US Ambassador Mike Huckabee Says It’d Be ‘Good’ If Israel Takes All Of West Asia

Israel has “historical and biblical rights” to West Asia, and “it would be nice if they took it all,” Mike Huckabee, the US ambassador to Israel, said in a newly released interview with podcaster Tucker Carlson. He appeared to backtrack on the comment, describing it as a “hyperbolic statement”.

Former Republican Governor of Arkansas Mr. Huckabee, Mr. On the Land and Interpretations of the Old Testament. Carlson discusses Israel’s “biblical rights”.

“It’s a small population. They’re connected to this land, historically, biblically,” Mr. Huckabee said of the Jews. “This particular region we’re talking about now, Israel, is the land that God gave through Abraham to his chosen people. It’s a people, a place and a purpose so we can look at it that way,” he said.

Mr. Carlson pressed him to explain his comment. According to Genesis, the Promised Land stretches from the Euphrates to the Nile, “which includes the entire Middle East — Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and large parts of Iraq,” said Mr. Carlson, the conservative podcaster. “What land are you talking about? [This] Basically the entire Middle East. You say that God gave this land to His people. What does that mean? He asked.

“It would be well if they took it all,” replied the ambassador.

When Mr. Carlson asked the ambassador if he would approve of Israel expanding throughout the region, he said: “That’s not what I’m trying to say.”

“I ask, is that what you said? I thought you just said that,” said Mr. Carlson.

“It’s a somewhat hyperbolic statement, you know, if you feel like we’re talking, but it’s not. We’re talking about Israel, the State of Israel, this land that we live in now, and we want peace,” the ambassador said. “They don’t want to take it over. They’re not asking to take it over… but they want to protect their people”.

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Israel, which has no clearly demarcated borders, captured the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights and Sinai Peninsula in the June 1967 war.

Of these lands, it returned the Sinai to Egypt after the 1978 Camp David Accords, but continued to occupy the rest. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and occupied the southern parts of the country for 18 years. It withdrew troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005 but kept the enclave under blockade, but Hamas attacked it again in 2023 after an October 7 attack.

The Israeli army now controls more than half of the Gaza Strip. It also carved out territories in southern Lebanon where it sent troops in 2024 and expanded its control over the Golan Heights after the fall of President Bashar al-Assad’s Syrian regime in December 2024.