While the last two months have been an exercise in diplomacy for Trump administration officials, who have crisscrossed the Middle East and Europe in an attempt to negotiate with Iran over its nuclear program, the last 24 hours have seen a sharp pivot from President Donald Trump to a more hard-line approach to Tehran.

“UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER,” the president posted on his Truth Social site on Tuesday afternoon, understood to be a message to Iran after more than five days of Israeli attacks meant to degrade Tehran’s military and nuclear infrastructure. Iranian reprisals have paralyzed Israel, but resulted in damage that has fallen far short of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s threats. Khamenei responded on Wednesday that “the Iranian nation will not surrender.”

The president’s post, made following his early departure from the G7 summit in Alberta, Canada, but before his Situation Room sit-down with senior advisors, signaled Trump’s new approach to the regional conflict.

Trump’s latest comments underscore his shift away from the isolationist elements of the GOP that have dominated his administration since a purge of more traditional foreign policy-minded Republicans, including former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz. As The New York Times’ Ross Douthat wrote on Tuesday, Trump’s isolationist supporters “imagined that personnel was policy, that the realists and would-be restrainers in Trump’s orbit would have a decisive influence. That was clearly a mistake, and the lesson here is that Trump decides and no one else.”

As the president’s position further crystalized — also Tuesday, he called Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei an “easy target,” but said the U.S. would not assassinate him, “at least not for now” — his post-G7 rhetoric trickled down to his inner circle.

Trump “may decide he needs to take further action to end Iranian enrichment,” Vice President JD Vance posted on X yesterday. “That decision ultimately belongs to the president. And of course, people are right to be worried about foreign entanglement after the last 25 years of idiotic foreign policy. But I believe the president has earned some trust on this issue. … Whatever he does, that is his focus.”

It’s a notable shift from Vance, too, who has been one of the most prominent opponents of preemptive military action in the Middle East. (Vance opposed U.S. strikes on Houthi targets in Yemen earlier this year.)

Journalist Eli Lake noted on Tuesday that Trump’s “inner circle deliberating on Iran policy is very small and has been fairly tight-lipped,” adding that those advising him on Iran include Vance, Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and CIA Director John Ratcliffe. Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Lake said, is “occasionally” part of the group, but was absent from recent Camp David conversations about Israel and Iran.

On Capitol Hill, while Republicans appear publicly split on the level of involvement that the U.S. should have in the conflict — from working with Israel to destroy the Fordow nuclear facility to forcing Iran’s hand in diplomatic talks — JI’s conversations with legislators indicate a different approach behind the scenes. One senior Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss internal conference dynamics estimated that nearly the entire GOP conference is privately united on the issue of the U.S. supporting Israel in bombing the Fordow facility if Israel needs such support. Read more from JI’s Emily Jacobs and Marc Rod here.

“I think the president has struck the right position,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) told JI earlier this week, “which is supportive of Israel’s right of self-defense, which is what this really is, and supporting them publicly while they defend themselves. I think that’s the right position to stick on.” Read more of Hawley’s comments here.

Trump has “handled this situation very deftly,” Hawley added. “I think his message has been pretty clear, which is that Iran is not going to get a nuke. So they can either surrender their nuclear program peaceably, and he’s willing to [have] the United States facilitate that, or the Israelis are going to blow their program to smithereens. Right now they’re choosing the smithereens route.”

Senate Republicans are, at least publicly, showing some signs of division on the possibility of a U.S. strike to eliminate the deeply entrenched Iranian nuclear facility at Fordow, as the Trump administration appears to be increasingly discussing the prospect.

President Donald Trump held a Situation Room meeting with his national security team on Tuesday after publicly suggesting that the U.S. might join Israel’s operations in Iran. Israel is believed to need U.S. assistance to destroy Fordow, and officials have said their operations will not end without hitting the site.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), asked by reporters about striking the nuclear site, reiterated what he told Jewish Insider a day prior. “How can you be successful without taking out Fordow?”

A senior Republican senator who requested anonymity to discuss internal conference dynamics, estimated that a vast majority of the conference, around 90% of Senate Republicans, are at least privately united on the issue of the U.S. supporting Israel in bombing the Fordow facility if Israel needs such support. 

Other Senate Republicans with whom JI spoke on Tuesday did not fully echo that view.

Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) said he’d want the U.S. to get involved directly in Israel’s campaign if the U.S. believes there is an imminent threat to the U.S., or if Israel is not able to fully destroy Iran’s nuclear program on its own.

“If we have intelligence saying that they were a true threat and that they’re going to go after us, then I want to be proactive not reactive,” Mullin said. “And if for some reason Israel can’t finish the job, President Trump has made this point very clear, in no way are we going to allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. So if for some reason the job can’t be finished, then that’s the time for us to have to go finish it.”

Experts largely believe that Fordow will be able to continue operating and Iran’s nuclear program will survive if the U.S. does not join Israel’s strikes on Iran.

Asked about striking Fordow, Sen. Ted Budd (R-NC) said, “I think we need to make sure we force Iran to the table and that we’re strong,” adding that diplomacy should be “the primary effort and we do it through being strong.”

Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said that Fordow needs to be eliminated but warned that a strike on the site would leave the nuclear materials there buried.

“I’m a little confused on all the conversation about dropping a bunker buster on a mountain that’s filled with enriched uranium, and how that solves the problem,” Lankford said. “If you’re going to try to get enriched uranium out of the country, dropping a big bunker buster on it may disable the centrifuges in [Fordow], but you still have 900 pounds of enriched uranium sitting there.”

He also said that the U.S. may not be able strike Iran before Iran attacks U.S. personnel, unless Trump can present to Congress and the American people evidence of a direct threat toward the United States, as was the case in the 2020 strike that killed Quds Force head Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Meanwhile, multiple Senate Democrats who spoke to JI on Tuesday said they haven’t yet made up their minds about two separate pieces of legislation, led by Sens. Tim Kaine (D-VA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), which aim to block U.S. involvement in Iran without direct congressional approval. None said affirmatively that they plan to join either effort.

Sanders’ bill was introduced with seven Democratic co-sponsors. Kaine’s resolution is likely to come up for a vote under special procedures in the coming weeks.

Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), who led legislation in the House in 2020 to block U.S. attacks against Iran in the wake of the killing of Soleimani, said she hasn’t yet decided whether she’ll support the new legislation.

“We’re just looking at it pretty closely now,” Slotkin said, noting her past work on the issue.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) said he needed to look at Kaine’s resolution more closely, but said that from his understanding, “it seems to articulate what is our constitutional responsibility, and in no way constrains the president from any legitimate exercise of war powers and foreign policy.”

Asked about striking Fordow, Blumenthal added that Israel “seems to be prevailing tactically, and I believe it has the right to defend itself against the existential menace of a nuclear armed [Iran],” which would also be “a threat to the entire world, including the United States.”

“I support our providing the means for Israel to defend itself against Iran’s retaliation,” he continued. “I’m concerned about U.S. personnel in the region, and I hope that a wider conflict can be avoided.”

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said she hasn’t yet had the opportunity to review the legislation.

Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said that he was planning to review the legislation on Tuesday evening.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), an isolationist-leaning Republican who supported a similar effort in 2020, said “you’ll know soon” if he’ll support the new legislation. He has argued that the administration would need congressional approval for operations against Iran barring an imminent threat.

An effort in the House led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) that mirrors Kaine’s resolution to block U.S. military action against Iran without congressional authorization, on which the sponsors could force a vote, is picking up support from a group of progressive Democrats.

That resolution is co-sponsored by an expanding group of House progressives, including Reps. Ro Khanna (D-CA), Don Beyer (D-VA), Greg Casar (D-TX), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Nydia Velázquez (D-NY), Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Chuy Garcia (D-IL), Delia Ramirez (D-IL), Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), Summer Lee (D-PA), Jim McGovern (D-MA), Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Mark Pocan (D-WI), Paul Tonko (D-NY), Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), Becca Balint (D-VT) and Val Hoyle (D-OR).

A bipartisan group of nine House members wrote to the Trump administration on Friday emphasizing — as the administration continues to push for a nuclear deal — that U.S. negotiators must not allow Iran to maintain any nuclear enrichment capacity if a deal is reached. 

An early draft of the letter circulated by Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-NJ) and Don Bacon (R-NE) prior to Israel’s strikes on Iran on Friday forcefully condemned the administration over reports that it had proposed allowing Iran to temporarily maintain low-level enrichment, criticizing that proposal as weaker and more dangerous than the original nuclear deal, and describing the talks as an Iranian delay tactic.

The finalized letter, which follows a similar communique from a bipartisan group of members earlier this month, again highlights that the administration will face vocal opposition on both sides of the aisle if it agrees to a deal that allows Iran to maintain a pathway toward a nuclear weapon.

“[Israel’s] decisive action comes after two months of unsuccessful diplomacy and represents a critical chance to stop the Iranian regime from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” the final version of the letter reads. “Tehran’s pursuit of nuclear arms, combined with its long record of fueling violence through terrorist proxies, has brought this moment upon itself.”

The letter argues that the U.S. must insist upon “zero enrichment, zero pathway to a nuclear weapon” and warns that any nuclear deal that does not meet those benchmarks “will face strong bipartisan opposition in Congress.”

The letter states that Iran “spent decades deceiving the international community and using diplomacy as a delay tactic while building the capacity to produce nuclear weapons” and describes the Israeli campaign against Iranian nuclear, military and critical infrastructure sites as “an opportunity to bring an end to Iran’s nuclear ambitions by ensuring their complete dismantlement in negotiations.”

The lawmakers said that they are “deeply concerned by Iran’s continued use of stalling tactics,” calling the talks an effort to buy time to avoid snapback of United Nations sanctions and rebuild Iran’s nuclear program. They noted that the Trump administration’s own two-month deadline for talks had already passed.

