Amb. James Jeffrey, who served as US Ambassador to Iraq under President Obama, said that the Middle East has “destabilized considerably more rapidly than under President Bush” on Friday’s “On the Record” on the Fox News Channel.
“The situation has gotten worse, and the recipes that we have tried to use to stem the violence and to stem the destabilization, the basic challenge to the nation states in the region, by one or another Islamic religious movement, be it the Iranians, be it ISIS and al Qaeda, have not been successful, and now we’re at a crisis point” he stated.
Jeffrey added, “we don’t have the military commitment we had a decade ago. We have more support, at least up until very recently, from the American public to that. But the situation in the region has destabilized considerably more rapidly than under President Bush,” and that “Iran is on the move.”
Jeffrey also spoke about the Iran deal, arguing “if it’s successful, as I understand it, we will push Iran back to a one year breakout period, assuming that inspectors and other monitoring actually work. They have not worked in the past…they have a bad record. But even assuming it does work, you’re still going to have an Iran that will be within a year of a breakout. The problem that this administration and the last one had with Iran is, for sanctions to work you have the support of the entire international community because it’s not trade with us that’s at stake, it’s trade with India, with China, with western Europe, with Africa, and to get those people on board, you cannot insist on no enrichment. They won’t go along.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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