By Amy Mackinnon and Jack Detsch
Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s SitRep. We’re in countdown mode. It’s just four days until the U.S. House Foreign Affairs Committee releases the findings of its three-year investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, five days until the presidential debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and 18 days until SitRep touches down in New York for the U.N. General Assembly.
Alright, here’s what’s on tap for the day: The Gaza cease-fire deal looks further away than Team Biden is indicating, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky shakes up his wartime cabinet, and an American sailor is arrested in Venezuela.
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U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, D.C., on July 25. Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
If you take the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden at its word, a cease-fire deal and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas has been on the one-yard line for nearly three months.
On May 31, Biden made the unusual move of announcing a detailed Israeli proposal to secure the release of the hostages held by Hamas as well as a cease-fire in Gaza. The three-phase framework announced by Biden has served as the backbone of negotiations ever since. At the time, a senior Biden administration official described the deal as “extremely close in almost every respect,” the kind of agreement that Hamas had indicated it would be willing to accept.
Since then, senior members of the Biden administration have reiterated the idea that a deal is tantalizingly close.
July 4, “I think the framework is now in place, and we have to work out the implementation steps,” said a senior Biden administration official.
July 11, “‘Optimistic’ is always a hard word to use in a sentence around this tragic conflict. But I think the signs are more positive today than they have been in recent weeks. Yes,” said National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.
July 24, “We’ll also talk, I’m sure in depth, about developments in Gaza and the negotiations on the ceasefire and hostage release deal, which we believe is in the closing stages and it’s reaching a point that we believe a deal is closable and it’s time to move to close that agreement,” said a senior Biden administration official.
Aug. 8, “The three of us and our teams have worked tirelessly over many months to forge a framework agreement that is now on the table with only the details of implementation left to conclude,” the leaders of Egypt, Qatar, and the United States said in a joint statement.
Aug. 15, “We have already narrowed some gaps, and the focus now is on some of the more specific implementation and specific issues as it relates to the agreement,” said Vedant Patel, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson.
Aug. 16, “We are closer than we’ve ever been,” Biden said.
Aug. 16, “Before the end of next week, we will gather again at this level with an aim to conclude this,” a senior administration official said.
Aug. 30, “We have advanced the discussions to a point where it’s in the nitty-gritty,” National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said.
Aug. 31, “We’re on the verge of having an agreement,” Biden said.
“Tasted Close.” But in the months since the deal with first announced by Biden at the end of May, a further 4,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run health authorities in the enclave, Polio has been detected in the strip for the first time in a quarter of a century, and the number of living hostages, most of whom are Israeli, has dwindled.
“The hope that perhaps a deal was near, was so authentic it was crunchy. It tasted close,” said Rachel Goldberg-Polin in her eulogy for her son, Israeli American hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was among the six hostages murdered by Hamas as Israeli troops closed in on their location.
Stumbling blocks. Even as the killing of Israeli hostages over the weekend added a complex new layer to negotiations, a senior administration official told reporters on Wednesday that 90 percent of the deal was done while acknowledging that significant stumbling blocks remain regarding the the exchange of Palestinian prisoners for hostages and Israel’s control of the Philadelphi corridor, which runs between Gaza and Egypt—matters of substance, by all accounts.
In a press conference on Monday night, Netanyahu said outright that Israel would not leave the Philadelphi corridor—a route that runs for nearly nine miles from Egypt into the Gaza Strip and has been used to funnel not only aid, but also weapons and ammunition to Hamas—until Israeli officials guaranteed that it was secure.
Negotiators believe that Netanyahu’s hemming and hawing is snarling the talks. The Israeli side has reportedly offered to withdraw troops from the corridor as part of a phased cease-fire deal. Asked by reporters on Monday if Netanyahu was doing enough to secure a hostage deal, Biden responded flatly: “No.”
Why the optimism? U.S. officials have likely continued to cheer the deal because they see no other options to ending the nightmare in Gaza for Palestinian civilians and the Israeli hostages. “They’re in an investment trap. There is no alternative to the mechanism they have identified to de-escalate the war in Gaza,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East peace negotiator. He noted that the circumstances of the negotiations were highly unusual. Israel and Hamas do not communicate directly but rather through intermediaries in Qatar and Egypt.
There are also lingering questions about how motivated Hamas and Netanyahu are to secure a deal. “I don’t think there is any question that the U.S and the other mediators appear to want this deal more than Netanyahu and Hamas do,” said Frank Lowenstein, a former U.S. special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.
But the Biden administration risks undermining its credibility by setting expectations of a breakthrough too high, said Miller. “I’m not sure I’ve ever been in a negotiation or seen a negotiation where the premises and expectations of a breakthrough have been repeatedly briefed to the media and then there are no results,” he said.
