President Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel just lit a diplomatic match and tossed it straight into the Middle East.
In a jaw-dropping interview with Tucker Carlson that aired Friday, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee appeared to endorse the idea that Israel has a biblical right to much of the modern Middle East, triggering swift condemnation from Arab and Muslim nations.
Carlson invoked the Book of Genesis and told Huckabee that God’s promise to Abraham would today encompass land stretching “from the Nile to the Euphrates”—essentially everywhere across Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, and large swaths of Saudi Arabia and Iraq.
Carlson pressed: Did Israel have a right to that land?
Huckabee’s response: “It would be fine if they took it all.” He later added that Israel was not looking to expand and has a right to security in the land it “legitimately holds.” But the damage was done.
In a statement posted on X, Saudi Arabia’s foreign ministry blasted the comments as “extremist rhetoric” and “unacceptable,” and demanded clarification from the U.S. State Department.
A joint statement by at least 14 Arab and Muslim nations, including Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bahrain, Turkey, Lebanon, and Egypt—along with the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, the League of Arab States, and the Gulf Cooperation Council, also condemned the remarks.
The bloc declared that “Israel has no sovereignty whatsoever over the Occupied Palestinian Territory or any other occupied Arab lands,” flatly rejecting any assertion of further territorial control.
The broad coalition also warned that the ambassador’s remarks violated international law and threatened regional stability.
There was no immediate response from Israel or the White House.
The backlash lands at an already volatile moment. Israel’s borders have shifted repeatedly since 1948. It captured the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza during the 1967 war and later withdrew from Gaza in 2005, though settlement expansion in the West Bank has accelerated again in recent years.
Huckabee, a self-described Christian Zionist, was announced as U.S. ambassador to Israel by Trump in 2024. He was confirmed in April 2025.
He has long opposed a two-state solution and denied that Israel is engaged in an illegal occupation of the West Bank. Back in a 2008, he went further, declaring: “There’s really no such thing as a Palestinian.”
The Carlson exchange raised eyebrows for another reason: Huckabee at times appeared unsure when pressed about the sweeping biblical basis upon which he laid his arguments.
“You’re dodging a very obvious question, which is: Where does this right come from?” Carlson asks.
“I’m not sure if I understand your question,” Huckabee responds.
Whether he fully grasped the diplomatic shockwave his words would trigger, the fallout was immediate.
In a region where borders remain contested, an offhand “take it all” is more than a talking point, it’s a geopolitical accelerant.
