Bashir Assad Quotes

I am aware of the thesis that the United States has long since invested exclusively in stability and this has obviated democratic transformation in the Middle East.

I think we have to pay attention to the Arab masses not just in the Gulf States, but also in the hinterlands.

The Turks ... the Saudis, the Emiratis, etc. What were they doing?

Turkey in general became too involved with what is happening in Egypt and in Syria. Some politicians with neo-Ottoman dreams developed this idea of being a major player in the Middle East, which hasn't gone as expected.

Taking stock of 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' a decade later, the Financial Times concluded that the US won the war, Iran won the peace, and Turkey won the contracts. I can only agree.

Maybe Iraq will come back and become the dominant power among Arab countries. That seems to me as conceivable.

Several experts on the Middle East concur that the Middle East cannot be democratized.

Those looking from Europe see Turkey as an economic success, whereas others from the Middle East see Turkey as a democratic success.

Turkey's solidarity with Hamas is not, of course, based on Arab nationalism, which as a non-Arab nation it does not support. It is instead based on a definition of the Mideast conflict as one between Jews and Muslims, precisely the position of Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda.

The Arab Spring has heightened the ideological tension between Ankara and Tehran, and Turkey's model seems to be winning.

The U.S. relationship with Bahrain is obviously more complicated than with Syria and Iran.

Public interest in most of the Middle East was slight at that time; the Arab-Israeli conflict was all that people were interested in and that was not my specialty.

Doesn't it seem awfully strange that the Iraqi government we support is an ally of the Iranians who are our declared enemies? Are we not now supporting the Iranians by propping up their allies in Iraq?

The reason there IS a Turkey and there ISN'T a Kurdistan is in all of history no Kurd could ever stand by any other Kurd long enough to hold off all the hungry Arabs, Persians, Turks, Brits and other sand carnivores swimming around the Fertile Crescent.

One of the rules of the Middle East is: The enemy of your enemy can still be your enemy.

Saudi Arabia has historically attempted to influence politics in Beirut.

Russia, their number one client in the Middle East is Syria; that is their foothold in the Middle East. They want to have influence there.

America's decline would set in motion tectonic shifts undermining the political stability of the entire Middle East.

The issue with Syria, I think for many of us, has always been about Iran. This is an anchor point for them in terms of regional domination. It means a lot to them. They are all in here.

Israel is the only democratic country in the Middle East.

We are not a minor power in the Middle East; we are a significant player.

If we cannot understand the depth of feeling in the Muslim world toward Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, and Islam as a political force, then we will be doomed to failure in every encounter we have with the world.

Any country that has Milton Friedman as an adviser has nothing to fear from a few million Arabs.

Syria is lucky to have Bashar al-Assad as her President.

In the United States, Iran is nothing but a whipping-boy. Few Americans have any real use for Iran. Most of us, what we know and remember about Iran are things like the hostage crisis in 1980, or they think about the Iranian attacks in Lebanon, or on the Khobar Towers. So you don't get a whole lot of political mileage in the United States by going out and advocating better relations with the Iranians.