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There’s a big cabinet shuffle underway in Ukraine, as Amy and Jack reported last night. The Verkhovna Rada, the country’s parliament, approved Andrii Sybiha as Ukraine’s new foreign minister, replacing Dmytro Kuleba, who resigned on Tuesday.
Sybiha was a deputy to Andriy Yermak in the Presidential Office until earlier this year and previously served as Ukraine’s ambassador to Turkey. Kuleba’s next role is not immediately clear, but Ukrainian officials indicated that it could be an ambassador post in Africa, or a spot at a major European institution, such as NATO or the Council of Europe.
The portfolio of Olha Stefanishyna, the deputy prime minister for European integration, is expected to be folded into the Justice Ministry, a platform from which she will continue to lead accession talks with the European Union.
Oleksandr Kamyshin, who resigned as minister of strategic industries earlier this week, will be promoted to become a strategic advisor to the Presidential Office. Taking his old job will be Herman Smetanin, the 32-year-old head of Ukroboronprom, the Ukrainian state defense conglomerate.
Meanwhile in France, President Emmanuel Macron has ended a two-month search for a new prime minister and named former chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier to the job. Barnier will now have to form a government that is approved by France’s new parliament, where no party has an absolute majority after this summer’s elections.
Back in Washington, Dr. Hilary Hurst is now the quantum liaison at the National Quantum Coordination Office within the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy.
Amish Shah and David Manners-Weber are now senior associate counsels at the Office of the White House Counsel.
Herbie Ziskend is now the principal deputy communications director at the White House, and Zoe Hopkins-Ward is the director of research in the communications shop of the Office of the Vice President.
What should be high on your radar, if it isn’t already.
U.S. sailor nabbed in Venezuela. Venezuelan authorities arrested a U.S. Navy sailor who was traveling in the country late last month, White House spokesman John Kirby said on Wednesday. “My understanding was that this individual was on some sort of personal travel and not on official government business,” Kirby said. “We’re obviously in touch, as appropriate, as you’d think we would be, with Venezuelan authorities to try and get more knowledge and information about this.”
The arrest comes just a week after the United States seized President Nicolás Maduro’s airplane in the Dominican Republic in a bid to put more pressure on the embattled Venezuelan leader after he appeared to be defeated by opposition leader Edmundo González in an election earlier this summer.
Double duty. In a federal indictment unsealed yesterday, U.S. prosecutors allege that Linda Sun, a former top aide to New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, helped China spy on official calls and even forged her boss’s signature in a scheme to advance Beijing’s interests.
Sun served in the administrations of Hochul and her predecessor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo, before being fired in 2023. Federal prosecutors allege that Sun blocked Taiwanese representatives from meeting with state officials—and bragged to her Chinese interlocutors about stopping the engagements. She also allegedly changed the messaging of top state officials on China and kept Beijing in the loop on New York state’s COVID-19 response.
In exchange, Sun got millions from China, enough to purchase a $4.1 million home on Long Island, a condo in Hawaii, and a brand-new Ferrari, according to the indictment. Her husband was also charged with bank fraud and money laundering. It’s just the latest in a string of high-profile foreign lobbying indictments by the Justice Department.
Washington assembles its cyber diplomats. The State Department is on track to meet its goal of having a trained cyber and digital officer in every U.S. diplomatic mission by the end of this year, according to Nathaniel Fick, the inaugural U.S. ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy. Around 216 State Department officials have thus far completed their training to assume those positions, he told an audience at the Billington Cybersecurity Summit in Washington, D.C., this week. “And so you can do the math on U.S. missions globally, we’re going to hit that KPI by the end of the year,” Fick said, referring to the key performance indicator metrics that he frequently used in his previous life as a technology executive.
Context: The United States has a little more than 270 diplomatic missions—including consulates, missions to international organizations, and even some virtual embassies—so expect a few dozen more cyber diplomats in the coming months.
– Rishi Iyengar
New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon burns incense during a visit to the Seoul National Cemetery in Seoul, South Korea, on Sept. 4. Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
Thursday, Sept. 5: Forum on China-Africa Cooperation continues in Beijing through Friday.
Friday, Sept. 6: Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida begins a two-day visit to South Korea, likely his last as PM.
Saturday, Sept. 7: Algeria holds its presidential election.
Tuesday, Sept. 10: The first presidential debate between U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump takes place in Philadelphia.
Also on Tuesday, the 79th session of the United Nations General Assembly is set to open, and Jordan holds parliamentary elections.
“‘Is Space Force a real thing?’ I get that question all the time.”
—Brig. Gen. Anthony Mastalir, the top Space Force officer at the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, tells the Wall Street Journal that he’s still running into people who don’t know that the Pentagon added a sixth branch of the U.S. military—six years ago.
Serious inquiries only. The head of one hawkish Washington, D.C., think tank wants your help. “Please send me your actionable ideas on how to topple the regime in Iran,” tweeted Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “This is a major priority for me and FDD. I promise that as many of the good ones as possible will be put into action.”
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