“And no matter what’s happening in the Middle East – the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment – the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.”

Together, we can create a world in which peace is real; in which every human being can thrive; in which all share the promise of our century. I believe we can succeed.

I’m just very wary that once you start military operations in any country, it’s very difficult to predict what the outcome is.

No matter what’s happening in the Middle East – the Arab Spring, et cetera, the economic challenges, high rates of unemployment – the emotional, critical issue is always the Israeli-Palestinian one.

All this needs to stop. And we pledge that Jordan will do its utmost to help achieve it.

Jerusalem is a time bomb that I fear is just waiting to go off.

Whenever you have a crisis, you’re always going to have the extremists taking advantage of the situation.

For me, I am left leaning when it comes to health and education, on the right when it comes to defense. So I don’t know where I come on the political spectrum. And I think this the challenge that a lot of Jordanians have to deal with.

The global system they hope to create is one of new walls and new isolation, and radically smaller horizons. It is an anti-democratic, anti-economic-growth, and anti-progress agenda.

I like to look at the glass half full.

That frustration does translate into the political sphere when people are hungry and without jobs.

I believe nuclear energy in Jordan will be done in such a way where it is a public-private partnership so everyone can see exactly what’s going on.

If you have a government that is elected, they need to do the hard work – because if they don’t, they won’t be around the next time the ballot box is open.

Today more than ever we need creative minds to address the issues of the age. And one of the most urgent is this: How can humanity know so much, achieve so much, and still fail so many people so badly?

Each country its cost analysis is going to be different. So what we are you seeing in Syria, for example, is different than what’s going on in Jordan. The maps are being rewritten.

There is resistance to change. There’s a resistance to ideas.

I hope that none of the countries in the Middle East are planning anything but the peaceful utilization of nuclear energy.

Even in the 1950s, President Eisenhower was concerned about what he called a campaign of hatred of the U.S. in the Arab world, because of the perception on the Arab street that it supported harsh and oppressive regimes to take their oil.

However, the resources at our people’s disposal are very few and we require assistance from the neighboring Arab countries, and for weapons in order to fight the enemy.

Lest Arab governments be tempted out of sheer routine to rush into impulsive rejection, let me suggest that tragedy is not what men suffer but what they miss.

Talk to women who’ve ever dated an Arab man. The results are not good.