'This Week' Transcript 5-10-26: Amb. Mike Waltz, Dr. Michael Osterholm & Adm. William McRaven
This is a rush transcript of "This Week" airing Sunday, May 10.
A rush transcript of "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" airing on Sunday, May 10, 2026 on ABC News is below. This copy may not be in its final form, may be updated and may contain minor transcription errors. For previous show transcripts, visit the "This Week" transcript archive.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC “THIS WEEK” CO-ANCHOR: And I'm joined now by the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Mike Waltz.
It’s good to see you, Mr. Ambassador.
I want to talk to you about Iran in just a moment. But first, a couple of questions about hantavirus.
Tell me how the coordination is going with other countries to get those Americans out of there. We know the president exited the World Health Organization. So, is the coordination any more difficult?
MIKE WALTZ, U.S. AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED NATIONS: No, it’s being happened -- or it’s happening, just as it was, whether we were in and out. And the WHO is a completely different issue. We are coordinating closely with our European partners. The CDC is in the lead. Of course, I'll defer to them and the National Institutes of Health. But my understanding is, we have teams on the ground. We’re taking care of the Americans that were on that ship. They will get repatriation flights. And they will come back to Nebraska, to the national quarantine center.
Again, not a doctor. I don’t want to get too deep into it. But I do understand that this is not a respiratory disease. Meaning, it’s very difficult, if impossible to pass through coughing or breathing. It’s very rare to see it transmitted between humans. And I'm confident again that our experts at CDC and NIH are on top of it.
RADDATZ: And President Trump, of course, said of the virus, it’s very much, we hope, under control. But you know, people are scared because of what happened with COVID. And President Trump said in a CNBC interview, at the beginning of COVID, he had no worries, not at all and that we had it under control, it’s going to be just fine. That was at the beginning of COVID. So, you can understand why people have concerns.
What would you say to them?
WALTZ: Well, I think that’s also why we have to be very clear about the nature of what we’re dealing with here. And that is a very rare -- my understanding, again, from the medical experts, very rare to see it transmitted human to human, almost impossible to transmit from respiratory or coughing or breathing. And that it’s -- but, at the same time, we’re taking it incredibly seriously. And you will see those individuals handled appropriately, pulled back to a quarantine center in Nebraska. And then, my understanding, again, is monitored very closely once they’re cleared, I believe after a month, to then go back to their communities.
At the same time, you know, this is why we have a State Department, our great embassies and consulates overseas, so that they can coordinate with local authorities since this ship is near the Canary Islands, right off the coast of Spain. And all of that coordination will be handled through the inner agency and through the State Department and the CDC.
RADDATZ: Thanks, Ambassador.
Let’s turn to Iran.
What is happening with negotiations? We heard on Friday Secretary of State Marco Rubio say they expected a response from Iran about this proposal. Why haven’t we gotten on?
WALTZ: Well, I think part of it is that their leadership has been so devastated and so fractured. We know that Mojtaba, the new ayatollah, the previous ayatollah’s son, has been severely injured. He’s in hiding. He’s incredibly difficult to get a hold of. Yet the IRGC is still deferential to some degree. So, that is making the negotiations go longer and slower, I think, than anyone would like. But, at the same time, those negotiations and that diplomacy is ongoing.
So, we’ll see what they come back with. But President Trump has been very clear, not just now, but, frankly, for decades, even before he was in office, that the world cannot and should not have a genocidal, aggressive regime with its hand on a nuclear button.
And, Martha, it’s important to point out, I'm the ambassador to the U.N. It’s not just the United States’ position. We have had resolution after resolution for nearly 20 years with the entire world agreeing that Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, that it has to subject itself to inspections, that it cannot violate its obligations to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, and on and on. So, it’s not just us. That’s the entire world’s position. And the entire world stood strong with us when they snapped back the sanctions to, frankly, punish the regime for its violations of its obligations under nuclear non-proliferation.
RADDATZ: But, Mr. Ambassador, it was 50 days ago that President Trump posed a warning to the Iranians saying they had 48-hours to fully open, without threat, the Strait. Fifty days ago. Nothing happened and the Strait is still closed.
