South Africa and Israel banished each other’s highest-ranking diplomat serving in each country, after a video of Israel offering water technology and medical aid to minority tribes angered Pretoria last week.

The diplomatic row took place days before Congress is expected to vote on renewing the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which would allow many products from the continent to enter the U.S. duty-free. The Trump administration has considered removing South Africa from the program because it is a “unique problem,” as U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer described it in December. Removal from AGOA would adversely affect about half of South Africa’s exports to the U.S., its second-largest trading partner, Bloomberg reported.

Pretoria declared Israel’s chargé d’affaires, Ariel Seidman, persona non grata on Friday, and hours later, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar expelled South African envoy Shaun Edward Byneveldt, whom they called “the senior diplomatic representative of South Africa.” Byneveldt is South Africa’s “ambassador to Palestine,” but he was based in Tel Aviv, and diplomats serving the Palestinians are accredited by Israel.

Israel and South Africa have not exchanged ambassadors in recent years. South Africa announced in 2019 that it had downgraded its embassy in Tel Aviv to a liaison office. Israel maintained an ambassador in Pretoria until South Africa petitioned the International Criminal Court to arrest Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant in 2023.

However, with an active Jewish community of over 50,000, Israel has dispatched Amb. David Saranga, the Foreign Ministry’s director of digital diplomacy and a former ambassador to Romania, to be a kind of ambassador-at-large, visiting South Africa for specific meetings and projects. 

Saranga visited South Africa’s Eastern Cape last Sunday, as a guest of King Buyelekhaya Zwelibanzi Dalindyebo, the monarch of the AbaThembu people. The group is part of the Xhosa nation, the second-largest tribe in the country. Dalindyebo had visited Israel weeks earlier. The largest tribe, the Zulu, dominates South African politics through the African National Congress, the largest party in the country’s parliament.

In a post on X, Saranga characterized the Eastern Cape as “a region rich in heritage, poor in infrastructure,” noting that in some areas, “access to clean drinking water remains a luxury rather than a given” and “healthcare challenges are equally severe.” Saranga helped arrange partnerships between Innovation:Africa, Israel’s Sheba Hospital, Dalindyebo and other traditional leaders in the region. 

Saranga and Dalindyebo held a joint press conference with other traditional leaders outside the tribal leader’s home during the Israeli diplomat’s visit last week, videos of which were posted to social media by the Israeli embassy. In one of them, Dalindyebo said of the South African government’s opposition to cooperation with Israel: “They can go to hell if they wish.” Saranga can be seen chuckling next to him. 

“As a king, I am a bona fide head and owner of the land. If any government, if any constitution disputes that, someone must educate me afresh,” Dalindyebo said, asserting his authority to accept aid from Israel if he so chooses.

Days later, the Eastern Cape province’s premier, Lubabalo Oscar Mabuyane, expressed “shock and concern” that Israel acted without consulting his office, calling it “a clear breach of diplomatic protocol.” Israel argued to the South African Jewish Report that it was acting within diplomatic norms. 

On Friday, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) gave Seidman a 72-hour deadline to leave the country following what it called “unacceptable violations of diplomatic norms and practice which pose a direct challenge to South Africa’s sovereignty.” According to DIRCO, the violations included a failure to inform the department of visits by “senior Israeli officials” and insults to South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on official Israeli social media accounts.

South African political news site The Common Sense reported that the ANC, of which Mabuyane is a member, was “panicked by an Israeli effort to expand a service delivery programme in the Eastern Cape and the positive reception to that programme by communities,” and “feared that positive imagery of ordinary South Africans cooperating with Israelis would be very damaging to the government’s hostile foreign policy towards Israel.” 

The South African Jewish Board of Deputies contrasted DIRCO’s actions against Israel with its “willful blindness toward ongoing international atrocities [in Sudan and Iran] … This glaring inconsistency exposes the hypocrisy at the heart of DIRCO’s actions.” 

“Given the dire lack of basic services for countless South Africans, it is striking that just days after Israel offered water solutions to a desperate community in the Eastern Cape, DIRCO expelled the Israeli charge d’affairs, diverting attention from real domestic issues,” the SAJBD added.

The South African Zionist Federation said that the expulsion of Seidman “is an act of staggering moral bankruptcy — a choice that exposes a ruling party more committed to ideological hostility than to the welfare of the people it has so profoundly failed.”

SAZF argued that DIRCO’s actions were “never truly about process, protocol, or sovereignty.”

“A diplomat was declared persona non grata not for espionage, not for misconduct, not for breaching protocol — but for the unforgivable crime of helping South Africans get water. Clean water,” the organization stated. “In a country where taps run dry, where children walk kilometers with buckets, where elderly women queue for hours at communal pumps, and where the state has normalised collapse, neglect, and decay, the ANC chose to punish the one party actually delivering solutions. … When water flowed where excuses had ruled, the ANC did not respond with humility or gratitude. It responded with expulsion.”

SAZF also accused the government of corruption: “What the ANC cannot tolerate is … aid that bypasses the patronage machine. Help that cannot be claimed, captured, or corrupted. … The message sent by this government is as obscene as it is clear: if assistance cannot be politically owned, it must be destroyed, even if people suffer.”

Saudi Arabia’s growing economic struggles have raised doubts among foreign policy experts about whether Riyadh can fulfill its sweeping monetary commitments to the United States.

During Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House last November, the crown prince pledged to increase his country’s investments in the U.S. to nearly $1 trillion, committing funds to projects spanning artificial intelligence, energy, defense and infrastructure.

But the kingdom is now facing significant financial strain, driven by persistently low oil prices and the immense funding demands of its domestic development agenda, including Saudi Vision 2030, a major government initiative taken on a decade ago to diversify Saudi’s economy, society and culture, which has since been downsized. 

“It’s an economic challenge, and frankly, crisis is a word which works for it,” said Simon Henderson, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “The Saudi economy requires $100 barrels of oil, and although the price of oil has gone up a bit in recent days, it’s still low and way short of $100.”

Henderson emphasized that while Saudi Arabia remains a wealthy country due to its hydrocarbon reserves, declining revenue has forced the government to scale back or cancel marquee projects. 

Among the most visible examples Henderson cited were the indefinite postponement of the 2029 Asian Winter Games, which the kingdom was set to host at a futuristic mountain resort as part of its Neom mega‑project, as well as the postponement of a major construction project in Riyadh.

“They have had some very ambitious projects which are very expensive, and there isn’t the money to fund the projects,” Henderson said. “If you’ve got plans for the economy and you can’t fulfill them and you have to cancel them, then that makes it a crisis.” 

Due to the increasing financial strain and decision to scale back major financial ventures, experts remain skeptical that Riyadh will have the capacity to live up to its major investment commitments in the U.S. 

Jonathan Ruhe, a fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, said the pledge is “in doubt,” and called the initial promise “as much performance as substance.” 

“A lot of the money Riyadh would devote to U.S. investments is instead being plowed into its ambitious Vision 2030 development projects at home,” said Ruhe. “We already see this reflected in the recent announcements that Neom and other high-prestige gigaprojects are being scaled back. Combined with persistently low oil prices, this means the kingdom is running deficits. In this crunch, borrowing to fund overseas investments becomes less likely.”

Henderson echoed those sentiments, calling Saudi’s investment pledge a “headline figure with a very strong Trump dimension to it.”

“Clearly they [Saudi Arabia] can’t do it at the moment,” said Henderson. “Everybody knew it was far-fetched and probably an exaggeration. It’s clearly not going to happen anytime soon.”

Ruhe noted that several countries in the Middle East practice what he called “checkbook diplomacy” in order to “grab headlines during major summits” and “gratify Trump’s desire to be a deal-maker.” He noted that a similar strategy has been employed by Qatar and Turkey.

In May 2025, President Donald Trump signed an agreement with Qatar for an economic exchange worth at least $1.2 trillion during his visit to the country. Four months later, Turkish Airlines completed a deal to buy 225 Boeing planes following a White House meeting between Trump and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. 

“The actual execution is always in doubt, even if some of the investments do come through,” said Ruhe. “During Trump’s first term, Saudi Arabia announced nearly a half trillion dollars of deals and investments in the United States, but only a fraction of that ever came to fruition.

The kingdom’s economic situation, and its ability to invest nearly $1 trillion, is now less favorable than it was in Trump’s first term.” 

Experts noted that should the proposed investment fall through, it is highly unlikely to change the diplomatic relationship between Washington and Riyadh, nor would it have any consequential impact on the U.S. 

“Actual Saudi investment in things like AI and critical minerals supply chains would certainly be great for the United States, but it’s just as important for both countries to focus on advancing other aspects of the strategic partnership,” said Ruhe. “Especially regional collective defense against Iran and keeping Riyadh from becoming too close to Beijing and Moscow.”

Veteran Israeli diplomat Eitan Na’eh, who had a long career in key posts representing Israel in the Arab world, died of a heart attack on Monday. He was 62.

Na’eh’s most recent role was as the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s representative to the U.S.-led Civil-Military Coordination Center (CMCC) in southern Israel, established in October to coordinate humanitarian relief efforts and the stabilization of Gaza.

Na’eh played a key role in growing and preserving Israel’s relations with Abraham Accords signatories. He was Israel’s first envoy to the United Arab Emirates in 2021, setting up Jerusalem’s diplomatic representation in Abu Dhabi. His last posting abroad was in Bahrain, where he served as Israel’s first ambassador to the country from December 2021 until August 2025. 

In 2022, Na’eh told Jewish Insider: “I sit here in Manama and look outside to a beautiful view of the Gulf, and I am still pinching myself. I feel lucky to work in these countries.” The ambassador said at the time that he was optimistic about expanding the Abraham Accords and the potential in Israel-Bahrain ties. 

A Foreign Ministry official characterized Na’eh to JI as “contributing the first steps in establishing relations in the framework of the Abraham Accords. … He built the content of the Abraham Accords at a critical time in which you don’t want to drop the ball.” 

The official said Na’eh was skilled at bringing concrete results from diplomatic relations and had a talent for making connections. At the CMCC, “everyone knew him after five minutes,” the official recalled.

A Bahraini diplomat remembered Na’eh as someone who “represented his nation with grace and wisdom, but also fostered genuine goodwill and friendship wherever he went.”

Fleur Hassan-Nahoum, co-founder of the UAE-Israel Business Council and former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, called Na’eh “the Abraham Accords ambassador, ushering in a new era of regional diplomacy in the most professional way.” 

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar said that Na’eh was “a gifted diplomat who stood out in his ability to make connections wherever he served. Above all, in all of his missions and many positions he filled, Eitan was known for his big heart and endless caring.”

Na’eh was also Israel’s ambassador to Turkey from 2016 to 2018, the first after the diplomatic crisis between Jerusalem and Ankara following the 2010 Gaza flotilla incident. However, his term ended abruptly when Turkey expelled him in response to Palestinians killed by the IDF during protests and riots on the Gaza border.

He was previously Israeli ambassador to Azerbaijan and the head of the foreign policy department of Israel’s National Security Council, giving him a broad view of Israel’s international relations that the Foreign Ministry official said was very valuable.

Na’eh was also interim ambassador in London in 2013-2015, and Israel’s political consul at the Israeli consulate in Chicago in 1997-1999.

Hassan-Nahoum recalled Na’eh’s warmth and sense of humor, and said that he and his wife, Cheryl, had a marriage “to emulate in every way.” 

Ahdeya Ahmed, former president of the Bahrain Journalists Association, called Na’eh “a friend who was like a brother.” 

“I could talk about his professionalism as a diplomat, but what I really want to share is Eitan the friend — Eitan the warm soul who lit up every room, who always had a laugh, and who dreamed of a kinder world,” Ahmed said. “I’ll always remember his smile, his jokes, the way he made life’s burdens lighter for all of us, and all the celebrations we shared.”

Na’eh is survived by his wife, two children, Maya and Itai, and a granddaughter.

Even as President Donald Trump backed away from taking immediate military action against Iran, several leading foreign policy analysts believe a U.S. strike against the Islamic Republic remains a possibility, arguing that the administration may be deliberately keeping Tehran off balance and preserving its military options.

Trump appeared to ease off on striking Iran after being advised by administration officials that a large-scale attack is unlikely to bring about regime change and could instead trigger a broader regional conflict, and hearing concerns from allies — including Israel, Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia — who have urged him not to carry out military action. U.S. officials said Washington is now monitoring to see whether Tehran is backing down from its violent crackdowns against protesters before determining whether to act.

“Even though Trump did not direct strikes on Wednesday, he is keeping options open,” said Dana Stroul, the research director at The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, pointing to the administration’s decision to reposition the USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier from the Indo-Pacific to the Middle East. “The buildup of military posture in the region over the coming weeks keeps plenty of military options on the table and maintains pressure on the Iranian regime.”

Stroul said the president appears to be taking additional time to ensure the U.S. is prepared not only to act against Iran, but also to defend regional partners in the event Iran attacks U.S. allies or military bases in the region, in retaliation.

Analysts cautioned that the delay should not be interpreted as a decision against military action altogether. Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told Jewish Insider that he believes a strike is still on the table, putting the odds at “60–40 [percent]” in favor of a strike.

“There’s still a very real possibility of a strike,” Miller said. “I don’t see how the president gets out of the box he put himself in,” referring to Trump’s public calls for Iranians to continue protesting and his promise of U.S. assistance. “When an American president emboldens demonstrators and then says ‘We will help you’ without the capacity to really protect them, you have to wonder whether that’s morally conscious.”

Andrea Stricker, a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, also noted that Trump’s rhetoric has made the administration’s hesitation striking.

“It’s puzzling and upsetting that President Trump would call on the Iranian people to continue protesting in the midst of gunfire and then wait so long to act,” Stricker said. She suggested the delay could reflect a deliberate effort to gain military or intelligence advantages before a strike.

“I lean more toward a possible deception campaign designed to expose IRGC [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps] movements and preparations before an actual U.S. attack,” Stricker said, adding that the administration may prefer to wait until additional U.S. naval assets arrive in the region, which she said would “happen in the coming days.”

Other analysts were more skeptical that Trump’s hesitance is a cover for an impending operation. Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former Iran envoy in the first Trump administration, said it’s possible the president won’t act at all.

“As of noon today, it seems Trump will not do anything, which is extraordinary after he urged Iranians to protest and seize institutions at the risk of their lives,” Abrams said on Thursday. “It is unconscionable to say ‘Help is on the way’ and then do nothing. I hope the president will change his mind.”

While the Iranian regime has faced unprecedented pressure at home and abroad, Stroul warned that Iranian retaliation could be significant in the event of a strike — potentially another factor in Trump’s hesitation.

“The regime still has substantial missile and cyber capabilities,” she said. In the event of a strike, “the U.S. and Israel would need to prepare for the possibility of a sustained, destructive conflict that could be extremely costly in human life, military platforms and infrastructure.”

Concerns over retaliation have fueled lobbying by Arab states, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, urging Trump to avoid military action, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly conveyed a similar message to the president on Wednesday

“Arab governments recognize that the regime in Tehran is destabilized but still dangerous,” Stroul said. “Desperate leaders often take unpredictable, aggressive actions. For a region trying to turn the page after years of conflict, leaders are wary of another escalation that could jeopardize economic and security priorities.”

Even among experts who believe military action remains possible, there is broad agreement that it’s not clear what the consequences of a strike would be or that sustained military engagement would lead to the collapse of the regime.

“Any military strike has to answer the question of how it actually changes the balance between a repressive regime and protesters who have very limited means to push back,” Miller said. “There’s no guarantee that even massive strikes would lead to regime change.”

Miller and Stricker both noted that the administration has also not articulated a clear plan for alternative political leadership in Iran should the regime fall — an issue that complicates any decision to intervene.

“Penalizing the regime enough to support the Iranian people could produce unclear outcomes in terms of who provides order and security afterward,” Stricker said. “At the same time, if Trump ultimately does not act, it will be seen by many Iranians as a historic betrayal — and by U.S. adversaries as weakness.”

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.”

Norman Podhoretz, the pugnacious editor and neoconservative pioneer who died on Tuesday at the age of 95, charted a protean trajectory through American politics and intellectual discourse, rising to prominence as a leading champion of a muscular foreign policy vision conjoined with a fierce support for Israel that influenced such presidents as Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush.

Despite his early political conversion from staunch liberal to conservative trailblazer, Podhoretz — the always-ambitious son of a Yiddish-speaking milkman from Eastern Europe who was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn — remained consistent in his commitment to defending Israel as well as promoting the Jewish ideals that guided his social and professional ascent.

During his 35-year tenure helming Commentary— from 1960 to 1995 — he established the periodical as a lightning rod of disputatious ideas that helped drive the conservative movement, while at the same time building his reputation as an estimable thinker in Jewish American debate of the mid-20th century. 

Under his editorial stewardship, Podhoretz transformed the magazine — then published by the American Jewish Committee — into a pro-Israel force that significantly shaped American foreign policy in the Middle East while helping steer the GOP to a more instinctive embrace of the Jewish state as a key ally.

“The neoconservatives played a pivotal role in providing the intellectual firepower for the case for Israel,” Jacob Heilbrunn, the author of a book about the movement Podhoretz founded, They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons, told Jewish Insider in an interview on Wednesday. “They did that not only by arguing that Israel was a vital outpost in opposing the spread of communism in the Middle East, but also in forging and defending the rise of the evangelicals who supported Israel.”

