Arab states have reacted with fury after U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee suggested Israel has a biblical right to take over large swaths of the Middle East.
“It would be fine if they took it all, but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about here today,” Huckabee told podcaster Tucker Carlson during an interview posted on YouTube on Friday, as the two discussed his Christian Zionist beliefs and interpretations of the Old Testament regarding land promised to Abraham’s descendants, stretching across multiple modern-day countries.
Huckabee added that this was not on the table, as “they’re not asking to take all that.” Asked if it would be fine for Israel to take over countries including Syria and Lebanon, he replied: “That’s really not exactly what I’m trying to say.”
His comments drew swift condemnation from across the region.
A joint statement from the foreign ministries of over a dozen Arab and Muslim nations, including U.S. allies Qatar and Saudi Arabia, expressed their “strong condemnation and profound concern” regarding Huckabee’s comments, affirming their “categorical rejection of such dangerous and inflammatory remarks.”
“These statements directly contradict the vision put forward by U.S. President Donald J. Trump, as well as the Comprehensive Plan to End the Gaza Conflict,” the statement said.
The League of Arab States, which includes all Arab states in the Middle East and North Africa, called his comments “extremist and lacking any sound basis” in a statement posted on X.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry described Huckabee’s comments as “extremist rhetoric” and called for the State Department to clarify its position on them, while Egypt described the comments as a “flagrant breach” of international law.
Iran warned the remarks could further “embolden” Israel in its “illegal measures against Palestinians as well as its constant aggression against the nations of the region.”
Huckabee has since complained that a viral clip from the interview did not give the full context of their two-hour exchange, which was posted in full by Carlson on X and YouTube.
The ambassador wrote on X that they had had a “very twisty and frankly confusing discussion about the meaning of Zionism,” adding that he had been asked “as a former Baptist minister about the ‘theology’ of Christian Zionism.”
“He 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,” he added.
In the wide-ranging interview, Carlson had asked Huckabee about a Bible verse in which God promises Abraham that his descendants will receive land “from the wadi of Egypt to the great river, the Euphrates — the land of the Kenites, Kenizzites, Kadmonites, Hittites, Perizzites, Rephaites, Amorites, Canaanites, Girgashites and Jebusites.”
Carlson, who has increasingly questioned U.S. support for Israel, said that this area would include “basically the entire Middle East,” including parts of Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
“I’m not sure it would go that far,” Huckabee said, “but it would be a big piece of land.”
He added: “They’re not trying to take over Jordan, take over Syria, take over Iraq, or anywhere else, but they do want to protect their people.”
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, a longtime proponent of Israeli expansion in the Middle East, appeared to welcome the remarks. He posted on X Saturday: “I (heart) Huckabee.”
Huckabee, a devout Christian and outspoken Zionist, has frequently drawn on the Bible when discussing the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, but the latest remarks go a step beyond that in seemingly referring to a much larger hypothetical expansion of the Israeli state.
In an interview with NBC News in September, he said the U.S. and Israel shared a value system that “is rooted deeply in a biblical understanding of a worldview.”
Prior to his appointment as envoy, he was outspoken about his support for the idea that Israel should annex the occupied West Bank and incorporate its Palestinian population, a position that would represent a reversal of decades of U.S. policy.
He has continued to back the idea that the West Bank should be referred to by its biblical name of “Judea and Samaria,” a term that he uses and that right-wing Israeli and American politicians and activists have failed to get the U.S. government to formally adopt.
Huckabee called the terminology “historically accurate” and said it “has roots in a 3,800-year history.”
The ambassador’s interview with Carlson came a week after Israel’s Security Cabinet approved measures to tighten the country’s control over the West Bank and make it easier for Jewish settlers to buy land there, a move that also attracted widespread statements of concern from Western governments and condemnation from throughout the Middle East.
In Hebron, an ancient community in the West Bank that has Jewish settlements in the heart of the city, the local Palestinian governorate was stripped of planning and building authority, which will instead be controlled by Israeli officials.
The moves were roundly condemned by Palestinians, who see the West Bank as vital for a future independent state. To this day, the international community overwhelmingly considers Israeli settlement construction to be illegal and an obstacle to peace.
Neither the White House nor the State Department have issued statements about the new measures.