circumstance where these two pariah states have found each other. You are right to describers newly energized ties because these ties for started earlier. And they kind of get done and they got some new energy. We go through the oil numbers in venezuela what this is done to his missions. A very similar analogy in iraq, but when trump got out of the Iran Nuclear Deal in may of 2018, iran had about 3 of the worlds oil supply, and thats equal to about 2. 5 Million Barrels a day that were exported. Being out of the deal allowed us to apply big pressure on iran, and irans chief source of revenue is oil, oil exports. We have slapped around oil sector, and the press that it pays for being the principal driver of terrorism and antisemitism instability in the middle east so in may of 2018, iran had 3. 5 Million Barrels of oil a day, and there is a story that came out in april that had their march 2020 members 70,000 barrels. 2. 5 million to 70,000 barrels in about two years. This is the price that the regime pays. What i find interesting about venezuela and iran is that these are not poor countries. They are rich countries that are governed by thieves. I was just in the middle east last week and went on a tour of the gulf and also to israel. When you look at cities like tel aviv, abu dhabi, montana and then you look across the gulf, and you get the feeling that the iranian people have been robbed of decades of failed leadership and you see the same thing happening in venezuela under maduro, and youll see the same thing in lebanon said the Islamic Republic of iran and that has not been to the advantage of lebanese people and what we see in the region, is that the iranian Islamic Revolution model being rejected we see now on october mass to protest against the iranian, model against hezbollah, even in the south, we have protest against hezbollah. Theyre tired of corruption, the tide of the lack of transparency and accountability. In iraq, massive protests in iraq at the end of last year, and in iran itself, the heart of the shia corridor of power, protests in november in all 31 provinces. The regime ordered 1500 of its own people, and they injured thousands and jailed everyone anywhere between 10,000 people. Its because crackdown theyve had to do other people in their 41 year history. So i see the trend lines in the middle east, and contrast that with what we are seeing in places like the uae, the reforms in saudi, in bahrain, in israel. These are countries investing in iran, people in progress, in the future, and that gives people a sense of hope and you look at iran and you see a sense of hopelessness among the iranian people and we think iranians deserve more representative government. I go all over the world and meet with the iranian diaspora and one thing that is clear to me is that iranians are thriving everywhere except in iran, and this regime has held back so much potential, because this kind of the peoples well on our proxies. That is the consequence of our maximum economic pressure campaign, very successful. We are very pleased with the regime being much weaker today than it was three and a half years ago we took office. And you do not see these kinds of headlines when we came into office. Irans military budget is not a record low. Its proxies are its proxies were written you had a lot of shear relating. When you do business with this government in iran, you never know if you are supporting common commercial terrorism, and weve now made that very clear. And if so i think weve seen Foreign Direct Investment collapse as a result. So as we look at the growing, newly energized ties between iran and venezuela in our hemisphere, we are very concerned about it. That is why we have offices next to each other on the second floor. We have determined that this relationship not become a new form of instability in our hemisphere and so while that is kind of how i look at it, elliott who has had so much expertise in the middle east and also equities in the western hemisphere, given the work he did back in the clinton bush years so weve got i think the right people in place with the right policies, with a lot of good leadership. Thanks, brian. One of my questions is what do you see as the objectives of both iran and venezuela in terms of the reconnection that we have seen . Are the tactical objectives merely to get around some of the sanctions . Is there a longer history of that relationship . Is there a more strategic impetus behind this relationship . Elliott, do you want to provide your thoughts on that . Well, it does go back, as brian was, saying it starts with chavez under an inch of as an ahmadinejad if you go back to those years, you have exchanges of business. The level, if were talking dollar, mounts the level of commerce has never been very great. It is rising now, for a few reasons and i think one of them is they are pariah states. They are essentially friendless countries. They have relationships with a few other countries but in terms of friendly relationships, not really anything so, theyre looking for a way to say, you see, we are not really all that isolated. Then there is a very pragmatic one. There is one thing we. So which is oil. And he desperately needs gasoline. Nobody is buying the oil. He does have gold reserves so he is able to say to the iranians, well, if you want gold, i can give you gold and the iranians of course have an enormous amount of oil and gasoline but they are having a hard time getting rid of it so, that is a practical arrangement. Gold for gasoline. And then is the ideological part. I mean, what held together chavez and ahmadinejad and now maduro