Hillary Clinton Quotes

I do think that it is impossible for us to think only in terms of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and not think in terms of what's happening with Syria or Iran or Lebanon or Afghanistan and Pakistan. These things are interrelated. And if we are looking at the region as a whole and communicating a message to the Arab world and the Muslim world, that we are ready to initiate a new partnership based on mutual respect and mutual interest, then I think that we can make significant progress.

What is likely to happen? Either an escalation of violence or an entire change in the whole Middle East theater. It may well happen, and I say this to my Palestinian friends, that the Palestinians have in a certain way missed their hour. They had their moment when the world's public opinion was behind them, and a considerable part of the Israeli public was willing to compromise with them.

I think everybody realizes some things went wrong in the Middle East and that most of the terrorism is emanating from that area.

Washington sees the various local and national conflicts in the Middle East as part of a battle for regional hegemony between the U.S. and Iran.

So I think we should stay focused on the real problem in the Middle East. It's not Israel. It's these dictatorships that are developing nuclear weapons with the specific goal of wiping Israel away.

When it comes to the Middle East, this is always a very difficult issue for any American president.

Iran is the base of an axis of evil which is a problem for all the world.

The way that Soviet intelligence tried to reshape the balance of power in the Middle East is essential to understand the developments that led to the outbreak of the Six-Day War.

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

Look at what's happening, how Iran is taunting us. Look at what's going on, look at the world.

In the wake of Hillary Clinton's tenure as secretary of state, where she was the architect of the Obama administration's foreign policy, we see entire portions of the world, particularly the wider Middle East, literally spinning out of control.

I think there's so many things happening, whether it's gender inequality or immigration, there's just so many issues happening around the world where not doing anything makes you guilty.

The war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.

I think we've, again, got to be extremely careful; otherwise we'll misunderstand what's going on in Iraq and in Syria today. Of course, you can't say that those of us who removed Saddam in 2003 bear no responsibility for the situation in 2015.

I think President Barack Obama came to office with quite fundamental understandings in his mind about what's possible and what's not possible in the Middle East. The first, I would say, revolutionary breakthrough that he introduced is that the Middle East doesn't matter to American geostrategy as much as we think.

I think too many of my Republican friends are into perpetual warfare in the Middle East. And that scares the bejesus out of me.

I'm worried about the world because there's chaos in the Middle East, and I think the Iranian deal [to lift sanctions] is going to continue the Shia-Sunni battles, the Persian-Arab battles.

Imagine a world in which you had Saddam Hussein, who had the capacity to make a weapon of mass destruction, who was paying suiciders to kill innocent life. Imagine what the world would be like with him in power. The idea is to try to help change the Middle East. Part of the reason we went into Iraq was we thought he had weapons of mass destruction. It turns out he didn't, but he had the capacity to make weapons of mass destruction.

I think that the Middle East is the largest piece of unfinished business that we all have. I happen to believe in the democratization process.

I think that we have to be very careful about who comes here from the Middle East.

There are lots of conflicts going on in the Middle East. It is unclear as to which country will emerge, if any, as the dominant or hegemonic power in the Middle East.

I'll do anything to try to prevent John Bolton from getting any position, because I think his world view is naive. He believes we're going to spread democracy. We're going to topple governments everywhere and they're going to elect Thomas Jefferson. That's not the way it works in the Middle East.

We try to coordinate regularly with Russia, as well as with others - except for the United States - on what is happening in the region. And we're open to discussing with everybody the situation in Syria, because we believe it's a common threat.

No nation in the world has so many drastic problems squeezed into so small a space, under such urgent pressure of time and heavy burden of history, as Israel.

Obama really does recognize the threats that are out there; I think he understands the world. He understands the role of America in that troubled world.