My job to the Muslim world is to communicate that the Americans are not your enemy. We sometimes make mistakes. We have not been perfect.

Iran's Supreme Court has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons. President [Hassan] Rouhani has indicated Iran will never develop nuclear weapons. I've made clear that we respect the right of the Iranian people to access peaceful nuclear energy in the context of Iran meeting its obligations.

I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.

There's no question that a lot of Americans on both the right and the left are expressing some fears and frustrations about the dislocations brought on by globalisation. Many of those frustrations are legitimate and they need to be addressed.

I think it's important to recognize that you can't have 100 per cent security and also then have 100 per cent privacy and zero inconvenience.... In the abstract you can complain about Big Brother and how this is a potential program run amok, but when you actually look at the details then I think we've struck the right balance.

As we keep up the pressure, our air campaign will continue to hit ISIL harder than ever.

Any time bombs are used to target civilians it is an act of terror.