“It is time Iran makes a decision — make meaningful concessions or face crushing diplomatic pressure in addition to Israel’s military pressure,” the lawmakers wrote, urging the administration to work with allies to reimpose sanctions by next month — in advance of the October deadline.

The finalized letter was led by Gottheimer and Bacon and co-signed by Democratic Reps. Jared Moskowitz (D-FL), Greg Landsman (D-OH), Juan Vargas (D-CA), Tom Suozzi (D-NY), Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Brad Sherman (D-CA) and Darren Soto (D-FL).

The previous version of the letter, drafted and circulated by Gottheimer and Bacon prior to the beginning of the Israeli campaign, more directly criticized the administration and its reported proposal to allow Iran to maintain some level of enrichment in an interim capacity.

“Such a proposal undermines U.S. national security and the security of our allies in the region,” the draft read. “The Iranian regime cannot be trusted … The Iranian regime must not be permitted to enrich uranium on its soil, at any level, under any circumstances.”

“We are deeply concerned that the United States is even entertaining proposals that would enable any form of enrichment — particularly one that involves U.S. assistance to build nuclear reactors in Iran and allows enrichment until a regional enrichment consortium facility is built, something Iran will demand is on their soil,” the draft continued.

The draft framed the delays and that proposal, as outlined, as “not just weaker than the JCPOA but far more dangerous,” referring to the Obama-era Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, imposing fewer restrictions and greater concessions than the original 2015 nuclear deal at a time when Iran is only weeks from nuclear breakout.

It argued that a deal should also address Iran’s support for terrorism, something that Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, as recently as last month, has not been part of talks.

“If Iran refuses, we must return to a policy of maximum pressure and strategic deterrence,” the draft read. “The Iranian regime responds only to strength — not appeasement.”

The draft stated that the negotiations bore the hallmarks of Iranian obstructionism and stalling tactics.

“Iran continues to slow-walk negotiations, refusing to make meaningful concessions — all while continuing to grow its stockpile of enriched uranium,” the draft read. “If this process feels like a delay tactic, that is because it is.”

The draft also condemned Trump’s discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin about joining the nuclear talks as “not only naïve, [but] incredibly dangerous.”

“Putin is openly allied with Iran and is actively engaged himself in an unprovoked war in Ukraine,” the draft  read. “Asking for Putin’s help in securing a nuclear deal with Tehran risks legitimizing the actions of both regimes and could invite further instability.”

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, criticizing Israel’s strikes on Iran and the Trump administration’s global posture, suggested that China might be better positioned than the United States to broker peace in the Middle East.

The 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee was a favorite of Israel critics on the left during the vice presidential selection process and praised anti-Israel protesters during the campaign. He is seen as a potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.

“I truly worry now. I’m sure there’s some great strategic thinkers in the Trump administration that have now said, how is this going to — a tweet from the President today said, ‘I told them, I told them, they should have done something and here we are,’” Walz said at a Center for American Progress event, to chuckles from the audience. “Yeah, here we are with the Middle East back on fire in a way that has now expanded.

He said he is “deeply concerned” about the Israeli strikes on Iran.

“Iran has to retaliate in their mind, I’m sure,” Walz continued. “And now, who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some type of agreement in this, who holds the moral authority? Who holds the ability to do that? Because we are not seen as a neutral actor, and maybe we never were, I don’t want to tell anybody that … but I think there was at least an attempt to be somewhat of an arbitrator in this.”

“Consistently, over and over again, we’re going to have to face the reality, it might be the Chinese,” Walz said, “and that goes against everything [the Trump administration] say they’re trying to do in terms of the balance of power.”

.@GovTimWalz on Israel's preemptive strikes: "Iran has to retaliate in their mind I'm sure and now, who is the voice in the world that can negotiate some kind type agreement in this? Who holds the moral authority…we are not seen as a natural actor…it might be the Chinese…" pic.twitter.com/pi4tpnc4lD

— CSPAN (@cspan) June 13, 2025

Walz also described the humanitarian situation in Gaza as “intolerable.”

“It became a central focus in the campaign — and I would say rightfully so,” Walz said. “Human rights issues, how we’re going to try and attempt to get a two state solution where we can allow folks to live peacefully and coexist and have their own self control, or self determination.”

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth confirmed on Wednesday that the memorandum of understanding between the Trump administration and Qatar for the gift of a luxury jet worth $400 million to join the Air Force One fleet has not been completed and signed.

Hegseth and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine were pressed repeatedly on the terms of the contract allowing for the U.S. to formally accept the Boeing 747 jumbo jet from Qatar while testifying before the Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee on the Pentagon’s proposed fiscal year 2026 budget. The two largely declined to answer questions on the subject given the public setting, though the defense secretary acknowledged that the MOU was still being worked on.

“Any specifics about future aircraft that could be Air Force One can’t be discussed here, but there is a conversation about a memorandum of understanding. A memorandum of understanding remains to be signed,” Hegseth said in response to Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI) asking if the U.S. was currently in possession of the jet.

Hegseth declined to answer Reed’s subsequent questions about the price of the contract to reconfigure the aircraft, saying he would provide it to the senator’s office but could not divulge that information in public. He offered the same response when Reed asked about the delivery time for the reconfiguration contract. 

Reed pointed out that the terms of the contract originally signed with Boeing to deliver the next Air Force One jets were public while criticizing the secrecy around this deal. 

“The Boeing information was public knowledge — the delivery date, the cost, the course overruns — but this is not, because this is not only a bad deal for the American public, it is just gratifying the presidency, that’s all it is,” Reed said.

Later in the hearing, Hegseth again confirmed to Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) that the MOU was still not signed. The Connecticut senator then pressed the defense secretary on the need for the Qatari jet, noting that the extensive modifications and security enhancements may keep it from being usable before Boeing’s new fleet of Air Force Ones are ready in 2028. 

“It doesn’t stand to reason that you will be able to retrofit the plane from Qatar much sooner than 2028 so I’m trying to understand what the gap is that we’re trying to fill. If this contract ends up being a half a billion dollars and the gap only ends up being six months, that doesn’t sound like a wise investment for this committee to make,” Murphy said.

Hegseth replied by pointing to the repeated delays from Boeing in delivering on their new fleet. “I don’t know that’s a firm fixed date yet, unfortunately, that can be counted on,” Hegseth said.

A senior Air Force official testified at a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing last month that Boeing had told the service that it could potentially deliver the fleet by 2027 if certain requirements were lifted.

After Hegseth told Murphy it was his understanding that the plane would be transferred to Trump’s presidential library at the conclusion of his term, the Connecticut senator replied: “Why would we ask the American taxpayer to spend upwards of $1 billion on a plane that would then only be used for a handful of months and then transferred directly to the president?”

Hegseth emphasized the importance of the modifications to “ensure the safety and security of the president of the United States,” but did not address Murphy’s question directly. 

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI) pressed Hegseth on whether the Department of Defense or the Qataris initiated conversations about the jet and how the transaction came to be. Hegseth said he would need to “go back and review” the details and did not go into specifics, to which Schatz asked, “I think it kind of matters who’s asking, doesn’t it?”

“I think this is illegal and unconstitutional and I won’t rant about that, but I actually think from the standpoint of our collective responsibilities it very much matters what the paper flow was. Who started these conversations? Did it come out of the White House, did it come out of the secretary of state or the president or the SEC Def [secretary of defense] or at a lower level or ambassadors?” Schatz asked. 

“We’re entitled to know, because we can agree or disagree about the propriety of this, but my basic request of you is that if we’re going to disagree, let’s disagree with the same set of facts. Let’s have the documentation on the Qatari aircraft,” he continued.

Joel Rayburn, the Trump administration’s nominee to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, faces a difficult path to confirmation, with no Democrats on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee expected to support him, leaving the vote to move him to full Senate consideration deadlocked.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told Jewish Insider on Tuesday that she’s not aware of any committee Democrats planning to vote to move Rayburn’s nomination out of committee, and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) told JI last week that he opposes Rayburn.

A spokesperson for Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) confirmed he’s opposing Rayburn and a source familiar with the matter said the same of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). Asked to confirm that they were planning to oppose Rayburn, the other Democratic members of the Foreign Relations Committee did not respond to requests for comment.

If all of them oppose Rayburn’s nomination, that leaves the committee vote on Rayburn’s nomination tied, preventing it from moving forward to the full Senate.

A spokesperson for Sen. Jim Risch (R-ID), the committee’s chairman, did not comment.

Senate Republicans could still call a full Senate vote to discharge Rayburn’s nomination from the committee, but it’s unclear if they will be eager to spend floor time on that process as they work to finalize a budget reconciliation package ahead of the July 4 recess.

Asked about the possibility of a floor vote to discharge Rayburn, Shaheen responded that it “will be very difficult” to move Rayburn’s nomination forward at this point.

If Rayburn’s nomination fails, it would be a blow to national security-focused conservatives, with whom Rayburn is aligned, and could reopen another key post to someone affiliated with the isolationist wing of the Republican Party.

Vice President JD Vance defended Israel against an accusation of genocide from podcaster Theo Von on Saturday, but said “this whole debate” around the Israel-Hamas war “has caused us to lose our humanity.”

Speaking on the comedian’s podcast, Vance called the images coming out of Gaza “very heartbreaking” and said the administration is trying to “solve two problems here.” The first, he said, is that “you’ve got innocent people, innocent Palestinians and innocent Israeli hostages, by the way, who are like caught up in this terrible violence that’s happening as we speak. OK? And we’re trying to get as much aid and as much support into people as humanly possible.”

The second, Vance said, is that “Israel’s attacked by this terrible terrorist organization … So I think what we’re trying to do in the Trump administration with that situation is to get to a peaceful resolution.” 

He laid out his vision of that resolution: “You’ve got to give Israel confidence that Hamas is never going to attack them and kill a bunch of civilians. And then you’ve got to get as much aid and support into these innocent Palestinians as possible, because in some ways, they’re caught in the middle of this thing too.”