Absent Podhoretz and his ideological comrades including Irving Kristol, another neoconservative leader, “I don’t think that you would have had the intellectual justification for defending Israel inside the GOP,” Heilbrunn said, noting that the party had previously been “hostile to Israel.”

Podhoretz, who wrote a dozen books including his score-settling debut memoir, Making It, published in 1967, was an erstwhile liberal who abandoned the left-wing New York intellectual milieu that nurtured his rise and turned to neoconservatism in the 1960s, after growing disillusioned with a counterculture he viewed as increasingly hostile to Israel following the Six Day War.

“Podhoretz was the founder of neoconservatism,” Joshua Muravchik, an author and like-minded foreign policy expert, told JI, noting that the “role is sometimes ascribed to Irving Kristol. In truth, there were two strands.”

Kristol, he argued, “led a group of thinkers who reckoned with the limits of social engineering and the welfare state” — while Podhoretz “led a deeper project, the rediscovery or reassertion of the moral greatness of America, of democracy and of Western civilization.”

“This made him not only a great American patriot but a great Jewish patriot,” he said, “because Israel is a precious, against-all-odds outpost of Western civilization and because the roots of American civic culture and Western civilization are found in the Hebrew bible.”

In publishing major articles by the likes of Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane Kirkpatrick as well as Norman Mailer and Philip Roth, Podhoretz “set a high standard for Jewish intellectual periodicals” while also playing “a role in opening up the Jewish community to more conservative views that had not previously been admitted,” said Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis University.

“Even those who didn’t agree with him I think respected his standard,” Sarna, who published his first article in Commentary in his mid-20s, told JI in an interview. “I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels indebted to Norman.”

Mark Gerson, an author and businessman who interviewed Podhoretz while working on his 1997 book, The Neoconservative Vision, called the late editor “a towering intellectual” and a “great man of ideas who made Commentary, when he took it over, one of the best magazines or publications ever.”

“It was always interesting, always intellectually serious, always rigorous, always challenging,” he said. Podhoretz, who was otherwise recognized as an astute if often acid-penned literary critic, “had a unique ability to come up with the most interesting ideas, to tell the most visceral truths and to recruit some people who became defining the writers of his generation,” Gerson told JI.

The magazine is now edited by Podhoretz’s son, John, who wrote in a tribute on Tuesday that his father’s “knowledge extended beyond literature to Jewish history, Jewish thinking, Jewish faith, and the Hebrew Bible.”

“Norman believed that words matter, and arguments matter, and his leadership of Commentary was a 30-year effort at putting forward the best arguments in defense of America, Israel, the West and the Jews,” said Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and Podhoretz’s stepson-in-law. “He looked for the best writers and champions of this cause, from Moynihan and Kirkpatrick to dozens of young voices, and he engaged them in this noble cause.”

“There was no magic formula beyond logic, language and unwavering moral commitment,” Abrams told JI. 

Podhoretz, of course, had many critics on the left and right — including among some former writers. Robert Alter, the renowned biblical translator who frequently contributed to Commentary, said he had “mixed thoughts about Norman.”

“Early in his career, he was admirable in attracting promising young writers,” he told JI on Wednesday. “His staunch defense of Israel, as the American left moved toward anti-Israel positions after 1967, was politically valuable.”

But while Podhoretz had “made Commentary the central journal in American intellectual life” during the 1960s, his politics had, by the end of the decade, “hardened into a rather rigid neoconservatism,” he added. “The eventual result was that Commentary became a kind of sectarian publication with a much smaller readership.”

In recent years, the movement Podhoretz led has also faced backlash from isolationist and America First conservatives who have pejoratively invoked the term “neoconservative” as representative of the sort of hawkish interventionism that helped lead the U.S. into war in Iraq and other quagmires across the Middle East.

Though his movement was usurped by President Donald Trump, Podhoretz — unlike other fellow neoconservatives — backed his campaign in 2016, citing concerns about Hillary Clinton’s support for the Iran nuclear agreement which he viewed as disastrous. In a characteristically cutting explanation, Podhoretz said at the time that he skeptically viewed Trump as “Pat Buchanan without the antisemitism,” underscoring the extent to which his attachment to Israel fueled his political thinking.

But even as the ideals that Podhoretz had long championed have largely “been steamrollered now by Trump,” said Heilbrunn, the scrappy editor and public intellectual “will be there in the conservative pantheon” and “played a key role in reshaping the Republican Party.”

“And who knows, neoconservatism is a protean movement,” Heilbrunn speculated. “It can always make a comeback.”

Former Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ), who established himself as a prominent voice on Capitol Hill on foreign policy and national security issues in Congress between 2019 and 2023, told Jewish Insider last week, as he mounts a congressional comeback bid, that he’s “as pro-Israel as I have ever been.”

But he also expressed more openness to policies conditioning or restricting aid, and called for the U.S. to serve as a “counterweight” to the Israeli far right. And he said that U.S. aid shouldn’t be used in furtherance of Israeli actions that the U.S. itself doesn’t support. At the same time, he expressed support for the Trump administration’s Gaza peace plan and strikes on Iran’s nuclear program.

Malinowski is one of the many Democrats who have declared their candidacies in the special election in New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District, recently vacated by Gov.-elect Mikie Sherrill. The 11th District, an affluent suburb with a sizable Jewish population, borders and incorporates portions of the district Malinowski represented for two terms.

Malinowski said that he’s “as pro-Israel as I have ever been, in the sense that I believe that Israel should be safe and secure as a Jewish and democratic state, and that the United States has a moral and strategic interest in defending Israel as that kind of state at the same.” 

Malinowski said that “to be pro-Israel for me also requires listening to what the hostage families have been saying for the last couple of years, to what hundreds of Israeli security officials have been saying to their government and directly to the United States about the need to bring the war in Gaza to an end and to have some plan that addresses the legitimate desire of Palestinians to have their rights respected and to have a future that they can strive towards.”

“I would not seek to enable [any] ally to do something that I thought should not be done. It’s just a basic foreign policy principle that I think most people would agree is straightforward,” Malinowski told JI, when asked about the possibility of conditioning or suspending aid to Israel. “I would make case-by-case judgments given what’s happening on the ground.”

He said he would not support U.S. policies that would hurt Israel’s ability to protect itself, but added that the U.S. should “serve as a counterweight” to the pressure that an Israel government may feel from Israel’s far right and “use our influence and leverage and our honest voice to steer our ally away from policies that are self-destructive.”

He expressed a similar view in public interviews last year when he offered support for President Joe Biden’s moves to suspend some U.S. arms sales to Israel to pressure Israel against mounting a military incursion into the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

“I would not seek to enable [any] ally to do something that I thought should not be done. It’s just a basic foreign policy principle that I think most people would agree is straightforward,” Malinowski told JI, when asked about the possibility of conditioning or suspending aid to Israel. “I would make case-by-case judgments given what’s happening on the ground.”

He said he was not committing to supporting conditions on aid but also did not rule them out depending on the situation. “There’s no U.S. ally in the world that I would guarantee a rubber stamp on every request for military assistance, that’s not the way U.S. foreign policy functions,” Malinowski said.

He said on X in April of last year that the U.S. has, in practice, failed to apply the globally applicable U.S. laws conditioning all arms sales on human rights compliance to Israel. He said that a decision to enforce that law last year to suspend arms sales to certain Israeli units was a “step towards treating Israel as we would any other partner.”

He added that the purpose of the law is to seek remediation of the issues to prevent the need to cut off arms, as was the case for most of the Israeli units to which it was applied.

At the same time, Malinowski indicated to JI a level of skepticism of efforts to halt all offensive aid to Israel, which have been pushed by some former colleagues, arguing that the “distinction between defensive and offensive is hard to make and a bit artificial.”

He expressed support for the Trump administration’s 20-point ceasefire plan for Gaza, saying it “offers the best possible hope for a way forward” and said the U.S. should focus on pushing all parties involved to implement it to its fullest extent, to deploy the international security force to neutralize Hamas and to surge humanitarian aid.

He said any decision on Israel in Congress, including with regard to aid, would be geared toward pursuing that goal.

“I think we’re very far from being able to address the issues of sovereignty and what the ultimate answer to those questions should be,” Malinowski said. “Even many of my Palestinian and Arab American friends, I think, would say that they’re not interested in lip service to a two-state solution right now.”

He said that “serious oversight” is needed from Congress on the deal because he is concerned that Trump will be “tempted to just declare victory and claim his Nobel Peace Prize without doing the hard work of securing implementation of the rest of the plan,” when it will require “steady pressure” — on Hamas and its interlocutors as well as on Israel — to ensure that the situation does not return to the pre-Oct. 7, 2023, status quo.

Malinowski was not supportive of an effort led by some progressive lawmakers to recognize Palestinian statehood, arguing that the U.S. focus should be — and that his focus would be — on more immediate humanitarian and security issues, including ensuring the Trump plan proceeds.

“I think we’re very far from being able to address the issues of sovereignty and what the ultimate answer to those questions should be,” Malinowski explained. “Even many of my Palestinian and Arab American friends, I think, would say that they’re not interested in lip service to a two-state solution right now.”

Malinowski said he did not oppose the U.S. strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities earlier this year, adding that U.S. intervention likely helped bring the war to a quicker close than it would otherwise have, by bringing the U.S.’ superior capabilities to bear on Iran’s nuclear facilities. He also said he’s “very happy” the Assad regime fell, Hezbollah was “significantly weakened” and the “paper tiger of Iran’s defenses has been exposed.”

At the same time, he argued that any “lasting solution” to Iran’s nuclear program will require a diplomatic agreement with “highly intrusive inspections,” and said President Donald Trump had “exaggerate[d] the impact” of the U.S. strikes.

“My hope is that we will continue to pursue that, rather than imagining that this problem can be addressed just by going to war every few years,” Malinowski said.

At home, Malinowski has spoken publicly at various occasions since the Oct. 7 attacks about anti-Israel and pro-Hamas activism in the U.S. and on college campuses. He argued in May 2024 that students who care about protecting innocent Palestinians were being overshadowed by more extreme voices advocating for the end of Israel, which he called counterproductive.

“The loudest voices are using Gaza’s plight to push a sweeping & more radical agenda of defeating Zionism and “colonialism.” This is not about ending the war but about ending Israel,” Malinowski said on X. “But the actual political effect of these protests has been to shift attention away from Gaza at the very moment (after the World Central Kitchen strike) when opinion was shifting against the war. All our attention should be on getting aid to Gazans, freeing hostages, avoiding more deaths, and what happens post-war. Instead, we have to talk about dumb 19 year olds glorifying Hamas & ‘intifada,’ drowning out the voices of others who sincerely care about saving lives.”

He said those voices also gave right-wing “bad faith partisans” fodder to “cast all legitimate criticism of self-defeating Israeli government policies” as support for Hamas and demand police crackdowns.

“Even though there is a significant problem on the far left that involves anti-Israel protests morphing into calls for an end to Israel as a Jewish state, we don’t quite have a Nazi problem in the Democratic Party in a way that leading Republicans are now acknowledging they do on their side,” Malinowski said.

Malinowski told JI that leaders need to speak up and police antisemitism on their own sides, adding that he “probably underestimated the extent of the problem on the far left” during his time on office but argued that the “problem on the right has gotten much worse and is too often dismissed by critics of the Democratic Party.”

He argued that the problem in the GOP is much more severe than in the Democratic Party. “You have leaders of the party rightly worried, as some on the Republican side are, that a significant share of the young people going into administration positions … have something akin to a Nazi ideology,” he said.

“Even though there is a significant problem on the far left that involves anti-Israel protests morphing into calls for an end to Israel as a Jewish state, we don’t quite have a Nazi problem in the Democratic Party in a way that leading Republicans are now acknowledging they do on their side,” he continued.

He also said that holding social media platforms accountable — a longtime priority for Malinowski — for their amplification of content designed to fuel hatred, will be critical. He said that social media platforms “bear the largest share of responsibility” for increased extremism on both the far left and far right.

Asked about New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s record on Israel and antisemitism issues, Malinowski told JI the Jewish community is “rightly feeling a tremendous amount of anxiety” about rising antisemitic rhetoric and violence.

He said Mamdani has “made a lot of decent promises about the need to reject antisemitism and hatred of all stripes, and about his interest, his determination to listen to people and to bring communities together. And he needs to be held to those promises.”

Malinowski said that if Mamdani follows through, he could prove to be a “potentially very powerful ally against antisemitism” and help to rebuild Jewish-Muslim dialogue that has broken down since Oct. 7.

“But I also understand that he has said things in the past and failed to say some things in the present that cause people understandable anxiety, and therefore everyone has to be vigilant and hold him accountable to the better angels of his nature,” the former congressman continued.

Malinowski said he decided to run for Congress again because “it would be nice to have a Congress again, one that can fulfill its basic constitutional function of checking presidential policies that go too far. … I’d like to contribute to making Congress a coequal branch again.” 

And he argued that his experience in foreign policy generally is one of the key factors that makes him stand out from the rest of the field, explaining that there is a “big shortage” in the House of “people who can conduct oversight of the administration’s foreign policy.”

Asked about emerging attacks on him as a carpetbagger — he previously represented a neighboring district that included only part of the district in which he is now running — Malinowski argued he’s the only lawmaker who has represented any part of the district before and he works in the district as a professor at Seton Hall University.

And he argued that voters are looking for a candidate who can effectively pick up Sherrill’s work where she left off from his first day in office, given his previous service. His previous service, he said “is one of the key distinctions” between him and the rest of the field.

A newly released CNN poll, conducted this month, illustrates the resilience of a hawkish DNA within the Republican Party and among its voters even amid the rise of an isolationist strain that has sought to gain influence in the GOP during President Donald Trump’s second term.

The poll asked respondents: “Do you think the United States should or should not take the leading role among all other countries in the world in trying to solve international problems?” Overall, 43% took the more active approach, while 56% took a more isolationist view.

Republicans, however, remained the strongest advocates of a muscular American role in world affairs, with 52% supporting America taking a leading role and 47% opposed. By contrast, just 42% of Democrats and 39% of independents shared the more hawkish worldview.

Notably, the shift in more isolationist sentiment was almost entirely driven by Democrats and independents since the last CNN survey in March, which found majority support for significant American global engagement. In the March survey, a 57% majority of Democrats preferred more American involvement in the world, a number that dropped 15 points in the last four months. The Republican share of those preferring American engagement remained steady at 52%.

The results from the CNN polls suggest there’s a more committed core of Republican-voting hawks that is more resilient than the shifting political winds, whereas the Democratic foreign policy worldview appears more dependent on partisanship and what’s happening in the news at the time. 

In March, at the time of the first CNN poll, Democrats showed a surge of support for foreign engagement — in large part, because they were responding to the hostile reception Trump delivered at the time to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who was seeking American military aid to his country. Back then, Trump wrongly blamed Zelensky for causing the war, and attacked him as a dictator in the run-up to the ugly confrontation at the White House. It was the high point of isolationism in Trump’s second term — and prompted an uptick of hawkishness among Democrats.

But since then, Trump has sharpened his rhetoric against Russian President Vladimir Putin and agreed to send Ukraine offensive weapons, in a reversal of his previous reluctance. He also decided to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities despite alarmism from an isolationist faction within his party, which turned out to be a major military (and political) success. 

A recent Echelon Insights survey underscored that Trump’s hawkish turn has broadened and deepened support for strongly supporting American allies within the party. A clear 49-36% of Trump voters, asked if they supported continuing to give weapons to Ukraine, said yes. When informed that it was Trump’s decision to aid Ukraine further, nearly two-thirds of Trump supporters embraced the decision.

The actions on Capitol Hill are consistent with the polling. When Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) proposed a series of amendments cutting off aid to foreign allies, the vast majority of Republicans voted against them. Even on her proposal to cut military aid for Ukraine, 141 of the 217 House Republicans took the pro-Ukraine side. 

And when Greene proposed to block missile defense funding that the U.S. gives to Israel, only one other Republican, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), joined her. Indeed, there were more Democrats who joined with MTG (four) than Republicans — in a sign of the “horseshoe theory” of the far left and far right uniting in their extremism.

Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear program appears to have created a momentum shift within the party, pushing back the faction of isolationists seeking to gain influence in the administration but also building support for a familiar brand of muscular engagement that has defined the party for generations.

Senate Republicans on Tuesday emphasized that Trump administration officials need to follow the president’s lead on foreign policy, after President Donald Trump publicly overrode a Defense Department-instituted halt on weapons for Ukraine.

The public back-and-forth indicated discord between the president and the Pentagon. Trump on Tuesday appeared to suggest he was out of the loop about the Ukraine military freeze; when a reporter asked him who had ordered the halt, Trump responded, “I don’t know, you tell me.” 

Top Pentagon policy official Elbridge Colby reportedly led the move, citing a review allegedly showing U.S. missile defense interceptor shortages. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth approved the decision without informing the White House, CNN reported, and Trump did not specifically direct him to halt the weapons transfers. Politico reported that a series of other unilateral moves by Colby have surprised and frustrated Trump administration officials and U.S. allies.

