We speak to Bibi or speak to somebody in the Israeli government just as we speak to the Gulf Coast Coalition, our regional partners, pretty much every day, at least at some high level of our government.

No one could withdraw from another country's right of self-defense — Israel has the right to defend itself.

But fundamentally, the Israelis, just like everybody else, have to respect this peace process that is fundamentally good for them and good for the entire region.

We seem to be right on the cusp of a major breakthrough in the agreement, and then all of a sudden there's a major explosion that goes off in a civilian population center in Beirut, and a lot of people who have nothing to do with Hezbollah lose their lives.

That's not acceptable. That's the sort of thing that we've asked for closer coordination so that we ensure it doesn't happen.

The Obama nuclear deal allowed enrichment — ours will not.

The Obama deal allowed the accumulation of stockpiled weapons-grade material; ours is actually leading to the destruction of that stockpile of enriched materials.

The Obama deal gave them over a billion dollars of American money; this deal gives them zero dollars of American money.

They've made very concrete nuclear commitments. They have committed to the destruction of the highly enriched stockpile that they have in their possession.

All we've done is lift the blockade in the Strait — that would basically return it to where it was before the conflict.

Whether they're written down or spoken, this is why we structured the deal that we did, because we don't trust words. We trust action and we trust conduct.

Words don't matter ladies and gentleman, we're about verification.

Hypothetically, let's say two years down the road, they've done what we need to see on the nuclear program, and we release the sanctions, as the deal contemplates.

Then they decide they're going to start rebuilding the nuclear program.

Then, of course, those sanctions are going to come back on.

It's really kind of like a dial: as they dial up their good behavior, we can dial up the economic relief; if they dial down their good behavior, we can turn it off.

I don't think our public messaging has been chaotic.

What really happened here is that we did sign the MOU on Sunday. That locked in the terms of the deal.

What the Iranians came to us and said is, "We'd like not to release the text until Friday." I didn't really understand that. I wanted to get the text out immediately. But in order to be accommodating to them, we said, "Sure, okay, we'll wait until Friday."

And then what happened over Monday and Tuesday, while President Trump was at the G7, is that maybe foreign leaders were talking to the Iranians and encouraging them to do that.

We were definitely saying to them, "We understand your desire not to have the text out until Friday, but, you know, we live in a democratic system. The American people want to see the text of this deal. We would certainly like to get it out as soon as possible."

And so they came up with having their president sign it, our president sign it, and then just releasing the text as a signed document immediately at that point.

Right now, the Iranian nation is a nation of 94 million people. Their economy is in a freefall. They have sky-high inflation.

Fundamentally, about a trillion dollars of damage to their industrial base was caused over the last three months.

The idea that selling a few million dollars' worth of oil is going to fundamentally change Iran's economy is just not true.

On the frozen funds, the amount of money — I honestly don't know.

I've heard numbers north of 100 billion dollars. I've actually heard numbers north of 200 billion dollars.

Most of it is not in United States accounts; most of it's either in the Gulf, or in Europe, or somewhere else.

But I don't know the exact amount of money — it's a lot.

I've seen some reports — I don't know where this came from — that the Qataris had released billions of dollars and Iranian assets.

That's just not true. It would be impossible for the Qataris to do that without our buy-in, and certainly without us seeing it.

Our plan is to go to Switzerland. I don't know exactly when.

The way that we're setting up this technical negotiation is that obviously you're going to have the political leadership involved. We're going to have people on the ground actually driving the technical talks — the nuclear talks.

We think these technical negotiations are going to start sometime this weekend. That's still the plan. But that could change because it's not an easy country, Iran, to get out of, and so we're trying to figure out exactly when that's going to happen.

What matters is the number of launchers they have and, importantly, the teams on the ground that have the capacity to launch those missiles.

Their ability to launch missiles has been substantially degraded.

Is it zero? No. But it's substantially degraded.

We haven't abandoned that mission. We accomplished it.

The Gulf Arab allies and the Israelis faced the brunt of these missile attacks — each of them feels substantially safer today.

Praise Jesus. I am glad that the Pope has positive things to say about our MoU.

What we're saying is that we will withdraw troops to the pre-conflict level, we're not going to keep a couple of extra aircraft carrier groups over there.

The Iranians don't want that; frankly, we don't want that either.

What I would say to any of the critics is have a little bit of faith in the President of the United States.

The idea that he is going to strike a deal that's been bad for the American people, it's preposterous.

I saw the Axios report that says Netanyahu is fuming.

That's not reflective of the conversations that I've had with him.

Maybe he is saying something to somebody else that he is not saying to me.

You have seen people within Bibi's Cabinet who have come out and attacked the deal and, in some ways, very personally attacked the President of the United States

Donald J. Trump is the only head of state in the entire world who is sympathetic to the nation of Israel at this moment in time.

If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have anywhere left in the entire world.

Over the last three months, two-thirds of the defensive weapons that have protected Israel have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars.

The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in.