Vance opined that “one thing that I don’t love about the whole Israel-Palestinian debate is, I think it kind of degrades our humanity a little bit. Because I’ve seen people on the left, mostly on the left, who will … completely ignore that all these innocent Israelis were killed in this terrorist attack. And you have some people, usually on the right, who will completely ignore that there are, like, kids who are caught up in this violence.” He continued, “And I think it’s why the president has been — you know, I call him the president of peace — it’s why he cares about solving this problem. Because the longer this goes on, the more suffering, the more death. So we’re trying to solve it as much as we can.”

Vance described Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff as “a Jewish guy, very pro-Israel. He’s done more to try to bring this conflict to a close than anybody. And you sometimes have people who say that they’re pro-Israel who attack Steve for not being pro-Israel enough. And I think it’s totally bogus. I see this guy operate every single day. … He’s a Jewish guy who believes in the purpose of the State of Israel. He also is a guy with a heart who’s trying to prevent the killing. … When I talk about, ‘this whole debate has caused us to lose our humanity,’ I think of the people who are constantly going after Steve.”

Von characterized the conflict as a genocide, saying, “We’re seeing all these videos of people, like, picking up pieces of their children and  it’s the sickest thing I think that’s ever been televised. … It feels like a massacre, and it feels like, you know, I’ve called it a genocide.” Von said the U.S. is “complicit” in the conflict “because we help fund military stuff, you know, and that’s where it’s, like, as a regular guy, you’re like, ‘Well, I’m paying these taxes, and they’re going towards this.’”

“Do I think it’s a genocide? No,” Vance replied. “Because I don’t think that the Israelis are purposely trying to go in and murder every Palestinian. I don’t think that’s what they’re doing. I think they got hit hard. And I think they’re trying to sort of destroy this terrorist organization. And war is hell, and that is true.”

But Vance criticized some on the right for a lack of empathy for Palestinians: “I mean, I’ve seen people on my side of the political aisle … who will see these videos of these innocent Palestinian kids and say, ‘Oh, well, they had it coming to them.’ No, no. If you have a soul, your heart should break when you see a little kid who’s suffering, which is why we have the policy that we have, which is we’re trying to stop, eliminate the conflict, eliminate the source of the conflict, so that we can actually bring some peace and some some humanitarian assistance in to people.”

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.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee delayed an anticipated vote on Thursday on Joel Rayburn’s nomination to be assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs as he faces opposition from Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), which could imperil his nomination.

The news is another setback for Middle East hawks who saw Rayburn, who held a series of national security positions in the first Trump administration, as more aligned with their worldview, as compared to the isolationists populating many senior roles throughout the administration.

Thursday’s delay came because an unidentified member exercised a prerogative to delay the vote on Rayburn until the committee’s next business meeting, which would still allow the committee to vote on him in the near future. But Rayburn may face bigger problems: If no Democrats support Rayburn, the vote on his nomination would be tied, meaning it cannot advance out of committee.

It’s not clear whether any Democrats will support him. At that point, Rayburn’s nomination could still be advanced through a full Senate floor vote, assuming a sufficient number of other Republicans support the nominee.

Paul told Jewish Insider that he was primarily concerned that Rayburn was involved in a deliberate effort in the Trump administration to obscure the U.S. troop presence in Syria from Trump and disobey orders to withdraw U.S. forces.

“My concern is that James Jeffrey directly disobeyed direction from President Trump. Said he was hiding the numbers of troop levels over there, and Rayburn worked for him at the time, and still remains close to him,” Paul said, referring to the then-U.S. envoy to the global counter-ISIS coalition. “I don’t know how that could have happened without him knowing about it, and I think we need people at the State Department who will follow the direction of the president.”

Paul said he had not been the senator who requested a delay in the committee vote on Rayburn.

Morgan Ortagus, a key member of Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff’s team, is departing his office, Jewish Insider has learned. 

Ortagus, the deputy special envoy, has been removed from her portfolio in the special envoy’s office, two sources familiar with the matter confirmed to JI. Ortagus had been overseeing the Trump administration’s Lebanon policy and had wanted to take over the Syria file, but was unsuccessful in doing so. 

Israel’s Channel 14 reported over the weekend that Ortagus was expected to leave her position.

Ortagus, who supported Trump’s 2024 bid and campaigned for him, did not respond to JI’s request for comment on the move or if she plans to continue serving in the administration in another capacity. 

The White House did not respond to JI’s request for comment on Ortagus’ future in the administration. 

President Donald Trump appointed Ortagus as Witkoff’s deputy in January, which he announced in an unusual statement expressing reticence about her appointment.

“Early on Morgan fought me for three years, but hopefully has learned her lesson,” Trump said in the statement, referencing Ortagus’ tenure as spokesperson for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. “These things usually don’t work out, but she has strong Republican support, and I’m not doing this for me, I’m doing it for them. Let’s see what happens.” 

Ortagus’ departure comes less than two weeks after Witkoff and Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw a widespread purge of officials at the NSC, including those overseeing the Middle East and Israel and Iran portfolios. This followed Trump’s decision to pull former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, another Iran hawk in the administration, from his role and instead nominate him to be his ambassador to the United Nations.

The staffing developments inside the administration are taking place against the backdrop of an effort by Witkoff and Trump to move ahead with nuclear talks with Iran and a continued push for a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Correction: An earlier version of this story said that Ortagus was leaving the National Security Council. Ortagus was not a member of the NSC.

The Trump administration’s battle with higher education escalated on Wednesday with the announcement that Columbia University is at risk of losing accreditation for violation of the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights and the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights “determined that Columbia University acted with deliberate indifference towards the harassment of Jewish students, thereby violating Title VI,”  the Education Department said in a statement, noting that the Ivy League institution “no longer appears to meet the Commission’s [sic] accreditation standards.” 

Columbia is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education, a voluntary membership organization recognized by the Department of Education. Accreditation is required for a university to receive federal funding, for its students to receive public student loans and to be recognized by employers.

In a statement to Jewish Insider, a spokesperson for Columbia said that the university is “aware of the concerns raised by the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights today to our accreditor… and we have addressed those concerns directly with Middle States.”

“Columbia is deeply committed to combating antisemitism on our campus. We take this issue seriously and are continuing to work with the federal government to address it,” the spokesperson said. 

The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from JI inquiring whether any specific recent incidents led to the determination.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the department’s announcement that Columbia’s actions on antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks have been “immoral” and “unlawful.”

McMahon said the department will work with the accreditor “to ensure Columbia’s compliance with accreditation standards including compliance with federal civil rights laws.”

Columbia University has faced intense scrutiny from the federal government since President Donald Trump returned to the White House earlier this year. 

In February, the Trump administration directed that an investigation into violations of Title VI be opened. A month later, it pulled $400 million from Columbia’s federal funding over its failure to crack down on antisemitism, marking the first time a university has faced a cutoff of federal funds since Title VI was implemented six decades ago. 

Columbia responded by entering ongoing negotiations with the government. The agreement included putting the school’s Middle Eastern studies department under a “receivership,” which involves closer oversight from an external body.

Several other elite institutions faced similar funding freezes in the weeks that followed, including Harvard University, which responded by suing the Trump administration.  

As Israeli students departed from Harvard University last month to begin summer break, the usual sense of relief and excitement at having completed another academic year was replaced by fear and uncertainty for many.

Amid the Trump administration’s battle with Harvard — which recently escalated to stripping the university of its ability to enroll foreign students entirely — “see you in the fall” was replaced with  “I hope to see you in the fall” among international students exchanging goodbyes. 

Harvard currently hosts more than 10,000 international students, according to university data. 160 of them are from Israel. On May 22, the White House issued a policy directive meant to completely cut off the university’s ability to admit international students, the first instance of the government doing so. A federal judge has since temporarily blocked President Donald Trump from implementing the policy, although the matter will work its way through the courts. If the White House is successful, international students must transfer schools or lose their visa. 

Jewish students and faculty who conduct biomedical research at Harvard also face grim prospects, after Trump revoked billions of dollars in federal funds to the university. 

“Jewish faculty may have grants, as well, that are being cut or canceled,” said Dr. Richard Schwartzstein, a professor at Harvard Medical School who has worked to raise awareness about antisemitism in medicine, and to incorporate lessons on antisemitism into the school’s anti-racism curriculum. “That has been disconcerting for everyone, because most of us don’t believe that biomedical research has much to do with the issues that the Trump administration seems to be concerned about. It seems to be merely used as a punishment.” 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, told Jewish Insider that “morale is low” among Jewish students planning a career in scientific and medical research, and among Jewish students from abroad.  

“Those are major parts of the Harvard Jewish community, and they are really suffering and concerned about their future,” said Rubenstein. 

At the same time, many Jewish students on campus expressed relief that the antisemitism and anti-Israel activism that was all too common in the aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks had declined significantly in the previous school year. 

Last year, for instance, hundreds of students and faculty members walked out of the school’s main commencement ceremony in solidarity with 13 anti-Israel student protesters who were denied degrees as a result of their involvement in the school’s illegal encampment that spring.

But last week, Harvard’s 374th Commencement appeared to run smoothly, with just a few subdued reminders of the campus chaos that has been wrought by Israel’s war with Hamas. 

Harvard’s president, Alan Garber — booed at last year’s ceremony over his decision to not allow the demonstrators to graduate — received a standing ovation this year. A banner reading “There Are No Universities Left in Gaza” was briefly unfurled on the steps of the main library before being confiscated by campus police, the Harvard Crimson reported. Another, reading “Harvard Divest From Genocide in Gaza,” was dropped from a window of Sever Hall and taken down minutes later.

Alex Friedman, who just finished his second year at Harvard Law School, said he left Cambridge last month feeling “cautiously optimistic” about the direction in which the university is moving.