Trump’s own policy on Ukraine as it defends itself against Russian aggression has been inconsistent since taking office, but in recent months he has grown publicly frustrated with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approach to the war. Trump is now also backing a bipartisan Senate sanctions bill targeting Russia, according to the bill’s lead sponsor, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

Republican hawks on Capitol Hill praised Trump’s decision to reinstate U.S. aid to the country, with several warning Pentagon officials against working at cross purposes with the president, though they declined to directly address the behind-the scenes machinations.

“Policy on defense and otherwise, it’s clear, is set by the president, it’s not set by his underlings,” Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) told Jewish Insider, adding that he thinks that Trump’s own position on the issue has hardened because “President Trump is rapidly becoming fed up with President Putin and starting to see him for what he is, which is a pirate and a liar” who only responds to pressure.

Kennedy denied that the Pentagon had been at odds with Trump, however, adding, “Whether you like it or dislike it, the people who generally get crosswise with the president that work for him only do it one time.”

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) told JI, “Generally speaking, I don’t think [Trump] likes people getting out ahead of him. So they need to coordinate that. I assume they did, it could have just been one situation, but you need to coordinate with the president.”

Tillis added that “anything that cuts short or challenges Ukraine’s resupply and support is a bad idea, and it’ll be a disastrous mistake.”

Sen. Mike Rounds (R-SD) told JI, “I’m in favor of additional aid for Ukraine. Whether it is simply a matter of having the Department of Defense get very clear orders from the president, or if it’s a matter of clarifying for the rest of the world to hear that we’re not walking away from Ukraine, I think it’s a very important message to send.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY), the former Republican Senate leader, offered the most pointed criticism of those in the administration who have advocated for cutting off aid to Ukraine.

“This time, the President will need to reject calls from isolationists and restrainers within his Administration to limit these deliveries to defensive weapons,” McConnell said in a statement. “And he should disregard those at DoD who invoke munitions shortages to block aid while refusing to invest seriously in expanding munitions production. The self-indulgent policymaking of restrainers — from Ukraine to AUKUS — has so often required the President to clean up his staff’s messes.”

According to Politico, Colby independently ordered a review of the AUKUS submarine pact with the U.K. and Australia, which also surprised other elements of the Trump administration.

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declined to comment on “palace intrigue” and said he was “just glad to see Washington, D.C., on a bipartisan basis moving in the right direction in favor of the good guys.”

“Facts become clearer, and more and more people, including the president and members of the administration, are coming to the realization that Putin wants nothing but conquest, and if he gets it in Ukraine, he won’t stop there,” Wicker told JI. “So it’s just a matter of the truth coming to light.”

Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) suggested that the change had come about as a result of new information, rather than discord within the administration.

“Well, I think all of us have the right to change your mind when you have new information, so he’s not happy with the situation,” Budd said. “Again, I think all of our hearts are supportive of Ukraine. We want to make sure they have the right leadership, and transparency that they’re doing the right thing. So I think he’s making the right decision with the information that he’s given in real time.”

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said he wasn’t familiar with the exchange between Trump and the Pentagon, but noted concerns about U.S. stockpiles.

“I don’t know what the back-and-forth is,” Mullin said. “I know what we’re trying to do right now is build up our stockpiles, because we let things get pretty low with some of our missile systems, but I haven’t heard the back and forth between Trump and the Pentagon.”

Among Democrats, Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called out Colby and Hegseth by name.

“I am pleased that President Trump appears to have reversed course on the dangerous and shortsighted decision made by Secretary Hegseth and Under Secretary Colby to continue critical assistance to Ukraine,” Shaheen said in a statement. “Unfortunately, last week’s decision sent exactly the wrong message. And it came with a tragic human cost.”

Analysts outside the administration emphasized that Trump’s policy is his own and hard-liners inside the Pentagon should be mindful that their views are not necessarily the same as Trump’s.

“I think over the last few years, it has been very, very clear that the only person who speaks for President Trump is President Trump,” Carrie Filipetti, the executive director of the Vandenberg Coalition and an official in the first Trump administration, told JI. “There are a lot of people, specifically within the Pentagon, that are much more ideological, who have assumed that President Trump shares their ideology, when really President Trump has always been much more flexible and responsive.”

Filipetti added that, from her experience in the first Trump administration, the president could get frustrated when officials “tried to speak for him” or “got over their skis and assumed that they knew the direction he was going in.”

She said that the administration’s recent moves, as well as some of Trump’s hawkish policies dating back to his first administration, show that the calculated use of force and economic power are key to Trump’s foreign policy.

“This is really a vindication of what Trump has always said was America First, which includes the willingness to use force if he can see how it will prevent a longer-term conflict,” Fillipetti explained. “Right now, I think the people who have pushed for a more hawkish policy are gaining more influence, partially because they’re proving that the goal was never to start wars. The goal was to end wars by using force and strength as a deterrent.”

Heather Conley, a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the former president of the German Marshall Fund, said it seemed clear that the Pentagon had not coordinated its moves with other parts of the administration or Congress, catching the White House off-guard.

“I think this was probably a very important lesson that the senior leadership in the Pentagon learned: that there’s no independent review, that these things are all connected and are all highly political and need to be coordinated with the White House, and Congress, most certainly, as well,” Conley said. “I think this will be a reinforcing lesson for the Pentagon to not get ahead of the president.” 

Referencing Colby specifically, Conley said, “He may have very strong views about what is needed, but the president is shaping this policy, he’s shaping it every hour and every day, and that means it’s moving very quickly. … [Administration officials] have to be in alignment for there to be success. And they also may not be able to pursue their own independent view of where things should go.”

Conley said that the capability review that prompted the cutoff was necessary — given proper coordination — for any administration, in light of the multiple draws on American weapons reserves. 

She said that the situation highlights the need for the U.S. to significantly accelerate its missile-defense production capacity and find ways to prompt Ukraine to expand its domestic production capacity, explaining that the U.S. lacks the ability to produce sufficient interceptors to cover Ukraine, the Middle East and potentially Taiwan. 

Conley also noted that this isn’t the first time the Pentagon has appeared to be acting out of step with the White House, pointing to moves by Hegseth on Ukraine policy dating back to February.

Administration spokespeople have denied any discord or lack of coordination within the administration. 

Kingsley Wilson, the Pentagon’s press secretary, told CNN in a statement that said in part, “Secretary Hegseth provided a framework for the President to evaluate military aid shipments and assess existing stockpiles. This effort was coordinated across government.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said that Trump “has full confidence in the secretary of defense.”

The Department of Defense and National Security Council did not respond to requests for comment.

Jewish Insider’s congressional correspondent Emily Jacobs contributed reporting.

We’ve written a lot about the so-called horseshoe theory of U.S. politics and foreign policy — the point at which the far left and the far right coalesce into agreement — but the Israeli campaign against Iranian military and nuclear targets is providing a particularly stark example of that convergence. The two factions find themselves openly and publicly aligned in opposition to any form of U.S. intervention in Israel’s campaign and against Israel’s operations in general.

An X post by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) on Sunday provided a distillation of that dynamic. Greene claimed that a regional war or global war, which would likely overwhelm the Middle East, BRICS and NATO, is inevitable and that countries would be “required to take a side.” She continued, “I don’t want to see Israel bombed or Iran bombed or Gaza bombed. … And we do NOT want to be involved or required to pay for ANY OF IT!!!”

Among those who supported Greene’s post were CodePink activist Medea Benjamin, who praised Greene’s “incredibly strong anti-war position!” and Drop Site News co-founder Ryan Grim, who called the Georgia Republican “presently the most sensible member of Congress.” Doug Stafford, the chief strategist for Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), shared Benjamin’s post — and has repeatedly shared and praised both her and Code Pink in the wake of the Israeli operation. Read more here.

It’s not just Greene and Stafford. A host of prominent figures on the right, such as Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Tucker Carlson, Steve Bannon, former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) and former Pentagon senior advisor Dan Caldwell are touting narratives about the conflict that would not be out of place at a far-left anti-Israel rally.

Recent reporting from Semafor indicates that some inside the administration, particularly Under Secretary of Defense Elbridge Colby, are also reportedly trying to limit U.S. support for Israel. A source familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider they’ve heard similar chatter coming from the administration. Conservative radio show host Mark Levin said he’d been “informed” that the report was incorrect. 

On both ends of the horseshoe, many are downplaying or outright rejecting the notion that Iran was close to or even pursuing a nuclear weapon, comparing the idea to the disproven claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction that prompted the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and in some cases denying claims Iran attempted to assassinate President Donald Trump.

Voices on both political extremes are also framing Israel as the villain in the conflict, and a perpetrator of unprovoked aggression and atrocities.

And they’re warning that a continued Israeli campaign will inevitably transform into a regional and ultimately global war that will suck the U.S. into an endless quagmire in the Middle East.

Though they haven’t all gone as far as Greene, prominent progressive Democrats in Congress are also warning of significant potential consequences from the conflict. Likely coming soon: a congressional vote aiming to prevent U.S. military action against Iran without specific congressional authorization.

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.”

Another week, another round of evidence showing that a growing faction of isolationist-minded foreign policy advisors — or, in the parlance of some on the MAGA right, the “restrainers” — are slowly but surely gaining influence in the Trump administration’s second term.

If personnel is policy, it suggests the second Trump term will feature a markedly different approach to the Middle East than his record from 2017-2021, which included the signing of the Abraham Accords between Israel and four Arab countries, the elimination of Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader Qassem Soleimani and the withdrawal from former President Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran.

We reported this week that the Senate will soon consider the nomination of Justin Overbaugh to be deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence and security. Overbaugh is just the latest of several senior Pentagon nominees who come from Defense Priorities, a Koch-backed think tank that has generally argued the U.S. should scale back its involvement in global conflicts, including in the Middle East. 

It’s not just at the Defense Department. A senior State Department official told Jewish Insider that at Foggy Bottom, too, the “restrainers” are ascendant. Morgan Ortagus, an Iran hawk who has been serving as deputy Middle East special envoy under Steve Witkoff, plans to depart the office. At the National Security Council, top officials focused on Israel and the Middle East were pushed out last month as President Donald Trump seeks to centralize foreign policy decision-making in the Oval Office. 

This story is more than just a gossipy tale of White House palace intrigue. This factional foreign policy battle is set to have major global consequences. The impact is already clear: Trump is pursuing nuclear negotiations with Iran, led by Witkoff, that may result in a deal — one that reportedly could allow Iran to at least temporarily continue enriching uranium, a position that would have been unimaginable in Trump’s first term.

The ongoing, ever-extending negotiations and apparent concessions to Iran — along with occasional leaks from unnamed American officials telegraphing Israel’s military plans — have reduced the leverage to pressure Iran to make significant concessions. While Trump has threatened military action if the talks break down, the actions from the U.S. side suggest they’re eager to make a deal at any cost.

It’s not a coincidence that malign actors are taking advantage of American goodwill. Last month, Trump abruptly abandoned a bombing campaign against Yemen’s Houthi militia, announcing a truce with the Iranian proxy even as the group continues to threaten Israel with missiles. While Trump claimed to have reached a ceasefire with the Houthis to make the trade lanes safer, commercial shipping companies are continuing to avoid the Red Sea and Suez Canal shipping lanes, according to The New York Times.

Trump’s reassignment of hawkish former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz to serve as ambassador to the United Nations last month was the first of a series of moves that have since diminished the influence of those advocating a more traditional conservative foreign policy worldview of peace through strength, and projecting military power to deter American enemies.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also serving as U.S. national security advisor, would’ve been considered firmly in that camp until this year. But since joining the Trump administration, Rubio has managed to maintain his influence by accommodating the ascendant faction of isolationists in the administration.

For decades, Jewish and pro-Israel groups invested significant resources in building bipartisan relationships with key members of Congress to steer legislation, while helping secure foreign aid and blocking unfavorable initiatives concerning the Middle East.

But that long-standing playbook has appeared less effective and relevant in recent years as Congress has increasingly ceded its authority on foreign policy to the executive branch, a trend that has accelerated with President Donald Trump’s return to office. The dynamic is frustrating pro-Israel advocates who had long prioritized Congress as a vehicle of influence, prompting many to reassess the most effective ways to advocate for preferred policies.

That Congress had no formal role in Trump’s recent decisions to unilaterally reach a ceasefire with the Houthis in Yemen and to lift sanctions on Syria, for example, has stoked speculation that legislators could also be sidelined from ratifying a potential nuclear deal with Iran.

There are any number of reasons why Congress has taken a back seat in shaping foreign affairs, experts say, including Trump’s efforts to consolidate power in the executive branch, most recently by gutting the National Security Council. And Trump’s own power in reshaping the ideological direction of his party, preferring diplomacy over military engagement, has made more-hawkish voices within the party more reluctant to speak out against administration policy.

“Congress is increasingly irrelevant except on nominations and taxes,” Elliott Abrams, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who served as a special envoy for Iran in the first Trump administration, told Jewish Insider. “It has abandoned its once-central role on tariffs, and plays little role in other foreign affairs issues. That’s a long-term trend and we saw it in previous administrations, but it is worsened by the deadlocks on Capitol Hill, the need to get 60 votes to do almost anything, and by Trump’s centralization of power in the White House.”

Previously, “when there was real power in the departments, congressional oversight meant a lot more,” Abrams added. “If you’re a foreign ambassador in Washington, there’s no one to talk to at the NSC, lots of vacancies at State, and while there are plenty of people to meet with on the Hill, what are they going to do for you? You need to see Trump” Abrams said, or Steve Witkoff, the special envoy to the Middle East leading the negotiations with Iran.

The executive branch, to be sure, has long held significant control over foreign policy but it has expanded considerably in the decades following the 9/11 attacks. Since then, a law passed by Congress to authorize the invasion in Iraq in 2003 has been used — and, critics allege, abused — by successive administrations to initiate military action abroad without first seeking approval from lawmakers who are constitutionally empowered to decide when the country goes to war and oversee defense spending.

Still, Congress has also long shown “disinterest” in exercising its power over foreign policy, said Brian Katulis, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute. “This was a preexisting condition,” he explained to JI. “By and large, Congress abdicated its oversight role before Trump even came to office,” especially as national security matters have been overshadowed by competing domestic issues such as inflation and immigration, which “resonate more saliently” with voters.

“Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party accounts for much of the acquiescence on the part of his Congress,” observed Stephen Schlesinger, a historian who specializes in international affairs. “But let us not forget that recent Democratic presidents have practically had a free hand, too, in pursuing their own global policies — with little reaction or opposition from their party members.”

Among other examples, Schlesinger cited former President Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran — brokered without consent from Congress — as well as former President Joe Biden’s “total support” for Ukraine in its war against Russia.

Republican deference to Trump, however, has set a new standard for such acquiescence, Schlesinger argued, particularly on talks with Iran. “Given the past obsessive Republican fury against a deal with Iran during Democratic administrations, still none in Trump’s party have objected to a nuclear deal with Tehran under Trump, or, for that matter, his solo decision to lift sanctions on Syria, a country led by a former radical Islamic leader,” Schlesinger noted.

“Certainly the reality of governance in Washington today is that Congress may not be totally irrelevant, but they’re an appendage to the whims and desires of the Trump presidency,” said Norman Ornstein, a senior scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. “There is little if any pushback or oversight of what Trump” and his advisors “involved in foreign policy and diplomacy are doing — and that’s a change.”

The new dynamic has forced pro-Israel groups to adapt to a new political landscape in which their traditional advocacy has been weakened by Congress’ diminished clout and lack of interest in asserting meaningful supervision over Trump’s recent Middle East policy decisions.

“There are very few remedies for this kind of a standoff where the executive branch has arrogated to itself so much power that Congress is essentially marginalized,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who previously worked on the Hill. “When you look at the question of Israel, you have to see it in the context of much broader trends.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, argued that both “the administration and Congress play a critical role in strengthening and expanding the U.S.-Israel relationship, and AIPAC works with key leaders in power, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, to build support for the mutually beneficial alliance between America and Israel.” 

The absence of congressional influence has come as disagreements have emerged between the Trump administration and the Netanyahu government over ending the war in Gaza and nuclear diplomacy with Iran. Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East — where he met with a range of Arab leaders but did not stop in Israel — was one of the latest indications of deprioritization of America’s closest ally in the region.

Tensions have also surfaced amid ongoing negotiations with Iran. Pro-Israel advocates have voiced concerns that Trump’s negotiating team is nearing an agreement that could simply reinstate the deal brokered by the Obama administration a decade ago — which detractors had criticized as a pathway to a nuclear weapon since it allowed Iran to continue enriching uranium.

The Trump administration has indicated it will not permit Iran to retain domestic nuclear enrichment — even as some officials have sent mixed signals on the matter, contributing to a sense of confusion over the ultimate terms of an agreement. Trump pulled out of the original deal — which was widely opposed by Republicans — during his first administration.

For pro-Israel groups, the risks of clashing with Trump on key issues likely outweigh the benefits, observers contend. “Any organization has to very carefully weigh its equities before publicly taking on the administration,” Daniel Silverberg, a former top foreign policy advisor to Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-MD), told JI.

The pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC has recognized that it is now operating in a unique landscape, according to Manny Houle, a Democratic pro-Israel strategist who previously served as the group’s progressive outreach director in the Midwest. Before Trump was elected, Howard Kohr, AIPAC’s former president, frequently said the group “was all about Congress,” Houle recalled in a recent interview with JI. “Then, Trump was in office and he said we’re going to be dealing with the White House.”

Marshall Wittmann, a spokesperson for AIPAC, argued that both “the administration and Congress play a critical role in strengthening and expanding the U.S.-Israel relationship, and AIPAC works with key leaders in power, on both sides of the aisle and both sides of Pennsylvania Avenue, to build support for the mutually beneficial alliance between America and Israel.” 

“President Trump has a strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran record, but his administration evinced early on a lack of expertise and consistency in its policy toward Iran’s nuclear program,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “But recently that position has evolved and strengthened due in no small part to feedback it has gotten.”

“We applaud the administration’s strong statements and actions in support of our ally, commend Congress for passing pro-Israel legislation such as the annual appropriation for lifesaving security assistance to Israel, and appreciate President Trump and congressional leaders both making clear last week that Iran must completely dismantle its nuclear program,” Wittmann said in a statement to JI last week.

Even as Congress has failed to take formal action over points of disagreement with Trump’s recent Middle East directives, some pro-Israel activists suggested their outreach to lawmakers on the Iran talks in particular has yielded substantive results in recent weeks. 

“President Trump has a strong pro-Israel and anti-Iran record, but his administration evinced early on a lack of expertise and consistency in its policy toward Iran’s nuclear program,” said Michael Makovsky, president and CEO of the Jewish Institute for National Security of America. “But recently that position has evolved and strengthened due in no small part to feedback it has gotten.”

In public and private settings, JINSA and other pro-Israel groups, as well as Israeli officials and congressional Republicans, “have made the case that Trump needs to stick to his initial policy of dismantlement of Iran’s enrichment facilities,” Makovsky said.

“This has contributed to Trump officials pivoting in the past couple weeks to a tougher ‘no enrichment’ stand,” Makovsky told JI last week.

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who recently launched a federal lobbying practice, said “the most important voice Congress will have is if the president makes a deal with Iran. I think that it’s really important that the Senate remains steadfast and safeguards its powers and insists, if there is a deal, it should be counted as a treaty. If he thinks it’s an amazing deal, he should have no trouble passing it.”

Still, it remains to be seen if the toughest voices against Iran in the Senate who have expressed reservations with enrichment limits and other perceived weaknesses of a potential deal will push back against Trump if he lands on an agreement that does not meet their standards. While some Republican lawmakers have spoken out in recent weeks to set expectations for a deal, including Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC), observers say they are skeptical that Congress will ultimately seek to flex its authority if an agreement comes forward.

“The ultimate test will be if there’s a vote on Iran,” said former Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), a pro-Israel Democrat who opposed Obama’s deal in 2015. “As Congress has grown more performative, it has become less deliberative on foreign policy,” he added. “The speaker’s gavel has become a rubber stamp. The result is an abdication by Congress of its delineated responsibilities.”

Eric Levine, a top GOP fundraiser and a board member of the Republican Jewish Coalition who recently launched a federal lobbying practice, said “the most important voice Congress will have is if the president makes a deal with Iran.”

“I think that it’s really important that the Senate remains steadfast and safeguards its powers and insists, if there is a deal, it should be counted as a treaty,” said Levine. “If he thinks it’s an amazing deal, he should have no trouble passing it,” Levine said of Trump’s efforts to reach what he has suggested is an imminent accord.

It is unclear if the White House will seek approval from Congress for a deal, even as lawmakers have recently stressed that an agreement would have no guarantee of surviving in future administrations if not ratified by the legislative branch.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed during hearings on Capitol Hill last week that U.S. law requires that any deal with Iran be submitted to Congress for review and approval, noting that he had been in Congress when that law, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, was passed. A White House spokesperson declined to confirm if Trump plans to present a potential deal to Congress when reached by JI on Wednesday, deferring to the president and Witkoff’s remarks from the Oval Office — which did not address the matter.

With Congress increasingly on the sidelines, some pro-Israel groups have turned to alternative forms of advocacy to buttress their lobbying efforts in recent years.

“Advocacy tactics are always changing,” James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University and a leading expert on federal lobbying, told JI. “It is like war where opponents must be flexible, try new tools, assess and adjust. It is essential to be persistently focused on the best strategy, theme and message and to not rely on outdated lobbying tactics.”

“Our world has changed,” said Ann Lewis, a veteran Democratic advisor and a former co-chair of Democratic Majority for Israel, whose formidable political arm has actively engaged in congressional primaries featuring sharp divisions over Israel. “Any definition of advocacy that begins post-election is less effective than it deserves to be.”

Indeed, AIPAC’s foray into campaign politics four years ago, marking a major tactical shift for the organization, was a sign of the changing power dynamics in Washington. The group has since helped to elect a range of congressional allies, while working to unseat some of the fiercest critics of Israel in the House and blocking potential antagonists from getting elected.

“Advocacy tactics are always changing,” James Thurber, a distinguished professor of government at American University and a leading expert on federal lobbying, told JI. “It is like war where opponents must be flexible, try new tools, assess and adjust. It is essential to be persistently focused on the best strategy, theme and message and to not rely on outdated lobbying tactics.”

But as most foreign policy decisions now emanate from the White House, some pro-Israel activists say they remain frustrated by the lack of will from Congress to assert its authority, even as they vow their efforts will continue.

“It is tragic that Congress has so blatantly shirked its responsibility to act as a check and balance on the executive branch,” a senior political operative involved in pro-Israel advocacy recently lamented. “But under no circumstances does that mean we stop fighting for the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

President Donald Trump lambasted “interventionalists” and “neo-cons” who previously led foreign policy discourse in the Republican Party in a speech on Tuesday at a U.S.-Saudi Arabia investment forum event in Riyadh. 

“The gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called nation-builders, neo-cons or liberal nonprofits like those who spent trillions failing to develop [Kabul], Baghdad, so many other cities,” Trump said. “In the end, the so-called nation-builders wrecked far more nations than they built and the interventionalists were intervening in complex societies that they did not even understand themselves.”

“They told you how to do it, but they had no idea how to do it themselves,” Trump continued. “Peace, prosperity and progress ultimately came not from a radical rejection of your heritage but rather from embracing your national traditions and embracing that same heritage that you love so dearly.”

Trump also condemned American presidents who “have been afflicted with the focus that it’s our job to look into the souls of foreign leaders and use U.S. policy to dispense justice for their sins” — an apparent condemnation of former President George W. Bush. 

He said that it’s “God’s job to sit in judgement, my job to defend America and to promote the fundamental interests of stability, prosperity and peace,” but that he would “never hesitate” to defend the U.S. or its allies.

The remarks were cheered by several notable members of the isolationist wing of the GOP, including Dan Caldwell, a former Pentagon adviser fired for allegedly leaking sensitive information. 

A conservative foreign policy analyst compared the speech to President Barack Obama’s “A New Beginning” speech in Cairo in 2009. “It’s his apology tour,” the analyst told Jewish Insider.

“It’s crazy to air your dirty laundry in a place that bore the Al-Qaida hijackers. This is Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s ‘Blame America’ on the right,” the analyst continued, warning that an “Arabist view” appeared to be making its way into the administration “at the expense of Israel,” a trend they said was previously mainly seen among Democrats. 

Trump also announced the “cessation” of sanctions against Syria “in order to give them a chance at greatness” and the normalization of relations between the U.S. and Syria. He said that Secretary of State Marco Rubio will be meeting with the Syrian foreign minister this week.

Trump characterized these moves as a favor to Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on Capitol Hill had argued for a targeted, cautious approach to sanctions relief for Syria, in a reversible fashion, in return for measurable progress and results on U.S. priorities. Trump said that “we’re taking them all off.” It was not clear from his remarks if the U.S. would be attaching conditions to that sanctions relief.

The Israeli government has advocated against sanctions relief for the regime out of concerns about the new government’s ties to Islamist extremists.

Addressing the leaders of Iran, Trump said he was willing “to offer them a new path and much better path towards a far better and more hopeful future,” adding that he’s shown he is “willing to end past conflicts and forge new partnerships for a better and more stable world.”

He warned that “if Iran’s leadership rejects this olive branch and continues to attack their neighbors, then we’ll have no choice but to inflict massive maximum pressure, drive Iranian oil exports to zero like I did before … and take all action required to stop the regime from ever having a nuclear weapon.”

Trump also said that the clock is ticking for Iran to accept that offer.

The U.S. president lavished praise on Saudi Arabia and its crown prince for the development the country has seen in recent years. He said it’s his “fervent hope, wish and even my dream that Saudi Arabia … will soon be joining the Abraham Accords.”

“You’ll be greatly honoring me and you’ll be greatly honoring all of those people that have fought so hard for the Middle East, and I really think it’s going to be something special,” Trump said. “But you’ll do it in your own time. That’s what I want, that’s what you want, and that’s the way it’s going to be.”

Trump repeatedly insisted that the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel would not have happened had he been president at the time and said that the “people of Gaza deserve a much better future” but that cannot happen as long as the leaders of Gaza continue to pursue violence. He said he wants to see the Gaza war “ended as quickly as possible” and the hostages all returned, a seeming contradiction to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s plans to expand Israeli operations in Gaza.

He also said that the U.S. “stands ready to help Lebanon create a future of economic development and peace with its neighbors,” adding that its new government provides “the first real chance in decades for a more productive partnership with the United States.”

Regarding the U.S. strikes on the Houthis, Trump said that the U.S. “got what we came for and then we got out,” referring to the U.S. ceasefire with the group. He said that the U.S. “[doesn’t] want them shooting at Saudi Arabia,” but the deal, as publicly outlined, did not contain provisions to protect Israel, Saudi Arabia or any other U.S. partners.

Houthi attacks on Israel have continued since the deal was struck.
He additionally claimed that he had requested a $1 trillion military budget from Congress to ensure “peace through strength,” adding “hopefully, we’ll never have to use any of those weapons.” But top conservative foreign policy leaders on Capitol Hill have said that the administration’s budget request does not actually meet that $1 trillion benchmark and have called the request insufficient.

Donning their foreign policy hats, candidates in New York City’s hotly contested mayoral race were quick to weigh in as violence erupted between Israel and Hamas this week. “I stand proudly with Israel,” former Citigroup executive Ray McGuire pronounced Monday evening in a statement later echoed by Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president. Andrew Yang, the apparent frontrunner who has earned key endorsements from several Orthodox Jewish leaders, also made sure to signal his unwavering support for the Jewish state. “I’m standing with the people of Israel,” he said, condemning “the Hamas terrorists.”

The lone dissenting voice was Dianne Morales, the outspoken former nonprofit executive who, by varying degrees, has positioned herself to the left of every leading candidate in the crowded Democratic primary field. “Our world needs leaders who recognize humanity and the dignity of all lives,” Morales wrote on Twitter early Tuesday morning. “Whether in NYC, Colombia, Brazil or Israel-Palestine, state violence is wrong. Targeting civilians is wrong. Killing children is wrong. Full stop.”

With her statement, rhetorically limp by pro-Israel standards, Morales demonstrated that she is willing to stray from the pack on an issue where most mainstream Democratic candidates in New York, home to the largest Jewish population in the United States, are usually aligned. While the majority of her opponents identify as solidly pro-Israel, Morales has veered in the opposite direction.

During a private virtual event with Jewish high school students last December, for instance, Morales accused Israel of “apartheid” while describing a 2015 mission sponsored by the Jewish Community Relations Council of New York as “propaganda,” according to leaked audio obtained by The Forward. 

“I’ve been to Israel, and I participated in what would be considered a propaganda trip,” Morales said bluntly in the recording. “The country is beautiful, so I understand why everybody wants a piece of it. That being said, I believe that Israel is an apartheid state. I think that is highly problematic. I cannot advocate for equity and justice in New York City and turn a blind eye to the challenges around those issues in Israel and with the folks living in Gaza and in Palestine.”

Dianne Morales at a march for transgender rights. (Courtesy)

In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, however, Morales seemed hesitant to invoke the same feisty rhetoric. “The first thing that’s really important to say is that I really appreciate the opportunity to have taken that trip,” Morales said of her week-long excursion with the JCRC, which has been leading missions to Israel for more than two decades. “JCRC does really incredibly important work for the community of New Yorkers around leadership development and advocacy for the Jewish community, and I certainly look forward to continuing to support that work as mayor.”

But Morales admitted to harboring “really complicated feelings” about her visit. “I see myself as a champion for equal rights and protections under the law,” she said, without making mention of  “apartheid.” “I don’t think any child should be denied the right to a home or to their full potential and that everyone deserves to be free of state violence.” 

Even having softened her views somewhat, Morales’s public and private comments would almost certainly have come at a cost in previous mayoral races. Instead, it is Yang who has drawn intense feedback for his pro-Israel views. After his Monday night tweet, Yang found himself uninvited from a Ramadan event as pro-Palestinian activists disrupted a campaign stop in Queens. “Utterly shameful,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said of Yang’s comments.

By Wednesday morning, Yang had clarified his initial statement, sending out a white flag of contrition to his 1.9 million Twitter followers. “I mourn for every Palestinian life taken before its time as I do for every Israeli,” he said in a lengthy statement. 

Adams, too, has faced some criticism for defending Israel in the conflict with Gaza. Earlier this week, the Muslim Action Network announced that it was pulling its endorsement of Adams, claiming he had “failed to take a principled stance.”

For her part, Morales appears to be gaining a modicum of momentum as she slipstreams behind New York’s ascendant far-left, which has carved out prominent footholds at the state and federal levels in recent years. “We’ve been defying all kinds of expectations and also bucking the traditions as to what criteria you need to have in order to be considered viable or a contender,” she told JI. “This campaign is, in fact, resonating with New Yorkers.”

That boast comes with some supporting evidence. Having lagged behind her opponents in most polls, Morales suddenly found herself in third place with 12% of the vote, just four points behind Adams, who topped the list, according to a survey commissioned by the Hotel Trade Council’s political arm and released earlier this week. Those numbers suggest that the June 22 Democratic primary remains in flux as underdog candidates like Morales and Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation chief who received a surprise endorsement from the The New York Times on Monday, show signs of life. 

Further scrambling the dynamics, Scott Stringer, the city comptroller and until recently the leading progressive candidate in the race, was rocked by allegations of sexual assault that have hobbled his once formidable campaign. Morales, who has called for Stringer to withdraw his name from the ballot, believes his embattled position has likely pushed some voters to her side as she notches new endorsements that would otherwise have gone his way. 

“I think it’s freed people up who might have felt indebted to him to feel like they can back me or support me or be louder about supporting me,” Morales said, while making sure to add that her grassroots campaign would be cresting with or without the scandal. “We’re just starting to surge,” she said. “The groundwork for that has been laid over the course of the last year.”

***

Morales, a resident of Bedford-Stuyvesant, announced her campaign last November with the hope of becoming New York’s first Afro-Latina mayor. A former employee in the city’s Department of Education, she served for a decade as the executive director and CEO of Phipps Neighborhoods, an affordable housing nonprofit in the Bronx, before seeking office as a first-time candidate. “I spent my entire career actually working on the ground,” said Morales, casting herself as a candidate of the people, “helping communities that have just been historically disenfranchised, underserved, marginalized.”

“She was the most believable, transparent candidate that I met,” said Harvey Epstein, a state assemblyman in Manhattan who endorsed Morales in March. “She had a plan that was achievable and she had a track record that proved she could get things done.”

The platform Morales puts forth is unapologetically progressive, including a municipal Green New Deal, a public bank for underserved New Yorkers and a plan to provide free college education through the city’s public university system.

“She is predictably consistent on the left side of the spectrum,” said David Bloomfield, a professor of education at Brooklyn College and the CUNY Graduate Center, “opposing screens in school admissions, looking toward a highly collaborative form of school governance that gives greater weight to community education councils and parents than most other candidates have indicated.”

Perhaps most notably, Morales is the only candidate in the race who wholeheartedly supports defunding the police. “I understand that the language of defunding is scary to some,” she acknowledged. “But what it really means is that we need to be investing in alternative services and supports for our community members.”

After a shooting in Times Square last weekend, most candidates struck a balance in their messaging on public safety, calling for robust policing while emphasizing a need for reform. But Morales rejects such rhetoric, notwithstanding a violent crime surge that has put many New Yorkers on edge as the city emerges from a destabilizing pandemic. “We’ve seen the escalation in violence despite the fact that there actually has been no real decrease in policing, despite the fact that Times Square is one of the most heavily surveilled communities in the city,” she argued. “I think that we have to debunk the idea that the police are actually creating safer communities.”

Morales advocates for a “multi-pronged” response amid an uptick in hate crimes against Jews and Asian-Americans. “I think antisemitism, anti-Asian violence, anti-Black violence, all of these things are rooted in white supremacy,” she said, while advocating for a humanistic approach to public education that embraces differences. “From a social perspective, I think we need to meet the needs of communities,” Morales continued. “I think the systems right now pit communities against each other and fosters this sort of us-them dynamic, and we need to actually counter that and really sort of lift up this perspective of solidarity and combating these things together.”

