I'm Margaret Brennan in Washington and this week on Face the Nation, the consequences of the war in Iran are increasingly reverberating across the globe. The world's oil supply is under intensifying pressure as Iran threatens to blow up tankers in the Strait of Hormuz. And the US strikes back at the heart of Iran's critical oil hub. President Trump is now asking US allies to send warships to the region to help keep the strait open as Tehran doubles down on its blockade. We'll get the latest from Iran's foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi. Meanwhile, the pain from the oil supply shock is beginning to hit Americans at the gas pump. We'll ask President Trump's top economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, what the administration can do to lower energy prices. The top Democrat on the intelligence committee, Senator Mark Warner and Texas Republican Congressman Dan Crenshaw will be here as well. Then, three violent attacks in the US last week against the backdrop of global conflict. How safe are we in the homeland? We'll get analysis from our panel of experts. It's all just ahead on Face the Nation.
Good morning and welcome to Face the Nation. This morning, the Israel Defense Forces say they've launched a new wave of strikes in Iran. While Iranian state media says Iranian forces have fired back at Israeli and American targets, the number of US casualties is now at 13 with the Department of Defense identifying the six service members killed last week when their military refueling aircraft crashed in Iraq. Our senior national security correspondent Charlie D'Agata has the latest from Tel Aviv.
Among the six air crew now identified in the crash of the refueler, Tech Sergeant Tyler Simmons. Sergeant Simmons was a boom operator. This video showing him refueling a fighter jet mid-flight. Now, thousands more US sailors are heading to the region equipped for close combat on sea or land. The increased firepower comes as an Iranian-backed militant group in Iraq struck the US embassy compound, prompting officials to urge US citizens to leave the country as soon as possible. Even as President Trump claimed to have totally decimated Iranian military targets on Kharg Island, a crucial oil hub, Iran's grip on the Strait of Hormuz has crippled at least 16 oil tankers and other vessels to the point where President Trump has even asked China to send warships. While his administration claims US and Israeli forces have neutralized most of Iran's military, yet in an act of defiance, Iran's president and other senior officials were seen on the streets taking part in open air rallies earlier this week. Here on the streets of Israel, there's been a sharp increase in the amount of rocket and missile attacks from Iran and its proxy Hezbollah in the past 24 hours. They've already begun cleanup of a strike here in Tel Aviv just this morning. Margaret.
That's Charlie D'Agata in Tel Aviv. We turn now to the foreign minister of Iran, Abbas Araghchi. Good evening to you, sir.
Well, good evening to you. Thank you for having me for the second time.
Yes. And they are extraordinary times. Minister, President Trump said this weekend he is not ready to make a deal with Iran because the terms aren't good enough yet. His administration is saying this war could last another three and a half weeks or so. Has Iran asked for a ceasefire?
No, we never asked for a ceasefire and we have never asked even for negotiation. We are ready to defend ourselves as long as it takes and this is what we have done so far and we continue to do that until President Trump comes to the point that this is an illegal war with no victory and people are being killed only because President Trump wants to have fun. This is what he has said.
Yes. This is what he said that they are sinking ships and targeting different places because it is fun. And the secretary of war has said that there is no mercy. And this is actually a war crime. Even saying that is a war crime. So this is a war of choice by President Trump and the United States and we are going to continue our self-defense.
Well, that may be your position, but sir, this is a war of survival for your government. Minister, don't you have to negotiate and reach out either directly or through a third party?
No, it's not a war of survival. We are stable and strong enough. We are only defending our people from this act of aggression and we don't see any reason why we should talk with Americans because we were talking with them when they decided to attack us and that was for the second time. There is no good experience talking with Americans. We were talking. So why they decided to attack us? So what is good if we go back to talk once again?
Well, I want to come back to that in just a moment. You're referring to the diplomacy with President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and his envoy Steve Witkoff. Just to continue on this, Iran is sending its drones and its missiles into your neighboring countries, American allies throughout the Gulf. Before the war, your government traded with them. You had relations with them. If your government survives this conflict, how do you go back to doing business with countries you're sending drones into and hitting civilian targets?
Well, obviously these are the countries who have given their soil to American forces to attack us. So what can we do? We just sit and watch that American forces are attacking us from their soil.
But your drones are going into civilian areas and hitting plants and hotels and civilians.
