FDD’s Clifford May interviewed Amb Nikki Haley

Foundation For Defense Of Democracies:
Presentation Of The Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Award
to U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley

[..]

HALEY: This is very kind, thank you.

Thank you all for being here and thank you to FDD for this amazing honor. I will tell you that FDD has been such a partner. Whether it is us dealing with the Iran deal and the flaws that were in it, all the way to human shields and all the things that we need to do to combat it, you’ve been a partner in a time where we need partners. And so I appreciate that very much.

I did not know Jeane Kirkpatrick, but I try and channel her many times when I’m fighting with Russia. So she sometimes responds to me and sometimes not, but I will tell you this: what I love about Jeane Kirkpatrick and what I see in the similarities about both of us was we both fought — fight for freedom and we love defending America. It’s a pleasure and an honor to defend a country you just love so much.

And so, while it’s brutal at times, and while it’s a battle, many of the same time challenges that she had we do still have and then many things have changed. And so, regardless, I look back at what she must’ve gone through during that time, in that place, and I am in awe; so this is quite the honor. Thank you very, very, much.

MAY: Madam Ambassador, thank you again. I’ve got to take just one minute. Richard V. Allen asked me to convey something. Now, some of the younger people here won’t know who that is. He was foreign policy adviser to candidate Ronald Reagan and then he was the first national security adviser to Ronald Reagan. And most importantly, he was the one who introduced Ronald Reagan to Jeane Kirkpatrick. Neither knew the other one. Reagan had never heard of Jeane Kirkpatrick. In fact, he said, “who is this guy you want me to meet?” And he is — Dick Allen is still alive and kicking very much. I don’t know if you had the chance to meet him –you should sometime.

And he said first that he agrees with this award, having known her. He sends you his regards. He hopes that he gets to meet you. And he particularly said that you resemble Jeane in disposition and style, which is really high praise.

HALEY: Yes, very much so. I appreciate that. Thank you.

MAY: And by the way, at our cocktail party last night, Bud McFarlane was there, who was another also national security adviser to the president. Is Bud here now? If so, I want to say a shout out. But if not, he also congratulates you in all of this.

HALEY: Thank you very much. Thank you.

MAY: Ambassador, my first question is not quite for the policy wonks. It’s more for those who are watching livestream and also this will be available — we’ve been recorded. You can watch it on our website. It will also be a podcast, we do Foreign Podicy is our FDD podcast.

It’s not a personal question, it’s more a work question. Your background is unusual. You were a businesswoman. You were a state legislator. You were a governor. Most governors could not distinguish Slovenia and Slovakia. Most wouldn’t know the Balkans from the Baltics.

I don’t know if they would know if Bosnia and Herzegovina is one country or two. How did you so quickly master the skills and the knowledge, and it’s a huge amount that you have, in order to do the job? In my opinion, I think others here would certainly agree, as well and as really remarkably well as you have? How did you do that?

HALEY: Thank you. I think that a lot of it was obviously a massive learning curve but at the same time I can tell you that you can’t know all 193 countries that are at the United Nations, so you have unbelievable experts to help you. Once I knew I was taking this job, I knew that I had to be great at it and that’s what I wanted to be able to give the president. And so it was just constant studying and constant reading and constant understanding of why countries act the way they do, what they’re looking for, and where to go from there.

And the similarities from governor, it actually is, one, the negotiation skills is very much the same. And then the second thing is you have to understand your audience. You have to know how to make them see that it’s in their best interest to be with you. And so I found both of those work the same between governor and ambassador.

MAY: You, I would imagine, came to Turtle Bay with no illusions about the U.N. Frankly, you knew that there is significant corruption, inefficiency, waste, other things. Anything surprise you when you got there? Either worse than you thought or some things that were not?

HALEY: I think everything surprised me when I got to the U.N. There’s no preparing for when you walk in the doors of the United Nations.

