Obama’s parting thoughts on Syria, Israel

In his final interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday night, President Obama was pushed by host Steve Kroft on foreign policy in Syria and Israel.

Kroft flashed back to 2012, when the president used the words “red line” when he pledged to retaliate against Bashar Assad’s regime if it used chemical weapons.

Kroft noted that there were reports the phrase, which has come back up often as the Syrian conflict worsens, was not in Obama’s planned speech.

“No, it wasn’t,” Obama confirmed Sunday.

{mosads}“Look, if you’re putting all the weight on that particular phrase, then in terms of how it was interpreted in Washington, I think you– you make a legitimate point.

“I’ve got to tell you, though, I don’t regret at all saying that if I saw Bashar al-Assad using chemical weapons on his people that that would change my assessments in terms of what we were or were not willing to do in Syria,” he added.

Obama issued the warning in 2012, but stalled after Assad crossed the red line by using chemical weapons a year later.

Kroft pushed back and asked if he’d take the phrase back if he could.

“… I would have, I think, made a bigger mistake if I had said, ‘Eh, chemical weapons. That doesn’t really change my calculus.’ I think it was important for me as president of the United States to send a message that in fact there is something different about chemical weapons. And– regardless of how it ended up playing, I think– in the Beltway, what is true is Assad got rid of his chemical weapons.”

On Israel, Kroft asked about the recent United Nations

 Security Council vote to pass a resolution condemning Israel’s settlements in the West Bank, which the U.S. abstained from.

“It caused a major fallout between the United States and Israel,” Kroft pointed out, asking, “Was it your decision to abstain?”

“Yes, ultimately,” Obama said. 

“I don’t think it caused a major rupture in relations between the United States and Israel,” he said.

“And– despite all the noise and hullabaloo– military cooperation, intelligence cooperation, all of that has continued. We have defended them consistently in every imaginable way.”

But, he said, allowing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to worsen is a problem for both the U.S. and Israel and said settlements are “a contributing factor to the inability to solve that problem.”

Obama said he wanted “to make that point” with the vote.