Doha, Qatar (CNN) -- Don't look for the United States to send weapons to Syrian rebels any time soon, Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday in a CNN interview on the last full day of his first international trip as the nation's top diplomat.
Instead, President Barack Obama's administration will continue to provide non-lethal aid while other countries arm the rebels fighting to defeat forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad in the two-year conflict that has claimed nearly 70,000 lives and left many areas of Syria in ruins.
"The president always has options and always has the right to adjust a policy as he goes forward," Kerry said. "At the moment, this is the calibration the president believes is correct to try to give the opportunity for a diplomatic solution."
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Iran: Kerry said Obama continues to prefer a diplomatic solution to concerns over the Middle Eastern country's nuclear weapons. But he said Iran should be willing to prove to the world that its nuclear program is peaceful.
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Kerry said former basketball player Dennis Rodman's trip to North Korea wouldn't do anything to resolve the tension between Pyongyang and much of the rest of the world.
"I have great respect for Dennis Rodman as a basketball player. As a diplomat, he was a great basketball player," Kerry quipped.
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His appointment as secretary of state: Kerry said he didn't accept the job to be a "yes person," and doesn't think Obama wants him to be, despite Washington chatter that the second-term president is assembling a team that largely mirrors his own views. "I don't think the president appreciates just 'yes' people," Kerry said. "I think he is a man who has a very highly developed intellect and looks for answers to tough issues in a very inquisitive, Socratic way, and he looks for every point of view he can, and then he makes the tough decisions. So my job is to tell him the truth.