What was surprising was, there was a disappointment at the resentment that was there for America, you know, just the reality that you have many countries that have their hands out but yet they scold you at the same time and then expect you to be all things to all of them. And so that obviously was a disappointment that we needed to fix quickly and fix by letting them understand this was a new day in our country.

And then I think the other thing is just — it is a new day in our country. (APPLAUSE)

But the other part of it was just the bureaucracy. You can’t imagine the bureaucracy and the ability of countries to stop things. And so constantly being able to move through that to get things done can be very difficult.

MAY: Orwellian is a term that’s overused but when it comes to the U.N. Human Rights Council I think it really is appropriate. This isn’t a little entity, often joined by the worst most egregious violators of human rights in the world so that they can be immune from criticism and so they can criticize others — other nations that do guarantee human rights such as the United States, such as Israel.

Useful, I think, and brave that you decided there was no way for the U.S. to remain in that entity if it couldn’t be improved.

Now I understand that National Security Advisor Bolton is going to find a way to begin to cut off U.S. funds to it — not so easy to do because this is an entity that we don’t fund separately, it comes from general funds. But he has a mechanism to do this.

First, talk about what we’re going to do there and what it could or could not accomplish, and whether this might be a model for other U.N. agencies that either don’t do anything useful or do a lot that is actually harmful.

HALEY: Well, I think what you saw with the Human Rights Council was –there were no words around it. Literally, the reason the Human Rights Council is in Geneva is because every country that serves in New York, they don’t think human rights is tied to peace and security. So they want it as far away from New York as possible and the truth is human rights, many times if you look at a government, if they don’t take care of their people, you can almost bet it’s going to end up in conflict and something is going to happen.

And so we went in genuinely, wanting to see if we could stay in the Human Rights Council. President Bush just said, we’re not going to join at all. We actually put in the effort and said, can we reform it?

And what we found were there were many countries that were embarrassed by it. Many thought we needed to reform it, but they would only tell me that behind closed doors. They wouldn’t do it out in public.

And so you saw Russia and China oppose greatly, reforms. And so, clearly, the last I think, decision point, was when an ambassador told me that if the United States gets out then that’s all that we have left. There’s no credibility left. Well, that’s exactly why we needed to get out. Because you can’t be the reason that something is given credit and said to be good when Venezuela is on it.

Recently they just appointed the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba. You see all of these bad actors that go on the Human Rights Council simply to protect themselves. And so it was a problem and we got out.

But there are multiple things that we have gotten out of that were a deal that were beneficial to other countries but not to us: the Paris Climate agreement, we got out. The Iran deal, we’ve gotten out of. UNESCO was another one that we got out of.

What we are now doing — I went to the president one day and I gave him a book. And in that book, I showed him every country and the money we give them and then I showed him the voting sheet and all those things, and I said at some point-it’s not that we should solely look at U.N. voting; that is not what I’m saying.

What we should do is, the countries that we give money to, do they believe what we believe? Are they still actually wanting to be our partner and work with us? If they’re not and they’re shouting, “death to America,” why would we give them a single penny?

And so you are seeing the efforts of defunding those things that are not helpful to us and that don’t — aren’t in the United States interest. And the Human Rights Council and the Office of the Human Rights Commissioner, we are going to make targeted cuts. If there are certain things that are not beneficial to our interests and the things that we fight for, we’re going to get out of it.

MAY: So there’s two ways for that taxpayer money won’t be wasted the way it’s been in the past. One is not giving aid, which may or may not do any good, to countries that don’t believe in those things we believe in either in terms of what produces economic growth or protecting freedoms.

And, two, almost a quarter of the U.N. budget is supplied by us. It’s more than — I don’t know – – the next eight or nine countries combined — 22, 23 percent plus. So the idea is to begin to whittle that back and say — and of course the money is fungible. But we’re going to say, we’re not going to give money if we think it’s going to bad endeavors.

