In an interview with JI, Hood reflected on a career included stints working on Iran policy, relations with Gulf states during the fraught Arab Spring and antisemitism policy in the tense aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023
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Ludo Hood
Add JewishInsider on GoogleAfter a career in the foreign service, where officers are obliged to keep their political views to themselves and promote the positions of the current U.S. administration, some retiring diplomats have a hard time getting used to speaking their minds, particularly when the press is involved.
Ludo Hood is not one of those people.
The 53-year-old retired from the U.S. Foreign Service last week after two decades of service, a career that took him to Kuwait, Bahrain, France and Qatar. Most recently, he served as a senior advisor to Keith Kellogg, President Donald Trump’s former special envoy for Ukraine, and before that as a close advisor to Deborah Lipstadt, the former U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism — two roles that put him in the crossfire of some of the biggest political debates in Washington.
Hood, who is preparing to take on a role at a think tank, sat down with Jewish Insider this week to reflect on a career representing the U.S. that included stints working on Iran policy during negotiations for the 2015 nuclear deal, relations with Gulf states during the fraught Arab Spring and antisemitism policy in the tense aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023.
Through all those foreign postings and geopolitical flashpoints, one of the most “alarming and shocking” moments of Hood’s time as a foreign service officer came within the halls of Foggy Bottom — when, in the months after Oct. 7, the State Department hosted listening sessions for staffers to express anti-Israel views and bash the policies espoused by the federal government.
“It was the only time in my career where active dissent against the elected president’s overall policy and strategic direction was allowed to be aired in the open, and was actually in many ways encouraged,” Hood told JI.
The gatherings were hosted by then-Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, and they came as some rank-and-file diplomats, plus many political appointees from the Biden administration, voiced dissent against President Joe Biden’s support for Israel.
“In terms of being politically correct, you had to give a lot of deference to a heavy anti-Israel point of view, which maybe is fine in the context of a social studies program at a university,” Hood said. “But it’s the State Department. We are national security professionals who are supposed to be implementing the policy of the duly elected president.”
Hood compared that moment to the sentiment among some foreign service officers who have struggled to represent the U.S. under Trump. Hood acknowledged that some diplomats do not agree with Trump’s approach to foreign policy, but said that they should not express that view publicly as part of their job — and that Trump would not stand for so much public expression of dissent.
“There was and perhaps remains opposition to the way that Trump does and says certain things in the State Department,” said Hood. “The difference here is the Trump people, either under [former Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo or now, would never tolerate unprofessional behavior, and it is unprofessional.”
“Obviously, you’re allowed to have your own personal points of view,” Hood continued. “But if you’re going to sign up to do this work, you ought to be reasonable.”
That doesn’t mean he always agreed with the positions that he was meant to promote as a diplomat. During the Biden administration, Hood took issue with the White House’s policy that nearly anytime antisemitism was mentioned, it had to be coupled with a mention of Islamophobia, a policy that Hood called “illogical and irrational.” (Lipstadt, his former boss, has called for antisemitism and Islamophobia to be discussed as distinct forms of hate.)
“It was official policy at the Biden White House in terms of how they named task forces and so forth,” said Hood. “We had to accept the horrendously problematic addition of ‘counter-Islamophobia efforts’ into what we were doing or what we were commemorating. I say ‘horrendously problematic’ because it undermines the fight against Muslim hatred or other forms of religious hatred to start conflating them for politicized reasons that have nothing to do with the actual strategies needed to curb that kind of discrimination.”
Even before Oct. 7, Hood said, getting certain State Department diplomats to include antisemitism in meetings with foreign leaders could be challenging.
“It could be painfully difficult to say and do certain things because of an institutional reluctance to highlight antisemitism,” Hood said, particularly in Europe.
When Trump was inaugurated early last year, Hood transitioned to the Ukraine file, the first time in his career when his portfolio did not include the Middle East.
He was more sympathetic to the plight of Ukraine than many members of the incoming Trump administration, which he said was more amenable to appeasing Russian President Vladimir Putin and less interested in continuing to spend billions on Ukraine’s defense. Kellogg, the Ukraine envoy, was also more supportive of Kyiv than Trump, leading to some of his portfolio being taken over by White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff. Kellogg ultimately stepped down in January.
“It was frustrating to see how that played out, partly because the guy is a decent, honorable man who probably could have been treated better by some people operating in the White House and elsewhere,” said Hood. “Perhaps more relevantly, more substantively, I think Kellogg had a view on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which, from where I stood, reflected reality and reflected how we should be approaching the conflict.”
On the other side of the Ukraine issue was the increasingly influential isolationist right. Hood called the ongoing intra-Republican feud about foreign policy “a profoundly important debate,” even as he came down hard against the isolationist wing.
“I think there’s very easy arguments to be had to push back on isolationism and restrainers,” said Hood. “I think those of us who want an assertive America aren’t asking for forever wars, aren’t asking to invade in the name of democracy. I think there are ways of putting America first on the global stage without deploying what has now become known as neocon objectives, basically democracy promotion.”
It’s fair to say Hood is aligned with the more traditional, interventionist wing of the Republican Party; he recently joined the Hudson Institute, a pro-Israel think tank closely aligned with several former top Bush administration officials. He said that over his two decades in diplomacy, his central views about the world and foreign policy have not changed. But he said he has come to hold a more realpolitik view of the world that is less Pollyannaish about democracy as a strategic objective.
“I think maybe democracy promotion, or even having a heavy focus on human rights, is probably at best naive, if not a lost cause, in some parts of the world,” said Hood. “We shouldn’t necessarily allow those issues to always get in the way of a bilateral strategic partnership that is broadly speaking good for stability and prosperity for that country or for that region.”
Hood is leaving the foreign service at a time when the institution’s future is in question. More than 1,300 State Department staffers — including many foreign service officers — were laid off last summer. The American Foreign Service Association, the union representing foreign service officers, called it “a catastrophic blow to our national interests.”
Hood called Trump’s “top-down approach,” where he leans heavily on personal advisors like Witkoff and Jared Kushner, “understandable in some respects.” He is not instinctually opposed to the cuts and thinks some were necessary.
“We needed a lot of disruption in the national security establishment. There’s still so much bloat to be cut,” said Hood. But, speaking diplomatically, Hood tentatively suggested that Trump might actually does have something to gain from the bureaucrats in Foggy Bottom and America’s embassies around the world.
“What you don’t have now is bottom-up information and recommendations being aired, discussed, debated,” said Hood. “Sometimes there are real questions about implementation and messaging.”
Next stop: the well-trodden Washington path of helping public officials hone their messages. In other words: a think tank.
Plus, meet Trump’s Jewish UFO czar
Aspen Security Forum
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice speaks at the Aspen Security Forum on July 17, 2025.
Good Wednesday morning.
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we report on former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s suggestion that the U.S. forgo diplomacy with Iran and continue to pressure Tehran, and cover a meeting this week between the Board of Peace’s Nickolay Mladenov and Aryeh Lightstone and the executive board of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States. We report on the House’s passage of a bill opposed by some Orthodox Jewish groups that would permanently institute daylight saving time, and interview Harvard astrophysicist Avi Loeb, who is now serving as the Trump administration’s UFO czar. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Michael Diamond, Elena Kagan and George Deek.
We have also launched a new on-demand Live Briefing that you can access throughout the day via our new app (on Apple and Android) and on our website.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- President Donald Trump is slated to speak at the Pennsylvania Defense and Innovation Summit, organized by Sen. Dave McCormick (R-PA), at the U.S. Army War College today. Additional speakers include Army Secretary Dan Driscoll, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon.
- A vote on Rep. Thomas Massie’s (R-KY) legislation to strip all U.S. aid to Israel out of the 2027 State Department appropriations bill could come for a vote as soon as today. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said in a “Dear Colleague” letter on Tuesday that he opposes the legislation, but also argued for “urgent change” in the U.S.-Israel relationship, including changes to U.S. aid going forward. Read more here.
- The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold its rescheduled confirmation hearing for Jay Clayton, the Trump administration’s nominee to be director of national intelligence. Originally slated to testify before the committee last month, Clayton heeded a directive from Trump not to appear as the president battled Congress on voter-ID legislation.
- The Hudson Institute is hosting a fireside chat this morning with Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY).
- The Aspen Security Forum continues today in Colorado, with sessions focused on a range of issues including China, Europe and trade challenges. Later in the day, the American Enterprise Institute’s Danielle Pletka and Marc Thiessen will record an episode of their “What the Hell Is Going On” podcast with former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy and former National Security Advisors Stephen Hadley and Robert O’Brien.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S GABBY DEUTCH
As Maine Democrats pick up the pieces of Graham Platner’s failed Senate campaign and quickly try to find a replacement for the scandal-tarred candidate on the ballot, moderate Democrats in Michigan, where a primary is fast approaching, are in a race against time to prevent another far-left Senate candidate from capturing a valuable nomination.
The final three weeks of the Michigan primary will be 2026’s most consequential test yet for the power the party establishment still holds, particularly in a pivotal swing state. After socialist candidates scored a number of surprise victories in heavily blue districts in New York City, Philadelphia and Denver, party leaders are fighting with renewed vigor to rally behind Rep. Haley Stevens (D-MI) in the primary against her left-wing challenger, Abdul El-Sayed.
Retiring Sen. Gary Peters (D-MI) endorsed Stevens on Monday, a pivot from his announcement in May that he planned to stay out of the race, joining Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who had already backed the congresswoman. The party’s left flank — including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) — is backing El-Sayed.
“The change of heart is we just know that we have to hold Michigan,” Peters said on “Morning Joe” on Tuesday of his decision to endorse, with Stevens sitting beside him. “She’s an outstanding candidate and I certainly hope that folks get behind her around the country and understand that she’s the right person to be the next senator from the state of Michigan.”
There are fresh signs that the late push for Stevens from Democratic leaders — along with millions in ad spending from pro-Stevens outside groups — has given the congresswoman momentum in the closing stretch of the race. A new poll commissioned by the Detroit News found Stevens pulling ahead of El-Sayed by seven points, 48-41%, after she trailed in most public polls this year.
LITMUS TEST
Khanna pressed to support Oct. 7 attacks in Drop Site interview
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), fresh off a trip to the West Bank where he alleges he was unjustly detained by Israeli settlers and Israeli military forces, faced a barrage of criticism in a Drop Site News interview on Tuesday for refusing to endorse Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Back-and-forth: In the lengthy exchange, Drop Site co-founder Jeremy Scahill repeatedly questioned Khanna, a 2028 presidential hopeful, on why he would not express support for Hamas attacks on Israeli soldiers. Scahill framed the Oct. 7 attacks as primarily targeting Israeli military bases and soldiers, despite the fact that the group attacked many civilian communities and fired thousands of rockets at civilian centers. Further angering Scahill, Khanna said he believed Israel had a right to go after Hamas terrorists “who killed the civilians” on Oct. 7, “but not in the way they went about it, which I said is genocide.”
WAR WORRIES
Amid Iran war concerns, Democrats pump brakes on Senate defense bill
Citing concerns about the Iran war and the administration’s elevated defense funding request, Senate Democrats voted in lockstep on Tuesday evening to block a procedural motion to open debate on the 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, despite the bill passing out of the Armed Services Committee with bipartisan support, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
Why it matters: The decision to block the start of debate on the NDAA — an annual must-pass bill which typically garners strong bipartisan support — is a rare and significant step by Democrats signaling significant frustrations with the Trump administration’s ongoing war against Iran. Some anti-Israel voices have sought to cast the vote as a rejection of a provision in the bill expanding U.S.-Israel military cooperation but only a handful of Democrats have cited that as part of their reasoning for opposing the bill.
Trade-off: President Donald Trump on Tuesday walked back his announcement, made the previous day, that the U.S. would institute a 20% fee on cargo transiting the Strait of Hormuz, saying the toll would be replaced by trade deals with Gulf states, but providing no details, JI’s Christina Sher reports.
HEARD AT ASPEN
Condoleezza Rice warns against any Iran deal, urges to keep the pressure on
Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Tuesday opposed any nuclear deal with Iran, arguing that the U.S. should continue pressure on Iran’s economy and “see what happens,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports from the Aspen Security Forum.
Assessment: Meanwhile, former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, speaking alongside Rice on a panel, suggested that the U.S. had potentially overestimated its capabilities in the war, agreeing that continued economic pressure and a renewed blockade are the best strategy going forward. Both also offered strong criticisms of U.S. allies for not joining with and even attempting to obstruct the U.S. campaign against Iran. “I would not buy a nuclear agreement under any circumstances. I’d let them sit there and stew in their lousy economy … and let’s just see what happens,” Rice said.
DST DEBATE
House passes permanent daylight saving time bill, concerning Orthodox Jewish groups
In a bipartisan vote pushed in part by President Donald Trump, the House passed the Sunshine Protection Act, making daylight saving time permanent, a situation that raises concerns for Orthodox Jewish groups that have long warned that such a move would have negative impacts for Jewish morning prayer and potentially raise dangers for school children who have to travel to school before daybreak, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
State of play: The bill passed the House by a 308-117 vote, with 95 Democrats and 22 Republicans voting no. The issue has been a priority for Trump, and lawmakers have also included the same legislation in a must-pass transportation bill, with near unanimous support in committee. Orthodox groups now say they’re placing their hopes on the Senate to stop the bill from passing, where the policy has some vocal opponents.
SPACE MAN
The Israeli scientist at the center of Trump’s search for answers on UFOs
President Donald Trump has a border czar, a government official leading the crackdown on undocumented immigrants — whom the White House calls “illegal aliens” — crossing the southern border. The president, who likes to go big, now also has a UFO czar, a Harvard astrophysicist who is scanning the cosmos in search of aliens of the science-fiction variety, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
From farm to universe: It’s a stunning if improbable career highlight for Avi Loeb, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who fled Nazi Germany and settled in a communal farm in central Israel. As a child, Loeb had a lot of time alone with his thoughts — walking around to collect eggs from the chickens, or driving a tractor to the surrounding hills, where he would sit and read philosophy books. “I was deeply interested in the most fundamental questions of our existence,” Loeb told JI in a recent interview.
BRUSSELS BUNCH
Mladenov, Lightstone meet with Middle East rabbis in Brussels
Nickolay Mladenov and Aryeh Lightstone, respectively the high representative for the Board of Peace and the body’s senior advisor, met in Brussels earlier this week with rabbis representing Jewish communities across the Islamic world, Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss reports.
Money for Gaza: Mladenov and Lightstone met with the executive board of the Alliance of Rabbis in Islamic States at the group’s annual two-day board meeting. On Monday, the two also attended the second convening of the EU-backed Palestine Donor Group, as the collective of some 65 delegations launched a billion-dollar initiative to begin the economic recovery of the Gaza Strip. Jared Kushner joined the donor conference by video. Among those in attendance at the board meeting were rabbis from Morocco and Turkey.
Worthy Reads
Stroke of the PEN: In The Wall Street Journal, author Meg Keene addresses a recent article from PEN America that detailed the isolation of Israeli and Jewish writers following the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks, the publication of which prompted the resignation of the organization’s president. “The article acknowledges that the accounts reveal ‘blatant hostility, discrimination, and hate.’ That should have been the thesis, not an aside. PEN can see the discrimination; it struggles to name it when the targets are Jews and Israelis and the method is anti-Zionist exclusion. PEN America’s article claims to describe a silent moratorium. Its president’s resignation broke that silence. The scandal, apparently, wasn’t the marginalization of Jewish and Israeli writers; it was PEN’s willingness to acknowledge, even tentatively, that it is going on.” [WSJ]
Don’t Chase the Iranians: The Washington Post’s David Ignatius suggests that President Donald Trump should not rush diplomacy with Iran, arguing that Tehran is headed toward eventual collapse. “I’m usually an enthusiast for diplomacy, but for now, we should stop chasing the Iranians — through the front channel, back channel or anything in between. Let’s wait and see. The Iranian government is obviously split. … A genuine peace with Iran ‘will come in two weeks, or two months, or two years,’ as one U.S. negotiator puts it. Trying to rush that timetable hasn’t worked. But I think the Iranian regime is still on a one-way street to an eventual demise, however long that takes.” [WashPost]
Beyond the Startup Nation: In Time, Frayda Leibtag looks at the economic impact of nearly three years of war on Israelis who work outside the country’s high-tech bubble. “The high-tech sector driving the headline numbers is small. It employs only about one in nine Israeli workers, pays them close to three times the average wage in the rest of the economy, and earns most of its revenue from customers abroad, who keep paying when the sirens sound. The other eight out of nine Israeli workers make their living in shops, farms, and one-person businesses that depend on local customers, the ones who stay home and lose a day’s income every time the fighting flares up. Those Israelis have borne much of the toll of the war.” [Time]
A larger selection of Worthy Reads is available in our Live Briefing.
