
Why Jordan and Egypt Are Critical to Trump’s Gaza Proposal
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT – On Tuesday, with Jordan’s King Abdullah II at his side, President Donald Trump exuded confidence that the Arab world will […] More
EXPERT INTERVIEW — On the day the Israeli cabinet voted to approve the long-awaited ceasefire-for-hostages deal in Gaza, The Cipher Brief spoke with a former advisor to U.S. presidents who has known his share of painstaking negotiations with the various parties to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and others in the Middle East. Dennis Ross was special assistant to President Obama and National Security Council senior director for the Central Region and served in the Clinton and first Bush administration. Ross credits the Biden Administration for the long work of bringing the deal to fruition – but also what he calls a “Trump Effect” that he believes helped bring it over the line. Ross also spoke about the work the Trump Administration will have to do to turn a short-term, six-week truce into a lasting peace, and perhaps a way to prod Israel and Saudi Arabia to renew their talks on normalizing their relationship.
“We’ll see an interesting test here,” Ross said, “of how important a priority this is for President Trump, A, to get this actually implemented as an agreement that in effect is his agreement; and B, how important is producing Saudi normalization with Israel to him as a priority? The more important it is, it will remain difficult for Prime Minister Netanyahu to say no to President Trump.”
Ross spoke Friday with Cipher Brief contributing editor Elaine Shannon.
Their conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
The Cipher Brief: What do we hope for and what’s going to happen next?
Ambassador Ross: I look at this as an agreement that emerged when it did because of what I call the Trump effect. This agreement, the outline of this agreement, the framework, the content — almost all the language was completed and accepted in July. So we’re looking at months and months of not closing it. And there’s a variety of reasons. Hamas would create an issue; Prime Minister Netanyahu presented some clarifications. I think Hamas seized on those clarifications.
The point is, what produced the closure was the reality that President Trump was going to be inaugurated on January 20th, and he made it clear he wanted this done before he was inaugurated. Now his negotiator, the person he has designated to be his Middle East negotiator, is someone who was actually in Doha, went there, was part of the concluding part of the negotiations, flew from Doha to Jerusalem, saw Prime Minister Netanyahu on Saturday, and made it very clear to him that he needed to say yes to this. We’re seeing the Trump effect in terms of [the fact that] Prime Minister Netanyahu did not feel he could say no to Donald Trump.
The Qataris and the Egyptians put a lot of pressure on Hamas to close, because they also wanted to show President Trump that they could deliver and they could do something that he wanted so they’d get on his right side. That kind of leverage doesn’t necessarily exist for a long time, but it exists now, and it’s very much in President Trump’s interest to see this implemented.
We had an unusual relationship [between the outgoing Biden administration and incoming Trump administration.] In fact, I can’t think of any equivalent, with an outgoing administration and the incoming one completely agreeing and working together to get this done. Yes, this was all drafted by the Biden administration negotiators, but to close it, they needed the presence, not just the signal, not just the input, but the presence of Steve Witkoff, who is President Trump’s Middle East negotiator.
What was announced by the Qatari prime minister was that there are three parties who are responsible for monitoring this, and three parties who are the guarantors of it. The only real guarantor that matters in this case is the U.S., and the fact is, this is now a Trump administration agreement. It will be important, I think, for the Trump administration to put together a team of people who can be very active in terms of overseeing the implementation, because there are lots of potential problems with this implementation. You’ve got people returning in Gaza from the south to north. They’re not supposed to be carrying weapons. Is there a guarantee that they’re not all going to be carrying weapons? There are Hamas fighters who are wounded, who will be allowed to go to Egypt; [is there] an agreement on who they are?
The Cipher Brief: What about the ripple effects of this deal?
Ambassador Ross: We know that one of the priorities that President Trump has is to expand the Abraham Accords, and that’s a euphemism for saying Saudi-Israeli normalization. And the Saudis have made it very clear, especially given the imagery that comes out from Gaza, which is an imagery that captures death and destruction, the scope of which is literally hard to exaggerate – and by the way, in Israel, nobody sees it – that for the Saudis, they want the war over, but that means they want Israel out of Gaza. So that will give President Trump and his administration an enormous incentive to make sure that all three phases of this agreement actually are carried out and implemented.
We have a temporary ceasefire right now, and it goes on for 42 days, and 33 hostages will get released and we will see [the release of] close to a thousand Palestinian prisoners. On day 16 of the first phase, the negotiations for reaching understandings on Phase Two are to begin. The aim of the second phase is to take what is a temporary ceasefire and turn it into a permanent ceasefire that then outlines the withdrawal of Israel from Gaza. Prime Minister Netanyahu can legitimately say he has not agreed to end the war because technically this agreement doesn’t mean that there’s a guarantee the war is going to end, but the fact is, you’re supposed to, in Phase Two, reach an understanding that turns this into a permanent ceasefire.
And if you don’t achieve that in Phase Two and it falls apart and Israel resumes, I suspect that you’ll see President Trump think, “Well, the agreement somehow hasn’t been fulfilled.” Now if Hamas has violated it, he will be supportive of whatever the Israelis do. I would say that Hamas should have an interest in carrying this out. If they do, then it’ll be pretty difficult to see this conflict resume. And you’ll see the President’s interest in doing a Saudi deal come to the fore, in terms of helping to make sure a deal that the administration will own actually gets fulfilled.
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The Cipher Brief: That’s fairly optimistic – and we see a lot of pessimism, especially coming out of some of the Israeli commentators who are critics of Netanyahu and his government. Do you think that Netanyahu and his government can stick this landing for now?
