Live already. So that's amazing. Yeah. Take. Thanks for having me. This is great.
Not at all. Well, as you can imagine, I have a lot of questions.
I can imagine. There's so much going on at the moment.
So, I think we'll just get right to it if that's okay with you.
So, Secretary General, thank you very much for talking to Reuters. If I could begin by asking you how seriously, from a NATO point of view, you view yesterday's incident involving Turkey, the targeting of a NATO member by an Iranian ballistic missile.
Well, we clearly condemn it. As you know, NATO air missile defense was able to take it out. So, that was very important. It also shows you, I think, clear evidence that with a 360-degree approach, we will defend every inch of NATO territory. Our military are constantly on it, but of course, this was serious and absolutely condemnable.
Can you share any more details about the incident? Do you know what the intended target was and who exactly fired the missile?
I'm afraid I cannot do that in this open interview. But it was clearly a serious incident.
And how big is the risk that an incident like this draws all of NATO into the conflict? That Iran or one of its proxies attacks a NATO ally, that ally invokes Article 5, and NATO suddenly then is at war with Iran.
Well, Article 5, I think, is not in order here. Nobody's talking about Article 5. And the most important thing is that our adversaries have seen yesterday that NATO is so strong and so vigilant, and even more vigilant if possible since Saturday because of the situation, of course, in the Middle East. So they see and know and sense that our military are on this.
But just to follow up on that question of the risk that this conflict poses. You've obviously praised President Trump. You think that what he's doing is correct, he and the Israelis. But by the same token, it is a major conflict on NATO's doorstep. What risks does it pose for the alliance and what steps are you taking to mitigate those?
But let's also think about the risks if the president would not have done this. We know that Iran was close to getting its hands on a nuclear capability, a missile capability which would be a threat not only to the Middle East and of course to Israel and potentially it would be life-threatening to Israel, but also a threat to Europe. I've seen in my own country where members of the Iranian diaspora are constantly under threat from the regime in Tehran. So in that sense, I think, and I see this widespread in Europe and with allies, that we support the president in taking out that capability as the Americans were able to do, and they're working on that as we know. But of course, there are always downsides in the sense that you have to be sure that you defend every inch of NATO territory as we are doing.
Do you have a clear idea of the US and Israel's desired end state here? Because obviously we've seen with other conflicts in the region, they resulted in instability that posed security risks for Europe. So, do you have a clear idea of the end state here? And how sure can you be that it won't pose new security risks for Europe?
Well, obviously we are in the early stages of this campaign. We are now day four, day five since last Saturday and it will be difficult to assess exactly how this will end in the coming weeks. But I think there is widespread acknowledgement and agreement that at least we have to be sure that going forward, Iran, this republic, is not able again to pose a death threat to its neighbors, to Israel, the Middle East, to Europe, but also through its terrorist activities, exporting chaos, exporting terrorism basically to the whole world and particularly again to the free world, the Western world and to the Middle East. So that's the minimum I think we all agree upon.
But are you confident there is a plan to actually do that? This is a country of 90 million people. There's talk now of arming the Kurds, a potential civil conflict. I mean, do you see clear ideas of how this is meant to end and how you get to stability?
Well, clearly NATO is not itself involved here. NATO allies are providing key enabling support. What we see here is that NATO in that sense is also this power projection platform for the United States, because without European allies, the US would have found it very difficult to launch this campaign against Iran. Because we see, you've heard the German Chancellor in the Oval Office and so many others making sure that the US can make use of these key enablers. But we are, other than that, not directly involved. But from my conversations with senior American military and political leaders, it's my absolute sense that they know what they are doing.