Word on the Street
President Donald Trump held a Situation Room meeting on Tuesday night ahead of a fresh bombing campaign targeting Iran this morning, including rare daylight strikes…
Following a complaint by the U.S., Israel lifted its restriction on the number of American refueling jets permitted at Ben Gurion Airport, a day after Transportation Minister Miri Regev announced that no more than 20 refuelers would be permitted to land at the airport due to overcrowding that threatened to cancel commercial flights in the coming weeks…
Trump reportedly told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week that Israel should begin redeploying its troops currently stationed in southern Syria, suggesting that the IDF’s presence threatens to escalate tensions in the area; Trump also said that the IDF should withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon to avoid a similar escalation there…
Israeli media reports that Netanyahu is planning to travel to the U.S. this weekend, and will attend the funeral of late Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), expected to be held on Tuesday…
Trump hosted five Holocaust survivors in the Oval Office on Tuesday; the group also met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Jared Kushner…
White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Kushner were spotted in the Senate chambers during the swearing-in of Graham‘s sister, Darline Graham, who was appointed to fill the remainder of her brother’s Senate term following his death over the weekend…
Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan, who along with Justice Amy Coney Barrett testified on Capitol Hill yesterday about the Supreme Court’s budget request, reflected on her now-viral exchange with Graham during her 2010 confirmation hearing, during which he asked her how she spent Christmas and she responded that she spent the day “like all Jews … probably at a Chinese restaurant”; testifying on Tuesday, Kagan said, “Many people have talked about how funny Senator Graham was… What I remember about that hearing was that somehow Senator Graham made me look funny, which is a harder thing entirely”…
Former Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of the school’s anti-Israel protests, is suing the federal government, the Heritage Foundation, Canary Mission and Betar, alleging a coordinated campaign targeting student activists who organized against Israel in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks and ensuing war in Gaza…
The New York Times spotlights Michael Diamond — known to Beastie Boy fans as Mike D — ahead of the release of the performer’s first solo album following the 2012 death of bandmate Adam Yauch…
An 82-year-old Israeli man who was wounded in an Iranian missile attack that struck his apartment building in Haifa in April died of his injuries earlier today…
The Israeli government announced the allocation of $431 million to fund the construction of several dozen new West Bank settlements over the next four years…
The Wall Street Journal reports on allegations from human rights groups that the treatment of Palestinian prisoners in Israel significantly deteriorated following Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks…
Gabe Stutman has joined Inside Political Money as a senior reporter…
Leonard Abramson, who pioneered the industry of HMOs following his creation of U.S. Healthcare, died at 93…
Pic of the Day
George Deek, who serves as Israel’s special envoy to the Christian world, on Tuesday inaugurated a new trauma center at the English Hospital in Nazareth, Israel, that had been funded by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews.
Birthdays
Immediate past board chair of The Jewish Federations of North America, Julie Beren Platt (pictured with her husband, Marc, and Barbra Streisand)…
Member of the British House of Lords, he is a professor, medical doctor, scientist, television anchor and Labour party politician, Baron Robert Maurice Lipson Winston turns 86… Israeli composer and conductor, he composed and conducted the winning entry at the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, Kobi Oshrat turns 82… Professional sports bettor and poker player, he is a four-time winner of World Series of Poker bracelets, Mickey Appleman turns 81… Physician and life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, Dr. David Harris Lippman… Co-rosh yeshiva of Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, N.J., one of the largest yeshivas in the world, Rabbi Dovid Schustal turns 79… Congresswoman from Florida for 30 years ending in 2019, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen turns 74… Senior fellow at the Aspen Institute, Elliot Gerson… Israel’s ambassador to the U.S. from 2021-2025, Michael “Mike” Herzog turns 74… Retired California-based appellate attorney, Feris M. Greenberger… Executive director of Friends of OU (Orthodox Union) Israel, Miriam Baron “Mimi” Jankovits… Professor at the UCLA School of Law, Richard Harold Steinberg turns 66… Former political news director at Bloomberg, Jodi Schneider… Member of Congress (D-RI) until 2023, his mother is Sabra née Peskin, David Nicola Cicilline turns 65… Anchorage, Alaska-based attorney, a member of the Alaska House of Representatives since 2012, Andrew Lewis “Andy” Josephson turns 62… Former U.K. Labour party MP including three years as foreign secretary, now CEO of NYC-based International Rescue Committee, David Miliband turns 61… Co-founder and chief investment officer of Toronto-based EdgeStone Capital Partners, one of Canada’s leading private equity firms, Gilbert S. Palter… Israeli actor and singer, she is the 1991 and 1998 winner of the Ophir Award (Israel’s Academy Award) for best actress, Dafna Rechter turns 61… Senior advisor at investment bank Greif & Co., he was the CFO of Jewish Family Service of Los Angeles, David S. Felman… Senior business development representative at Atera, he served for eight years as the Florida synagogue initiative director of AIPAC, Sam Kalmowicz… Senior correspondent at New York magazine, she is a co-author of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Irin Carmon turns 43… Israeli actor, he played Boaz in Season 1 of “Fauda,” Tomer Kapon turns 41… Filmmaker and co-founder of the Square Peg film production company, Ari Aster turns 40… Managing editor of the U.S. deals team at Bloomberg, Liana Baker… Deputy assistant secretary for travel and tourism at the U.S. Department of Commerce during the Biden administration, now CEO of the FIFA World Cup 26 NYNJ host committee, Alexander Lasry turns 39… SVP of campus solutions at Hillel International, Jonathan Steven “Jon” Falk… Independent journalism consultant, Ariel Zirulnick… Senior NFL reporter at Yahoo Sports, she is also the author of a biography of a Holocaust survivor, Jori Epstein…
Qatar’s once-quiet intermediary role is now not only public, but a key element of the infrastructure supporting the new regional dynamics
Fabrice Coffrini / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Qatar's Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim al-Thani speaks prior to a quadrilateral meeting between the United States, Iran, Pakistan and Qatar at the Burgenstock luxury hotel complex overlooking Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, on June 21, 2026.
As diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran continues following the adoption of the memorandum of understanding between the two countries last week, Washington is again leaning on Qatar to serve as a critical interlocutor, further cementing Doha’s standing as an intermediary despite the significant setbacks sustained by the Gulf state during the recent war with Iran.
In an interview with UnHerd that was published on Thursday, Vice President JD Vance, traveling back from the Iran talks in Switzerland earlier this week, said that Doha would serve as the location for CENTCOM to meet with Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officials — despite the IRGC’s designation as a foreign terror organization by the U.S. (a move undertaken by President Donald Trump in his first term).
“One of the things we wanted to come out [of the negotiations] with” was a “channel on the Iranian side” to seek conflict resolution, Vance told UnHerd aboard Air Force Two. “Which we did. They were like, ‘OK, fine, we’ll send somebody from the IRGC to go hang out in Doha with somebody from CENTCOM,’ and that’s how we’re going to settle a lot of these disputes,” he said.
Doha has long played a role in the back-channel communications between the U.S. and adversaries. But Vance’s comments underscore the degree to which Qatar’s once-quiet intermediary role is now not only public, but a key element of the infrastructure supporting the new regional dynamics.
The close relationship between Washington and Doha was on full display during the Switzerland talks. On Sunday, Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani posted a photo of himself with Vance and Jared Kushner as the three huddled around a laptop. “Live from Lucerne, work continues” with Vance and Kushner, Al Thani wrote in separate English and Arabic posts.
Earlier this week, the White House leaned on Al Jazeera, the Qatari-owned media outlet, to deny a report that Vance had been snubbed by the Iranians at a press conference following talks in Switzerland — a signal that Washington is increasingly treating Qatari institutions as useful and legitimate when its message is being amplified.
Qatar wasn’t affected by the war in the same way as the UAE, which faced more missile fire than any other country in the region, including Israel. But it also wasn’t immune from Iranian attacks. Early in the war, Iranian missiles targeted the Gulf state’s Ras Laffan gas complex, causing some $20 billion in annual revenue loss and damage that is estimated to take five years to fully repair.
The strike on Ras Laffan came in spite of a secret effort by Qatar, first reported by The Washington Post, to press Iran not to target the facility. In exchange, the Post reported, Doha offered to use its leverage to halt gas production and send oil costs up — moves intended to increase pressure on the U.S. and Israel to wind down the war quickly.
Qatar has long tried to play to all sides in conflicts even as it serves as a mediator — despite the inherent risks. It was an Iranian strike on the U.S. base in Qatar last June that marked one of the final salvos of the 12-day war. Months later, five Hamas members and a Qatari security guard were killed in an Israeli strike on a building used by Hamas for its senior officials who live in Doha.
Doha’s strategy over the last two decades of investing anywhere and everywhere has largely paid off (though not through sports prowess, as evidenced by the Qatari team’s World Cup loss to Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday). In this next phase, Qatar will continue to seek to play a key role in Iran talks and the implementation of any agreements — ensuring that the Gulf state has significant buy-in in shaping the future of the region.
The South Carolina senator also suggested that Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords before the end of the year
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) walks into the Senate Chamber on December 11, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) defended the Trump administration’s diplomatic discussions with Iran on Sunday, but predicted that negotiations with the Islamic Republic will likely fail, and threatened that the U.S. will take over the Strait of Hormuz if no agreement is reached.
“Let’s try a diplomatic solution. I think it’s going to fail,” Graham said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday regarding a negotiated agreement with Tehran.
He said that, following his lengthy meeting with Trump on Friday, he believes that, ”If this deal fails, President [Donald] Trump is going to take the Strait of Hormuz over by force. The United States will control the Strait of Hormuz” and charge fees for passage. President Donald Trump made similar comments on Saturday.
“If Iran continues to attack Israel and Lebanon, the new policy will be, we’ll hit Iran. So, to the Iranians, if you’re listening, when you use Hezbollah to attack Israel, I think the new policy will be, we will attack Iran,” Graham continued. The senator’s comments are at odds with recent remarks fromTrump and Vice President JD Vance rebuking Israel for its strikes on Hezbollah in Lebanon, responding to Hezbollah attacks on Israel.
Graham acknowledged the memorandum of understanding signed last week is “problematic” but said he’d rather “try diplomacy than take it off the table,” and downplayed the financial windfall that Iran will get from the deal in the form of the lifting of sanctions and unfreezing of sanctioned Iranian funds.
“The money Iran gets is not going to change the future of Iran,” Graham said. “It’s not enough to reconstruct the country.”
Graham and other Senate Republicans in 2023 criticized the Biden administration for releasing $6 billion in frozen Iranian funds as part of a hostage deal, a sum likely to be dwarfed by the amount Iran stands to gain from this deal.
Graham, who previously criticized the idea of a $300 billion reconstruction fund for Iran, now says he supports the prospect — as long as the funds come from Arab states, rather than from the United States. But he also raised doubts that such a fund would actually come to fruition.
Graham suggested that a fundamental change in Iran’s posture would be required to convince the Arab states to Invest in Iran: “It would mean that the Sunni Arabs believe that Iran has changed to the point they want to be a business partner. I pray that happens. I doubt if it will.”
The South Carolina senator also predicted Saudi Arabia will join the Abraham Accords before the end of the year, something that the Saudi government has publicly denied.
Asked whether Israel would be ready to recognize a Palestinian state before the end of the year, which has been Saudi Arabia’s demand in exchange for normalization, Graham said, “Donald Trump is going to empower me and others to jumpstart an effort to get Saudi to join Israel. There will be accommodations made by Saudi and Israel.”
He said that there had been plans to announce a Saudi-Israeli normalization framework by the end of October 2023, which were upended by Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.
“I’m not asking you to do anything to jeopardize the future of Israel’s security, but I am asking you to be open to expanding the Abraham Accords and finding a solution to Palestinians that are good for Israel, and quite frankly, good for the world,” he continued, addressing the Israelis. “To Saudi Arabia, now is the time to open negotiations yet again.”
The South Carolina Republican said that Trump should allow Jay Clayton’s nomination to be director of national intelligence to proceed and unlock Democratic votes to reauthorize Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
He said that Trump blocked Clayton’s planned confirmation hearing last week because he was told, incorrectly, that Democrats did not plan to follow through on renewing FISA even if Clayton were confirmed.
Asked whether he has any concerns about acting DNI Bill Pulte, Graham responded, “I’m fine right now, but I won’t be fine much longer if we don’t get FISA up and running, and I think Clayton’s the perfect pick.”
Hagar Hajjar Chemali, who is half Jewish and half Christian, thinks she has a shot at helping break through the deep sectarianism that has led to distrust both within Lebanon and towards Israel
Courtesy
Hagar Hajjar Chemali
Hagar Hajjar Chemali is an American by accident — quite literally — of birth.
Her parents left their native Lebanon in 1981 as a civil war raged in the country. Chemali’s father, Hadi, had been kidnapped by a political group, and the young couple quickly left the country once he was released, with plans to move to Milan. While visiting friends in Greenwich, Conn., Chemali’s mother, Mirella, began experiencing pregnancy complications and chose to wait out the final months of her pregnancy there. Soon after, Chemali was born, followed quickly by a son. The family never left.
So began Chemali’s American story, the result of a potent combination of determination and coincidence. That’s the story of Chemali’s professional journey, too: a mix of persistence and being in the right place at the right time. She spent the first decade of her career helping steer U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East in the Bush and Obama administrations, ultimately becoming the spokesperson for former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Samantha Power. She spent the next decade as a consultant and communications expert, appearing regularly on cable news and a YouTube channel where she produces an occasionally satirical show explaining American foreign policy.
Now Chemali, 44, faces her biggest and most personal assignment yet: creating an unofficial backchannel to boost the ongoing peace talks between Lebanon and Israel, the first time that officials from the two countries have sat for direct talks since 1983. And Chemali, who is half Jewish and half Christian, thinks she has a shot at helping break through the deep sectarianism that has led to distrust both within Lebanon and towards Israel.
The deal between the U.S. and Iran that was announced on Sunday may complicate Chemali’s efforts. Iran’s attempt to link its own negotiations with the U.S. to developments in Lebanon could potentially complicate efforts to advance Israeli-Lebanese peace, and Iranian state media said on Sunday that Lebanon would be part of the new deal. Details remain scarce.
“It’s about the art of the possible. Lebanese-Israeli peace is not particularly easy to achieve,” said Daniel Glaser, a former assistant Treasury secretary for terrorist financing and financial crimes. He hired Chemali for her first job at the Treasury Department. “What’s going to get it done is the ability to understand what’s possible, and how to get to that possible within the U.S. system, within Israel and the Israeli system, within Lebanon and the infinitely complicated Lebanese system. There’s not a lot of people that have the ability to do that more than Hagar.”
In April, she announced the creation of an organization called LIPA, the Lebanon-Israel Peace Alliance. It’s a vessel for advocacy by Chemali and a cadre of Israeli, Lebanese and American foreign policy experts she colloquially describes as the “peace crew” — many do not yet want to publicize their involvement with the effort — who are working to keep the pressure on the U.S. government to help broker a deal between Lebanon and Israel.
The group has been collaborating since early last year, soon after Israel and Lebanon reached a ceasefire in late 2024 that ended the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that began when the Iranian-backed group launched missiles at Israel on Oct. 8, 2023. The effort gained traction amid a broader shift in Lebanon: Hezbollah was weakened by the death of its longtime leader, Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah, and newly elected Lebanese President Joseph Aoun moved to reassert state authority over Hezbollah’s power and influence.
“She was one of the very first people that said to me that I should go for peace,” said Morgan Ortagus, who served as deputy Middle East special envoy at the beginning of the Trump administration. Ortagus and Chemali have been friends since they worked in the Treasury Department together nearly 20 years ago. “I said, ‘Really, do you think they’re ready?’ And she was emphatic that she thought that it was the time to go for peace.”
The work of Chemali’s burgeoning “peace crew” solidified in March, at a dinner soon after the Iran war started. The geopolitical time crunch of a fast-moving war spurred the group to come up with a name to formalize the informal diplomacy they had been pursuing for more than a year.
“All this work actually helped bring the Israelis and the Lebanese governments to hold direct talks in Washington,” said Hanin Ghaddar, a senior fellow studying Lebanon at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I don’t think this would have been possible without the whole year of work on the narrative and the policy and the recommendations and the shift on the ground, that this is where Lebanon and Israel finally decided, ‘Let’s do this.’”
