Inside the Hostage Negotiations - with Brett McGurk

0:00Quick note before we start. Big things are coming to ARK Media. Somewhere in the small gaps of time between putting out three episodes each week, we've been secretly working on something we think all our listeners are going to be really excited about. We're announcing everything live on October 5th. If you want to be the first to hear about it, RSVP to our virtual announcement event. You can find the signup link in the show notes. See you there.

0:28you are listening to an art media podcast i came back to washington and days go by another day goes by and once again you're waiting on hamas and on august 31st i think it was a sunday and i was out to lunch with my family and we're waiting on hamas and i'm checking in with the countries and the egyptians and yeah we think we're going to get an answer soon okay and it was bill and i stepped out on a sidewalk and I literally thought I was getting good news that we finally got it. And Bill says, Brett, I just talked to Ronan Barr, the head of Shindat. And he said, the Israelis just found six hostages dead in a tunnel under Rafa.

1:05And kind of right there, you know, I just feel your heart drop and kind of guts rip out of your chest. And I had been carrying around a list of names to this deal, which included Hirsch, which included Carmel, which included Eden, who you mentioned. And here's the thing, as horrible as that is, the question is, can we keep this process on track or not? And Bill's point is that other than a hostage deal, there's no way to end this war. But what did Hamas do after this? You know, did they send messages? They can communicate with us. Did they say this was a tragic mistake or a panicked or something.

1:43No. They released videos of the dead, and the videos came out like when the funerals were going on.

2:03It's 2 p.m. on Friday, October 2nd here in New York City. It's 9 p.m. on Friday, October 2nd in Israel as Israelis are already deep into Shabbat and Shemini Yatzeret. Before we get started, a few quick notes. You'll notice this episode is out on Sunday instead of our usual Monday. That's because on Monday, October 5th, we're hosting a live event to share some big changes coming to ARK Media. You can RSVP at arkmedia.org forward slash RSVP. The link is in the show notes. Okay, on to today's episode. For the first 15 months after October 7th, 2023, one question hovered over almost every major decision in the war in Gaza.

2:46How do you bring the hostages home? The intense negotiations that followed involved Israel and Hamas, obviously, but also Qatar, Egypt, the CIA, the White House, Israeli intelligence, and eventually two American administrations working together. At the center of those negotiations was Brett McGurk, President Biden's senior Middle East advisor and one of the most experienced American officials in the region. Brett has served in senior national security roles across four presidencies. The Bush administration, where I first met him, we overlapped in Iraq. The Obama administration, the first Trump administration, and then the Biden administration.

3:25He spent years dealing with Iraq, ISIS, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel. and his new book, Brink, Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, is his account of what happened inside the negotiation rooms. Brett is explicit that this is not intended as the final history. It is his reconstruction of events he personally participated in, conversations and decisions made, as he put it, under extraordinary pressure, ambiguity, and uncertainty. The story begins on October 7th, when 251 people were dragged into Gaza from Israel. And it follows a path that repeatedly appeared to be hours away from success, only to collapse again.

4:08Running through the book is a fundamental argument about how the hostages would ultimately be freed, whether the key was putting greater pressure on Israel to stop the war, or maintaining military pressure on Hamas while negotiating at the same time. This debate divided Washington. It divided Israel. And it certainly strained the relationship between President Biden and Prime Minister Netanyahu. And Brett's conclusions about it are likely to generate plenty of debate themselves. So today, rather than simply retell the chronology, I want to understand the choices behind it. What Hamas wanted, what Netanyahu believed, what Biden believed, where the United States got it wrong, and what eventually made a deal possible.

4:51My conversation with Brett McGurk right after this short message.

5:00I'm Debra Pardes, the host of ARK News Daily. What's happening in Israel and the Jewish world right now matters. But it can be hard to keep up, let alone make sense of it all. That's why we started ARK News Daily. Every weekday morning, I walk you through the most important news, give you the context you need, and let you know what to look out for next. I don't try to convince you of anything, and I don't waste your time. On most days, I'll be in your ears for about 10 minutes or less. Then you can move on with your day, hopefully a little bit smarter than before. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts or follow the link in the show notes.

5:38I hope to see you tomorrow.

5:44Brett McGurk, welcome back to the podcast. Dan, it's great to be here. I've been looking forward to this conversation and thanks so much for having me. I've been looking forward to it as well. So we are going to jump right into it. I devoured your book, Brink. As I told you, as I was reading it over the summer, there are going to be a lot of books about the time in which you served in government. I think yours will emerge as one of the most important ones. I take it. It's not the final chronicling of history, but it is certainly a first draft and it's by someone who was in the thick of it all.

6:14So I want to just get into it. You open the book with President Biden giving you essentially two weeks to get a hostage deal before he leaves office. So here we are, it's late 2024, early 2025, and he wants a deal. And we're gonna get to that, but I want you to first take us back to October 7th, 2023. What was your initial understanding of the hostage situation during the first few days of October 7th? Yeah, Dan, to tell the story of October 7th, you gotta start, I think, on October 6th, because I had the Saudis in my office on October 6th, it was a Friday, because we had been working on the Saudi deal.

6:49And I shook hands with Princess Rima, who's their ambassador here on kind of a timeframe for closing out that deal. And the book talks about that package and included, you know, the Palestinians were like a part of that overall package. The Palestinian Authority was working with us and Tony was about to go to the region. And that was on October 6th on a Friday. And I came home, you know, that Friday night and I put the kid to bed and I was doing some work. And it was about midnight when I heard from, we first got to get reports from a situation room about rockets coming from Gaza. Unfortunately, that's not wasn't totally unusual.

7:22And then I got messages from Mike Herzog, who was the ambassador here, who, of course, is one of my key contacts. The Israeli ambassador to Washington. Israeli ambassador to Washington. And then we started getting reports of incursions across the border. And then I got a message from Herzog saying we're at war. And I was up all night. My Israel advisor was on her way to, I think, New York. I asked her to come back. Jake Sullivan is in Italy, just trying to figure out what's going on. I got to the White House very early that morning. I'm calling all my Israeli contacts, trying to get as much intelligence information as we can, plus what's in open sources.