WALTZ: Well, one, Martha, I think we should take a step back. Fifty days to deal with a 50 year old problem. And, by the way, this isn’t the first time Iran has either threatened or actually done this. I mean, we have the tanker wars where they struck one of our ships with a mine back in the ‘80s, and we took out, under Reagan, half of the Iranian navy.
That said, that’s why we’re pushing now another U.N. resolution that says Iran cannot do this. No country can do what Iran is doing in international waterways.
Martha, we cannot have a conflict between two countries, whether it’s over a border, resources, a nuclear program, where one side’s respond by holding the entire world’s economies hostage, by throwing sea mines out in international waterways. Can you imagine if a country did that in the Strait of Gibraltar or the Straits of Malacca?
RADDATZ: But -- but, Mr. Ambassador --
WALTZ: And also, they’ve even now threatened, in Iranian state TV, to take over the undersea cables that flow through that waterway, which moves financial data, stock exchange data --
RADDATZ: Mr. Ambassador --
WALTZ: Things that are going into the cloud and data centers. We can’t stand for it. We’ve gathered over 60 countries now that are standing with us to isolate Iran and make sure no country can ever do this again.
RADDATZ: We also had this week, in addition to the fact, again, that that was 50 days ago, he threatened Iran, and nothing happened. We’ve also had now, this week, an exchange of fire just today. Drones going over Kuwait. Others over UAE. And you're saying that is not a violation of the ceasefire. How is exchanging live fire with Iran not a violation of the ceasefire?
WALTZ: Well, Martha, I've got to push back. Something did happen. President Trump put in a blockade with our great U.S. Navy that has stopped Iranian shipping, both coming out and, importantly, the empty tankers coming in that they need for storage. We see now Iran’s economy in absolute free-fall. Its currency is down over 100 percent. Its foreign currency reserves are completely exhausted. “The New York Times” ran an article today about mass layoffs across its manufacturing sector. So, the regime is under tremendous pressure.
We don’t expect a regime that’s been obsessed with a nuclear weapon to just give it up freely. It’s going to take this type of pressure. But at the same, to you point on the ceasefire, look, that’s up to President Trump, as commander in chief, to determine what constitutes a violation, when to go back to military action, or when to continue to give diplomacy a chance. And when the mediators, in this case Pakistan, ask us, head of state to head of state, to give this negotiation another chance before we go back to bombing Iran, then I think that’s a completely appropriate choice for President Trump to make. He is putting -- giving diplomacy every chance we possibly can before going back to hostilities. But he’s absolutely prepared to do that.
RADDATZ: OK, thanks so much for joining us this morning, Mr. Ambassador.
WALTZ: All right. Thank you.
MARTHA RADDATZ, ABC “THIS WEEK” CO-ANCHOR: And joining me now is retired Admiral William McRaven, the commander of the Special Operations Forces that took out Osama bin Laden and author of the new book, “Duty, Honor, Country, and Life”.
It's great to see you this morning, Admiral.
You heard what Ambassador Waltz said, and I especially want to talk about -- that they say there is no -- that the ceasefire has not been violated.
As you look at what -- I see you laughing already -- as you look at this situation, and again this morning we've had drones launched from Iran, has the ceasefire been violated?
ADM. WILLIAM MCRAVEN, FORMER U.S. SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMMANDER & U.S. NAVY (RET.): Yeah, well, of course, the ceasefire has been violated, Martha. Anytime you have rounds being exchanged, then that's a violation of the ceasefire.
Now, I understand Ambassador Waltz's position. At the end of the day, this is about hopefully getting the Iranians to agree to the proposal, and therefore, you know, we want to downplay these exchanges of fire.
But, I mean, in technical terms, of course, the ceasefire has been -- you know, has been put aside. The fact of the matter is, when you're shooting at each other, then you no longer have a ceasefire.
RADDATZ: And how do you think the Iranians are taking this when they see what's happened, and, OK, we can keep firing these things? It appears that they are keeping on that.