“Harvard is moving very quickly and aggressively to eliminate certain sources of anti-Israel bias on campus,” said Jesse Fried, a law school professor at Harvard. “If the Trump administration were not breathing down their neck, I believe progress would have been much slower.” 

“There’s no question that campus was definitely quieter this year than in the previous year. That year was extraordinary, the outburst of antisemitism and anti-Israel activity on campus,” Friedman told JI last week. “The magnitude and consistency were definitely not the same. That, of course, doesn’t mean that the underlying issues have been solved. Antisemitism at Harvard has been a problem for decades, and it’s not going away overnight.”

Jesse Fried, a law school professor at Harvard, attributed to the change to a combination of “natural loss of energy” as students got bored of the topic, and “students’ sense that, ‘Okay, I could get into trouble.’” 

Changes on campus were implemented at the beginning of the 2024-2025 school year, when Joe Biden was still president, Fried said, noting that Harvard’s progress in addressing antisemitism and students’ anti-Israel bias was not only a result of pressure from Trump. But once Trump came into office and began threatening Harvard — and then implementing policies that directly targeted the Ivy League university — change happened more quickly, Fried observed.

“Harvard is moving very quickly and aggressively to eliminate certain sources of anti-Israel bias on campus,” Fried said. “If the Trump administration were not breathing down their neck, I believe progress would have been much slower.” 

Last month, under pressure from Trump, Harvard released a long-delayed report on campus antisemitism, which found that the university had “severe problems” in its handling of the issue. In March, before any funding had been revoked, Harvard paused a controversial partnership with a Palestinian university and let go leaders of its Center for Middle Eastern Studies. 

Harvard’s Jewish community is “split” on how Trump is handling the problem, Fried said, although Trump’s revocation of federal research funding and his threat to bar international students from the university have upset many in the Jewish community. 

“There might be some people who are supportive of what Trump is doing, because they see it as a necessary evil: ‘You have to do this in order to fix Harvard,’” said Fried. “But most of the Jewish community is appalled by what he’s doing and the tactics he’s using.”

Rubenstein echoed that the Jewish community has mixed reactions to Trump’s crackdowns. “Federal engagement has been helpful when it’s focused, measured and proportionate,” he said. “The threat of federal funding cuts was important in facilitating different actions throughout the university. For example, Harvard’s counsel was explicit that it wanted to settle the Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act of 1964] lawsuits before Trump’s inauguration.” 

Before the government’s actions against Harvard escalated, aspects of the crackdown appeared to address antisemitism that had been pervasive on campus even before the Oct. 7 attacks, according to Rubenstein. 

“Every time there’s an action taken by the Trump administration, an immediate email is sent discussing how Harvard will respond and offering support to students,” said Alex Friedman, who just finished his second year at Harvard Law School. “People are focusing on, ‘Oh, Harvard’s doing great. They’re really standing up,’ and understandably so. But this also shows that Harvard could have done that 18 months ago, after Oct. 7, when they were faced with what was happening on campus and what they were facing in the world, and yet they chose not to.” 

“I’ve heard from faculty that they always felt Harvard has been one settlement away from the antisemitism policy we wanted,” Rubenstein said, “so they are grateful for the settlement [in January] which led to the adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism” as part of a resolution to two Title VI lawsuits. 

Even as Harvard has made progress in tackling antisemitism, the university’s blundering response in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks still stings for many Jewish Harvard affiliates, particularly when viewed in comparison to the urgency with which Harvard has responded to Trump’s policies. 

“Every time there’s an action taken by the Trump administration, an immediate email is sent discussing how Harvard will respond and offering support to students,” said Friedman, the Harvard Law student. “People are focusing on, ‘Oh, Harvard’s doing great. They’re really standing up,’ and understandably so. But this also shows that Harvard could have done that 18 months ago, after Oct. 7, when they were faced with what was happening on campus and what they were facing in the world, and yet they chose not to.” 

Looking ahead to the fall, Jewish leaders at Harvard expressed hope that their focus can return to strengthening Jewish life.

Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads the campus Chabad, said he intends to stay away from the “politics of the moment” and instead “focus on building and nurturing Jewish life and community … [which] we expect to continue to grow from strength-to-strength.” 

Rubenstein expects “the disproportionate focus on Israel will really dissipate on campus when there’s peace in Israel, the hostages are returned, please God, and Hamas is no longer a threat in the Gaza Strip.”

Still, he predicts “several years of work and ongoing vigilance from the Jewish community, as antisemitism is ascendant in many corners where we didn’t used to think we had to combat it.”

And campus Jewish leaders are cautiously optimistic that the work won’t fall as heavily on them. 

“What we hear consistently from Jewish students is by far the most important thing for their experience of being Jewish in college is the vibrancy of their Jewish community — the Shabbat dinners, friendship, trust, song, laughter. That need is not going anywhere,” Rubenstein said. 

“That need is only growing, and in many ways we’ve lost track of it over the past year as we’ve turned attention to governance of the university, faculty politics and disciplinary procedures,” he continued. “That’s important, but our community needs to recommit to resources for the lives of Jewish students.” 

Speaking at a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Secretary of Education Linda McMahon laid out the administration’s expectations for campus antisemitism policies, but sidestepped how the administration will execute on those directives while making substantial cuts to the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.

“We’re saying we mean business, these programs and policies have to have teeth, they have to be enforced,” McMahon said. 

She outlined a series of policies the Trump administration wants to see campuses enforce, including banning encampments, prohibiting the use of masks and better vetting of students and professors. Professors, she said, must not teach ideology.

She added that the Office for Civil Rights has opened “many cases” on campus antisemitism and is taking enforcement actions, including pulling funds from multiple schools.

But she failed to directly address concerns from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), the subcommittee chair, that cuts to OCR could hamper the administration’s ability to adequately address campus antisemitism.

A federal judge in New Jersey issued an order on Wednesday ruling that the Trump administration’s monthslong effort to deport Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil was likely unconstitutional — but that his failure to disclose his affiliations with anti-Israel groups raises concerns. 

Judge Michael Farbiarz said in his opinion that the court found that Khalil is unlikely to succeed in his challenge against the claim that he failed to disclose crucial information in his green card application, including former employment by UNRWA and his membership in the campus group Columbia University Apartheid Divest, which has been banned from Instagram for promoting anti-Israel violence.  

Farbiarz also noted that the charges in Khalil’s case are “unprecedented” and likely unconstitutional, stating, “the issue now before the Court has been this: does the Constitution allow the Secretary of State to use Section 1227, as applied through the determination, to try to remove the Petitioner from the United States? The Court’s answer: likely not.” Farbiarz said he will soon issue an order about next steps in the case.

The opinion ruling was a response to an appeal filed by Khalil’s lawyers last month, after the Trump administration presented claims against Khalil, a former graduate student who led last year’s anti-Israel campus protests against the war in Gaza and subsequent student negotiations with university administration.

A memo submitted to the court in Louisiana — where Khalil remains held in an ICE detention facility — signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio cited the president’s authority to expel noncitizens whose presence in the country could have adverse foreign policy consequences, regardless of whether they have committed a crime. It stated that Khalil’s arrest and planned deportation are based on his “participation in antisemitic protests and disruptive activities, which fosters a hostile environment for Jewish students in the United States.” 

“Condoning anti-Semitic conduct and disruptive protests in the United States would severely undermine that significant foreign policy objective,” Rubio wrote in the two-page memo.

One day after the memo was submitted, an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the government’s argument that Khalil’s presence in the U.S. posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences” was sufficient to rule he could be removed from the country. Khalil’s lawyers argue that he’s being punished for what they say is protected speech.

Khalil, who grew up in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, first came to the U.S. on a student visa and later married a U.S. citizen and received a green card. He was arrested on March 8 at his university-owned apartment, without being charged with a crime, making him the first high-profile target of the Trump administration’s crackdown on foreign students.  

The prolonged case is a contrast to a Vermont judge’s decision last month ordering the immediate release of Mohsen Mahdawi, another Palestinian student from Columbia who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations, but remained jailed for just two weeks. Mahdawi graduated from Columbia last week. 

The top National Security Council officials overseeing the Middle East and Israel and Iran portfolios — seen as pro-Israel voices in the administration — were among the dozens of officials dismissed in a widespread purge of the NSC on Friday, two sources familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider.

Eric Trager, who was the senior director for the Middle East and North Africa — the lead official on the Middle East — and Merav Ceren, the director for Israel and Iran, were both Trump administration political appointees but were pushed out in what one official called a purge of “the Deep State” inside the NSC.

Their firings come as voices skeptical of the U.S.’ role in the Middle East increasingly establish a foothold in the administration, and as President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the acting national security advisor, seek to restructure and slim down the key foreign policy-making body.

According to Axios, officials cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in the government. Ceren previously came under fire from the far left and far right after false claims that she had previously worked as an Israeli Ministry of Defense official generated accusations of dual loyalty.

NSC spokesman Brian Hughes defended Ceren at the time and denied the accusations, describing her as “a patriotic American who has served in the United States government for years, including for President Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congressman James Comer. We are thrilled to have her expertise in the NSC, where she carries out the President’s agenda on a range of Middle East issues.” He said she “was never employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, let alone was she an Israeli official.”

Trager and Ceren were hired under former National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who was pushed aside after he added a journalist to an administration group chat about U.S. strikes on the Houthis, and after right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer accused him of staffing the NSC with a host of neoconservatives out of step with Trump.

Trager and Ceren had maintained their positions at the time, even as several of Waltz’s top hires were dismissed.

The Trump administration on Thursday stripped Harvard University of its ability to enroll foreign students, citing Harvard’s collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party, in what the Department of Homeland Security described as an act of accountability for the university “fostering violence, antisemitism and pro-terrorist conduct from students on its campus.” 

