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State Dept Assures American People Trump Admin Is Handling N. Korea, Iran, Syria

February 28, 2018

State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert assured the American people on Wednesday that the Trump administration was handling the crises surrounding North Korea, Iran, and Syria.

Fox Business host Stuart Varney asked Nauert about concerns in the Middle East, particularly in regards to Syria. Varney asked if there was a "clear-and-present danger" to the United States, which Nauert said should not be a concern to the American people.

"I don't want to worry the American public. We are on this, administration-wide, from the White House, the State Department, Department of Defense, all of us are working very, very hard on this," Nauert said. "We are seeing some successes. It's not something that's going to happen overnight. This is something that took years and years to develop and now we'll continue to be focused on it so stay tuned."

Earlier in the conversation, Varney specifically asked about reports North Korea sold chemical weapons materials to the Assad regime in Syria and about Iran establishing bases in Syria "as a launchpad into Israel."

The spokesperson said North Korea was "desperate," which is why they may have sold chemical weapons to the Syrian regime. On the subject of Iran, she said the Islamic Republic presented a threat to many countries in the region by sending weapons to terrorist organizations throughout the Middle East.

"We have seen that Iran has malign influence all across the world, not just in that region, but all across the world," Nauert said.

Nauert added that the Obama administration failed to look at non-nuclear related actions made by Iran.

"The previous administration had simply looked at Iran with regard to the nuclear deal, forgetting all the other bad things that Iran is doing, such as funding and backing Hezbollah," she said. "So the president has decided to really focus on that in addition to the nuclear deal."