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Israel Must Carry Out Its Mission, and Ignore Biden and Sullivan
An armored personnel carrier (APC) maneuvers near the Israel-Gaza border, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in Israel, March 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan thinks Israel is making a major error.
“A major ground operation [in Rafah by Israel against Hamas] would be a mistake,” he said at a White press briefing on March 18. “It would lead to more innocent civilian deaths, worsen the already dire humanitarian crisis, deepen the anarchy in Gaza, and isolate Israel internationally. More importantly, the key goals Israel wants to achieve in Rafah can be done by other means.”
According to Sullivan, President Joe Biden reassured Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “I am for the defeat of Hamas… At the same time, I believe that to get to that, you need a strategy that works. And that strategy should not involve a major military operation…”
Sullivan’s war aims for Israel appear to be preventing Palestinian civilian deaths, feeding people, restoring government functions, and protecting Israel’s international political standing. Both he and the president seem to think they know better than Israel how to achieve them.
Instead, the team that brought you the deadly, disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan should recalibrate.
After the horrific attack by Hamas on Israel — maiming, raping, burning alive, and otherwise killing 1,200 people and dragging 240 others, including corpses and babies, into Gaza — the Israeli cabinet issued a set of war aims to the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). They are:
toppling the Hamas regime and destroying its military and governmental capabilities,
removing the terrorist threat from the Gaza Strip,
creating conditions for the return of the hostages,
defending the borders of the state and its citizens while removing the security threat from Gaza,
leaving the IDF full freedom of action without restrictions on the use of force.
The Israeli government’s aims are military, they are achievable, and success would ensure the security of the citizens of Israel as well as rescuing the Palestinian people from the brutality of a Hamas occupation designed to kill them.
Sullivan and President Biden should stand firmly behind those aims.
In 2021, Douglas Feith, former undersecretary of defense for policy, gave an interview to inFOCUS Quarterly magazine of the Jewish Policy Center. He defined Hamas’ strategy of locating its military under the civilian population — in order to ensure as many Palestinian casualties as possible in the event of a future war — as “ironic and perverse.”
“No party to a war has ever… as an element of its strategy, purposefully arranged to maximize civilian deaths on its own side,” said Feith. “… So, Hamas is doing something that is really innovative, morally horrific and… even worse than the war crime of using civilians as human shields.”
“The purpose of using human shields in war is to protect what the human shields are shielding,” he said. “… But what Hamas is doing is purposefully maximizing Palestinian civilian casualties. It wants to force Israel to have to kill Palestinian civilians…”
On the other hand, there is Israel.
Professor John Spencer, chair of urban warfare studies at the Modern War Institute (MWI) at West Point, served for 25 years as an infantry soldier. In January, he wrote, “Israel has taken more measures to avoid needless civilian harm than virtually any other nation that’s fought an urban war… Israel has taken precautionary measures even the United States did not do during its recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Spencer pointed to mechanisms for minimizing civilian casualties, including providing warning and evacuating urban areas. “This tactic is unpopular for obvious reasons: It alerts the enemy defender and provides them the military advantage to prepare for the attack.”
He noted that the IDF air-dropped more than half-a-million flyers, made nearly 20,000 real phone calls, and sent 64,000 text messages and almost 6 million pre-recorded phone calls to civilians in Gaza — along with radio and social media messages with instructions for evacuation. “The IDF also conducted daily four-hour pauses over multiple consecutive days of the war to allow civilians to leave active combat areas,” he wrote.
This week, Spencer updated his thoughts. “Calls for a ceasefire are simply calls for Israel to surrender and let October 7 happen repeatedly. If the U.S. was in such a situation, it would respond more aggressively. Hamas exceeds ISIS in its desire to slaughter civilians. They’re unique in wanting many of their own people to die. Despite this, the fighter: civilian casualty ratio is 1:1 in Gaza vs a 1:9 global average – the lowest rate by far for similar urban conflicts.”
The IDF, Spencer concludes, “Is successfully achieving its goal of neutralizing Hamas in a uniquely difficult urban environment, with an enemy determined to increase civilian tragedies.”
Military victory first.
The author is Senior Director of the Jewish Policy Center. A version of this article was previously published by The Daily Caller.
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Trump Open to Meeting Iran’s Leaders, Sees Chance of Nuclear Deal
US President Donald Trump speaks to reporters at the White House in Washington, DC, US, April 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US President Donald Trump this week said he is open to meeting Iran’s supreme leader or president and that he thinks the two countries will strike a new deal on Tehran’s disputed nuclear program.
However, Trump, who in 2018 pulled the US out of a now moribund nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers, repeated a threat of military action against Iran unless a new pact is swiftly reached to prevent it developing nuclear weapons.
Trump, in an April 22 interview with Time magazine published on Friday, said “I think we’re going to make a deal with Iran” following indirect US-Iranian talks last week in which the side agreed to draw up a framework for a potential deal.
The Republican US president, speaking separately to reporters at the White House on Friday, reiterated his positive prognosis, saying: “Iran, I think, is going very well. We’ll see what happens.”
A US official said the discussions yielded “very good progress.”
Asked by Time whether he was open to meeting Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, an anti-Western hardliner who has the last say on all major state policies, or President Masoud Pezeshkian, Trump replied: “Sure.”
Expert-level talks are set to resume on Saturday in Oman, which has acted as intermediary between the longtime adversaries, with a third round of high-level nuclear discussions planned for the same day.
Israel, a close US ally and Iran’s major Middle East foe, has described the Islamic Republic’s escalating uranium enrichment program – a potential pathway to nuclear bombs – as an “existential threat.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has called for a complete dismantling of Iran’s nuclear capabilities, saying partial measures will not suffice to ensure Israel’s security.
