US President Barack Obama says that the Middle East conflict will not end until there is peace between Saudi Arabia and Iran.
"The competition between the Saudis and the Iranians, which has helped to feed proxy wars and chaos in Syria and Iraq and Yemen, requires us to say to our friends, as well as to the Iranians, that they need to find an effective way to share the neighborhood and institute some sort of cold peace," Obama told The Atlantic.
He also spoke of the dangers in the region, particularly extremists' ability to gain power when there is no clear authority. "You have countries that are failing to provide prosperity and opportunity for their people. You've got a violent, extremist ideology, or ideologies, that are turbocharged through social media. You've got countries that have very few civic traditions, so that as autocratic regimes start fraying, the only organizing principles are sectarian"