Zalmay Khalilzad Quotes

I think it's reality that Iran is going to have influence in Iraq. All elements of Iraq accepted that.

Iran is taking over Iraq. They've been trying to for many, many decades. And now they're finally taking over Iraq. As we sit here, they're taking over Iraq. We get nothing.

Iran is taking over Iraq.

If you really look at the aftermath of Iraq, Iran is going to be taking over Iraq. They've been doing it. And it's not a pretty picture.

The victor of the war in Iraq is Iran.

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?

Saudi Arabia has historically attempted to influence politics in Beirut.

There has come into being a kind of a Shia belt from Tehran through Baghdad to Beirut. And this gives Iran the opportunity to reconstruct the ancient Persian Empire - this time under the Shia label.

Clearly, Iran has influence in Iraq. Iraq has a majority Shi'a population, they have relationships to Iran. Some are natural.

Years ago, I predicted that Iran would take over Iraq. Iran and Iraq used to fight back and forth.

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

Iran has interest in seeing that the Shia population of Iraq basically adhere to a line that comes from Iran.

Iran does not yield easily in the standard tools of Western political analysis.

Because of the greatness of the Shah, Iran is an island of stability in the Middle East.

We are caught in the Middle East in supporting the bad guys in order to get rid of the worse guys.

Iran has proxies in Yemen, Syria, Iraq. You can push back against Iran without pulling out of the deal.

I believe Saddam Hussein's strategic objective was, and remains, to assert dominance over the Gulf region.

Iran is the middle child of the Axis of Evil. Iraq is the oldest child and gets the lion's share of the attention, and North Korea is the crazy baby.

If you want peace and well-being to be in place in the Middle East and you want terrorism to be uprooted, then there's no path other than the presence of the Islamic Republic of Iran, you saw that in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen that the power that was able to help the people of Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen in the face of terrorist groups was the Islamic Republic of Iran.

The voice of Mr Bush and the voice of Mr Blair can't decide who shall rule in Zimbabwe, who shall rule in Africa, who shall rule in Asia, who shall rule in Venezuela, who shall rule in Iran, who shall rule in Iraq.

Look, Iraq and Iran would fight for years and years and years, it went on forever. They were almost identical strengths, and the line would never move, right? Then they would go home and rest for ten years and then they would start fighting and they'd rest, that was it. We knocked out one of those two pegs, and so now Iran is taking over.

If we had allowed things to drift, everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Moslem Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control.

If I look at the really important questions in [Middle East] region, I see Iran, where there is a strong desire for a freer society and where people are repressed by a small group of ayatollahs. I see Syria, where we can see a similar desire of the people to be free. These two countries fund Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations and are hurting our efforts in Afghanistan and have been extremely harmful in Iraq. Then I also see large, important countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

We're going to take out seven countries in 5 years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran.

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.