with the present group, a hatred of the United States, i think probably more than anything else. All right, so its not necessarily an ideological affinity but the islamic regime has with venezuela. I wouldnt call the regime in venezuela a leftist regime. I would call it a criminal gang, thieves to deal with drug traffickers who take bribes from drug traffickers, who have destroyed the country, which was, you know, as brian was saying, in both of these cases, used to be rich countries, but it is an ideological and left right says it is ideologically it is not ideological in the left right. Sends it is ideological and has a viewing the United States as an enemy which necessarily pulls them toward each other and to it certain extent, in the case of venezuela, toward russia and china, although russia and china are keeping a certain degree of distance. But i would like to hear more about later. But brian, your sense of the nature of this inbound friendship. The imf recently put out an assessment, the three word performing economies in the world, libya, iran, and venezuela. Libyas a failed state and you have an illegitimate regime in venezuela and in the case of iran, you have a regime that is facing a crisis of legitimacy and credibility with its own people. The elections that are held in iran are complete sort of west failure theater. About the true nature of the regime, so i think the fact that iran and venezuela, two of the worst performing economies in the world, causes them perhaps to reach out and see if they can do something to help each other because they are both in dire situations. The Iranian Regime, as elliott said, they could only assess about 10 of the Foreign Exchange reserves. Right now the reality 225,008 to one dollar and you have seen a collapse in that currency. People are losing their savings because their money is not worth all that much. Ive been very heartened by the fact that in the november protest, all of them were directed against the government. When we got out of the iran deal, there were plenty of people in the commentariat who had long predicted that are sanctions and cause the iranian people to rally around the regime. Its the opposite. In 31 provinces, not a single protest against america or President Trump or our sanctions. What did we see . We saw a brave woman on video climbing of all to tear down a picture of soleimani. We saw the Supreme Leader being burned in effigy, seminaries were burned. The government invited people to trample upon the israeli in american flags and people walked around them, and the video went viral. I think in both cases, maduro and iran, these are two governments that represent around people badly to the rest of the world. And when you look at the long history of these two countries, the American People, the venezuelan people, and the iranian people, we have so much in common in terms of interest in boundaries and right now in both cases with these governments, we dont Share Interests or boundaries. These two pariah states found each other because they need each other, and even, so weve been able to disrupt those operations to get fuel and money exchanged in our hemisphere. Speaking of gold, just a small point, but, elliott correct me if im wrong, i read recently that a lot of that cold is in the United Kingdom and that can be blocked, actually, from being removed. Is that correct . Thats right. There is well over one billion dollars worth of gold and maduro tried to get at it and sued and the high court in london ruled about a week ago that juan guaido is the 220,000 to the dollar i think you said in venezuela, in venezuela, its only up to 200,000 to the dollar. So, another, you know, point, is it also shows that this is not just a u. S. Position but it is an example of allies and partners working together for the same set of objectives in this case. I think you made your point, elliott, earlier. Its nearly 60 countries. It is really all the democracies. The eu, western europe, canada, the u. S. , latin america. They view the maduro regime very much is illegitimate. They very much want to see venezuela go back to a democracy. With neighbors, its worth noting columbia, above all, but peru, ecuador, chile, brazil, there is a huge tide of migrants. The largest in history of latin america. Now it is not far short of 5 million. Of course, the strain that puts on their educational systems, their Health Systems is very great. I would like to add to that. Sure. Our policy, broadly, you can and it took summarize them about 8 more years to is the four pillars. The finally get there economic. And pressures, diplomatic then, it took isolation, us 5 years to get to the super bowl so military force to defend our interests and it is not done standing with the overnight iranian people. And all this other things elliott talked about have to be the very successful policy by the, way, your 45 minute building a coalition of countries are all supportive of the same instance. In the case of iran, democratic isolation is something that we spent a lot of time on. Part of that is exposing the regime for what it is and talking about it honestly. Because, if you whitewash what the regime is up to, if you look the other way, it expands its non Nuclear Threats in order to keep iran alive, you have the consequence of actually increasing Global Support for the worlds leading state sponsors. That is what we saw, i think in the last demonstration. The iran deal has come to the acceptance of Regional Peace and stability because theres a green light to move out of hostage taking our policy of isolating the worlds leading sponsored terrorists and