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      Biden defends Saudi Arabia trip that aims to reset ties

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      Biden defends Saudi Arabia trip that aims to reset tiesPresident says he aims to reorient relations and meet with the crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah Joe Biden on Saturday defended his decision to travel to Saudi Arabia saying human rights would be on his agenda as he gave a preview of a trip on which he aims to reset ties with the crown prince, who he previously denounced as a pariah.The American president will hold bilateral talks with Saudi King Salman bin Abdulaziz and his leadership team, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on his visit to the Middle East next week.Prince Mohammed, Saudi Arabia’s de facto leader, was believed to be behind the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist and political opponent Jamal Khashoggi, according to the US intelligence community.In a commentary published in the Washington Post late Saturday, Biden said his aim was to reorient and not rupture relations with a country that has been a strategic partner of the US for 80 years.“I know that there are many who disagree with my decision to travel to Saudi Arabia,” Biden wrote. “My views on human rights are clear and longstanding, and fundamental freedoms are always on the agenda when I travel abroad.”Biden needs oil-rich Saudi Arabia’s help at a time of high gasoline prices and as he encourages efforts to end the war in Yemen after the Saudis recently extended a ceasefire there. The United States also wants to curb Iran’s influence in the Middle East and China’s global sway.Biden argued that Saudi Arabia had recently helped to restore unity among the six countries of the Gulf Cooperation Council, had fully supported the truce in Yemen and was working to stabilize oil markets with other OPEC producers.Biden said he will be the first president to fly from Israel to Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, next week, which he said would be a small symbol of “budding relations and steps toward normalization” between Israel and the Arab world.“I will be the first president to visit the Middle East since 9/11 without US troops engaged in a combat mission there,” Biden said. “It’s my aim to keep it that way.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsMohammed bin SalmanSaudi ArabiaMiddle East and north AfricanewsReuse this content More

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      In the Path of Abraham: selective memoir of Trump’s Israel policy

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      In the Path of Abraham: selective memoir of Trump’s Israel policyJason Greenblatt chronicles his work with Jared Kushner for Middle East peace, leaving out anything bad for his boss Jason Greenblatt was once in-house counsel to the Trump Organization. After the 2016 election, he became Donald Trump’s special representative for international negotiations. With Jared Kushner, he aimed to secure peace between Israel and the Palestinians.Trump’s Peace review: dysfunction and accord in US Israel policyRead moreJust like its predecessors, the Trump administration failed at that task.That cold reality might make some think the subtitle of Greenblatt’s new memoir – How Donald Trump Made Peace in the Middle East and How to Stop Joe Biden from Unmaking It – is at least a bit of an overstatement.On the other hand, Trump did deliver the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco. The Trump administration also moved the US embassy to Jerusalem and shredded the Iran nuclear deal. The 45th president left his mark in so many places, in so many ways.As to be expected, Greenblatt’s book is silent about some of Trumpism’s darkest hours, its engagement with the antisemitic far right: Charlottesville, Nazis and tiki torch marches, the January 6 insurrection. Also predictably, he is happy to strafe Barack Obama, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib.Greenblatt left the White House in late 2019. He volunteers that Kushner was “the best boss I ever had or will ever have – with the possible exception of his father-in-law”. These days, Greenblatt is engaged as an investor, like Kushner with an eye on the Middle East.Greenblatt’s book is a gentler and more graceful version of Sledgehammer, a memoir written by David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Like Friedman, Greenblatt attacks Biden and blows kisses at Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s once and possibly future prime minister.As was the case with Friedman, Greenblatt keeps mum about Trump saying of Netanyahu, “Fuck him,” as was reported by Barak Ravid in Trump’s Peace. Ravid captured Trump in all his profane and vindictive reality. He reported Trump’s critique of Netanyahu and his praise for Mahmoud Abbas, the ageing Palestinian leader.Trump told Ravid he believed Netanyahu “did not want to make peace. Never did.” As for Abbas, Trump said: “We spent a lot of time together, talking about many things. And it was almost like a father. I mean, he was so nice, couldn’t have been nicer.”Greenblatt skips both issues, choosing to stress Abbas’s hostility toward Israel and his recalcitrance in negotiations.Greenblatt also says he stood removed from politics until Trump launched his candidacy, and first registered as a Republican in 2016. No one would confuse him with Michael Cohen, the Trump lawyer who entered a guilty plea and turned on his former boss.Greenblatt does not crave the spotlight but he can be subtly subversive. In the Path of Abraham casts bouquets at three Trump nemeses: Mike Pence, HR McMaster and John Bolton, McMaster’s successor as national security adviser. Trump dumped McMaster in a tweet after clashing over the Iran deal, then sent Bolton packing for his bellicosity.