HALEY: And I think a really good example of how this can be done is if you look at the fact — we were giving a billion dollars to Pakistan and they were harboring terrorists that were killing our soldiers. I mean, at some point you have to look and say, we’re hurting ourselves by giving money. And if they want to be a partner with us they need to quit harboring terrorists.

So there’s multiple examples like that. You’ll continue to see the president puts into place to make sure that we are funding and helping the countries that are helping us back.

MAY: Endemic of the U.N. for a very long time has been anti-Israeli bias using Israel as a sort of whipping boy. You made a decision that you were going to speak up on Israel’s behalf even if nobody else was. What brought you to that conclusion?

HALEY: I really didn’t even have that decision in my mind. I knew that there was a bias against Israel, but I hadn’t really put a lot of the thought into it until I attended the first session. And when I saw literally how abusive all of those countries were being to Israel in a way that was pathetic, really, I had no choice but to get up and say this is completely wrong. It’s like that kid in the schoolyard that gets bullied and everybody is bullying the kid just because they think it makes them stronger. I wasn’t going to stand for that.

And so I came out and said we are not going to condone this anti-Israel bias. We started to make sure that the Israel bashing sessions, as I call them, that they have once a month — we now try and talk about –they’re supposed to be sessions on the Middle East, not sessions on Israel. And so now we’re actually making them talk about other areas in the Middle East and how we’re dealing with those.

MAY: There are some other problem areas in the Middle East, last I heard. (LAUGHTER)

HALEY: And you would not know it if you were at the U.N. And so, we’re starting to do those things and now frankly they’re scared to say anything negative about Israel because they don’t want me to yell at them.

(APPLAUSE)

MAY: Here again do you find that the representatives of some of the countries behind closed doors, not in front of a microphone will say, I know you’re right on that. I can’t be saying that, it will get me in trouble.

HALEY: You know politics is politics everywhere. And politics at the U.N. is exactly like politics in D.C. There are many times where they come to you behind closed doors and say, I’m really with you, but. Or I wish I could do this, but. So no, that happens everywhere.

MAY: I’ve seen some reports that the government is going to announce in the next month or so, that the administration is going to cease funding the West Bank operations of UNRWA, the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, which as most of you probably know, is a U.N. agency that handles Palestinian refugees, no other refugees in the entire world. And has managed, since the 1940s, to do the opposite of what the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees does, which is reduce the number of refugees, starting with about 700,000 refugees in — after the Israeli War of Independence, because every descendent of those who claim refugee status becomes a refugee, it’s now up to about 5 million. It could be up to 50 million in years ahead, it — it continues to grow.

So the — there’s a new plan on this, as I — as I understand it, in terms of the definition of refugees and in terms of the funding and how it should be funded. Because right now, you have this interesting and kind of illogical situation where somebody who is a Palestinian, living in a territory he considers to be Palestine, can also say, “And I’m a refugee from Palestine. Here I am in Ramallah, I’m a refugee from Palestine.”

And why isn’t the Palestinian Authority, which claims to be governing these people, assuming some responsibility as opposed to saying no, there’s a U.N. agency that does it, it’s funded by the donor community, which means us and a few others, we don’t need to worry about this, we can worry about other things.

I’ve given you a lot to chew on here but I — I’m sure you have opinions.

HALEY: It’s — it’s a — it’s bigger than that, even. You know, if you look at UNRWA — first of all, we are the most generous country in the world. And we do that because it’s in our core. We believe in human rights. We believe in democracy. We believe in freedom, and we’re always going to fight for those things, not just here in America, but for every country that craves that.

And so I think that’s really important. When you look at UNRWA, there’s a couple of issues there. First of all, you’re looking at the fact that, yes, there’s an endless number of refugees that, continue to get assistance, but more importantly, the Palestinians continue to bash America. Continue to bash America. This is the government, not the people, not the Palestinian people.

