On September 28, 2026, The Atlantic published a remarkable piece by Brett McGurk, a Biden administration national security official tasked with facilitating a ceasefire and hostage-for-prisoners exchange between Israel and Hamas after October 7. Adapted from his recent book Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, McGurk’s article provides a visceral account of the administration’s attempts to broker a second deal (the first was in November 2023) during the initial months of 2024, as well as its handling of Iran’s massive ballistic missile attack targeting Israel in April of that year.
The details are revealing. McGurk’s testimony paints an unfortunate picture not of steadfast leaders supporting an ally during wartime, but of an administration wracked with resentment and grappling with self-doubt. Examining the narrative closely provides crucial insight into the state of the U.S.-Israel relationship and the broader outlook of American foreign policy elites.
McGurk begins by describing his February 2024 meeting in Cairo with Abbas Kamel, Egypt’s intelligence chief, recalling that “Only three months earlier, Kamel and I had sat in this same room and helped close the first cease-fire deal of the war.” But, as McGurk recalls, the lull in fighting would not last. He clearly understands why (even if he does not put it so bluntly): Hamas’s belligerence and sociopathic, evil refusal to unconditionally release the hostages it abducted. In McGurk’s exact words:
The [November 2023] deal collapsed when Hamas, at the last moment, refused to release the younger women it was holding. Hamas proposed that we skip over them and begin discussing the older men, a clear violation of the deal that we had put together over weeks of negotiations.
Israel refused. After midnight in Washington on December 1, 2023—early morning in Gaza—Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Israel resumed air strikes. The war was back on.
At the time, I had presumed that we’d succeed in putting together another deal, at least for the remaining women and the older men, including an American citizen.
But Hamas held to maximalist demands. They included a return to the status quo of October 6, with the organization remaining in power in Gaza, reconstituted on the borders of Israel. After the massacres of October 7, when Hamas killed more than 1,000 and took more than 250 hostages, no Israeli leader would accept that outcome.
The difficulties went beyond Hamas’s intransigence. In the months prior to McGurk’s meeting with Kamel in Cairo, relentless attacks against U.S. troops by Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, as well as by the Houthis in Yemen, wounded and murdered American troops, distracting from the Israel-Hamas negotiations. McGurk recounted:
On Christmas Day, three Americans were wounded in a strike in northern Iraq, one grievously. Days later, the Iranian-backed proxy in Yemen, the Houthis, opened fire against ships in the Red Sea, including U.S. military vessels. The region was on the brink of a wider war.
President Biden asked me to meet the Iranians in Oman, reactivating a back channel that had been used at times before the October 7 crisis. The day before my meeting, the Houthis launched their largest attack to date, firing about two dozen missiles and drones at U.S. and U.K. military ships.
The back channel went nowhere. On January 28, 2024, two weeks after my meeting in Oman, an Iranian-supplied drone struck the living quarters of American troops in Jordan, killing three U.S. soldiers and wounding dozens. Biden finally chose to hit back, ordering the largest wave of air strikes across Iraq and Syria in more than a decade, including targeted strikes against the militia leader responsible for the attack in Jordan and the Iranian adviser in Baghdad enabling the militias. After that, the militias stood down.
“Now, finally,” McGurk writes, “we were getting back to the hostage talks.” He recalls Kamel’s words during the February 2024 Cairo meeting: “We are mediators, Brett. It’s not my war, or your war; it’s their war, and they don’t want to stop. They both think they’ll win; there’s nothing to win.” “The war could stop tomorrow with the release of six women hostages, I reminded him,” McGurk writes. But there was an unbridgeable impasse. Kamel insisted that the women would be released last because Hamas understood their value to Israel. “Kamel insisted that he was doing all he could, but we were stuck,” McGurk lamented.
But here’s a key question: When his Egyptian interlocutor insisted that “there’s nothing to win,” why did McGurk not correct him? Why did he feel no need to counter that, in fact, the administration does believe Israel should “win” by dismantling Hamas’s military and governance capabilities? After all, just four months earlier, the president indicated his belief that Hamas should be eliminated entirely. What changed?