Ambassador Ross: Well, obviously, he’s already experiencing some opposition. I think Minister [Itamar] Ben-Gvir will quit the government. I don’t think Minister [Bezalel] Smotrich will, but I also think that Smotrich is saying if the second phase turns into a permanent ceasefire and the war is not resumed, then he will leave. The opposition will not bring the government down even if it loses its majority, and [Netanyahu] could maintain a minority government. I think Prime Minister Netanyahu will go to great lengths to try to preserve his government. I think he’ll try to persuade Smotrich to stay by saying, “Look, [we are] trading Gaza for you to be able to do what you want to get done on the West Bank; that’s a good trade.”
But here again, you see another tension. The other tension is, if you’re going to do the Saudi normalization deal, the idea that there’s any annexation in the West Bank, that will rule [a Saudi deal] out. A huge increase in building in the West Bank, I think, probably makes it difficult for the Saudis to proceed. So we’ll see an interesting test here of how important a priority this is for President Trump, A, to get this actually implemented as an agreement that in effect is his agreement; and B, how important [to him] is producing Saudi normalization with Israel as a priority? The more important it is, it will remain difficult for Prime Minister Netanyahu to say no to President Trump.
The Cipher Brief: Moving to Iran, do you think that it’s possible or likely that Iran will do something to get the spotlight back on its position?
Ambassador Ross: I think that Iran is not interested in any kind of conflict anytime soon. I think they’re quite vulnerable right now and they know it. Their domestic situation economically is quite bad. You have a country that produces natural gas and oil, and it has electricity shortages. That speaks to the mismanagement of the country. It is a country that is quite vulnerable because it’s lost its strategic air and missile defense — it has probably lost 90% of its ballistic missile capability. I don’t think it needs to have a conflict right now. I don’t think it has an interest in having a conflict right now.
Does that mean it will do nothing? No, I think it’ll try to do everything it can, first to heat up the West Bank by continuing to smuggle weapons in there. I think it also will try to do a lot to try to destabilize Jordan. [Iran] has lost so much. What [former Revolutionary Guard Corps leader] Qasem Soleimani called the “Ring of Fire” around Israel, basically that’s collapsed. It’s no longer there. And what the Iranians call the “Axis of Resistance,” it has suffered a profound loss. So the regional balance of power has changed a lot. What could the Iranians do that might show they still have options, they can counteract some of what they’ve lost? Try to heat up the West Bank beyond where it is, but also try to destabilize Jordan.
I think it’s very important for the Trump administration and the Gulf states to be focused on Jordan and doing as much as they can to be helpful in Jordan right now. Jordan is a country that has the longest border with Israel. Jordan is a country that creates a buffer for the Gulf states. It is a long-time American partner and friend, and I think this is certainly an area that we should be paying attention to.
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Shannon: Are there ripple effects that extend beyond, to Russia, Ukraine, China?
Ambassador Ross: I’ve been uneasy that one of the things that Putin might want to do with President Trump is to say, “Look, I can help you on Iran, if you will help me on Ukraine.” You had the president of Iran meeting Putin today in Moscow, and they are concluding a strategic cooperation agreement. I’m concerned about where the Iranian nuclear program is. This is a country that probably has accumulated 11 bombs worth of highly enriched uranium. I’m worried that some of that is being diverted and we won’t know where it is necessarily. So if we’re going to deal with the Iranian nuclear program, 2025 is going to be a pivotal year for doing that.
It’s possible that Putin will come in and say, “Look, here’s what we can do to deal with your concern on that, if you’ll help me address some of my concerns,” and we know that President Trump appears to want to have an early meeting with President Putin. Putin has laid out a series of conditions on Ukraine, which add up to a complete capitulation on the part of Ukraine. I can envision him meeting with President Trump, and he says, “Look, because of you, I’m prepared to make a number of moves away from what I’ve said I needed.” So this is a way to convince President Trump that he is already producing from Putin. And what it reflects is, you establish certain conditions that seem extreme and then you’re prepared to give some of them up. And it looks like you’re being reasonable. I anticipate that. I anticipate maybe also recognition of our concerns about Iran and how [Russia] might try to help address some of them.
Shannon: Is there anything else that we should be thinking about?
Ambassador Ross: I want to end up with a more positive sense of possibilities. The one thing that is very clear is that the Israeli military achievements have transformed the balance of power in the region. That’s the good news. Now, these become something other than tactical if you can turn them into strategic gains, and I think there’s a potential for that, but it will require greater attention to the Middle East than is probably the instinct of many of those coming in the Trump administration. Many will want to shift the focus to the Indo-Pacific and China. And I’m not saying that isn’t important. We have to be able to compete with China, for sure. But I also know one thing about the Middle East, and I’ve said this to presidents and secretaries of states that I’ve worked with: You may think you can disengage from the Middle East. You may think you can walk away from the Middle East, but the Middle East will not walk away from you and sooner or later it will bring you back.
It’s like the line from, I think, “The Godfather Part III”: “Every time I try to walk away and get away, they just draw me right back in.” And you don’t want to be drawn back into worse circumstances. The good news is, you have a changed balance of power. And that’s why I think the key is making sure that, during this year, Israel is out of Gaza, because that really will help you move on the normalization track with Saudi Arabia and focus on what your strategy towards Iran has to be.
And there really has to be a serious effort. Here, I think, the instinct of President Trump is to do a deal. He will do maximum pressure, which is maximum economic pressure. But I think he can take advantage of what is a very real likelihood of an Israeli threat to act against the nuclear program, use the threat of military force, the Israelis and maybe our own, if there isn’t a deal. I think the potential under those circumstances, by the end of 2025, we could have a very different Middle East and one that’s much more promising.
It’s an opportunity. You’ve got to take advantage of it. It won’t happen on its own.
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