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.

It’s unlikely to change – there’s nothing in King Salman’s past as governor of Riyadh for about forty years that suggests that he was particularly a reformer, not on the role of women, not on democratic development. There’s been a rumor in the last couple of days that he said to someone in an e-mail that he’s in favor of a constitutional monarchy, but I would be surprised if the level of repression started to go down … I think the kind of thing that we would view as significant reforms is unlikely.

When freedom of the press is threatened, the United States should be leading efforts to protect it.

I grew up in Queens, in New York City, in a middle class Jewish family. My mother was a public school teacher, my father was a lawyer. They were Democrats - kind of middle-of-the-road democrats.

There is no way around the contradictions and dangers inherent in Israel's decision to free over 1,000 prisoners in order to liberate Gilad Shalit.

Oil policy, policy toward the United States, policy toward Iran, Bahrain, Yemen, very unlikely, I think, to see significant change. These policies were the policies that had a wide family consensus. The question I think would be if the king becomes sick, whether you have weak Saudi leadership in the Arab world and the Middle East rather than strong Saudi leadership, but I think the fundamental policies will continue, the ones we’re familiar with under King Abdullah.

Like all forms of collective security, multilateral sanctions require a unanimity rarely achieved in international politics.