“Pence was, refreshingly, the authentic article,” Greenblatt writes, “… a man who was unflappable and unfailingly helpful, no matter the problem, big or small.”Greenblatt offers no comment about Pence’s plight in the Capitol on January 6, when the mob chanted for him to hang, or Trump’s reported comment that his vice-president deserved it.During his trip to Israel in 2017, Trump excluded McMaster from a meeting with Kushner, Netanyahu and the Israeli national security adviser. According to Israeli reports, Rex Tillerson, then secretary of state, was invited to join the group. But “McMaster sat outside the King David room during the course of the entire meeting”.McMaster suffered in silence. Bolton did not. “I don’t think [Trump’s] fit for office. I don’t think he has the competence to carry out the job,” he told ABC, promoting a book of his own.Mike Pompeo, by then secretary of state, called Bolton a traitor. Peter Navarro, the White House trade hawk who now labors under a contempt indictment, called Bolton’s book “deep swamp revenge porn”.In the Path of Abraham is not that. But as Greenblatt conveys his impressions of the Arab world, he chooses to call the Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, “a truly visionary leader”.He writes: “I cannot possibly understand what then-candidate Biden was trying to accomplish when he said that he planned to make the ‘Saudis pay the price, and make them, in fact, the pariah that they are’.”It had something to do with US intelligence believing the prince ordered the murder, dismemberment and disposal of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi dissident and US resident who wrote for the Washington Post.Then again, with gas topping $5 a gallon, many Americans wish Biden would make nice with the Saudis and stay on script.Greenblatt also offers glowing praise for a leader of the UAE, writing: “Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, colloquially known by his initials as MBZ, is a unique leader. One of the most influential people in the Middle East, he also one of the most humble and thoughtful. Wise and extraordinarily open-minded, he knows the best way to plan for the future is to create it.”Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and IsraelRead moreIn the same spirit of trans-global high-fiving, Greenblatt has attracted blurbs of praise from Trump, Kushner, Pence, McMaster, Pompeo and a passel of Gulf-state ambassadors. The book could double as a prospectus.As the book lands, Greenblatt finds himself unexpectedly in the news. Last week, the New York Times reported that he made the introduction of Alex Holder to Kushner. Holder is the British documentary film-maker subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the Capitol riot.Fittingly, In the Path of Abraham contains a Yiddish proverb: “Mann Tracht, un Gott Lacht”. Translated: “Man plans and God laughs.” Greenblatt would be hard-pressed to find anyone close to Trump smiling at this moment – whatever their plans may be.
      In the Path of Abraham: How Donald Trump Made Peace in the Middle East – And How to Stop Joe Biden from Unmaking It, is published in the US by Post Hill Press
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      Trump sought strike on top Iran military figure for political reasons – Esper book

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      Trump sought strike on top Iran military figure for political reasons – Esper bookRobert O’Brien told top general shortly before 2020 election that Trump wanted to kill unnamed official, according to Esper memoir Shortly before the 2020 election, Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Robert O’Brien, “stunned” the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff by saying the president wanted to kill a senior Iranian military officer operating outside the Islamic Republic.“This was a really bad idea with very big consequences,” Mark Esper, Trump’s second and last secretary of defense, writes in his new memoir, adding that Gen Mark Milley suspected O’Brien saw the strike purely in terms of Trump’s political interests.I warned national guard of possible coup, Trump defense secretary saysRead moreA Sacred Oath: Memoirs of a Defense Secretary in Extraordinary Times will be published next week. The Guardian obtained a copy.Throughout the memoir, Esper presents himself as one of a group of aides who resisted bad or illegal ideas proposed by Trump or subordinates – such as the proposed strike on the Iranian officer.Among other such ideas that were discussed, Esper says, were sending “missiles into Mexico to destroy the drug labs”; sending 250,000 troops to the southern border; and dipping the decapitated head of a terrorist leader in pig’s blood as a warning to other Islamist militants.Trump made belligerence towards Tehran an important part of his administration and platform for re-election, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal and regularly warning in bombastic terms of the cost of conflict with the US.He also ordered a drone strike on a top Iranian general blamed for attacks on US targets. In January 2020, Qassem Suleimani, the head of the elite Quds force, was killed in Baghdad.At a meeting in July 2020, Esper writes, O’Brien pushed for military action against Iran over its uranium enrichment – work that accelerated after Trump pulled out of the nuclear deal.Esper’s book is subject to occasional redactions. In this case, it says “O’Brien was pushing for” one blacked out word “and military action”. Esper says the vice-president, Mike Pence, “subtly lean[ed] in behind” O’Brien, who said: “The president has an appetite to do something.”Esper writes that Mark Meadows, Trump’s chief of staff, “jumped in to contradict this statement” and the moment passed.However, a month or so later, on 20 August, Esper says Milley told him O’Brien had called the evening before, to say “the president wanted to strike a senior military officer who was operating outside of Iran”.Esper writes: “Milley and I were aware of this person and the trouble he had been stirring in the region for some time. But why now? What was new? Was there an imminent threat? What about gathering the national security team to discuss this?