McGurk goes on to detail the meeting following the arrival of Ronen Bar, head of Israel’s internal security agency Shin Bet. “Bar said Israel was prepared to finalize the details for an exchange of hostages for prisoners, down to the names of prisoners Hamas wanted released,” per McGurk. “He was also prepared to negotiate the conditions for a phased cease-fire, with Israeli forces withdrawing from Gaza to smaller perimeters as more hostages were freed by Hamas. If no hostages came out, Israeli forces would go in deeper [into Gaza].” Specifically, Bar promised an intensive Israeli operation in the southern Gazan city of Rafah – a Hamas stronghold where its leader Yahya Sinwar was likely hiding among Israeli hostages – should Hamas refuse to release captives. Considering the butchery Hamas inflicted in Israel on October 7, that Israeli security chiefs were willing to entertain a second ceasefire mere months after the first is remarkable.
However, “Kamel said Hamas had opposite demands. Israel must withdraw completely from Gaza and guarantee a permanent cease-fire before it would release any hostages. Hamas and its leaders would remain in power, returning to the status quo of October 6. Meanwhile, Israel had to release all Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, regardless of crimes committed.”
Attempting to break the impasse, McGurk proposed a counter-offer: “a cease-fire and the release of large numbers of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a humanitarian category of hostages, starting with the remaining women and the older men, and then the sick or wounded … The incentive for Hamas was a prolonged cease-fire—at least six weeks, longer than what was promised for the remaining women alone. And it could continue as long as talks continued for the remaining hostages, creating a chance to last a year or more.”
In other words, the administration chose to give Hamas a better offer in response to its intransigence – nothing less than an indefinite ceasefire “as long as talks continued for the remaining hostages.” The implication was that the terror group could simply pretend to negotiate and enjoy a reprieve from Israeli military pressure while holding hostages indefinitely. Nonetheless, “Bar said the Israeli side could accept that outline.”
Next, McGurk details a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He recalls the Israeli leader’s passion with which he spoke about militarily defanging Hamas and Hezbollah so that Israeli citizens could safely return to their homes. “Netanyahu by this time was under criticism for not prioritizing the release of hostages over the military campaign inside Gaza,” McGurk says. “The criticism seemed valid. He was animated in discussing the military campaign, and far less so when discussing the hostages—when he chose to discuss them at all.”
Despite McGurk’s characterization of Netanyahu’s priorities regarding the hostages, the diplomat nonetheless recalls that “Netanyahu told me that he’d accept our proposal—a six-week cease-fire and a release of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for the women, elderly, and ill hostages—in principle,” despite the Israeli leader’s skepticism that negotiations with Hamas were productive and that the terror group would simply pocket any concessions offered.
What happened next? “Two weeks later, Hamas’s response to our proposal reinforced Netanyahu’s view that negotiations were going nowhere. The group rejected the compromise deal and stuck to its original demands.” So, instead of making it very clear to Hamas that its thuggish exploitation of innocent captives is unacceptable and will be met with steadfast support for Israel’s just fight, “Biden called Netanyahu and urged him to sweeten the deal by offering to release a larger number of Palestinian prisoners.” Astonishingly, “Netanyahu reluctantly agreed,” and yet “Hamas would not budge.”
It would seem that the administration again decided the correct approach was to “sweeten the deal” for Hamas even more. “A week later, the United Nations Security Council voted on a resolution calling for an unconditional cease-fire in Gaza during the month of Ramadan, which was about to begin. The U.S. abstained from the vote, allowing the resolution to pass,” McGurk details. Why? “Our UN team thought it would be too reputationally costly to veto it, as we had done with previous resolutions calling for an unconditional cease-fire—meaning without any hostages being freed.”
It is an astonishing admission from the administration’s diplomat. Concern about preserving “reputation” over principles is almost always counterproductive. True leadership demands standing for what is right, even if others would disapprove.
