National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster gave a wide-raging interview to Fox News on the occasion of the 100th day of the Trump administration.
McMaster was asked about the fact that North Korea conducted a ballistic missile launch just hours after President Trump had said that we could end up "in a major conflict with North Korea."
McMaster described the North Korean response as "open defiance of the international community", adding that North Korea poses threats to US and its allies South Korea and China. He added that "this is something that we know we cannot tolerate in terms of a risk to the American people. The president has made clear that he is going to resolve this issue one way or the other. And what we prefer to do is work with others, China included, to resolve this situation short of military action."
McMaster added that enforcing UN sanctions may also be effective but did not rule out military operations "if necessary."
McMaster was asked how he believes China can help solve the crisis when Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi says that North Korea is not China's responsibility. McMaster replied that Chinese president Xi did view the North Korean threat as a Chinese issue and had shown willingness to take ownership of this problem and was indeed taking action. McMaster reiterated that "more needs to be done' but stressed that "you need the viable option, the military option, to help make what you were doing diplomatically, economically, with sanctions, viable, to be able to resolve this problem short of what would be, as the president said, a major, major war and a humanitarian catastrophe."
McMaster was then asked whether the US still has leverage in Iran after the allies have dropped most of their sanctions and are conducting business with Iran. He answered that "I think all we have to do is pull the curtain back on Iranian behavior. This is a regime that is supporting the murderous regime in Syria, that’s committing mass murder of its own people. This is a regime that is really applying what you might call a Hezbollah model to the greater Middle East, in which they have weak governments, that they want to depend on Iran for support, while they grow militias and other illegal armed groups outside."
McMaster blamed the previous US policy in the Middle East for empowering Iran and thus causing a "humanitarian political catastrophe in the greater Middle East." He added that "what's critical now is a shift in that policy to confront Iran and what you're seeing is because of the president's leadership, really strong relationships across the Arab world, for example, and I think that there's going to be a tremendous opportunity to confront Iran’s destructive behavior in the region and beyond the region."