Washington has been involved in nearly two dozen regime change operations across the Middle East, each ending in disaster, US Ambassador to Türkiye Tom Barrack has said.
Barrack criticized American efforts to manipulate the region and impose change through military force during an interview at the Global Security Forum in Qatar on Tuesday. He warned that his remarks would be “real” rather than “diplomatic.”
“If you take the greater Middle East, including the Levant, the Gulf, the Caucases, Central Asia, North Africa, we’ve had 23 regime changes. None of them have worked,” he said, stressing that the US had been involved in all of them in one way or another and bore responsibility for the outcomes.
The diplomat added that “kinetic reactions have never worked” either, referring to US military interventions and their “unintended consequences.” The latest US-Israeli war on Iran, which began in late February, has also plunged the region into chaos.
Barrack acknowledged that fomenting “conflict and controversy” had previously benefited Washington because “the more off base the region was, the more [Washington] could manipulate fossil fuels for its own benefit.” That is no longer the case, he said.
According to Barrack, the US “no longer wants to own [what it] doesn’t need to own” and envisions a different role for itself in the Middle East. “The bargain is not to own, not to control, but to tend, not to leave,” he said.
The envoy contrasted the proposed approach with the arrangement Washington reached with Saudi Arabia in 1974 following the oil shock triggered by the Yom Kippur War between Israel and several Arab nations.
Under the old arrangement, Saudi Arabia continued pricing its oil exclusively in US dollars and invested much of its revenues in American assets, while also purchasing US weapons and expecting American troops stationed in the region to rescue it in case of a major conflict.
The US confrontation with Iran, culminating in two open wars since 2025, has crumbled the foundations of that relationship.
Barrack urged friendly Middle Eastern nations to temper their expectations of American assistance, saying the US is not offering “a commitment to open seas and open trade at any cost.” Washington should “do a better job of defining: here’s what we’re willing to do, here’s what we’re not willing to do,” he added.
The diplomat repeatedly deflected questions critical of Israel, its regional policies, and its role in pushing Washington toward war with Iran.
“We leave Israel out of this because it’s so delicate to talk about,” Barrack said.
He also acknowledged that the Israeli government was reluctant to make any concessions on national security and described a “failure” of the Abraham Accords, a series of normalization agreements Israel signed with several Arab nations in 2020.
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