To his credit, McGurk admits the mistake. “Hamas saw the UN resolution as a strategic opening to strengthen its position. The day after the vote, Hamas’s leadership met with Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, in Tehran, and pointed to Israel’s growing international isolation. The Houthis escalated their missile and drone attacks in the Red Sea. And with no progress in sight, Israeli negotiators withdrew from the talks altogether.” McGurk goes on to describe increasing domestic political pressure on the president “to somehow force Israel to stop the war” and the president’s insistence that an Israeli operation in Rafah “is a red line” because Israel “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost.” Israel, it would seem, is the party at fault for Hamas’s monstrous decision to massacre, rape, and kidnap its way across Israel before retreating to Gaza’s dense cities. Vice President Kamala Harris, meanwhile, threatened “consequences” should Israel make the “huge mistake” of operating in Rafah.
“Looking back,” McGurk laments, “it’s no wonder that Hamas never responded to our proposals during this period. We now know that in March 2024, as this political debate was taking place in the U.S., Sinwar was in a tunnel complex underneath Rafah. An avid consumer of news, he would have understood that relations between Biden and Netanyahu were approaching the boiling point.”
Such an acknowledgment is welcome, but American diplomats should have known better initially, not merely after “looking back.” At the time, several analysts and journalists pointed to the folly of chastising Israel, including West Point war scholars John Spencer and Dr. Jacob Stoil, who wrote in March 2024:
As it becomes increasingly clear that the United States has little stomach for an Israeli incursion into Rafah, Hamas has no reason to negotiate the terms of a ceasefire. It does not care about the interest of the Gazans. Hamas can maximize its gains with faith that the United States will ultimately impose a ceasefire on Israel. In the unlikely event that the Hamas assumptions about the United States start to prove false, they could attempt further delays of the Israeli offensive into southern Gaza by coming back to the table.
Without the realistic threat of an Israeli operation in Rafah, Hamas has no reason to seek a ceasefire, and given Hamas’ strategy, there can be no truly lasting ceasefire if Hamas can return to control Gaza.
McGurk then fast-forwards to an April 1, 2024 Situation Room meeting during which visiting Israeli officials “[laid] out their humanitarian plans for the Rafah operation.” This is indicative of the U.S.-Israel relationship dynamics – far from a fantastical situation in which Israel “controls” the United States, as antisemites across the political spectrum would have us believe, Israel actually takes great pains to ensure its behavior aligns with U.S. wishes, even when these wishes are strategically ill-advised and Washington expresses them via public shaming.
Yet, the details that McGurk provides next underscore that Israel’s efforts to minimize loss of innocent life curried it little favor within the administration.
During the meeting in the Situation Room, according to McGurk, Israeli military attaché Major General Hidai Zilberman told him that “Israel was about to conduct an air strike in Damascus” against “Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior Iranian officer responsible for proxy operations across Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah.” McGurk clarifies that “Zahedi was a legitimate target for the Israelis, given the ongoing Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel,” although Zilberman warned that “Iran might claim that the building about to be attacked was a consulate.” Israel’s position was that the building was not.
Following the strike, McGurk details the administration’s preparations to defend Israel against Iran’s forthcoming salvo of ballistic missiles and drones. White House aides were “visibly alarmed … for the people who lived [in Israel] and for how it might affect the 2024 election” – an interesting admission given the argument just paragraphs earlier that criticism of Netanyahu for ostensibly out-of-order priorities was “valid.”
Following the tragic, accidental Israeli drone strike in Gaza on April 1 that killed seven World Central Kitchen employees, Biden and Netanyahu spoke by phone three days later. Immediately before the call, the president, consumed with anger, implored his staff, “What the fuck am I telling this guy?” Per McGurk, “Some people advised the president to simply tell Netanyahu that the war was over; if he refused, we’d cut Israel’s support.” Exhibiting some common sense, Biden apparently “asked what would happen if we cut military assistance while hostages remained in tunnels and the war continued, with Israel under attack from multiple directions.” CIA director Bill Burns recommended continued pursuit of a hostages-for-prisoners ceasefire deal while supporting Israel. Absent from McGurk’s account of the conversation is any strategizing for how Hamas might be compelled to surrender and release every hostage unconditionally.