antisemitism has brought a lot of people onside. When you look at every thing that europe has done over this administration in terms of visas, sanctions, iranian activity on missile testing, cutting diplomatic ties. This is the eu sanction, the regime for the nation and terrorism attends in europe. We have the International Security in the gulf to respond to irans piracy. Maritime people that it executes. That International Coalition has really helped to develop iran to illuminate their ability its a much different picture than what it was last year before we had this set up. Just two weeks ago, at the iae, the board of governors had gone 25 to two calling on iran to open access to suspicious Nuclear Sites and answer questions from the iae. We are working with the e3 and leading, as we do, diplomatic isolation from iran and to hold them to a higher standard, a standard of a normal nation. Secretary pompeo claims this. We want iran to behave like a normal nation, not like a revolutionary cause. I hear that repeated as i have been around the region. This is what people are saying. Why cant iran be normal and be at peace with the sanctions . Theyre constantly at war. Iran loves to be the arsonists and the firemen. We do not allow them to perpetuate that fiction. Heres another key thing and i think this is something that is really, you will take all the people that work on iran and put them into a room, you could probably divide them over this question. We see iranian aggression and we decide to stand up to it. The other side of the room sees iranian aggression and worries that if we stand up to it, it will force iran into a corner and they will then commit even greater acts of terrorism. Well, if you follow that second theory of the case, you are playing by irans rules. As i said, the hallmark of this regime is Foreign Policy. Its to intimidate people into accepting the usual level of violence for fear of something worse. If you play by those rules, iran winds. The house always winds. So, we are saying to iran, its over. You are not going to be running an expansionist evolutionary Foreign Policy that will. We are going to hit back harder than you hit us. The president has taken up with syria and iraq and into the mining field, we have collapsed irans economy. Now they are managing economic collapse and they do not have the support of their own people. So, we have been very pleased with the policy we have run. I think the press overstates a lot of our differences. They like to highlight the transatlantic ribbed over the Iran Nuclear Deal. Russia, china to e3, iran has a nuclear weapon, they do not like that iran keeps tracking its neighbors, they condemned the Ballistic Missile testing in the space launch vehicles. We have the same predecessor. Nobody wants iran to achieve its have demonic ambitions in the least and introduce massive violence. Could you, i want to turn to you elliott, but just because this is directly related, can you talk a little bit about potential cracks in this diplomatic coalition, visavis the expiration of the arms embargo in october and the back and forth that we have been having with partners over that . Maybe just a minute on explaining what that ours embargo is and what that actually means in terms of if it expires. The mistakes of the Iran Nuclear Deal is that, in your five, which we are in your five, the un arms embargo that has been in place for 13 years the state has put that in. I think the theory of the case at the time was that this administration does not get distracted over what we think is kind of a parlor game. Empowering sidelines and extremists. They can get as many elections as they want, the moment after the election, theres another guy in charge. He has a bunch of councils that are under elected and they control the country. For the west, and that is how they set it up, it has all the kind of features that the western style government, but the back office is run by the militants. The arms embargo is about to inspire expire. Iran has been engaging in all sorts of terrorism around the region and beyond, so there is no National Security to allow this arms embargo to expire. We have circulated a resolution in the Un Security Council that as extended a. Until we see a change in pardon and change in behavior. We circulated this, we hope that it will expire on october 18th, we need to get it renewed before then. I was in the region. You have yemen, saudi, the uae, iran and israel all publicly calling on america to extend the un arms embargo. That is what we hope to do. If we are blocked by any country, we have other available options to extend. By the way, the last thing i will say, nadia, the arms embargo, in october, iran will be freely able to purchase fighter jets, tack helicopters, submarines, missiles up to 300 kilometers and large artillery systems. Then, that is the first expiration date. In 2023, all of the missile restrictions expire and iran will be free to buy and sell missiles. They can buy them, pirate the technology, make a home grown industry and then move it over to their country. It will set off in arms race. Do they have the Financial Resources to do all of that . Is that a consideration . Or they would find a way . Thanks to our pressure, they certainly dont. They will not be able to write the check that they had hoped to. Look, this is a government that has spent ten billion dollars in syria since 2013. Thats real money. They will find a way. That is real money. So, they do not have that money like they used to. We enforce them to choose between guns and damascus, or rhetoric and iran. They ought to be on that. The arms