QUESTION: Joining us now from the State Department, Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken. Good morning, Tony. Good to have you on board this morning.

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: Morning, Mika. Thank you.

QUESTION: Tony, thank you so much for being with us. We congratulate you for, in the words of David Ignatius, having a lead at halftime. But this is only halftime, of course. You would say that, I think, before anybody else. What areas are most important to nail down between now and June 30th at the end of this process?

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, Joe, first of all, what’s critical here is that this deal, if we can bring it to closure, cuts off Iran’s pathways to a bomb far, far into the future, and that’s going to make us more secure, Israel more secure, and our partners in the Gulf more secure.

Dotting the Is and crossing the Ts is a complicated business. It’s a lot of detail, it’s complicated stuff, and it’s going to take the next couple of months to make sure we can lock everything down. There’s some open questions that we have to resolve, including something that David Ignatius mentioned a moment ago, and that’s the question of sanctions relief. And I just want to correct one thing. It is absolutely our intention to sequence that relief so that Iran has to make good on its commitments before they get sanctions suspended, never mind lifted, and then ultimately lifted. But that schedule has to be worked out.

QUESTION: You talk about partners in the Gulf – obviously Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, a lot of the Sunni states very concerned about this deal, especially given where Iran is right now with their influence greater than ever before. How do you assure our Gulf partners that this is not only in Iran’s best interest and America’s best interest, but in Sunni Arab states’ best interests?

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: So you heard the President yesterday, Joe. He’s going to bring the leaders of the Gulf countries to the United States to Camp David for a summit meeting to go over exactly that. I’m heading out to the region next week to consult with them, to go through all the details of this agreement with them. Our team is doing the same thing. And the other thing that’s critical is this: Even as we get this nuclear deal, we are not taking our eye off the ball when it comes to Iran’s other activities that are a threat to neighbors in the region, to us, and to Israel. We are very, very vigorously implementing all the other sanctions that go to its support for terrorism, its efforts to destabilize other countries, its own human rights problems. All of that will remain even as we finalize this deal.

QUESTION: So Tony, you – the President said if Iran cheats, the world will know it. You just talked about the steps that need to be taken to lock everything down. What will happen if that’s not possible, if somewhere along the way Iran does not follow through? Will the United States act in an aggressive way?

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: Well, first, what’s critical about this deal is it has an unprecedented system for monitoring what Iran is doing, for getting access, for making sure the inspectors know every aspect of its program. And it’s something that’s never been done before, and it’s the entire supply chain. It’s everything from the Iranian mines and mills, to the factories where they make centrifuges, to the actual enrichment facilities. We will have more knowledge of their program 24/7 than we’ve ever had before. And if something goes wrong, if they decide to cheat or try to renege on commitments, we’ll know it, we’ll be able to do something about it.

QUESTION: And Tony, Benjamin Netanyahu said this deal was a threat to the state of Israel. They’d always said that the military option was on the table. How concerned are you that Israel could act alone in the coming years?

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: Look, we’re going to consult as we have been very, very closely with Israel. And we understand that for Israel, Iran poses an existential threat. But we are not going to take a deal, and we haven’t taken a deal and we won’t take a deal that undermines our security or Israel’s or our Gulf partners; to the contrary. It advances it. This cuts off – Benjamin – Prime Minister Netanyahu’s talked about the different pathways to a bomb. This cuts those pathways off far into the future. Israel will be more secure, we’ll be more secure, so will our partners.

QUESTION: Mark Halperin.

QUESTION: Mark Halperin.

QUESTION: What’s the proper role for Congress in the next two months as far as the Administration’s concerned?

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: So the President’s been very clear. He wants to engage intensely with Congress. We’ll bring them all of the details. We need to work with them to determine the right oversight role for them to play. They’ve been critical to this process all along.

QUESTION: What’s the --

QUESTION: I’m sorry to interrupt, but what is the right oversight role? Some in Congress would like to vote on this package. Are you opposed to that?

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: So first of all, I think we’re going to have a series of briefings, a series of hearings in public, also in private for some of the classified information. And then when it comes to a vote, what’s critical is this, Mark: Congress has the ultimate vote because Congress – only Congress – has the authority to actually lift the sanctions. And by holding out that authority and holding that toward later in the process so that Iran can demonstrate that it’s making good on its commitments, Congress retains the critical leverage. We think that’s the right role for Congress to play.

QUESTION: All right. Tony, thank you so much for being with us. Congratulations. I mean, it was a long, long haul, and now again --

QUESTION: A lot of critics along the way before we even got to this.

QUESTION: A lot of – I got to tell you, Mika was judging this before we even knew what was in there, and it made me sad, Tony. It made me sad. (Laughter.) No, I’m just wondering, yesterday morning we had Andrea Mitchell agreeing with me, and who else? We had General Hayden and a lot of others talking about how it seemed like we were getting pushed around. Andrea at one point said the Iranians seemed to be playing the press a lot better. I must say, you never know how politics is going to go and you never know how these negotiations are going to go. It actually seems like you guys played the press masterfully, let all the bad information get out, let everybody on both sides draw conclusions that ended up – they were surprised by. Richard Haass critical yesterday, but yesterday afternoon after the deal came out, people like he and David Ignatius said, “You know what? This is --

QUESTION: Pleasantly surprised.

QUESTION: -- this is much better than we thought.” That has to be gratifying this morning.

DEPUTY SECRETARY BLINKEN: I’d like to think we’re that good, Joe. (Laughter.)

QUESTION: All right, Tony. Well, you are.

QUESTION: At least they have a nice set there at the State --

QUESTION: All right, Tony. Thank you so much.

QUESTION: Tony, thank you very much.