Dianne Morales at a rally for Breonna Taylor. (Courtesy)

“I truly believe that all communities that have been historically marginalized or oppressed or harmed deserve to be centered and prioritized moving forward, and to me, that includes the Jewish community,” Morales said, adding: “I understand the history of oppression and discrimination and exclusion and the fear that so often can instill in people. I’m committed to actually creating a safe city for all of us to coexist peacefully and with dignity.”

Morales’s message appears to be falling on receptive ears. Her coalition, she says, represents a diverse patchwork of New York City’s voting populace, including teachers, LGBTQ voters and Hispanic women. Unemployed workers, according to Morales, make up 30% of her donor base. Morales has also been buoyed by a passionate young fan base of volunteers as well as digitally savvy supporters who are enthusiastically promoting her campaign on social media.

Last month, Morales notched an endorsement from the Jewish Vote, the political arm of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, whose 6,000 members live mostly in New York. “We want to make sure that the next New York City mayor is fighting to really transform New York City and fighting for people who are working-class and fighting for racial justice,” Sasha Kesler, who sits on the Jewish Vote’s steering committee, told JI in an interview. “Dianne fit the bill.”

“We want a mayor who takes a firm, principled stance against forms of state violence, militarism and abuse,” Kesler added, expressing her appreciation for Morales’s recent comment on the conflict between Israel and Gaza. “That’s what she said in her message.”

JFREJ says it remains neutral on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, only opposing efforts to criminalize BDS on free speech grounds — and Morales echoed that view in conversation with JI.  “We should not create an environment that penalizes people’s right to organize and protest,” she said, adding: “That being said, that doesn’t mean I support hate or fear mongering or antisemitism. I don’t think that those two things are one and the same.”

Asked for her personal stance on the BDS movement — which is rejected by almost every mayoral candidate in the race as well as by a number of the most progressive candidates now running for public office across the country — Morales was noncommittal. “As a candidate and the mayor of New York City, it’s less important what I believe than what I’m going to uphold for New Yorkers,” she said. “I am going to uphold that it not be criminalized.”

Morales was equally hesitant to weigh in on a controversial questionnaire, distributed last summer by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, asking that City Council candidates pledge not to visit Israel. “I never actually saw the questionnaire,” she said. “But what I understood was that it was just poorly worded.”

Morales said she was open to visiting Israel again if she is elected —  something of a rite of passage for New York City mayors. Bill de Blasio, the outgoing two-term mayor, toured the Jewish state on a 48-hour trip in his second year in office. But Morales made clear that any future visit would likely be on her own terms. “I’m not opposed to visiting Israel,” she said. “I would want to do that independently rather than through any kind of sponsored trip because I think it’s important to being able to maintain my own sort of independence, judgment and decision-making.”

Ultimately, Morales was reluctant to discuss such issues in much depth, despite her apparent readiness to speak out on social media and in at least one private forum. “I don’t want to distract from the race that I am in,” she said. “If I had wanted to get mired in the international stuff, I’d probably run for a different thing.”

But while New York City mayors wield no direct influence over foreign policy, Morales may discover that the scope of the job is broader than she expects. 

“There was a time in New York City politics, years back, that if you ran for mayor you had to go immediately and visit the three ‘I’s: Italy, Ireland and Israel,” said Hank Sheinkopf, a veteran Democratic consultant in New York. “Now the ethnic population has shifted, so what’s left? Just one ‘I,’ and that’s Israel.”

One hundred days into Joe Biden’s presidency, the White House is focused on addressing major issues at home: the pandemic, climate change and gun violence, to name a few. But these first few months also offer some insight into how the administration will approach key issues in the Middle East: nuclear talks with Tehran, Israeli-Palestinian relations and cooperation with Jerusalem. 

Up until 2018, Beltway insiders might expect high-level conversations on these topics to take place at the Saban Forum, a long-running invite-only conference bringing together policy experts, high-ranking officials and lawmakers from the U.S. and Israel. 

“It was set up in the early 2000s to fill a void for dialogue between Israelis and Americans. It was very specifically Israel and America,” said Natan Sachs, director of the Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution, which organized the forum with backing from media mogul and Democratic megadonor Haim Saban.  

The off-the-record Saban Forum was hosted annually at the ritzy Willard InterContinental, a hotel across the street from the White House. Speculation abounded that the conference was canceled due to the election of former President Donald Trump. 

“This is a common misperception. It really is not the case,” Sachs told Jewish Insider. “We had two Saban Forums since the Trump election. The first was immediately after the Trump election, we had a successful one. The second one was in 2017, it was almost a year into the administration. We hosted Jared Kushner. It was the first time he spoke publicly on these issues.”

Sachs explained that Brookings, in conjunction with Saban, made the decision to pause the conference “while on a high note” because, he argued, “institutions never know when to quit.” He noted that the decision was not to cancel the conference altogether, but rather to put it on pause — and while there are no current plans to resume the annual event, it could come back in the future. 

More recently, Brookings’ Middle East center hosted a virtual international conference that was much broader in scope, with leaders from countries including Jordan, Iraq, Morocco, Algeria, Israel and Italy. “It was excellent,” Sachs said, noting that the new conference is one of Brookings’s many public events and “is not a replacement for the Saban Forum.” 

Since the Saban Forum won’t gather its distinct selection of Middle East experts this year, Jewish Insider polled the Saban Forum crowd with a simple question: When it comes to foreign policy and the Middle East, how is Biden doing?

“I think it’s very impressive how the early days are marked by a sense of restraint and patience,” said Robert Satloff, executive director of The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “For example, we just had an Israeli election, a remarkably visceral, hard-fought election, in which the new administration played no role because it was smart enough to keep quiet, and not to get drawn into the gutter of Israeli politics one way or the other.”

Biden came into this role with decades of public service under his belt, including a stint as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He is, to a certain extent, a known entity in Israel. 

“Biden has known [Israeli Prime Minister] Netanyahu for decades, so at the top, there’s a familiarity between the two leaders, which can be called upon when serious issues in the relationship erupt,” noted Andrew Shapiro, who served as assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs from 2009 to 2013.  

The Biden administration has approached the Israeli-Palestinian peace process with less zeal than its two most recent predecessors, which were both quick to stake their ground on the issue and attempt to reach a solution. 

Ghaith Al-Omari, a senior fellow at the Washington Institute who served as an advisor for the Palestinian negotiating team from 1991 to 2001, noted that Biden and his team “seem to have internalized the lesson — and rightly so — from previous administrations that right now, Israeli politics and Palestinian politics do not allow for a major breakthrough, so they’re not pushing that.”

“You do not see the soap opera-like quality of the centrality of Israel as we saw in the Obama administration and the Trump administration,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “One, great tension in the Obama administration; and the other, great exaltation, where Trump basically created what I describe as a sugar high for both Israel and Saudi Arabia; you’re not seeing that here… They’re very busy. And they really don’t have time or interest, as Obama and Trump did, in focusing on this issue.”

Then-Vice President Biden meets with then-Israeli President Shimon Peres in Jerusalem on January 13, 2014. (U.S. Embassy)

After two administrations marked by intense personal relationships between the leaders of the countries, the Biden White House is “just trying to restore a little bit more of a sense of balance in the way the United States relates to both sides of the conflict,” said Susie Gelman, board chair of Israel Policy Forum. 

Allies of Biden say that his history of support for international institutions and foreign policy norms is a welcome change from the Trump years.

“President Biden’s responsible leadership, strategic policymaking and fundamental civility have been on full display these past 100 days, in stark contrast to the turbulent and chaotic Trump years,” Haim Saban told JI. “In terms of the U.S.-Israel relationship, I remain pleased that President Biden and his administration have emphasized time and again their unyielding support for Israel’s safety and security, directly engaged with the Israelis on core issues of national importance, and rebuffed fringe calls to condition U.S. aid to Israel.” 

The individuals who spoke with JI acknowledged that the Biden administration is taking care to not politicize the U.S.-Israel relationship and repair damage that may have occurred under the prior two administrations — but some worry that may not be enough if the U.S. takes steps on Iran that may endanger Israel’s security.

“Although the White House has underscored America’s commitment to Israel’s security repeatedly, and pledged to continue consultations with Israel on regional affairs, the subtext of a potential collision between U.S. and Israeli positions toward engagement with Iran hovers over their relationship,” said Shalom Lipner, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who previously served in the Israeli prime minister’s office.

Dani Dayan, Israel’s former consul-general in New York, told JI that he worries Biden is looking to get back into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) too quickly. Still, Dayan does not expect Israel to mount as much of a public opposition as Netanyahu did in 2015, when he angered Democrats by speaking to Congress at the invitation of then-House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), who had not informed then-President Obama of the invitation.  

“Unfortunately it seems that President Biden has decided to return to the JCPOA ‘as is.’ If he believes he will be able to extend, later, the scope of the agreement — I doubt this is a strategy [that] will succeed,” Dayan argued. “However, I assume this time Israel will be less confrontational in its attitude towards the administration. I don’t foresee Netanyahu speaking in Congress… Also, the political chaos in Israel itself makes it more difficult for Israel to launch a strong diplomatic initiative.” 

The White House has made clear that it views returning to the JCPOA, which was a campaign talking point for Biden, as a priority. 

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, told JI that Biden “gets good marks from J Street for articulating good intentions regarding their policy direction during the first hundred days.” The real test, Ben Ami said, “is likely to come in the second hundred days. Will those good intentions be translated into an actual agreement that enables both the U.S. and Iran to return to full compliance with the JCPOA, and which paves the way for subsequent diplomacy?”

Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife, Sara Netanyahu. (Haim Zach/GPO)

Indirect nuclear negotiations between Washington and Tehran continued in Vienna this week, following comments from the White House last week that it may lift sanctions on Iran as a step toward rejoining the 2015 nuclear agreement. 

Many of Biden’s top foreign policy officials are veterans of the Obama administration, including Malley and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, who was the lead negotiator for the 2015 deal. “The Biden administration, on the Middle East, represents the third term of Barack Obama,” said Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute who served on George W. Bush’s National Security Council. “There is a view which holds that there is a division inside the administration between the progressives and the centrists, but the apparent division is smoke and mirrors. On the big issues, they are all on the same page.”

One point of frustration for opponents of the deal is that Iran has been elevated as a top foreign policy priority. “The unseemly eagerness of the new administration to get back into the JCPOA, at any cost, has been much more precipitous and obvious than I had expected,” said Victoria Coates, who served as deputy national security advisor under Trump. 

“Once [Secretary of State] Tony Blinken selected Rob Malley [as special envoy for Iran] to negotiate the return, that was a clear signal that everybody should have received that they were going to run the same playbook they ran in 2015, with respect to the negotiations, and that there was very little the Israelis or anyone else could do about it,” said Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. 

Language used by the Biden administration suggests an outward desire to improve on some of the more widely criticized aspects of the 2015 deal. In February, Blinken offered some examples of “issues that were not part of the original negotiation that are deeply problematic for us and for other countries around the world: Iran’s ballistic missile program, its destabilizing actions in country after country.” Blinken has also said the U.S. wants a “longer and stronger” deal. 

The secretary of state has also promised to consult with Congress on the deal: “I am committed to working with Congress — on the takeoff, and not just the landing,” he said at a March hearing on Capitol Hill. Obama faced widespread criticism in the leadup to the 2015 agreement for failing to engage Congress — as well as U.S. allies in the Middle East, including Israel and the Gulf Arab states — as the deal was negotiated. 

“Biden’s team is seasoned,” said Laura Blumenfeld, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “While they reject the Trump administration‘s maximalist approach, in sober moments they will acknowledge the shortcomings of the Obama efforts. This time around, there’s a renewed commitment to bring along Israel and the Gulf states.”

“I don’t think Joe Biden is looking for a fight with the Israelis at all, which is why I think you see his desire to consult,” said Carnegie’s Miller. “There’s been more consultation on Iran in three months [of Biden] than there was between the Obama administration and Israel in three years.” 

Still, the question remains as to what extent critics’ views are taken into consideration as the White House proceeds with negotiations. “My understanding is there has been some informing of Congress and of our partners and allies in the region, but certainly no discussion with them,” said Coates. “Their views are not solicited. They sometimes are informed of developments. And one of the key flaws of the JCPOA was the fact that regional partners and allies were not involved in those negotiations.”

Earlier this month, the Iranian nuclear facility Natanz was attacked while U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin was visiting Israel. Reports indicated that Israel had orchestrated the attack, although Israel has not publicly claimed responsibility. Austin and Netanyahu appeared at a press conference together soon after news of the attack became public. “I will never allow Iran to obtain the nuclear capability to carry out its genocidal goal of eliminating Israel, and Israel will continue to defend itself against Iran’s aggression and terrorism,” Netanyahu said. Austin did not mention Iran, but noted, “I wanted to reaffirm the administration’s strong commitment to Israel and to the Israeli people.” 

“Not only did Secretary of Defense Austin project no embarrassment or consternation or anger that this occurred during his visit to Israel, but then this was followed almost immediately by a particularly warm public statement by National Security Advisor [Jake] Sullivan toward his Israeli counterpart, warmly inviting him to Washington,” said Satloff.

Sullivan and his Israeli counterpart, Meir Ben-Shabbat, speak regularly, and the pair met for the first time this week in Washington. “The United States updated Israel on the talks in Vienna and emphasized strong U.S. interest in consulting closely with Israel on the nuclear issue going forward,” said a White House readout of the meeting. Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Gilad Erdan, who was also present, called the meeting “excellent” and tweeted that he, Sullivan and Ben-Shabbat “discussed our shared goal of preventing Iran from developing nuclear weapons [and] agreed to work together to strengthen our security ties.”

“I think [Sullivan’s] discussions with Meir Ben-Shabbat are genuine and well-intentioned and mostly positive in terms of tone and spirit, but the reality is Meir Ben-Shabbat has no ability — he nor anyone else in the Israeli government — to change the direction and trajectory of the Biden administration’s Iran policy,” said Dubowitz. 

Biden surprised observers by not calling Netanyahu until mid-February, nearly a month after taking office. Although he has known Netanyahu for a long time, Biden came to office following a uniquely close personal relationship between Trump and the Israeli prime minister. 

“Did Bibi make the bed that he’s lying in? Oh, absolutely, by throwing his lot in so obviously with Donald Trump, you shouldn’t have been surprised at what was coming,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. “And yet we were constantly told that this is an administration that’s much, much more mature now, and they’re not going to retaliate. And yet, how petty was the decision by the White House not to call the prime minister of Israel for over a month? What was that about?”

“The truth is that, at least so far, I don’t think we’re seeing the same kind of clashes that we saw in the Obama-Netanyahu relationship,” said Gelman. “It’s unquestionable, his commitment to the relationship between the United States and Israel. He’s made it very clear that that is something he intends to maintain, and hopefully strengthen.”

Iran is attempting to avoid direct state-on-state conflict with the U.S. pending the outcome of the nuclear negotiations, General Kenneth McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, told the Senate Armed Services Committee during a hearing on Thursday.

McKenzie said that Iran is avoiding direct confrontation with the U.S. while continuing deniable activities through proxies with the goal of forcing the U.S. out of nations like Iraq.

“They are prepared to [conduct attacks], which they believe they can disavow by their actors, their proxies acting on the ground, to conduct low-level attacks against us,” McKenzie asserted. “Over the last year in 2020, the Iranians believed they had a political solution to eject us from Iraq. That no longer appears to be a viable way ahead for them. So we’re seeing a return to a more kinetic approach.”

McKenzie also affirmed the Israeli military’s assessment that a Syrian missile attack on Israel on Wednesday was likely unintentional, and is not a sign of a broader Syrian campaign of direct attacks on Israel. 

The incident, he said, appeared to have been an attempt by Syrian air defense forces to shoot down Israeli aircraft striking locations in Syria, but the missile missed its target and continued into Israel. It exploded in southern Israel near the site of Israel’s nuclear reactor in Dimona.

“I think it reflects incompetence in Syrian air defense,” McKenzie explained. “I do not believe it was an intentional attack, but just rather a lack of capability on the part of the Syrian air defenders.”

McKenzie added that he expects Israel’s qualitative military edge in the region to remain secure, downplaying concerns about U.S. arms sales to other Middle Eastern nations.

“I am confident that we will be able to preserve Israel’s QME going forward, even considering arms sales to the various countries across the region,” he said. “And we should also reflect that the arms sales across the region at least partially reflects the increasing normalization of ties between Israel and those nations.”

McKenzie spoke on the issue at a House Armed Services Committee hearing earlier this week, noting that arms sales to countries such as the United Arab Emirates are a key part of the U.S. strategy for deterring Iran.

At that hearing, McKenzie also emphasized the threat of Iranian drones to U.S. forces and allies, which he said the U.S. is not yet fully equipped to counter.

A House push to repeal the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) has picked up support across the political spectrum as President Joe Biden begins taking significant steps to extract the U.S. from Middle East conflicts that date back to his time in the Senate, leaving some legislators concerned that a full repeal could open the U.S. and its assets to future attacks.

