Shortly after Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel, President Biden asked me to help lead negotiations for a cease-fire and hostage-release deal. After some initial progress, the talks soon stalled, as fighting raged in Gaza. On February 21, 2024, I went to Cairo to restart them, carrying a new proposal.
Egypt’s intelligence headquarters is in northern Cairo, surrounded by leafy avenues. Behind its gates is the heartbeat of the formidable Egyptian security state. Abbas Kamel, the head of the intelligence service from 2018 to 2024, was one of the country’s most powerful figures, although little known. A reserved man in his 60s, he had served in military intelligence with Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, now Egypt’s president, and the two had remained close ever since.
Kamel was also central to the effort to stop the war in Gaza through a hostage deal. His intelligence service maintained direct channels to Hamas’s leaders in Gaza.
Seated beside me in his office, Kamel lit his third cigarette and signaled to his aide Ahmed Abdel Khalek to bring the Israelis into the room.
“Now!” Kamel said. Abdel Khalek skirted out the door, clutching an ever-present binder of papers.
Kamel, slumped in his chair, seemed at the end of his patience. The task of delivering Hamas to a hostage deal was proving impossible. But cigarettes had a calming effect on him. The routine of sparking a lighter; the long inhale. He’d lean back, his eyes following a cloud of smoke wafting toward a fan on the ceiling. Then he’d sit up with the hint of a smile, or a new idea.
Time to take up smoking, I thought.
Only three months earlier, Kamel and I had sat in this same room and helped close the first cease-fire deal of the war. For seven days in November, the fighting stopped. More than 100 hostages were freed—women and children, including toddlers and grandmothers—in exchange for hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel. Humanitarian aid surged into Gaza and, with the guns silent, reached those in need across the Strip.
The 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.
[Mark Bowden: The lesson of Israel’s success in the air]
Let alone Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s hard-line prime minister, who demanded as a war aim that Hamas be removed from power entirely. I would see him shortly after meeting Kamel.
Our talks had further stalled as Iran ramped up attacks on Americans. In Iraq and Syria, U.S. troops came under near daily fire from Iranian-backed militias. Since October 7, these attacks had increased sevenfold from the year before, and the strikes aimed to kill.
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, we were getting back to the hostage talks. Like Kamel, my patience was frayed. The war was now in its fifth month. Nearly 30,000 people had been reported killed in Gaza, including militants. More than 230 Israeli soldiers had died, and nearly 1,500 had been wounded. Hamas still held more than 100 hostages, including several American citizens.
The carnage weighed on all of us.
“We are mediators, Brett,” Kamel lamented. “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.”
He blew smoke to the ceiling. “They’ll destroy all of us, not just themselves.”
The war could stop tomorrow with the release of six women hostages, I reminded him. These were the women passed over in the November deal, mostly civilians taken from a music festival.
They’ll come last, he said. Hamas knew they were valuable to Israel.
Kamel insisted that he was doing all he could, but we were stuck.
Abdel Khalek returned with the Israeli delegation. Gaunt, with a military-style haircut graying like mine, Abdel Khalek was the Egyptian intelligence officer long charged with the Hamas file and was in direct contact with Yahya Sinwar, Hamas’s leader in Gaza and the mastermind of October 7. Few people outside Hamas knew the organization better.
The Israeli delegation was led by Ronen Bar. With a shaved head and square jaw, Bar looked as if he’d stepped out of Fauda, the television drama about Shin Bet, the internal security agency he led. Bar was the main Israeli liaison with Hamas, and the Israeli official who most wanted a deal. He was willing to bend but not break Netanyahu’s guidance.
To demonstrate his seriousness, Bar carried maps of Gaza rolled up in cases, and briefcases filled with the names of every Palestinian prisoner held by Israel, as well as all of the information Israel had on the hostages, their likely locations and conditions.
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. 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. “That’s the formula,” Bar said.
He challenged Kamel to convince Hamas to release at least one of the women.
“I’m not Hamas!” Kamel said. Bar backtracked, meaning no offense.