So the government continues to bash America. They have their hand out wanting UNRWA money. We were supposed to, the last time, give them $130 million. We cut it in half, saying that they really needed to reform and fix the things they were doing, because they teach anti- Israeli and anti-American things in their textbooks. They are not necessarily doing things that would cause peace, they tend to — it’s very political.

So instead of the $130 million, we give them $65 million. They didn’t say thank you. UNRWA had them protest in the streets that we didn’t give more. So at the last Security Council meeting we had, on the Palestinian issue and UNRWA, I went and said, “You are all so quick to wag your finger at us for not giving more. Where is Saudi Arabia? Where is United Arab Emirates? Where is Kuwait? Where are all of those countries? Do they not care enough about Palestinians to go and give money to make sure these kids are taken care of?”

(APPLAUSE)

If the region doesn’t invest in those areas, why are we being faulted for not investing in those areas? They have to have skin in the game. They have to — they’re the ones that fight me every day on Israel issues. But yet they don’t give a penny when it comes to — any more than they have to. They give tokens, and then we still are the largest donor of UNRWA at the same time.

So it goes to a second set. Our job is not to take the beatings that you give us, saying we’re not kind to Palestinians and then turn around pay for them. Our job is to make sure that, look, we’ll be a partner with you, but only on a partner basis of something you believe in. So you show us you care, and then we’ll come back and decide if we’re going to give.

MAY: And by the way, this at least raises the question of whether the money that we are donating is seen for what it is, a form of charity. Or if it is seen as entitlements, or worse, reparations for some sin we have committed. I don’t think we want to agree that we owe this; we give it out of the kindness of our hearts.

Also I would say those who are talking about what you’re talking about, possibly defunding UNRWA, possibly melding UNRWA into the offices of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees — which again, takes care of all the other refugees in the world and does it rather well as a U.N. agency, it is one of the better ones — from what I’ve seen in my opinion as — from my days as a foreign correspondent.

It doesn’t mean the money will be cut off to those in need. But let’s identify it for what it is. Somebody born in Gaza, living in Gaza, who doesn’t have a job, is poor and may need welfare. Maybe we help with that. But let’s call it what it is. It’s welfare. And let’s have the P.A., even if we assist them, if we should — let the P.A. give that welfare rather than do what they’ve been doing, which is keeping these refugees essentially as a knife aimed at the throat of Israel, because that’s really the purpose of increasing the number of refugees strategically over the years, is it not?

HALEY: Well, and I think, too — look, if you look at the situation Palestinians live in, in Gaza, it’s horrible. It’s sad, it’s heartbreaking, you know, all of those situations — no one should be OK with how they’re living.

Our concern is, the Palestinian Authority is not doing anything to fix the problems with Hamas in Gaza. They have to take responsibility for what is happening in Gaza, and until they take responsibility, and until the Arab community takes responsibility for what’s happening in Gaza, we can’t begin to try and fix this problem.

And so I think a lot of it is, everyone’s quick to blame America for a lot of things that aren’t our issue. We do it because we want to be helpful. We do it because we want all people to live a good, free life. But we don’t do it because we’re expected to do it or to pick up the burden of other countries, and I think that’s happening.

And I think there’s a bigger issue because if we are ever going to get a better quality of life for Palestinians, we have to have — we have to have them come to the table for a peace agreement. We have to have the two come together and say, “OK, this is enough,” and that’s only going to happen if the region pushes that to happen.

MAY: I see. I’m going to try to nail you down on two issues but you don’t need to be nailed down, obviously. One is, do you think that — at this point, that it is a good idea for UNRWA to be melded eventually into the U.N. Human Rights Commissioner’s Office, so that we don’t have two agencies for refugees in the world. That we just have one and refugees are treated equally around the world. Is that a good idea?

