At the Semafor World Economy summit in Washington on Wednesday, Chuck Robbins, CEO of the tech giant Cisco, spoke about his decision a decade ago to acquire Leaba Semiconductor, an Israeli company, before it had even developed a product. 

“Now we’re underpinning the GPU training models and running the enterprise AI stacks. And it turns out, it’s been brilliant,” Robbins said.

“You never know how important a decision is when you make it, and if you have conviction, and your team has conviction, even with something we have invested in for probably five years before we begin to see any ROI, you just gotta stay with it,” Robbins added.

Congressional lawmakers met Wednesday with Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman, a day after a summit between the Saudi leader and President Donald Trump at the White House, where the administration announced a slew of new military and civilian deals with Riyadh.

Sens. Jim Risch (R-ID) and Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the top lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, met separately with the crown prince midday Wednesday. Risch described the meeting to Jewish Insider as “very good.”

“We talked about the president’s 20-point plan for Gaza, obviously the normalization process with Israel and the things that are related to that — it was a very good meeting,” Risch said.

Bin Salman said publicly on Tuesday that he’s interested in joining the Abraham Accords but only after a clear pathway to a Palestinian state has been implemented.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) organized a separate meeting with Sens. Tim Sheehy (R-MT), Dick Durbin (D-IL), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Jim Banks (R-IN), James Lankford (R-OK), Katie Britt (R-AL), Tom Cotton (R-AR) and Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and Rep. French Hill (R-AR). Ernst, Lankford and Rosen co-chair the Abraham Accords Caucus.

“It was a great meeting, great discussion,” Banks said. “Our relationship has never been stronger. … His visit to the U.S. has been incredibly successful, not just in Washington but throughout the rest of the country. America is very pro-MBS and pro-Saudi Arabia, and the relationship is only going to grow further from here.”

He noted that his state’s national guard is a partner of the Saudi Arabian military, so the state has a special relationship with Riyadh.

“We discussed everything. MBS is focused on the future, artificial intelligence, data centers, the relationship with the United States, we talked about all of it,” Banks continued. “It was a candid discussion. I have a sense — I’m a young senator, he’s a young world leader — that he’s going to be around for a long time and our relationship’s only going to improve and grow from here.”

Sheehy said the meeting was “great.”

“They are our strongest ally — obviously besides Israel — in the region so we’ve got to stay close to them and make sure we’re aligned,” Sheehy said.

Lankford declined to delve into the specifics of what was discussed. Still, he described it as “positive” and “a good meeting.”

Rosen said, “Saudi Arabia plays a critical role with the US and other Middle Eastern partners to combat Iranian aggression in the region, and I believe Saudi-Israel normalization is key to long term peace in the region. I attended the meeting today to learn about the Saudi vision for a future Middle East and conditions for joining the Abraham Accords.”Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) said he asked bin Salman about a two-state solution.

“My question was direct—I believe in the two-state solution. I believe the only way to bring real peace to the Middle East is to give both the Palestinian and Israeli people a safe homeland. We need to work towards that goal,” Durbin said in a statement.

An individual familiar with the discussion described it as “a very cordial and productive discussion that included all different topics, including Israel and Hamas, how to work together to box out Iran, and economic development between our nations.”

But Rosen said she emerged with lingering questions about some of the deals announced this week.

“However, I still have questions about several of the White House announcements this week, including the sale of F-35s to the Kingdom and how we will maintain Israel’s QME and protect our own technology,” she said. “I urge the Administration to provide Congress with more specifics on all of these agreements as soon as possible.”

On the House side, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) and Reps. Rick Crawford (R-AR), Jim Himes (D-CT), Mike Rogers (R-AL), Adam Smith (D-WA), Tom Cole (R-OK), Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) and Brad Schneider (D-IL) reportedly participated in a separate meeting with bin Salman.

Rogers, the chair of the House Armed Services Committee, described bin Salman as “very impressive.” 

“He did a great job, he’s been a great ally in that region … he was very impressive today,” Rogers said.

He said that the issue of Saudi normalization with Israel was not discussed, and that the conversation focused more on “stabilizing the region from threats.”

Johnson, in a podcast interview with Katie Miller after the meeting, said that bin Salman was “very engaging” and praised his “sense of humor.”

“It was encouraging, we need that partnership between the two nations,” Johnson said

“He just wowed [the attendees],” Johnson said. “My Democrat colleagues were leaving and Greg Meeks … said, ‘He’s really good.’ And I said, ‘Yeah, he is’’

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) criticized Republicans who refuse to disavow prominent antisemites in the conservative movement as “cowards” after the Heritage Foundation and its president, Kevin Roberts, defended Tucker Carlson and his friendly interview with neo-Nazi influencer Nick Fuentes. 

Cruz warned during a half hour address at the opening of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual summit in Las Vegas on Thursday evening that young Christians were turning away from supporting Israel, something he argued was the result of pro-Israel Christians being maligned by leading voices in the America First movement. 

The Texas Republican senator did not mention the Heritage Foundation, Roberts, Carlson or Fuentes by name, though he accused anyone who uncritically promotes Adolf Hitler of being “complicit” in spreading virulent antisemitism.

Fuentes has praised Hitler on multiple occasions; in his statement, Roberts said he “disagree[s] with” some of Fuentes’ views, “but canceling him is not the answer.” 

“The last year, we’ve seen three prominent people on the right publicly muse, ‘Gosh, maybe Hitler’s not all that bad.’ No. He is the embodiment of evil, a grotesque bigot. And if you’re confused by that, you’re an imbecile,” Cruz said on Thursday. “Too many people are scared to confront them. I want to ask you, how many elected Republicans do you see standing up and calling this out? How many do you see willing to take on the voices in the anti-Israel right?”

