Mohammad Javad Zarif Quotes

The United States has the right to use its friendly offices in discouragement of any movement on the part of neighboring states which may tend to disturb the balance of power between them.

American presence is, you know, the major cause of balance of power and the stability in this region.

What is the Obama Doctrine? It seems to be one of disengagement, to try to ignore the hot, religious, dry, poor countries from Algeria to Pakistan.

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.

The [foreign] policy of the United States is modeled on interventionism and aggression. It is logical that we should always be very suspicious.

All foreign policy is the intervention of one nation's domestic politics into another nation's domestic politics.

... American temptation to beleive that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

I’d rather build highways here then try nation building in Iraq

The Middle East does not follow Las Vegas rules. Whatever happens in the Middle East affects the rest of the world.

Such recognition is not necessary in order to enable the United States to intervene and pacify the Island.

In the wars of the European Powers in matters relating to themselves we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy to do so.

The purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own sentiments of hope or indignation; it is to shape real events in a real world.

Whenever peace—conceived as the avoidance of war—has been the primary objective of a power or group of powers, the international system has been at the mercy of the most ruthless member of the international community.

The management of a balance of power is a permanent undertaking, not an exertion that has a foreseeable end.

The only things that matter in the world are Japan and China, Russia and Europe. Latin America doesn’t matter…. And … there’s nothing you can do about the Middle East.

Our country is being bled daily in an effort to create a democracy in a place where it never existed.

Too frequent or too quick a resort to force can also undermine the authority of power. Not all use of force is created equal. Other states will grant authority to the use of force, implicitly if not otherwise, if it falls within the bonds of justice and reason; if they think a use of force does not fall within such bonds, they will withdraw their legitimate consent, and thereby undermine the authority of power.

Our leaders are cruel because only those willing to be inordinately cruel and remorseless can hold positions of leadership in the foreign policy establishment. People capable of expressing a full human measure of compassion and empathy toward faraway powerless strangers do not become president of the United States, or vice president, or secretary of state, or national security adviser or secretary of the treasury. Nor do they want to.

Between countries -- regardless of whether they are democratic or authoritarian -- there will need to be an explanation, either for publics or for powerful constituencies

The diplomatic relations upon which our present system of international comity is based are being encountered by new forces and combinations which are fast rendering them impotent and antiquated

[George W.] Bush is the only force of evil in the world that liberals haven’t wanted to appease.

If American lives must end, and American treasure be spilled, in countries we barely know, that is the price that change has demanded of conviction and of our enduring covenant.

The policy of the United States in the Spanish war and since has given it a position of influence among the nations that it never had before.

In relations with other nations, there is neither right nor wrong; there is only strength and weakness.

It was relatively easy, we now realize, to categorize countries and nations. You knew who your enemies were and whom you could count on as collaborators and friends. And even more importantly, you had ready-made scapegoats to take the blame when things were going wrong.