Asked in the interview if he was concerned Netanyahu might drag the United States into a war with Iran, Trump said: “No.”
‘I’LL BE LEADING THE PACK’
However, when asked if the US would join a war against Iran should Israel take action, he responded: “I may go in very willingly if we can’t get a deal. If we don’t make a deal, I’ll be leading the pack.”
In March, Iran responded to a letter from Trump in which he urged it to negotiate a new deal by stating it would not engage in direct talks under maximum pressure and military threats but was open to indirect negotiations, as in the past.
Although the current talks have been indirect and mediated by Oman, US and Iranian officials did speak face-to-face briefly following the first round on April 12.
The last known face-to-face negotiations between the two countries took place under former US President Barack Obama during diplomacy that led to the 2015 nuclear accord.
Western powers accuse Iran of harboring a clandestine agenda to develop nuclear weapons capability by enriching uranium to a high level of fissile purity, above what they say is justifiable for a civilian atomic energy program.
Tehran says its nuclear program is wholly peaceful. The 2015 deal temporarily curbed its uranium enrichment activity in exchange for relief from international sanctions, but Iran resumed and accelerated enrichment after the Trump walkout in 2018.
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Trump Poised to Offer Saudi Arabia Over $100 Billion Arms Package, Sources Say
US President Donald speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC on March 3, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
The United States is poised to offer Saudi Arabia an arms package worth well over $100 billion, six sources with direct knowledge of the issue told Reuters, saying the proposal was being lined up for announcement during US President Donald Trump‘s visit to the kingdom in May.
The offered package comes after the administration of former President Joe Biden unsuccessfully tried to finalize a defense pact with Riyadh as part of a broad deal that envisioned Saudi Arabia normalizing ties with Israel.
The Biden proposal offered access to more advanced US weaponry in return for halting Chinese arms purchases and restricting Beijing’s investment in the country. Reuters could not establish if the Trump administration’s proposal includes similar requirements.
The White House and Saudi government communications office did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
A US Defense official said: “Our defense relationship with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is stronger than ever under President Trump‘s leadership. Maintaining our security cooperation remains an important component of this partnership and we will continue to work with Saudi Arabia to address their defense needs.”
In his first term, Trump celebrated weapons sales to Saudi Arabia as good for US jobs.
Lockheed Martin Corp could supply a range of advanced weapons systems including C-130 transport aircraft, two of the sources said. One source said Lockheed would also supply missiles and radars.
RTX Corp, formerly known as Raytheon Technologies, is also expected to play a significant role in the package, which will include supplies from other major US defense contractors such as Boeing Co, Northrop Grumman Corp and General Atomics, said four of the sources.
All the sources declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter.
RTX, Northrop and General Atomics declined to comment. Boeing did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A Lockheed Martin spokesperson said foreign military sales are government-to-government transactions. Questions about sales to foreign governments are best addressed by the US government.
Reuters could not immediately establish how many of the deals on offer were new. Many have been in the works for some time, two of the sources said. For example, the kingdom first requested information about General Atomics’ drones in 2018, they said. Over the past 12 months, a deal for $20 billion of General Atomics’ MQ-9B SeaGuardian-style drones and other aircraft came into focus, according to one of the sources.
Several executives from defense companies are considering traveling to the region as a part of the delegation, three of the sources said.
The US has long supplied Saudi Arabia with weapons. In 2017, Trump proposed approximately $110 billion of sales to the kingdom.
As of 2018, only $14.5 billion of sales had been initiated and Congress began to question the deals in light of the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
In 2021, under Biden, Congress imposed a ban on sales of offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia over the Khashoggi killing and to pressure the kingdom to wind down its Yemen war, which had inflicted heavy civilian casualties.
Under US law, major international weapons deals must be reviewed by members of Congress before they are finalized.
The Biden administration began to soften its stance on Saudi Arabia in 2022 after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine impacted global oil supplies. The ban on offensive weapons sales was lifted in 2024, as Washington worked more closely with Riyadh in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack to devise a plan for post-war Gaza.
A potential deal for Lockheed’s F-35 jets, which the kingdom has been reportedly interested in for years, is expected to be discussed, three of the sources said, while downplaying the chances for an F-35 deal being signed during the trip.
The United States guarantees that its close ally Israel receives more advanced American weapons than Arab states, giving it what is labeled a “Qualitative Military Edge” (QME) over its neighbors.
Israel has now owned F-35s for nine years, building multiple squadrons.
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Iran Summons Dutch Envoy to Protest Assassination Attempts Claim
Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi looks on before a meeting with Qatar’s Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, in Tehran, Iran, Aug. 26, 2024. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
The Iranian foreign ministry summoned the Dutch ambassador to Tehran on Friday, the official IRNA news agency reported, a day after the Netherlands called in Iran‘s envoy over suspicions that Iran was behind two assassination attempts.
An Iranian foreign ministry official described the Dutch accusation as “laughable” and based on “suspicions or assumptions,” according to IRNA.
“It is regrettable that the Dutch diplomatic apparatus acts so easily on speculations injected by its security bodies and the Zionist regime [Israel], and even summons the Iranian ambassador over such an absurd fabrication,” the official, Alireza Yousefi, was quoted as saying.
The Netherlands summoned Iran‘s ambassador after the Dutch intelligence agency, known as the AIVD, said in its annual report published on Thursday that it was likely Iran was behind two assassination attempts in the Netherlands and Spain.
Two men were arrested in June 2024 in the Dutch town of Haarlem after an assassination attempt on an Iranian residing in the country, the report said.
One of the suspects was also believed to have been behind the failed assassination attempt on Spanish politician and Iran critic Alejo Vidal-Quadras in Madrid in November 2023, it said.
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