7:57And I describe it as coming together in jagged pieces. And different Israeli officials are saying different things. There was a lot of denial that we got this under control. Others deeply concerned that this could be the first shot in a broader campaign against Israel. And as the overall scope of the incursion became clear, that became a consensus on the Israeli side. This must not be just a one off. I've got to the Oval Office, I think, around noon or so. And, you know, I describe in the book, Dan, briefing presidents in the Oval Office. And I started doing it when the Bush administration, and I asked Josh Bolton, who was the chief of staff then, what's your advice for this?

8:34What do you prepare, particularly in a crisis? And his advice, which stuck with me, was tell the president the truth in five minutes every morning. I remember walking in the Oval Office and John Feiner was there. Tony was there. I just want to establish the characters. So Tony Blinken, Secretary of State, John Feiner is the Deputy National Security Advisor. I'm sure we'll hear about Jake Sullivan, who's the National Security Advisor. All these characters loom large in your book. Yes. I just remember Biden looked very pale. It was a Saturday. I did not know at the time he was actually preparing that Saturday for to sit down with Rob Hurd and a prosecutor on this issue of classified documents in the president's garage.

9:11I didn't know that at the time. You never actually know what a president is dealing with. So, you know, Biden asked me, what do you make of this? I said, honestly, this is unprecedented, but we still don't know the scale of it. And we didn't. We didn't learn about the Nova Festival where so many atrocities and hostages were taken until I think a few days afterwards. But the president got on the phone with Netanyahu, and I have this in the book. I remember Netanyahu at first being very defiant, but then saying, you know, Joe, I'm in the Middle East. And in the Middle East, if you're perceived as weak, you're roadkill.

9:43And very concerned early on, Dan, I'll just close on this, on what was coming from Gaza, but also Hezbollah in the north. And are they about to come from the north? I mean, that was very present, very early, even on October 7th. Then how do we try to deter that and contain whatever is happening to Gaza? And how close, from your perspective, did the region actually come to an all-out war in those first days? I know, obviously, we'll get to this. There were later expansions of the war as it relates to direct confrontations between Iran and Israel. But in those early days, what were you guys prioritizing?

10:16What were you processing first? Wait, how many hostages and their Americans being held hostage? Was that the focus or was the focus guys work a few clicks away from like a 1973 like regional war? What was the focus? Yeah. So all things at once. Or all of the above. Yeah. How many Americans are dead? How many are missing? And that number grew four, six, 10, up to 17. So trying to figure that out. And I just remember scouring all the information about what is Iran doing? Did they know about this? What are they preparing? When you looked at the situation, and I think Americans who haven't been out there don't realize how small everything is.

10:54I mean, Israel is such a small country. And you had 30 ,000 Hezbollah troops on the northern border. And if they crossed the border, as Hamas just did, I mean, the situation was quite grim. And that's one reason Biden very early on, I mean, his early statements were that we got Israel's back. We announced deploying an aircraft carrier to the eastern Mediterranean. That was all about deterring Hezbollah. I can't say, had we not done that, that they might have crossed the border. But I will say, Dan, in my conclusion and seeing everything we could possibly see, I don't think Sinwar informed the Iranians.

11:25I think we know that now because he kept this so compartmentalized. But he did expect that once it started that the Iranians and the others would come in. And we could see the Iranians calculating in some way as surprised as we were, but then very quickly calculating how do we take advantage of this? And it was on October 8th that Hezbollah started firing into the north. And very shortly thereafter, we can get to it on October 11th, we did come to the brink of a regional war. And at multiple points throughout the crisis, that happened. So it was really kind of right away. I think those early moves we made, they were intended to deter.

11:59And I think it was very important that we did that. Okay, so I want to get to the hostage negotiations. It's some of the most interesting and at times devastating parts of the book. The first hostage negotiations seem almost primitive compared to what came later. Proving Hamas could actually locate and deliver hostages, determining who controlled whom inside Gaza, who was actually in charge, negotiating temporary pauses in Israeli warfighting, Israeli surveillance. When did you first conclude that Qatar could actually serve as an effective channel to Hamas? So a couple of days into the crisis, Biden has a video call with all the families of Americans missing.

12:37He had scheduled half hour. This meeting went on for, I think, almost 90 minutes. I describe it in the book. I've done hostage deals before, Dan. You get to know the families. But this was just some mothers just wailing into the screen in front of us, you know, do something. And in fact, in the middle of it, one woman left the screen. And when she came back, she learned that her loved one was found dead and just started wailing. And Biden was called, the time's up. You got to go to your next engagement. He shut that down. We stayed on in this incredibly horrific, emotional meeting. And it was after that that we were actually about to go to Israel for that first trip.

13:15And Biden said to me, damn it, do everything you possibly can to get these people home. So I started working very early then together with Bill Burns on, you know, what's possible here. And Bill Burns, director of the CIA at the time. Bill Burns, director of the CIA. The Qataris were actually coming to us with information on Americans missing. And we start, we open a back channel with Qatar on who's alive, who's dead, trying to figure it out. It was after the trip to Israel, I actually called Sheikh Mohammed, who's the prime minister of Qatar, just before we left Israel, about to check in. And I called one of his aides and told him to call him Sheikh Mohammed.

13:51And it was right when we were lifting off from Israel, Dan, that we heard from the Qatari side. They were working on getting these two Americans out, mother and daughter. They were the two Americans who were not dual citizens. And that we could, as a proof of concept, we could get two hostages out. We did that successfully within a couple of days. And then we started to move very quickly on a deal for all women and children. are thinking, and we were aligned with the Israelis on this, was Hamas had taken octogenarian grandmothers, babies, Abigail, Adon the toddler, which is, you know, I tell the story in the book.

14:28So release the women and children. And it became a very difficult negotiation. The idea that Hamas just was ready to release all the hostages, that's complete bullshit. So I tell the story of just the women and children deal and how hard that was to get. Just to stay on this for a moment, there have been reporting recently that in the days after October 7th, Hamas signaled that they were prepared to just release all the hostages in return for something. And you're saying that is nonsense. No, Hamas was sending signals. We're ready to have a discussion. But their core demand from the beginning, after they've killed 1 ,200 people and have invaded Israel, 3 ,000 terrorists and everything, taken 250 people, the worst mass hostage crisis in modern history, their core demand from the beginning was, yeah, you can have the hostages in exchange for all Palestinian prisoners and we stay in power, right?