“Milley said he was ‘stunned’ by the call, and he sensed that ‘O’Brien put the president up to this,’ trying to create news that would help Trump’s re-election.”Milley, Esper writes, told O’Brien he would discuss the request with Esper and others.“I couldn’t believe it,” Esper writes. “I had seen this movie before, where White House aides meet with the president, stir him up, and then serve up one of their ‘great ideas’. But this was a really bad idea with very big consequences. How come folks in the White House didn’t see this?”Fears that Trump might provoke war with Iran persisted throughout his presidency, stoked by reports of machinations among hawks on his staff. Such fears intensified as the 2020 election approached and Trump trailed Joe Biden in the polls.Esper book details Trump rage at Pence and proposal to hit Mexico with missilesRead moreIn September 2020, Trump tweeted: ““Any attack by Iran, in any form, against the United States will be met with an attack on Iran that will be 1,000 times greater in magnitude!”In the case of O’Brien’s suggested strike on the Iranian officer, Esper writes that he told Milley he would do nothing without a written order from Trump.“There was no way I was going to unilaterally take such an action,” he writes, “particularly one fraught with a range of legal, diplomatic, political and military implications, not to mention that it could plunge us into war with Iran.”He also says the O’Brien call to Milley in late August was “the last time something involving Iran seriously came up before the election”.TopicsBooksIranMiddle East and north AfricaDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS politicsUS national securitynewsReuse this content More

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      Saudis’ Biden snub suggests crown prince still banking on Trump’s return

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      Saudis’ Biden snub suggests crown prince still banking on Trump’s returnRefusal to help US punish Russia and $2bn investment in Kushner fund signal crown prince’s displeasure with Trump’s successor Saudi Arabia appears to be banking on Donald Trump’s return to office by refusing to help the US punish Russia for the Ukraine invasion, and by placing $2bn in a new, untested investment fund run by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner.In seeking to persuade Riyadh to increase oil production so as to lower prices by as much as 30%, and thereby curb Russian government revenue, the Biden administration is looking for ways to reassure the Saudi government that it is dedicated to the kingdom’s security.The White House said on Thursday it was an “iron-clad commitment from the president on down”, and the Pentagon is reported to be working on a draft of a new statement of US-Saudi security arrangements, but observers say it is likely to fall short of the firm guarantees the Saudis and other Gulf states are demanding.The kingdom’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, reportedly declined to take a call from Joe Biden last month, showing his displeasure at the administration’s restrictions on arms sales; what he saw as its insufficient response to attacks on Saudi Arabia by Houthi forces in Yemen; its publication of a report into the Saudi regime’s 2018 murder of the dissident and Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi; and Biden’s prior refusal to deal in person with the crown prince.Instead, Prince Mohammed shows signs of betting on the return to office of Trump in 2024, and the resumption of the Trump administration’s cosy relationship with Riyadh.There have been calls for an investigation into the huge investment made by the Saudi Public Investment Fund, controlled by Prince Mohammed, in Affinity Partners, a private equity firm set up by Jared Kushner months after he left the White House and his job as special adviser to Trump, his father-in-law.In doing so, the kingdom’s de facto ruler ignored the warnings of the Saudi fund’s own advisory panel. It worried about Affinity’s inexperience: Kushner was in real estate before his White House stint, and his track record of investments was widely considered not particularly good. It was concerned that the new company’s due diligence on operations was “unsatisfactory in all aspects”, and that it was charging “excessive” fees, according to a report in the New York Times.“It boils down to something very simple. The Saudis – meaning Mohammed bin Salman – have chosen Trump over Biden, and they’re sticking to their bet,” said Bruce Riedel, a former senior CIA official who is director of the Brookings Institution’s intelligence project.