Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on Wednesday that the “case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago,” adding that he now backs such efforts.

“The thing that we were grappling with throughout all of 2024, which is not the case today, is that Israel was under attack from multiple fronts,” Sullivan, who served under President Joe Biden, told The Bulwark’s Tim Miller. “It was under attack from Hezbollah, from the Houthis, from Syria, from Iraq, obviously from Hamas and from Iran itself. So the idea of saying, ‘Israel, we’re not going to give you a whole set of military tools’ in that context was challenging.”

“The case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago,” Sullivan added. “One, they don’t face the same regional threats. Two, there was a ceasefire hostage deal in place and the ability to have negotiations, and it was Israel who just walked away from it without negotiating seriously. Three, there is a full-blown famine in Gaza. And four, there are no more serious military objectives to achieve. It’s just bombing the rubble into rubble.”

Sullivan, who was tapped as the inaugural Kissinger Professor of the Practice of Statecraft and World Order at the Harvard Kennedy School, suggested that the political makeup of the Israeli government could affect the future of the U.S.-Israel relationship.

“If nothing changes in their government — if it continues to be a far-right government that pursues the same policies — then it won’t be the Israel we’ve known,” Sullivan said. “I think a lot of Israelis would say they wouldn’t recognize that Israel. And obviously, that should have an impact on the relationship.”

ASPEN, Colo. — Former National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan suggested at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday that the U.S. strikes on Iran had not been necessary and didn’t accomplish the fundamental goal of permanently stopping Iran’s nuclear program.

Asked whether he wished that President Joe Biden had carried through with plans to strike Iran before he left office, Sullivan argued that the situation at the time had been ripe for a diplomatic solution.

“During the transition, we handed off to the Trump administration. The situation in which Iran was at its weakest point since 1979,” Sullivan said. “Hezbollah had been functionally defeated. Assad had fallen. Its air defenses had been destroyed, and twice, Iran had tried to hit Israel with large salvos and missiles, and twice, with American help ordered by President Biden, Israel defeated those attacks. So Iran was weak and vulnerable.”

“In my view, a weak and vulnerable Iran was susceptible to a very good deal that would lock Iran’s program in a box for decades, not just set it back for a couple of years,” Sullivan continued.

He said that, after the strikes, a very similar deal remains necessary, “which is what I think President Trump will pursue, because the only way to permanently end Iran’s nuclear threat, I think, is through diplomacy.”

Sullivan’s perspective separates him from some Senate Democrats who spoke earlier in the day at Aspen, who described the strikes as successful even as they criticized the administration’s failure to coordinate with Congress and also emphasized that negotiations must follow.