With what sounded like an offhand line about Israel's borders, US Ambassador Mike Huckabee has touched off a regional firestorm. When pressed on whether Israel had a right to land stretching across parts of Egypt, Syria, Iraq, and Jordan in a chat with host Tucker Carlson, Huckabee said it "would be fine if they took it all." Carlson, in the interview posted on X and YouTube, characterized that involving "basically the entire Middle East," CNN reports. The US envoy later said the nation is not seeking to seize neighboring states, but he said Israelis want to keep territory they "now occupy, now live in, now own legitimately."
A joint statement led by the United Arab Emirates and endorsed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, and others blasted his comments as "dangerous and inflammatory" and a "flagrant violation of international law." Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, and additional Muslim-majority countries also signed on. The Palestinian foreign ministry said the remarks defy international law and even President Trump's stated opposition to Israel annexing the West Bank. The backlash raises fresh questions about whether Huckabee's personal views align with official US policy; CNN asked the State Department to clarify.
Huckabee later posted on X that a viral clip taken from the interview lacked the full context of the two-hour conversation, per NBC News. He described the exchange as a "very twisty and frankly confusing discussion about the meaning of Zionism." He had been asked "as a former Baptist minister about the 'theology' of Christian Zionism," Huckabee posted. Carlson, he said, "kept dragging it to discussions about other topics, literally other countries, things that have nothing to do with theology and certainly not with Israel, Zionism, or anything else."
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