The United States is imposing sanctions on individuals and companies working to advance Iran's ballistic missile program, and we are going to remain vigilant about it. We're not going to waver in the defense of our security or that of our allies and partners.
Iran's Supreme Court has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. President [Hassan] Rouhani has indicated Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. I've made clear that we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy in the context of Iran meeting its obligations.
We have a legal system, and this is not something that happens all the time. We have capital punishment. America has capital punishment. Iran has capital punishment. Iran hangs people and leaves their bodies hanging on cranes. Iran put to death more than a thousand people last year. I don't see EU reporting on it.
Everything we've done has been designed to make sure that we address that number one priority. That's what the sanctions regime was all about. That's how we were able to mobilize the international community, including some folks that we are not particularly close to, to abide by these sanctions. That's how these crippling sanctions came about, was because we [USA] were able to gain global consensus that Iran having a nuclear weapon would be a problem for everybody.
Now that Iran's actions have been verified, it can begin to receive relief from certain nuclear sanctions and gain access to its own money that had been frozen.
The North Korean regime remains one of the world's leading proliferator of missile technology, including transfers to Iran and Syria. The transfer of nuclear weapons or material by North Korea to states or non-state entities would be considered a grave threat to the United States, and we would hold North Korea fully accountable of the consequences of such action.
We have a historic opportunity to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons in Iran, and to do so peacefully, with the international community firmly behind us. We should seize that chance.
We [USA] don't have diplomatic leverage to eliminate every vestige of a peaceful nuclear program in Iran. What we do have the leverage to do is to make sure that they don't have a weapon.
If you're saying that Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu got fired up, he's been fired up repeatedly during the course of my presidency, around the Iran deal and around our consistent objection to settlements.
Of course we [with Angela Merkel] discussed our commitment to meeting shared security challenges from countering cyber threats to ensuring that Iran continues to live up to the terms of the Iran nuclear deal.
When al-Qaeda was on the run from Afghanistan crossing through Iran, some were arrested and they are imprisoned. Some of them are charged with some actions in Iran.
We all know a lot of people who died in 9/11, the World Trade Center. A lot of money funding that mission is directly tied - from the 9/11 Commission, directly tied to Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas.
Essentially, Iran was sanctioned because of what had happened at Fordow, its unwillingness to comply with previous U.N. security resolutions about their nuclear program, and as part of the package of sanctions that was slapped on them, the issue of arms and ballistic missiles were included.
The ecological movement is concerned about this, and this is in here, where everything is public. In Iran, where everything is covert, we have no firsthand information.
Today, as a result of a miraculous set of circumstances, Iran is going to get between $50 to $55 billion in oil revenue, which is unheard of in the history of the revolution.