British News Agency

Some key points from US President Donald Trump’s speech are as follows:

“The war in Gaza, and of course, is ending right now. In the Middle East, 59 countries were part of the process. And many said that if Hamas doesn’t keep its word — which they most likely will — but these are groups that were literally given guns in their hands from the moment they were born, they have to lay down their weapons. If they don’t lay down their weapons, that will be the end of them.

Many countries came to me and said they want to go and do this. And the countries traditionally involved in this, of course, said these things. But here the fires never stop — for example, Hezbollah in Lebanon. We’re going to do something about that too. But I call them remnants because we’re talking about a past environment where very large, extremely powerful countries were clashing with one another.

Of course, in addition to that, in June we eliminated Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity with a midnight ‘sledgehammer’ operation. Now Iran wants to negotiate, and we will talk.

Likewise, we struck ISIS in Syria. You know, we did that in my first term too. In my second term, I have to say I was even more successful than in my first. We eliminated ISIS. We had completely eliminated them, but under the Biden administration they started to re-emerge. By the way, I also spoke with the President of Syria — very big progress is being made. We’re very happy about that. We lifted all sanctions. And that will give them a chance to breathe.

Threats to Europe and America, threats to the Middle East, and threats to other places have started to calm down. It’s very different compared to just one year ago; one year ago the world, frankly, was in flames, and many people didn’t realize it. In Nigeria, terrorists were killing Christians — we hit them too. They killed thousands of Christians. You wonder what that’s about. Many of these things, and all of this success, happened because I strengthened the US armed forces in my first term. And now, with a budget of over one trillion dollars, we are stronger than ever.

I got commitments from almost all NATO allies to raise defense spending to 5 percent — everyone except Spain. Why Spain isn’t doing it, I honestly don’t understand. We’re going to have to talk to Spain about it.

The US commitment to our security and the security of the Western Hemisphere is also foremost. I closed our southern border to terrorist organizations, to cartels, to any criminal who would enter our country, and we’ve nearly shut down, almost 100 percent, the drugs coming into our country by sea. It was easy to do it on land, but doing it by sea, doing it by maritime routes, was really hard. According to the latest information I got yesterday, we stopped 98.1 percent.

The Peace Council is made up of truly very important world leaders. Last October we announced our plan to permanently end the conflict in Gaza. And I want to remind you that our vision was unanimously adopted by the UN Security Council last year. Within the framework of the first phase of this plan, of course, we will continue the peace and the ceasefire in Gaza.

We want Gaza to be disarmed, properly governed, and beautifully rebuilt. The Peace Council began with this idea. If we succeed in Gaza, we can move on to other issues. We will be very successful in Gaza.

After the Peace Council is established, we can do many different things. We can do it in coordination with the UN as well. I always say the UN has a lot of potential, but it doesn’t use it.”