The move is an escalation in President Donald Trump’s battle with Harvard, just one front in his war with elite higher education institutions. He has already revoked billions of dollars in federal funding from Harvard, as well as several other universities. Trump has also sought the deportation of hundreds of foreign students on college campuses over their alleged support for terrorism and antisemitism.

But this is the first instance of the White House completely cutting off a university’s ability to admit international students. Harvard currently hosts more than 10,000 international students, according to university data. 160 of them are from Israel. Current students must transfer schools or lose their visa. 

“It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement. 

Last month, Noem asked Harvard to provide data on the disciplinary records of foreign students on campus and their record of participating in protests. Noem said the information shared by Harvard in response was “insufficient.” 

Harvard Hillel’s executive director, Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, expressed concern about the impact on Israeli students at Harvard.

“The current, escalating federal assault against Harvard — shuttering apolitical, life-saving research; threatening the university’s tax-exempt status; and revoking all student visas, including those of Israeli students who are proud veterans of the Israel Defense Forces and forceful advocates for Israel on campus — is neither focused nor measured, and stands to substantially harm the very Jewish students and scholars it purports to protect,” Rubenstein told Jewish Insider. 

A university spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Barak Sella, an Israeli educator and researcher who earned a master’s degree from the Harvard Kennedy School in 2024, said the action will “be detrimental for the entire higher education system.”

“Never did any Jewish [organization] ask to ban the ability to accept foreign students, especially when a lot of the antisemitism is perpetrated by American citizens — aka the shooting last night,” Sella told JI, referring to the killing of two Israeli Embassy officials outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington. The alleged perpetrator is an American citizen. 

Harvard is likely to take legal action in response, according to The Crimson. 

Jewish Insider reporter Haley Cohen contributed to this report. 

Leo Terrell, senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights, says he’s undeterred by critics of the Trump administration’s approach to combating antisemitism, arguing that those dissatisfied with its deportation strategy are “trying to justify, in my opinion, the antisemitic behavior” of those individuals. 

Terrell, who has a career spanning three decades as a civil rights attorney and a conservative media personality, sat down on Monday for his first interview with Jewish Insider since joining the Justice Department earlier this year — at a time when some mainstream Jewish organizations, including the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee, have expressed concern that the administration’s approach has violated the due process rights of the individuals being targeted. The Trump administration has argued that non-citizens do not have the same constitutional protections as U.S. citizens, though the Fourteenth Amendment grants due process rights to all people regardless of status. 

“That question is being asked quite often, and I think those people who are raising that issue are trying to justify, in my opinion, the antisemitic behavior,” Terrell said. “If you’re an American citizen, I have due process on a lot of different criminal issues if I’m arrested. I have due process. That term due process needs to be evaluated depending on the status of the individuals who assert it.”

“I will submit to you that individuals who are here on, let’s say, for example, a student visa, who are not American citizens, who are here as a privilege by this country, do not have the same due process rights, do not have the same access to the court system as I do as an American citizen,” he continued, adding, “Your rights depend on your status in this country. You won’t hear that because it’s the truth, it’s not a talking point.”

Terrell said he and Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the DOJ, remain confident they are following the law. He also said he wants injunctive relief for Jewish students from U.S. citizens and foreign nationals involved in antisemitic hate crimes. 

“How many times do we see individuals violating the rights of Jewish American students use the lying argument of freedom of speech, and it was adopted by a majority of the left-wing media, but these blue cities allow these individuals to be violent. They were arrested, and then they were released, and they were never prosecuted. They were never prosecuted. And that type of mentality existed not only on the local level, but on the federal level as well. That has stopped under the Trump administration,” Terrell explained.

“One of the first questions you mentioned is, and I’ve heard it the last couple of days, if you think the Trump administration is too hard or being too aggressive? They raise that question, and I’ve heard it in three different locations, but I say no, we’re not aggressive enough. If you’re comparing that there’s been some progress in relationship to the Biden administration, that’s not much of a standard, because they did nothing,” he added.

When asked about Columbia University, where new acting President Claire Shipman oversaw the suspension and arrests of some of the students involved in last week’s takeover of the school’s main library, Terrell said the university’s actions were insufficient because they did not deter future action from the protesters. 

“Some people have said, well, you know, some of these students have been suspended by the college president. Not good enough. There’s no deterrent mechanism. You need deterrence where it doesn’t happen again. And under the Trump administration, I can tell you right now, I’m using the tools of Title VI [of the Civil Rights Act]. I’m using the tools of filing hate crimes as a deterrent mechanism,” Terrell said, later noting, “Trump is dead set on eliminating antisemitism, and besides the litigation that we are contemplating … we’ve got some tools … that we’re going to be disclosing later on, that are going to definitely have a major factor.”

Terrell added that he stood by the decision to target the individuals the Trump administration had sought to deport as part of its antisemitism policy, including the case of Rümeysa Öztürk, the Tufts University doctoral student and Turkish national who was released from detention last week amid criticism from several leading Jewish groups as federal authorities continue pushing for her deportation. Some Jewish leaders and organizations had argued against Öztürk’s detention due to the lack of evidence against her the federal government has made public; currently, her only known anti-Israel activity is a critical op-ed she co-authored in her school newspaper.

“The Civil Rights team is more concerned with getting rid of the problem than making everybody comfortable while they do so. I believe the previous administration expressed commitment, both in speech and in certain actions, to fighting antisemitism, but then allowed antisemitism to get diluted to the point where the effort was regrettably no longer as effective. A wise man once said, when you get too well-rounded, you stop pointing anywhere. An effort to combat and eradicate antisemitism must do that,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), told JI. 

Öztürk’s release on bail, Terrell explained, “has nothing to do with the merit as to whether or not she can be removed based on the evidence and the discretion of the secretary of state.” 

“Yes, she got released on bail. So the standard for bail is: Are you a flight risk? Are you a danger? Will you return? That has nothing to do with the merit of her status here. … The decision on the merits as to whether or not she will remain in this country has not been decided,” Terrell said, criticizing the news media’s portrayal of the latest developments in Öztürk’s case as inaccurate.

Asked if any universities had responded to campus antisemitism in ways that he found satisfactory, Terrell pointed to Dartmouth College. “I was very pleased when the president of Dartmouth College came by and spoke to us, and they got a very favorable grade from the ADL as far as battling antisemitism. If I was going to mention one school that is on the right track to combat antisemitism, that has addressed the issue, and not tried to dodge it or look for press coverage because they suspended some students, Dartmouth College would be probably number one on my list,” he said. 

Looking off campus, Terrell told JI he has reached out to the mayors of Boston, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City to try to find ways to work together on campus antisemitism “because I felt those were major cities that had failed to protect Jewish American students, not only on campus, but Jewish Americans period, in the city.” 

Terrell said that he hasn’t heard back from Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass or Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, but his message to them is that he’s “not going to run away from that. I’m going to meet it head on.”

“I’m going to do everything I can to get him [Johnson] and those [Chicago City] Council members to change their ways. The federal government has a lot of tools, and we’re going to use all of them. The one thing I can tell you is that I’ve had conversations with the president about this as late as last week, and he said basically in so many words, whatever you need on this subject just call me directly, just talk to me directly. Because I have approached him on certain issues involving resolving some of these issues in schools and he wants complete, 100% compliance,” Terrell said.

While he has some detractors, Terrell also has a number of Jewish leaders in his corner who argue his approach to his current role was bound to ruffle some feathers. 

Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s envoy to the U.S., told JI in a statement, “Leo Terrell has hit the ground running … showing remarkable clarity and passion. From day one, he has demonstrated unwavering commitment to this crucial fight — through strong public statements, meaningful action, and a clear moral compass.”

“The Civil Rights team is more concerned with getting rid of the problem than making everybody comfortable while they do so. I believe the previous administration expressed commitment, both in speech and in certain actions, to fighting antisemitism, but then allowed antisemitism to get diluted to the point where the effort was regrettably no longer as effective. A wise man once said, when you get too well-rounded, you stop pointing anywhere. An effort to combat and eradicate antisemitism must do that,” Rabbi Levi Shemtov, the executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), told JI. 

“We cannot compromise our efforts to deal with the situation just so that everybody’s very comfortable with what we’re doing. Unconventional and illegal are not the same thing, and people facing existential threats cannot be expected to make everybody comfortable while they fight for their survival,” Shemtov continued, later adding: “Any energetic effort might test some limits here or there.” 

Ambassador Yechiel Leiter, Israel’s envoy to the U.S., told JI in a statement, “Leo Terrell has hit the ground running … showing remarkable clarity and passion. From day one, he has demonstrated unwavering commitment to this crucial fight — through strong public statements, meaningful action, and a clear moral compass.”

“We deeply value our partnership with him and appreciate his willingness to listen, engage, and stand up against hatred in all its forms. His leadership is both encouraging and inspiring at a time when it’s needed most,” Leiter added.

Terrell spent more than two decades amassing a large following on the talk radio circuit and on cable news, serving as a Fox News contributor on legal issues for much of the last decade. He made headlines in 2020 when debuting “Leo 2.0,” his revamped persona, while announcing his move from the Democratic Party to the GOP. 

In his new job, he frequently starts his morning tweeting on X about the rise in antisemitism to his 2.5 million followers.

“The Jewish American community and I have had a love affair for the last 35 years. One of my first jobs as a lawyer, I worked in a Jewish law firm, and I was befriended not only by the Jewish lawyer who helped me get started, but by the community at large. So my relationship with the Jewish American community has been in place for the last 35 plus years,” Terrell said, noting his time leading the California Commission Against Hate Crimes, “where we looked at all hate crimes against Blacks, Browns, Jews, Catholics.”

While Terrell warned in media appearances about the rise of antisemitism in recent years, he was not directly involved in trying to address the issue nationally until 2024, when he began criticizing the Biden administration’s lack of response to incidents of antisemitism taking place amid anti-Israel campus protests. 

Still, Terrell says he’s no stranger to fighting for civil rights protections for all, citing his three-decade “love affair” with the Jewish people and his legal career, which included efforts to address antisemitism in California.