Rolling out a map in front of us, Bar explained that Israel was preparing a major military offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah. It would be the largest operation of the war so far.
[Arash Azizi: Iran is not ready for war with Israel]
Rafah was adjacent to Egypt’s border, and it was where Hamas remained militarily intact, still organized into brigades with subordinate battalions and smaller units beneath them. A network of tunnels deep underground fed into a main labyrinth to the north, known as the Kingdom, where Sinwar and his advisers had been hiding from Israeli forces, together with several hostages.
Rafah was also where much of the civilian population had fled from Israel’s ongoing military operations elsewhere in Gaza. The only way to stop this planned operation, Bar said, was for Hamas to begin releasing hostages—starting with the women.
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.
That was Sinwar’s position, Kamel explained.
“Impossible,” Bar said. He looked at me, wondering why I had recommended this meeting. “What is this?” he asked.
In a negotiation with irreconcilable views, a mediator tries to create a “zone of possible agreement.” Between Hamas and Israel, there was none whatsoever.
“Let’s consider a different approach,” I said.
Together with Bill Burns, the CIA director and my partner in the hostage negotiations, I had developed a compromise framework to overcome the impasse. It would focus first on an area where both sides might agree: 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.
There were more than 30 hostages in those categories, including three Americans.
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.
Bar said the Israeli side could accept that outline.
Kamel smashed the butt of his cigarette in an ashtray. “They have greater demands,” he said. “You both know this. Sinwar won’t agree—”
“Then push them! Push them!” Bar interrupted.
“I do!” Kamel said. “What about you? Push Netanyahu!”
I raised my arms to stop the two men from shouting at each other. Kamel retreated: “I trust you, Ronen. I trust you. But what does Netanyahu say?”
Bar insisted that he was speaking for Netanyahu.
“We need to hear it from your prime minister.”
I was seeing Netanyahu the following day.
“He’ll agree,” I predicted.
“Release our girls, the war stops,” Bar insisted.
We stood and shook hands. The three of us had no choice but to work together. Kamel asked Abdel Khalek to join us. “We’ll do our best,” Kamel said.
Abdel Khalek shrugged, looking unconvinced. “Inshallah, inshallah,” he said.
The first thing a visitor to the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem sees is a wall draped with a map of Africa and the Middle East, with Israel, the size of a postage stamp, in the middle. Netanyahu greeted me in front of the map, then posed for a photo with a smile. Once the press had left the room, he offered his own bleak assessment of things across the map.
Northern Israel had been evacuated. More than 80,000 people had relocated to escape daily rocket fire from Hezbollah in Lebanon. Southern Israel, the areas near Gaza, had also been evacuated, up to 50,000 people. Nearly 5 percent of Israeli territory was now a no-man’s-land. Netanyahu likened Hamas’s insistence on restoring its positions on Israel’s borders to national suicide. Israel won’t be a country, he said. People would never return to areas bordering Hamas or Hezbollah. His priority was creating the conditions for people to return home.
In the south, that meant Hamas would never again exist adjacent to Israel. In the north, if a deal was reached in Gaza, he’d leave Hezbollah alone for now. If not, then Israel might have to clear Hezbollah from that border too. For more than 30 minutes, he never mentioned the hostages. “I’m here to discuss the hostage deal,” I reminded him.
Netanyahu by this time was under criticism for not prioritizing the release of hostages over the military campaign inside Gaza. 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. He believed that it was only through a military campaign that Israel could secure the release of the hostages. There could not be one without the other.
“So, how’s that all going?” Netanyahu asked me. “Not great, it seems.”
I explained where we stood. The aim was to unite around the proposal we had discussed in Cairo, with Israel signed on and endorsed by Qatar and Egypt.
“That places the onus squarely on Sinwar,” I said.
“Why don’t you ask Hamas to accept something, then come to me,” Netanyahu said. This was not the way to negotiate with Hamas, he insisted. The group would pocket anything Israel accepted and then keep demanding more. “You’re doing things backward,” he said.
