NPR’s Rob Schmitz speaks with State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott about the with Iran and the hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals who have had their U.S. visa revoked.
Transcript
ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:
As the U.S. war with Iran continues to drag on, a deal to resolve the conflict remains elusive. Among the key sticking points is the Strait of Hormuz. Iran and the U.S. simply cannot come to an agreement over this key waterway. And so, yesterday, President Trump proposed annexing it.
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PRES DONALD TRUMP: And after we finish defeating Iran, which is being very badly defeated…
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TRUMP: Pretty soon I’ll be declaring the Hormuz Strait a territory of the United States.
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SCHMITZ: We have many questions about the war with Iran. So earlier today, I spoke with U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott. I asked him if the U.S. plans on declaring the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory, as President Trump stated.
TOMMY PIGOTT: Well, look, the president – clearly talking about the levers that we have in this area here both economically and when it comes to the blockade, the fact that we’ve seen containers and other goods moving through the Strait of Hormuz, the fact that we see the Iranian regime losing hundreds of billions of dollars every single day. The president – stating repeatedly about that economic argument and also the blockade argument, the impacts that the policies have had, in terms of leveraging and having that leverage when it comes to these conversations and these goals and also the fact he’s been very clear on his objective from the beginning – that the Iranian regime cannot have a nuclear weapon.
SCHMITZ: But it’s the Strait of Hormuz, and he’s saying he’s going to declare it a U.S. territory. How does that work, Mr. Pigott?
PIGOTT: Well, look, once again, the president, clearly speaking – the president’s words speak for themselves. But I can say once again, the fact that we and economic pressure being placed on the Iranian regime – we have hundreds of billions of dollars that the Iranian regime is losing every single day. We have the blockade of Iranian ships and Iranian ports. We have other containers moving through the strait, as the president has described, and we also have, from the State Department’s perspective, and the Treasury Department continuing to enact sanctions and other policies to increase maximum pressure to deny the Iranian regime the revenue they need for their malign activities.
SCHMITZ: You mentioned Iran is losing a lot of money. The war in Iran has cost the U.S. tens of billions of dollars and even more if you include the cost on U.S. consumers like rising gas prices. What do you say to constituents who don’t want to foot the bill for this war?
PIGOTT: The Iranian regime having a nuclear weapon is an untenable threat. The actions that the president has taken have already made the United States safer. We saw Operation Midnight Hammer, Operation Epic Fury, the obliteration of those nuclear sites, the decimation of the conventional weapons military shield they were trying to construct, and now we see this maximum pressure campaign continuing.
SCHMITZ: And is this a sacrifice that U.S. taxpayers should be making?
PIGOTT: Once again, the Iranian regime having a nuclear weapon has been identified for decades as an untenable threat. But I also think it’s important to talk about the broader policies of this president, including policies we’re having at the State Department to make sure we have visa policies and other policies in place that make sure Americans are protected and also are able to take advantage of those investment opportunities.
SCHMITZ: You mentioned visas. Let’s talk about that. Your office published a fact sheet this week stating the Trump administration has revoked more than 175,000 visas from foreign nationals who the department says committed crimes or violated the conditions of their visas. That’s a lot of people. What kind of crimes do these people commit?
PIGOTT: The three most common are DUIs, assaults and thefts. Those are the three most common when it comes to that criminal bucket. So the bottom line is we’re not going to allow foreigners here on visas to drive drunk on our streets, to steal from our stores, to assault our people. That’s a common sense policy. We are also seeing violations of the terms of their visas – if they overstay that visa, if they break the terms that are conditioned on that visa. We are also seeing a bucket in terms of people that are undermining the national security of the United States. We abide by the principle that each visa is a national security decision and that, fundamentally, visa security is border security because it’s who we’re letting into our country legally.
SCHMITZ: So among the people who had their visas revoked – and I’ll read the exact language from your office – are, quote, “multiple foreign nationals who celebrated the assassination of Charlie Kirk, including one who stated, quote, “when fascists die, Democrats don’t complain,” and another who said,” Charlie Kirk, quote, “died too late.” Celebrating the assassination of someone – while many would see that as ugly, terrible – would also seem to some, at least, to be protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution. What law did these foreign nationals break?
PIGOTT: Well, that gets to the point of the visa is a privilege, not a right. We’re under no obligation to let people stay in our country, foreigners stay in our country, if they wish death to Americans, if they celebrate destruction to America, if they aid and abet our adversaries when it comes to language or otherwise.
SCHMITZ: Do U.S. visa holders have the same First Amendment rights and protections as U.S. citizens?
PIGOTT: Well, again, it gets to the fundamental principle that no foreigner here on a visa has a right to remain in the United States of America if they partake in actions that undermine our national security, break our laws, break the terms of their visas. It’s a privilege. It’s not a right. So I think that’s a conflation of two different issues.
SCHMITZ: How is that a national security issue? You mentioned it was a national security threat.
PIGOTT: Well, again, it gets back to the fundamental principle that if there are people here on visas that are wishing death to our country, wishing death to Americans, that’s something that we take seriously, and they’re certainly, like I said, under no obligation to allow…
SCHMITZ: To be clear…
PIGOTT: …To remain in this country.
SCHMITZ: Mr. Pigott, to be clear here, the folks that you mentioned in your list, I guess, wished death to Charlie Kirk. It was one American.
PIGOTT: Well, that’s something we take incredibly seriously. I mean, if we see an example here of foreigners here on visas who, again, have no right to be in this country – it’s a privilege to be in this country. And if they’re taking action here that we see of wishing death to Americans, of wishing violence upon Americans, of celebrating violence against Americans, that’s something we’re going to look at, and that could be grounds for revocation.
SCHMITZ: That was U.S. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott. Thank you so much for joining us today.
PIGOTT: Thanks for having me on.
SCHMITZ: In a final note here, you may have noticed that earlier in this interview, Mr. Pigott stated that Iran is losing, quote, “hundreds of billions of dollars every single day” as a result of U.S. economic pressure. We reached out to Mr. Pigott’s team for clarity on this, and a State Department spokesperson said that Pigott was referring to the hundreds of millions of dollars lost per day due to the blockade. The spokesperson went on to say, quote, “third-party estimates place the overall cumulative economic effect of maximum pressure in the hundreds of billions.”
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