Editor’s Note: Brett McGurk is a CNN global affairs analyst who served in senior national security positions under Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
CNN
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Two weeks after America’s unprecedented military strikes into Iran, the situation in the Middle East has stabilized and focus is turning to diplomacy.
So, what’s on the global agenda? Over the coming weeks, I’d concentrate on a few areas.
Prime Minister Netanyahu visits Washington early this week, and his top aides have been in town for days preparing. Top of mind is Gaza, where a ceasefire could be closer than it’s been in months.
The situation in Gaza is horrific. This is a war that must end, and end soon. But ending a war is far harder than starting one — a lesson Hamas has learned. Israel also has failed to define a future for Gaza without Hamas, still its core demand in ongoing talks.
It is impossible to responsibly answer how this war ends without fully grappling with October 7, 2023, and Hamas’ decision to invade Israel, slaughter 1,200 innocent people, and take more than 250 hostages (living and dead) back to its tunnels in Gaza.
Since then, Hamas has had one consistent demand in exchange for the release of the hostages: Israel must guarantee a “permanent ceasefire” against Hamas while the group still controls Gaza and rearms, effectively returning to the status quo before the attack. Israel has rejected that demand, and in return, demands that a permanent ceasefire means Hamas must relinquish control of Gaza for good.
That is the intractable crux, and it’s remained so during nearly two years of this terrible war.
In the Biden administration, I helped lead talks with Israel and Hamas on a ceasefire and hostage release deal. Unable to resolve this fundamental gap in positions, we developed a phased process whereby Hamas would release the most vulnerable hostages — children, women, elderly and wounded — in exchange for temporary ceasefires and the release by Israel of an agreed set of Palestinian prisoners.
The ceasefire would continue so long as talks were ongoing in good faith over post-conflict arrangements in Gaza.
These phased deals have resulted in the release of nearly 150 living hostages from Gaza. There are now believed to be 20 live hostages left there. This past January, after months of painstaking talks and after Hamas’ ally Hezbollah in Lebanon had cut its own deal and left Hamas isolated, both Hamas and Israel agreed to a three-stage roadmap to end the war for good.
That deal had earlier been endorsed by the UN Security Council, and it required that “conditions” be set for a permanent end to the war in later stages. That was understood to mean Hamas would need to relinquish its authority to allow Gaza to be rehabilitated with international support, as few are likely to support the reconstruction of Gaza with Hamas still in control.
Unfortunately, Hamas used the promising ceasefire earlier this year to come out of its tunnels in a show of force. After six weeks of calm without a shot fired, during which more than 10,000 trucks of humanitarian aid reached those in desperate need, the ceasefire broke down after its first 42-day phase.
The war has since escalated, even as efforts to secure the release of hostages through a deal have continued.
Today, there is new momentum toward a deal, structured along the same lines as the Biden framework. Under this proposal, Hamas would release 10 living hostages in exchange for a 60-day ceasefire and parallel release of Palestinian prisoners. If talks are ongoing at the end of that period for the final set of hostages, as well as conditions necessary for a final settlement, the ceasefire would continue.
On July 1, Trump announced that Israel accepted this proposal. Hamas spent the week studying it, while also coming under tremendous pressure from Egypt and Qatar to give an unqualified yes. On July 4, Hamas gave its response, which appears to be a “yes, but,” with an offer of further talks to clarify where Israeli forces will deploy during the 60-day ceasefire, the number of Palestinian prisoners to be released in the deal, and modes of humanitarian aid delivery.
Unfortunately, this means a war that could have stopped last week will now continue as Hamas’ remaining leaders — living either underground in Gaza or in comfort outside of it — insist on haggling over details as the people they purport to represent live in the most horrific conditions imaginable.
Talks over these final details are now set to resume this week in Doha, Qatar. We should all hope these talks succeed, because they offer the only way to free the remaining hostages and to end the war in Gaza anytime soon.
In fact, unlike the January deal, where the ceasefire broke down after a first phase, now conditions are set to continue the ceasefire after 60 days and perhaps end the war for good.
That is because most of Hamas’ militant leaders are dead, and Israel is in a remarkably strong position following its successful military operation in Iran last month.
This allows Israel to wind down the war from a position of strength and with no serious risk of another October 7. Trump will no doubt press Netanyahu to make reasonable compromises, while also pushing the emir of Qatar to deliver Hamas, which as of right now — and consistently throughout this conflict — is the main obstacle to a deal that will stop the war.
Even as the assessments are ongoing about the extent of damage to Iran’s nuclear program, a long-term solution will demand some form of a diplomatic arrangement.
This is primarily for two reasons:
First, as a member of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT, Iran has an obligation to account for and “safeguard” all its nuclear material. That includes the stockpiles of highly enriched uranium that may or may not be buried in the caverns of the bombed Fordow facility.
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While Iran’s parliament has passed a law to sever ties with the International Atomic Energy Agency, its government has made clear it remains a member of the NPT and will continue to deal with the international agency through its Supreme Council for National Security, a rough equivalent to the National Security Council in the US.