[David Frum: A test of strength]
Netanyahu also believed that time was on his side, not Sinwar’s. Israeli forces had finally discovered the Kingdom, thought to be the heart of Hamas’s extensive tunnel system. There, they had found millions of dollars in cash, along with Sinwar’s handwritten notes, laptops, and phones. Hamas’s leader had left the area before Israeli forces arrived, but they were now thought to be closing in. Eliminating Sinwar, combined with the looming Rafah operation, Netanyahu thought, would force Hamas to soften its demands and give up all the hostages, not just some.
In the end, 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. But the constant rounds of talks were grating on him, because they seemed to treat Hamas leaders as statesmen, as opposed to terrorists holding hostages in tunnels. “It won’t work,” he said.
I agreed that eliminating Sinwar would be important and might help unlock a hostage deal, but until that happened, we should work to corner him—militarily and diplomatically.
I called Abdel Khalek after the meeting. There was still no word from Hamas.
I told him that Netanyahu accepted the proposal in principle. But even after spending nearly two hours with the prime minister, I could not be sure. Netanyahu was just impossible to pin down. Was he aiming to sabotage the talks, or was it his genuine view that Sinwar would only release the hostages with a knife to his throat? Until that proposition was tested, it was impossible to know.
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.
On March 18, Biden called Netanyahu and urged him to sweeten the deal by offering to release a larger number of Palestinian prisoners. Netanyahu reluctantly agreed, but Hamas would not budge. 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. 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.
Ron Dermer, a member of Netanyahu’s cabinet who was formerly Israel’s ambassador to the U.S., called me after the vote. He said Hamas had praised the resolution and asked why our administration treated Israel as a “dishrag” at the UN. The charge was offensive, given Biden’s staunch support for Israel, and I told him as much, hanging up the phone. But while Dermer’s rhetoric was overheated, he was not wrong that 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.
“Israel will not surrender to Hamas’s delusional demands,” Netanyahu said in a statement. Our efforts to stop the war through a hostage deal were dead.
Meanwhile, Biden was under political pressure at home—mainly from within his own party—to somehow force Israel to stop the war. Earlier in March, the journalist Jonathan Capehart had asked Biden whether Israel’s planned offensive in Rafah was a “red line,” given the potential impact on civilians. “It is a red line,” Biden said, adding that Israel “must pay more attention to the innocent lives being lost.”
Biden later told us that he was referring to how Israel should conduct the operation, not whether it was conducted at all. In the same interview, he said he was “never going to leave Israel.” Around the same time, however, Vice President Harris told ABC News that Israel’s operation in Rafah would be a “huge mistake” and refused to rule out “consequences” if it went ahead.
Looking back, 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.
A year later, Ronen Bar visited Washington, D.C., and met with a group of former Biden aides. One of them asked plaintively what Biden should have done differently in the negotiations with Hamas. Bar pointed to this period in spring 2024, when Biden was said to be blocking Israel’s operation in Rafah. From Bar’s vantage point, that perception had hardened Hamas’s position, making it more difficult to free the hostages and end the war. “That was your biggest mistake,” he said.
On the morning of April 1, a group of Israeli officials crowded into the White House Situation Room to lay out their humanitarian plans for the Rafah operation. Following Biden’s comments, we had made clear that the operation should not begin before civilians had the opportunity to leave the area.
Before the meeting started, Israel’s ambassador, Michael Herzog, and its military attaché, Major General Hidai Zilberman, asked to speak with me outside the room, so as not to be overheard. Zilberman said that Israel was about to conduct an air strike in Damascus. The target was Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a senior Iranian officer responsible for proxy operations across Syria and Lebanon, including Hezbollah. That was not particularly surprising. Zahedi was a legitimate target for the Israelis, given the ongoing Hezbollah attacks in northern Israel. I thanked Zilberman for informing me.