embargo is not going to expire. We will make sure that it continues one way or the other. This regime does not have the money that used to spend, that it wants to spend on buying and selling weapons. Thank you. Elliott, any comment . Yes, i will just jump in. To what they do with the arms embargo expires and want to buy more arms, part of the answer is cell more arms. To anybody who would buy, and that probably includes rogue regimes around the world, any actors who have cash. One of the actors who has cash, in this case is maduro. There has been an arms relationship going back to chavez years 20 years ago. At one point, i think they tried to build a bullet factory, actually. Mostly small arms, obviously. But that is something we watch very fearfully because iran does manufacture a number of things that, in theory, could sell or it could buy, for example jets and then, with some kind of markup, sell them to venezuela. We are getting back to the human missile crisis. There are certain things that the National Security interest in the United States simply will not permit in this hemisphere and im sure that this administration, i would hope any administration, would place really significant limits on the kind of arms that iran can ship to the western hemisphere. Thank you elliott there are two areas that i would like to talk about before we, as the program ends one, you both mentioned it comment being the people in those countries. Right . And the differences between the people and the regimes. Are there ways that the United States can communicate more effectively with those people in ways that you can talk about . I know that for years, we were talking about Public Diplomacy as a country, the radios are mechanisms for using those sets of instruments more effectively. So, elliott, you have been involved in this area for a long time. Can you comment a little bit about that . It seems to be a pretty important issue. It is an important issue. I have actually, even this week, i have been thinking about that question. There is the voa, of course. There is radio florida for iran. We do not have Something Like that for venezuela i have been asking myself whether we should. Of course, you know, when the cold war started, the High Technology that we were using was a shortwave radio and fax machines. Now, the internet is critical because in venezuela, the regime has completely control over the broadcast mass media. Television, for example. And, parts of the internet, in the sense that, in a National Assembly, juan guaido would give a speech and they would take down the ability of the National Assembly page to be seen in venezuela. So, we need, obviously, to think hard about vp ends and various ways that we can help venezuelans access the internet. You then have the other problems, like unstable electricity, unstable internet connections. You know, this is the new world that we are working in. Even in this new world, radio remains important. It is something that i think in the context of venezuela, we are going to be thinking about more thats good. Actually, i read the iranians also have their own, they actually have a station focused on venezuela yes. Thats always ironic. I mean some of these stations in essence do not get a very wide view. That is one of the things that we need to do to make sure that anything we do does reach a wide audience in venezuela thank you elliott. Brian, the iranian people, that has been a longstanding subject in the United States. Can you comment a little bit as well . One of the things that ive been very proud of that i understood with the iranian people, in 2009, the United States worked with the regime in the green revolution the first protest we had in this administration was december of 2017. We were there very quickly. In january 2018 as well. Attending to the iranian people. The president , when he went to iran for his first general assembly, spoke directly to the people. He said longest suffering victims of the Iranian Regime are the iranian people. We had not really spoken up for them. We have, here at the state department, we have five social media platforms that are pushing out context every day. This does not cover it, because farsi is a bit different, but we have translators there, so i put out a lot of content on a very regular basis, speaking directly to iranian people we see the regime cracking down on protesters or someone gets murdered, i will do a segment talking about it. When you, one of the things when people are victims of oppression, they really, especially the family members, they want to hear the name of their loved one who was murdered. They want to hear it said. Out loud by the international community. We try to speak up and to expose these things. The regime would like all of this to happen in silence. They took down the internet november because the regime did not want to show the world its beating heart, which is to oppress its people violently, so they turned off the internet. That probably cost their economy 700 Million Dollars. Whenever they shut down the internet, it is not cost free. They live in an age of ecommerce. That can only go for so long. They look for ways to communicate directly with these people. We do the same thing, through our different platforms. The president has tweeted in farsi many times. He is the first president to tweet in farsi. I think his first tweet wrote a record of all tweets in farsi for the most views we know that we are connecting in a very real way with the iranian people. But, they see a president that wants to invest in the American People and they want the same thing in their country and