Susan Rice, who served as national security advisor during the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, sharply criticized President Donald Trump’s decision to strike Tehran’s nuclear program while defending the 2015 agreement during a panel discussion on Monday at the Aspen Institute’s Ideas Festival.

Rice, who was on stage with former Trump administration National Security Advisor John Bolton and former CIA director David Petraeus, disagreed with her two colleagues that Trump’s Iran strikes were largely a success. 

“I think the resort to military action when diplomacy had not been exhausted was a strategic mistake,” Rice said. “And the reality is, and we’re back to this point today, only diplomacy and a negotiated settlement can ensure the sustainable and verifiable dismantling of Iran’s nuclear program. You need inspectors on the ground. You need verifiable constraints that are very significant, and you don’t achieve that by ripping up the 2015 nuclear agreement and replacing it with nothing.”

Rice joins a chorus of former Obama and Biden administration officials who have criticized Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities, despite many experts concluding the damage to the program was significant. IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, for instance, said that “based on the assessments of senior officers in IDF Intelligence, the damage to [Iran’s] nuclear program is … systemic … severe, broad and deep, and pushed back by years.”

Last week, former Secretary of State Tony Blinken wrote an op-ed in The New York Times: “The strike on three of Iran’s nuclear facilities by the United States was unwise and unnecessary. Now that it’s done, I very much hope it succeeded.”

At the Aspen Ideas Festival last week, former Biden administration National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan told moderator Fareed Zakaria: “We still need a deal because Iran still has, it appears, stockpiles of enriched uranium, still has centrifuge capacity, even if the installed centrifuge capacity has been destroyed or damaged or who knows what, and still has know-how and therefore still has the possibility of reconstituting its program.”

Bolton, on the same panel as Rice, argued that the time was ripe for military action against Iran.

“I think the regime is weaker than at any point since the 1979 revolution,” Bolton said. “But I think we will never have an opportunity this good to remove not just the nuclear program but the Iranian support for terrorism, which dates back to 1979 when they seized our embassy employees and it went downhill from there.”

Bolton outlined several ways in which Iranians are dissatisfied with the regime, including economic stagnation and state of women’s rights in the country. 

“The answer is regime change. But in the meantime, we want to make sure that there aren’t any even possible successful efforts by Iran to do something with what they have,” Bolton said.

Turning to Israel’s war in Gaza, all members of the panel argued that Israel needed to shift its strategy to successfully eliminate Hamas. Bolton said that, despite successfully degrading the terror group’s organizational structure, Israel had not successfully fulfilled all of its war goals, which include eliminating Hamas and securing the release of all the hostages.

Bolton argued that an additional objective of the war should be to “provide a better future for the Palestinians without Hamas in their lives. The only way you can achieve all four of these is … by going in and conducting a comprehensive civil military counterinsurgency campaign. You clear every building floor room and block all the tunnel entrances, let the people that belong there back in with biometric ID cards, and then you have an entry control point to the rest of Gaza. With security, anything is possible.”

President Donald Trump announced Friday afternoon that he was suspending the possibility of sanctions relief efforts with Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei defiantly proclaimed victory over the U.S. and Israel in a videotaped message. 

“During the last few days, I was working on the possible removal of sanctions, and other things, which would have given a much better chance to Iran at a full, fast, and complete recovery – The sanctions are BITING! But no, instead I get [sic] hit with a statement of anger, hatred, and disgust, and immediately dropped all work on sanction relief, and more,” Trump said in the Truth Social post.

Previously, Trump had announced the potential for sanctions relief towards Iran during a press conference at the NATO Summit on Wednesday as part of a desire to help them recover from the war in exchange for other concessions. Later that day, Witkoff confirmed the administration had begun rolling back sanctions, although an administration official denied there was a change in policy.

In addition to ending any sanctions relief efforts, Trump said in a White House press conference that he would require Iran to allow entry for international inspectors to ensure the regime doesn’t rebuild its nuclear program.

The pivot comes as Israel Defense Minister Israel Katz announced that Israel will adopt the “Lebanon model” against Iran. The plan calls for continuing strikes against military targets to further degrade Iran’s military capabilities and cement the progress made during this month’s war. 

A new super PAC launched by aides to President Donald Trump aimed at unseating Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) placed its first ads in a $1 million blitz in Kentucky targeting the isolationist lawmaker for his refusal to support key parts of the president’s agenda, Jewish Insider has learned.

The Kentucky MAGA PAC was launched earlier this month by Chris LaCivita, who co-managed Trump’s 2024 campaign, and Tony Fabrizio, the president’s pollster, with the goal of defeating Massie in the GOP primary for his House seat next May. LaCivita told Axios at the time that the PAC would spend “whatever it takes” to defeat the Kentucky lawmaker.

Trump and those in his orbit have been discussing the idea of primarying Massie for months, as the congressman criticized the president’s reconciliation package and his approach to foreign policy. Most recently, Massie decried Trump’s decision to strike Iran’s nuclear facilities as part of Israel’s military operation to destroy the regime’s nuclear program as unconstitutional. 