After the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire in early April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced that Israel would open direct negotiations with Lebanon. It was the moment for which Chemali had yearned for over 18 months — or, perhaps, a whole lifetime. In the aftermath of the first round of talks, LIPA was launched in the way so many projects are: via a somewhat haphazard post on X. Chemali did not want to lose her chance at creating momentum for a window for peace that might soon close. She has not returned to Lebanon in 15 years due to security risks.
“As a comms person, I would never advise a rollout this way. This is like the opposite of what you do before a rollout. You have all your ducks in a row when you roll anything out,” Chemali told Jewish Insider in a recent interview at a Washington cafe. “We wanted to come out there and be like, we have an organization that exists that is there to support this process.”
For Chemali, the effort is a culmination of her own professional arc, as well as the choices her parents made in building a life here. Her family might be Lebanese, but this effort is all-American — something she can do because of where she was born and the circumstances that allowed her to rise to a public, senior government role without having to worry about the strict sectarian divisions that govern Lebanese society and the country’s government.
But there was a piece of Chemali’s story that was missing, something that now makes her uniquely positioned to serve as a convener of Lebanese and Israelis here in the U.S.
“She’s half-Jewish and half-Christian,” said Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a Lebanese-Iraqi researcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “She has the highest pedigree for someone to be working on this issue.”
Chemali did not know about her Jewish roots when she was growing up. Her father is a Maronite Christian, a Catholic sect with deep roots in the Levant. The family attended a nondenominational church in Connecticut. When Chemali was 11 or 12, her mother revealed a secret she had kept since her children were born: She was Jewish.
“I think she just couldn’t take it anymore. She was just like, ‘Actually, I’m Jewish,’” Chemali recalled. “My brother and me, being raised in the United States, we were like, ‘That is so cool. Does that mean we get Hanukkah gifts?’”
Her mother, Mirella, grew up in Wadi Abu Jamil, Beirut’s Jewish neighborhood. She attended a Catholic school at the urging of the family of her late father. The nuns at her school would tell Mirella that “she had evil in her blood because she was Jewish,” according to Chemali. “So [her family] practiced Judaism in secret at home.”
The revelation from her mother intrigued Chemali. Why didn’t she tell them sooner? Mostly Chemali ignored it, until she came to Washington during the George W. Bush administration. She joined the Treasury Department in 2006, in the newly created Office of Terrorist Financing and Financial Crimes, where many of her colleagues were Jewish. They started inviting her to Shabbat dinners and Jewish holidays. Chemali learned more about Judaism, and began to feel proud of that part of her identity. When she moved back to Greenwich, she asked her mom to teach her more about her family’s traditions.
“I told my mom, ‘These traditions die with you. You didn’t raise me with these traditions. I only know what I know from books and from going with friends to their houses for events,’” Chemali said. So her mom bought a menorah, and they lit candles together for Hanukkah.
“She starts singing in Hebrew, and I was like, ‘Who is this woman who sings in Hebrew?’ As far as I knew, she speaks a lot of languages — actually, she speaks five languages — but Hebrew was not one of them,” said Chemali.
Chemali has not abandoned the Christian faith she was raised with, even as she grapples with her identity.
“What I tell people of where I am at the moment, but it is always an evolution, is that I am of Christian faith and feel very much a Jew,” said Chemali. “I always tell people I’m a member of every tribe.”
Lebanon is so beset by tribal division that different government positions are reserved for people from different religious sects: the president is required to be a Maronite Christian, the prime minister is a Sunni Muslim and the speaker of parliament is a Shia Muslim. Chemali has refused to diminish any part of her identity, even as her home country all but demands she pick a side.
“She’s someone who can actually speak to everyone. She’s not there to take sides,” said Ghaddar. “She really sees the whole picture, and I think that’s what this kind of initiative really needs. It’s someone who has a stake in everyone and everything.”
Chemali retains the idealism that so many lose after decades in Washington. She described herself as a “Lebanese Zionist,” a position she said she has stuck by even amid the polarization that crept into her family after Oct. 7.
“This is the thing that sets me apart from the rest of my family. There’s a chunk of my family that unfriended me on social media after Oct. 7 because of my statements — and by the way, my statements are not like, ‘Yeah, go into Gaza and get ‘em.’ That’s not what I’m saying. My statements were more posting about the hostages,” said Chemali. “There’s one chunk of my family from Syria on my dad’s side that, straight up, they will lecture me at any opportunity they have. I view them as brainwashed, to be perfectly honest, and they probably view me as brainwashed.”
Chemali recalled a trip to Lebanon during her time as the National Security Council’s director for Lebanon and Syria in the Obama administration. A Lebanese friend advised her not to share that she’s Jewish.
“I was like, ‘Look, that’s not how I operate,’” said Chemali. “First, I really make sure religion doesn’t come up in my government work, because I don’t want anyone ever accusing me of seeing something through a religious lens. But secondly, if it comes up, I don’t hide. That’s not how I roll, ever.”
Still, she understands that not everyone can be as visible as she is. Chemali gave up her Lebanese citizenship before entering the U.S. government, but ordinary Lebanese people face steep prison sentences simply for talking to Israelis because of the country’s anti-normalization laws. Free from these restrictions, Chemali has recently taken to setting up discreet dinners between Lebanese and Israelis in Washington.
“We are trying to come up with creative ways to work around these laws,” she said. “We have to pick locations where nobody will see them or recognize them, so it makes it much more difficult.”
One of LIPA’s priorities is urging the U.S. to pressure Lebanon to repeal those laws. Chemali holds meetings with members of Congress on both the left and right. She talks to contacts at the State and Treasury Departments regularly, advocating for new sanctions on Hezbollah. She’s a fixture in Foggy Bottom and at wonky Middle East conferences, on cable news and in cafes, all from her home base in Connecticut.
“The ideal is a warm peace where you have thriving business relations, and that’s how our efforts are geared, toward that vision,” said Chemali. “That will hopefully undermine Hezbollah’s presence.”
After a new round of talks early this month, the governments of Lebanon, Israel and the U.S. released a joint statement in which Lebanon’s army agreed to create “pilot zones” where it will exert control and ban Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militia that uses southern Lebanon as a base to attack Israel. The diplomats will meet again later this month, and military representatives from each country will hold their own parallel track. The talks are testing the Lebanese government’s appetite for taking a stand against the militia. Meanwhile, Israel and Hezbollah continue to trade blows even as the talks proceed.
That negotiations are happening at all reflects unprecedented discontent within Lebanon toward Hezbollah. Until now, Lebanon’s leaders have been unable or unwilling to exert the strength needed to push back on Hezbollah’s grip over the country’s politics. Earlier this month, Aoun, the country’s president, took the unusual step of criticizing Iran, Hezbollah’s primary backer: “It’s not your country, it’s our country,” he told CNN.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro called the peace talks a “tremendous opportunity” for both countries.
“Maybe more for Lebanon than for Israel, because it really would mean breaking free from the handcuffs of Hezbollah and Iran,” said Shapiro. He hired Chemali for her job at the Obama White House and said he is encouraged by her efforts with LIPA.
“Having a strong advocacy body in the United States perhaps buttressed by those in Europe and elsewhere in the region is important fuel to that process,” said Shapiro. “She’s got just endless energy and creativity and a real commitment.”
The biggest challenge is that Lebanon’s leadership does not control Hezbollah. Peace between Israel and Lebanon would still be momentous even without dealing with Hezbollah, but it would leave the most intractable issue unresolved.
“It’s not the elephant in the room, because they all talk about it. But the crux of this is Hezbollah and Hezbollah’s weapons, and it’s not just the disarmament of them, it’s ensuring that they’re never able to rearm again,” said Chemali.
Washington is easily distracted; Trump is no exception. For Chemali, who is not directly involved in the talks, perhaps the most urgent task is to make sure the people in the room do not move on. She needs to remind them that the Lebanon-Israel file remains important, and worth pursuing — and that it should not be subsumed up by negotiations between the U.S. and Iran.
“We keep our fingers crossed, we advocate, we speak up, publish op-eds, you name it. Go on interviews, whatever it takes, just to make sure that things keep on going in the peace direction,” said FDD’s Abdul-Hussain, who is friends with Chemali but is not formally collaborating with her. “People like us, who are not governments, who are just regular people, we have a bigger margin. We have a lot of freedom to move. We have a lot of freedom to explain things, or to oppose things.”
But even in the perpetually explosive Middle East, where the talks could easily fall apart, Chemali believes something fundamental has changed.
“No matter what happens with the talks, there’s a reason I have hope,” she said. “Because you see this taboo in Lebanon has broken.”
The tense nature of the Trump-Netanyahu call this week underscores the increasingly divergent tactics the two are taking to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East
Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images
President Donald Trump, right, and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister, during a news conference in the State Dining Room of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Monday, Sept. 29, 2025.
It’s a strange moment when the leader of the free world explains to a reporter why he cursed out the prime minister of a major ally.
But we live in an increasingly strange moment, one in which President Donald Trump confirmed to the New York Post this week that he had indeed called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “f***ing crazy” during a discussion about Israel’s plans to expand operations in Lebanon, even as he stressed that he and the Israeli leader have “worked very well together.” (Trump’s confirmation came after Netanyahu’s office denied the remarks.)
The tense nature of the Trump-Netanyahu call this week underscores the increasingly divergent tactics the two are taking to ongoing conflicts in the Middle East as Trump leans into diplomacy while Netanyahu pushes for intensified military action — and as questions loom over the future of U.S. aid to Israel.
With the House’s passage of a war powers resolution yesterday (with four Republicans breaking with House GOP leadership), and a Senate vote on the issue still pending, the Trump administration’s appetite for a resumption of hostilities is even smaller than it was last month (when, as we reported, it was already quite low, owing to rising gas prices and the approaching midterms).
And it’s not just Trump distancing the U.S. from renewed all-out conflict. Speaking before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told lawmakers that the Iran war was “over.”
The comments come even as Iran continues to scale up its attacks in the region, in some cases prompting a U.S. response. Early Wednesday morning, the Islamic Republic launched a drone attack targeting Kuwait’s main airport, killing one person and injuring at least 60.
Trump has reportedly set a red line on Iran, telling aides that he could end the ceasefire — which, while not a technical halting of all fire, has resulted in far fewer exchanges of fire and destruction than at the height of the war in March and early April — if U.S. troops are killed.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu told CNBC on Wednesday that he wants to start the process of winding down U.S. military aid to Israel over the next two years — the final years of Trump’s term — in a way that would shift the relationship, according to the prime minister, “from aid to a partnership where we both invest equal amounts and both share equally in the fruits of our innovators and technologies.” Such a move, Netanyahu added, “will also take away the myth that Israel is depleting America’s coffers” — a popular talking point among opponents of U.S. aid to Israel on Capitol Hill and beyond.
On paper, Washington and Jerusalem do appear in lockstep — alongside Beirut — on deepening relations between Israel and Lebanon and rooting out Hezbollah. To that effect, the White House announced in a joint statement with Lebanese and Israeli officials on Wednesday that the parties had agreed to a renewed ceasefire — though it is contingent on the cooperation of Hezbollah, which did not take part in the talks and continues to launch drones and missiles at northern Israel.
But even as officials in Washington reach an accord on Lebanon, the challenges on the ground remain much the same. It was, after all, the issue of Lebanon — and Netanyahu’s announcement that the IDF would attack Hezbollah strongholds in Beirut — that triggered Trump’s expletive-laden outburst on Monday, causing Netanyahu to walk back Israel’s military plans in Lebanon.
And while Netanyahu needs to stay in Trump’s good graces, it is voters in Israel — including those in the country’s north who are living under daily Hezbollah fire — whom Netanyahu will need to sway ahead of the fall elections.
The new presidential center, scheduled to open June 19 in Chicago, highlights Obama’s ‘strategic engagement with adversaries’
Scott Olson/Getty Images
The Obama Presidential Center towers over Jackson Park on May 15, 2026 in Chicago, Illinois.
The Barack Obama Presidential Center, slated to open in Chicago in mid-June, will feature an exhibit highlighting the former president’s “patient and principled diplomacy” and “strategic engagement with adversaries” in the lead-up to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, asserting that he prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.
The claims emerge amid a tenuous ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran as the parties have repeatedly rejected the other’s proposals to end the war. Iran and its proxies in the region have attacked Israel and its neighbors with thousands of ballistic missiles and drones since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attacks.
“Through diplomacy, the US forged a new treaty with Russia to reduce both countries’ nuclear stockpiles,” the exhibit reads, according to images obtained during the museum’s soft launch reviewed by Jewish Insider. “The Obama administration prevented Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.”
It goes on to say, “Iran’s nuclear program threatened the security of its neighboring countries and global stability. Rather than risk another Middle East war, Obama chose patient and principled diplomacy. Over six years, he negotiated, built a global coalition, and enforced strong sanctions on Iran. In a historic deal, Iran rolled back its nuclear program and was prevented from building a nuclear weapon. The result supported his view that strategic engagement with adversaries can reduce threats while avoiding war.”
The statements refer to the 2015 agreement known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. At the time of its implementation, the deal garnered widespread criticism, including from mainstream Jewish organizations, over concerns that the limits placed on Iran lifted too quickly and would allow the Islamic Republic to achieve a nuclear weapon, all while jeopardizing Israel’s security. Critics further say the agreement indirectly provided Tehran with additional resources to fund its regional proxies.
President Donald Trump abandoned the agreement in 2018, arguing it was inadequate and failed to address Iran’s ballistic missiles and regional malign activities.
A dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center is scheduled for June 18 followed by its opening to the public the next day.
The center did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider about the exhibit.
Former Iran envoy Elliott Abrams: ‘It’s a foolish and damaging failure by the Trump administration, and there’s no excuse for it’
U.S. Department of State
Elliott Abrams
Former U.S. diplomatic officials and Middle East experts called on the Trump administration to fill dozens of ambassador-level Middle East posts, warning that not doing so could carry damaging consequences for U.S. influence and diplomacy in the region, while other former Trump officials argued the administration can manage regional diplomacy in its current format.
The Wall Street Journal first reported that more than 100 U.S. ambassador posts remain vacant under the Trump administration, including several key posts in the Middle East. The U.S. currently has no formal ambassadors in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Iraq or Kuwait.
The vacancies stem from a mix of factors: a slower pace of nominations from President Donald Trump, a Senate confirmation process increasingly prone to delays and holds, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s December decision to abruptly recall nearly 30 career ambassadors.
The Trump administration has played down the vacancies, arguing that its foreign policy operation is running smoothly despite the empty posts. But several former U.S. officials and Middle East experts told Jewish Insider that leaving the post unfilled could be a serious diplomatic error.
Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy during the first Trump administration and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, called the vacancies a “huge mistake.”
“It’s a foolish and damaging failure by the Trump administration, and there’s no excuse for it,” Abrams said. “There are top career diplomats, such as the ones the administration has sent to Jordan, Bahrain and Oman, who could be sent, and surely there are potential political appointees who’d love to be in Riyadh or Abu Dhabi.”
Abrams noted that ambassadors often have access to members of royal families that lower-ranking U.S. diplomats do not, a dynamic that he said is especially important in monarchies.
“There’s simply no excuse for this, and no other country leaves such important posts vacant,” he added.
Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and former State Department negotiator, expressed similar concern over the vacancies, saying “it would be better if they were filled with people.” He stressed, however, that the openings are more than a “narrow issue,” but rather a “reflection of a broader trend” in how the administration “makes decisions.”
“It’s a lack of priority in diplomacy, and in diplomats,” Miller said. “It reflects a situation where the analytical assessments of how these countries would behave in response to a crisis like the war, what I call the ‘ground truth,’ is not getting to the president because there’s no one out there doing it.”
Miller said he believes the administration does not rely heavily on the advice of career diplomats or ambassadors, with key foreign policy decisions instead shaped by Trump’s inner circle.
“I think this reflects the fact that this administration does not rely on the advice and counsel of probably most of its ambassadors,” he said. “So does this surprise me? No, because part of the issue is that the White House and the president’s political team, including Jared Kushner and [White House Special Envoy] Steve Witkoff, seem to have more say and more influence than a Department of State led by Marco Rubio.”
Still, Miller acknowledged that filling the vacant ambassador posts likely would not have altered Trump’s broader foreign policy or prevented the Iran war.
Dan Shapiro, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama and later as the Biden administration’s special liaison to Israel on Iran, similarly warned that relying on senior officials in Washington rather than ambassadors on the ground could limit U.S. influence and understanding of regional dynamics.
“Senior Trump administration figures may believe they can manage these relationships just fine over the phone from Washington because of their close ties with Arab officials. But there are gaps and bandwidth limits that they cannot always overcome,” Shapiro said.
