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White House officials ‘very matter of fact’ at meeting with hostage families
TEL AVIV — Two senior White House officials met with the families of American hostages yesterday as talks continue on a potential deal to pause the fighting in Gaza and secure the release of some of those held captive.
National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Brett McGurk, one of the President Joe Biden’s top Middle East advisors, met with the families for nearly an hour at the Einsenhower Executive Office Building on the grounds of the White House grounds, the father of one American hostage told NBC News today.
“They didn’t want to give us false hope,” said Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose 35-year-old son Sagui was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz in southern Israel on Oct. 7. Sagui one of six American hostages still held in Gaza.
Sagui’s wife Avital was seven months pregnant on the day of the attack and has since given birth to a daughter that he has never met.
The officials “were very matter of fact about it,” said Dekel-Chen. They believe that there is reason for optimism. But the road is still long and it’s only done when it’s done. They were very straightforward about that.”
He declined to say what level of detail the U.S. officials shared about the state of the negotiations to free the hostages.
No U.S. threat ‘will be left unanswered,’ commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards warns
Iran will respond to any threat from the U.S., the powerful commander of the country’s Revolutionary Guards, Hossein Salami, said today.
His comments came a day after President Joe Biden said he had decided how to respond to the drone attack that had killed three U.S. service members in Jordan.
“We hear threats coming from American officials, we tell them that they have already tested us and we now know one another, no threat will be left unanswered,” Salami was quoted as saying by Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency.
Iran’s ambassador to the U.N., Saeed Iravani, also said last night Iran would respond strongly to any attacks on its country or nationals.
Iran ’emboldened by the crisis’ in the Middle East, CIA director says
Iran has been “emboldened by the crisis” in the Middle East and “seems ready to fight to its last regional proxy,” according to CIA Director William Burns.
The Islamic Republic was also “expanding its nuclear program and enabling Russian aggression,” Burns wrote in an article for Foreign Affairs magazine, published yesterday.
“I have spent much of the last four decades working in and on the Middle East, and I have rarely seen it more tangled or explosive,” he said.
“The United States is not exclusively responsible for resolving any of the Middle East’s vexing problems. But none of them can be managed, let alone solved, without active U.S. leadership,” he added.
Burns, who met with the Qatari prime minister in Paris this weekend for hostage negotiations, along with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s spy agency Mossad, and Egyptian intelligence chief Abbas Kamel.
Far-right Israeli minister threatens to quit government over any ‘reckless’ deal
JERUSALEM — A far-right partner in Netanyahu’s coalition threatened to quit the government over any attempt to enter a “reckless” deal with Hamas to retrieve hostages held by the Palestinian militants.
“Reckless deal = dismantling of the government,” Itamar Ben-Gvir of the Jewish Power party posted on X amid media reports that Israel was considering a long-term pause, brokered by Qatar and Egypt, in its offensive against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
Netanyahu has stressed his commitment to destroying Hamas, whose Oct. 7 cross-border killing and kidnapping spree blindsided Israel, and he argues that the military pressure improves the chances of recovering the 132 hostages.
But at least one member of Netanyahu’s decision-making war Cabinet — former military chief Gadi Eisenkot, whose son and nephew died fighting in Gaza — has cast doubt on the prospects for rescue missions and called for a hostage deal.
That has set off speculation that Netanyahu is under pressure from both his left- and right-wing flanks, spelling a potentially wider shakeup — and perhaps even a snap election.
Jewish Power accounts for six of the 64 seats Netanyahu’s religious-rightist coalition held in the 120-seat parliament before the Gaza war. He has since brought Eisenkot’s 12-seat centrist National Unity party into an emergency Cabinet.
Ben-Gvir and another ultranationalist coalition partner, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich of the Religious Zionism party, have chafed at their exclusion from the war Cabinet. They have called for no let-up in the offensive and for Israel to resettle Gaza, from which it withdrew in 2005. Netanyahu has ruled out rebuilding Jewish settlements there but says post-war Gaza will be under Israeli security control.
Israeli gunners at the Gaza border
An IDF soldier takes up position on the border with the Gaza Strip in southern Israel on Monday.
