When you work in the White House you talk to the White House staff all day, so you're talking to the guy who handles the congressional liaison and the guy who's handling domestic politics and the guy who's handling the American economy and so forth.

The Obama administration rarely demonstrated the ability to shift gears and change policy in its first year. Even in the face of historic events such as the continuing demonstrations against Iran's regime, it stuck devotedly to prior plans.

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.

The ultimate goal is to change Syria's behaviour on a variety of issues - on its interference in Lebanese internal affairs, on its support for Palestinian terrorist groups that oppose the Palestinian Authority, on, most importantly, acting as a land bridge between Iran and Hezbollah, where Hezbollah gets all its arms.

On taking office in 2009, U.S. President Barack Obama put Israeli settlements at the center of U.S. policy in the Middle East.

For the entire first term, Obama and his people blamed Bush for everything - which is another way of saying they felt Bush and the Bush years were the inescapable reference point for everything they were themselves doing.

A great nation like the United States has many and varied interests, and we need both to do business with tyrants and to engage constantly in multilateral diplomacy.