“Senate-confirmed ambassadors are the only senior U.S. officials who spend all day, every day in dialogue with foreign leaders. So they simply have greater access to key players in their host governments, knowledge of how they reach decisions, and ability to ensure they hear the views of the United States than do more junior diplomats,” he added.
Edmund Fitton-Brown, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and a former British diplomat, explained that the vacancies are partly the result of a “downsizing” problem at the State Department, noting that the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs in particular has suffered “budget cuts and lost over 80 staff since President Trump returned to office.”
“Many of those departing were senior, experienced diplomats who would have been candidates for Chief of Mission posts that were not offered to political appointees,” Fitton-Brown said.
Others who served in Trump’s first administration were less concerned, arguing instead that the White House can still conduct effective regional diplomacy through senior officials and direct relationships with Middle Eastern leaders.
Jason Greenblatt, a former White House Middle East envoy during the first Trump administration, told JI that while ambassadors “play an important role,” he does “not believe the administration is at any disadvantage … because of these vacancies.”
“The leadership and senior diplomats in those countries have strong and trusted relationships with President Trump and with the group doing much of the day-to-day work, including Steve Witkoff, Secretary Rubio, Vice President Vance and Jared Kushner,” Greenblatt said. “Just as important, that group has President Trump’s deep trust and direct access to him. In this region, those trusted relationships, direct lines of communication and confidence from the president are more valuable than having an ambassador in place.”
Alexander Gray, who served as chief of staff to the National Security Council during Trump’s first term, similarly downplayed concerns over the vacancies, and said filling such positions is “one of the most difficult parts of American foreign policy.”
“This stems from multiple causes, including the arcane Senate confirmation process and the frequent holds placed by senators on ambassadorial nominees over unrelated issues,” Gray said. “The approval process for all presidential nominees, including ambassadors, needs a major overhaul by congressional leadership. President Trump has been diligent in nominating high-quality, non-career diplomats for critical posts.”
The State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
Any potential agreements between Jerusalem, Beirut and Washington will ultimately hinge on whether Hezbollah can be fully disarmed
Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (2nd-R), accompanied by U.S. State Department Counselor Michael Needham (C), and U.S. Ambassador to Lebanon Michel Issa (R), speaks as they begin working-level peace talks with Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh Moawad and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter at the U.S. State Department on April 14, 2026 in Washington, DC.
The first round of direct talks between Israel and Lebanon has been received positively by diplomats, pro-Israel lawmakers and experts, who see it as a sign of Hezbollah’s waning influence in Lebanon. But despite the optimism surrounding the discussions, experts caution that disarming the terrorist group remains a daunting obstacle that stands in the way of any meaningful change — one that would require a significant shift from the Lebanese government and its armed forces.
On Tuesday, Israeli and Lebanese leadership convened at the State Department in Washington for the highest-level direct discussions in more than 30 years, aiming to outline a framework for “lasting peace” and a “permanent end” to Hezbollah’s influence, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL) told Jewish Insider that “it is great” that talks are taking place, expressing hope that “the Lebanese government, the United States and the Israeli government make a deal, and collectively, they push Hezbollah out.”
“That way the Lebanese people can be freed from the Iranian extremism that they have in their country,” Moskowitz said. “The Lebanese people are being held captive by the Iranian government because of Hezbollah. It’s obviously good for the United States, it’s good for Israel, but more importantly, I think it’s good for the people of Lebanon. I think disarming Hezbollah is obviously key to all this.”
Moskowitz added that while the Lebanese government appears to want to disarm Hezbollah, “they probably need help.”
“It’s not going to happen overnight, but I think it’s historic, and this is what the entire region wants,” he said. “This is what the Gulf states want. Everybody wants to come out of the extremism and the terrorism that Iran is trying to spread in the region.”
Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) similarly told JI that Hezbollah disarmament is an important factor in talks.
“Why would you have talks if they [Hezbollah] are not going to disarm?” Scott said. “I’m not the prime minister of Israel but my condition would be that Hezbollah has got to disarm.”
Scott dismissed the notion that the Lebanese government and the Lebanese Armed Forces have not done enough to disarm the group, stating that the main problem is “not caused by Lebanon or by the military of Lebanon, it’s caused by Hezbollah.”
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) said that disarming Hezbollah should be a “red line” for Israel in talks. He added that Israel “needs a buffer zone so Hezbollah can’t continue to rain down terror on Israelis.”
“Hezbollah has historically been the best trained, best equipped opponents to Israel,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) said. “Israel’s done a great job with them over the last two years, but they’re hardcore fervent believers in destroying Israel.”
Experts similarly described the talks as a meaningful development. John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, called the discussions an “important breakthrough” and a sign of Hezbollah’s diminishing influence.
“Everyone should welcome the opening of a direct political dialogue between Israel and Lebanon,” Hannah said. “The fact that [the talks are] occurring at all is an important sign of Hezbollah’s declining hegemony over the Lebanese state.”
Robert Satloff, executive director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, described the talks as a “win-win-win” in a social media post, adding that Hezbollah emerged as a “big loser.”
“Today is a day to celebrate — we all saw a glimpse of what is possible after so much violence and conflict,” Satloff wrote on Tuesday. “That is a very good thing.”
Still, experts say disarming Hezbollah, which parties agree is necessary for any lasting piece, remains highly difficult and uncertain.
Even before Tuesday’s opening round of discussions, Hezbollah senior member Wafiq Safa said Hezbollah is “not bound” by any deals reached between Israel, Lebanon and the United States.
“It’s hard to be an optimist when it comes to the core question of Hezbollah’s disarmament,” Hannah said. “Even after all that’s been done over the past few years to weaken the group and its Iranian sponsors — including the loss of its legitimacy in the eyes of a majority of Lebanese — it’s not at all apparent that the raw balance of forces inside Lebanon has shifted sufficiently to favor Hezbollah’s near-term demise.”
Hannah described disarming Hezbollah as “worth trying,” but ultimately a “long shot.”
“Since the war against Iran broke out on Feb. 28, Hezbollah has shown through its sustained attacks on Israel that, while much diminished, its forces retain far more significant capabilities than many believed,” he said. “And in the wake of its battle against Israel, Hezbollah is making clear that if push comes to shove, it’s prepared to burn down the state before surrendering its weapons.”
Blaise Misztal, JINSA’s vice president for policy, said the task cannot be accomplished through Israeli military action alone and will ultimately depend on whether Lebanon and the LAF are willing to act.
“[Disarming Hezbollah] can only be fully done by a strong and committed Lebanese government,” Misztal said. “Israel can secure southern Lebanon with ground operations and strike Hezbollah sites in Beirut or the Bekaa Valley, but that will merely distance and degrade the threat, never fully remove it.”
“The question is whether the Lebanese government is, or can be convinced to be, strong and committed enough to take on the task of asserting its control over its own territory,” he added. “Thus far, it has failed to demonstrate either the political will or military capability to do so.”
Hannah similarly noted that “Israel is rightly unwilling to pay the necessary cost in blood, treasure and diplomatic opprobrium” required to fully dismantle Hezbollah, leaving the responsibility to Lebanon and its armed forces.
“The factor that has truly held Lebanon back from disarming Hezbollah has been Hezbollah’s retention of, as far as we can tell, overwhelming support among Lebanese Shiites,” David Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said. “Having retained that popular support, it can deter the government from pursuing forcible disarmament by dangling the threat of civil war.”
But experts weren’t optimistic that the Lebanese government and LAF are capable — or willing — to take on that role. Hannah said Lebanon’s military “doesn’t appear to have the stomach to truly confront Hezbollah and dismantle the group’s armed wing,” noting that it has already “failed” to disarm the group in southern Lebanon, “much less the rest of the country.”
“It seems even less likely than before the Iran war that the LAF would now be willing to take on the risk of massively confronting Hezbollah,” he said, “in spite of the misery Hezbollah’s unilateral decision to enter the conflict on Iran’s behalf is now inflicting on the rest of Lebanon.”
David Daoud, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also said Beirut “ultimately holds the key” to resolving the issue of Hezbollah’s disarmament. He said that while Lebanon has taken “immense and commendable” steps in “proscribing Hezbollah’s military activities,” the country’s “unwillingness to act against Hezbollah has been missing from the equation” and has “allowed the group to regenerate in the past.”
He added that Hezbollah still “retains enough military strength to make disarmament daunting” for Lebanese forces and the LAF, and that the group continues to wield significant political power.
“The factor that has truly held Lebanon back from disarming Hezbollah has been Hezbollah’s retention of, as far as we can tell, overwhelming support among Lebanese Shiites,” Daoud said. “Having retained that popular support, it can deter the government from pursuing forcible disarmament by dangling the threat of civil war.”
Daoud also raised concerns about Lebanon’s intentions in negotiations, arguing that Beirut may not truly be seeking meaningful change.
“A good test will be the extent to which the LAF fulfills the Lebanese government’s order from early April to put all of Beirut under its full control,” John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said. “Will the LAF truly confront and disarm Hezbollah in the capital or simply repeat the phony disarmament it claimed to have completed in the south?”
“Lebanon is seeking to use the negotiations to return to the status quo, and is willing to ‘pay the price’ of a joint photograph with an Israeli ambassador to achieve that objective,” he said. “This is because the situation in Lebanon is indeed dire — economic collapse compounded by war, the direct impact of the war itself and the emergence of sectarian tensions that could boil over into full-on conflict.”
If those dynamics remain unchanged, he warned that Hezbollah could indefinitely delay disarmament and eventually rebuild its strength.
“A good test will be the extent to which the LAF fulfills the Lebanese government’s order from early April to put all of Beirut under its full control,” Hannah said. “Will the LAF truly confront and disarm Hezbollah in the capital or simply repeat the phony disarmament it claimed to have completed in the south?”
Satloff said the challenge will ultimately require translating diplomacy into “practical steps,” including a shift in how the Lebanese military approaches disarmament.
“While some of this can happen in the negotiating room when the parties meet again, nothing can substitute for strong measures by the Lebanese state to isolate, weaken, delegitimize and disarm Hezbollah while promoting the idea of peace,” he said.
He suggested that turning Beirut into a “true weapons-free zone” is necessary “but not sufficient,” pointing to additional steps such as removing Hezbollah officials from government, expelling Iranian operatives from the country and shutting down the group’s financial and institutional networks.
As the president touts progress in talks with Tehran while escalating military pressure, analysts say the administration is keeping its options open — but will need to make a move soon
U.S. Navy via Getty Images
A U.S. Sailor signals the launch of an MH-60R Sea Hawk helicopter, attached to Helicopter Maritime Strike Squadron 70, on the flight deck of the world's largest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), while supporting Operation Epic Fury on February 28, 2026.
The Trump administration’s conflicting posturing on the war in Iran — insisting on the one hand that a diplomatic deal is within reach while also threatening to escalate strikes and potentially deploy ground troops — has left experts and former administration officials uncertain about President Donald Trump’s next move.
The president threatened in a post on his Truth Social platform on Monday morning to “conclude our lovely ‘stay’ in Iran by blowing up and completely obliterating all of their electric generating plants, oil wells and Kharg Island” if current talks fall apart and “the Hormuz Strait is not immediately ‘Open for Business.’”
But he wrote in the same post that the U.S. is engaging in “serious discussions” with Iran’s current leadership, which he described as a “new” and “more reasonable” regime than its predecessor, and said that “great progress has been made.”
Reached for comment, the White House referred Jewish Insider to Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt’s remarks at Monday’s briefing where she defended the president’s approach and repeatedly stated that Trump and his advisors are merely ensuring he has “maximum optionality” as he considers next steps.
“With respect to forces that are on the ground in the Middle East, it’s the job of the Pentagon to create maximum optionality for the commander-in-chief. It does not mean the president has made any additional decisions,” Leavitt said, adding that Trump has “decline[d] to rule … out” the use of ground troops.
On Capitol Hill, there are increasingly evident divides among Republican lawmakers about the prospect of boots on the ground. Some have argued that a ground operation would require explicit congressional authorization, and a number of otherwise-hawkish Republicans are hesitant about, if not outright opposed to, the idea of a ground operation.
In recent days, the U.S. has amassed over 3,500 more troops in the Middle East, including deploying the USS Tripoli aircraft carrier, which hosts around 2,500 Marines. Trump has also threatened to attack Iran’s oil and energy facilities and potentially escalate the war as a result of Iran’s blockade of the Strait of Hormuz — a vital passageway for the global oil trade.
Elliott Abrams, who served as Iran envoy under the first Trump administration and is now a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told JI that the president’s decision to move more troops to the region and not exclude ground operations from future military plans is an effort to “keep his options open.”
“The massing of ground forces near Iran is both preparation for their possible use and a means of pressuring Iran to make concessions in the negotiations,” Abrams said. “There is no way of knowing what Trump will do if the negotiations fail.”
The administration is considering multiple options for the use of ground troops, including the seizure of Kharg Island, a vital economic artery for Tehran that accounts for roughly 90 percent of the country’s crude exports.
Cameron McMillan, a senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said that targets could also include the “seizure of key terrain — including relevant islands — in and around the Strait of Hormuz and securing Iranian highly enriched uranium.” However, he remained unsure whether the Trump administration would carry out such operations.
“Seizing or destroying the [highly enriched uranium] is a sensible goal if it is militarily feasible without too much risk,” Abrams said. “Taking the targets associated with the strait is, I think, both for bargaining purposes and perhaps meant to be given up only when traffic has moved through the strait freely for some time.”
Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said that there are “real reasons to think ground operations could end up taking place.” He said that Iran “refuses to entertain Trump’s demands,” which could compel the administration to use elevated means of force in order to seize Iran’s highly enriched uranium, reopen the Strait of Hormuz or take Kharg Island “or other assets as bargaining chips.”
“The past month reaffirms that standoff air and naval power are insufficient by themselves to neutralize these targets or convince Iran to give them up,” Ruhe said. “Trump’s tendency is to employ the forces that he deploys overseas, as seen in both the Venezuela operation and the start of the current conflict. And there’s an opportunity cost to letting such well-trained U.S. forces idle indefinitely in the Middle East after pulling them from the Indo-Pacific or the homeland.”
Daniel Shapiro, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama and deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East under President Joe Biden, said current talks between Washington and Tehran “look like a negotiation going nowhere.” He argued that Trump’s track record of pivoting to military action when diplomacy stalls, along with pressure to decide whether to use forces that cannot remain in the region indefinitely, suggest that ground operations could be looming.
“There is little chance that Iran, despite all punishment it has taken from U.S. and Israeli airstrikes, will make these concessions … If the [current] negotiations falter, it’s not hard to guess which way [Trump] will go,” Shapiro said.
Shapiro said that the current moment has a “similar feel to the military build-up Trump ordered throughout February” before he launched the war at the end of the month. Shapiro cautioned that any use of ground forces would indicate a “longer war” and signal that the objectives of the war are expanding “far beyond what negotiations in February were seeking to achieve.”
“With the ground forces available, they can’t just park in the region for long. Trump will, sooner than later, need to decide whether to use them or send them home,” Shapiro added.
Meanwhile, McMillan cautioned against ground operations, “especially those designed to secure and hold terrain.”
“I do not see any value in employing these forces to seize Iranian territory and would highly caution against ground operations,” McMillan said. “All of the desired objectives — with the exception of securing highly enriched uranium — can be secured through other means with substantially less risk. Seizing tankers is the most obvious if [the administration] is seeking to cut off Iran’s oil revenue.”
He also warned that the current forces being deployed might “not be enough for any large-scale ground operations for any long duration.”
“Simply deploying these units is unlikely to leverage Iran at the negotiating table, as the regime is fighting a total war that it views as existential,” McMillan continued. “Considering the profound impacts of U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran’s ballistic missile, drone and naval capabilities, as well as its senior leadership, it is unlikely that a few more American battalions in the region will change that view or their will to continue fighting.”
Ruhe noted that Trump could be overlooking the potential costs of ground operations. He said that the president “has not adequately anticipated Iran’s retaliation” and is “discounting the uncertainties and risks of rolling the iron dice with ground operations.”
“And even if Trump is clear-eyed about the risks, he may accept them because getting the highly enriched uranium [HEU] and reopening the strait are such important goals,” he continued. Ruhe noted that such operations would likely be very complex.
“Seizing Iran’s HEU at Isfahan, Kharg Island or beachheads along the strait would be larger and more open-ended than raids on Maduro, al-Baghdadi or Bin Laden, which were in-and-out and occurred in much more tactically permissive environments,” Ruhe said. “Though Iran is being hit hard, it still has much greater military capabilities than ISIS, Venezuela or the Taliban.”