HALEY: I am not for putting that in. UNRWA can stay there, and we will be a donor if it reforms what it does. If it goes and makes sure that they’re not doing those teachings in textbooks, if they actually change the number of refugees to an accurate account. We will look back at partnering them. But otherwise, you’re just molding an organization that has flaws into another organization, and that’s not fixing the problem. I think we have to go further than that.

MAY: One other question, then we’ll move on to another subject, and that is the so-called right of return. The idea that every Palestinian who calls himself a refugee, whether one who left in 1949 at the end of the war or the great-great grandson, or whatever — that they all have — or should have — a right of return in effect.

If the negotiations should be left to the final status agreement, would it not make more sense to say, “Look, Palestinian refugees were — they can come back to the state of Palestine if there is a two-state solution, which requires two states for two peoples, and one of those two peoples must be the Jewish people and must be recognized as that”?

But 5 million Arab Muslims are going to say, “they’re not coming back, get the right of return off the table, it’s not to be negotiated, it’s not going to happen.” Once it’s accepted it’s not going to happen, then you say, “OK, how do we come to terms so we have a two-state solution?” Do you agree with that, the right of return should be off the table?

HALEY: I — I do agree with it, and I think we have to look at this in terms of what’s happening in Syria, what’s happening in Venezuela, what’s happening in other parts of the world and how we treat refugees and how we’re going to look at that going in the future.

So I absolutely think we have to look at right of return.

MAY: Let’s talk a little bit about human shields, which is one of the things — issues you were trying to make some progress on. I want to hear about how — just so people understand.

Human shields, that means you’re — you — that — that one combatant puts innocent men, women and children out in front and gets them killed. You’ve seen this most recently on the Gaza border protests. The — the burnt tires, they put women and children out, terrorists are behind them.

The Israelis try to protect themselves. They hit a Palestinian who is not a terrorist. Didn’t happen much. We know that, according to Hamas. It did happen to — is going to happen occasionally. Hezbollah does this.

And the international community, so to speak, condemns not those who are using human shields to protect their combatants, to protect their missiles, to protect their terrorists, but they — instead, the Israelis or the U.S., in some cases in Afghanistan. Or, by the way, the Saudis in some cases as well. You want to make this very clear, who is to blame when human shields are killed.

HALEY: Iran is behind so much of the problem with human shields. If you look at the Houthis in Yemen, if you look at what we’re dealing with Hezbollah and Hamas. Whether it’s in Gaza, whether it’s in Lebanon, all of the areas where we have to deal with human shields, Iran is behind it.

And I think that if you look at the fact that they’re taking innocent people and using — it’s the most cowardly act you can ever imagine. I think that’s the first thing.

Secondly, the idea that Iran is doing this — anyone that works with Iran is just as guilty, because they know they’re doing this. We’ve seen them do it multiple times.

And it’s why in — recently in the United Nations, when they had yet another anti-Israel resolution, we forced an amendment that made the General Assembly acknowledge Hamas.

Just acknowledge. They were very quick to blame Israel. And we had them acknowledge that Hamas was causing the problems, and we won a majority of the vote for the first time.

MAY: And you think you can make further progress at the U.N. on the human shields issue? At the Security Council, for example?

HALEY: Well — and thank you again for FDD and all the work that they’ve done on human shields. We will always fight for that.

And so I think, one, we’re going to continue to put more amendments up like we did with Hamas, to make them acknowledge who’s doing this.

And I think the second thing is, we would love to have some sort of resolution in the Security Council. Concern is obviously that Russia would veto it, but it is something that we’re looking at.

MAY: Speaking of Iran, you recognized pretty early on that the Iran nuclear deal, the JCPOA, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, was fatally flawed, I would say.

Was there any point at which you thought, “Well, maybe it can be fixed”?

HALEY: No. I never thought the Iran deal could be fixed. I mean, you give, literally, millions of dollars to this country and they don’t stop their ballistic missile testing, they don’t stop selling arms and they continue to support terrorism.

In no way is that a good deal for anyone in the international community but Iran.

