Mohammad Javad Zarif Quotes

We need a clear plan to put radical Islamic terrorism out of vogue, and it should be eliminated at its roots. American SOF are part of the puzzle, but they do not, by themselves, complete the picture.

Every time we meet a new terrorist group, we argue they are utterly different and we can learn nothing from the last time. Of course they are different, but some lessons on how we deal with them seem to apply in all cases.

I believe the war on terror is the vital discussion of this decade and of our generation, probably. To win the war on terror, you need a good offense and a good defense. On defense, I regret to say, basically, this administration has not come close to doing what is necessary.

Simply killing everyone who is already a terrorist today won't solve the problem.

Even as we pour hundreds of billions of dollars into our efforts in the Middle East, there is much that needs to be done to win the war of ideas in the Muslim world and beyond.

I would say national security is work in progress.

We don't have a war on terror - that's a technique. We didn't have a war on blitzkriegs, and we didn't have a war on surprise attacks.

I am looking for suggestions on what we can do about extremists within our own society. They cannot be ignored.

Counter-terrorism is not solely a military matter.

With terrorism becoming the increasing tactic of choice, the military component would become a smaller component of our national security system.

We have an unfinished worldwide war against Al Qaida, a war that has to be won in conjunction with friends and allies and that ultimately will be won as much by persuasion as by the use of force. We've got to turn off the Al Qaida recruiting machine.

You cannot bomb extremism into submission

The most potent long term weapon against jihadists is moderate Arabs and South Asians, not American soldiers.

We’ve spent more time debating what to call extremism than we have discussing a long-term strategy for defeating it. If we don’t wrestle with the long-term, every four years a different president and a different foreign minister will be facing a different terror group with a different acronym.

The threat from terrorists - from extreme ideologies - needs to be challenged head-on.

The West needs leaders with the courage and the will to fight the scourge of radical Islam.

We have to fight all terrorist groups, and not arm one to fight another.

You cannot deal with an industrial-strength extremist problem just with force of arms. You have to have that political component as well.

To fight extremism, we will need to pursue a two-pronged strategy: both 'hard,' through stricter control of our borders and a more robust and technologically advanced security response, and 'soft,' based on better intelligence-gathering, working to return our mosques to their spiritual function and barring entry to foreign preachers.

We think there should be a better countering-violent-extremism effort, that there should be a lead agency tasked to handle that.

Defeat the Taliban. Secure the population.

The president says, 'What difference does it make what you call the enemy?' Are you kidding me? As an intelligence officer, I would never get away with that. I could never say, 'Well, you know, boss, I don't label this enemy that we're facing.'

With awareness and a social movement against extremism, we can prevent our children from becoming terrorists.

It's not enough to speak loudly and confidently. You have to know how to get the world on your side, to accept Israel's ideas of security and defending its interests. Netanyahu does not know how to do this.

Imagine if somebody were to really sit down with Osama bin Ladin and say, 'Listen man, what is it that you're so angry at me about that you're willing to have people strap bombs to themselves, or get inside of airplanes and fly them into buildings?' That would be the miracle if we can get, sit down and talk to our enemies and find a way for them to hear us.