No. No. No. This is not the fact. We are only targeting American assets, American installations, American military bases. Everything belongs to Americans and this is a fact that they are using their soil. Just there are many examples. Just yesterday they attacked our islands using high artillery rockets which are low-range rockets and they used the territory of UAE to attack us. Some a week ago, three F-15 jet fighters were shot down apparently by friendly fire in Kuwait. But nobody asked what they were doing in Kuwait. They were using Kuwait and airspace of a friendly country to attack us. So it is obvious we cannot just remain.
Well, so many of these countries are part of CENTCOM. But the point is that it's going to hurt your country in the long term. But when we talk about the Strait of Hormuz, which is such an important transit point for global trade. You have said it is closed to Israel and it's closed to the United States. The Financial Times is reporting that European diplomats from France and Italy are talking to your government about trying to get safe passage for their ships. Are you open to restarting oil and gas vessels going through there?
Well, we are open to countries who want to talk to us about the safe passage of their vessels.
You are negotiating with France and Italy.
Well, I cannot mention any country in particular, but we have been approached by a number of countries who want to have a safe passage for their vessels and this is up to our military to decide and they have already decided to let a group of vessels belonging to different countries to pass in a safe and secure manner. So we provide them security to pass because we have not closed this strait. They are not coming themselves because of the insecurity which is there because of the aggression by the US.
I want to ask you again about the negotiations. Iran has declared it has 440 kilos or so of nuclear material. Where is that material now? Who has custody of it?
Well, we have not declared. This is verified and declared by the agency. This is not a secret. The agency has said in its many reports the exact amount of our enriched nuclear material.
Yes. So where is it now? Who has custody of it?
So they are under the rubbles. Our nuclear facilities were attacked and everything is under the rubbles. Of course, there is the possibility to retrieve them but under the supervision of the agency. If one day we come to the conclusion to do that it would be under the supervision of the agency but for the time being we have no program, we have no plan to recover them from under the rubbles.
Am I understanding you here because I know that you said 48 hours before the US strikes happened you had personally offered to President Trump's negotiators to take that 440 kilo amount of 60% enriched material and to dilute it. You said Iran was ready to give that material away. This was in the deal that was also presented to Vice President Vance by Oman today. Is Iran still willing to let go of that enriched uranium?
Well, that was one of the elements of a deal that we were negotiating with our American interlocutors. That element dealt with the question of Iran's 60% enriched material and I said I offered actually that we are ready to dilute those enriched material or down blend them as they say into lower percentage. So that was a big offer, a big concession in order to prove that Iran has never wanted nuclear weapons and would never want them.
Are you willing to give that up?
Well, there is nothing on the table right now. Everything depends on the future. If anytime in the future we decide to enter into negotiation with the US or other interlocutors, we may decide what to put on the table. For the time being nothing is on the table.
There are at least four Americans being held at Evin Prison that we know of, including a journalist Reza Vali and Cameron Hekmati, a 61-year-old man. What is the status of those Americans? Are they safe?
Well, if the US and Israel do not attack our prisons, I guess they are safe.
Foreign minister, we are running out of time and I can see the internet is going in and out here. I just do want to point out you're speaking to us via Zoom. The Iranian people don't have open internet access, but you do. Why?
Well, I'm the because I'm the voice of Iranians and I have to defend their right. So this is why I have access to internet to just have our voice being heard by the international community. But internet is closed because of the security reasons because we are under attack. We are under aggression and we have to do everything to protect our people. In any country there are urgent measures taken for the sake of war.
Minister, I'm glad the uplink worked to talk to you right now. We thank you for your time this morning. Face the Nation will be back in a minute. Stay with us.
We go now to President Trump's top economic adviser Kevin Hassett. Good morning to you.
The IDF spokesperson said this morning that Israel's combat operations will go through the beginning of April. Is that also the US timeline? And if so, how much will this conflict cost the economy if it goes on another three and a half weeks?
Right. Well, one of the things that we've been briefed on almost every day is what's going on and what the president's being briefed on with regard to the Iran war. And as of yesterday, the message was that the defense department of war believed that it would take four to six weeks to complete this mission and that we're ahead of schedule. And so we're a couple of weeks in and I think that should give you some clarity about when we expect that the president will decide that we've achieved his objectives. The other thing I can say is that you can also look at futures markets which are interesting because you've cited over and over the spot price of gasoline which of course is affected right now by the disruption of the strait. But if you look at the futures prices they're expecting a rapid, rapid end to this situation and much, much lower prices. In fact, I don't think I've seen a sort of future price path with as steep a decline in all my years watching futures.
