Iran is at its “weakest point in decades,” White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Tuesday, telling an audience at the 92nd Street Y in New York that recent events in the Middle East — including the weakening of Hezbollah in Lebanon and the toppling of Bashar al-Assad in Syria — present a “huge opportunity” to advance regional integration.

“Is there a huge opportunity right now? Absolutely,” said Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy advisor. “The possibility of a more stable, integrated Middle East, where our friends are stronger, our enemies are weaker — that is real. And in fact, Iran is at its weakest point in decades, in modern memory.”

With just over a month remaining in Biden’s term, Sullivan touted his boss’ support for Israel after last year’s Oct. 7 attacks as a factor in Iran’s diminished standing in the Middle East, and as one of the reasons for Assad’s fall in Syria. 

“One could see the ways in which Israel — frankly, backed by the United States, in terms of much of what it has accomplished — was taking the fight to its enemies. One could see the weakening and the fracturing of the Axis of Resistance and the weakening of Iran. And one could see the pressure on Assad,” Sullivan said. “But the speed, the scope and the scale of the remaking of the Middle East in this short amount of time, I think you’d find very few people who could have predicted all of that.” 

Biden’s national security team has long sought a deal to normalize ties between Israel and Saudi Arabia, although the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks scuttled progress on that goal. Saudi leaders have said in recent months that a deal cannot move forward without a commitment by Israel to the creation of a Palestinian state. 

The window for Biden to bring home such a diplomatic achievement is rapidly closing. But Sullivan said there has been some cooperation between the Biden White House and the incoming Trump administration on national security matters.

“The imperative on us, both the outgoing Biden administration and the incoming Trump administration, has to be to lash up more tightly than is typical, to spend more time together than is typical, and to try to ensure we are sending a common, clear message to both friends and adversaries in the Middle East,” said Sullivan, who said that maintaining “vigilance” on Iran should be a priority during the transition period. “We have endeavored to do that over the last few weeks.”

When discussing the war in Gaza, Sullivan stood by the Biden administration’s support for Israel, even in the face of concerns about the humanitarian situation in Gaza. 

“There’s nothing inconsistent,” Sullivan explained, in calling for more humanitarian aid in Gaza, and also “standing up strongly and resolutely for the security of the State of Israel and for Israel’s right, indeed its duty, to get after the terrorists who attacked it and caused the greatest massacre of the Jewish people since the Holocaust, and who say they want to do that again and again, if given the opportunity,” he noted. 

“We should be absolutely resolute in our moral authority on that point, while also being resolute in our moral authority that we can do that and also ensure that innocent people in Gaza have access to basic sustenance and life saving necessities,” Sullivan added.

The question for Israel going forward, Sullivan posited, is how to convert its “significant” tactical gains into “a long-term strategic end game, where Israel is secure on a durable basis and where Gaza emerges where Hamas is not in power.”

The answer, Sullivan argued, comes down to what Biden has supported all along: a two-state solution. He warned that not pursuing a political solution could lead to further radicalization within Gaza. 

“The best way to do that, in my judgment, is to have a political solution, a political track alongside the military track,” he said. “That starts with the basic concept of essentially trying to make sure that the ordinary civilians of Gaza, the innocent people of Gaza, are not being put in a position where things are so bad that they all become radicalized and you have nothing to work with.”