Peter Mansoor Quotes

There's an abiding interest by the United States, by the American people, and by anybody with his eyes set in his head, to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons.

There's an 800 kilometer border between Iran and Afghanistan.

Seen from the United States or Europe, Iran's nuclear program often causes most concern, but from the perspective of countries in the Asia-Pacific region, the North Korean program is equally worrying.

Any state surrounded by enemies will seek strategic depth.

Most of the Shias are loyal to Iran, and not to the countries they are living in.

We are fifty or a hundred years behind the advanced countries. We must make good this distance in ten years. Either we do it, or they will crush us.

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 oceans have shrunk, until today both Europe and Asia border the United States almost as do Canada and Mexico.

The Shiite Crescent is the areas that receive Iran's support for Shiite forces in the Middle East which seeks to alter the traditional balance of power between the two main Islamic sects and poses new challenges to U.S. interests and allies.

One good quality in European peoples is their willingness to take risks. This is the chief source of their success …. Another of their good qualities is perseverance and … hard work.

The practice of politics in the East may be defined by one word: dissimulation

When your enemies are fighting one another, don’t support one or the other. Weaken both.

We [Iran and the United States] have a common destiny in this region [The Middle East].

There are very few fighters in the ISIS organization in Iraq and Syria coming from the United States; most of them have either come from a region of the Middle East or from Europe.

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.

The word 'populism' was everywhere in 2016. Political leaders claiming to speak for the people have achieved significant victories in Europe, Asia, and, with the election of Donald Trump, the United States.

There is total unanimity that the most serious threat facing the United States and Israel is a nuclear-armed Iran.

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.

The Saudis and Emiratis blame all of this on Iran. I think they’d have to grant, that as has been said, that the Houthis are an internally generated movement in Yemen and the Saudis were supposed to be dealing with the Houthis, who started out in essence along their border. So one of the things that we’re seeing is a complete failure of Saudi policy toward Yemen over the past 10 years, but the Saudis totally believe that the reason the Houthis are able to succeed militarily is the amount of money, advice, and guns they are receiving from Iran.

Perhaps the most troubling area in the world goes from the Balkans through the Middle East and in Central Asia.

I think it's yet to be seen how that is going to shape up. But I can tell we all know that President-elect [Donald] Trump doesn't like the Iran deal, thinks it's a terrible document, thinks it will create a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, which it already is beginning to do.

The Gulf States are extraordinarily suspicious of Iran for good reason. They view Iran as meddling in their affairs. They have seen Iran level asymmetric attacks against their facilities or their interests.

We propose to rebuild the key tools of missile defense starting with Navy cruisers that are the foundation of our missile defense capabilities in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

From a geo-strategic point of view, I consider Iran a bigger problem than the Islamic State. ISIS is a group of adventurers with a very aggressive ideology. But they have to conquer more and more territory before they can became a geo-strategic, permanent reality. I think a conflict with ISIS - important as it is - is more manageable than a confrontation with Iran.

I think there are hard-liners inside of Iran that think it is the right thing to do to oppose us, to seek to destroy Israel, to cause havoc in places like Syria or Yemen or Lebanon, if they don't change at all, we're still better off having the deal.