John Kasich Quotes

I think most of the Washington foreign policy establishment exists in a fantasy world when it comes to Syria. They fundamentally don't understand that Russia and Iran, from the beginning, had much more at stake in Syria than the United States did. Russia and Iran were going to do everything possible in order to keep Bashar al-Assad in power.

What the United States needs to do at this point is reaffirm our commitment that Assad must go and that Iran and Russia cannot be granted a sphere of influence in Syria, and that we will not sit down at the negotiating table to help broker Assad's victory in this fight.

Syria is no longer Syria. Syria is Russia and it's Iran, who Hillary Clinton made strong and Kerry and Obama made into a very powerful nation and a very rich nation, very, very quickly, very, very quickly.

Russia hasn't paid any attention to ISIS. They're interested in keeping Assad in power.

What I did warn about when I testified in front of Congress in 2002, I said if you want to worry about a state, it shouldn't be Iraq, it should be Iran. But this government, our administration, wanted to worry about Iraq, not Iran.

The Syrian Intervention was aimed not only at strengthening Assad's position but at forcing the United States to deal with Moscow on a more even footing.

Russia and Iran back Assad, but are they fighting Daesh? The answer is 'no.'

I'm no apologist for Russia or the Assad regime, but actually, this has been staring us in the face for a number of years now, and I think it's time to turn a page and accept reality. Our strategy - if that is the right word - failed miserably, and Russia's with Iran has been successful.

Here's the problem - under both Obama and Trump, American military forces and assistance have provided just enough support to anti-Assad forces to keep the resistance going, but never enough help to actually dislodge Assad from power.

While Syrian President Bashar al-Assad is a brutal dictator and should be tried at the Hague for international war crimes, the United States should not militarily overthrow him.

I think Hillary Clinton is right. I think it isn't enough to leave [Bashir] Assad in place, because as long as he is there, there is going to be a recruiting magnet for ISIS.

[Bashar] Assad is one of the main reasons why ISIS even exists to begin with. Assad is a puppet of Iran.

Part of the problem that we have currently in the Middle East is that[Bashar] Assad has hung on to power with the very strong support of Russia and Iran and with the proxy of Hezbollah being there basically fighting his battles.

Seeing Syria remove Assad is a very high priority for America.

The fall of the Syrian regime is in the interest of America and Israel.

Weapons systems the U.S. sold to the Shah of Iran wound up in the hands of Islamic militants who seized power there in 1979; a comparable scenario in Saudi Arabia is hardly impossible.

In Arab capitals, the failure of the United States to stop Iran's nuclear program is understood as American weakness in the struggle for dominance in the Middle East, making additional cooperation from Arab leaders on Israeli-Palestinian issues even less likely.

I just don't understand how Kerry or Obama or anybody else thought Assad was going to change.

I think the Iraq War is not particularly tailored to American interests.

The fact that the Bush administration, and those in Europe who have followed its 9/11-inspired agenda, somehow believe that the future of the world is being played out in the Middle East and Central Asia rather than East Asia has only served to accelerate China's rise and the U.S.'s decline.

I just think everything we do has an unintended consequence. We take out Saddam Hussein in Iraq, and Iraq was the check against Iran.

Turkey wants to see Bashar al-Assad go and wants to kind of expand its sphere of influence into Turkey so its Ottoman glory or Ottoman past are once again project into the Syrian provinces. That's kind of what Turkey's vision is.

Anybody who believes that we can democratize Iran, Iraq and Syria by military force is living in a fantasy world.

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?

ISIS despises the Russian government for its support of the Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, and so it's no surprise that ISIS began targeting Russia in 2015, around the same time that Russia first intervened in the Syrian civil war.