“It’s not an unreasonable proposition. Trump gave them everything they wanted: complete support in Yemen, support over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, whatever they wanted in terms of access in the United States.”John Jenkins, a former UK ambassador to Saudi Arabia said: “I suspect [the crown prince] is betting on the Republicans winning big in the midterms and then regaining the presidency – with or without Trump.”He added: “He probably thinks Biden is politically weak and he can therefore afford to spite him. That sends a signal not just to the Dems but also to the Republican party. And – judging by the debate raging in DC policy circles on these matters – it’s working.”The Saudi embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.Senior Democrats reacted furiously to the revelation of the Saudi investment into Kushner’s fund. Senator Elizabeth Warren called for the justice department to “take a really hard look” at whether the arrangement was illegal.Senator Chris Murphy tweeted: “Just because the breathtaking corruption occurs in public doesn’t make it not breathtaking.”In the first months of the Trump administration, Kushner was instrumental in switching its support from the former crown prince, Mohammed bin Nayef, to the much younger Mohammed bin Salman, with whom the president’s son-in-law had established a rapport largely over the messaging service WhatsApp. After the Khashoggi murder, Kushner was also the crown prince’s staunchest advocate.As for the Biden administration, there are advocates inside it for placating the Saudi crown prince in pursuit of the overarching objective of bringing down oil prices – for its impact both on Kremlin coffers and on the politically sensitive price at the pump.“There is a real argument at the moment that you can befriend anyone who isn’t Russia now,” a European diplomat observed. The Pentagon has recently been holding meetings aimed at hammering out a statement on US security arrangements with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states.However, Kirsten Fontenrose, former senior director for the Gulf at the national security council, said that whatever the administration comes up with is unlikely to come close to regional demands for security guarantees akin to Nato’s article 5 provisions for mutual defence.“There’s been this big push for an article 5 by a lot of these countries recently,” said Fontenrose, now a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “But there’s not a chance they are going to get it.”The Pentagon would not comment on its reported work reframing Gulf security arrangements. A spokesman, Army Maj Rob Lodewick, said: “The Department of Defense remains committed to helping advance the security of Saudi Arabia against serious external threats.“We are doing this through defense cooperation, arms transfers and defense trade, exercises, training and exchanges, alongside engagement on human rights and civilian harm mitigation.”Even if the administration wanted to offer such guarantees, there is no way such an agreement would gain approval from Congress, where the progressive wing of the Democratic party wants Biden to be tougher on Riyadh, especially in view of its lack of cooperation over oil production and Russia.“The US continues to provide certain types of equipment. They have announced several arms sales just within the last year. There is logistics support and maintenance,” said Seth Binder, director of advocacy at the Project on Middle East Democracy. “All these things to my mind should be on the table, particularly if this Saudi regime continues to increase this sort of public pressure on the Biden administration.”Many observers believe, however, that Mohammed is unlikely to be swayed either by wooing or by threats, as the high oil price boosts his budget while he waits for a more amenable administration.“I don’t see it changing very much. The Saudis have chosen to go with Putin and the oil production level they want, and the world economy is adjusting to that,” Reidel said. “I don’t think there’s much room for manoeuvre for Biden either … I think there are powerful forces against that.”TopicsUS foreign policyUS politicsSaudi ArabiaDonald TrumpMohammed bin SalmanMiddle East and north AfricaanalysisReuse this content More

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      Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and Israel

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      Sledgehammer review: David Friedman comes out swinging on Trump and IsraelThe former US ambassador has written a predictably unsubtle memoir, aimed squarely at the 2024 Republican primary David Friedman was Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel. But that job title alone fails to adequately convey his proximity to the 45th president and his impact on US policy. Their time together marked a repudiation of Barack Obama’s vision for the Middle East. Sledgehammer, Friedman’s memoir, reminds the reader of all of this as insistently as its title suggests.Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador saysRead moreWith Friedman’s assistance, the US helped forge the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations between Israel and four Arab countries. The US also moved its embassy to Jerusalem and left the Iran nuclear deal. As for the Palestinians, put it this way: they no longer occupy rent-free space in the Republican conscience.Unlike other Trump appointees, Friedman was often in the room when it happened. To all intents and purposes, he was not subordinate to Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state. And as an enthusiastic backer of Israeli settlements in occupied territories, he had little interest in preserving the status quo.More than a half-century had elapsed since 1967 and the six-day war. Israel’s hold on the West Bank had grown organic. The Oslo Accords gave way to the second intifada and Gaza continued to smolder, despite Israel’s withdrawal more than a decade before. Godot had failed to arrive. Friedman’s