McMillan said that ground operations could also provide Tehran with leverage and risk further expanding the conflict. He also noted that any ground operation designed to seize and hold terrain in Iran is “more likely to become a liability than an asset and would draw the Trump administration closer to the war of attrition that it is trying to avoid.”
“Instead of the U.S. securing leverage, Iran would likely gain significant leverage against the U.S. by being able to employ a greater part of its arsenal against a vulnerable and isolated U.S. troop presence,” McMillan said. “If those troops were to take consistent casualties against threats that could not be removed from the air alone, expanded ground operations in the name of force protection would not be hard to imagine. That would require more forces, more resources and, in turn, likely more casualties.”
However, Richard Goldberg, a former Trump administration official, said that the use of ground operations does not necessarily signal that there will be an expanded presence and scope of U.S. involvement.
“People hear ‘boots on the ground’ and immediately think of Iraq, but we had boots on the ground in Venezuela as well — just in a very different way,” Goldberg said. “The U.S. would not be invading Iran in the sense of Iraq, but you could see a number of contingencies that might require special forces, airborne or marines for narrowly scoped missions with limited objectives, whether that’s securing nuclear material or neutralizing a threat that you can’t neutralize from the air for a variety of reasons.”
“It’s also important to remember that the military is preparing for contingencies, which may or may not ever be needed,” Goldberg added, noting that the U.S. “had Marines off of Venezuela but we didn’t use them.”
Jewish Insider’s senior congressional correspondent Marc Rod contributed to this report.
Sen. James Lankford: ‘I think we’re not done. I don’t like calling it “won” until it’s done’
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Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill on May 1, 2024 in Washington, DC.
Several Senate Republicans this week declined to fully endorse President Donald Trump’s comments that the U.S. had “won” the war in Iran, arguing that there is still more to be done to fully degrade Iran’s capabilities to the extent necessary.
Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Tuesday, “You know, I don’t like to say this — this war has been won. The only one that likes to keep it going is the fake news. … We’ve won this war.” Trump also said Monday he would postpone strikes on Iran’s energy infrastructure to allow for “productive conversations” toward ending the war — an announcement that boosted markets and brought down oil prices.
“I think we’re not done. I don’t like calling it ‘won’ until it’s done,” Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) told Jewish Insider. “You can’t stop a war too soon, once it gets started, because then you’ve got to get right back to it again. You’ve got to finish it.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he agreed with the president, but added, “we’ve done a good job of accomplishing our military objectives. We’re not quite there yet.”
Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) said, “I think what he means by that — and he happens to be correct — we have basically significantly reduced their ability to wage a lot of the … war. It doesn’t mean they’re not dangerous yet, but we’re getting there.”
Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, quipped of Trump’s comments, “I think that’s probably hyperbole. It’d be the first time ever, but I think it may be hyperbole.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) hewed more closely to the president’s comments, while stopping short of declaring the war over. “Operation Epic Fury is almost done. I mean, I think the mission that was very clearly defined in the beginning, the objectives have been met,” Johnson told reporters on Wednesday.
Graham, one of the most vocal supporters of the war on Capitol Hill, who has been agitating for the U.S. to pursue full regime change in Iran, said that he would support — and even prefer — a diplomatic outcome.
“Not only do I support @POTUS and his team’s efforts to negotiate with Iran to find a solution to the threats this regime presents to the region and the world, I encourage it,” Graham said on X on Wednesday. “It is the outcome I seek, not the method. I have confidence in President Trump’s negotiating team to make sure that any deal would meet the military objectives laid out early on.”
Those goals, as articulated by Graham, are ending Iran’s ballistic missile program, support for terrorism and nuclear ambitions.
“If diplomacy can achieve these objectives, I would not only support it, but I would also prefer it because war literally is hell,” Graham continued.
Other Republicans are also backing the diplomatic push. Sen. Rick Scott (R-FL) told JI that the president would have better information on the U.S.’ progress toward its goals, but said that from what he has seen, the administration has “made a lot of progress.”
He also expressed support for the administration’s negotiations with Iran about ending the war.
“You always hope war ends,” Scott said. “I hope we’ve fulfilled our mission to destroy their ability to produce nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles.”
“The administration has been very clear that they are about degrading Iran’s missile capabilities, launchers, production facilities, stockpiles, taking out their navy and their nuclear facilities,” Sen. Pete Ricketts (R-NE) told JI. “When they reach a sufficient point, that’s when it’s time to cease the shooting, and hopefully someday the Iranian people will throw off the tyrants that rule them, and we can get a better administration.”
The president predicted a four to five week timeline for the military campaign against Iran in several interviews over the weekend
Daniel Torok/White House via Getty Images
President Donald Trump oversees "Operation Epic Fury" at Mar-a-Lago on February 28, 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida.
President Donald Trump said over the weekend that Iran’s new leadership has made overtures to restart diplomatic negotiations with the U.S. — which he plans to accept — after Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed during Israeli and U.S. strikes in the country.
Still, the president warned that strikes would continue until their objectives had been achieved.
Trump made the comments while speaking to The Atlantic on Sunday morning, one of a series of interviews he gave after launching a joint military operation against Iran alongside Israel on Saturday. The president has been touting Operation Epic Fury to journalists as an immediate success, arguing that the removal of Khamenei and 47 others in senior Iranian leadership has provided a window for diplomacy as the U.S. military operation swiftly advances.
“They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” Trump told The Atlantic. “They should have done it sooner. They should have given what was very practical and easy to do sooner. They waited too long.”
The commander-in-chief declined to say when he plans to begin engaging with the Iranians, instead noting that most of the Iranians involved in past negotiations with the U.S. are now deceased.
“Most of those people are gone. Some of the people we were dealing with are gone, because that was a big — that was a big hit,” Trump said. “They should have done it sooner. They could have made a deal. They should’ve done it sooner. They played too cute.”
Asked if he was willing to extend the bombing campaign in order to support a popular uprising in Iran, should it unfold, the president was similarly coy, telling the outlet: “I have to look at the situation at the time it happens … You can’t give an answer to that question.”
In a video posted to his Truth Social platform on Sunday afternoon, however, Trump spoke directly to the protesters, calling upon “all Iranian patriots who yearn for freedom to seize this moment, to be brave, be bold, be heroic and take back your country. America is with you. I made a promise to you, and I fulfilled that promise. The rest will be up to you, but we’ll be there to help.”
Further illuminating his thinking, Trump wrote on Truth Social on Saturday shortly after the killing of Khamenei, “We are hearing that many of their IRGC, Military, and other Security and Police Forces, no longer want to fight, and are looking for Immunity from us … Hopefully, the IRGC and Police will peacefully merge with the Iranian Patriots, and work together as a unit to bring back the Country to the Greatness it deserves. That process should soon be starting.”
“The heavy and pinpoint bombing, however, will continue, uninterrupted throughout the week or, as long as necessary to achieve our objective” of world peace, he wrote.
In an interview on Saturday evening with CBS News’ Robert Costa, Trump said he believes that the joint U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that killed Khamenei made diplomacy “much easier now than it was a day ago, obviously, because they are getting beat up badly.”
As for the military operation itself, Trump suggested in subsequent conversations on Sunday with The Daily Mail and The New York Times that the U.S. could be involved for another four to five weeks.
“It’s always been a four-week process. We figured it will be four weeks or so,” Trump told the U.K. tabloid. “It’s always been about a four week process so — as strong as it is, it’s a big country, it’ll take four weeks or less.”
He repeated the four to five week timeline in interviews with Axios’ Barak Ravid on Saturday and The New York Times on Sunday.
“I can go long and take over the whole thing,” Trump told Ravid by phone, “or end it in two or three days and tell the Iranians: ‘See you again in a few years if you start rebuilding [your nuclear and missile programs].’”
Trump later predicted to Ravid that, “In any case, it will take them several years to recover from this attack.”
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Tom Cotton (R-AR) echoed the president’s predictions, telling CBS’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday that Trump has “no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside Iran.”
“The president has been clear that what we should expect to see is an extended air and naval campaign that’s designed not only to continue to set back Iran’s nuclear ambitions, but most importantly, to destroy its vast missile arsenal, many more missiles than the United States and Israel have air defenses combined, as well as the missile launchers and its missile manufacturing capability,” said Cotton, one of the president’s more hawkish GOP allies on Capitol Hill.
“Now obviously one risk of that kind of campaign is that an aircraft could be shot down, and the president would never leave a pilot behind,” he continued. “So no doubt we have combat search and rescue assets in the region that are prepared to go in and extract any downed pilot. But barring that kind of unusual circumstance, the president has no plan for any kind of large-scale ground force inside of Iran.”
‘The president has a number of other tools at his disposal to ensure’ Iran does not get a nuclear weapon, the VP said on Fox News
Jim Watson - Pool/Getty Images
U.S. Vice President JD Vance gives remarks following a roundtable discussion with local leaders and community members amid a surge of federal immigration authorities in the area, at Royalston Square on January 22, 2026 in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
A day before U.S.-Iran nuclear talks, Vice President JD Vance urged the Iranian regime on Wednesday to take President Donald Trump’s diplomatic overtures “seriously,” cautioning that the president has “a number of tools at his disposal” to keep the “craziest and worst regime in the world” from acquiring nuclear weapons.
Vance made the comments while appearing on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” after being asked about Trump’s comments at the State of the Union on Tuesday night, during which the president underscored his willingness to use force while acknowledging his preference for a diplomatic solution.
“The president has been as crystal clear as he could be: Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. That would be the ultimate military objective if that’s the route that he chose,” Vance said. “That is what we’re trying to accomplish, as the president said, through the preferred route of diplomacy, but it’s very simple: We have to get to a position where Iran, the largest state sponsor of terrorism in the world, cannot threaten the world with nuclear terrorism.”
“I think most Americans understand that you can’t let the craziest and worst regime in the world have nuclear weapons. That’s what the president is accomplishing, that’s what the president has set as our goal,” he continued. “He’s going to try to accomplish it diplomatically, but as we all know, the president has a number of other tools at his disposal to ensure this doesn’t happen. He’s shown a willingness to use them, and I hope the Iranians take it seriously in their negotiations tomorrow because that’s certainly what the president prefers.”
Asked if that meant the president’s position is that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei must be removed, Vance reiterated that the administration is “hopeful that we’re able to come to a good resolution without the military, but if we have to use the military, the president, of course, has that right as well.”
“I think the president ultimately will make the decision about how to ensure Iran does not have a nuclear weapon, but we’re sitting down having another round of diplomatic talks with the Iranians, trying to reach a reasonable settlement, but a reasonable settlement towards what end?” Vance asked. “Iran can’t have a nuclear weapon. It’s very simple. I think the supreme leader and everybody in their system should understand it. We’ve been crystal clear.”
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), meanwhile, warned on Wednesday that he would not support a Trump administration-brokered deal with Iran that would allow the regime to continue enriching some uranium as part of its nuclear program.
“If media reports are true that there is a consideration of allowing Iran to have very small enrichment of uranium for face-saving purposes: screw that,” Graham wrote on X. “This regime is made up of religious Nazis that are the largest state sponsor of terrorism. The regime has American blood on its hands and they have killed over 30,000 of their citizens simply because they demand the end to their oppression.”
Graham added that he “could care less about efforts to save face for this regime. I would like to see the people of Iran change the regime – it’s long overdue. I hope help is on the way.”
"They want to make a deal, but we haven't heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said about Iran
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U.S. President Donald Trump, with Vice President JD Vance and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-LA) looking on, delivers his State of the Union address during a Joint Session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on February 24, 2026, in Washington, DC.
In his State of the Union address Tuesday night, President Donald Trump maintained his tough talk against Iran, reiterating that he will use force to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, even though he’s willing to explore diplomatic options to resolve the standoff.
Trump did not — as some online had predicted — make a grand televised announcement of United States strikes on Iran during the speech. Nor did he elaborate further on his plans for the growing U.S. military might in the region, or what specifically would trigger the U.S. to utilize that military power.
”They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” Trump said about Iran. “My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror — which they are by far — to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.”
A number of moderate House Democrats — around a third of the Democrats in the chamber — as well as the majority of Republicans stood to applaud those comments from the president. Democrats remained largely passive through much of the rest of Trump’s speech.
Negotiations are set to resume between the U.S. and Iran in Geneva later this week.
Trump also insisted again that the U.S. had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program in its strikes last June, and had warned the regime in Tehran not to attempt to rebuild its weapons programs, including its nuclear program, but it has continued those efforts anyway.
“As president, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must,” Trump said. “And no nation should ever doubt America’s resolve. We have the most powerful military on earth. … It’s really called ‘peace through strength’ and it’s been very, very effective.”
In addition to Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Trump highlighted the Islamic Republic’s manufacture of ballistic missiles, threatening U.S. allies, troops and potentially the U.S. homeland, and its sponsorship of terrorism.
“Since they seized control of that proud nation 47 years ago, the regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate,” Trump said. “They’ve killed and maimed thousands of American service members and hundreds of thousands and even millions of people.”
And he again said the regime had killed 32,000 protesters during a recent wave of demonstrations, though he asserted that the U.S. had prevented the regime, through threats of retaliation, from executing “a lot of” dissidents.
Trump boasted of having ended the war between Iran and Israel last year, as well as the war in Gaza, which he said “is proceeding at a very low level — it’s just about there.” Trump offered praise to White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner for their involvement in those negotiations, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), who wore a scarf in the pattern of a keffiyeh with a Palestinian flag at its ends, shouted, “It’s a genocide” during those remarks.
Trump also highlighted the successful return of the Israeli hostages: “Believe it or not, Hamas worked along with Israel and they dug and they dug and they dug. It’s tough — it’s a tough thing to do, going through bodies all over, passing up 100 bodies sometimes for each one they found,” the president said.
Trump added that “nobody thought that was possible” to find the remains of the final hostage, Ran Gvili, but Witkoff and Kushner were able to accomplish it.
“I remember the family of the 28th [hostage of the final group that had remained in Gaza]. They were so — grieved, but they were so happy, as happy as it’s possible to be. They had their boy back,” Trump said. He emphasized that the hostage families all wanted to see the remains of deceased hostages come home “as much as though [they] were living.”
Earlier in the day, top congressional leaders received a classified briefing from the administration on Iran, and Democrats emerged urging the administration to explain its position and plans to the American people.
“It’s very serious and the president has an obligation to make his goals public,” Schumer told Jewish Insider after the briefing.
Graham said Trump told him there’s ‘no light’ between Trump and Netanyahu
Maayan Toaff/GPO
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) meets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.
The Iranian regime may fall within weeks, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said during a press conference in Tel Aviv on Monday.
“We’re on the verge of eliminating the greatest state sponsor of terrorism in the region,” Graham said. “We’re in for weeks, not months.”
“President Trump is very good at making sure people don’t play him by giving them deadlines. I think you may see that now with Iran,” he added.
Graham said that President Donald Trump is pursuing diplomacy “to find a way to end this regime diplomatically that will advance our national security interests,” while leaving the military option open.
“I think President Trump is looking to see which line will catch the biggest fish,” he added.
Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are in total agreement about how to proceed to weaken the Iranian regime, Graham said.
“There is no light between President Trump and Bibi about what to do and how to do it,” Graham said, later adding: “That’s what the president told me.”
After their meeting at the White House last week, Netanyahu characterized Trump’s assessment of Iran negotiations as overly optimistic of the regime’s intentions, saying, “The president thinks the Iranians understand who they’re dealing with. He thinks the conditions he is setting, combined with their understanding that they made a mistake last time not reaching a deal, could bring them to agree to conditions that will allow a good deal to be reached.”
But Netanyahu’s own view was more reserved: “I do not hide my general skepticism about the possibility of any deal with Iran.”
Graham called on the U.S. to “meet the moment” to topple the regime in Tehran.
The senator said both that he is “hopeful that diplomacy may prevail yet,” but when asked if he thinks a diplomatic solution is possible, he noted that Iran is “prone to cheat,” and that “based on the past, no,” but he is willing to give it a chance.
He pointed out that the military option is still on the table and that “the [USS] Gerald Ford [aircraft carrier] is steaming this way. I don’t think they’re just going for better weather.”
“In the coming weeks, if we can’t find a diplomatic solution, we will engage in the great endeavor of supporting the Iranian people, demanding their freedom and the end of their oppression,” he stated.
To reach that goal, Graham said, “we have military capability second to none. There’s no more clever nation than Israel and no more powerful nation than the United States.”
Asked if he thinks a military solution could actually bring about the end of the regime, Graham said that the Iranian regime is “weak” and “will collapse with sustained pressure,” and noted that their Air Force flies planes “from the 80s.”
