Ten things Tom Barrack said in wild interview on Israel, Lebanon and Muslims
Ten things Tom Barrack said in wild interview on Israel, Lebanon and Muslims
US special envoy says Israel is 'attacking everyone', Washington asked Doha to host Hamas officials, and the Lebanese army is being armed to 'fight their own people'
US ambassador to Turkey and special envoy for Syria Tom Barrack at the Presidential Palace in Baabda, Lebanon, on 26 August 2025 (AFP/Anwar Amro)
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Tom Barrack, the US special envoy to Syria and ambassador to Turkey, has made a number of frank remarks about Israel, Lebanon and Qatar, among other issues, in an interview with The National.
Barrack, whose grandparents were Lebanese, has been President Donald Trump’s envoy to Syria since May.
In a wide-ranging 23-minute interview with journalist Hadley Gamble, published on Monday, he described peace in the region as “an illusion”, and said that Israel was “attacking everybody”, including Syria, Lebanon and Tunisia.
He also said that Israel’s strike on Qatar earlier this month was “not good”, adding that groups like Hamas and the Taliban were in Doha at America’s request.
Middle East Eye takes a look at some of the key quotes from the interview.
‘Israel is a different story’
On Trump’s overall doctrine in the Middle East, Barrack said the administration was keen to take a step back.
“President Trump brilliantly said, 'Look, I’m not going to lose any more American lives. We’ve been there. I’m not going to take over any more countries and try and teach them the colonial method. It never worked,’” he said.
Barrack added that they would cooperate with countries in the region on issues such as counterterrorism, but “that’s it”. Apart from Israel, that is.
“Israel [is] a different story. Israel is a valued ally. We subsidise them $4 or $5 billion a year. It has a special place in America’s heart. And we’re living with the confusion of what’s happening in this transition. So it’s complicated.”
‘Peace is an illusion’
When asked what the endgame was in the region for the US administration, he dismissed the idea of peace.
“When we say peace, it’s an illusion. There’s never been peace. There will probably never be peace because everybody’s fighting for legitimacy,” Barrack said.
“So people say, well, they’re fighting over borders and boundaries. It’s not what they're finding over. A border or a boundary is the currency of a negotiation.
“The end result is somebody wants dominance, which means somebody has to submit. In that part of the world, submit, there’s no Arabic word for submit. They can’t wrap their head around submit. So eventually, prosperity is the only answer.”
That particular quote was heavily criticised on social media, with many pointing out that the word “Islam”, among other words, can translate to submission.
‘Israel is attacking everybody’
In a section of the interview talking about the situation in Lebanon, Barrack was asked what the incentive was for Hezbollah to disarm. He replied: “Zero”.
“This is the problem, especially when Israel is attacking everybody. So Israel is attacking Syria. Israel is attacking Lebanon. Israel is attacking Tunisia,” he continued.
He was referring to frequent Israeli strikes across Syria since Bashar al-Assad’s government fell in December, and the near-daily Israeli breaches of the ceasefire agreed in Lebanon in November.
As for Tunisia, Barrack was likely referring to a suspected drone strike on the Global Sumud Flotilla, which is currently heading towards Gaza. Israel has not taken responsibility for the attack.
“As it goes on, [Hezbollah’s] argument gets better and better: ‘We’re here to protect the Lebanese from Israel’. Israel has five points [that it still occupies in Lebanon] and is not withdrawing,” Barrack added.
‘Arming Lebanon so they can fight their own people’
Elsewhere in the discussion about Lebanon, Barrack repeatedly said that it was on the Lebanese government to disarm Hezbollah.
“We’ll usher. We’ll give our advice. We’ll help, but they’ve got to solve it,” he said. “The Lebanese government, if they want to get back on track, has to say ‘We’re going to disarm Hezbollah’.”
He described the Lebanese Armed Forces, which he shortened to LAF, as “well-meaning” but “not well-equipped”.
“Because who are they going to fight? We don’t want to arm them… so they can fight Israel? I don’t think so,” the special envoy said.
“So you’re arming them so they can fight their own people, Hezbollah. Hezbollah is our enemy. Iran is our enemy.
“We need to cut the heads off of those snakes and chop the flow of funds. That’s the only way you’re going to stop Hezbollah.
“You’re not going to have LAF go knock on the door of a Shia house… and say, 'Excuse me, ma’am, can I go and take the rockets and the AK-47s out of your basement? And if not, I’m going to take you away at gunpoint.’”
‘Jerusalem is going to take care of Hezbollah’
Barrack went on to say that America would not directly intervene on the issue of Hezbollah in Lebanon, but Israel would.
“I would say the Lebanese, and I don’t mean this in a disrespectful way, all they do is talk,” he stated.
“We told them, 'Do you want our help? We’ll give you our help.’ We gave them a playbook. They can’t get there.
“So we say, 'Fine, we’re not going to execute. You know who’s going to execute? Walk across that border. Do you see where Jerusalem is? Jerusalem is going to take care of Hezbollah for you.”
He went on to say that Hezbollah was rebuilding during the current ceasefire, and that it has “$60m a month coming from some place”.
