united states have been interestingly quiet apart from saudi arabia saying once again that they support the american campaign to get iran to moderate its behavior. one of the things in this region that makes people very anxious indeed about iran s behavior over the longer term is not just its efforts that were suspended under the nuclear deal to develop a nuclear program and nuclear weapons program, but also its influence on proxies, hezbollah, south lebanon, of course the houthis in yemen, which gives iran to reach right deep into parts of the middle east where they are not popular, part of the shia/sunni split but also because of the foreign leading policies that very often are activated through these groups. and it is that sort of behavior
against extremism, not in a partisan fight within the shia/sunni split. you have written that removing saddam hussein did not cause this conflagration, but if we had not invaded in 2003, the united states, great britain, and others, wouldn t iraq be a very, very different place? well, it s hard to judge a better place. because obviously if you were to ask some of the kurds against whom saddam launched jep si genocide or people in basra who were excluded from government, excluded from their rights of worship, they would probably say no. if you ask the people in baghdad who have had a terrible time over the last years, they d probably say yes. however, the purpose of what i m saying is not to shuffle off responsibility. i take full responsibility for what we did. the important thing is to realize this is a long-term problem. its root cause is in this extremism. these regimes were never going
iran. there are no easy answers on what to do but we do know that we shouldn t be listening to bush-era leaders who got us into this mess. starting with paul wolfowitz, bush s number two at the pentagon. he claimed iraqi oil revenue would help pay for the war and mocked warnings that 20,000 u.s. troops would be needed as, quote, wildly off the mark. now he s calling for action. this is more than just an obscure shconflict. this is al qaeda. the sh ia/sunni split is obscure? he s disqualifying himself all over again. paul bremer, bush s envoy to iraq. in 2003 he signed the disastrous order to disband the iraqi army.
saudi arabia, with the united arab emirates, some of the gulf states are not very happy what the obama administration is doing right now either. critical point. they live in the neighborhood. different set of fears an concerns but iran is the preepnent challenge. the shia sunni split, this so-called political war is crucial consideration in saudi foreign policy and absolutely right. they re not happy. i said a couple weeks with a former mossad sad analyst and the former are saudi intelligence chief. this disagreed on arab-israeli issues. did they talk to each other, the saudi and israeli? absolutely. that s unusual at least in public. it may well be there s more that brings those two together, the israelis and saudis than they have in common with us right now. prince turkey was the saudi and bass door in washington. who was the person he was
up in the u.n. and i ve never really quite forgiven myself for not pushing harder to be engaged. we can t just sit by and watch tragedies, atrocities, unfold. and we have an obligation to the world. that does raise the question of how we can stand by and let people be killed. in yemen, in bahrain and elsewhere in the region, where we have very different strategic interests. well, first of all, it s not exactly a parallel. because gadhafi is without question, mercurial and probably nuts. the expectation is he would carry out and threaten and it was basically a massacre in the eastern areas of libya. that is not exactly what is happening in yemen or in bahrain. these are more limited, they re highly differentiated, because we re talking about a shia/sunni