Last year, after it emerged that a private White House chat group about U.S. strikes on Yemen mistakenly included a journalist, the inevitable headlines and media coverage meant someone had to take the fall. Then-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz departed after just 101 days in the job. Waltz, a decorated war hero who had previously represented Florida’s 6th district in Congress, was later named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. If the role seemed like a relegation to a place U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t hold in high regard, Waltz himself disagrees: “President Trump is a New Yorker,” he told me in a wide-ranging interview on FP Live. “He appreciates that the entire world—more than 150 prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, and CEOs—comes to one place in the world once a year, and it’s New York City.” Waltz has also become an increasingly visible spokesperson for Trump’s foreign policy, defending his decisions on Iran and Venezuela not only at the U.N. but also on the Sunday talk shows.

I spoke with Waltz on FP Live on the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 29. We began with the conflict with Iran, since Iran’s foreign minister had stayed on in New York after the U.N. General Assembly to conduct indirect talks with the United States. But we also discussed Sudan, a crisis Waltz has personally invested time in and written about for FP, as well as the Trump administration’s policies regarding Ukraine, China, and international law. The full interview is available on the video box atop this page, or on the FP Live podcast on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.

Last year, after it emerged that a private White House chat group about U.S. strikes on Yemen mistakenly included a journalist, the inevitable headlines and media coverage meant someone had to take the fall. Then-National Security Advisor Mike Waltz departed after just 101 days in the job. Waltz, a decorated war hero who had previously represented Florida’s 6th district in Congress, was later named U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. If the role seemed like a relegation to a place U.S. President Donald Trump doesn’t hold in high regard, Waltz himself disagrees: “President Trump is a New Yorker,” he told me in a wide-ranging interview on FP Live. “He appreciates that the entire world—more than 150 prime ministers, presidents, foreign ministers, and CEOs—comes to one place in the world once a year, and it’s New York City.” Waltz has also become an increasingly visible spokesperson for Trump’s foreign policy, defending his decisions on Iran and Venezuela not only at the U.N. but also on the Sunday talk shows.

I spoke with Waltz on FP Live on the afternoon of Tuesday, Sept. 29. We began with the conflict with Iran, since Iran’s foreign minister had stayed on in New York after the U.N. General Assembly to conduct indirect talks with the United States. But we also discussed Sudan, a crisis Waltz has personally invested time in and written about for FP, as well as the Trump administration’s policies regarding Ukraine, China, and international law. The full interview is available on the video box atop this page, or on the FP Live podcast on Spotify, YouTube, or Apple. What follows here is a lightly edited transcript.

Ravi Agrawal: Let’s start with the Middle East. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi left New York on Tuesday. He had been engaged in indirect talks with the United States. Can you give us a sense of how those talks went?

Mike Waltz: I didn’t directly participate in the talks, just to be clear. The Iranians came and made an offer, and U.S. President Donald Trump and the team didn’t think it was a very good offer, to be candid with you. Trump has basically said, “Not good enough.”

Iran is still, illegally, trying to hold an international waterway hostage, and with it, the world’s economy—mainly Asia’s economies—to serve its ends to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The president doesn’t think it’s acceptable. One hundred forty-six nations—a U.N. record—have joined us in condemning not only their violations of the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), but their attacks on innocent civilian shipping and infrastructure around the Persian Gulf. So the president rightly said we won’t unfreeze all of their assets or lift sanctions based on an Iranian promise that they’ll start to talk seriously about their nuclear program, which is also in violation of numerous U.N. resolutions.

RA: I’m curious how you’re thinking about U.S. strategy going forward after the talks this week and after everything we saw at the U.N. General Assembly last week. Critics often point out that so far in this war, many U.S. bases in the region have been damaged. The United States has used up precious munitions, including more than a third of its Patriot missile interceptors. The global price of oil has soared, which means Americans are now forking out about 40 percent more for gas compared to what they were paying before the conflict. The war is deeply unpopular among the American people. So, I’m curious, ambassador, at this point, when you make the case to the American people for staying in the conflict, and for next steps in the conflict, what is that case, and how do you make it?

MW: There are a lot of critics out there; that’s easy to do. At the end of the day, President Trump isn’t going to be like his predecessors who have kicked this can down the road. Now, you have an Iranian regime, which is a declared terrorist regime and the largest sponsor of terrorism—which has killed thousands of Americans—in the world. They are progressing aggressively toward acquiring a nuclear weapon and, in the last few years, have literally been building a mountain of drones and ballistic missiles that they’ve clearly demonstrated they are willing to use. They were hitting a J-curve in terms of that production, so that the cost of arresting their illegal nuclear weapons program was so high and insurmountable that their breakout would be a fait accompli. This is the exact playbook North Korea used, except they were hiding behind a wall of artillery, so that no one was willing to sacrifice Seoul in order to militarily arrest their program.

The bottom line is, we couldn’t allow the Iranians to repeat the North Korea playbook. We should also believe this regime. There’s Iran the country and Iran the revolution, which says they will use those weapons if they acquire them. Finally—and this is the part that I think gets lost—there’s the question of why this affects everyday Americans. Why is it so important to stop this regime? If Iran tests a nuclear weapon, Saudi Arabia has already said they will, too. Now you have a nuclear arms race across the Middle East and an absolute breakdown of the nonproliferation that’s been in place since World War II, if not the Cold War. A Middle East awash with nukes is something that should scare every American for the next generation.

So yes, this has been difficult. The Iranian regime has fought back. But what they’ve done is attack their neighbors, regional countries, and civilian infrastructure. I remind people that you can’t attack civilian shipping or throw mines in waterways any more than you can start shooting down civilian airliners just because you’re a party to a conflict. So, I think what President Trump has done is quite brave and bold. Good presidents secure this generation; great presidents secure the next generation. All of those critics would criticize him if he didn’t do anything about it, and if Iran had that nuclear breakout that sparked an arms race in the Middle East.

RA: Respectfully, ambassador, I don’t want to debate whether it was the right idea to attack Iran or not. But in terms of how it was executed, I guess the question is, don’t the American people deserve a more thorough accounting of U.S. losses so far, and of any mistakes that were made? And crucially, in the coming months, what will now be done differently?

MW: I don’t know a country that exposes its military’s mistakes. The military certainly should learn from its mistakes. As you know, I’m a 27-year veteran of the Green Berets. You should always learn from your mistakes and improve. But if you’re arguing that we should publicly expose those mistakes in the midst of a conflict, that would be quite foolish. I haven’t seen any evidence that there is any kind of false accounting on our casualty numbers, if that’s what you’re alleging. So I’m not quite sure where you’re going with that.

The Iranians have overplayed their hand. Their leverage over the Strait of Hormuz is declining by the day. We are now receiving almost a prewar level of oil out of our Gulf allies, who are getting the oil out to Asia and elsewhere, while the Iranians are not. Iran’s currency just hit a record low. Their foreign currency reserves are almost gone. Inflation is hitting a record high. And I’ll........

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