“More than a few of my Republican officeholders are terrified of upsetting people with really big megaphones,” he explained.

Cruz warned that antisemitic ideas are spreading among young Americans through social media and argued that rising support for isolationism and the pro-Israel community’s failure to adequately explain the benefits of the U.S.-Israel relationship accounted for the broad ideological shifts on the issue — but he noted that there “is also a theological argument” being made on the Christian right against Jews. 

“We are seeing young Christians and young evangelicals turning against Israel, and they are being pitched lies,” Cruz said. “One particular lie is something called replacement theology, and replacement theology is a twisted view that the Jews are no longer God’s chosen people, that the promises in the Old Testament no longer apply and that Christians have replaced Jews. Now in my Bible, I believe every word of it is true, and I believe every promise that God made to the people of Israel remains a promise that is made to the chosen people.”

After noting that he was “proud to be a Christian Zionist,” Cruz noted Carlson’s recent comments expressing his disdain for people who identify as such while appearing to note his protected status in the Trump administration. Carlson attacked Cruz and other pro-Israel conservatives, including U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, by name in his podcast conversation with Fuentes, where Carlson claimed that those who identify as Christian Zionists have been infected by a “brain virus.”

“There are some people who are embraced at the highest level of government who said there is no one they hate more than Christian Zionists,” Cruz said. “Well, I’ll tell you what, there’s no one I hate more than communists and jihadists who want to murder us. Now is the time for choosing. Now is the time for courage.”

“If you sit there and nod adoringly while someone tells you that Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II, if you sit there and nod while someone says, ‘Well, there’s a very good argument that America should have intervened on behalf of Nazi Germany in World War II.’ If you sit there with someone who says Adolf Hitler was very, very cool and that their mission is to combat and defeat global Jewry, and you say nothing, then you are a coward, and you are complicit in that evil,” he added.

Omri Ceren, Cruz’s legislative director and longtime advisor, criticized Heritage directly in a post on X on Friday morning, writing that: “I mean, if Republican Jews don’t have a place at @Heritage that’s a choice its current leadership is institutionally empowered to make, but it sits uncomfortably with the organization’s history.”

Cruz’s comments were met with praise from Deborah Lipstadt, the State Department’s special antisemitism envoy during the Biden administration, who posted a message on X commending the Texas Republican.

President Donald Trump blasted Israel on Tuesday morning after it said it would respond to Iranian violations of the ceasefire, telling reporters, “I’m not happy with Iran, but I’m really not happy with Israel.”

“We have two countries that have been fighting for so long and so hard that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing,” he continued, speaking to reporters at Joint Base Andrews before taking off to attend the NATO summit at The Hague, Netherlands. 

The IDF intercepted two missiles from Iran at about 10:30 a.m. Israel time, just hours after the ceasefire announced by Trump on Monday night came into effect. Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz said he “instructed the IDF to respond forcefully to the violation of the ceasefire by Iran with powerful strikes against regime targets in the heart of Tehran.”

Asked about Iran’s violation of the ceasefire, Trump said, “They violated it but Israel violated it, too. Israel, as soon as we made the deal, came out and they dropped a load of bombs the likes of which I’ve never seen before. … I’m not happy with Iran, either, but I’m really not happy if Israel is going out this morning because of one rocket that didn’t land, that was shot perhaps by mistake, that didn’t land. I’m not happy about that.”

“These guys gotta calm down, it’s ridiculous,” he added later.

The Prime Minister’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday, “The ceasefire was set for 7 a.m. At 3 a.m., Israel forcefully struck at the heart of Tehran, damaging regime targets and eliminating hundreds of Basij militants and Iranian security forces. Shortly before the ceasefire went into effect, Iran sent a barrage of missiles, one of which took the lives of four of our civilians in Beersheba. At 7:00 the ceasefire went into effect. At 7:06 Iran sent one missile to Israeli territory and at 10:25, two additional missiles. The missiles were intercepted or fell in open areas with none injured and no damage.”

Shortly after he made his comments, Trump posted to Truth Social, “ISRAEL. DO NOT DROP THOSE BOMBS. IF YOU DO IT IS A MAJOR VIOLATION. BRING YOUR PILOTS HOME, NOW!”

Jerusalem sought clarifications from the Trump administration after his Truth Social post, an Israeli official told Jewish Insider, as the president had previously reassured Israel it could respond to Iranian violations of the ceasefire.

A senior Israeli official told Axios’ Barak Ravid that Trump called Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday and told him not to respond to Iran. Netanyahu reportedly told the president he could not cancel the strike and needed to give some kind of response to Iran’s violation of the ceasefire, and it was ultimately decided Israel would significantly scale back its attack and strike only one target. 

The PMO confirmed the Israeli Air Force destroyed a radar system near Tehran as its response.

“Following a conversation between President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu,” the PMO continued, “Israel avoided conducting further strikes. In their conversation, President Trump expressed his great appreciation for Israel, which reached all of its goals in the war. The president also expressed his confidence in the stability of the ceasefire.”

After the conversation, Trump wrote on Truth Social, “ISRAEL is not going to attack Iran. All planes will turn around and head home, while doing a friendly ‘Plane Wave’ to Iran. Nobody will be hurt, the Ceasefire is in effect!” and then wrote, “IRAN WILL NEVER REBUILD THEIR NUCLEAR FACILITIES!”

Jewish Insider’s senior political correspondent Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.