they very much like the fact that the president stands up for its people. This regime claims to power on the basis of force, not on consent from the government. We want reelection. Thank you, brian. Obviously we cannot have this conversation without talking about covid, the pandemic, the human tragedy and especially enclosed countries, like venezuela. To understand the impact that it is having on the people is probably even more difficult. Has the United States reached out in a humanitarian way . What do we think about how this will affect the nature of the regimes, their strengths . Can you comment a little bit about that elliott and then brian . Yes. Well. The impact is horrendous. We see this in china, we see it in iran, we see it in venezuela. It is worsening closed society in venezuela, journalist and doctors have been jailed for speaking out honestly about what is going on. We know that the number of cases is significantly higher than what the maduro regime announces. We do not know the exact number. Again, they are suppressing the information. What we are trying to do is to help the people. We are working with and through juan guaido, helping him access some funds overseas to give to various medical agencies. The largest single donor in the United States. To give you an idea of the comparison of what were doing in what the regime has done. The largest donor of venezuela, the regime to this day forbids the World Food Programme from operating in venezuela because the regime wants to be the one that gives four venezuelans food and it places a political test before they can get the food secondly, we know from indictments and sanctions, they steal money from the food program for the four they do not want a competition from the world food program. You have a regime that is feeding off the carcass of the venezuelan economy. And, you have the United States having now given about, i believe up to about 850 Million Dollars in aid to venezuelans who are migrants, refugees or living inside venezuela. Thank you elliott. Brian, what about covid and iran . As i listened to elliott, it is just remarkable how much commonality there is among mafia regimes. Democracies have so much variety an interest. There is something that is very you uniform about mafia governments. Everything elliott described from venezuela applies equally to how the Iranian Regime has handled covid. Very early on, we had our own challenges here. We offered humanitarian assistance. I offered it directly, i know that other channels and the executive branch offered it directly within hours, im not talking about they thought this over. They just said no. Things and im proud of as an american is that the United States is the largest provider of humanitarian assistance in the world. In the narrow case of iran, every time theres a Natural Disaster or any sort of crisis in iran over the last 41 years, we are always the first out of the gate to offer assistance to iran and the people. The regime typically rejects it because they do not want iranian people to think well of the United States. They thing this regime knew it had a crisis. You watch the bbc documentary and it showed that we are 175 flights between iran and china. While they were telling the world they were cutting back on flights, they were in fact running at full speed. That caused an investigation from china to iran of the virus. The regime did nothing to stop it spread. In fact, they held the elections, they should not have held the elections. They also did not stop people from going to religious sites. Its hugely that way. Then, if you talk to countries in the region, taking patient zero, and iranian who came to places like lebanon and iraq and other countries. Not only does the Iranian Regime export sectarian ideology, it also exports the coronavirus. Another gift that keeps on giving from this regime is destabilizing its neighbors of ideological grounds and destabilizing them as of the Health Crisis so, anytime you see a number on the statistics in iran, you should probably say its anywhere between five and ten x higher. Same thing with venezuela. They are closed societies, theyre not honest about it. That lack of transparency has a consequence of infecting a lot more people, increasing the mortality rate and spreading it around the region. I do not know how venezuela has spread it in the region, but iran has been the epicenter of corona. That is in the middle east because of mismanagement. Thank you for that impressing news. As we come to a close, i want to give both of you in opportunity to maybe comment on something that i have not asked we did not talk specifically about the iranian fuel shipments to venezuela, efforts to disrupt them. Maybe you want to Say Something about that. Maybe something about where we hope to be in the next six months. Where would we like to be in terms of where you are sitting and what we hope for. I will turn to you, elliott, to make some final comments and then to brian. Well, it is easy to say we would like to see a restoration of democracy for the venezuelan people. We like to see them getting what they want. We will remain faithful to that cause. We will call the elections that are now planned for december 6th, that they are clearly planning for them to be we will not recognize the outcome of that fraudulent election. I guess i close on saying that we are all still going to work very hard, we are working very hard to maintain this International Coalition of democracies. That realizes that it is really important not to let what is happening in venezuela spread ideologically. Latin america went through a long period of