Well, we'll talk about the oil trade later on in the program as those markets prepare to open later today, but the International Energy Agency called this the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market. So, I'm not sure how much past charts are a future indicator here, but the president is calling on other countries now to send ships to help protect the Strait of Hormuz. You just heard Iran's foreign minister saying Tehran has been approached by other countries about negotiating their way through the strait. If that kind of negotiation happens, are Americans just going to get cut out here?
Well, first of all, you have to understand that America is not going to have its economy harmed by what the Iranians are doing. The bottom line is that in the 70s we didn't produce much oil, but now we do. And so America's in a very strong position. They think that they're going to harm the US economy and get President Trump to back down. There couldn't be anything that was a stupider thing to say. Because the bottom line is that our economy has got all this momentum in the world and we've got lots and lots of oil. We have lots of trading partners that are more on the hook from imported oil from these guys. And as we can see, it's completely unacceptable that a government that would, you know, murder 40,000 of their people just a few months ago would be blackmailing countries to let stuff through. President Trump thinks that is unacceptable and for the global economy, we need to fix it and we're going to fix it fast.
Okay. It is a global market, but I take your point. There is supply, of course, there's refining, there's other interruptions to the ability to access oil and gas, but gas prices themselves are up more than 20% since this conflict has begun. Jet fuel prices are leading airlines to raise ticket prices quickly. That's not my opinion. That's the United Airlines CEO who just said that. The American Farm Bureau warned of supply chain shocks when we already have record high input prices. So can you give us some kind of projection here on how this will impact consumer prices and for how long?
For sure. For sure. And I want you to know that this is something that the government has been studying for decades. And even myself when I first came in as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers, one of the first assignments I got from General Mattis was to study what happens if there are oil disruptions. And so we know how to minimize the impact of this disruption. Now, you can't make it completely go away, but you can minimize it. And so we're increasing the amount of permits that we're giving to Venezuela. We're getting new sources of fertilizer from Morocco and from Venezuela and other places to make sure that our farmers have the fertilizer they need. And we're even thinking ahead about the jet fuel problem, which is really mostly a problem for jet fuel coming from Asia. And we've been in discussions to make it easier for foreign ships to go from the Gulf of America over to the West Coast to make sure that we don't have a disruption from jet fuel as well. And so we are looking at every scenario and we've got a plan for each scenario.
Okay. Are you going to trigger those things and make them operational or are you just looking at them and how do you prevent food prices from also going up?
Right. Well, the big problem right now would be energy prices and we're watching and monitoring closely. We're looking at things every day and seeing how quickly we progress. The bottom line is again that the reason why futures markets for oil are dropping down towards 60 and even below 50 in the long run is that we expect that if Iran stops being this disruptive terrorist force in the Middle East that there will be a boom in oil production and industrial production. But think about the harm that this evil government has done to their own people. Back in the 70s before the revolution Iran was the 70th largest economy in the world. Now it's something like the 50th.
No one's going to defend the regime's human rights record.
But the point is that I wanted to just say that the countries around them, they also suffer from the risk of having them go nuts and attack them. And so we expect that the global economy is going to have a big positive shock as soon as this is over. And we're still being briefed that it would be four to six weeks from the beginning and that we're ahead of schedule.
A big positive shock. Four to six weeks. So, this is an April 9th scenario you're talking about. You're going to see some kind of.
The president will decide. The president will decide if they no longer have the capability of blackmailing us and harming our neighbors. And once he decides that, he'll call an end to the war.
That's a pretty broad definition.
Well, we've destroyed their navy. We've destroyed their air force. And so on. So I think we're well on the way.
Well, tell me how much is this war going to cost? Because I know the Pentagon briefed it's going to be about 11.3 billion. Do you need to ask Congress for more money to pay for what you're doing?
I think right now we've got what we need. Whether we have to go back to Congress for more is something that I think that Russ and OMB will look into, but the latest number you said 11.3. The latest number I was briefed on was 12. And so it's consistent. So this is something that we've got the weapons that we've already got in place to do this. And so we're not necessarily going to need any kind of supplemental.
More than that was spent just the first week of the war. You know that it was over 5 billion just in munitions.
Are you your solid number 12 billion? 12 billion for six weeks of war.
No, I'm sorry. The 12 billion was what I was briefed has been spent so far.