The ad, which opens with the question, “What happened to Thomas Massie?” criticizes Massie for voting against Trump-backed legislation on sex reassignment surgery for minors, tax cuts, border security funding and his opposition to the Iran strikes.

“After Trump obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program, Massie sided with Democrats and the Ayatollah,” the ad’s narrator intones. “Let’s fire Thomas Massie.”

The ad superimposes Massie’s face and his tweet calling the strikes unconstitutional next to pictures of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Iranian supreme leader, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY).

Massie is among the most outspoken Republican critics of the U.S.-Israel relationship in the House, and consistently opposes U.S. aid to Israel and nearly all measures to combat antisemitism.

He’s also been repeatedly condemned by colleagues on both sides of the aisle and Jewish leaders in his home state for antisemitism, often over comments about AIPAC and other pro-Israel advocates.

Thus far, Massie does not appear to have any serious primary challengers. 

“Massie sided with Democrats and the Ayatollah.”

President Trump’s anti-Thomas Massie SuperPAC is out with its first ad against the Kentucky Congressman. pic.twitter.com/OwpfP3P6ql

— Yashar Ali 🐘 (@yashar) June 26, 2025

The Republican Jewish Coalition said earlier this year it would join Trump in backing a primary challenger to Massie. “The RJC is proud to join with President Trump to defeat Massie,” the group’s spokesperson, Sam Markstein, said Thursday, when asked about the new PAC.

Past primary attempts against Massie — a Trump antagonist dating back to his first term — have fallen short.

Though it did not make a direct attempt to challenge him in his primary race last year, where he faced no serious competition, the AIPAC-affiliated United Democracy Project super PAC spent several hundred thousand dollars on ads criticizing Massie.

Massie was seen as a potential Senate candidate to run for Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-KY) seat, but hasn’t yet announced any plans to run. He’s also been floated as a Kentucky gubernatorial candidate.

The RJC pledged it would spend an “unlimited” budget to oppose a potential Massie Senate run. 

President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agreed to terms to end the war in Gaza and advance other shared interests in a telephone call held shortly after the U.S. struck nuclear sites in Iran earlier this week, according to a new report by Israel Hayom. 

A source familiar with the conversation told the right-leaning Israeli daily that Trump and Netanyahu were joined on the call by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs Ron Dermer, where the four determined that Israel would end the war in Gaza within two weeks. 

This process would include the exiling of what remains of Hamas’ leadership from Gaza, voluntary emigration for Gazans who elect to leave the territory — though which countries would host them was not specified in the report — and the release of the 50 hostages remaining in Gaza, less than half of whom are thought to be alive. 

Under the terms of the agreement, the UAE and Egypt, along with two other Arab countries, would jointly govern the Gaza Strip after Hamas’ removal.

In addition, the Abraham Accords would be expanded to include Syria and Saudi Arabia, as well as additional Arab and Muslim states.

The plan would also see U.S. recognition of “limited” Israeli sovereignty in the West Bank, while Israel would express support for a future two-state solution premised on reforms within the Palestinian Authority. 

Shortly after the publication of the Israel Hayom report, Netanyahu released a statement saying, “We fought valiantly against Iran — and achieved a great victory. This victory opens up an opportunity for a dramatic expansion of the peace agreements. We are working hard on this.”

“Along with the release of our hostages and the defeat of Hamas, there is a window of opportunity here that must not be missed,” Netanyahu added. “Not even a single day must be wasted.”

The following morning, however, Netanyahu’s office released a new statement saying, “The conversation described in the ‘Israel Today’ report did not happen. The diplomatic proposal described in the article was not presented to Israel and Israel obviously did not agree to it.”

The feasibility of this plan remains in question. The Israeli government has been firm in its opposition to a two-state solution and public opposition to a Palestinian state grew after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks. In April, as French President Emmanuel Macron moved to recognize a Palestinian state, Netanyahu “expressed fierce opposition” to the move in a phone call with Macron and conveyed to him that “a Palestinian state established a few minutes away from Israeli cities would become an Iranian stronghold of terrorism; that the vast majority of the Israeli public opposes that categorically — and that this has been the PM’s consistent and longstanding policy,” according to a readout from the Prime Minister’s Office.

Even the potential acceptance of a future Palestinian state could put Netanyahu’s governing coalition at risk, with not only the parties led by Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar adamantly opposing one, but most Likud lawmakers, as well.

U.S. lawmakers told Jewish Insider last week after a trip to the region that the normalization process between Saudi Arabia and Israel had been dealt setbacks by and since Oct. 7 and that the Saudis were demanding concrete progress toward a two-state solution before moving forward with normalization. 

Egypt and Saudi Arabia in March condemned moves by the Israeli government to encourage migration from Gaza. The Arab League, meeting earlier that month, also adopted a plan for Gaza’s reconstruction put forward by Egypt where a committee of Gazan professionals would manage the Strip for a period of time until the Palestinian Authority would take over its governance.

JI’s Tamara Zieve contributed to this report.