Should Iran refuse such cooperation, then France and the UK have authority to “snap back” all UN and international sanctions between now and October. That is something Iran’s fledgling economy cannot afford.
Second, if Iran wants to avoid the risk of further Israeli or American strikes, it will need to reach an agreement on whatever remains of its enrichment program. Before Israel’s 12-day conflict with Iran, the US was prepared to accept enrichment by Tehran below 5% and aboveground pending the establishment of a regional fuel bank consortium where Iran would be a member with access to nuclear fuel for a civilian program, but unable to enrich entirely on its own.
Iran did not accept that deal, and today the terms will surely be less favorable: no enrichment even for a temporary period or else face the risk of further strikes and international sanctions.
Despite predictions that American strikes would render diplomacy impossible, Iran in fact is saying it’s prepared to engage the American side once again, and I’d expect those talks to start soon.
Given Iran’s leadership losses, it may have a difficult time reaching decisions that will be necessary to forge an agreement of any kind. With the threat of the snapback procedure, however, which I’ve explained in this earlier essay, the table is being set for negotiations with a deadline later this year.
The aim between now and then will be deal that permanently forecloses the possibility of Iran developing nuclear arms.
Expanding Abraham Accords
Before October 7, 2023, the trend line in the Middle East was toward broader regional integration, economic cooperation and peace. In fact, on the day prior, an official Saudi delegation was in my office at the White House discussing parameters for an agreement to recognize Israel.
That agreement promised to build on the Abraham Accords, and set the conditions for a longer-term regional peace, including between Israelis and Palestinians.
The Palestinians (separate from Hamas and other terrorist groups) were part of this process and poised to reap significant gains from a Saudi pact. A senior Saudi official had just visited Ramallah, the administrative capital of the Palestinian Authority, for the first time since 1967. And on September 9, less than one month before October 7, the G20 nations endorsed an integrated trade, energy and technology ship-to-rail corridor known as IMEC — connecting India through the Gulf, Jordan, Israel (with future linkages into the West Bank), and from there into Europe.
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Hamas and its Iranian-backed allies derailed this promising agenda, but they did not reverse it. Ties between Israel and Abraham Accord countries such as the United Arab Emirates remain strong, and there is broad desire to return to an affirmative agenda once the war in Gaza subsides and a lasting ceasefire is in place. Israel’s impressive military and intelligence successes make this trend more probable over time, as countries look to gain from its defense and technology sectors to further their own defense and economic growth.
In a sign of how much has changed since October 7, and not in the manner Hamas and Iran intended, two new candidates for peace with Israel include Lebanon and Syria.
Lebanon is formally in a state of war with Israel, but following Hezbollah’s defeat last year, the country is setting a different trajectory. The new government in Beirut, led by the former Chief of Defense Joseph Aoun, aims to keep Hezbollah from re-arming and to finally resolving through negotiations demarcation of Lebanon’s land border with Israel.
That might pave the way toward diplomatic relations between the two countries, effectively ending a conflict that has lasted over 75 years.
In Syria, the situation is more head-spinning.
Last fall, after the defeat of Hezbollah and a US-mediated ceasefire in Lebanon, the long-standing Iranian ally Bashar al Assad fled to Moscow as his regime collapsed. The new president of Syria is Ahmed al-Sharaa, once the head of an extremist rebel group with ties to al Qaeda.
I was the White House’s Middle East lead when that happened, and pushed to engage with Sharaa, as our paramount interest was to give this new Syria a chance, albeit with our eyes wide open as to the risks
Since then, Sharaa has said and, for the most part, done what is needed to return Syria into a broader regional fold without threatening any of its neighbors, including Israel. He has forged deals with the Kurdish-led forces in the northeast, embraced ties with Arab capitals, and assured the United States of his intentions enough to secure needed relief from crippling sanctions.
Today, Israel is in backchannel talks with Syria, and there may be an opening for more formal talks leading to a possible nonaggression pact. No doubt, such an arrangement will be difficult given decades of mistrust, tensions between Israel and Turkey, and the need for Syria to compromise on Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights.
But even the possibility shows the new potential in the region. Whereas Syria and Lebanon were once the main corridors for Iranian arms and militias to reach and threaten Israel, now both countries are in talks with Israel to forge a border rational peace.
For Israel, if it wishes to truly translate military success into lasting strategic gains, there is nothing more important than this regional agenda of integration, including with Saudi Arabia, which is still possible to achieve within Trump’s second term.
This will require a lasting ceasefire in Gaza and a political horizon on the Israeli-Palestinian issue, both of which will demand American diplomacy and facilitation with all parties.
So, if there is one longer-term item on the agenda when Trump meets Netanyahu, it’s this one.
When Netanyahu visits the White House this week, there may be an inclination to score a victory lap following the combined US and Israeli operation last month in Iran. While an impressive feat of arms, declaring victory would be premature and without a focus on the agenda outlined above could even prove fleeting.
Military success has set the stage for feats of diplomacy, and with creativity and compromise, it’s now possible to see an end to the cataclysmic chain of events that Hamas unleashed on October 7.
That should be the primary focus for both leaders this week.