15:15Permanent ceasefire, October 6th status quo. Their core demand was we stay in power. We will reconstitute on Israel's borders. No Israeli government was ever going to accept that. But that was their core demand throughout. And you had these kind of irreconcilable, because Israel's position was at the end of this, Hamas could not be in power in Gaza. So you had a completely irreconcilable positioning. And a lot of the book is about how we bridge that and try to find a formula. But this first phase was all women and children. And what Hamas did was what they would do is they'd say, sure. And then we would say, well, then who are the hostages that will come out in this deal?

15:51Because I have a deal, a hostage deal. Who are the hostages? And then this is what Hamas was very good at doing. They were kind of onesie and twosie. So they would say, oh, we can identify 10. And the Israelis knew there were at least almost 70 women and children. And I have a scene in the book, Dan, where I go to Israel and I'm in the Kyria. The Israeli defense ministry, the defense headquarters. Yeah. Yes. In Tel Aviv. And I'm there for the hostage deal. There's a lot going on. I'm there for this. Okay. And I'm on my way to Doha and I'm going to go to Cairo. And we have an offer on the table from Hamas for 20 guaranteed can come out.

16:25And what Hamas would say is these are the 20 we can identify. We need the ceasefire to identify the rest. Okay. and the Israelis thought that was BS because we knew and we know from talking to hostages now, Hamas took very careful records of who the hostages are and had pretty good accounting. So if you went into a deal for all the women and children with a guarantee of only 20, you're likely to come out of that without getting all the hostages out. After this meeting at the defense ministry, the equivalent of the Pentagon for Israel, it's a big meeting and all these people and there's all this stuff being discussed and the hostage talks are so sensitive.

17:03And I'm pretty frustrated because I'm there to talk about this. And Netanyahu kind of pulls me aside after that meeting. And we have a little tête -à-tête by the door. And he tugs at my sleeve and he's like, Brett, I need this deal. Help me get it. And I said, you know, that's why I'm here. And we have an offer of 20, birds in hand. I said, what if we can get 30? The Egyptians and countries are saying we can maybe get 30. And Netanyahu said, no, no, no, no, no. Like demand 50. I think they'll cave and I'm willing to go ahead. And we eventually got that. OK, we got 50. And this just shows the way Hamas dealt with these negotiations.

17:40They wanted to hold on to as many hostages as they could while also getting into ceasefires. So we eventually got the guarantee of 50. And we went into that deal in late November. And we finally get the ceasefire. Hostages start coming out. And in a very dramatic way, night by night, Hamas will release a list of names. and who's on the list, who's not. I described this kind of torturous process and waiting, is Abigail going to be on the list? Is she alive or not? And they start releasing the foreign workers, the Thai workers and others. So by day eight, about 100 hostages have come out. And in a meeting on day four or five or so, a phone call we had with President Biden and Bill Burns is on the line, CIA director.

18:27And Bill pointed out the concern that Hamas was not releasing the younger women. Only one younger woman had been released and she was like just grievously wounded. And there was a concern that at the end, they were going to try to hold onto them. So on day eight, this is a key moment in this crisis. We're in a ceasefire, guns are silent, a hundred hostages have come out. The remaining women on the list are the younger women. There are some soldiers, but most were taken from Nova or from their homes. And I was home at this point in Washington, it was about midnight. and we're waiting for a list from Hamas.

19:02And the Israelis were telling us, even if they produce one, one, we'll keep the ceasefire going. And we get a cryptic message from Hamas saying, you know, we can't really find the younger girls. And so let's skip to the older men. Keep the ceasefire, skip to the older men. And if you read the book, Dan, you know, you live through this moment. And it's like a moral quandary. What do you do? Do you keep the ceasefire, skip to the older men? Men and the older men. Right. Right. Is the goal to get as many hostages back as possible, no matter who they are? Or do you hold Hamas accountable and say, no, you're not fulfilling this deal unless you get these women out?

19:36Right. The deal's for all women and children. But the older men are in rough shape, too. And keep in mind, I'm sure you're thinking at this point, you do have a sense at this point what the women have gone through. Exactly. And so you're thinking, my God, we know from the images on October 7th what these women went through. And we can only imagine what these women are going through the longer they're in captivity. Yes. So anyone who cares about whatever side you're on in this most polarizing crisis, it's like a key moment because we have a ceasefire that can continue if Hamas will just release these younger women.

20:08And they don't. And the question is, do you skip to the older men? And the decision from the Israeli side was unanimous. No, we cannot. If we skip over the women, it's basically we're signing their death sentence. We'll never get them out. And the war started again that night. And I don't want to fast forward, but Romy, Daron, and Emily are three women who came out the day before the inauguration. One taken from Nova, two from Kafaraza, the kibbutz where the seagulls were and where Abigail and her parents were killed. But they should have come out in November. And why do you think Hamas did not want to release these women?

20:41Yeah, I think they saw them as their most valuable hostages, clearly. For all the worst reasons, because they knew we in the West would be horrified about the longer they're there. Yeah. But do you also think there was concern that in releasing these women, these women would have stories to tell that could invite pressure on Hamas? Yeah, we actually talked about that at the time. Yes, that was, yes, the testimonies would be told to the world and as they have now. But in any case, the point is we had a deal for all women and children, unequivocal. And Israel's releasing, you call it the keys and the nomenclature of these negotiations.

21:17The keys are the ratio for Palestinian prisoners to the hostages. They're releasing, I think, about 10 prisoners for each hostage. And Hamas broke the deal. And I did not think at that moment it would take 14 months or so to get back to a deal. I didn't because I thought we succeeded here. We can get back to the table pretty quickly. But that was just a key. It's important to, I think, pause on that November deal and why it fell apart. and then we get into what happened after. Do you think it was a mistake by the Israelis to not just go for numbers at that point? No, I think there's a very good chance we never would have gotten the women out.

21:52Wow. And Hamas played with this issue because we can get in the guts of the talks, but they played with it. Israel had a key demand in every offer. Women come out first and Hamas would always soften that. You know, we'll make a good faith effort and things. I mean, I think Hamas believed, particularly Yahashinwar, that this war would end with Hamas holding a number of hostages. Meaning indefinitely. Or for years. Yeah, I agree with that. I tell the October 7th story through the eyes of the White House and what we're seeing, and also through the Seagulls, Keith and Aviva Seagull, both taking hostage.

