Hooman Majd Quotes

Iran is central to our foreign policy in the Middle East, a major player in global energy markets, and a key country in terms of our interaction with the Muslim world.

Both Bibi and Obama realize that they are going to have to face the problem of Iran together.

I would meet directly with the leadership in Iran.

Iran is a great problem, but not necessarily a great country. In fact, I think it is a very weak country.

We can see that immigration has become favorable terrain for the development of Islamism.

For years, Islamists and other extremists have taken advantage of grievances of Muslims in Britain and have successfully identified ways to integrate them under one 'Islamic' banner.

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 have a background and an understanding of what's happened in the Middle East that a lot of people don't have, because there's been no interest.

You can't have a discussion about Israel and the region without including Iran and their nuclear ambitions.

It is no secret that many Islamic movements in the Middle East tend to be authoritarian, and some of the so-called 'Islamic regimes' such as Saudi Arabia, Iran - and the worst case was the Taliban in Afghanistan - they are pretty authoritarian. No doubt about that.

What Ottawa and Washington used to think about Turkey or Iran was not very important because we really didn't think much about either, but now what we think about them is extremely important - to ourselves and to many other peoples.

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.

America faced its first hostage crisis in the Middle East… Thomas Jefferson was President and over 100 Americans were being held hostage by Arabs from the Barbary Coast and the Arabs believed that if they were killed, they would go immediately to heaven. 220 years later America is still facing the same problem.

The U.S and England are not worthy of security council membership. Those who want good relations with the Iranian people should bow and surrender to its right and might.

If Tehran insists on combining the Persian imperial tradition with contemporary Islamic fervor, then a collision with America — and, indeed, with its negotiating partners … — is unavoidable. Iran simply cannot be permitted to fulfill a dream of imperial rule in a region of such importance to the rest of the world.

The Iranians are not part of the “axis of Evil”. They are part of the axis of Medieval.

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?

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

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

Anyone who understands the rudiments of politics doesn't say, 'We will stop Iran's oil exports'... we have been the guarantor of the regional waterway's security throughout history.

In Iran, fundamentalism was fuelled to an extent by the regime of the Shah being supported by the West.

One of the lessons learned in the Middle East is to never try to anticipate the other side's moves.

It is still worth talking to Iran to see if there is a way through and to prevent the huge rivalry between Saudi and Iran turning into another version of the Iran-Iraq war. That is what all countries that have influence have to be thinking about.

A little exposure to a city like Sulaimani will help Trump understand that the Middle East is a much more complex place than he seems to believe. Perhaps Trump could even give a speech at the American University in Sulaimani, just as President Obama did at Cairo University early in his first term.

One of the themes of 'The Longest War,' my book, which came out before the Arab spring happened, was how al-Qaida and bin Laden was losing the war of ideas in the Muslim world, not because the United States was winning them, but because al-Qaida was simply losing them.