Thomas M. Countryman: “This Agreement is an example of the strength of our bilateral relationship.”

The U.S. relationship with China is one of the most important and complex relationships we have in the world.

In an environment as conflictive and combustible as the Middle East, making sure that a country like Iran does not have a nuclear weapon has to be a strategic goal of utmost importance.

We have become, I would say, dangerously uncompetitive on the nuclear sphere when we cannot compete with countries like the French and the Russians.

This agreement advances the primary goal we have in every 123 agreement, which is strengthening the longstanding nonproliferation policy of successive administrations.