22:26And the Seagulls, in their home, they had a bumper sticker that said, Galad is alive. From the period in which Galad Shalit is being held, an Israeli soldier taken in 2006 and held for five years. And there was a big debate in Israel about getting him out. And eventually he was freed in 2011 in an exchange for 1 ,000 Palestinian prisoners, including Yaha Sinwar. And it gets to the perverse nature and the moral quandaries of a hostage negotiation. Because a hostage taker always puts a price on the table. Like I've dealt with this with Iran in hostage negotiations. Same tactic. There's always a price on the table.

23:05And the question is, what can a state who's responsible for the safety of all of its citizens and also redeeming the releasing the hostages? What can a state accept and where do you draw that line? And I cite Maimonides in an epigraph. You know, there's no higher mitzvah than the redemption of captives because of what captives might be going through. And it's true. It's like an absolute commandment. But he also has kind of utilitarian formula that the price can't be so high that you encourage further hostage shaking or put society at risk. And this is the kind of sliding scale that there's no right answer for and that it tears your soul apart if you're working on it.

23:42It tears society apart. It tears governments in two because just meet their price. But meeting the price, the consequences can – you can actually set conditions for an even worse situation. But that is the nature of a hostage negotiation. This one, of course, is also – encompasses a war and a regional crisis and everything else. But that was Hamas's calculation. And I think like a lot, they intended to keep hostages for years. I have no doubt about that. But there's this recurring disagreement in the book between you and Prime Minister Netanyahu that keeps coming up different parts of the book.

24:15And what you capture is that Washington frequently, and it alludes to something you just said earlier, Washington frequently wanted Israel to put an offer on the table and force Hamas to respond. And Netanyahu would argue that Hamas, if that was what Israel kept doing, Hamas would simply pocket every Israeli concession in any offer and then ask for more. And it was a fool's errand. Looking back, Brett, who understood Hamas's negotiating strategy better? Yeah, so our approach was get a deal that went as far as you could in the direction of Hamas that then Israel endorses and then put the onus on Sinwar to say yes.

24:51And we did that a number of times. Netanyahu, and I obviously saw him a number of times, and the Israeli government has two goals. Defeat Hamas as a military and governing power in Gaza. They'll never again rule Gaza. And release the hostages. And that plays out in my conversations with Netanyahu. But Netanyahu would say, you're doing this backwards. Like, get them to say yes and then come to me. But what Hamas would say yes to was we stay in power. You go back to permanent ceasefire, guaranteed ceasefire, October 6th status quo, which Israel's not going to accept. But and I honestly you're asking a good question about how do you kind of a chicken or egg.

25:31And eventually to get the deal, it was we had Israel signed up and we and once Yaa Hassan was dead and the whole regional balance of power changed, Hamas said yes. But yeah, this was a tension. And those conversations with me and Netanyahu and with Biden and Netanyahu and others are reflected in the book. I've really tried, Dan, in this book. And I know you've read a lot of kind of books from former officials. And as of I, I've just, I tried to just, and there was no other way to write it. I just poured it down. Like, this is what happened in the room, not all the rooms and with Netanyahu, with a situation room, with intelligence chiefs and with Hamas downstairs on one floor, Israelis on another in the immediacy of the moment.

26:09And there's never like a right answer. You know, it's just so exceedingly difficult. So I want to go to the spring of 2024, which, as I remember it, but certainly as I'm reading your book, I was reminded, it sort of crystallized for me what a turning point spring of 2024 was, because Biden at that point was becoming much more publicly critical of Israel. There was enormous pressure on Israel over Rafa. All eyes are on Rafa, the humanitarian conditions in Gaza, and the administration did pause the delivery of certain weapons. And the New York Times reported, from your book, a recent piece, like the last couple of days, reported that President Biden was close to a fundamental break with Netanyahu in April of 2024.

26:56So I guess critics will ask, if he was really at that point, why didn't he do so? Yeah. Yeah. So April 4th, 2024, kind of all these conflicting objectives, emotions come into the end of the Oval Office. Now, after the November deal falls apart, just a quick to bring you up to April 4th, when I thought we'd get a deal back on the table soon, we come under attack in the region, increasing attacks in Iraq and Syria and the Red Sea. We have an awful casualty on Christmas Day. Biden dispatches me to see the Iranians in Oman to try to get a handle on this. I describe those talks in detail. And then we have three Americans dead the end of January.

27:36And Biden orders significant airstrikes, including directly against an Iranian officer in Baghdad. And after all that, we get back to the hostage talks and we just couldn't get any traction because Hamas would sit on offers and were just rejecting any kind of compromise formula. So by April, the talks have basically collapsed. and Biden is now in, he's running for reelection and it's hard to even articulate how we're gonna manage, what is our plan to kind of end the Gaza war, get hostage out? He's taken criticism from the right that we're not being supportive enough of Israel and tough enough on Hamas.

28:14He's taken massive criticism from the left that we're not somehow restraining Israel. And on April 1st, three days before this call, we're having a meeting in the Situation Room with the Israelis on Rafa, on the kind of humanitarian plan for Rafa. And Gadai Zilberman, who was the military attaché to the Israeli embassy, pulls me aside before the meeting and says, Brett, I got to tell you something. We're going to do an airstrike in Damascus against Mohammed Reza Zahedi, who was the Quds Force commander who we've known for years, who kind of enables Hezbollah and everything. And honestly, my initial reaction, given that Hezbollah was firing into Israel every day, was that's a totally legitimate operation.

28:57He said, there's one more thing. The Iranians might say that the building he's in is a part of their embassy in Damascus, but it's not. I saw that would be a problem. I say, Dan, we've never seen anything to support that it is part of an embassy. But in any event, the Israelis did that strike. They take out Zahedi. On the same day, there was the World Central Kitchen drone strike in Gaza, which killed seven aid workers, which was an awful tragic event and which was so self-defeating also for the Israelis. because they were working with World Central Kitchen far more effectively than with the UN.