MAY: You were instrumental in helping undo the deal, I believe. You might want to share with us the ways in which that was the case.

HALEY: I — I strongly believed it was wrong. I — you know, you have to look at Iran, or at least how I looked at it, as the next North Korea. If you continue to fund this and they continue to do these bad acts and no one holds them accountable, we one day are going to be talking about Iran the same way we talk about North Korea.

And so to me, it was fundamental that we had to go back and pull back something that was done that was wrong, and try and make it right.

And you can’t — you couldn’t change a bad deal. You could change it to be a better deal, but you couldn’t change it to be a good deal.

MAY: Or at least a less-bad deal.

HALEY: Right. And the point was we went to all the other countries that were in the Iran deal and said, help us fight the ballistic missile testing. Help us — all of these things were in resolutions and they weren’t following them, so we gave them the opportunity. That if they would include those three things then we would talk to them. And nothing happened.

And so I think the president was very bold and I think he did the right thing by pulling out of the Iran deal. And I think, honestly, the other countries came to me and said, “we know, you’re right.” But because everybody loves the deal and if their handprints are on it, then they have to say it was successful, they were tiptoeing around all of these things.

And Iran was going to be able to start nuclear testing after 10 years. Well, we’re already four years into it, so you’re really looking at something that in six years is going to be really bad. Why not go ahead and stop it now, and see if we can start to correct the issue.

MAY: I understand about our agreement with the Europeans, who think this deal does more good than harm and it was as good as we can get, and we should go along — I get that.

What I find really puzzling, is when you see the Europeans turn a blind eye to terrorism taking place in Europe that they know the Iranians are behind. When they see what’s happened, the carnage, the mass murders, the genocide in the Middle East, that Iran is behind. When they see the missiles still being launched — and they actually protect the Iranians. They turn a blind eye and they say it has nothing to do with it and let’s see if we can give them some money because we kind of owe it to them, don’t we?

They don’t — they refuse to be offended. They end up as apologists for all sorts of things which they don’t really need to do.

HALEY: They just don’t want to admit they were wrong. That’s the thing. They don’t want to admit that they were wrong. They don’t want to admit that they had good intentions, as everyone did, but when it was wrong, and it was obvious it was wrong, they just couldn’t admit it until we did.

And then now that we’ve admitted it, you can look at all the business that is now leaving Iran, because they don’t want to deal with sanctions and because they realize this was — this was too big to fail in everyone’s eyes and it failed.

MAY: You know there was a view years ago, previous centuries, like when I was in graduate school, that you can do everything through arms control, right? And that was a view that Ronald Reagan thought better of, Jeane Kirkpatrick thought better of, Richard Allen thought better of — that you can’t simply say how we can ignore ideology, we can ignore behavior — we just need arms control agreements, and all will be well.

In a sense, that’s also what you and this administration — that’s sort of what you’re reviving. It’s not enough to have an arms control agreement “with Iran.” You do have to recognize that the ideology is profoundly anti-American.

They’re not just our rival. They see us as their enemy. They want to destroy us. It’s a different way of looking at the world than frankly the sort of left-progressive way of looking at it; yes?

HALEY: I think that we would — look, as a mom, I would love to have a world where we didn’t have any nuclear arms; where we didn’t have to do that. Where every country could say we’re done, I would love that, but it’s not practical and is not realistic.

Because look at North Korea. Look at how we’re pulling teeth to get them to stop. We’re not going to get Iran to stop. Russia is building up theirs. China is building up theirs. We have to defend America at every turn and we have to stand strong for America. And if that means we have arms, we have arms.

(APPLAUSE)

MAY: And you have a particular concern of which I think the Europeans don’t seem to be sharing, regarding Iran’s regional ambitions, its hegemonic ambitions, its neoimperialism. Even neocolonialism since they are resettling people into parts of Syria. Sunnis are being displaced and Shia being moved in.