He also suggested that there was more incentive for a Hezbollah fighter than a Lebanese army soldier.
“A Hezbollah troop makes an average of 1,000 to 2,000 a month. A Lebanese soldier makes 200 to 300 a month, so if you’re a Lebanese soldier, you have to be an Uber driver, a barista, and pick up garbage on the weekends in order to fight,” he said.
“Hezbollah also runs the best municipalities. They have water, they have power, they have waste management, because Iran is funding that money. So if you want to get rid of Hezbollah, you choke Iran.”
He once again reiterated that there would be no US boots on the ground.
“We’re not going to go take Hezbollah out with our troops, with Centcom. Israel will just continue on. They bomb it daily because Hezbollah’s moving rockets, missiles, IRGs.”
‘Ceasefire not going to work’ in Gaza
Barrack said that the war in Gaza was “unsettling”.
He said that whether deaths in Gaza were happening because Hamas was “taking two million people hostage” in the enclave - which he said he believed to be true - or whether it was “Israel being overly aggressive”, it did not matter and has “got to end”.
Asked whether the US is undermining that position by not supporting a ceasefire, he rejected the idea of a truce.
“I think there’s been 27 ceasefires. None of them work. Ceasefire is not going to work.”
It is not clear what the number 27 was referring to. There have been two short periods of a fragile halt in hostilities since Israel’s genocide on Gaza began in October 2023.
One of those was in late November 2023 for around a week, and the other was between January and March 2025, before Israel unilaterally ended the truce.
Barrack later added that the situation in Gaza was bad for “all sides”.
“I hate what’s happening in Gaza on all sides. For the Palestinians, for the Israelis, for the Jordanians, for the Lebanese, for the Syrians, for the Turks,” he said. “It’s a mess.”
Qatar hosted Hamas and Taliban ‘at our request’
Asked about the impact of Israel’s strike on Qatar targeting Hamas officials, Barrack said that “It was not good”.
“Qatar has been a great and valued ally to us since day one,” he said.
He added that in the US, people have said of Qatar that “they house Hamas, they house the Taliban”, referring to the fact that at different times, senior officials from the Palestinian and Afghan movements have been based in Doha.
“They did it at our request. If we didn’t have some conduit to be able to speak to them, we would never get there.”
That position seems to contradict Karoline Leavitt, the White House’s press secretary, who following the attack was critical of the location but suggested that “eliminating Hamas” in such a way was a “worthy goal”.
Barrack was asked whether Israel overstepped by carrying out the attack in Doha without Washington’s permission.
“I don’t agree with a lot of things that [Israel] do, but I respect them,” he said. “Because they tell you exactly what’s going to happen.”
“If [Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu] feels that his borders or his people are being threatened, he will go anywhere and do anything, full stop.”
‘It’s not the United States of Israel’
The special envoy said that he didn’t trust any actor in the region.
“I don’t trust any of them. Our interests are not aligned. Ally is a mistaken word,” he said. Barrack was then asked to clarify if that included Israel.
“Absolutely. Our interests are vectors, right? There’s metrics,” he said.
“There’s things that we’re aligned with and there’s things that we are not aligned with. So there’s no unanimity, it’s not the United States of Israel. It’s not the United States of the Gulf. It’s not the United States of Turkey.
“We find alignment of the necessity of interests and we bond together. But blind trust on any of them? I don’t think anybody’s ever had it.”
‘By 2045, you’re going to have 5 billion Muslims’
In one section of the interview, he was asked about a Palestinian state, which Barrack was reminded that the majority of the global community supports.
“The world’s not doing a very good job of implementing or convincing anybody,” he said. “When you say the world, nobody has any skin in the game, except Israel and us.”
“We’re befriending, and we have befriended, Islam and the East. And by the way, you have to,” he added.
“If you just look at the demographics, you’re going to have, by 2040-2045, 10 billion people in the world. You're going to have five billion Muslims.. So are we going to keep pounding, from little Israel, against five billion Muslims?”
There are around two billion Muslims in the world currently. It’s not clear what evidence Barrack was using to suggest that this would more than double in less than two decades.
He was later asked, considering that Muslim populations are growing, if there would be blowback in the US for its funding of Israeli military actions in Gaza.
“I think America is divided on that issue,” he said. “Either there’ll be a solution that people say was worth it, or there’ll be a solution that wasn’t worth it. And people can vote with their feet the next time around.”
‘Wouldn’t rule out’ future Iran attack
To conclude the interview, Barrack was asked if the US felt the need for another “definitive strike” on Iran, following the days-long conflict between Israel and Iran in June.
He began by saying that Iranian people were “sensational”.
“Educated, thoughtful, civilised. I don’t want to see them harmed in any way,” he said.
“What Israel would do is another question, but it seems as though they’re marching towards a resolution of the entire problem, which is what Gaza is, right?
“I would imagine that just getting Gaza under control, and Hezbollah under control and the Houthis under control is not fruitful if you don’t get the Iran regime under control.
“I have no information as to what they’re going to do, but I wouldn’t rule that out.”
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