I’m not sure whether I’ve been happy. After my last book tour, I sat on my balcony with a cup of tea. I thought: ‘You can’t rewind the movie. I’ve spent more than half my life in the Middle East. There have been great moments of horror and depression and loneliness.’
I am optimistic that peace can be achieved in the region because I believe that every society on earth can be free and that if freedom comes to the Middle East, there can be peace.
The fact that we walked away from the Middle East, as distasteful as it was for us to stay involved and prevent wars, based on our long involvement there, we have helped to create and provide a foundation. Obviously for ISIS and also for the absolute barbarianism and human catastrophe that Assad impacted on his people.
When I was 26, I founded Peaceworks as a food company that brought together Israelis, Arabs, Turks, and others in conflict regions to make and sell various food products from the Middle East. That economic cooperation helped bridge divides and cultivate mutual understanding among neighbors.
The whole kind of post-World War I settlement that formed the modern Middle East is in danger of collapsing, and we can – we, the United States, you know, the preeminent power in the world – we can say that we want to ignore that, but how long can we avert our gaze? And how long can we stay out?
To achieve a lasting peace in the Middle East takes guts, not guns.
I often ask myself, ‘Why is it that most of the lies come out of Islamic countries, and why is it that most of the social corruptions are in the Middle East and in these Islamic countries?’ The answer is, when you control something, when you suppress something, people try to do it another way.
Jerusalem Syndrome is actually a rare psychological condition that occurs to some visitors to the Middle East. They get to Israel and just snap.
The war and terrorism in the Middle East, the crisis of leadership in many of the oil-supply countries in the developing world, the crisis of global warming – all these are very clearly tied to energy.
The modern Middle East was largely created by the British. It was they who carried the Allied war effort in the region during World War I and who, at its close, principally fashioned its peace. It was a peace presaged by the nickname given the region by covetous British leaders in wartime: ‘The Great Loot.’
We would have teams in Europe, Asia, Australia, South America and the Middle East. That would allow us to one day crown a true world champion. Clearly we have great ambitions but we also have a wonderful product.
Basically, I see Iran as an authentic nation-state. And that authentic identity gives it cohesion, which most of the Middle East lacks.
I don’t think the Middle East could afford another war.
I believe the government of the United States should re-examine its policies in the Middle East and adopt a more balanced stance toward the Palestinian cause.
A central claim of the Bush administration’s foreign policy is that the spread of democracy in the Middle East is the cure for terrorism.
Shrouded by the ‘dodgy dossier,’ which warped opaque intelligence, none of the stated war aims in Iraq spoke to the British national interest. Illusory dreams of bringing Western-style democracy to the Middle East were punctured by failures of planning and strategy, as catalogued before the Chilcot Inquiry.
There isn’t a doubt that Iran constitutes the single most important single-country strategic challenge to the United States and to the kind of Middle East that we want to see.
Fantasy is the tendency of Americans, going back to colonial times, to look at the Middle East as a type of fractured mirror of the United States – a type of mirror that could look a lot more like the United States, if, say, a Middle Eastern George Washington would emerge.
For too long, America tolerated a ‘democratic exception’ in the Muslim Middle East. As long as governments were friendly and backed regional stability, there was no need for outsiders to encourage representative government.
We can stay in Afghanistan and the Middle East forever, and it won’t make a difference.
Iraq has the most extensive petrochemical industry in the Middle East and a wealth of vaccine factories, single-cell protein research labs, medical and veterinary manufacturing centers and water treatment plants.
The Swedish government needs to understand that relations in the Middle East are more complicated than a piece of furniture from IKEA that you assemble at home.
I know the WWE is popular, but it is extremely popular here in the Middle East and the U.A.E.
My military service is the thing I’m most proud of, but when I think of everything happening in the Middle East, I can’t help but tell myself I wish we would have achieved some sort of lasting victory. No one touched that subject before Trump, especially not in the Republican Party.
Saying you don’t want to enter every potential war in the Middle East doesn’t make you an isolationist; it makes you wise.
It is no exaggeration to say that Syria holds the key for nearly all of America’s foreign policy goals in the Middle East. As Syria goes, so goes the region.
There is a conflict in the Middle East between two entities, and they’re both right, each in their own way.
Israeli Arabs have more political rights than any other Arabs in the Middle East, including their compatriots in the Palestinian Authority.
When it comes to the greater Middle East, McMaster brings to the table his own deep knowledge of Iraq and Afghanistan, countries where he served for many years.
The biggest danger for any organism is to not identify that it’s being threatened. I want to hope that people realize that the source of danger and risk in the Middle East is not the Israeli-Palestinian conflict but the deep radical Islamic vision of forming a global caliphate.
I am confident in saying that Oberlin did more for me than vice versa. I took a fantastic class in religion, which led me to archaeology, which got me to the Middle East, which led me to international relations, which launched me on my career.
Soaring prices for crude oil, falling production surpluses, wild speculation in commodities, a rush into the precious metals, turmoil in the Middle East, assertive oil producers: it is 1973-74 all over again, and at dictation speed.
Syria is geographically and politically in the middle of the Middle East.
Christianity in the Middle East is shattered. The ancient faith tradition lies beaten, broken, and dying.
Arafat is the greatest obstacle to peace and stability in the Middle East.
I think Iran is a very dangerous country – very dangerous to Israel, to the Middle East, and also to the United States. They export terrorism. And they also have the ability to manufacture rockets and missiles.
The Middle East is the tinder box of the world, and to be able to remove a nuclear threat of any kind out of Iran, that would have been a big deal, very positive step forward.
World leaders need to approach the problems in the Middle East and northern Africa with imaginative ideas such as those that created the E.U.
The message films that try to be message films always fail. Likewise with documentaries. The documentaries that work best are the ones that eschew a simple message for an odd angle. I found that one of the most spectacular films about the Middle East was ‘Waltz With Bashir,’ or ‘The Gatekeepers,’ or ‘5 Broken Cameras.’
Contrary to popular view, I’ve never been patronized in the Middle East. Men maybe treat women differently, but they do not treat them with disrespect. They don’t hate women. It’s a very different kind of mentality.
The Saudis helped the U.S. ensure that the Russians never got a meaningful foothold in the Middle East.
We know there can be no justice in the Middle East without a Palestinian state. But there can be no security in the Middle East without a Palestinian state.
George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian influence enhanced.
The Iraqi war has transformed the Middle East.