“To anybody who believes the ayatollah can withstand all of this — you’re wrong,” he said.
Graham said the way to topple the regime militarily is to “kill the people who do the killing and see if the next guy wants to volunteer. … To those who want to appease: It never works. How many times could we have stopped Hitler? A bunch … The ayatollah represents evil incarnate to me.”
Graham acknowledged that military action in Iran could endanger American troops and result in the regime shooting ballistic missiles at Israel, but said “the risk associated with that is far less than the risk associated with blinking and pulling the plug and not helping the [Iranian] people as we promised. … We have to be good to our word.”
Should the mullahs’ regime fall, Graham said, it will be the result of Israel’s “determination to … go on the offensive” in response to the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks by Hamas, sponsored in part by Iran, and the “bravery of the people of Iran, who said ‘we’ve had it; we want change.’”
“I look forward to the day that Israel no longer has to fear a nuclear weapon developed by the Iranian regime,” he said.
Graham also recalled attending a demonstration against the Iranian regime in Munich over the weekend, and displayed a “Make Iran Great Again” hat, the idea for which, he said, came from diplomat Morgan Ortagus.
“The best way to make Iran great again is through the people, not the ayatollah,” Graham said.
In Gaza, Graham said that Hamas is “playing a game,” and Trump should set a time limit for disarmament.
“I think it’s either going to take pressure from the region to get a monster to disarm, or Israel is going to have to go back in and wipe them out. The sooner we get an answer to those questions the better,” he said.
Graham also expressed doubts that Gaza can be rebuilt “if right down the road there’s a neighborhood controlled by Hamas.”
Graham’s remarks came following meetings with Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz, Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, and he plans to visit the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia in the coming weeks.
The senator said one recurring theme in his meetings in Israel was expressions of appreciation for UAE leadership, specifically President Mohammed bin Zayed, as “a stalwart, reliable partner under difficult circumstances.”
As for concerns about antisemitic and anti-Israel messages coming out of Saudi Arabia, Graham said that he knows Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman well, and that he “believe[s] he still has the same vision for the region as he did before Oct. 7, but Oct. 7 took its toll.”
Graham expressed support for Netanyahu’s plan to taper off U.S. military aid over the next decade, saying that “rather than writing a check, he wants to create a partnership. … I like that idea. The wars of the future are being planned here in Israel, because if you’re not one step ahead of the enemy, you suffer. … We’re looking at Israel advancing down the road of new weaponry far beyond us. It would be nice to be part of that process.”
As to Trump calling Israeli President Isaac Herzog a “disgrace” for not yet deciding whether to pardon Netanyahu of his various corruption charges, Graham said: “I’ll leave that to President Herzog.”
The two leaders avoided the cameras during Israeli PM’s White House visit
GPO
President Donald Trump greets Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House on Feb. 11, 2026.
The U.S. will continue pursuing diplomacy with Iran, President Donald Trump said following his White House meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday.
“There was nothing definitive reached other than I insisted that negotiations with Iran continue, to see whether or not a deal can be consummated,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If it can, I let the Prime Minister know that will be a preference.”
If negotiations do not lead to a deal, the president added, “we will just have to see what the outcome will be. Last time, Iran decided they were better off not making a deal, and they were hit with Midnight Hammer. That did not work out well for them. Hopefully, this time, they will be more reasonable and responsible.”
In addition, Trump wrote, he and Netanyahu discussed “the tremendous progress being made in Gaza.”
Trump characterized the summit as “a very good meeting, the tremendous relationship between our two countries continues.”
Netanyahu’s office said he and Trump discussed Iran, Gaza and regional developments.
“The prime minister stood up for the State of Israel’s security needs in the context of the negotiations, and the two agreed to continue to coordinate closely,” the Prime Minister’s Office statement read.
Netanyahu made a quiet entrance to the White House, and Trump was uncharacteristically camera-shy.
Trump and Netanyahu’s meetings — this was their seventh in the past year — have usually been accompanied by freewheeling press huddles, either in the Oval Office or East Room, in which Trump answered dozens of questions. On Wednesday, however, reporters were not allowed in the room before or after the meeting, which continued longer than scheduled and included lunch.
At the top of the meeting’s agenda were the details of the ongoing negotiations with Iran. The American team is led by White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, both of whom met with Netanyahu at Blair House on Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Trump said on Fox Business that the Iranians “want to make a deal. I think they’d be foolish if they didn’t. We took out their nuclear power last time, and we’ll have to see if we take out more this time.”
Trump added that a “good deal” would mean “no nuclear weapons, no ballistic missiles, no this or that.”
That statement checks off the most important items on Netanyahu’s priority list for an Iran deal, while leaving out the Islamic Republic’s sponsorship of terrorist proxies like Hezbollah and Hamas. It also does not include any aid to the Iranian protesters against the regime, whom Trump said late last year that he would help.
A source on Netanyahu’s delegation said that the prime minister is aware of the American political sensitivities around their meeting and was cautious to show deference to Trump, lest Netanyahu be seen as trying to push for war.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, however, said in an interview that his country’s ballistic missile program is “never negotiable.”
Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani called Trump ahead of his meeting with Netanyahu to encourage him to reach a deal, according to Qatari media.
Netanyahu met with Secretary of State Marco Rubio ahead of the Trump meeting, for discussions focused on the administration’s plans for Gaza.
Netanyahu presented Rubio with signed letters certifying his membership in the Board of Peace, which Trump founded to oversee reconstruction and demilitarization in Gaza and attempt to resolve other conflicts.
The Board of Peace’s first meeting is next week, and Netanyahu’s office has yet to say whether he will attend. The prime minister was expected to come back to Washington from Feb. 18-22 for an AIPAC conference beginning that Sunday, and his office said the trip is still on schedule.
U.S.-Iran negotiations scheduled are ‘likely a diplomatic box-checking exercise and smokescreen,’ FDD’s Andrea Stricker said, while JINSA’s Jonathan Ruhe said U.S. military action is ‘unlikely for the moment’
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump gives a speech at the World Economic Forum (WEF) on January 21, 2026 in Davos, Switzerland.
Despite the Trump administration’s willingness to diplomatically engage with Iranian officials, leading Middle East experts told Jewish Insider on Monday that military action against Tehran still remains a very real possibility.
“I can’t tell you what I’m going to do,” President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday evening when asked about the threshold for an Iran strike.
“We have a tremendous force going there [to the Middle East], just like we did in Venezuela,” said Trump. “I’d like to see a deal negotiated. But right now, we’re talking to [Iran] and if we could work something out, that’d be great. If we can’t, probably bad things will happen.”
White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi are expected to meet in Istanbul on Friday to discuss a potential new nuclear agreement, according to reports. Jared Kushner, who has played a key role in recent high-profile diplomatic negotiations, is also expected to attend, alongside the foreign ministers of Turkey, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, in the first meeting between the U.S. and Iran since U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities last June.
The planned talks come as the administration continues to exert pressure on Tehran — in response to Iran’s violent crackdown on protesters last month, Trump has publicly weighed the possibility of U.S. military intervention, ordering the movement of additional military assets into the region and issuing a series of stark warnings on social media indicating that U.S. forces are “ready, willing and able to rapidly fulfill [their] mission, with speed and violence” should a deal fail to be made.
While the administration has emphasized diplomacy as its preferred path, analysts caution that negotiations do not necessarily signal that the U.S. will not strike.
“Military intervention remains likely in light of President Trump’s demonstrated willingness to use force and the U.S. military buildup in the region,” said Michael Koplow, chief policy officer at the Israel Policy Forum. “Given the gulf between the American and Iranian positions and the general hard-line position of the Iranian regime on nuclear issues, it is hard to tag a nuclear deal as a likely outcome.”
Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JI that a strike does remain on the table. She said that a deal could be difficult to reach and the upcoming meeting in Istanbul is unlikely to yield meaningful results or concessions from Iran.
“The planned meeting is likely a diplomatic box-checking exercise and smokescreen to enable a continued U.S. military buildup before Trump authorizes strikes,” Stricker said. “The administration’s demands that Iran abandon nuclear enrichment, cap its missile program, and halt support for regional proxies and terrorism, as well as stop executing its people, are nonstarters for the regime.”
Koplow said the administration’s “mixed signals” on whether it will seek diplomacy or take military action are likely “not a ruse or a diversion,” but instead a signal that Trump “has not actually made up his mind” and is “unsure what his end goal is.”
Jason Greenblatt, who served as White House Middle East envoy in the first Trump administration, asserted that “there’s no mixed signals,” arguing that the president’s messaging has been clear.
“President Trump has made the choice clear: a real, enforceable deal that ends Iran’s nuclear and missile threats and protects the U.S., our allies, and the Iranian people — or decisive action,” said Greenblatt, who emphasized that while Trump is reluctant to engage in war, the president will not accept an agreement he views as insufficient.
“He is not a war president,” Greenblatt said, “but he will not accept a weak deal. Iran’s leadership should understand by now that President Trump means exactly what he says.”
Stricker also noted that Trump has consistently sought to avoid prolonged conflict, but argued that Iran’s internal repression and continued nuclear advances may push the president toward decisive action. On Saturday, satellite images revealed new activity at Iranian nuclear sites, a potential sign that Tehran is aiming to salvage remaining materials from the June strikes.
“President Trump favors stability and prioritizes ending violence in global affairs,” she said. “After achieving the defanging of Tehran’s nuclear program, the regime has shown it remains a threat — the ongoing massacre is too much for Trump to tolerate as the leader of the free world.” “The president will likely ensure the regime pays a price, but whether the price is regime change remains to be seen,” she added.
When detailing what potential U.S. military intervention could look like, Koplow said that it would likely be “limited” in scope.
“Any U.S. action is likely going to fall short of what the Israelis would like to see, which is a campaign that doesn’t stop until the regime has fallen,” said Koplow. “Trump seems to favor quick strikes, and he is also facing wall-to-wall opposition from Arab states regarding the prospects of a long campaign that destabilizes the region and damages prospects for trade, investment, and growth.”
However, other analysts read the shift to negotiations as a signal that intervention is increasingly unlikely. Jonathan Ruhe, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America told JI that U.S. military action is “unlikely for the moment.”
“An even bigger concern now is that military action could be off the table indefinitely, in a way it wasn’t just a day or two ago, as renewed talks now seem more likely,” said Ruhe.
Ruhe also noted that a key indicator of Trump’s intentions will be “how long he keeps the ‘armada’ within striking distance,” referring to the U.S. military assets in the region. He added that negotiating with Tehran will likely result in an unfavorable outcome for the U.S.
“Negotiating with Iran is absolutely the worst possible option for the United States now, because Iran’s regime will go from being on the ropes to thinking it prevailed,” said Ruhe, noting that Tehran is unlikely to agree to an “acceptable deal,” instead using the “prospect of talks to stave off military threats.”
“[Iran] is trying to do what it always does, playing for time and seeing what concessions it can wrangle without ever giving up anything itself,” Ruhe added. “This leaves zero upside for the U.S., since Iran is too emboldened to agree to serious concessions. There’s plenty of downside, too, since U.S. credibility would be dangerously eroded in Tehran’s eyes if Trump fails to fulfill his earlier threats.”
Koplow said Jerusalem is also concerned about a potential nuclear deal and is likely to perceive Iran’s willingness to enter talks as a way of “dragging out the process indefinitely.”
“[The Israelis] are concerned that Trump will back off his threats to take action or end up signing a deal that falls short of addressing the entire basket of issues — nuclear, missiles, and proxies,” said Koplow.
Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had said Tehran would strike Israel in response to any U.S. military action, in an interview with the Lebanese-based Al Mayadeen.
Stricker warned that any agreement that falls short of dismantling the regime’s power structure and fails to address key issues would be problematic not only for the U.S. and Israel, but for the Iranian public.
“Any deal with the Islamic Republic would represent a historic betrayal of the Iranian people,” Stricker said. “The only negotiation America should entertain with Tehran is the exit of top regime officials from Iran and their relinquishing of power prior to an orderly transition to democracy.”
Plus, Jason Zengerle on Tucker's transformation
Chesnot/Getty Images
PARIS, FRANCE - JUNE 16: Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) poses prior to a working lunch with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Presidential Palace on June 16, 2023 in Paris, France.
👋 Good Monday morning!
In today’s Daily Kickoff, we talk to journalist Jason Zengerle about his new book about Tucker Carlson’s political evolution, and look at the wave of antisemitic and anti-Israel messaging coming from Saudi Arabia in recent weeks. We spotlight White House advisor Josh Gruenbaum’s position as a key player in U.S. diplomacy, and look at the role that the United Auto Workers union is playing in anti-Israel activist efforts. Also in today’s Daily Kickoff: Jennifer Mnookin, Morris Katz and Marc Shaiman.
Today’s Daily Kickoff was curated by JI Executive Editor Melissa Weiss and Israel Editor Tamara Zieve, with assists from Danielle Cohen-Kanik and Marc Rod. Have a tip? Email us here.
What We’re Watching
- Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day tomorrow, Meta, UNESCO and the World Jewish Congress are convening a discussion at the U.N. today in New York focused on the role that technology can play in Holocaust preservation efforts.
- Israel’s Ministry of Diaspora Affairs is hosting the second annual International Conference on Combating Antisemitism in Jerusalem. Speakers at the two-day confab include Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli, the Department of Justice’s Leo Terrell, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, former New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Jewish Federations of North America CEO Eric Fingerhut.
- Elsewhere in Jerusalem, Israeli President Isaac Herzog will host the annual lecture of the Jabotinsky Institute at the President’s Residence tonight, delivered this year by U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee.
- The IDF, acting on new information from Hamas, is conducting an operation in northern Gaza to locate the remains of Ran Gvili, who was killed during the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks.
- The Saudi Real Estate Future Forum kicks off today in Riyadh. Former Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry are slated to speak, as is far-right commentator Tucker Carlson.
What You Should Know
A QUICK WORD WITH JI’S LAHAV HARKOV
Anti-Israel and antisemitic messages from Saudi regime mouthpieces and state-sanctioned media have increased in recent weeks, as Riyadh has pivoted away from a more moderate posture to an alignment with Islamist forces, such as Qatar and Turkey.
Over the weekend, prominent Saudi columnist Dr. Ahmed bin Othman Al-Tuwaijri wrote an article in a Saudi news site attacking the United Arab Emirates, with whom Saudi Arabia has been at odds in recent weeks, as “an Israeli Trojan horse in the Arab world … in betrayal of God, His Messenger and the entire nation.” He also wrote that “Israel is on a path to a rapid downfall and the umma [community of Muslims] will remain, God willing.” The column, published after weeks of anti-Israel and antisemitic messaging from Saudi-backed channels, sparked an uproar from Western voices, including the Anti-Defamation League, which condemned “the increasing frequency and volume of prominent Saudi voices … using openly antisemitic dog whistles.”
Hussain Abdul-Hussain, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said on the “Ask A Jew” podcast earlier this month that the Trump administration needs “to have a serious talk with” the Saudis. “I’m ringing the alarm; I’m breaking the glass,” he said. “I’m saying, listen, these guys are changing.”
In the past, “you only got these crazy terrorist clerics, the al-Qaida types … would be inciting against the Jews,” Abdul-Hussain said. “But this week, the [Saudi] state-owned media was inciting against the Zionist plan to partition the region and to divide the region. This is very new.”
One possible reason for the turn in Saudi messaging is that Riyadh is “very afraid of Israel,” Edy Cohen, a research fellow at the Israel Center for Grand Strategy, told Jewish Insider, noting that it views recent Israeli actions as going against Saudi interests.
Cohen noted that “the Saudis and the Qataris led a campaign for Trump not to strike Iran. …[The Saudi leadership] heard [exiled Iranian Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi] said the new Iran will normalize relations with Israel, and this drove the leadership crazy. Imagine Iran and Israel together … It’s their biggest nightmare.” Riyadh and Jerusalem are also at odds on Syria and Somaliland.
NEW ON THE SCENE
Josh Gruenbaum’s rapid rise from overseeing federal contracting to dealmaking on the world stage
Josh Gruenbaum’s Thursday started in Davos, Switzerland, at the signing ceremony to inaugurate President Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. Gruenbaum walked onto the World Economic Forum stage where Trump sat, surrounded by world leaders, to hand the president the board’s first resolution — focused on the demilitarization and reconstruction of Gaza — for him to sign. Hours later, Gruenbaum’s day ended at the Kremlin in Moscow, alongside White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and advisor Jared Kushner. Gruenbaum is a relatively new figure on the diplomatic scene. He started working with Witkoff and Kushner soon after the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas took effect in October, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Trajectory: Since then, Gruenbaum has been spotted in meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Earlier this month, hewas named a diplomatic advisor to the new Board of Peace, which the Trump administration is reportedly envisioning as a replacement to the United Nations. It’s a somewhat surprising turn for Gruenbaum, whose expertise is not diplomacy or foreign policy but investment banking. But with his business background, Gruenbaum fits in with Witkoff and Kushner, both of whom come from the real estate world. His rise underscores how the Trump administration is reshaping the machinery of government by elevating loyalists with private-sector backgrounds and expanding their portfolios far beyond traditional lanes.