Last month, the House Foreign Affairs Committee voted to advance a bill that would fully repeal the 2002 AUMF, originally passed to allow the U.S. to wage war on Saddam Hussein’s regime. The legislation was introduced by Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), the only lawmaker at the time to vote against the post-9/11 2001 AUMF targeting terror groups and the 2002 AUMF. The current bill is cosponsored by 114 members reflecting a rainbow of ideological viewpoints, from House Freedom Caucus Chair Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) to progressive “Squad” members such as Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) and Democratic moderate Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA). 

Such repeal efforts passed the House on multiple occasions during the 116th Congress, but faced opposition in the Senate — largely from Republicans — and from the Trump administration. This term, Sens. Todd Young (R-IN) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) are pushing similar legislation to repeal the AUMFs from both 2002 and 1991, the latter of which authorized the Gulf War.

Repealing the 2002 AUMF, Lee told Jewish Insider, “is a no-brainer. It does nothing to support troops in the field; it is only a temptation for abuse. [The] 2002 repeal passed the House twice in the 116^th Congress. It is past time to get it off the books,” she said, adding: “The 2002 AUMF was intended to enforce UNSC [United Nations Security Council] resolutions regarding Saddam Hussein’s WMD programs. Those programs have been dismantled; the UNSC resolutions have expired; and Saddam himself has been dead for 15 years.”

Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI), who introduced a separate bill to repeal the 2002, 1991 and 1957 AUMFs, described the repeal efforts as “a matter of basic constitutional hygiene.” The Cold War-era 1957 AUMF authorized activity against communists in the Middle East, but was never directly invoked.

“These authorizations are no longer relevant, and their repeal would not impact ongoing operations,” Gallagher told JI. “War powers are Congress’s most important constitutional responsibility, and it’s critical we take this small but significant step forward to reassert our authority.”

Both inside and outside of Congress there remains considerable debate over the continued necessity of the 2002 AUMF. During a House Foreign Affairs Committee meeting last month, Republicans argued that repealing the 2002 AUMF without a broader reform of presidential war powers, including the 2001 AUMF — a much more difficult prospect — could prevent the president from responding to threats to the United States.

The 2002 AUMF was most notably cited in recent years as part of former President Donald Trump’s legal justification for the 2020 strike on Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq.

“It signals unilateral disarmament. The fact that it has been used, the fact that it has been referenced, the fact that it remains there is a deterrent in and of itself to those would-be actors that think they can potentially operate with impunity without it,” Rep. Scott Perry (R-PA), a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a vocal opponent of repealing the 2002 AUMF alone, said in an interview with JI.

Some outside analysts, like John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America, agree with Perry that repealing the 2002 AUMF would tie Washington’s hands, particularly in fighting Iranian proxies that have established a foothold in Iraq.

“I do think that the most energetic opponents of an aggressive U.S. policy to combat Iranian regional aggression are the same people who want to either do away with those AUMFs entirely, or to drastically reform them or amend them in such a way that they really limit the ability of any president to take action against the Iranian threat,” Hannah said. “Once you begin getting rid of the AUMFs, the real purpose behind [that] is to tie the president’s hands to address the ongoing threat from Iran and its proxies throughout the region.”

Others say that repealing the 2002 AUMF would have little to no practical effect on U.S. engagement with Iranian proxies in Iraq, given that presidents can continue to cite Article II self-defense powers.

“If you look at the legal justifications associated with military strikes in the Middle East, the primary justification is almost always either the 2001 AUMF or Article II authority,” Gallagher said. “Where the 2002 AUMF is cited, it’s a secondary source of legal authority that is ultimately unnecessary.”

Richard Fontaine, the CEO of the Center for a New American Century, echoed Gallagher.

“You have to ask yourself, would they not have targeted Soleimani if the 2002 AUMF had been repealed prior to it? And my guess is that they would have done exactly the same thing,” Fontaine said. “I don’t think at the end of the day it will make that much difference.”

Of the Trump administration’s argument that the 2002 AUMF allowed the Soleimani strike, Fontaine added, “I don’t know how many people found that terribly persuasive.”

Still others, like Lee, say that the Iranian threat is irrelevant to the debate over the 2002 AUMF.

“The argument that the 2002 AUMF is somehow a tool to be used against Iranian militias that did not exist when it was passed 19 years ago is a complete red herring,” the California Democrat said. “If some members feel that we should authorize force for a proxy war with Iran, they should have the courage to introduce a new authorization to enable that. Otherwise, they are just contributing to the dereliction of responsibility we’ve seen from Congress for 20 years.”

Despite bipartisan agreement among a number of legislators that the 2002 AUMF should be repealed, it is not clear if they will be successful in these efforts.

“There’s nothing that’s not going to be difficult [regarding AUMF reform],” said former Ambassador Dennis Ross, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, adding that efforts to move the issue forward may require the Biden administration to expend political capital in Congress — something it may not be willing to do on this contentious issue so early in the president’s tenure. The Biden administration has expressed support for AUMF repeal efforts.

Fontaine said 2002 AUMF repeal is “possible” but added “there’s a certain ‘Groundhog Day’ quality to some of these debates, because every few years the drive for a new AUMF sort of gathers steam. It’s never actually been successful.”

Even if the 2002 AUMF repeal efforts do succeed, lawmakers are likely to face a nearly insurmountable challenge in reforming the 2001 AUMF, on which there is much less agreement, including among legislators backing 2002 AUMF repeal.

“I think it’s inconceivable that they’ll repeal the 2001 AUMF without replacing it with something,” said Fontaine, “and I think the difficulty of replacing it is so profound that it’s unlikely that it will be repealed,.”

Twenty-six Senate Democrats, led by Sens. Chris Murphy (D-CT) and Tim Kaine (D-VA), signed onto a letter sent Tuesday to President Joe Biden urging him to quickly reenter the Iran nuclear deal as it stood in 2015.

The letter supports lifting U.S. sanctions on Iran in line with the 2015 agreement if both sides come back into compliance. Senior administration officials are reportedly split on how to approach Iran, with Secretary of State Tony Blinken suggesting a more gradual approach to rapprochement, while Special Envoy for Iran Rob Malley has called for a return to the deal without addressing issues including Iran’s influence in the region, raising concerns among Israeli security officials over the future of negotiations.

Signatories on the letter include Sens. Chris Van Hollen (D-VA), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Michael Bennet (D-CO), Raphael Warnock (D-GA), John Hickenlooper (D-CO) and Ben Ray Luján (D-NM). Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) also signed on.

Last month, a bipartisan group of 43 senators, including 14 Democrats, sent a letter urging the administration to reach a more comprehensive agreement that also addressed Iran’s destabilizing role in the region, rather than rejoin the 2015 deal.

Only one Democrat, Sen. Bob Casey (D-PA), signed both letters. Nine Democrats have not signed onto either one.

The letter’s release comes amid ongoing indirect nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran. Over the weekend, the Iranian nuclear facility in Natanz sustained significant damage following an attack that Iranian leaders have blamed on Israel.

Murphy told Jewish Insider on Monday that “Any time there’s activity of that nature, it’s not likely going to be constructive in the midst of diplomatic efforts,” adding in a Tuesday tweet that “now, the diplomatic road is more difficult.”

On Tuesday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran will begin to enrich uranium at higher levels than it ever has before.

Fifty-seven senators have signed onto a letter written by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH) and Ben Cardin (D-MD) criticizing the International Criminal Court’s decision to launch a formal investigation of Israel. A larger group of 69 senators signed onto a similar letter in May 2020 — a supermajority of the Senate, Portman boasted at the time.

The final version of the letter, which was sent to Secretary of State Tony Blinken on March 11 after the ICC announced it would officially investigate Israel for war crimes, praised the secretary for denouncing the decision and expressed concern over the ICC’s actions.

“We believe that the United States should stand in full force against the ICC’s Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision,” the letter reads. “We also urge you to work with like-minded international partners to steer the ICC away from further actions that could damage the Court’s credibility by giving the appearance of political bias. We ask that you give this matter your full attention and that you continue to defend Israel against discriminatory attacks in all international fora.”

The initial draft of the letter obtained by Jewish Insider on March 1, before the ICC’s pre-trial chamber decided to proceed with an investigation of Israel, urged Blinken to “issue a more forceful condemnation of the Court’s actions,” a call that is missing from the final version.

Fourteen current senators — 11 Republicans and three Democrats — who signed the 2020 letter did not sign the letter sent earlier this month: Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), and Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-ND), Richard Burr (R-NC), Roy Blunt (R-MO), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Steve Daines (R-MT), Joni Ernst (R-IA), Ron Johnson (R-WI), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Ted Cruz (R-TX), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) and Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV).

Five Republicans who did not sign last year’s letter joined this one, as did four new senators — two Democrats and two Republicans.

A source familiar with the situation told JI that every senator on both sides of the aisle was contacted about the letter — Republicans by Portman’s office and Democrats by Cardin. But spokespeople for Graham and Tillis said they were never contacted.

“[Sen. Tillis] was happy to sign it last year, and would have been happy to sign it again as he staunchly opposes the ICC’s unfair and unwarranted treatment of Israel,” Tillis spokesperson Daniel Keylin said.

In a statement to JI, Jessica Skaggs, a spokesperson for Cruz, described the senator as “a leader in countering the ICC’s overreach and politicized attacks on Israel.” Skaggs added that Cruz is “considering how to respond to the ICC’s newest campaign.”

The Daily Beast reported in early March that Cruz is working on a resolution calling on the United Nations Security Council to block the ICC from bringing charges against individuals from non-ICC member states. The resolution would also condemn the ICC for investigating Americans and Israelis.

Cardin and Portman’s offices did not provide comment for this story.

Iran’s military and intelligence services attempted to undermine former President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects, a declassified report from the U.S. intelligence community found.

The report, declassified Monday by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, concluded that “Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects — though without directly promoting his rivals — undermine public confidence in the electoral process and U.S. institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the U.S.”

It further assessed that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei authorized the “whole of government” campaign, which was carried out using “overt and covert messaging and cyber operations.” The report also found that Hezbollah, an Iranian-funded terror group, also engaged in smaller-scale attempts to undermine Trump’s re-election.

Iran’s efforts were “driven in part by a perception that the regime faced acute threats from the U.S.” under Trump, the report details.

The Iranian efforts were aimed largely at “sowing discord in the United States and exacerbating societal tensions” and influencing U.S. Iran policy through methods such as promoting anti-Trump social media content, spreading pro-regime messages and attacking pressure points such as the COVID-19 pandemic response, the pandemic’s economic impacts and domestic civil unrest.

The Iranian campaign was further-reaching in 2020 than in previous election cycles, according to the report, which specifically mentions a previously disclosed campaign by Iranian actors who sent threatening messages to swing-state Democratic voters impersonating members of the right-wing pro-Trump Proud Boys group.

It also discusses several other influence attempts, including disseminating a video demonstrating alleged voter fraud, publishing over 1,000 pieces of online content in the U.S., utilizing “several thousand” inauthentic social media accounts and attempting to gather passwords from U.S. government and campaign officials in order to “gain derogatory information or accesses for follow-on operations.”

Iran’s efforts have not stopped after the election, the report adds, alleging that “Iranian cyber actors were almost certainly responsible” for a website containing death threats against election officials and that Iran is “seeking to exploit the post-election environment to collect intelligence.”

The assessment concluded that the regime’s influence efforts were likely blunted, compared to  previous election cycles, due to greater awareness of the issue, information sharing between the government and social media companies — which led the companies to take down Iranian-operated  accounts, public information-sharing and sanctions against some of the individuals responsible for the efforts.

According to the report, Iran did not attempt to directly manipulate any election infrastructure, although it did “[exploit] a known vulnerability to compromise U.S. entities associated with election infrastructure.”

The report also alleges that Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah backed efforts to undermine Trump in the election.

“Nasrallah probably saw this as a low-cost means to mitigate the risk of a regional conflict while Lebanon faces political, financial and public health crises,” the report reads.

The report also details extensive efforts by Russia to influence the election in favor of Trump and exacerbate domestic divides, and contradicts claims from former DNI John Ratcliffe that China conducted election interference or influence operations.

Robert Malley has reportedly been chosen as the Biden administration’s envoy to Iran, confirming a report from Jewish Insider last week that the former Obama administration official was under consideration for the role. Malley, a veteran foreign policy analyst who is currently the president and CEO of the International Crisis Group, was one of the key negotiators of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.

“Secretary Blinken is building a dedicated team, drawing from clear-eyed experts with a diversity of views. Leading that team as our special envoy for Iran will be Rob Malley, who brings to the position a track record of success negotiating constraints on Iran’s nuclear program,” a senior State Department official told Reuters. “The secretary is confident he and his team will be able to do that once again.”

The New York Times cited a senior State Department official who said that Malley and other diplomats’ first step, before approaching Iran, will be to consult with leaders in the Middle East, Europe and Congress to hear their concerns. 

Over the past week, a number of prominent progressive Democrats coalesced behind Malley, while Republicans and some moderate Democrats criticized him for his close relationships with Iranian leaders and for meeting with members of Hamas — which cost him his role as an advisor to President Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign.

“You can’t do better than Rob Malley,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) told Jewish Insider on Wednesday. “He knows the region. He’s willing to think outside of the foreign policy consensus. He has a lot of friends on the Hill. Whatever Rob Malley is being considered for, I’d be supportive. I’ve relied on him a lot during my time in the Senate.”

Other Senate Democrats are more skeptical about the pick, two Democratic congressional staffers told JI.

“Malley would be an odd choice. I say so since our ability to navigate the Iran issue from Congress will be largely dependent on the administration’s willingness to consult about their approach/decisions,” one aide said. “While some Republicans are already struggling to outflank each other from the right on anything Biden does, having an envoy that is viewed as moderate and restrained would be to everyone’s advantage.”

One Democratic senate staffer said that moderates are hesitant to speak out the pick publicly, despite some reservations.

“The consensus is that the criticism isn’t totally off-base but is a little overblown, so folks aren’t going to pile on,” the staffer said. “At the same time, he’s disliked enough in pro-Israel circles that it isn’t worth it to make a nuanced case about the criticism. It’s not like anyone truly loves this guy, either. And at the end of the day, [President Joe] Biden and [Secretary of State Tony] Blinken are in charge and we trust them.”

Moderate Senate Democrats were, at least publicly, remaining quiet about Malley ahead of Thursday’s news. A spokesperson for incoming Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — who expressed skepticism about the Biden administration’s plans to rejoin the Iran deal — declined to comment to JI on Wednesday. 

Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) — who opposed the Iran deal in 2015 — declined to comment Thursday and told JI that he needed to refresh his recollection of Malley’s background. Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) told JI on Wednesday that he felt it was premature to comment on reports that Malley had been offered the position, adding that he planned to review reporting about Malley that afternoon. A spokesperson for Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) also declined to comment.

Outside Congress, progressive leaders and groups rallied around Malley following backlash over reports that he was likely to become the administration’s point person on Iran. Nearly 200 academics, foreign policy professionals, organizations and others released a letter supporting Malley, describing him as “among the most respected foreign policy experts in the United States” and “an astute analyst and accomplished diplomat.”

“Those who accuse Malley of sympathy for the Islamic Republic have no grasp of — or no interest in — true diplomacy, which requires a level-headed understanding of the other side’s motivations and knowledge that can only be acquired through dialogue,” the letter continues. “As veterans of diplomacy and human rights work, and organizations that support the same, we hope that someone as capable and knowledgeable as Rob Malley is put in charge of fixing our broken policy towards Iran.”

This post was updated at 4:55 p.m. on 1/31/2021.

Linda Thomas-Greenfield, President Joe Biden’s pick for ambassador to the United Nations, pledged to stand behind Israel in her role at the U.N. during her Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing Wednesday.

In response to a question from Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), Greenfield addressed attacks on the Jewish state at the U.N.

“I look forward to standing with Israel, standing against the unfair targeting of Israel, the relentless resolutions that are proposed against Israel unfairly and… look forward to working closely with the Israeli embassy, with the Israeli ambassador to work to bolster Israel’s security and to expand economic opportunities for Israelis and Americans alike and widen the circle of peace,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “It goes without saying that Israel has no closer friend than the United States and I will reflect that in my actions at the United Nations.”

The former assistant secretary of state for African affairs also praised the recent normalization agreements between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, describing them as opportunities for further progress both within the U.N. and around the globe.

“I see the Abraham Accords as offering us an opportunity to work in a different way with the countries who have recognized Israel… We need to push those countries to change their approach at the United Nations. If they’re going to recognize Israel in the Abraham Accords, they need to recognize Israel’s rights at the United Nations,” she said. “I intend to work closely with the Israeli ambassador, with my colleagues across the globe, because this is not just an issue in New York — but also pushing our colleagues to address these issues with their countries bilaterally so that we can get a better recognition of Israel in New York.”

She also condemned the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement.

“I find the actions and the approach that BDS has taken toward Israel unacceptable. It verges on antisemitism,” she said. “It is important that they not be allowed to have a voice at the United Nations.”

Thomas-Greenfield also said she plans to implement a robust approach to thwarting Iran’s nuclear ambitions, with the goal of engaging both U.S. allies and adversaries in countering the Iranian regime.

“We will be working with our allies, our friends, but we also have to work with other members of the Security Council to ensure that we hold Iran accountable,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “As the ambassador to the United Nations, if I’m confirmed, I will work across all of those areas to ensure that we get the support but [also] see where we can find common ground with the Russians and the Chinese to put more pressure on the Iranians to push them back into strict compliance.”