dictatorships and came out of it. The last thing that latin american democracy is that surrounded venezuela. One, is to see in central america, the caribbean or south america, you see the venezuelan model, which is really a criminal model. A regime that just steals money and works with drug traffickers, spreading around the region we will work with venezuelas neighbors and with democracies, not only in the region, but all over the world, to try to help venezuelans restore the democracy that they once had. We talked about the years when venezuela, when latin america was mostly dictatorships. Those years, sixties, seventies, venezuela was the richest country and it was one of the rare democracies. It is really quite tragic to see what has happened there now. Thank you elliott. Brian . As i was listening to elliott, again, looking at the similarities, the future of iran will not be decided by the United States. It will be decided by the iranian people. We very much want them to have a representative government. Over the last 100 years in iran, the iranian people have made strides in that direction. The last 41 years will be remembered as 41 years of loss. And, we have, the United States has National Security objectives to work on the advanced. As elie talked about, containing and enforcing any of the spread of maduro to the region, infecting the region with that kind of failed governments model. We came into office, the regime bragging about the capitals in the region. We very much want to see the iranian model rejected. We are very pleased that it is under a lot of duress, a lot of strain, it is being rejected in a lot of key places that only few years ago, they took it for granted. We would like to see iranian, islamic extremism, we do not want to see that contagion to spread. The United States has done a lot to counter shia and extremism, whether it is in the form of irans revolutionary government or our work against allocator and isis. That is where our mission is set. That will continue. When we came into office, we thought it was very clear to reverse a lot of the gains that iran has made in the years prior to us coming into office. I think we have done that. The regime right now is playing a waiting game. They will see what happens in november. They are not used to being told no this president has said no to their expansionism, their sectarian violence, their missile proliferation, their hostage taking. That is the right policy. We have put in place a ton of effort to achieve, ultimately a new agreement with iran that will address the Nuclear Missile threat, regional aggression and the hostage taking. I think we are positioned very well for that kind of outcome. Has that materialized . We have really dented this regime in terms of its power rejection and the money that would be otherwise spent on its mission set. We have made their foreign possible policy prohibitively expensive and we are very successful of that. We will see, we will keep executing our policy as it is. We will keep trying to contain their influence, just as elliott was saying in venezuela. In terms, you mentioned nadia, about the tankers. There were nine tankers that moved into venezuela and we were able to disrupt four of those shipments. I think the Maritime Community knows that if you get a phone call to move fuel the venezuela, that is an offer you should not accept. Five tankers that did not make their way to venezuela, all the captains were strengthened and so they are going to face a very tough future economically because they said yes to that offer. So we will continue to sanction any activity and really dry up the Maritime Community that is available to iran to move this stuff. We have taken all of irans tankers. They have the goal, obviously to get a lot of fuel to maduro and they are getting paid for. That is an increasingly big challenge they face because of the work that elliott has done. Thank you brian. Thanks elliott. I appreciated the opportunity to speak with both of you, to learn more. There is actually not always a lot being written about this set of issues that we talked about. It is here and there. I definitely learned a lot and i look forward to seeing you both again. One day, hopefully in person in the future. I am good with that. Thank you very much. Stay well everyone and thank you for those of you listening in. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. Coming up, remarks from Florida Republican senator marco rubio on the u. S. Response to the coronavirus. He will speak at a Virtual Event held by Stanford University and the hoover institution. See it live at 4 30 pm eastern on cspan three. And, after that, President Trump holds a News Conference with reporters at the white house. Watch the president s comments live at 5 30 pm eastern, also here on cspan three. Live coverage of two key hearings next week. On monday, amazons jeff bezos, facebooks mark zuckerberg, some darpa chai of google and apples tim cook appear before the house judiciary subcommittee on antitrust commercial and Administrative Law as they examine dominance of Online Platforms and market power. Live coverage begins monday at noon eastern on cspan to. And, on tuesday, u. S. Attorney general william barr appears before the house judiciary committees general oversight of the Justice Department hearing. Watch live hearing coverage monday on cspan to. And tuesday on cspan. Watch any time on cspan. Org, or listen on the go with the free cspan radio app. We will go live now to the capitol hill where the senate on Foreign Relations committee where the u. S. Is holding a hearing on u. S. Relations with china