HER WAY
Tahesha Way campaigns as close ally of Jewish community in pivotal N.J. special election
Campaigning in a crowded field for the New Jersey House seat recently vacated by newly inaugurated Gov. Mikie Sherrill, former New Jersey Lt. Gov. Tahesha Way is leaning strongly into her support for Israel and the state’s Jewish community, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What she said: Speaking to JI last week, Way cited the rise in antisemitism that is leaving Jewish voters “terrified” as one of the reasons she’s running for office, alongside her concern about attacks on civil liberties, health-care access, the economy and immigration raids. She said that, going forward, it’s “really my fervor and my hope to continue my work on behalf of the Jewish community,” highlighting the work of the New Jersey-Israel Commission — which fell under her purview when she served as secretary of state — to increase trade between Israel and New Jersey as well as push back on antisemitism.
BISS’ BACKTRACK
Daniel Biss reversed position on aid to Israel after launching congressional campaign
Evanston, Ill., Mayor Daniel Biss, who has expressed support for cutting off some military aid to Israel during his campaign for Congress in the Chicago suburbs, had expressed support for continued aid to Israel earlier in the campaign, according to a position paper Biss himself released Friday amid scrutiny of his past communications with AIPAC, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.
What it says: Biss said Friday that he had met with local AIPAC representatives to lay out his positions, but that he does not share AIPAC’s views and met with the group in the interest of open communication and in hopes “they might decide not to direct [their] MAGA donors to support [his primary opponent, state Sen.] Laura Fine.” The paper Biss released — which includes stances largely in line with those of other candidates AIPAC has endorsed — stated that Biss supports continued aid to Israel under the terms of the current U.S.-Israel memorandum of understanding, and that he would support another MOU in the future. Biss now supports efforts to impose an offensive weapons ban on Israel — a direct contradiction to the MOU.
Texas turnaround: Texas state Rep. James Talarico, a Democratic candidate for Senate in the state, has disavowed AIPAC and pledged not to take support from the group on the campaign trail. But in late 2019, he attended an AIPAC event alongside a major donor to his campaign, according to a contemporaneous Instagram post about the event posted by an AIPAC supporter, JI’s Marc Rod reports.
UNSEALED
Newly released memos reveal State Dept. concerns about basis for student deportations
State Department officials who were tasked with deporting foreign students accused of antisemitism and threatening American national security warned that the efforts may present free speech concerns, according to government documents that a federal judge released last week. The several hundred pages of previously sealed federal documents are connected to the ongoing deportation cases against Mahmoud Khalil, Rümeysa Öztürk, Mohsen Mahdawi, Yunseo Chung and Badar Khan Suri, each of whom U.S. immigration authorities targeted because of their involvement in anti-Israel activity at American universities, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports.
Scant evidence: One case concerned the visa status of Öztürk, a Turkish student at Tufts University who was ordered to be deported last March and was arrested by federal agents on her way to a Ramadan event. A senior Department of Homeland Security official told JI last year that federal investigators “found Öztürk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” The only public evidence at the time connecting her to the anti-Israel protest movement was a 2024 op-ed in Tufts’ student newspaper that she penned with three other students calling for the university to divest from Israel. One of the State Department memos unsealed last week revealed that this op-ed was the sole basis for the effort to deport her — and that department officials recognized it might face legal challenges.
UNION LABEL
Beyond the assembly line: Auto workers’ labor union emerges as key player in anti-Israel activism
The United Auto Workers, one of the largest unions in the country, has increasingly drifted away from its core mission of representing autoworkers in the workplace, driven by individuals pushing an extreme anti-Israel political agenda that leaves critics questioning the relevance to workplace issues. The most recent example came earlier this month, when 30% of the 275 employees of the Israeli-owned Breads Bakery signed union authorization cards for UAW Local 2179, the percentage necessary to petition the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. The group’s demands include that the management of the New York-based bakery chain, CEO Yonatan Floman and founder Gadi Peleg, “halt use of bakery profit to materially support the Israeli occupation,” Jewish Insider’s Haley Cohen reports.
Behind the push: Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the State Department’s antisemitism envoy under President Joe Biden, told JI that “many institutions and organizations, whether they be universities, unions [or] city councils, a small group is able to go in and organize, and with the minority of members, push a policy.” Lipstadt, a historian who has served on Emory University faculty for more than 30 years, said she has “seen similar situation[s] on university campuses and [within] professional academic organizations where a small group, sometimes just a few individuals, is able to gain control and push the organization in a certain direction, even if the vast majority of members don’t agree. I wonder if that is the same thing happening” with the Breads unionization push, she said.
Worthy Reads
Hatred, Then and Now: In The Telegraph, Deborah Lipstadt, who served as the Biden administration’s antisemitism envoy, distances modern-day antisemitism from that of prewar Europe, but warns that similar sentiments can erode society if not properly addressed. “There are no shortages of historical examples of anti-Semitism. And probably each generation that faced these disasters wondered if their experience paralleled that of a previous generation. While we do not want to forget or ignore the past – something I have spent my whole life studying and teaching – or ignore what might be the consequences of this cosmic hatred, we also must avoid finding or inventing simple continuities. Every situation and era has unique characteristics. While the past can remind us just how bad things can get, we must avoid using it as a template for predicting the future. … Today we find anti-Semitism on the Right and the Left. We find it among Christian nationalists and Islamist radicals. We find it among white supremacists and multiculturalists. We even find it among Jews. Too many people, who do not share these views, remain silent when those next to them, their political allies, engage in overt anti-Semitism.” [Telegraph]
Limits of the Law: In The Atlantic, John Yoo argues that the present-day interpretation of international law does not defend against malign actors and should be revamped accordingly. “If critics correctly argue that the attack on Venezuela violates international law, they have unintentionally revealed that international law — not the United States — must change. Removing Maduro was just: The dictatorship has killed tens, if not hundreds of thousands, of Venezuelans, destroyed the country’s economy, and denied the electoral wishes of the Venezuelan people for new leadership. But international law did nothing about this crisis, and countenanced no solution. Because it prevents Western democracies from using force to preempt grave threats from disruptive nations, such as Venezuela or Iran, while posing little obstacle to the designs of our rivals in Beijing or Moscow, international law no longer serves as an instrument of global stability.” [TheAtlantic]
Peace Board Problems: On X, Palestinian American analyst and Gaza native Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib raises concerns about the degree to which the Trump administration’s newly created Board of Peace can be effective given on-the-ground constraints. “There are no perfect answers, solutions, or scenarios to address the myriad of terrible circumstances that require tough choices, strategic patience, and some trial and error. That said, what has been unfolding reeks of a horrendous disaster in the making and a five-alarm fire that may ensure the failure of Gaza’s future trajectory and prospects especially as it relates to the post war era, de-Hamasification, demilitarization, and deradicalization – all of which are core necessities for any hope that the coastal enclave will no longer be a battle field for Islamist jihadi terrorism or meaningless regional proxy battles which lead to squandered potential, needless deaths, and wasted opportunities.” [X]
Word on the Street
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly rejected a request from the White House for Israeli President Isaac Herzog to attend last week’s Board of Peace signing ceremony on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland…
Axios obtained two audio recordings of Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) speaking to donors last year, during which the potential 2028 presidential candidate suggested that Vice President JD Vance was “created” by his “protégé” Tucker Carlson, calling the two “one and the same”; Cruz also assailed the Trump administration’s economic policies and warned that Republicans could face a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterms…
The New York Times spotlights political strategist Morris Katz, who was a key player in New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s campaign; Katz is also working for Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner, who has come under fire for having previously bragged about having tattoos of Nazi imagery…
The U.S. is reportedly pushing Bolivia to expel suspected Iranian spies from the South American country and to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hezbollah and Hamas as terror groups…
Columbia University’s Board of Trustees unanimously selected University of Wisconsin-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin to be the school’s next president; Mnookin, who will be the school’s fifth president in four years when she assumes the role at the end of the academic year, has led UW-Madison since 2022…
The New York City Council is investigating a recent fundraiser in Brooklyn hosted by the Muslim American Society in which merchandise supporting U.S.-designated terror groups including Hamas and Hezbollah were available for purchase…
Robert Kraft’s New England Patriots are heading to next month’s Super Bowl, where they’ll face off against the Seattle Seahawks; the Patriots are making their 12th Super Bowl appearance, the most by any NFL team in history…
The New York Times profiles Broadway songwriter Marc Shaiman, the co-lyricist behind “Hairspray,” ahead of the release of his memoir, Never Mind the Happy: Showbiz Stories From a Sore Winner…
Police in London arrested 86 people who breached the grounds of a West London prison during a protest in support of a Palestine Action activist taking part in a hunger strike in the prison…
Australia canceled the visa of Sammy Yahood hours before the British-Israeli comedian was set to travel to the country for several speaking engagements; Yahood had in recent months called for the banning of Islam, which he had called a “murderous” and “disgusting” ideology…
Le Monde spotlights Israel’s Route 1 highway as a tourist destination, recommending that travelers make a stop at Neve Ilan’s Elvis American Diner…
Paypal acquired Israeli commerce technology startup Cymbio in a deal estimated to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars…
The Wall Street Journal looks at efforts by Israel to work with Palestinian militias in Gaza that are fighting against Hamas in areas of the enclave still controlled by the terror group and unable to be accessed by Israeli forces…
Israeli airlines El Al, Israair and Arkia are loosening ticket cancellation policies amid concerns over conflict between Israel and Iran…
The New York Times does a deep dive into Iran’s violent crackdown on anti-government protesters, as The Washington Post reports on an attack by Iranian forces on people fleeing a fire at an open air market in which dozens of people were gunned down…
Meanwhile, two senior Iranian Health Ministry officials told Time that as many as 30,000 people have been killed since the protests began last month…
In Tehran, officials unveiled a mural over the weekend depicting a damaged aircraft carrier strewn with bodies with the message “If you sow the wind, you will reap the whirlwind,” ostensibly a warning to the U.S. as an American aircraft carrier makes its way to the Gulf…
Saudi Arabia is scaling back its Neom project as the endeavor faces delays and funding issues…
The head of Iraq’s intelligence agency warned of a resurgence in Islamic State fighters in Syria, whose numbers have more than quintupled in the last year since President Ahmad al-Sharaa assumed power…
New York City art dealer Marian Goodman, who helped garner interest in avant-garde European art in the 1980s, died at 97…
Pic of the Day
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar (left) met with Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov in Baku earlier today. Sa’ar traveled to the Caucasus country with a delegation of Israeli businessmen for conversations focused on advancing bilateral economic ties.
Birthdays
Two-time Emmy Award-winning film and television director, her 2018 film is a biographical legal drama based on the life of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Mimi Leder turns 74…
Pioneering computer scientist, Barbara Bluestein Simons, Ph.D. turns 85… Singer-songwriter, socialite and political fundraiser, Denise Eisenberg Rich turns 82… Economic and social theorist, author of 23 books, Jeremy Rifkin turns 81… New Haven, Conn.-based personal injury attorney, Herbert Ira Mendelsohn… Publishing professional, Agnes F. Holland… Professor emeritus of modern Judaic studies at the University of Virginia, Peter W. Ochs turns 76… President of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, Rabbi Marc Schneier turns 67… Senior rabbi of Manhattan’s Stephen Wise Free Synagogue, Ammiel Hirsch turns 67… Argentina’s largest real estate developer, president of Chabad Argentina, president of Hillel Argentina and president of Taglit Birthright Argentina, Eduardo Elsztain turns 66… Co-founder of the Laura and Gary Lauder Family Venture Philanthropy Fund, Laura Heller Lauder… President of HSK Consulting focused on strategic planning and fundraising services, Hilary Smith Kapner… Former CNN anchor and correspondent for 12 years, author of two books, she runs a website and newsletter focused on uplifting and positive news, Daryn Kagan turns 63… Co-founder of Boardroom One, Brent Cohen… Actress, comedian and television screenwriter, Claudia Lonow turns 63… Former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy turns 61… Chief of the general staff of the IDF, previously director-general of the Ministry of Defense, Eyal Zamir turns 60… Senior strategist and consultant at Hillel of Broward and Palm Beach, Fla., Jill Weinstock Deutch… Oakland County (Michigan) clerk and register of deeds, she served on the board of the Jewish Association for Residential Care, Lisa Brown turns 59… Inaugural director of the Pava Center for Women’s Torah Scholarship at Yeshiva University, Raizi Chechik… Former middleweight boxing champion, he retired in 2003 with a 37–1–1 record, now a credit union loan officer, Dana Rosenblatt turns 54… Retired tennis player who was the top-ranked player in his age group at the ages of 12, 14, 16 and 18, then as an adult he won 15 doubles championships, Justin Gimelstob turns 49… Actress, she hosted The CW reality series “Shedding for the Wedding,” Sara Rue (born Sara Schlackman) turns 47… Policy director and counsel at Morrison Cohen LLP, he was previously an Obama White House Jewish liaison, Jarrod Neal Bernstein turns 46… Senior advisor at the Harold Grinspoon Foundation and president of the Palm Collective, Tamar Remz… Former Olympic figure skater, now in business operations at Figma, Emily Hughes turns 37… Blues and jazz musician, he describes himself as “sporadically shomer Shabbos,” Jerron “Blind Boy” Paxton turns 37… Member of the Rhode Island House of Representatives from 2015-2019, Jonathan Aaron Regunberg turns 36… Co-founder and CEO of Bardin, Fay Goldstein…
After Israel announced it would recognize the secessionist region, the big question remains whether the United States will follow suit
Shlomi Amsalem, GPO
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar meets with Somaliland President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi in Hargeisa, Somaliland, Jan 6, 2026
When Israel announced the day after Christmas that it would formally recognize Somaliland, making it the first country in the world to announce formal diplomatic relations with the secessionist region in the Horn of Africa, even some of Washington’s foremost foreign policy experts were sheepishly asking the same question: What, exactly, is Somaliland?
There was no single event that led to Israel’s choice to recognize the sovereignty of Somaliland, which announced its independence from Somalia in 1991. The territory has functioned independently for 35 years; nothing in its governance changed last year.
What changed was Israel — and its geopolitical calculus regarding regional security threats.
“The Houthis didn’t used to fire missiles at Israel. That’s new, and Israel’s now trying to respond to a new situation,” said David Makovsky, the Ziegler Distinguished Fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I have no doubt that this was driven by how to try to neutralize a threat from the Houthis that Israel takes very seriously.”
Somaliland sits just across the Gulf of Aden from Yemen, from which the Iran-backed Houthis have fired drones and ballistic missiles at Israel following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in 2023. Allying with Somaliland could allow Israel to target the Yemeni militia from much closer range. Israel has also reportedly approached Somaliland about resettling Palestinians from Gaza there, although officials in the country have denied that such conversations took place.
Somaliland also sits in a strategic location south of Djibouti and to the east of Ethiopia, and its coastland is close to where the Indian Ocean and Red Sea meet, making it a prime shipping location.
“No one can ignore the strategic location of Somaliland,” Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, told The Wall Street Journal. “The straits are a strategic point.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar visited Hargeisa, Somaliland’s capital, on Tuesday to meet with President Abdirahman Mohamed Abdullahi. It was the first visit by a foreign minister to Somaliland in its more than three decades of existence as a self-governing entity.
The key question is whether Jerusalem’s recognition of Somaliland will prompt similar moves by other nations. Somalia, with which Israel does not have diplomatic nations, has slammed the move. The African Union on Tuesday called for Israel to walk back its recognition, saying the move “represents an unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign Member State of the United Nations.”
But even as Israel faces diplomatic pushback even from allied African nations, it has created an opening for Somaliland to press its case internationally.
The region was a separate entity from Somalia beginning in the 19th century, when it was controlled by the British — in contrast to present-day Somalia, which was previously ruled by Italy. Today Somaliland is home to 6 million people, and it has held democratic elections throughout the past two decades.
Washington has not recognized Somaliland, and a State Department spokesperson told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that no such announcement is forthcoming.