book with its unsubtle title has a subtitle too: “How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East”.Obviously, he overstates. The Palestinians are not, of course, content. War rages in Yemen. Drones and missiles hit the Emirates. Things between Israel and Iran can get worse and probably will.Friedman was Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer. When Trump announced his presidential campaign, Friedman was doubtful. Both men venerated their fathers but, as Friedman acknowledges, they had little else in common. The author is still married to his first wife. Religion is central to his life. He is an Orthodox Jew, the son of a rabbi. While ambassador, his daughter made aliyah. That is, she moved to Israel and became a citizen.Friedman quotes a senior but unidentified state department aide as telling him: “Don’t be so Jewish. You represent the United States of America … Just a free word of advice.” Suffice to say, Friedman was not amused. Although he held a presidential appointment, he was not part of the club.Sledgehammer is also about ethnic grievance and expectations of Jewish solidarity – perhaps misplaced. Before joining the Trump administration, Friedman branded Obama antisemitic and trashed J Street, a liberal Jewish group, as “worse than kapos” – Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps. Such intemperate comments came with a political cost. The Senate confirmed him by the narrowest of margins, 52-46.On the page, Friedman says those were sincere expressions. He used the term “kapos”, he says, because he felt “J Street had betrayed the Jewish people”. Elsewhere, he admonishes American Jews against criticizing the Israeli government. He laments a growing schism among US Jews, even while describing his own testy relationship with the Reform movement.In 2020, American Jews went for Joe Biden by nearly 40 points but Trump was the clear favorite in Orthodox enclaves. In Israel, Trump is lionized. “Loved” is Friedman’s word.He likes wielding his sledgehammer at the left. The right, not so much.He castigates Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, progressive Democratic congresswomen, for hostility to Israel. As ambassador, he was fine with an attempt to stop them entering Israel as part of a congressional delegation.On the other hand, he has nothing to say about Charlottesville in August 2017, its tiki torches and cries of “Jews will not replace us” and Trump’s view that there were “very fine people” on the neo-Nazi side on that day of violence and shame.Friedman’s outrage appears selective.He is also silent on Trump delivering a tart “fuck him” to Benjamin Netanyahu – Israel’s former prime minister and a Friedman friend – in an interview memorialized in Barak Ravid’s book, Trump’s Peace.Instead, Friedman swings repeatedly at Mahmoud Abbas, challenging the Palestinian leader’s desire to reach an agreement with Israel.Once again, Trump might well disagree. Trump told Ravid he believed Netanyahu “did not want to make peace. Never did.” As for Abbas, “We spent a lot of time together, talking about many things. And it was almost like a father. I mean, he was so nice, couldn’t have been nicer.”Friedman was particularly close to Netanyahu, so much so that lines could blur. According to Ravid, Friedman sat in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet members. Friedman’s memoir does nothing to dispel that report.He describes his efforts to help Netanyahu cobble together a government. He zings Avigdor Lieberman, former Netanyahu confidant and current Israeli finance minister, for refusing to come to the struggling prime minister’s rescue. The fact Netanyahu was then under a legal cloud and now stands on trial for corruption escapes real mention.‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to passRead moreElsewhere, Friedman criticizes Benny Gantz, Israel’s defense minister and Netanyahu’s jilted coalition partner. Although Gantz had been chief of staff of Israel’s military, says Friedman, he was not the politician Netanyahu was. Then again, Friedman also expresses his gratitude for his relationship with Gantz, who he describes as “6ft 4in and ruggedly handsome, an unusual look for an Israeli politician”. Trump too has praised Gantz, albeit at Netanyahu’s expense.What Friedman does next will be interesting. Like Trump, he has left New York for Florida. His book jacket posts a blurb from Nikki Haley, formerly governor of South Carolina and a potential candidate for the Republican nomination if Trump does not seek it. Friedman has also described Ron DeSantis, of Florida, as Israel’s greatest friend among all 50 current governors.Friedman is far from finished. Sledgehammer is not just a memoir. It is a well-written audition for 2024 and beyond.
      Sledgehammer: How Breaking With the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, is published in the US by Broadside Books
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      Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador says