Senators on the Foreign Relations Committee did not raise the issue of U.N. Security Council Resolution 2334, a 2016 measure that declared that Israeli settlements in the Palestinian territories have “no legal validity” and constitute “a flagrant violation under international law.” In a rare step, the U.S. broke with Israel at the time and abstained in the Security Council vote on the resolution. In 2017, 78 senators cosponsored a resolution condemning the resolution.

Former Israeli defense officials offered differing views of the incoming Biden administration’s top Middle East priorities this week. Former Shin Bet chief Ami Ayalon celebrated the former vice president’s victory, while former Defense Minister Naftali Bennett praised President Donald Trump for his work in the region and expressed hope that President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will chart a different course from previous Democratic administrations.

Bennett said the outgoing Trump administration “was simply outstanding in so many dimensions of support of Israel,” highlighting the U.S. Embassy move to Jerusalem; the killing earlier this year of Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Quds Force; and the maximum pressure campaign on Iran. 

For Ayalon, Biden’s election and the selection of his national security team are a welcome moment for the security and future of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. 

In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, Ayalon emphasized that the Biden administration’s emphasis on diplomacy will prioritize both resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as part of a broad initiative to move forward with advancing peace and countering Iran’s efforts to destabilize the region. 

“Israel will not be safe, it will not be a Jewish democracy, unless we come to an agreement with the Palestinians,” posited Ayalon, who co-founded the Israeli NGO Blue White Future in 2009 to push for a negotiated peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians. “I believe that in order to create this Sunni coalition as a future basis to confront Iran and create more stability in the region, we have to come to an agreement with the Palestinians.” 

Ayalon suggested that while Israelis appreciated Trump’s support of Israel, the foreign policy team Biden has assembled will gauge Israeli concerns about a return to the Obama administration’s approach to the conflict, which was perceived by Israeli leadership at the time as aggressive and somewhat hostile. “Even if they are the same people [who served in the Obama administration], they are older and they are much more experienced,” he stressed.

Israeli leaders may also be more willing to consider peace process concessions depending on the next administration’s approach to Iran, Ayalon said. “If Israelis will feel that [a two-state solution] is the price that Israel will have to pay in order to remove the Iranian threat, a majority will support it,” he suggested. 

Bennett expressed different expectations from the Biden administration. In a Zoom call hosted by the Zionist Organization of America on Wednesday, Bennett — whose party, Yamina, is polling in second place behind its right-wing rival Likud — projected that the Biden administration will learn from the mistakes of the past and take a different approach that will be more acceptable to the nationalist camp. 

“The other path has been taken so many times and failed so many times, and brought immense damage and suffering on the region,” Bennett asserted. “There is a price to pay for failed so-called peace attempts — usually it ends up with another round of violence and people die. And I think the incoming administration is very experienced. They’ve been there, seen that, done that. I’m not ignoring the well-known opinions, but I do think that we need to sit down and think thoroughly about how to manage the disagreements that we might have.” 

It is unlikely that U.S.-Israel ties will be as strained as they were during the Obama administration, Bennett said, explaining that the peace process is likely to be “far down the list” of Biden’s priorities. Bennett also expressed hope that “stopping Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon does not become a partisan issue” in the U.S.

The former defense minister predicted that as more Arab countries express willingness to normalize relations with Israel, the paradigm of first resolving the Palestinian issue will become irrelevant. “I’ve always said that I’m okay with ‘land for peace’ — we are willing to accept land for peace from anyone who wants to provide us [with land],” Bennett quipped, adding, that “more seriously, the notion of ‘land for peace’ is crazy, and certainly, this will be one of the issues that we’re going to have to address.” 

It took just over two weeks for Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) to be formally declared the winner in New Jersey’s 7th district election. The Associated Press called the race for Malinowski hours after polls closed, but his sizable lead over State Senate Minority Leader Tom Kean, Jr., shrank from 28,000 votes to just 5,314 — a 1% margin — by November 24. The first-term incumbent, who beat longtime incumbent Rep. Leonard Lance (R-NJ) by more than 16,000 votes in 2018 is, nonetheless, satisfied with the win. 

In an interview with Jewish Insider on the eve of Thanksgiving, Malinowski sounded relieved. “I had a tougher challenge than many people,” said Malinowski, one of roughly a dozen Democrats reelected in districts that went for President Donald Trump. “[The Republicans] really put up a strong opponent, spent a lot of money. So I feel like we overcame a lot.”

Malinowski is also grateful that during his second term, he will serve both in the House majority and alongside a White House he feels he can work with, opening the door to collaborate on issues important to the New Jersey congressman. 

President-elect Joe Biden’s recently announced pick for secretary of state, Tony Blinken, added to the New Jersey congressman’s excitement. Malinowski and Blinken are longtime colleagues, having both served together under former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. The pair were also teammates on the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center of Washington, D.C.’s indoor soccer team. 

Last week, when reports emerged that Blinken had been nominated to be the country’s top diplomat, Malinowski tweeted a picture of the team after their only championship win, from the the winter of 2005, with the caption, “[Blinken] will be joining the best foreign policy team since this one… which was undefeated!”

“You don’t realize. This is a great honor for you,” Malinowski gleefully bragged in his JI interview. “You are talking to the goalie of the D.C. Jewish community center championship indoor soccer team.” 

“We were just awesome. We were just so good,” Malinowski said of his team, which also included former Obama administration officials Robert Malley and Philip Gordon. 

Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) and Anthony Blinken on the Edlavitch Jewish Community Center of Washington, D.C.’s indoor soccer team in 2005. (Twitter)

Malinowski first met Blinken at the State Department in the Clinton administration during the tenure of former Secretary of State Warren Christopher. Malinowski was Christopher’s speechwriter, while Blinken worked in the European Bureau. In 1994, Blinken left Foggy Bottom to become Clinton’s chief foreign policy speechwriter and director for speechwriting at the National Security Council, a role Malinowski took over four years later. 

Malinowski shared with JI that while serving in the Clinton White House, he and Blinken “teamed up” to write “parody versions of famous songs, where we changed the lyrics to make fun of our foreign policy” and “directed a couple of self-parody movies together.” When pressed, Malinowski declined to leak the revised lyrics or share footage of the films — at least not before Blinken’s Senate confirmation.

The two friends later “revived the band” when they served together in the State Department under Obama.

“Tony and I share a sense of humor about the world, a belief that the more serious your job, the more important it is to find some humor in it,” Malinowski explained. 

Blinken is “a great diplomat,” Malinowski said of his close friend. “He has the right personality for the job. He will be a good leader for the people at the State Department who have been disparaged and dismissed by the current [Trump] administration.” 

“I think this is the first president in my lifetime who is appointing, from my point of view, the perfect person for every job,” Malinowski added, speaking more broadly about Biden’s key administration appointments. 

Malinowki said that both Blinken and Jake Sullivan, who was tapped as Biden’s national security advisor, “are strong believers in the idea that American power comes from American principles, and that there has to be a moral component to our foreign policy if we are to advance our interests effectively. They both have a tendency to challenge conventional wisdom. They are comfortable with being challenged by others, and I think they’ll always tell the president what he needs to hear, not just what he wants to hear.”

Even if Republicans maintain control of the Senate following two Georgia runoffs in early January, Malinowski predicted a smooth confirmation process for Biden’s foreign policy team. “I’m sure the Republicans will suddenly rediscover their obligation to conduct oversight now that there’s a Democratic president,” he quipped. “But so far the people Biden has nominated are people who enjoy broad bipartisan respect in Washington.” 

The Democratic congressman — who was endorsed for his reelection bid by J Street, the Jewish Democratic Council of America, and Democratic Majority for Israel — sought to reassure supporters of Israel that as the chief diplomat representing the Biden administration, Blinken “is always going to listen” on issues affecting Israel. Malinowski also noted that there are “few leaders in the Democratic Party, or any party, who will be more grounded in a traditional American approach in support for Israel security, who understand more clearly the moral and historical basis for America’s relationship with Israel.”

“And if you come to him with a thoughtful and principled argument, he’s going to hear you out,” Malinowski emphasized, “Tony’s not an ideologue. He’s not insecure in the way I think [Secretary of State Mike] Pompeo was.”

Still, Malinowski cautioned that the Israeli government “has to understand that there are going to be significant changes” in the Biden administration’s approach in the Middle East, particularly toward Saudi Arabia. “I think it would be a very serious mistake for the Israeli government to think that they can somehow shield a guy like [Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman] from that change, solely because he has — for pragmatic and self-interest reasons — moved closer to the Israeli perspective on some issues,” Malinowski warned. “This is an administration that is going to care about human rights, for example. It is going to care about the plight of civilians in Yemen. It’s not going to tolerate governments in the Middle East that kidnapped and chopped to pieces journalists,” referencing journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was killed after entering the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.   

According to Malinowski, the recent secret meeting between bin Salman and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “is not an alignment that is in Israel’s medium- to long-term interests.” 

“This is the administration that will be very pro-Israel,” he continued, “but that alignment has to be disentangled from our relationship with Gulf states that have been behaving in many ways that are directly contrary to U.S. interests.”

As the Biden-Harris transition team begins to build out its incoming administration and speak with foreign leaders, Israeli political observers caution that an immediate return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran — while renegotiating the agreement’s terms — could put the Biden administration and the Israeli government on a collision course. 

“I believe that on most issues, we will be able to work with the new administration. But I think the key question is the Iranian issue,” former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Danny Danon said in an interview with Jewish Insider. “This is a crucial issue for Israel. We heard Joe Biden speak about re-entering the JCPOA with some amendments. And the question is how it will look at the end. If the U.S. returns to an agreement that will be similar to the [previous] agreement, it means that Israel will have to recalculate its approach regarding Iran.” 

Danon suggested that if a new Iran deal were to have the same outcome, just “with different titles,” Israel would be obligated to oppose the deal and “take the necessary steps to ensure Iran will never obtain nuclear capabilities.” 

The former Israeli diplomat, who is a member of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, said that Israel will have to “carefully” examine the Biden administration’s approach to the Middle East and engagement with international organizations as it shifts away from President Donald Trump’s policies. Danon, who represented Israel at the U.N. during the last year of former President Barack Obama’s second term and for most of Trump’s time in office, said that while he expects some changes to Israel’s standing at the U.N. — especially if the new administration rejoins the Human Rights Council and reinstates currently frozen U.S. funds to the U.N. body that supports Palestinian refugees — “I think we will still have the support of the U.S., but it will require more effort from our side.” 

Danon added that if Biden is “supportive of Israel, he will gain the trust and support of Israelis very fast.” 

Israeli author Yossi Klein Halevi suggested that the two sides will “inevitably come into conflict” over the Iranian issue, predicting a “tough fight” for Israel to keep the U.S. from returning to the terms of the 2015 deal. 

“The Palestinian issue is not going to cause a major rupture between Israel and America,” explained Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem. “Biden isn’t Obama. He’s not going to go to war for a two-state solution. He is a seasoned enough politician to understand what Obama did not understand, which is that you don’t go for broke on an issue that you don’t have sufficient leverage on for both sides.” 

But on the Iranian threat, he argued, Israel has more leverage than it had in 2015. In the wake of the recently signed normalization agreements with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Klein Halevi suggested, Israel now has “a shared strategic structure to confront the international community.” 

On Tuesday, Netanyahu pushed back against the notion that strained ties between Israel and the Democratic Party in recent years would undercut a good working relationship with the Biden administration. “What I see before my eyes is not Democrats and not Republicans. It is just the State of Israel,” Netanyahu said during a speech at the Knesset. “I am committed to stand behind the interests that are crucial to our future and our existence and this is how I will continue even with the next American administration.”

In his remarks, Netanyahu pointed to his decades-long relationship with Biden and the personal moments they shared “that are beyond politics and beyond diplomacy.”

The Israeli premier said that over the last four years, he has met with 134 Democratic members of Congress — of the 292 who have visited Israel since 2017 — including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), as well as Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. Netanyahu said the meetings occurred “because I believe that strengthening the bipartisan support for Israel is a basic foundation of our foreign policy.” 

Netanyahu noted that even amid tension with the Obama administration, Israel and the U.S. signed a record $38 billion memorandum of understanding of security assistance. “That’s how a prime minister in Israel must act,” he said. “Not by submitting or groveling and also not arrogantly but with the wisdom, courage, dignity of a person who fights for his people, for his land and for his country.”

Shimrit Meir, an Israeli analyst and commentator, told JI that Netanyahu’s defense “was mainly about domestic politics at the moment.” According to Meir, Netanyahu needs to position himself as “a strong experienced prime minister” who is able to handle relations with the U.S. regardless of which party controls the White House. 

Meir noted that while Netanyahu speaks perfect English, “I don’t think he speaks their language.” 

Klein Halevi concurred: “Bibi has burned most bridges with the Democrats.”

Amid discussion on Capitol Hill over the potential sale of F-35 fighter jets to the United Arab Emirates, Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) is working to remind lawmakers of Washington’s commitment to maintaining Israel’s qualitative military edge.

In a webinar with the Jewish Institute for National Security of America on Wednesday, Schneider elaborated on the reasoning behind the resolution he introduced earlier this month that reinforces the legal guarantees for Israel’s qualitative military edge. He said the bill is designed to remind both the Trump administration and Congress of the U.S.’s responsibility to guarantee the QME. 

“A lot of my colleagues in Congress are relatively new… 100 new members came in in the last Congress, and 80 in the one before that. There’s been quite a bit of turnover,” he said. “I thought it was important to remind not just the administration, but my colleagues as well that Congress has an important role to play here.”

Schneider said that, in considering an F-35 sale, the U.S. should carefully examine the UAE’s needs, as well as the U.S.’s own principles and obligations. The Democratic lawmaker seemed skeptical of the Trump administration’s negotiations over the sale.

“I fear that that conversation was had in a very different way and that promises were made,” he said. “The news about it seems to be reinforcing that there was a promise to the UAE, concurrent if not dependent on the Abraham [Accords] that they would get F-35 jets.”

Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL), an original cosponsor of Schneider’s bill, also recently emphasized to JI that Congress will need to thoroughly vet the sale.

“I’ve been clear throughout that we will not allow Israel’s qualitative military edge to be threatened,” Deutch told JI in late September. “We don’t know the background story here. We don’t know what was promised, what the deal was, what is exactly that we ought to be focused on… There’s a lot of information that Congress needs to receive from the administration and we will carefully review [it] when we receive it.”

On Wednesday, Schneider pushed back on arguments from UAE officials that the F-35 is the “logical” upgrade to its existing fleet of F-16s, which the Gulf nation acquired in 2004. He expressed concern over the potential for an arms race in the Middle East, with other countries also seeking access to the jets.

“I always have concerns about inserting advanced military weapons into a complex and sometimes chaotic environment,” he said. “The last thing we should be promoting is an arms race.”

But he also emphasized that, should Congress find that Israel’s interests would remain protected, “I can’t imagine Congress would get in the way” of the sale.

Schneider acknowledged that his bill may struggle to gain traction during the lame duck session after Election Day — Congress is in recess until the election — but he said he is engaging in behind-the-scenes conversations, and hopes his bill will receive a committee hearing. 

Schneider also suggested that, under the right circumstances, lawmakers could generate support in Congress for increasing military aid to Israel beyond what was laid out in the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding.

“It depends on how it’s framed. Language dictates so much of what happens in Congress,” he said. “The 435 members of the House and Senate, all of them come with the biases they start with. And our job is to try to shift them to a place where we can find common ground.”

United Arab Emirates Chief Rabbi Yehuda Sarna predicted during a Jewish Insider webcast yesterday that the small Jewish community in Dubai and Abu Dhabi could soon number in the thousands.

“It would not surprise me if in a number of years, if we’re not looking at 1,000 Jews in the UAE, but we’re looking at something closer to 10,000 — and we’re looking at hundreds of thousands of Israeli and Jewish tourists a year,” Sarna said.

When Sarna was named the inaugural chief rabbi of the UAE in March 2019, the announcement made waves around the world. But, said UAE Ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh during the JI virtual event, the appointment marked an important moment in relations between Israel and the UAE, and more broadly, between Jews and Muslims across the globe. 

“I think what it demonstrated to colleagues at the U.N. is that this is what is at stake in our work every day in multilateral diplomacy and these agreements that we sign, that ultimately they are about the people-to-people connection,” Nusseibeh said.

Sarna first visited the UAE after New York University — where he has served as a university chaplain since 2002 — opened a campus in Abu Dhabi in 2008.

“When I received the invitation from [then NYU] President John Sexton to come to Abu Dhabi, truth is I’d never heard of it before, I could not have pointed to it on a map and knew nothing of its history or heritage,” Sarna admitted.

“From that first moment when I landed in the airport in Abu Dhabi and was just treated like everyone else, was treated with such a sense of welcoming and hospitality. But [what] it almost immediately did is it began pulling apart my own stereotypes. Even though I had been the one working to combat Islamophobia, nevertheless, there were still remnants, which I had to come to terms with on my own.”

And the recent UAE-Israel peace accord, Sarna said, will have a major global impact.

