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Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams Quotes

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Famous Elliott Abrams Quotes

“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.”

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“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.”

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“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.”

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“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.”

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“The question was never whether the United States, E.U., NATO, Arab League, U.N. Security Council, and African Union could together using economic sanctions, diplomatic pressure, and military attacks to bring Qaddafi down. The question was always how much time, how much blood, and what damage to NATO.”

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“Today's status symbol is the Palm Pilot; tomorrow's is not having one, because you have a whole staff keeping track of you. It's like a winter coat in Washington: The ultimate status symbol isn't cashmere, it's no coat at all on the snowiest day of the year - because that means you have a car and driver waiting for you, so why do you need a coat?”

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