29:30So all of this is kind of coming together in a very negative way. And after there's a heady strike, and I'll get to the phone call and your question, we start to see intelligence, Dan, that Iran is preparing a hard-to-believe missile, ballistic missile, drone, cruise missile, direct attack on Israel. And just to put this in context, like totally unprecedented and like massive. And so we're seized with that because if that attack succeeds and we have just by looking at it, you could have hundreds of casualties in Israel. You're in a major regional war. So this all comes into head in this call, Dan, in the Oval on the 4th.

30:08And the President Biden, I described in the book, is extremely just frustrated with the whole situation. And that's when he says to Netanyahu, like, you know, I can cut you off. And that's what's gotten a lot of attention and kind of the excerpts and things. But let me answer your question, because I did not think we should do that. And the key part of that call and what happened afterwards was the president said, look, here's what we're going to do. We're going to help defend you, and I'm going to send military forces to help defend Israel. And then we're going to get back to the hostage deal.

30:34And that's what we did. And then by the end of May, we have a hostage deal on the table that Israel has signed on to. So we kind of, in my view, we use that moment very effectively with very direct private conversations, to say the least. defending Israel in an unprecedented way against this unprecedented missile attack and then getting back to a process to try to get the hostages out. Now, many analysts of this from, I think, the left side of the equation say, no, no, Biden should have just cut Israel off at that point. Well, that would not have ended the war. It would not have gotten any hostages home.

31:08And so I don't, that argument, this is always the argument from just cut off Israel and somehow the war will stop, the hostages will come out, reduce human suffering, and it doesn't add up. Well, can you spend a minute on that? Because this criticism, including from members of President Biden's own administration, your former colleagues have made this point. So what do they get wrong? Because you're asserting that it wouldn't have worked, but why not? Well, it's also a bit of a rewriting history of that period because, I mean, Congress at the time voted, there was a vote on April 20th for a$26 billion aid package for Israel, which was overwhelmingly bipartisan.

31:42It was 366 to 58 in the House. So the idea that there was some consensus at this moment, in this time frame, is just completely false. When we did take very public measures against Israel in the period just before this call, we abstained from a UN Security Council resolution for basically an unconditional ceasefire over Ramadan, which did not tie a ceasefire to the hostages. Now that did not produce a ceasefire. It played back extremely negatively in the hostage talks. and the Hamas leaders like Haniyah went to Tehran and like praised it and basically doubled down on their demands. I mean, that's a very tangible example of performative diplomacy producing no outcome whatsoever, in fact, producing negative outcomes.

32:23The debate over Rafa, very public tortured debate. Now, we had concerns over Rafa and how the Israelis would handle it, which we were discussing with them privately and extensively. But the Israelis were trying to set up a choice for Sinwar. I'm actually have a I have a part of the book where I am sitting there with Abbas Kamal, the Egyptian intel chief and Ronan Barber. Ronan tries to really put this on the table. Ronan is the head of the Shin Bet. So he's part of the Israeli team. Yeah. And he's like he really wants a deal. The only way to stop this operation is release hostages and start with the women who should have come out in November.

32:57They're trying to set up this binary choice. The public kind of tortured debate over Rafa, which I think had no effect on the Israeli operations. I think our private consultations with them, we sent military experts out, did have an effect on how that operation went, played back very negatively on the talks. So just one more data point, of course, as you know, and I think your listeners know, I mean, the Israelis have one of the largest arms industries in the world. So the idea that had we made draconian cuts in military assistance would have stopped the war, it's just not well founded. And of course, after this call, we did selectively curtail certain munitions, the heavy payload munitions and a number of systems that could have been used in the West Bank.

33:37So, you know, we did selectively use that tool. But how do you end this war? You can't just say end the war. How do you get hostages home? You can't just say get hostages home. And there's like a Washington conversation and a political conversation. And then there's like where it really counts trying to get this done. And what I've tried to do is reflect both of that because it all kind of plays together. But I was spending a lot of my time here overseas trying to get this done. And I kind of felt how the public debate in Washington had an effect and often a negative effect on the talks. OK, so I want to fast forward, Brett, to August 2024.

34:12And I actually saw you shortly after that. you believed you were extremely close to a deal. And there were even names on a list, Israeli names that were going to be released in the deal. It was that close. And then six hostages were found murdered in Rafa, under Rafa, including Hirsch Goldberg-Poland, Eden Yerushalami, Carmel Gott, Ori Danino, Alex Lubavnov, and Almog Sarusi. And this was what Rachel Goldberg-Poland, She describes him as the beautiful six. And you wrote in the book that Bill Burns told you around that time, we don't have a plan B. Quote, we don't have a plan B. So, A, what did he mean by that?

34:52And what did this tell you, the beautiful six being killed? What did it murder? What did it tell you about the assumptions underlying the entire negotiating strategy up to that point? It's hard to, honestly, it's hard to write about, hard to talk about. But, you know, the dates matter here. I'll go through real quick. Just May 31st, Biden lays out three ceasefire deals, a detailed four page agreement. We got everything. Everything's in there. Netanyahu has said yes. President lays out to the world. U.N. Security Council endorses it unanimously. Hamas never answers. OK, if you want this war to end on June 1st, right after that speech, all pressure should be on Hamas.

35:27Just say yes. But what happens? Hezbollah launches its largest attack of the war in early June. Khamenei makes this crazy speech praising October 7th. Basically, the Iranians are telling Hamas not to compromise at all. And we don't get an answer from Hamas for five weeks, even though this deal went far in their direction. Hamas's answer, although Hamas announced to the world we accept the deal, they did not accept the deal. Had a number of poison pills in their response. And we worked through that in the course of July to put another offer down on August 16th. And this proposal went further in the direction of Hamas than the May proposal.

36:02And it had maps on Philadelphia corridor. The Israelis would move off the beach and have a very small perimeter, all this stuff. It was all there. The Palestinian prisoners that would come out for the hostages were there. And what in the nomenclature are called heavy prisoners. You know, the guys who Hamas operatives who are serving Syria censuses and killed Israelis. It's all there. We put that on on August 16th and it is endorsed by Tamim, who's the emir of Qatar publicly. He calls on Hamas to take the deal and it's endorsed by Sisi. And it didn't go all the way in the direction of Hamas, but it went about 80 percent of the way there.