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      Trump risked disaster with Abbas praise in key Israel meeting, ambassador saysIn new book, David Friedman recounts private meeting with Israeli president in which Trump also knocked Netanyahu – and how he says he turned his man around Meeting then-Israeli president Reuven Rivlin in Jerusalem in May 2017, Donald Trump stunned advisers by criticising the then-prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, for being unwilling to seek peace while Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader, was “desperate” for a deal.‘Apartheid state’: Israel’s fears over image in US are coming to passRead moreThe comment “knocked everyone off their chairs”, David Friedman, Trump’s ambassador to Israel, writes in a new book.“Although the meeting was private and off the record, we all envisioned a headline tomorrow that Trump had praised Abbas and criticised Netanyahu – the worst possible dynamic for the president’s popularity or for the prospects of the peace process.“Fortunately, and incredibly, the event wasn’t leaked.”Friedman now describes the incident, and how he says he changed Trump’s mind, in Sledgehammer: How Breaking with the Past Brought Peace to the Middle East, a memoir which will be published next week by Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins. The Guardian obtained a copy.Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer was a hugely controversial choice for ambassador. As well as being a hardline pro-settler rightwinger, during the 2016 campaign he called Barack Obama an antisemite and J Street, a liberal US Jewish group, “worse than kapos”, Jewish prisoners who worked as guards in Nazi concentration camps.He was confirmed as ambassador by a 52-46 Senate vote. US ambassadors to Israel are usually confirmed unanimously.In his book, he says the “worse than kapos” remark was not a political or policy mistake but a tactical one, as it gave ammunition to critics in the Senate.Describing four “murder boards”, sessions in which nominees are grilled over potential problems, he says he first said he used the controversial phrase “because I felt that J Street had betrayed the Jewish people”.That, he writes, caused a “firestorm of reaction” and he was told he could not speak that way. His settled-on answer was: “In the heat of a political campaign I allowed my rhetoric to get the best of me. I regret these comments and assure you that if confirmed, my remarks will be measured and diplomatic.”Describing his confirmation process, Friedman reproduces private conversations with Democratic senators including Kirsten Gillibrand of New York (a “bad joke”), Cory Booker of New Jersey (“delightful” in person, only, Friedman writes, to turn on him in hearings), and Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader.Friedman says he had donated to Schumer and the two New Yorkers spoke amicably before Friedman made a pitch for his vote, which he said would send “a strong message of bipartisanship on Israel, which you have advocated on numerous occasions”.Schumer, he says, smiled and answered: “I’m not giving Trump the win. Sorry.”Friedman also recounts an angry meeting with Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, who he accuses of “siding with terrorists over one of America’s strongest allies”.But his description of the meeting between Trump and Rivlin and how Friedman says he turned his president round makes for more surprising reading, not least in how it appears to show how eager Trump was for a deal.Friedman describes how during Trump’s next meeting, with Netanyahu, he manoeuvred all present into viewing a “two-minute collection of Abbas’s speeches that I thought was worth watching”.The tape contained “two minutes of Abbas honouring terrorists, extolling violence, and vowing never to accept anything less than Israel’s total defeat”.“After the tape ended,” Friedman writes, “the president said, ‘Wow, is that the same guy I met in Washington last month? He seemed like such a sweet, peaceful guy.’“The tape had clearly made an impact.”Friedman writes that he was rebuked by Rex Tillerson, Trump’s first secretary of state, and HR McMaster, Trump’s second national security adviser.“They thought it was a cheap propaganda trick,” he writes. He told them, he writes, “I work for the president, and nobody else … I am going to make sure that he is well informed so that he gets Israel policy right.”Trump tested positive for Covid few days before Biden debate, chief of staff says in new bookRead moreFriedman emphasises his role in such policy, prominently including closeness to Netanyahu; support for Israeli settlers on Palestinian land; cutting aid to Palestinians; recognising Jerusalem as the Israeli capital and moving the US embassy there; and diplomacy that led to the Abraham Accords, the normalisation of Israeli relations with four Arab countries.Aides to Trump, Steve Bannon famously among them, have often suffered from being seen to claim too much credit for his successes. Friedman is sure to repeatedly praise Trump, while bragging of how close to “the boss” he became.Nonetheless, his description of Trump’s private meeting with Rivlin – behaviour Friedman says would have been embarrassing had it been leaked – could prove embarrassing itself.Trump has been repeatedly burned by books on his time in power, even those written by loyalists like Friedman.In December, the Guardian was first to report that Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, described how the president tested positive for Covid-19 before his first debate with Joe Biden – and how the result was covered up.TopicsBooksDonald TrumpBenjamin NetanyahuIsraelMahmoud AbbasTrump administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Trump’s Peace review: dysfunction and accord in US Israel policy

