Engel: Assessment of Middle East Not ‘Very Rosy’

NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel said “I don’t think we have a really very rosy picture of the Middle East right now” on Friday’s broadcast of “The Rundown with Jose Diaz-Balart” on MSNBC.

Engel stated, “Well, I think there is certainly an important role for the US to play. I’m not sure, however, if lots of people would agree — military analysts, Mideastern analysts about an upbeat assessment of the Middle East. If you look at the middle east right now, you have Yemen, which is a failed state in a state of war, a proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran and an internal war within Yemen. You have Libya as a completely failed state where ISIS is emerging, where thousands of migrants are leaving every week, and many of them dying in the Mediterranean. You have Syria in just perhaps the worst kind of civil war that we’ve seen in decades anywhere in the world. You have Iraq back at a state of civil war. So, I don’t think we have a really very rosy picture of the Middle East right now. you could say the president maybe had a — give him an A for effort, but I think the results wouldn’t be quite as glamorous of a grade.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett

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