36:37And I'm hearing from the Egyptians I trust and others. I described them in the book that we think we're going to get at least something constructive here that we can get traction. And I came back to Washington. And once again, you're waiting on Hamas. And days go by. Another day goes by. And every day that goes by, people are dying. And on August 30th, 31st, I think it was a Sunday, and I was out to lunch with my family. And we're waiting on Hamas. And I'm checking in with the Qataris and the Egyptians. And they're like, yeah, we think we're going to get an answer soon. Okay. And it was Bill. And I stepped out on a sidewalk and I literally thought I was getting good news that we finally got it.

37:15And Bill says, Brett, I just talked to Ronan Barr, again, the head of Shin Bet. And I said, yeah. And he said, the Israelis just found six hostages dead in a tunnel under Rafa. And kind of right there, you know, I just feel your heart drop and kind of guts rip out of your chest. And and then he said, we think one of them is Hirsch. and I didn't want to believe it. And I had been carrying around a list of names to this deal, which included Hirsch, which included Carmel, which included Eden, who you mentioned. Carmel and Eden should have come out in November. And here's the thing, as horrible as that is, the question is, can we keep this process on track or not?

37:55And Bill's point, no plan B, is that other than a hostage deal, and I agreed with him, there's no way to end this war. But what did Hamas do after this? You know, did they send messages? They can communicate with us. Did they say this was a tragic mistake or a guard panicked or something? No. They released videos of the dead and the videos came out like when the funerals were going on. Meaning like propaganda videos. I mean, videos designed to torture Israelis. Yeah. So the idea of Hamas, again, Hamas is ready to release hostages, do a deal. show me the evidence as somebody who was right there.

38:33And this is another key moment. And so, Dan, I'll finish on this point. Again, this is the readers of the book will be in these rooms. We meet on Labor Day as President Biden, myself, Bill Burns. Labor Day 2024, after these six hostages have been murdered. So a couple of days after the, and Kamala Harris is to my left and we're debating what to do, you know, and one of our lawyers, Josh Geltzer, the NSC legal counsel said, you know, DOJ has been sitting on indictments for Hamas leaders. We could issue those. I was like, well, yeah. Like, why didn't we do that? There was a discussion of, is there another way, is there some other formula than the August 16th text to get the, go maybe more in the direction of Hamas?

39:12And the answer was no. And I flung the list of names on the table and I reached the conclusion in that moment in dealing with this horrific outcome. And it wasn't lost to me that it was Rafa where these hostages were. And I said, we're not going to get a hostage deal until Yaha Sinwar is dead. It's completely irreconcilable. There's just no way. That was my conclusion. And then, you know, Bill pointed out, Bill Burns, that, oh, by the way, the Iranians might be preparing another missile attack. And I said, you know, the Iranians, and I'd seen the Iranians in Oman. I said, the Iranians, they are still so confident and they think they're winning.

39:51And And Harris said it might be time to prove them wrong. And it's a key moment in this crisis because at this point, we basically walked away from the – we didn't walk totally away from the table on the hostage talks. But the conclusion was we were not going to get a deal until some fundamentals in the balance of power change here. And that meant Yahashinwar. And it ultimately meant Israel went north into Lebanon. And Bibi was always of the view, Netanyahu, prime minister, and others. We will wait on Hezbollah, okay? We can deal with them some other time if we get a deal in Gaza. If we can't get a deal in Gaza, then we got to take care of this.

40:27And so when the talks really collapsed after the beautiful six, that's when Israel went north. And then things just kind of unfold. I mean, Israel goes north on the Lebanon operation. Nasrallah is dead. Iran does launch another missile attack after Nasrallah, an even bigger one, 200 ballistic missiles. We help defeat that. We then work with the Israelis on a response. They take out the Iranian S-300s. And that's when we started to say, OK, maybe there's a way back to the table here. We'll be right back after this short message. Hi, I'm Daniil Hartman, president of the Sholem Hartman Institute in Jerusalem.

41:04And I'm Yossi Klein-Halevi, senior fellow at the Sholem Hartman Institute. What's more important, to be feared by your enemies or morally true to yourself? Should Israel strive to be a nation among nations, or should it accept the fact that it is now a fortress apart? What do Israelis and diaspora Jews owe each other? If you're Jewish. Or a friend, an ally. These questions have been gnawing at you these past few years. For some of you, like for us, these questions have been keeping you up at night. And for some, they've been simmering in the background, waiting for answers. But dilemmas don't always have clear answers.

41:41What they do deserve are honest and respectful debates. And as it happens, Yossi and I love to challenge each other to get to the bottom of things. We look at current events through a lens that speaks to us most deeply, a Jewish lens. So if today's Jewish dilemmas are on your mind, tune in to our conversation on For Heaven's Sake, a partnership between ARC Media and the Sholem Hartman Institute. You can find For Heaven's Sake on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you there. I want to fast forward to January of 2025. You are still representing an outgoing Democratic president.

42:20President Trump is getting ready to come in and his envoy, Steve Witkoff, and you are working and negotiating side by side together, sort of divide and conquer, division of responsibilities. What could Witkoff say or do with Netanyahu that the Biden administration after 15 months of war could no longer do? Well, I don't think it was so much that, Dan, but it was the fact that with Trump coming in, and I knew this right after the election, as soon as Trump won, the time frame happened to line up. We really have an opening now. Hezbollah cuts its own deal that cuts the legs out from under Hamas.

42:52Like the whole thing had kind of changed. Yahastin War was killed on October 16th. And it's time to get to really make the final push on the Gaza deal. I think we can get it. I really thought we could get it. Trump wins the election. And I knew immediately, having been through transitions, our power is going to wane. And Israelis and Hamas and anyone else on the field here is going to care what Trump is going to do. So I called Jared Kushner shortly after the election. And I don't know Jared particularly well, but obviously in his role in the Middle East, we've connected from time to time. And I just kind of laid this out.

43:24And so, look, I think we have an opportunity if we can be seen as working together. And he He fully agreed. He alluded to somebody that would be coming in to take the Middle East file, ended up being Steve Wyckoff. Biden and Trump meet in the Oval Office. They agree to work together. I go through this in the book because I think if left to its own devices and a polarized Washington, Dan, we would have said good luck to Trump people coming in. The Trump people would have said we're not going to work with these Biden people. They don't know what they're doing. That's kind of just the normal course.