We have the Shia militias of Afghans and Uzbekis and Pakistanis, that they are, essentially these are mercenary armies they’re bringing in. We haven’t seen a lot about this — about these proxies in the media. We haven’t heard concern from European diplomats, but I know you’re concerned about this and think this should get somewhat more attention than it does.

HALEY: Everyone should be uncomfortable about Iran and the progress that they have made. If you look at what they’ve done in Syria and the way they’ve moved into Syria. If you look at now how they’re helping the Houthis in Yemen and all the tragedies that are happening in Yemen, in Lebanon. The attacks and the things that they’re trying to do in Israel. Iran is a problem.

And so we have to get them out of Syria. We need to come to a political agreement in Yemen that gets the Houthis to go away. I mean, we’ve got to really start attacking this, because if you look at where they were 10 years ago, and you look at them now, it’s spreading. It’s growing and that’s a problem for everyone.

MAY: So we’re running low on time. We’ve got about three minutes. Let me throw two questions at you — and you deal with them as you like. One would be — is Syria. The Powell rule is, if you break it, you bought it. We didn’t break it. Those who did, maybe they should be looking towards the future in funding that. Let Iran spend some of its money on that. Let the Russians do that. They shouldn’t be coming to us.

Or to the U.N., since much of that money that they’re getting from the U.N. right now, is American money. So I’d like you to address that and a little bit about North Korea where I think a lot of us are disappointed that things are not moving. It strikes me that we’ve mostly used carrot and now it’s time to reapply the stick so that Kim Jong-un understands that there are things that we can do to him and to his regime that would be very unpleasant if he doesn’t cooperate.

So maybe just reflect on those two things and then I’ll let you go.

HALEY: Okay. So I think with Syria, you break it, you buy it – well Russia and Assad now own Syria. They own a great big pile of rubble. And they did this. And they did it by using chemical weapons and they did it by hurting innocent people and now they have to go fix it. And they are now looking to the U.S. and Western countries to go and help do that. We’re not going to do that. We’re not going to do it. It’s their issue. They have to take care of their issue. The United States is going to stay out of that.

I think right now — both Assad and Russia want to see Iran out. They need to focus on that and we will help when it comes to that aspect but in terms of reconstruction that is not the United States place to do that.

When it comes to North Korea, is it moving fast? No. But we never thought it would. We knew this was going to be a slow, tough process.

The good thing I can tell you is we haven’t had to deal with ballistic missile testing in months. So the positive is we’re now talking. The positive is we’re not dealing with ballistic missile tests. The positive is that we have sanctions that basically cut off 90 percent of their trade, 30 percent of their oil and we’re holding tight on those sanctions.

So they still need financial relief and they’re begging for it. So this is going to be a tough process, but this is still going in the right direction.

So, look — are they wishing or maybe changing their mind on denuclearization? It’s possible. But we’re not going to change our mind on the sanctions. We’re not going to change our minds on denuclearization and we’re not going to change our posture in terms of how we look at that as a threat in the world.

MAY: And the sanctions are not maximum pressure at this point. Might they be over the months to come?

HALEY: The sanctions are pretty maximum pressure at this point. I mean, if you look at cutting off 90 percent of trade, 30 percent of oil; stopping their foreign laborers from working; stopping all foreign investment. Literally all the money they use to build their intercontinental ballistic missiles is gone.

And they weren’t using that money to feed their people, they were using it to build their nuclear arsenal and we’ve taken that away and we’ve taken a lot of other things away.

Is there more we can do? There’s always more we can do and, diplomatically, we’ll continue to try and do that. But there is a line where that gets crossed and I think right now we have to see where we are. I think it’s too soon, though.

MAY: I’ve got many more questions, but I want to keep you on schedule and keep this on schedule. Ambassador Haley, it’s been an honor.

HALEY: Thank you.

MAY: It’s been a privilege. It’s been fun. So thank you and I hope to talk to you again very soon.