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      Trump’s Peace review: dysfunction and accord in US Israel policyBarak Ravid has written a fascinating account of four chaotic years in which some progress was nonetheless made Trump’s Peace is a blockbuster of a book. Barak Ravid captures the 45th president saying “Fuck him” to Benjamin Netanyahu and reducing American Jews to antisemitic caricatures. Imagine the Republican reaction if Barack Obama had done that. Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham would plotz. But Trump? Crickets.The State of Israel vs The Jews review: fierce indictment of a rightward lurch Read moreRavid also delivers a mesmerizing tick-tock of the making of the Abraham Accords, the normalization of Israel’s relations with four non-neighboring Arab states.Donald Trump, Jared Kushner, Yousef al-Otaiba – the United Arab Emirates ambassador to the US – and members of Israel’s government took the time to talk. Ravid footnotes the receipts.The result is a well-paced and engrossing read, if in Hebrew only for now. Israel-born and based, Ravid writes for Axios and Walla, an Israeli website. He knows his subject. Netanyahu is caught telling Avi Berkowitz, Kushner’s deputy and a US negotiator, not to leak to the author. Instead, Berkowitz talked on the record.Technically, the Abraham Accords are a joint declaration signed by the US, Israel, the UAE and Bahrain. Practically, the agreements represent the first major breakthrough in Middle East peace since the October 1994 treaty between Israel and Jordan. Unlike the Hashemite kingdom, the UAE and Bahrain do not border Israel, are graced with petroleum reserves, and stare at Iran across the Persian Gulf.According to Ravid, the nuclear threat posed by Tehran and the unrest that followed the Arab Spring reshaped policies and thinking towards normalizing relations with Israel. The Palestinians no longer occupied center stage.Ravid reports that Netanyahu backtracked on a commitment to annex part of the West Bank after being subjected to US pressure. Apparently, the Trump administration made clear it would continue to shield Israel in the United Nations security council but would not at the International Criminal Court. Netanyahu got the message. It came down to a UAE ultimatum: settlements or peace. Netanyahu blinked.Ravid regards Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, also known as MBZ, crown prince of Abu Dhabi, as an unsung hero. He compares MBZ to Anwar Sadat of Egypt, who made peace with Israel then paid with his life.By the numbers, the Abraham Accords are yielding dividends. The UAE has announced a $10bn investment fund in key Israeli economic sectors and envisions more than $1tn in trade over a decade. Saudi Arabia looks to Bahrain as a conduit for investment in Israel and the Biden administration is “leaning” into the accords, after first hesitating.Ravid portrays Trump and Netanyahu as divisive leaders who threatened their countries’ democratic moorings. He recounts the 6 January insurrection in the US and Netanyahu’s resort to incitement. And yet, Ravid argues, fairness demands that both receive credit for this particular accomplishment.Understandably, Ravid is more ambivalent toward the US withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal, a legacy of the Obama administration hated by Netanyahu and Trump. In Trump’s telling, his decision to pull out was not the result of Israeli urging. Rather, the deal was flawed and deserved to be scrapped.That verdict is not unanimous. Ravid quotes Udi Lavie, former deputy chief of the Mossad, who says the US withdrawal did not benefit Israel but hurt it. At the same time, Ravid observes that Netanyahu and Yossi Cohen, a former head of the Mossad, harbor no such regrets.Negotiations with the Iranian regime continue, with no tangible signs of progress. As Israel girds for possible conflict, its message is conflicted.A recent New York Times headline blared: Israeli Defense Officials Cast Doubt on Threat to Attack Iran. On the other hand, Amos Yadlin, a former air force general, told the paper his country has the capability for a successful strike.“Can the American air force can do it better? Definitely. But they don’t have the will.”Or necessarily the same strategic interests. Trump’s ascendance in 2016 was directly related to the Iraq war and its casualty count.Ravid also offers his take on Trumpworld. He stresses that Kushner was neither ideologue nor idealist. At heart he was a businessman, sympathetic to Israel but not seeing annexation as a personal cause. Nor, Ravid says, was Kushner driven by religious sentiment – as was Mike Pompeo, Trump’s secretary of state. The Messiah could wait.Nor, unlike Condi Rice, George W Bush’s secretary of state, did Kushner regard Palestinians stuck at Israeli check-points as – in Ravid’s words – “the reincarnation of Rosa Parks on a bus in Alabama”.In contrast to Kushner, David Friedman, Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer and ambassador to Israel, viewed the two-state solution as an “illusion”. Before he took office, he derided Jews on the left as “worse than Kapos”. His nomination narrowly cleared the Senate.‘We are family’: the Israelis sharing life and hope with PalestiniansRead moreAs ambassador, Friedman was close to Netanyahu, sitting in on Israeli government meetings until he was tossed out by cabinet members. Ravid describes Friedman as “flesh of the settlers’ flesh”. Friedman has taken issue with portions of Ravid’s reporting – and has a book due in February.Earlier this year, Friedman told the Times he would not rule out becoming a US-Israeli dual national, but not until Trump’s plans for 2024 were known.“I’m going to stay American-only for at least four years,” he said. “I want to give myself every opportunity to return to government.”Maybe, maybe not. Trump remains on the stage, ready to kneecap any competitor for the Republican nomination. Netanyahu is standing trial on bribery and corruption charges while leading the opposition bloc in Israel’s Knesset.Paradoxically, his efforts to cling to power may be the best insurance policy for the current coalition government. One thing is certain: the two men created facts on the ground that will outlast them both.
      Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East is published in Israel by Yedioth Ahronoth Books
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      Master of the Game review: Henry Kissinger as hero, villain … and neither

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      BooksMaster of the Game review: Henry Kissinger as hero, villain … and neitherMartin Indyk’s well-woven biography is sympathetic to the preacher of realpolitik condemned by many as a war criminal Lloyd GreenSun 31 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 02.02 EDTAs secretary of state, Henry Kissinger nursed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war to a close. The disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel ultimately yielded a peace treaty. The Syrian border remains tensely quiet. Unlike Vietnam, in the Middle East Kissinger’s handiwork holds.Friendly Fire review: Israeli warrior Ami Ayalon makes his plea for peaceRead moreThe Sunni Arab world has gradually come to terms with the existence of the Jewish state. Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. Relations with Saudi Arabia are possible.For Kissinger, student and preacher of realpolitik, peace was seldom an end in itself. His pivot to China was about boxing in the USSR. To him, the cold war and existing nation states were what mattered most. The Viet Cong earned a seat at the table because US troops were bogged down. The Palestinians were not so high on Kissinger’s agenda.Now comes Martin Indyk with a 688-page, well-woven history fittingly subtitled “Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy”. The book reflects the author’s admiration for and access to his subject.Kissinger last granted Indyk an interview at the age of 97. Now he’s 98. Indyk’s wife, Gahl Burt, once worked on Kissinger’s staff. Indyk himself is a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations. His gigs included ambassador to Israel and Middle East envoy. A former Australian national, he volunteered on a kibbutz. He checks many boxes.Master of the Game does convey a sense that Indyk wishes his own attainments equaled those of his subject. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1998 Wye River Memorandum between the Israelis and Palestinians quickly degenerated into the second intifada, flareups in Gaza and Hamas vying with the Palestinian Authority for power on the ground.In the Obama years, Israel emerged as a partisan flashpoint in the US, like abortion and taxes, to the chagrin of the Democratic establishment and Israel’s diplomatic corps but to the delight of the Republicans and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister.In Master of the Game, Indyk lays out the run-up to the October war of 1973, the responses of the US and the USSR, and Kissinger’s nearly two-year hopscotch between Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus.Indyk confirms what is widely known, that while Kissinger did not explicitly give Egypt the green light to attack Israeli-occupied Sinai, he was pleased with the outcome. The war and its aftermath presented the US with the opportunity to lure Egypt out of the Soviet orbit, even if Israel had to pay a price.The war Kissinger “had not expected at the moment”, writes Indyk, “would provide him with the opportunity to manipulate antagonisms”. Those, in turn, would help “begin the construction of what he intended to be a new, more stable American-led order in the Middle East”.Israeli combat deaths topped 2,600 – reportedly more than 1,000 in the war’s first five days. At the time, Kissinger noted that the latter figure would be proportionally equal to twice the number of US deaths in eight years in Vietnam. As a result, Kissinger coldly “assumed that when he needed Israel to accept a ceasefire it would have no choice but to do so”.Kissinger saw that a ceasefire would yield territorial concessions. He got that right but the pace was not necessarily to his liking. Disengagement arrived too quickly and then too slowly for him.In spring 1975, Gerald Ford announced the reassessment of America’s relationship with Israel. Months later, in early September, Egypt and Israel entered a second disengagement agreement, a precursor to the 1978 Camp David Accords hashed out by Jimmy Carter.While “Start-up Nation” has emerged as durable military power, Indyk yearns for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.After noting the Abraham Accords, agreements between Israel and Gulf states, Indyk contends that the “Trump administration actually made matters worse” by proposing a Palestinian entity “as a heavily circumscribed enclave within Israeli territory”. He also acknowledges that the accords took Israeli annexation of the West Bank off the table.As a Talmudic dictum goes, “avar zemano, batel korbano”. Loosely translated, the train has left the station. What applies to a sacrificial rite may pertain to politics. Even the peace process came with a sell-by date. Indyk admits that “the three presidents who succeeded Clinton” tried but failed to reach a lasting agreement, but while Jared Kushner failed to snag the deal of the century, his diplomatic achievement is tangible.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read moreIndyk also explores the competing tugs on Kissinger, a refugee, of loyalty, religion and ethnicity. Richard Nixon told Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador, Kissinger was prone to “indulge Israel’s nationalist sentiments”. On the other hand, Israeli protestors outside Kissinger’s hotel once bellowed: “Jew boy go home.” The Jackson-Vanick amendment, which linked preferred trade status for the USSR to its performance on emigration, infuriated Kissinger.Kissinger has plenty of detractors. Against the backdrop of Nixon’s Vietnam policy, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, genocide in Bangladesh and East Timor and a coup and invasion in Cyprus, he has been called a war criminal.On the right, the late Phyllis Schlafly dangled Kissinger’s otherness in the face of Ford’s bid for the nomination in 1976. She said Kissinger did not understand “typical American values” and claimed that the loyalty of the German-born and accented diplomat rested with a “supranational” order.Indyk writes: “When it came to managing violent middle eastern passions and preserving peace, history’s judgment should surely be that Henry Kissinger did well.”Reasonable people will freely differ.
      Master of the Game is published in the US by Knopf
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