43:51But I met Steve Wyckoff in a meeting in the Capitol with Mike Waltz and Jake Sullivan and J.D. Vance made an appearance and described this situation and that we have a chance to get and stop the Gaza war and get the hostages out. And Steve, I try to bring his character. He's such a character. He's a larger than life character. And I'm just like, man, he says, I don't give a shit about politics. I just want to save lives. This is why I'm here. And we exchanged numbers and started talking every day. Now, I went back to the region, saw Netanyahu in early December, and once again, here's the full deal.

44:25And Netanyahu said, first week of December or so, he talked a lot about Iran and Fordow, which is a separate topic. It's in the book. But he said, look, if I can get the full list of hostages from Hamas, I know who's coming out. There are 33 names on the list. I'm ready to do the deal. And when you roll into January, we have two issues left. Hamas puts an outrageous demand on the table for the number of Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences and the issue of the buffer zone. And that's when Steve came out to join us in Doha. And the Israelis were very reluctant to take that final step because some of these Palestinian prisoners, Dan, I don't think this is really ever fully appreciated.

45:01But a guy named Mohammed Abu Wardah, he's serving 48 life sentences. He was involved in multiple suicide bombings in the Second Intifada. Bilal Abuganam who killed several people, including an American teacher. These are the people on Hamas's list for civilians. In return for civilians. In return for civilian hostages, including Sagi Dekelchen, who was an American who was shot twice on October 7th, not soldiers. But this moment, I'm Biden's envoy, Steve is Trump's envoy. And the Israelis said, yes. And I think had we not joined forces, we never would have gotten the deal. And I give Trump and Steve full credit.

45:39And I also give Biden and our team full credit because there wouldn't have been, this is a detailed deal. It didn't kind of just come together in the final days. And Trump put this deadline on, if the hostages are not home by inauguration day, there'll be hell to pay or all hell will break loose. And nobody really knew what that meant. But, you know, that was effective. It's the inauguration or not. We would not have had a deal and we would not have gotten those hostages out without it. And I don't want to dwell too much on this whole, this inflection point that I asked you about earlier, the Roth operation.

46:12But the reason I want to spend a moment on it is because you've written about it, obviously, both in your book and some pieces in advance of your book's release. And then there's been responses to what you wrote from your former colleagues. So Phil Gordon, for instance, who is Vice President Harris's national security advisor, he writes in response to you, and I'm quoting here from X, he posts, Harris was hardly the only U.S. official to warn publicly and privately that an Israeli assault on Rafa would be a huge mistake, quote-unquote, with potential consequences. And then he goes on to explain just a lot about the overall approach that at least he believed and others in the administration believed the administration should take.

46:49And he says, whatever the administration's biggest mistakes, quote-unquote, I think he's quoting you, pressing Israel to change its Rafa plans was not among them. Now, again, it seems to me not just fixating on Rafa, but just generally there seems to be a difference in approach between, say, you and other officials in the administration in terms of what it would take to change the dynamic. Because you say, you said here and you say in the book, things didn't really change until the broader strategic environment changed. Sinwar's dead, Hezbollah's kind of decoupled and on defense. That's when things really start to change.

47:21Yeah, the biggest mistake, there was a quote from Ronan Barr when we were kind of reflecting on this at dinner we had with a number of foreign officials, that public debate, how it played into the hostage talks. And I mean, taking Phil's point there, and I have great respect for Phil, two things can be true. There are concerns about how the Israelis are going to pursue the Rafa operation. We want to make sure civilians are able to get out before the battle begins. How's that going to go? It's all true. We all shared that. And then how do you deal with that? Do you deal with it privately? Like we did, we had a number of meetings where all of our humanitarian officials were discussing directly with the Israelis and we did all that.

47:55And again, behind closed doors. Or do you have a very public kind of like an ultimatum to the Israelis? That sounded like if you go, there could be a break with the U.S. And I think there's no question that public aspect of that debate, I do not think affected the Israeli operation. But it definitely played back into the hostage negotiation. There's no doubt. And we now know, and we thought then, but we didn't know, that Sinwar, who is the guy who holds the keys to the hostages, the literal keys, was in Rafa while this is playing out. And we know Sinwar consumes media. So this is the tension between what you say here in Washington publicly will have an influence on all the actors that we're trying to influence.

48:37So the Israelis are not the only actor. There are other actors in this crisis. It's Hominay, it's Nasrallah, it's Sinwar, who's the guy who's going to say yes or no to a deal. And I always thought the only way to end this is a deal and we got to put the screws to Sinwar. It's a yes or no. And so if he thinks there's about to be a major breach with the U.S. and Israel, which is what he wants, what Israel wants, I think that is not helpful. Just one more larger point here. And people can debate this, you know. I mean, October 7th was such an unprecedented attack. And Israel took the position from the beginning that however this ends, Hamas cannot be in power.

49:12And that wasn't just Netanyahu. That was everybody. I described my visit, our visit to Israel early on where, you know, we saw Benny Gantz and Guy Eisenkot and everybody. Unanimous consensus on that point. However this ends, Hamas cannot be in power in Gaza. And the Israelis were unanimous. We are going in on the ground because we were thinking early on. I described this in detail. Is there a way to do this without even going in on the ground? The answer is absolutely not. I think some took the position that this was just another maybe like the 2014 Gaza war that was in the Obama administration.

49:41I didn't work on any of that. But, you know, there will be a short war and then there'll be a ceasefire. Hamas will stay in power and you'll find a way. That was not how this was going to go. And I don't think there's anything an American president could have done to convince the Israelis to just leave Hamas in power in Gaza. So it gets down to kind of the prism through which if you accept the legitimacy of the objective that Hamas can no longer be in power at the end of this, that then, you know, how do you actually achieve that? Well, Brett, you did have a tragically had a front row seat to the impact this all had on Israeli society.

50:14And the hostage crisis did feel like it was tearing Israeli society apart. And you had a front row seat, but you're an outsider. What was your interpretation of what was going on in Israeli society? Because it sounds like you were speaking to Israelis of all communities and of all private citizens, public officials, people on the right, people on the left, people. I mean, you were dealing with numerous aspects of Israeli life. What was your interpretation of what was going on? As an outsider, but someone who spent a lot of time there, I think the country, there was a dichotomy between the country being unified and mobilized after October 7th.