“The Jewish American community and I have had a love affair for the last 35 years. One of my first jobs as a lawyer, I worked in a Jewish law firm, and I was befriended not only by the Jewish lawyer who helped me get started, but by the community at large. So my relationship with the Jewish American community has been in place for the last 35 plus years,” Terrell said, noting his time leading the California Commission Against Hate Crimes, “where we looked at all hate crimes against Blacks, Browns, Jews, Catholics.” 

“I have committed to civil rights and my commitment to the Jewish American community has been so heartwarming based on my experience here in this position and on Fox, but it goes well beyond that. It goes well beyond that. For the last 25 to 30 years, ever since I have been a lawyer, I’ve had a fantastic, strong, great relationship with the Jewish American community and it is going to maintain.”

The Trump administration has dismissed multiple members of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council appointed by former President Joe Biden, Jewish Insider has learned.

Sources familiar with the situation told JI that those fired from the board overseeing the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other Holocaust commemoration activities include former Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, former White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain, former Ambassador Susan Rice, former Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, former presidential senior advisor Tom Perez and former Ambassador Alan Solomont.

In an email sent to board members on Wednesday reviewed by JI, Sara Bloomfield, the council’s director, confirmed that 13 appointees had been “removed” by the White House.

The additional members who have been let go include Anthony Bernal, a senior advisor to former First Lady Jill Biden; former Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI); Jennifer Klein, a former director of the White House Gender Policy Council; Stacy Eichner, a former deputy assistant to Biden; Meredith Jachowicz, a former special assistant to Biden; Kimberly Marteau Emerson, a lawyer and human rights advocate; and Marsha Borin, a Jewish community leader in Delaware.  

“We thank them for their service and hope there will be opportunities to work with them in the future,” Bloomfield wrote in her email, adding that the remaining “members of the council include those who have been appointed by President Trump in his first administration and President Biden.”

Klain, Rice and Finer did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and Perez and Zients could not be reached, nor could other members who were dismissed.

“He’s talking all about fighting antisemitism, but he chooses to make a divisive call on the official arm of the federal government that was created to remember the Holocaust,” Solomont told JI. 

The New York Times also reported that Emhoff, Klain, Perez, Rice and Bernal had been dismissed.

Solomont learned of his dismissal through a curt email from a staff member of the Presidential Personnel Office, reviewed by JI, which read, “On behalf of President Donald J. Trump, I am writing to inform you that your position as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council is terminated, effective immediately. Thank you for your service.”

The email, on which PPO Director Sergio Gor was CC’ed, provided no explanation for the dismissal.

A White House official confirmed Emhoff, Klain, Rice, Finer, Perez, Zients and Solomont’s dismissals and said that the Trump administration is currently interviewing prospective replacements. The official did not address questions from JI about why they were dismissed, how many others were dismissed or if any future dismissals are planned.

Such dismissals from presidentially appointed boards are unusual, but have happened in the past, including under the Biden administration, which dismissed a series of former Trump officials from military service academy advisory boards. The Biden administration also forced controversial Trump appointee Darren Beattie off of the U.S. Commission for the Preservation of America’s Heritage Abroad.

“Holocaust remembrance and education should never be politicized,” Emhoff said in a statement to the Times. “To turn one of the worst atrocities in history into a wedge issue is dangerous — and it dishonors the memory of six million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.”

Biden appointed more than 50 people to the Holocaust Memorial Board, and some have not yet been dismissed.

Sen. Jacky Rosen (D-NV), a co-chair of the Senate antisemitism task force and a congressionally appointed member of the Holocaust Memorial Council, decried what she described as politicization of the council.

“Spreading awareness and educating the American public about the horrors of the Holocaust cannot and should not be a political issue,” Rosen said. “Donald Trump’s action to prematurely remove members of the board before the end of their terms is an attempt to politicize an institution dedicated to remembering one of the worst atrocities in our history and hurts our efforts to educate future generations.”

Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), a co-chair of the House antisemitism task force, downplayed the significance of Trump’s move.

“It is the prerogative of all Presidents to appoint their nominees to various boards,” Bacon said. “Former President Biden did the same with all of the military academies in 2021. There are still democrat board members appointed by Congress who are serving on the board.”

Abe Foxman, the former national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor, called on the administration to reverse course.

“It is sad and insensitive to use the United States institution dedicated to the memory of the Holocaust and its victims for purposes other than memory,” Foxman said. “I hope the administration reconsiders.”

Foxman sits on the council but emphasized that he was speaking in his personal capacity as a survivor.

This story was updated on April 30 to reflect new details.

The Trump administration’s moves to cut billions in federal funding from colleges and universities and detain and deport foreign students have sparked fierce debate in the Jewish community in recent months, and opened fault lines among some who see the actions as necessary to fight antisemitism and others who argue that they’re an overreach.

The American Jewish Committee is trying to take a more nuanced approach, the organization’s CEO Ted Deutch told Jewish Insider in an interview at AJC’s Washington office this week ahead of the group’s annual Global Forum conference, which starts this weekend.

Deutch emphasized that AJC is a “fiercely nonpartisan organization,” which means it must sometimes “hold competing thoughts” so that it can “speak with clarity about what we believe is in the best interests of the Jewish community” and represent “the vast middle of the Jewish community.”

He called that approach not only proper, but necessary.

“There are campuses [where] so many of the challenges should have been addressed by universities, and weren’t. We’ve been clear that it’s really important that the administration, that the president, is making this a priority,” Deutch said. “At the same time, as we’ve said, due process matters and obviously our democratic principles matter as well, we have to be able to both express appreciation and, when necessary, express concern.”

He said that AJC does not and has never taken an all-or-nothing approach to any administration — being either fully supportive or fully opposed to all actions it takes — and that it is continuing to hold fast to that principle: “We are working with the administration and giving them credit where due and we are offering our thoughtful criticism also, when necessary.”

Deutch cited examples from both the Reagan and Obama administrations that he said demonstrated this principle.

“We’re not willing to give up on the idea that, in advocating for the Jewish community, we can continue to leave partisanship out of it, focus on the concerns and needs of the Jewish community and work with an administration as closely as we can to help them succeed in ways that are beneficial to the entirety of the Jewish community,” he said.

In both the revocation of federal funding from universities and the deportation of alleged anti-Israel agitators, Deutch said that due process must be “front and center.” 

On federal funding, Deutch noted that there are provisions in federal law that allow for the revocation of funding and said that the prior administration also expressed willingness to slash funding, but that such moves have not actually occurred for decades.

“It’s really important that the funding cuts be done in a way that will have the most impact in addressing the challenges of antisemitism and that other issues not be conflated,” he said. 

He added that funding cuts should be used as a tool to ensure that schools make necessary changes to protect Jewish students, such as changes to their protest and student conduct policies, and that funds should be cut in the context of negotiations with universities if they fail to take action.

“When the hammer is dropped before those conversations take place, then people go to their corners,” Deutch said. “What we are advocating for is for every university to do everything that it can to help keep Jewish students safe … It’s how we get them to do it, and making sure that when they make a commitment to act, that they follow through on it — from our perspective, that’s always the focus.”

He also warned that funding cuts motivated by antisemitism could have significant effects in other ways, and potentially take away from discussions about antisemitism.

“When the hammer [of funding cuts] is dropped in a way which winds up cutting life-saving cancer research, that’s when we have concern, which we’ve expressed,” Deutch said. 

“When you announce unilaterally that you’re cutting all of the funding, including funding that can help find cures and treatments for disease and funding that has contributed to the global preeminence of American universities in scientific research, then, unfortunately, that becomes the conversation, instead of the necessary conversation that the administration rightfully wants to have about the university’s need to adequately protect Jewish students and all students.”

Deutch also noted that some in the Jewish community are worried that cuts to life-saving research may ultimately produce backlash against the Jewish community.

“It is a concern that can absolutely be ameliorated. This is exactly how we are trying to address this,” Deutch said. “AJC is not jumping in and declaring that we’re on one side or another.”

On the deportations issue, Deutch said, “If [foreign students’] behavior is illegal and they have due process, then they should be deported. But it’s not either-or. All of this matters as we’re tackling these really serious challenges.” He emphasized the need to protect First Amendment free speech rights.

“It’s not, ‘the administration should be as committed as it is to fighting antisemitism’ or ‘should also be committed to ensuring due process and adherence to the Constitution,’” Deutch said. “Both of those things can and have to happen together, and that’s why we’ve been working so hard to make sure that they are.”

The administration has repeatedly made clear that it is not alleging criminal conduct in high-profile deportation cases, instead citing authorities allowing deportations of those deemed to be damaging to U.S. foreign policy interests.

Pressed on that subject, Deutch emphasized that “due process [and] constitutional protections matter here,” and that every individual should have a fair hearing in court.

At the same time, he said that the rhetoric used by some of those facing deportation has been “horrific” and that universities themselves should have stepped in, but did not, “which is why we’re now at this point where the administration has stepped in, rightfully so.”

Deutch and AJC have previously called for additional funding and resources for the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, which the Trump administration has instead slashed. Deutch said that the Trump administration seems to be pursuing a strategy of “fewer cases” being investigated nationwide while “going after universities for bigger remedies.”

AJC is also closely watching the Trump administration’s nuclear talks with Iran. Both AJC and Deutch, who was a Democratic member of Congress at the time, opposed the original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and Deutch voted against it in the House.

Deutch said that he doesn’t want to make assumptions about what a new Iran deal might entail based on the varying public comments from members of the administration, but said that “the world must agree” on a basic premise Trump has expressed, that “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

As the negotiations between the U.S. and Iran continue, Deutch said AJC wants to make sure that there is a proper understanding of the current status of Iran’s nuclear program, which Deutch described as geared toward producing a nuclear weapon.