MCRAVEN: Yeah, of course. You know, this is -- and we're at an interesting point right now. We're at this impasse, and if I were advising the president, I would tell him to look towards your strategic goals. I mean, at the end of the day, he wants to get the Strait open back up. He wants to have some sort of agreement on the nuclear enrichment of the uranium.
So if you want to do that, you're going to have to get the Iranians to the negotiating table. And he has one ability -- or his real one leverage point is this blockade. And the blockade has been working.
So if I were the president, I would go to the Iranians and say, look, I will lift the blockade if you will open the straits and come to the negotiating table. By doing that, one, he can always put the blockade back in place. This is something with a flip of a switch, he can put the blockade back in place if the Iranians don't come to the negotiating table or if they don't open the straits.
But you're not going to get any further along where we are right now unless they come to the table and we begin to have these discussions about some of the hard and serious issues.
RADDATZ: And some of those hard and serious issues, the number one is some sort of nuclear agreement, and that has a 30-day period right now to get that done. Is that realistic to you?
MCRAVEN: Yeah, I don't think it is. The fact is, you know, it took over two years to negotiate the JCPOA. So this idea that somehow we will negotiate, you know, a very challenging nuclear deal with the Iranians, I think 30 days is way too compressed of time.
RADDATZ: Do you see the Iranians giving up that enriched uranium? We've heard President Trump say it doesn't matter. Then we've heard him say we're going to get it back. Is it important?
MCRAVEN: Yeah, of course, it's important. I mean, the fact of the matter is they've got about 970 pounds of highly enriched uranium. It would not take them long if they have the ability to do that, to produce enough uranium to build a bomb.
Yeah, I think what the American people have to ask themselves, Martha, is, are we better off now than we were before February 28th? And I think that's open for some serious debate.
The fact is, before February 28th, the straits were open. You had a -- you know, not a moderate regime, but the regime right now is much more hard line than before February 28th, and I get -- my guess is that they were moving towards an enrichment. I don't think they had a nuclear weapon. I don't think it was, you know, coming about imminently.
But the fact of the matter is we're not really that much better off now than we were before February 28th. Yes, we have sunk their Navy. Yes, we have destroyed their Air Force. Yes, we have taken out a lot of their leadership, but I'm not sure we're a lot better off.
So if the President wants to get to a position where we are better off, he needs to bring them to the table, and my recommendation is he can make the blockade -- you know, make it a carrot rather than a stick. Get the Iranians to the table and then go from there.
RADDATZ: I want to ask you a question about the girls' school that was bombed on the first day. There is an investigation underway, 170 people were killed. The U.S. was bombing in that area. Obviously, we would never have done that on purpose, but mistakes can be made.
Is it normal for an investigation to take this long? And how important is it that we own up to mistakes if we made them?
MCRAVEN: Yeah, well, I think it's very important that we own up to mistakes. I mean, the fact of the matter is, this is who we are as Americans. Look, we hold people accountable, or we certainly should hold people accountable.
And to your point, Martha, look, this was clearly a mistake. Mistakes do happen. I mean, I've been involved in mistakes like this, not quite this serious, but in Iraq and Afghanistan, you feel terrible about innocent civilians being killed, but you do a very thorough investigation, and then you hold people accountable.
That doesn't mean you have to end their careers or destroy them, but there has to be some level of accountability when you have an accident like this.
RADDATZ: Is it taking longer than usual?
MCRAVEN: Well, I don't know the details of it, but it was frankly pretty clear from the very beginning that we were probably responsible. But again, I don't know the details of how this whole thing unfolded. It seems to be taking longer than I would think. But again, not being in the inner circle, I can't tell you whether this is too long or not.
RADDATZ: OK, thanks very much, Admiral McRaven. Very good to see you this morning. Thanks.
MCRAVEN: Thank you.
RADDATZ: Up next, what do the -- sorry, we're going to have to do that again. OK, thank you.
Can we thank him again? Can we start -- I can't see the prompter, guys.
MCRAVEN: I got it, Martha, thanks.
RADDATZ: OK, OK, thank you.
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