50:49I described some of those scenes. You could see it with your own eyes. And also this division in Israeli society, this kind of polarized division that we also have here was also very apparent. But I talk in the book, Dan, about I happened to be in Israel in December of 2023 when Gadi Eisencott's son was killed in Gaza. And I had known Gadi before. I think this gets to your question about just in society. And Gadi, of course, is a former chief of defense, and he's now a political opposition to Netanyahu and the election that is going to happen. But I went to his home on the last day of the Shiva for Gao for his son.

51:26It was me and Jake Sullivan. And obviously a very emotional moment. This is in the book. And I spoke with Gadi before putting this of the book. And he reached behind him for a book on his shelf. And it was a book about the second Intifada. And he had written an article for the book, or he's quoted in it. And he had the book marked and he turns to this page and he quotes himself from 20 or so years ago. And he says, I'm the father of a five-year-old son. And we know in Israel, we pay the price of war and of our security. And he closed the book and put it on a shelf. And he said, you know, that five-year-old son was Gal.

52:03And he said, I wish I had been wrong. And yet, Gadi believed Israel had to defeat Hamas, and he lost a nephew as well. So my hope for Israel, Dan, is that somehow the country can politically unite with a more of a consensus type government, because I think it really needs it. It's not for me to say, but I think this dichotomy between being mobilized and unified against common enemies, which is there, and yet being so driven with divisions is a serious challenge that I hope Israel can overcome. And as you said, this issue, this war, this what to do, how to respond, or not so much how to respond to the war, but how to deal with the hostages tore Israeli society apart.

52:42And there's aspects of it that are tearing American society apart. And it's perplexing to me, but it is a fact that our politics, at least in certain aspects of our politics, have been deeply polarized because of Israel, whatever that means to people. And certainly how Israel has conducted itself since October 7th. Again, fair or not fair, the criticism may be, but this is now determining the outcome of elections in the United States. It is like a top two or three issue for a whole swath of American voters. I guess, based on your own experience, what do you think people don't understand here about Israel?

53:17And you can take that anywhere you want. What do you think people hear? You know, you can get in front of the fiercest critics of what Israel has done since October 7th or for what it had done before October 7th, whether they're former colleagues of yours in government, whether they're journalist types, analysts, people running for office now, you had a front row seat to all of this. You lived it and breathed it. What do you understand that they don't? One thing that changed after October 7th that is now in the fabric of Israel, and I think will be true of any Israeli government, and I think any future U.S.

53:48administration, think about this, you have to understand this. Israel will never allow threats to gather again, ever. They will not allow Hamas to reconstitute on their borders. They will not allow Hezbollah to be sitting with 30 ,000 troops and digging tunnels on the borders ever. They won't. And that reaches further. They will act against Iran. For example, if Iran is reconstituting its nuclear program or its ballistic missile program is getting to kind of a point of no return, Israel will act after what happened. I just think that is so deeply ingrained and you have to understand that. And if an American president tells them not to act or just accept the fact that you're going to have 30 ,000 Hezbollah troops on the border, I think any Israeli prime minister will say, sorry, I got to do it to protect my people.

54:33That is kind of bedrock. The way the United States can influence that is by having a close relationship, frankly. Holding Israel at increasingly arms length is going to make the situation much more volatile and dangerous because I think Israeli conduct will become even more unpredictable. and the enemies of Israel, which are determined. And so long as this revolutionary system is in power in Iran, they have two goals. They want to get the U.S. out of the region and they want to destroy Israel. They say it and they mean it. You're going to have a much – an even worse situation in the Middle East.

55:04I'll just – I'll end on this anecdote. I talk a little bit about the difference in strategic cultures, Dan. And one of my colleagues in Mossad as we're working through this said, you know, in the United States, you're a strategic culture if you're in the national security business. America, about 80 % planning, or always planning, 10 % acting, and then 10 % doing the after-action review and feeding back into planning. Israel, 90 % acting, and Israel's not in the national security business, in the national survival business. 90 % acting, and then 10 % acting again to address the unintended consequences of act.

55:38There's something to that. But I think understanding the differences in strategic culture and the reality that Israel faces and what any leader in Israel is going to be calculating, and also how American policy affects the thinking of the determined enemies of Israel and of us, that's Iran, that's others, has to be part of the calculation as we decide in Washington what the right policies are going forward. Well, you certainly, to your point about Israelis are about 90 % acting, you certainly saw that on fly Dubai, flight number 1073. I think I said on CNN, again, there's an ethos in Israel. Don't mess with Israelis.

56:12We will act. And you saw that. Don't mess with Israelis up front on that extraordinary airplane. Just amazing. And had that succeeded, Dan, I mean, I shudder to think where we would be. Meaning not just the bloodshed that would have resulted, but also the spark it would have been for God knows what in the region. Right. A hundred percent. All right, Brett. The book is Brink Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, which will be released on Tuesday. It is a very important read. I couldn't recommend it enough. Actually, I read it fast. You know, I normally don't read that fast. I read it fast just in a couple of sittings.

56:49So if readers are allergic to long reads that require a big commitment, this one will certainly inform you and give you really, really firsthand accounts and context. and you can do it efficiently. So don't just rely on this podcast conversation uses a teaser to go order the book and dive in. Brett, as always, thank you. It's great to see you. Thank you for your service and your friendship and look forward to having you back on. Thank you, Dan. Likewise, great to be here.

57:31Hi, it's Dan Sinor. Israel is heading into one of its most consequential elections, and this time the whole world is watching closely. Hot takes and daily noise are pretty much guaranteed to populate your media diet. But as with any election, there's a deeper story about identity, religion, democracy, and what kind of country Israelis want to live in. That's why ARK Media launched Israel Votes, a special initiative across Call Me Back, For Heaven's Sake, and ARK News Daily. You'll hear from the leading candidates shaping the race, along with analysis and reporting from two of Israel's leading political analysts, ARK Media contributors Nadav Ayal and Amit Sego.

58:14Join us for Israel Votes, your front row seat to the election that could define Israel's future. Go to arcmedia.org forward slash votes to watch and listen. See you there.