James Jeffrey

What we really need in Idlib and throughout the rest of the country is a cease-fire.

I agree with the CENTCOM assessment. ISIS is still there in the northeast and throughout Syria.

He has shown little willingness to be flexible on any issue, and at the moment may be concluding that it is better to sit on a pile of rubble with half his population and 60 percent of his country than to compromise.

Everybody wants this war to end. Everybody wants refugees and IDPs to return, and everybody wants the fighting and this danger of an escalation to stop.

If we do not play the kind of very costly and at times very difficult role that we play in the world, then you get a Syria; you get a law of the jungle in a very important area where you do have, as I said, five armies.

I have no moral hesitation in asking other countries to do more and the American public to do less.

We think that this regime needs to subject itself to the U.N. process, free and fair elections, a new constitution or at least a reformed constitution, and a nationwide cease-fire.

I think Russia's support for the Assad regime is a mistake.

Every day we come to our jobs in the State Department and in the U.S. Government working on Syria, our goal is to ensure that that Assad regime does not gain another inch unless we have a political process and everybody wins, not just him.

I took this job on the assumption that this Administration would stand by its commitments and would hold the line on Syria. So far, I believe it has absolutely done so.

Israel is a major player in the Middle East. Its own security and its work with other countries, for example, to defeat ISIS, and to push back on Iran, is absolutely vital for our overall strategy for the region.

There is no doubt, including in the White House, that Iran is an extremely dangerous, expansionist force in the region.