He added that the nuclear talks cannot be divorced from Iran’s support for terrorist proxies that continue to threaten the Jewish community worldwide.

“We’ve all said 1,000 times, but it just feels like it always needs repeating, [and] I know the administration understands this: When a country says that their goal is the destruction of another country … we have to take them at their word in the way that we approach this,” Deutch said. “That’s the message that we’re giving to those who are working on this issue.”

Jewish faculty, alumni and students at Harvard — including some who have been outspoken against Harvard’s handling of antisemitism over the past year and a half — are watching with concern as the White House targets the Ivy League institution and the university prepares to battle with the Trump administration.

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it would be canceling $2.2 billion in federal funds to Harvard University after President Alan Garber said he would not cede to its demands. Many Jewish Harvard affiliates are wary of Trump’s aggressive intrusion into academia, while also calling for Harvard to take stronger action to address antisemitism. 

An April 11 letter from the Trump administration called for reforms to Harvard’s governance structure, its hiring of faculty, its admissions policies and its approach to antisemitism, with stringent federal reporting requirements, with all demands expected to be implemented by August. Attorneys for Harvard responded that Trump’s demands “go beyond the lawful authority of this or any administration.” 

“The second Trump letter had demands that could charitably be called ridiculous, and the Trump administration must have known that Garber would have no choice but to reject them,” Jesse Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who has spoken publicly about increasing antisemitism and anti-Zionism at Harvard after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, told Jewish Insider. “They say that Trump is the great divider, but I’ve never seen anybody unify the Harvard faculty as successfully as he has.”

Rabbi David Wolpe, who was a visiting faculty member at Harvard Divinity School from 2023-2024, said he has no problem “with the general goals that are laid out” in Trump’s letter. But, Wolpe added, “I think this is a letter that will have a lot of unintended consequences, and it seems to me an overreach.” 

“I think there are people in the Trump administration — one or two of whom I’ve spoken to — who I know that this is a genuine cause of the heart for them, I have no doubt about that,” Wolpe said. “But I think there are a lot of other agendas swirling around that are not directly concerned with antisemitism.” 

Jewish leaders on Harvard’s campus called on the university to implement some of the federal government’s suggestions to crackdown on antisemitism, even if the university rejects making a formal deal with Trump.  

“Considering that there is wide support in the Harvard community and beyond for many of these policies and changes, they should have been put into place long ago,” Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, who leads Harvard Chabad, told JI. “It’s our hope that in wanting to demonstrate its independence, Harvard will not delay implementing further necessary changes, because an authority is trying to impose it on them.” 

Former Harvard President Lawrence Summers, who is still a professor at the university, praised Garber for “resisting extralegal and unreasonable demands from the federal government.” But just because Trump’s approach is the wrong one, Summers argued in a post on X, that doesn’t mean Harvard should ignore the issues raised in his letter.

“The wrongness of federal demands must not obscure the need for major reform to combat antisemitism, to promote genuine truth seeking, to venerate excellence and to ensure ideological diversity,” wrote Summers, who has been critical of Harvard’s handling of antisemitism after Oct. 7. 

One Harvard senior who has sharply criticized Harvard’s response to campus antisemitism, Jacob Miller, argued that Trump’s “crusade against Harvard” seeks to “hobble” the university, “the same way he has sought to incapacitate other perceived political enemies, including a number of law firms.”

Alex Bernat, a senior who is co-president of the Harvard Chabad Undergraduate Board, said that if Harvard is set on resisting the government’s demands, “then it is imperative Harvard release the steps they will take to further fix antisemitism here.”

Bernat praised some of the recent changes Harvard made in an attempt to combat antisemitism ahead of the government’s reforms, such as last month’s firing of two controversial heads of the university’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies.

“But [that is] not enough by any means and I’d like to see a concrete plan, whether developed internally at Harvard or agreed upon with the government,” he continued. “Additionally, I think Harvard ought to be careful about failing to take a given appropriate action merely because it was recommended from outside the university.” 

One nonprofit representing Harvard alumni calling for the school to make changes focused on promoting academic excellence, the 1636 Forum, has been highly critical of Harvard’s handling of campus protests after Oct. 7. 1636 Forum co-founder Allison Wu, a Harvard Business School alumna, said Garber should use this opportunity to clarify what reforms he will take.

“Harvard could benefit from publicly articulating a concrete roadmap for internal reforms and showing it can make swift, meaningful progress on that plan — even in the face of internal resistance or inertia,” Wu told JI. 

Rabbi Jason Rubenstein, executive director of Harvard Hillel, declined to weigh in on the issue. 

The funding freeze is already affecting major research projects at Harvard. Jeff Fredberg, a professor emeritus at the Harvard School of Public Health, has been meeting weekly with Jewish public health students, researchers and faculty over the past year, and the feeling among them now “is one of fear and depression.” 

“They’ve dedicated their whole life to this, and now I’m hearing from them, ‘What am I going to do? There are not going to be positions, or my lab is going to get closed, or has been closed,’” said Fredberg, who started meeting with the group amid increasing antisemitism within the public health field. He worries the federal actions will backfire for budding Jewish scientists. “These Jewish students are afraid there’s going to be a backlash, because the sciences are going to take the body blows on this, and ‘It’s going to be because of the Jews.’”

Harvard’s attorneys made clear the university will fight Trump, although the school has not yet announced plans to file litigation against the federal government. The Trump administration’s antisemitism task force stated on Monday that it will not let up on its demands.

“Harvard’s statement today reinforces the troubling entitlement mindset that is endemic in our nation’s most prestigious universities and colleges — that federal investment does not come with the responsibility to uphold civil rights laws,” the task force wrote in a press release announcing the funding pause. “It is time for elite universities to take the problem seriously and commit to meaningful change if they wish to continue receiving taxpayer support.” 

Trump added to Harvard’s worries on Tuesday by threatening to revoke the university’s tax-exempt status for “pushing political, ideological, and terrorist inspired/supporting ‘Sickness.’” 

The Trump administration’s Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, who is leading U.S. nuclear talks with Iran, again suggested on Monday that the U.S. is willing to allow Iran to maintain some level of nuclear enrichment, as it did during the original 2015 nuclear deal. But Witkoff appeared to walk back those remarks on Tuesday, saying that the U.S. is demanding that Iran eliminate its enrichment and weaponization programs.

“The conversation with the Iranians will be much about two critical points: One, enrichment. As you mentioned, they do not need to enrich past 3.67%,” Witkoff said on Fox News on Monday. “You do not need to run a civil nuclear program where you’re enriching past 3.67%. This is going to be much about verification on the enrichment program. And then ultimately verification on weaponization. That includes missiles.”

Allowing Iran to continue any nuclear enrichment provides Tehran with an easy pathway to a nuclear weapon, critics have argued.

But Witkoff offered a different position on Tuesday in a post on X.

“Any final arrangement must set a framework for peace, stability, and prosperity in the Middle East — meaning that Iran must stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program,” Witkoff wrote. 

Witkoff’s follow-up post reportedly came around the time of a White House meeting held by President Donald Trump on the nuclear negotiations. The new comments appeared to contradict both his remarks on Fox News and other recent comments that the U.S. would be open to a deal that included verification that Iran is not weaponizing its nuclear program, and that dismantlement was only an opening negotiating position.

Witkoff’s initial comments on Fox set off a wave of concerned reactions from the U.S. and Israel. Some Iran hawks appear concerned that the Trump administration may be headed toward a deal similar to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Analysts seen as more sympathetic to the regime, meanwhile, celebrated the initial remarks.

Following Witkoff’s Tuesday comments, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) decried anyone in Trump’s orbit pushing for a repeat of the 2015 deal.

“Anyone urging Trump to enter into another Obama Iran deal is giving the President terrible advice,” Cruz said. “[Trump] is entirely correct when he says Iran will NEVER be allowed to have nukes. His team should be 100% unified behind that.”

Cruz was responding to a post from conservative commentator Mark Levin expressing deep skepticism of a new deal with Iran. Levin has openly criticized Witkoff’s apparent concessions to the Iranian regime.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) responded similarly to Levin’s post.

“As President Trump said, the only solution is Iran completely dismantling its program, or we should do it for them,” Cotton said. “Those who minimize the risk of this regime are dead wrong. Just look at the hundreds of missiles Iran launched at Israel in the past year, aimed at massacring civilians (including many Americans living in Israel). Imagine how much worse it would be with a nuclear weapon.”

Last week, before talks in Oman began, a group of nine House Republicans led by Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY) wrote to the administration standing behind the position that Iran’s nuclear program must be “fully and verifiably dismantled.”

“The JCPOA’s failed sunset provisions, lack of robust verification mechanisms, and allowance for continued centrifuge development have all but ensured Iran’s ability to achieve nuclear breakout within a matter of months,” the lawmakers wrote. “The regime in Iran must understand that there is no situation which allows it to retain a nuclear weapons capability, and there is no scenario in which the United States will accept anything short of its full and permanent disarmament.”

Former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett argued on X on Tuesday, before Witkoff’s walk-back, that “the only deal worth making with Iran” would be one that not only completely dismantles its nuclear program but also ends its sponsorship of terrorism and its ballistic missile program.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, the US has amassed for itself unprecedented leverage,” Bennett said. “It would be a historic miss to allow Iran to regroup and threaten us—the US, Israel and the rest of the world—again.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Jewish Insider he believes Witkoff “wants to return to” the JCPOA and had, in his public comments, “effectively conceded enrichment to the Iranians.”

“His challenge is that he has to come back with a deal that doesn’t look like [the] JCPOA, because then Trump would be embarrassed by having signed a deal that essentially is the same deal he withdrew from in 2018,” Dubowitz said. “Witkoff’s challenge is to figure out how to present [the] JCPOA but to do it in a way that looks like it’s a better deal.”

