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The United States ambassador to Israel has said on camera that he would find it acceptable for the Jewish state to seize the entire territory described in the Book of Genesis as promised to the descendants of Abraham, a landmass stretching from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates River, which flows through Syria, and Iraq.
"It would be fine if they took it all," Ambassador Mike Huckabee told conservative commentator Tucker Carlson in a two-and-a-half-hour interview released on Friday. The territory in question, often referred to as "Greater Israel" in both religious Zionist and critical geopolitical literature, encompasses all of modern-day Israel, Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria, as well as significant parts of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia.
Although Huckabee subsequently attempted to characterize the statement as "somewhat of a hyperbolic statement," the remark represents what appears to be the most explicit public endorsement of maximalist biblical territorial claims ever made by a serving American diplomat, and it arrives at a time when Israel is already expanding its military footprint into Syrian territory and lobbying Washington for a war against Iran.
While the concept of "Greater Israel from the Nile to the Euphrates" has long been dismissed by many Israeli commentators as a conspiracy theory or an outdated slogan, it has resurfaced repeatedly in recent years. In 2024, an Israeli soldier was photographed wearing a Greater Israel badge on his uniform during military operations in Gaza, depicting borders stretching from Egypt to Iraq. Israeli settler leader Daniella Weiss stated publicly in 2024 that "we know from the Bible that the real borders of Greater Israel are the Euphrates and the Nile." And Israeli forces have, since late 2024, moved into and begun constructing military bases inside the demilitarized buffer zone in Syria's Golan Heights, a zone established under the 1974 disengagement agreement, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu demanding a demilitarized corridor stretching all the way from Damascus to the Golan.
Huckabee's remarks thus did not emerge in a vacuum. They were made by the official representative of the United States in Israel at a moment when Israeli territorial expansion in Syria is ongoing, when settlements in the occupied West Bank continue to grow under explicit American diplomatic cover, and when the U.S. is massing naval forces in the Persian Gulf for a potential military confrontation with Iran.
The exchange that produced the quote was part of a lengthy theological discussion in which Carlson asked Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, to explain Christian Zionism, the doctrine that the modern state of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy and that Christians have a spiritual obligation to support it.
Huckabee grounded Israel's legitimacy in a combination of biblical covenant, historical precedent, and what he called ethnic continuity. He cited the Balfour Declaration of 1917, United Nations recognition in 1947, and Israel's military victories, but repeatedly returned to the book of Genesis as the foundational source of Jewish entitlement to the land. "God gave through Abraham to a people that he chose" this land, Huckabee said. "It was a people, a place, and a purpose."
When Carlson pointed out that the Genesis passage describes a territory far larger than Israel's current borders, asking specifically whether Israel would be justified in claiming "all of Lebanon, all of Syria, all the way up to Iraq," Huckabee initially said yes. Only after Carlson pressed, saying "What would be fine? It's exactly what we're talking about today," did the ambassador attempt to narrow his position, insisting Israel is "not trying to take over Jordan" or other neighboring states.
The walkback, however, was incomplete. Huckabee never disavowed the theological premise. Instead, he argued that Israel had voluntarily "shrunk the land" by returning the Sinai to Egypt in 1979 and by not pursuing the full biblical territory. He also added a revealing caveat: if Israel's neighbors attacked and Israel won, "then okay, that's a whole another discussion."
For countries in the region, this conditional framing is far from reassuring. Israel has, in living memory, seized territory from Egypt, Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon through military force, and it has annexed the Golan Heights and East Jerusalem in defiance of international law. The notion that a victorious war could reopen biblical territorial claims, articulated by the sitting American ambassador, lends diplomatic weight to what had previously been the language of religious extremists and settler ideologues.
Carlson asked repeatedly whether the indigenous populations of Britain, Ireland, or other European countries possessed the same inherent right to their homeland that Huckabee ascribed to the Jewish people. The ambassador acknowledged he had "never honestly sat down and asked myself" the question. When pressed, he offered a conditional answer that stood in sharp contrast to the unconditional right he described for Israel: other nations have a right to their land, he said, "as long as they can defend it."
Carlson also challenged the basis of Jewish identity as it relates to land claims. He pointed out that many of Israel's founders were atheists from Eastern Europe with no documented genealogical connection to the ancient land, that Prime Minister Netanyahu's family came from Poland, and that there are Palestinians, including Christians, whose families have lived continuously in the land for 2,000 years but who possess fewer rights than recent Jewish immigrants from Brooklyn or Moscow.
When Carlson proposed genetic testing to determine who the actual descendants of Abraham are, Huckabee said he had "no idea what that would prove." When Carlson noted that ethnic Jews who convert to Christianity lose their right of return under Israeli law, while atheist Jews retain it, Huckabee could not explain the distinction. "I asked you what a Jew was and you couldn't answer it," Carlson said. "You said it partly is religious but doesn't have to be. It's partly genetic, but it doesn't have to be."
The exchange laid bare a framework in which one people possesses a divinely ordained, historically validated, and internationally protected right to a vast swath of the Middle East, while the millions of Arabs, Turks and others who live on that same land possess no comparable claim, a framework now articulated not by a fringe preacher but by the principal American diplomatic representative in the region.
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Huckabee's comments did not take place in isolation. They form part of a broader pattern in which religious and ideological claims are being translated into territorial facts on the ground.
Since the fall of the Assad government in late 2024, Israel has moved military forces into the UN-monitored buffer zone in the Golan Heights and begun constructing permanent military infrastructure on Syrian soil. Satellite imagery analyzed by Al Jazeera's Sanad verification unit showed at least seven construction sites built inside the buffer zone and into Syrian territory. Netanyahu has demanded a demilitarized corridor stretching from the Golan to Damascus, and Israeli defense officials have said their forces will remain for an "unlimited amount of time."
In the occupied West Bank, which Huckabee refers exclusively by the biblical names "Judea and Samaria," settlement construction continues with the ambassador's vocal support. Huckabee has publicly rejected the concept of a distinct Palestinian identity and has participated in tours with settlement council representatives.
And in the broader region, Netanyahu has visited the White House seven times in a single year, according to Carlson, as Israel pushes for American military action against Iran. Carlson cited polling showing roughly 21 percent of Americans support such a war, yet the administration appears to be moving in that direction regardless. "Netanyahu has way more influence over American foreign policy than Americans do," Carlson told Huckabee. The ambassador did not dispute the claim about the number of White House visits.
Meanwhile, the Patriarchs and Heads of the Churches in Jerusalem, the most senior Christian leaders in the Holy Land, issued a joint statement in January 2026 describing Christian Zionism as a "damaging ideology" that "misleads the public, sows confusion, and harms the unity" of Christian communities. They warned that the ideology had "found favor among certain political actors in Israel and beyond who seek to push a political agenda which may harm the Christian presence in the Holy Land and the wider Middle East." Huckabee responded by defending evangelical theology and saying no single church should speak for all Christians.
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