“The United States continues to recognize the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Somalia, which includes the territory of Somaliland,” the spokesperson said.
But at an emergency United Nations Security Council hearing last week, Tammy Bruce, the U.S. deputy representative to the U.N., defended Israel’s right to conduct diplomacy, and she called out the body’s “persistent double standards” in treating the recognition of Somaliland as different from states that have unilaterally recognized a Palestinian state.
“The Americans are engaging with the country. How quickly they move to recognize Somaliland, I don’t know,” said Max Webb, a Horn of Africa expert who works at Israel Policy Forum. “Somaliland has been a fixture of Republican politics.”
“Israel has the same right to conduct diplomatic relations as any other sovereign state,” said Bruce. “Earlier this year, several countries including members of this council made the unilateral decision to recognize a non-existent Palestinian state, and yet no emergency meeting was called to express this council’s outrage.”
Even though Washington does not recognize Somaliland, the region has a small diplomatic mission in the United States. In December, the top U.S. military official overseeing the Africa Command visited Somaliland and met with Abdullahi, its president.
“The Americans are engaging with the country. How quickly they move to recognize Somaliland, I don’t know,” said Max Webb, a Horn of Africa expert who works at Israel Policy Forum. “Somaliland has been a fixture of Republican politics.”
The conservative Heritage Foundation first called for U.S. recognition of Somaliland in 2021. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) threw his support behind recognition last August, and he said in a post on X on Monday that Somaliland recognition “aligns with America’s security interests.” President Donald Trump told The New York Post in December that he wasn’t yet ready to recognize Somaliland but that he will “study” the issue. “Does anyone know what Somaliland is, really?” Trump said.
Taiwan, which is not a United Nations member state, has a representative office in Somaliland, but it has not formally recognized Somaliland as an independent state. A handful of regional powerhouses, including Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates, also have strong economic relationships with Somaliland. They have yet to establish full diplomatic ties, although Somaliland and Ethiopia — the second most populous nation in Africa — signed a major memorandum of understanding in 2024. There are larger geopolitical factors at play: Egypt is closely aligned with Somalia, while Egypt and Ethiopia have long been at odds over an Ethiopian hydroelectric project on the Nile River. Turkey and Qatar, both of which are close to Mogadishu, condemned Israel’s actions.
Somalia is a key counterterrorism partner for the U.S., particularly as the Islamist group al-Shabab has grown and become more deadly alongside a Somali affiliate of ISIS. Some worry that U.S. recognition of Somaliland could hamper that coordination.
“Somaliland is on the map,” said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “People who had never heard of Somaliland a week ago are suddenly reading up on its history and understanding its arguments.”
“I’m sure there are other countries as well beyond the U.S. that worry if they recognize Somaliland, then Somalia will have a full meltdown and will cut off counterterrorism cooperation, for instance, and then al-Shabab will make even further gains,” said Joshua Meservey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who has called for U.S. recognition of Somaliland. “Somalia’s dysfunction almost protects it, in a way, from Somaliland gaining wider recognition.”
Over the past 10 days, no other states have followed Israel’s lead. But a diplomatic crisis has not emerged, at least not yet — and now, Somaliland is part of the global conversation in a serious way for the first time since it declared independence.
“Somaliland is on the map,” said Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “People who had never heard of Somaliland a week ago are suddenly reading up on its history and understanding its arguments.”
The last 24 hours have seen a sharp pivot from Trump to a more hard-line approach to Tehran
Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
U.S. President Donald Trump stops and talks to the media before he boards Marine One on the South Lawn at the White House on June 15, 2025 in Washington, DC.
While the last two months have been an exercise in diplomacy for Trump administration officials, who have crisscrossed the Middle East and Europe in an attempt to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, the last 24 hours have seen a sharp pivot from President Donald Trump to a more hard-line approach to Tehran.
“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the president posted on his Truth Social site on Tuesday afternoon, understood to be a message to Iran after more than five days of Israeli attacks meant to degrade Tehran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. Iranian reprisals have paralyzed Israel, but resulted in damage that has fallen far short of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s threats. Khamenei responded on Wednesday that “the Iranian nation will not surrender.”
The president’s post, made following his early departure from the G7 summit in Alberta, Canada, but before his Situation Room sit-down with senior advisors, signaled Trump’s new approach to the regional conflict.
Trump’s latest comments underscore his shift away from the isolationist elements of the GOP that have dominated his administration since a purge of more traditional foreign policy-minded Republicans, including former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. As The New York Times’ Ross Douthat wrote on Tuesday, Trump’s isolationist supporters “imagined that personnel was policy, that the realists and would-be restrainers in Trump’s orbit would have a decisive influence. That was clearly a mistake, and the lesson here is that Trump decides and no one else.”
As the president’s position further crystalized — also Tuesday, he called Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei an “easy target,” but said the U.S. would not assassinate him, “at least not for now” — his post-G7 rhetoric trickled down to his inner circle.
Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X yesterday. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. … Whatever he does, that is his focus.”
It’s a notable shift from Vance, too, who has been one of the most prominent opponents of preemptive military action in the Middle East. (Vance opposed U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen earlier this year.)
Journalist Eli Lake noted on Tuesday that Trump’s “inner circle deliberating on Iran policy is very small and has been fairly tight-lipped,” adding that those advising him on Iran include Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Lake said, is “occasionally” part of the group, but was absent from recent Camp David conversations about Israel and Iran.
On Capitol Hill, while Republicans appear publicly split on the level of involvement that the U.S. should have in the conflict — from working with Israel to destroy the Fordow nuclear facility to forcing Iran’s hand in diplomatic talks — JI’s conversations with legislators indicate a different approach behind the scenes. One senior Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss internal conference dynamics estimated that nearly the entire GOP conference is privately united on the issue of the U.S. supporting Israel in bombing the Fordow facility if Israel needs such support. Read more from JI’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod here.
“I think the president has struck the right position,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told JI earlier this week, “which is supportive of Israel’s right of self-defense, which is what this really is, and supporting them publicly while they defend themselves. I think that’s the right position to stick on.” Read more of Hawley’s comments here.
Trump has “handled this situation very deftly,” Hawley added. “I think his message has been pretty clear, which is that Iran is not going to get a nuke. So they can either surrender their nuclear program peaceably, and he’s willing to [have] the United States facilitate that, or the Israelis are going to blow their program to smithereens. Right now they’re choosing the smithereens route.”
Harris national security adviser Phil Gordon: ‘I would have found it too risky to initiate military force with all that that could unleash’
JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images
Vice President Kamala Harris speaks with Phil Gordon during a meeting with Caribbean leaders in Los Angeles, California, June 9, 2022.
Among the more surprising cheerleaders for President Donald Trump’s diplomacy with Iran were several progressive foreign policy analysts who had advised former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Now, many of those same voices — including Phil Gordon, Harris’ national security advisor who would likely have stayed in the role if she had been elected president last year — are expressing skepticism about Israel’s preemptive strikes on Iranian military and nuclear sites, and urging Trump to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to cool it.
“I would have found it too risky to initiate military force with all that that could unleash,” Gordon told Jewish Insider on Friday. His approach would have been “to try to get an enduring, diplomatically-negotiated nuclear arrangement that prevented Iran from being able to get a nuclear weapon.”
If he were advising Harris, or another Democratic president, Gordon would’ve wanted “to try to get that accomplished without having used this military action,” he said.
Gordon also argued that Trump was manipulated into supporting Israel’s strikes by Netanyahu, even as Trump celebrated Israel’s killing of Iranian hardliners, noting that several of Trump’s senior advisors have urged restraint rather than intervention.
“His supporters did not put him in place to get involved in the conflict in the Middle East,” Gordon said. “A lot of his advisors … served in Iraq or are against U.S. military interventions in the Middle East. We know where Vance is in terms of intervention. The Tucker Carlson view, Don Jr. I think Trump really wanted to avoid military conflict and negotiate a deal and be the guy who got a better deal than Obama.”
Ilan Goldenberg, who served as an Iran advisor at the Pentagon in the Obama administration and who advised Harris on Middle East issues during her 2024 campaign, told JI that Trump should try to encourage parties in the region to tone it down.
“I think the appropriate position for the United States to be in now is the role of de-escalator,” said Goldenberg, now the senior vice president and chief policy officer at J Street. “The better option, the less risky option that had more good outcomes, was the diplomatic option. Unfortunately, it’s not the way it went. So now we have to see.”
J Street released a statement on Friday calling for an end to the “cycle of retaliation and escalation,” and for a return to diplomacy between the U.S. and Iran.
Both Gordon and Goldenberg questioned Israel’s end game in the strikes, which killed several senior Iranian military leaders and destroyed an above-ground uranium enrichment site at Natanz.
“It definitely has set back the timetable for Iran’s nuclear capacity, but it hasn’t eliminated it, and we also don’t know what happens in terms of retaliation. We’d like to think and hope that Iran has been deterred and won’t respond in a way that we can’t handle,” Gordon said. “So far, so good, but we’re only on the first day, so there were real risks of doing it this way. And that’s why I would have sought, if at all possible, to do it a different way.”
Goldenberg, who said the most important next step in stopping the violence is for the U.S. to help Israel defend against Iran’s retaliation, said he is unsure whether the Israeli success will turn into a long-term victory.
“The Israelis are incredibly good operationally, but they have challenges sometimes translating that into a strategic kind of sustainable victory, as opposed to just continuing to fight,” said Goldenberg. “What’s the end state here? What are you trying to do? Or is the objective to just be in constant conflict?”
Still, even as they said a return to diplomacy is the best way to move forward, both Gordon and Goldenberg acknowledged that Israel’s Friday attack on Iran had so far gone well for Israel.
“It is a remarkable display of Israeli military and intelligence capabilities,” said Gordon.
“I think in the immediate [term], it had a lot of success. Very impressive operationally,” Goldenberg noted.
Trump said in Truth Social posts on Friday that Iran could have a “second chance” at a deal, and that they should return to the negotiating table “before there is nothing left.”
Goldenberg agrees — and he thinks Israel needs to hear from Trump that they can’t attack Iran forever.
“Make clear to the Iranians that there’s still a deal on the table. We’re willing to negotiate,” Goldenberg said. “And at the same time, make clear to the Israelis, there are limits to this. We can’t see this get out of control.”
Ron Dermer and David Barnea will meet Steve Witkoff on Friday ahead of the sixth round of talks with Iran in Oman on Sunday 'in an additional attempt to clarify Israel's stance.'
ATTA KENARE/AFP via Getty Images
A picture taken on November 10, 2019, shows an Iranian flag in Iran's Bushehr nuclear power plant, during an official ceremony to kick-start works on a second reactor at the facility.
Since the Israeli strike on Iran’s air defenses in October, Jerusalem has sought a green light, or something close to it, from Washington to strike the Islamic Republic’s nuclear sites. President Donald Trump, however, repeatedly told Israel to hold off as he pursued a diplomatic agreement with Tehran to stop its enrichment program.
Now, after the Iranian nuclear program has continued apace and Trump has voiced frustration over Tehran’s intransigence, it seems that Jerusalem’s patience for diplomacy is running out.
Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer and Mossad chief David Barnea will be meeting Trump’s top negotiator Steve Witkoff on Friday ahead of the sixth round of talks with Iran in Oman on Sunday “in an additional attempt to clarify Israel’s stance,” an official in Jerusalem said, amid persistent reports and strong indications that Israel is prepared to strike Iran.
After a call with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, Trump said that if Tehran does not agree to give up uranium enrichment, the situation will get “very, very dire.” On Wednesday, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said that “there have been plenty of indications” that Iran is moving towards weaponization of its nuclear program, and Gen. Michael “Erik” Kurilla, the chief of CENTCOM, said that he presented Trump and Hegseth with numerous options to attack Iran if nuclear talks break down.
Hours later, the State Department began to move some personnel out of Iraq and the military suggested that servicemembers’ families depart the Middle East, while the U.K. warned about a potential “escalation of military activity” in the region. Such evacuations are often the first step to reduce risk ahead of a large-scale military operation.
Trump told reporters that the evacuations are happening because the Middle East “could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens.” More on this from Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod here.
Kurilla postponed his testimony before the Senate planned for Thursday. Staff at U.S. embassies and consulates throughout the Middle East were told to take safety precautions, and those stationed in Israel were told not to leave the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, Jerusalem or Beersheva.
Multiple news outlets published reports citing anonymous American officials that Israel is ready to strike Iran without help from the U.S. One possible reason for the timing — moving forward even as Washington and Tehran are set to enter a sixth round of talks on Sunday — is that Iran has reportedly begun to rebuild the air defenses that Israel destroyed last year. Iranian Armed Forces Chief of Staff Mohammad Bagheri reportedly said last month: “We are witnessing a remarkable improvement in the capability and readiness of the country’s air defense.”
Ynet’s well-sourced military analyst Yoav Zitun reported early Wednesday that Israel’s threat to attack Iran’s nuclear program is serious, and the most likely scenario is that Israel would strike Iran on its own but coordinate with the U.S. to receive air defense support. That scenario appears consistent with both Trump’s stated reticence to launch an attack, and the events that took place later that day.
In light of the negotiations set to continue on Sunday, some American analysts told JI that Washington could be acting as though it’s preparing for a possible attack to pressure Iran into concessions.
If the latest moves successfully pressure Iran, Shira Efron, Israel Policy Forum’s director of policy research, told JI that she hoped it would be “an opportunity to get to a bigger, better deal.”
However, in Israel, it looks like the moves towards a strike on Iran are serious.
The fact that Netanyahu is expected to go on a two-day vacation in northern Israel this weekend and his son is getting married next week have been counterintuitively pointed to as indications that a strike is imminent — after all, the Hezbollah pager operation happened when the prime minister was in New York, and the strike on Syria’s nuclear facilities in 2007 took place when then-Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was set to go on vacation in Europe.
“Yesterday, I thought there was no way something is going to happen,” Efron said, but now, “I think we’re at the money time. It’s more serious than we had thought.”
“Israel clearly no longer thinks an agreement can work, so it all depends on whether Trump told Israel it can do something before” negotiations between Iran and the U.S. break down, Efron said.
The son of the former shah argued that with sufficient U.S. support, the Iranian people can overthrow the theocratic regime in Tehran
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP via Getty Images
Reza Pahlavi, activist, advocate and oldest son of the last Shah of Iran, gestures as he receives the Richard Nixon Foundation's Architect of Peace Award at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum in Yorba Linda, California, on October 22, 2024.
Reza Pahlavi, the son of former Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, argued on Monday that the U.S. has another option to address the Iranian nuclear program and other issues with the regime, aside from diplomacy and military strikes, which have come under serious discussion by the administration in recent weeks.
Speaking at an event organized by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the National Union for Democracy in Iran, Pahlavi and others argued for a strategy of providing support for Iranian dissidents, whom he said are prepared to overthrow the regime from within.
The event was designed to promote that policy, which supporters have dubbed “maximum support” for the Iranian people, a play on and companion to the Trump administration’s “maximum-pressure” sanctions policy.
“All I’m asking is give the Iranian people a chance to put an end to all of these concerns,” Pahlavi said. “And if we fail, you always have those options. But jumping straight from ‘diplomacy is not working’ [to] ‘let’s go bomb the hell out of them’ — once again, you’re throwing the people of Iran under the bus which will only add insult to injury.”
“I think that the Iranians have understood that the more they are in numbers, they reach that critical number where change can really happen,” Pahlavi continued. “We are getting pretty close to that number.”
He said that the weakening of the regime and its proxies provides the “perfect opportunity to finally cut the state’s head, not by an outside force doing it for us, but … by supporting a change which is a combination of external pressure and internal pressure combined to ultimately bring the regime to its knees,” Pahlavi said. “If that is successful you won’t have to worry about having military strikes. You won’t have to worry about the existential threat [to] Israel.”
Pahlavi argued further that negotiations are a “waste of time” that the regime will only use to buy time. President Donald Trump said earlier on Thursday during a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office that “high-level” direct negotiations between the U.S. and Iran will begin on Saturday.
Pahlavi said that increasing defections from the regime is critical both to bringing down the regime and ensuring stability in a new government, with defectors taking places in a reconstructed post-regime government to provide stability.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC), the lead sponsor of the Maximum Support Act, which aims to implement a set of policies to support the Iranian people, also spoke at the event, saying that the Iranian regime “has never been weaker,” which he attributed to Trump.
“I’m very hopeful that the success of the people of Syria should be the equivalent for the Middle East of the fall of the Berlin Wall for Europe and Central Asia, for, ultimately, the liberation of countries around the world,” Wilson said.
He argued that the U.S. “cannot meaningfully negotiate” with the Iranian regime.
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