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The other point that the President was making is the United States has longstanding interests in the Persian Gulf. And you can go back and read statements all the way back to Truman or Carter about America's ability and willingness to defend its interest in the Palestinian Government and those of our allies. And so you know, some of the work that we're doing on helping our friends in the region improve their security capability, defensive security capability, is very important also to counter Iranian assertiveness.
Q: Can you talk just a little bit about — we raided an Iranian consulate or maybe it was an Interests Section in —
A: No, no. We — it was not.
Q: It was not. OK, that was my question (inaudible) what it was.
A: It was not a consulate.
Q: What would you call it?
A: All that I care is it wasn't a consulate. (Laughter.)
Q: And it would matter.
A: Yeah.
Q: Well — which suggested, and it's hard for us to see this, that this is — that would be part of a network of Iranian infiltration into Iraq for the purposes of either stabilizing or weapons —
A: I think that's it.
Q: Is that what we were after here when you talk about networks?
A: I think that's a fair assumption.
Q: And this was in the north, I think, or maybe.
A: That was in the north.
Q: So this suggested that it's not just in one part of the country.
A: I think it's not just in one part of the country.
Q: And is that also increased in your understanding over the last — since the — in the last couple of months? Is this — it's actually. It sounds like we're worried about —
A: I think it's been there and it's been increasing for a while, but we've just been more active.
Q: You've just been more active.
Q: I want to follow up with one thing on that line because I think another thing that people might not understand is whatever else Americans might think of Iran, they'd say well, this is just Iran. I mean, are we — and they want to be a regional power in the area and they obviously have some tools to do that and they're getting more. But are we increasing their stature by making them into a bogeyman? I sometimes think their rhetoric suggests to people that, you know, well, they weren't that big a deal, but we sure are making them one? How do you balance that and is that a fair criticism do you think?
A: Yeah. We don't want them to become the kind of regional — the kind of regional challenge that they could become. They're a pretty bad regional already. But over time, if they're — you know, their arms and legs, Hizballah, even now links into Hamas, the ability to have nefarious intellects in Iraq. They're going to have influence in on Iraq — Iraq's neighbors. That's not (inaudible.) But the kind of influence that destabilizing their and their ability to marry that with a nuclear weapon suggests to me that it's quite a big problem, but you can — we still have time, I think to arrest these developments. It means rallying those states that are concerned about it. It means being very tough on the nuclear issue. Some of the financial measures that we are engaged in, which are collateral to the Chapter 7 resolution I think are having an affect. So you need to put that policy in place.
But a piece of this is not very often I think seen, as we're also reaching out to the Iranian people. This is a great culture. The tragedy is there should be relations between the United States and Iran. It's a great culture, it's a great people. But the — it's not possible with this regime clearly, but we have a group of wrestlers from the United States going to Iran in a couple days. We've had medical personnel from Iran here. They went to the CDC and, you know, and places like that. So we're trying to reach out to the Iranian people, too, and to keep open the hope of the Iranian people for a democratic future.