“I think what we’re looking at is really a tipping point in Muslim-Jewish relations worldwide,” Sarna added. “There is a tremendous, tremendous enthusiasm, curiosity, energy, excitement, about building out not just the political dimensions of the accord, but building out everything else that it’s giving a platform to.”

UAE Ambassador to the United Nations Lana Nusseibeh

Nusseibeh agreed, telling the webcast: “I don’t find it surprising that I spent Yom Kippur yesterday speaking to a synagogue in Rye, [New York].”

Both panelists agreed that the normalization process could serve as a model for future relationships in the region.

“Our foreign minister announced today that we would be seeking election to the U.N. Security Council, the highest body for peace and security,” Nusseibeh shared. “The vote will happen in June next year. And I think it’s an opportunity for us to demonstrate everything that we have been discussing here today about our model, our perspective for the region, a perspective of openness, tolerance, integration, working to find regional solutions.”

Beyond the political and cultural impacts of the normalization agreement, both Nusseibeh and Sarna expressed optimism for the economic opportunities afforded by the normalization of two growing economies. 

“Jews who are living in the UAE came, for the most part, because they feel safe there. And for economic opportunity, whether they’re coming from Europe or South Africa, or the United States, or Canada, or Syria, or Lebanon or Tunisia,” Sarna explained. “With rising antisemitism in several countries, and with economies in certain countries not being as strong, they felt like there was opportunity.”

Nusseibeh echoed that sentiment. “I think, on the people-to-people level, everyone is looking for the opportunities for growth,” she said. “We understand we have a massive youth demographic, we need to provide opportunities for that youth demographic around our region. And we’re looking at ways to innovate startups, AI, and all these other industries.”

“What struck me is that while we’re witnessing a moment and an opportunity,” she continued, “we’re also taking on a responsibility, all of us who witnessed that, who supported that, who thought it was the right step for the region. And I think that responsibility is to make this work, to realize this vision for peace in our region.”

Sarna shared with the webcast that he spent Rosh Hashanah in Abu Dhabi this year. He said he met Israelis who had already moved to the UAE in the weeks since the Abraham Accords were announced. And he believes the free movement between the countries will have a long-lasting effect.

“I think one unforeseen consequence of this is that a deeper engagement between Israelis and Emiratis will actually challenge, for many Israelis, their notion of what does it mean to be Arab,” Sarna concluded. “And I think that will very much have a bit of a moderating effect on the Israeli political spectrum.”

United Arab Emirates Ambassador to the United States Yousef Al Otaiba on Tuesday hailed the Trump administration for working to finalize a normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel, which he said came as a result of Emirati efforts to halt Israel’s planned annexation of parts of the West Bank.

During a Jewish Insider webcast alongside Israeli-American businessman Haim Saban — moderated by former White House deputy national security advisor Dina Powell McCormick — Al Otaiba described the behind-the-scenes efforts that culminated in the groundbreaking Abraham Accords.

One of the first steps in the process, Al Otaiba said, came when he asked Saban to help him publish an op-ed aimed at the Israeli public during the time that annexation was being considered. “Haim told me where it should be placed, when it should be placed and, the most important piece of advice on this was, you have to do it in Hebrew,” the ambassador said. “If you really want to speak to the Israelis, it has to be translated in Hebrew.”

“I remember a subsequent conversation with [Saban], asking, ‘Hey, do you think this article made an impact?’” Al Otaiba recalled. “He started laughing at me, like laughing loudly. He’s like, ‘You have no idea how much impact this article had.’ And it was shortly after the article we then started thinking of actual concrete ideas to avoid annexation.”

Al Otaiba said he remembered “having a really serious conversation with [White House Mideast peace envoy] Avi Berkowitz on July 2, right after he returned from Israel, and figuring out what we can do to prevent [annexation], how do we trade this? How do we give something better?”

The deal, which was formally signed earlier this month during a ceremony on the White House South Lawn, jump-started the normalization of relations between the two countries in exchange for Israel’s commitment to shelve a planned annexation of West Bank territory.

The panelists noted that while the threat of annexation may have brought the sides to the negotiating table, there was little doubt that the larger threat posed by Iran was also a driving force. “There is no question that when you have a common enemy that is, basically, a cancer in the region, you unite forces against that enemy,” remarked Saban, who explained that “people have realized that there is much more upside, aligning with Israel, and forming a front against Iran.”

Both Saban and Al Otaiba credited U.S. leadership for helping to manage the negotiation process and deliver on the agreements. “I think the United States government came through every single time,” Al Otaiba said. “And that’s the reason we had the signing ceremony two weeks ago at the White House.”

The Emirati ambassador lauded Berkowitz, Jared Kushner and Brig. Gen. Miguel Correa for their efforts. “I spoke and talked to them and met with them, probably more in that four weeks than I did with anybody else, including my own family. If it wasn’t for them, I’m not sure this deal would be done,” Al Otaiba said, adding: “for anything like this to happen, it takes an incredible amount of trust.”

Saban, a longtime donor to Democratic candidates and causes, including the presidential campaign of former Vice President Joe Biden, also praised Kushner, Al Otaiba, UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah Bin Zayed, Emirati Crown Prince Mohamed Bin Zayed and Mossad director Yossi Cohen for paving the way for the deal. The Israeli-American businessman called the agreement “game-changing,” explaining: “There was no precedent for public commitment to normalization… Israelis would give their right arm to have peace with all its Arab neighbors.”

Al Otaiba echoed a similar interest in bilateral peace on the Emirati side, telling the webcast: “People always think we do not pay attention to public opinion inside the Emirates because we’re not a democracy. And it’s actually quite the opposite. Because we’re not a democracy, we have to be very in tune with what our people want, and what the streets feel. And people really wanted this. This is not something that we are forcing against the popular will of the parties that live in the country. There is a genuine energy, that people are excited about this.”

The three participants also sought to emphasize the economic benefits of the recent agreement.

Powell McCormick, who serves on Goldman Sachs’s management committee, noted that “we’re already having clients call us and ask about investment opportunities.”

Al Otaiba said he thinks “people forget about the immediate benefits that we’re going to have once you have direct commercial flights and tourism, about trade, investment, research, development, COVID research.” The ambassador added: “It is not a coincidence that when Jared Kushner came from Tel Aviv to Abu Dhabi on that historic flight, the first set of MOUs that we submitted to the United States to get done were on consular affairs, civil aviation, trade, prevention of double taxation, protection of investments — what we feel is the foundation, the infrastructure for any healthy relationship, so we can have mutual wins, so you can have trade investment R&D.”

Saban said at least five Israeli entrepreneurs have reached out to him with ideas to invest in the UAE. “Even my chief investment officer and the head of my VC division, they came to me and they said, ‘We have an idea that we can do with the Emiratis.’”

Al Otaiba noted how much has already occurred in just the few weeks since the accord was announced.

“We’ve already seen MOUs on AI, on COVID research, on health care and just today, a very prominent soccer club in Dubai bought an Israeli soccer player,” he noted. “Once an Emirati investor feels that he can invest in Israel safely, and an Israeli investor feels that he can invest in the UAE safely and not get taxed twice… I think the stars are the limit.”

A resolution introduced on Tuesday by Rep. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) criticizes the Palestinian Authority for payments to terrorists and honors a woman from his district killed in a suicide bombing.

“I think you need to keep a spotlight on this until the Palestinian Authority comes out and renounces martyr payments to terrorists,” Gottheimer told Jewish Insider. “And I just don’t understand why that hasn’t happened. And we need to keep the pressure on to get them to do that.”

Sara Duker, 22, of Teaneck, N.J., was killed in a bus bombing in Jerusalem on February 25, 1996, which also took the lives of 25 other people. Two other Americans were also killed in the attack, and are referenced in the bill, which is cosponsored by Reps. Tom Reed (R-NY) and Max Rose (D-NY).

Gottheimer linked the bill to this week’s divestment referendum at Columbia University. Duker graduated from Barnard College the year before her death.

“The BDS movement, which many, like me, believe is antisemitic, are trying to praise and trying to make it as if the Palestinian Authority is being attacked,” he said. “But actually the Palestinian Authority is the one that continues, as we see in this case, to reward terrorists with payments.”

Gottheimer said he sees a “double standard” at play in this incident and other scenarios involving the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which he said turns “a complete blind eye on rewarding terrorists.”

“The reality is there’s still so much that we must stand up to when it comes to the [Palestinian Authority],” he continued, “and this is just an example of that.”

The resolution calls on the international community to condemn Palestinian Authority payments to terrorists and reaffirms the penalties for such activity as laid out in the Taylor Force Act.

“I think you’ve got to continue to shine a spotlight on the behavior,” Gottheimer said. “And the fact that this individual, this terrorist who killed Sarah Duker — the family’s still getting money every single month while in jail because of the pay schedule. I don’t think people realize that.”

In a new book looking back at his time in the military and in several presidential administrations, former national security advisor H.R. McMaster expounds on what he thought were “fundamental flaws” in the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran and why he tried to persuade President Donald Trump not to withdraw from the deal. 

In Battlegrounds: The Fight to Defend the Free World, released on Tuesday, McMaster called the original JCPOA negotiated by former President Barack Obama “an extreme case of strategic narcissism based on wishful thinking” that led to “self-delusion and, ultimately the deception of the American people.” 

Yet, when Trump wanted to make good on his campaign promise to leave the deal, McMaster made clear his opposition to withdrawing from the accord. In the book, McMaster explains that he wanted the U.S. to maintain leverage to punish Iran for its behavior on matters unrelated to the Iranian nuclear program and to get the parties in the agreement to fix the deal’s flaws. McMaster said he also wanted to avoid giving Tehran the opportunity to portray itself as a victim. But as he attempted to work on a comprehensive Iran strategy, McMaster wrote, Trump grew “impatient.” 

McMaster details how he intervened in former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s efforts to certify the deal in April 2017, and how he successfully lobbied the president to recertify the agreement over the next two 90-day deadlines as required under the 2015 Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act. “We had created a window of opportunity for our allies to demonstrate the viability of staying in the deal while imposing costs on Iran,” McMaster writes. “That window closed soon after I departed the White House.” A month after McMaster left the administration, Trump announced the U.S. withdrawal from the deal. 

The former national security official accuses the Obama administration of ignoring Iran’s behavior in the region and avoiding confrontation in an effort to preserve the accord. According to McMaster, Obama officials “focused on selling the deal rather than subjecting it to scrutiny” by using a “red herring” talking point — the Iraq War — to pose “the false dilemma” of either supporting the deal or going to war with Iran. 

McMaster also offers his view on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the Trump peace plan announced in early 2020. Trump’s moves on Israel, he writes, “communicated support for Israel, but also removed incentives that might have been crucial in a future agreement.” While he described the rollout of the peace plan as “dead on arrival” due to lack of participation from Palestinian leaders, McMaster posits that the plan itself may at some point “help resurrect the possibility of a two-state solution.” 

The book itself is not a tell-all on the Trump administration. McMaster does not write about being excluded from Trump’s meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the president’s trip to Israel, or his disputes with Trump and Jared Kushner. “This is not the book that most people wanted me to write… a tell-all about my experience in the White House to confirm their opinions of Donald Trump,” McMaster writes in his preface. “Although writing such a book might be lucrative, I did not believe that it would be useful or satisfactory for most readers.”

McMaster accuses the Russians and the alt-right movement of leading a campaign against him, under the hashtag #FireMcMaster, because they viewed him as a threat to their agenda of undermining America’s national security. McMaster writes that the attacks against him were “often inconsistent” in nature. “For example, one caricature on social media portrayed me as a puppet of billionaire George Soros and the Rothschild family (both of whom were frequent targets of anti-Semitic conspiracy theories), while articles in the pseudo-media charged me and others on the NSC staff as being ‘anti-Israel’ and soft on Iran,” McMaster recalls.

Michael Anton, a former senior National Security Council official in the Trump administration, is “amazed” by what the administration has achieved in the president’s first term — but warns in a new book that the U.S. could careen into disaster if Donald Trump loses his reelection bid in November.

In his new book, The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return, which hit bookshelves last week, Anton argues that this situation has not fundamentally changed — America remains on the brink, and a Trump reelection is the only way to preserve the American way of life.

Although Anton served as the spokesman for Trump’s National Security Council, and left the administration just before former National Security Advisor John Bolton took office, foreign policy is not Anton’s top focus in the book.

However, he writes that the current international world order, with America at its helm, is “a voluntary alliance of neoliberal elites across nations to work together in their own interests.”

According to Anton, Trump’s foreign policy doctrine seeks to fight back against the current structure by rolling back decades of steadily expanding American foreign policy, which dictated that America needed to maintain a presence in every corner of the world.

Trump’s foreign policy has a more narrow focus, centered on defending national security, maintaining America’s economic and trading competitiveness, and maintaining America’s alliance structure, Anton continued.

“It’s a more focused doctrine than what Trumpism replaced. It’s seeing American interest through a more narrow lens,” he told Jewish Insider. “Once you define everything as a priority, nothing is a priority. Once you define everything as an interest, it means nothing is an interest.”

Anton explained that the Trump administration’s approach to the U.S.-Israel relationship fits within such a mold in part because of Israel’s critical position in the U.S.’s security strategy.

“But so many foreign relationships can’t be reduced to dollars and cents,” he added. “America has allies out of shared conviction and shared interests… Some of these alliances that you have are simply because of a natural affinity to democracies that share common values, and so on and so forth, and relationships built up over decades. And you don’t necessarily ask the question, ‘Hey, what am I getting out of this today?’ It’s not a calculation at every step of the way in foreign policy.”

Anton characterized the recent normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates as one of a litany of major Trump administration foreign policy accomplishments.

He declined to say whether this move was in the works during his tenure in the White House, but indicated that it fits within the Trump administration’s broader Middle East strategy.

“We knew going in that a big part of Middle East diplomacy would have to be as much normalization as possible between Israel and other states,” Anton said. “We knew also that some of that normalization would take place below the radar. It wouldn’t be formal or it would take a while for it to become formal. But we certainly were seeking to achieve as much formal normalization as possible.”

Anton also boasted that the Trump administration had helped improve the Israeli-Saudi relationship.

“The fact that relations get better and a lot of quiet and not particularly visible cooperation takes place is also an accomplishment, even if you don’t see it and even if there’s no moment where people sit down and shake hands and sign something,” he said, adding that the Trump administration sees improving relationships between Israel and Arab states as a critical step in facilitating an Israeli-Palestinian peace process. 

Anton acknowledged that the Trump administration’s peace proposal is not, and cannot be, a final peace deal, but laid blame on the Palestinians for the lack of progress — criticizing Palestinian leaders for walking away from the negotiating table after the U.S. moved its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

“What I had hoped for at the time was that it was a demonstration of displeasure… that would last a finite amount of time… and then the Palestinians would come back knowing that that recognition really didn’t change anything,” he said. “I don’t think that they’re helping themselves by staying away and not talking. I don’t see what that gains them.” 

Anton said he does not believe there is anything specific the U.S. can do to incentivize the Palestinians to return to the table, but it can push Arab states to encourage the Palestinians to reengage in negotiations.

In a second term, Anton predicted that Trump would continue to work toward a Middle East peace deal — although he acknowledged that is contingent on the Palestinians returning to the negotiating table. Anton also suggested that the administration would continue to pursue talks with North Korea and focus on the U.S.-China relationship.

Anton’s broader argument in The Stakes — that America is on the brink — echoes his 2016 essay, “The Flight 93 Election,” which made waves in political and media spheres. In it, he argued that a Hillary Clinton victory would, essentially, mark the end of America as it has existed, and that a Trump victory was the only possibility to stave off a calamity.

Anton said that, despite four years of a Trump presidency, the U.S. remains in a precipitous situation because of the influence of the federal bureaucracy and other institutional powers like the media, academia and the corporate world. “Every other power center in the country is held by people who oppose the president’s agenda,” he said

And America will find itself on the brink of disaster every four years, Anton continued, “until and unless we can get back to something like a real politics of give and take in this country.”

Former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy warned Israeli leaders not to ignore the objections to West Bank annexation plans raised by nearly 150 Democratic senators and members of Congress.

Flournoy, speaking during a panel discussion on the topic hosted by Israel Policy Forum, suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is “playing with fire, not only in terms of fracturing the region and their relationships with Israel, but also fracturing American political support, which would be terrible and disastrous.” 

Flournoy — who served in the Obama administration from 2009-2012 —said she worries that if Israel moves ahead with annexation in the coming weeks, some Democratic lawmakers  may try to hold up the implementation of the 2016 Memorandum of Understanding between the U.S. and Israel and “decide to hold hostage our security assistance to Israel as a way of protesting Israel’s policies” in the West Bank.

“That may not be the most likely outcome, but it’s not unlikely either,” she suggested. Such attempts, Flournoy cautioned, would undermine long-standing bipartisan support “for critical pillars” of the security relationship with Israel. “That’s what really worries me,” she added.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro said on the webcast that “while there are voices in both parties that are sounding different notes, I still think there’s a large number of Republicans, as well as Democrats, who adhere to [the] principles that can help reestablish broad bipartisan consensus” on Israel and peace in the Middle East. “I am hopeful that is the case,” Shapiro added, “which gives us a lot to work with if there’s a new administration.”