Dubowitz argued that it’s essentially impossible to implement sufficient safeguards and verification to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear warhead — as Witkoff had appeared to suggest on Fox — “because the Iranians can build a warhead in a laboratory the size of a classroom in a country that’s two-and-a-half times the size of Texas.”

“I think [Witkoff] comes out and makes these comments about enrichment and then congressional Republicans get upset or [National Security Advisor Mike] Waltz and [Secretary of State Marco] Rubio push back hard internally, and [Secretary of Defense Pete] Hegseth, and then he comes back and makes his statement today,” Dubowitz said. “He’s kind of going back and forth between conceding enrichment and dismantlement depending on who his audience is.”

Jason Brodsky, the policy director of United Against Nuclear Iran, told JI that allowing Iran to continue enriching uranium to 3.67% “would enable” Iran to “extort the United States,” and said that Trump should remain consistent on insisting on full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program.

Brodsky said that allowing Iran to enrich to 3.67% was the “original sin” of the JCPOA “and that set the table for the situation that we’re in today.”

“We need to learn the lessons of the past,” Brodsky said. “The JCPOA framework failed … It’s a flawed, fundamentally failed framework of dealing with the Iranian issue.”

Brodsky praised one element of Witkoff’s original Fox comments: limits on Iran’s missile program. The lack of provisions relating to the missile program “was one of the flaws of the original JCPOA,” Brodsky said.

“But also there are a lot of other questions regarding sanctions relief and mechanisms to prevent Iran from using sanctions relief … under any deal from funding its malign behavior in the region,” Brodsky continued.

Dubowitz argued that it will ultimately be up to Trump whether to accept a deal along the lines of the JCPOA and “spin it as the greatest deal ever negotiated” in order to bring sufficient congressional support. 

He said he thinks it will be difficult for congressional Republicans to agree to a deal similar to the JCPOA given that many of them rejected that deal in 2015. “The Iran issue, to me, is the exception where Trump cannot have his way … given the congressional investment in this issue over 20 years.”

Dubowitz added that Israel would also need to decide whether and how to publicly oppose such a deal and how to calibrate its military operations, or if it would defer to Trump. He further warned that allowing Iran — and potentially Saudi Arabia — to enrich could set off a worldwide “proliferation cascade.”

Former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who also served in senior State Department and Pentagon roles in the Biden administration, told JI that Witkoff’s comments on Fox were “certainly confusing to many audiences — the Iranians, Congress, maybe others in the administration” coming as Witkoff’s first public interview following the talks in Oman.

“It may be that the president is zig-zagging a bit on what he thinks is an acceptable deal, and that means his negotiator has to make adjustments, but it’s probably a mistake to do that in public on a day-to-day basis,” Shapiro said.

Shapiro said he continues to believe it will be difficult to achieve an agreement that would dismantle the Iranian nuclear program. He said he did not think it’s likely that the administration or Congress would agree to a deal that allows continued enrichment, adding that returning to a JCPOA-type scenario would be technically difficult given the advancement in Iran’s nuclear program in the ensuing years.

Shapiro suggested it’s more likely that talks will stall, that snapback sanctions will be imposed and that Iran will respond by withdrawing from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty or making a move toward weaponization, which would require the U.S. and Israel to consider a military response.

The former ambassador argued in a recent article that the opportunity is ripe for military action against Iran’s nuclear program. “The timing, need, and opportunity may never be more compelling. And, arguably, a military option is more feasible now than at any time in recent decades,” Shapiro wrote.

Shapiro told JI that, alternatively, the U.S. and Iran could agree to an extension of the snapback deadline to continue talks and/or a “freeze-for-freeze” deal with some sanctions rollback and potentially a reduction in Iran’s nuclear stockpile. “That’s a possible scenario, but even that agreement is going to be very difficult to reach, given how advanced the Iranian program is right now.”

Witkoff’s follow-up comments on Tuesday appeared to ease some concerns in Washington.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who has been skeptical of efforts to negotiate with Iran, approvingly reposted Witkoff’s later comment, saying, “Completely agree with Special Envoy Witkoff’s statement that any deal with Iran regarding its nuclear program cannot include an enrichment capability because that is how you make a nuclear weapon.”

Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY) responded to Witkoff’s post saying, “Any deal with Iran must include a complete end to their nuclear program. No exceptions.”

AIPAC in a statement thanked Witkoff “for your insistence that Iran eliminate its enrichment and weaponization programs entirely. Time-bound negotiations must permanently and verifiably dismantle Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

The arrest on Monday of a Palestinian student at Columbia University who helped organize campus anti-Israel demonstrations was the latest front in the Trump administration’s closely scrutinized crackdown on foreign activists who have expressed sympathy for Hamas and other Palestinian terrorist groups. 

Mohsen Mahdawi, a 34-year-old green card holder born and raised in the West Bank, was arrested and detained by federal immigration officers on Monday after he appeared at a U.S. citizenship interview in Vermont, where he resides.

Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, said in an email to Jewish Insider on Tuesday that Mahdawi “was a ringleader in the Columbia protests,” sharing a New York Post article citing anonymous State Department sources claiming that he had used “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” against Jewish students.

“Due to privacy and other considerations, and visa confidentiality, we generally will not comment on Department actions with respect to specific cases,” a State Department spokesperson told JI on Tuesday.

Mahdawi’s lawyers filed a habeas corpus petition on Monday calling his detention unlawful. “This case concerns the government’s retaliatory and targeted detention and attempted removal of Mr. Mahdawi for his constitutionally protected speech,” the petition said.    

Representatives for Columbia declined to comment on Mahdawi’s arrest, citing federal student privacy law.

Like Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian green card holder and recent Columbia University graduate arrested by federal immigration agents last month, Mahdawi has not yet been charged with a crime. Instead, he appears to have been detained on a provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act cited by Secretary of State Marco Rubio to justify expelling foreigners who are seen as a threat to U.S. foreign policy and national security, which the petition also challenges.

Last week, a federal judge in Louisiana ordered that Khalil can be deported, determining such arguments are sufficient grounds for his removal, in a decision that is expected to face further challenges.

A federal judge in Vermont ruled on Monday that Mahdawi must be held in the state and cannot be removed from the country for now. 

Mahdawi’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.    

Mahdawi had been a key organizer of anti-Israel protests at Columbia that roiled the campus after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attacks. He helped to found Columbia University Apartheid Divest and was a member of the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which has expressed pro-Hamas rhetoric, among other student anti-Israel groups. 

For his part, Mahdawi, who moved to the U.S. from a refugee camp in the West Bank in 2014, called Hamas a “product of the Israeli occupation” shortly after the attacks and reportedly helped to write a statement released by Columbia student groups on Oct. 14, 2023, claiming that the “Palestinian struggle for freedom is rooted in international law, under which occupied peoples have the right to resist the occupation of their land.”

He also appeared at a rally a month after the attack alongside Nerdeen Kiswani of Within Our Lifetime, a radical group that advocates for armed resistance against Israel. 

In an interview on “60 Minutes” in December 2023, Mahdawi voiced sympathy for Hamas’ terror attacks.

“I did not say that I justify what Hamas has done. I said I can empathize,” he said. “To empathize is to understand the root cause and to not look at any event or situation in a vacuum. This is for me that path moving forward.”

On his Instagram page in August, meanwhile, Mahdawi posted photos commemorating what he called the “martyrdom” of his “cousin,” Maysara Masharqa, a field commander in the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, the armed wing of Fatah, describing him as a “fierce resistance fighter,” according to The Washington Free Beacon. 

“Here is Mesra who offers his soul as a sacrifice for the homeland and for the blood of the martyrs as a gift for the victory of Gaza and in defense of the dignity of his homeland and his people against the vicious Israeli occupation in the West Bank,” Mahdawi wrote.

While the petition filed by his legal team notes that he stepped back from such activism in March 2024, Mahdawi’s public statements drew intense scrutiny from several antisemitism watchdog groups that are pushing the Trump administration to target campus protest leaders.

Mahdawi, who was an undergraduate at Columbia University, was planning to pursue a master’s degree in the fall, according to the petition.

His arrest drew criticism on Monday from Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Rep. Becca Balint (D-VT), who said in a statement that “he must be afforded due process under the law and immediately released from detention.” 

Ramping up its pressure campaign against Ivy League schools, the Trump administration notified Harvard University on Monday in a letter that it is reviewing the school’s billions of dollars in federal funding. 

The newly formed Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism will review $255.6 million in contracts and $8.7 billion in multiyear grant commitments between the government and Harvard, first reported by The Free Press and later announced by the Department of Education.

“Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-semitic discrimination — all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry — has put its reputation in serious jeopardy,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a statement. “Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus.”

Harvard President Alan Garber argued in a statement on Monday that the university has “devoted considerable effort to addressing antisemitism” for the past 15 months. 

Those efforts, Garber said, have included “strengthen[ing] our rules and our approach to disciplining those who violate them, training and education on antisemitism across our campus and [the introduction of] measures to support our Jewish community and ensure student safety and security.”

Garber said that the university will “engage with members of the federal government’s task force to combat antisemitism to ensure that they have a full account of the work we have done and the actions we will take going forward to combat antisemitism.” 

The crackdown comes days after Columbia University agreed to enter into ongoing negotiations with the Trump administration, which cut $400 million from the university on March 7, citing the academic institution’s “ongoing inaction in the face of relentless harassment of Jewish students.” The set of demands that Columbia agreed to include putting the school’s Middle Eastern studies department under a “receivership,” which would involve closer oversight from an external body.

As an apparent preemptive measure to avoid a fate similar to Columbia’s, two heads of Harvard University’s Center for Middle Eastern Studies were let go from their roles last Wednesday. 

Task force member Sean Keveney, acting general counsel at the Department of Health and Human Services, said in a statement that the task force is “pleased that Harvard is willing to engage with us.” 

Harvard University did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider about the investigation. 

On March 10, the Department of Education sent letters to 60 universities, including Harvard, warning them of “potential enforcement actions” if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students.