Richard Haass: We’ve Got to Take Away Iran’s Threat to the Region

EXCERPT:

HAASS: "So one of the things, it’s going to take time, but we work with Ukraine and others, and we get defenses against drones. Who did Saudis sign a deal with? Ukraine. Why? They have the most advanced drone defenses. What we ought to have is a serious strategy for — we’re not going to do it overnight. But again, we’ve got to take away Iran’s threat to the region. That’s going to take some time. It’s going to take anti-missile systems like Patriots. We've got to produce more of them, both for Ukraine, as well as for the region. Drone protections, counterterrorism. We need a serious strategy. So, we take Iran has two principal pieces of leverage: to stop the Strait, to control the Strait and to attack the neighbors. We have to have a long-term strategy to deal with those, and we can’t take our eye off the ball. The biggest ball may be Iran’s nuclear program. And the last I checked, it’s nine. The MOU simply says we have to have talks about it and we need a policy for that. So, we’re not going to solve this in a day. And quite honestly, you know, if the goal is to get the global and U.S. economy on track, we may have to live with some type of arrangement with Iran in the Strait. You know, so we’ll have it open or we’ll go to Iran open. I argued for four months ago, open for all or closed to all. We go back to our basic deal. I think that's a reasonable policy."