msnbc   |  March 13, 2013

Obama to visit Middle East next week

MSNBC’s Thomas Roberts talks to NBC News Foreign Correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin about President Barack Obama’s visit to the Middle East.

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This content comes from Closed Captioning that was broadcast along with this program.

>> the president wants to speak to the people of israel, the people of palestinian and the people of the region and not lay down a peace proposal but express his vision for what the possibilities of the future are.

>> joining me now on the set is amon. i want to remind everybody, and spending time in the conflict in '08 as well and there's no doubt that it's very difficult to have a breakthrough without u.s. leadership. the u.s. -- and this is something that the u.s. has said, and there's no major breakthrough when and what's the plan going to look like and president obama has insight from some meetings he has ahead of the upcoming visit and the indication is that he's not going there with any plan. that's been said.

>> finally, another milestone this week on tuesday. hard to believe it's going to be the ten-year anniversary of the iraq war . how have the tlast few years gone when we talk about and reflect on the rebuilding of iraq and trying to rebuild that country after being torn apart by war?

>> there's definitely been some progress but when you look at where it is today, it's still very fragile and the democracy has not taken root and suffers a the lot of corruption, a sectarian division and mutual interest and right now out of suspicion and so many players inside that country?

>> how does that play out with the rest of the middle east ?

>> as we're seeing with that part of the middle east , when you look at a country like iraq , it's slightly allied with bashar al assad , it's close to iran. that makes the saudis suspicious because the layers are so complex, divided, or at least run by ethnic undercurrents. iraq is now the epicenter as kro the region.