The details of the call between Biden and Netanyahu are staggering.
According to McGurk, Biden yelled, “Bibi, man, what the fuck are you doing?” “You think I’m Santa Claus? No Santa in Israel, pal.” The president threatened, in McGurk’s words, “[cutting] off military aid to Israel with the snap of a finger, leaving the country on its own.” Biden pledged to foil Iran’s forthcoming attack but promised that Washington would subsequently push to end fighting in Gaza immediately to free the hostages.
After the United States and regional partners largely countered Iran’s projectile salvo against Israel, Biden boasted to those in the Situation Room, “I just saved [Netanyahu’s] ass.” In another call between the American and Israeli leader, Netanyahu praised the U.S.-Israeli military cooperation and argued that Iran’s attack demonstrated “that these maniacs are willing to fire hundreds of missiles at Israel.” Biden seemed to take away a different lesson, which was that Israel relies on the United States. Netanyahu should “take the win” and tailor Israel’s response to avoid escalation.
There are several key takeaways from McGurk’s narrative.
First, despite the almost triumphalist tone of the article’s title (“How Biden Averted a War With Iran”) – which editors for The Atlantic likely wrote, not McGurk – the piece is anything but. It reads as melancholy and hardly exudes confidence that the administration made the best choices vis-a-vis its diplomacy with Hamas intermediaries. It is easy to wonder whether McGurk’s admission that lambasting Israel emboldened Hamas and that the president screamed, “There’s no Santa in Israel, pal,” at Netanyahu—actions that reflect poorly on the administration—amounts to a guilt-induced mea culpa.
(Another clue that McGurk regrets the administration’s posture toward America’s enemies is his palpable relief that the president “finally chose to hit back” against Iran-backed proxy militias firing at U.S. personnel in the Middle East. His wording implies a belief – entirely correct – that the president should have ordered strong kinetic action before three troops were murdered and dozens wounded.)
Second, the account that McGurk provides reflects disdain within the administration for a close partner at war against common enemies. There is no indication in the dialogue and internal deliberations that he recalls that administration personnel felt a sense of duty or mission to support a fellow democracy battling the genocidal forces of Hamas, Hezbollah, and their Iranian regime benefactors. One instead gets the impression that the administration viewed Israel as a problem to be managed and coerced while putting undeserved stock in the sensibilities of UN diplomats and domestic political agitators. This mirrors the wider malaise within American political culture over commitments to allies and close partners aligned against common adversaries. The Trump administration’s disdainful public treatment of Ukraine and South Korea are salient examples. Such trends are worrying amid ever-growing cooperation among China, Russia, Iran and its proxies, and North Korea to undermine the post-World War II U.S.-led international order that has fostered unprecedented global prosperity.
Third, Americans must contend with the sad reality that jihadist organizations have accrued a massive strategic advantage over law-abiding free nations by exploiting civilian infrastructure. Unlike groups such as Hamas that revel in wanton slaughter, the United States, Israel, and other western countries strive to minimize civilian harm during war to the extent possible. Terrorists understand this. When heart-wrenching images (including some that are fake) of lifeless civilians pulled from rubble circulate widely on social media platforms, domestic political pressure builds on western leaders to “end the war.” If such pressure succeeds, the terrorists using human shields escape military defeat. The Biden administration appears to have fallen victim to this propaganda effort and failed to clearly communicate to the American public that the fault of deaths in Gaza lies with the Hamas terrorists who use civilians for cover. Blaming Israel for Gaza’s tragedy implicitly validates Hamas’s cynical and evil strategy and demoralizes the American public in its own battles against terrorist groups and the Iranian regime.
McGurk’s testimony is an important piece of the post-October 7 diplomatic record. One can only hope that it will inspire a course correction.