[The Editors: The Biden doctrine]
“One more thing,” he said. He was a giant man with a shaved head, resembling a heavyweight boxer, and his large dome leaned toward mine. Iran might claim that the building about to be attacked was a consulate, Zilberman said, but it was not. I pressed him: Diplomatic facilities are protected under international law. If the target in Damascus was a consulate, it was off-limits. Zilberman insisted that the Israelis had seen no evidence that was the case.
By the time we got out of the meeting, the building had been flattened and Zahedi and several of his associates were dead. Iran declared that it viewed the strike as an attack on Iranian territory and vowed to strike Israel in retaliation. We soon picked up reports that Iran was preparing for a missile attack against Israeli cities. It was hard to believe at first. For decades, Iran had fought using proxies, allowing itself some deniability and reducing the risk of retaliatory attacks inside its own borders. But more reports came in showing preparations for a massive strike—a combination of ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones aimed at hundreds of targets across Israel.
In urgent consultations with the Israelis, we calculated how many defensive missile interceptors would be needed in a worst-case scenario. Israel has some of the world’s most sophisticated air defenses, including Arrow systems that target missiles at the edge of outer space and closer-range defenses that take out lesser threats. But based on what we were seeing from Iran, even that capability might not be enough. Zilberman visited my office with a formal request for U.S. military forces to help defend Israeli territory—air wings, destroyers, and missile defenses. The request was extraordinary, and it broke with Israel’s traditional doctrine: We defend ourselves, by ourselves.
When I told Biden’s chief of staff, Jeff Zients, and other top White House aides that we might be about to see the largest ballistic-missile attack in history, with Israel as the target, they were visibly alarmed—both for the people who lived there and for how it might affect the 2024 election. The focus in the West Wing had shifted to the campaign, and Biden’s team wanted him to appear strong and in command, not captive to events.
Biden was determined to defend Israel, but his frustration with the crisis—and with Netanyahu—was growing. The president was known for picking up the phone at all hours—he once called my mother out of the blue. But in the first quarter of 2024, he spoke with Netanyahu only a handful of times, compared with nearly 20 calls in the last quarter of 2023. Relations between the two leaders deteriorated further after Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer called for Israel to hold elections and replace Netanyahu. Netanyahu believed that Biden had put Schumer up to it; Biden denied this, but later called Schumer’s remarks a “good speech.”
Late in the day on April 1, hours after Israel’s attack in Damascus, an Israeli drone struck a convoy in northern Gaza and killed seven aid workers affiliated with World Central Kitchen, a nonprofit led by the chef José Andrés. The Israelis had welcomed Andrés and his organization into Gaza, viewing them as more trustworthy than the U.N. The strike was a tragedy—Israel called it a “grave mistake”—and it fueled calls for an immediate and unconditional cease-fire. Biden was now being criticized from all sides: The left saw him as too weak to rein in Israel, while the right saw him as too weak to force Hamas to free the hostages and, more broadly, as having no articulable plan to end the war.
Against this backdrop, Biden and Netanyahu spoke on April 4. The all-out Middle East war that the U.S. had sought to avoid was fast approaching. Iran had hundreds of ballistic missiles and drones aimed at Israel. Israel was planning a counterattack. The hostage talks with Hamas were dead. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza was worsening.
When I walked into the Oval Office that day, Biden’s face was red like a beet. I sat in front of his desk with a larger crowd than usual, including Zients, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and Burns. Everyone sensed that something was about to give. “What the fuck am I telling this guy?” Biden asked.
There were different views. Some people advised the president to simply tell Netanyahu that the war was over; if he refused, we’d cut Israel’s support. Biden was hearing this sentiment on the campaign trail from parts of the Democratic Party. But he 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. “We’re on the side of Iran?” he asked rhetorically.
Burns advised that a hostage deal remained the only path to a cease-fire. That meant maintaining support for Israel while trying to restart the negotiations with Hamas and easing the immense human suffering in Gaza as much as possible. I agreed with Burns but chose not to say much, taking in the scene and trying to read Biden, who seemed ready to blow his stack.
Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, discussed Israel’s preparations for the missile attack and its request for U.S. military support. On Biden’s desk were orders, recommended by Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, for the emergency deployment of additional forces to the region. Biden said he approved them, without hesitation. He then asked how we might return to the hostage deal. It seemed hopeless, but Burns suggested that there might be an opportunity to use Iran’s attack to our advantage. If we helped defeat it, Netanyahu would owe us, and Sinwar would see that even a direct attack by Iran could not improve Hamas’s position.
“If we don’t defeat it?” Biden asked, unconvinced. The answer was regional war. Israel had already prepared a counterattack in the event that Iran’s missiles caused Israeli casualties. “Great,” Biden said.
The Situation Room connected the call. Biden jumped in. “Bibi, man, what the fuck are you doing?” He gripped the phone tight. “You think I’m Santa Claus? No Santa in Israel, pal.” When Netanyahu asked what he meant, Biden said he could cut off military aid to Israel with the snap of a finger, leaving the country on its own. Netanyahu retorted that Israel would defend itself even without the United States. (We later learned that he concluded from this call that we were cutting military supplies.)
[Franklin Foer: How Netanyahu lost America]
Returning to his prepared points, Biden made specific requests regarding humanitarian aid and opening additional crossings into northern Gaza. Netanyahu began to discuss Israel’s preliminary assessment of the strike on the aid workers, claiming that it was more complicated than what was being reported in the news—a tragic miscommunication.
Biden interrupted: “I don’t want to hear it, Bibi.” He said he’d help defend Israel against Iran, but then the U.S. would move immediately to end the war and free the hostages. “That’s the deal, pal.” He hung up abruptly. It was a short call.
If not for the pending Iranian attack, the U.S. might have taken irreversible measures against Israel at this juncture. My own mind wrestled with whether this might have been a better course. We all wanted the war to end. It was a sickening horror in every dimension. Was the means to that end the hostage and cease-fire deal—the course we had been on—or simply telling Israel to stop, even as it was under attack on multiple fronts?
If there was a better way to end the crisis, Biden would have taken it. He had tried a UN resolution calling for an unconditional cease-fire. He had tried increasing public pressure. Those steps only seemed to make the situation worse.
There were multiple belligerents in this conflict. Increasing public pressure on Israel did not stop the war. It seemed to encourage those fighting against it.
I had never seen Biden so frustrated—spitting mad, literally.
Sullivan took out a note card to draft the readout, the official summary of the call. We debated whether to publicly threaten to cut military aid to Israel. Biden was not comfortable doing so at a moment when hundreds of Iranian missiles were being readied for launch. The final readout warned that U.S. policy “will be determined by our assessment of Israel’s immediate action” on “specific, concrete, and measurable steps to address civilian harm, humanitarian suffering, and the safety of aid workers.” At the same time, it said that Biden had “made clear that the United States strongly supports Israel in the face of [Iran’s] threats.”
This was the paradox. For all Biden’s frustration with the situation, and with Netanyahu, Israel was under attack from common enemies. Fueling Iran’s confidence was the belief that Biden was under pressure to break with Israel. Iran seemed to believe that a missile attack against Israel might help push Biden over the edge. That proved to be a miscalculation.
On Saturday, April 13, Biden took his seat at the head of the table in the Situation Room. He’d just come from his home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, and had two shirt buttons undone beneath his jacket.
I had been at the White House since early in the morning to help coordinate Israel’s defense with other countries in the region. Iran’s attack began around 3:30 p.m. with 200 drones, followed 90 minutes later by 30 cruise missiles. Those were all in the air and flying toward Israel by the time Biden arrived. The ballistic missiles had yet to launch.
The flight time for drones from Iran to Israel was three hours. Cruise missiles took about half that time, and ballistic missiles took 13 minutes. Iran’s launch sequence ensured that all of the attacks would converge on Israel at the same moment. The aim was to overwhelm Israeli air defenses and allow the heavy-payload ballistic missiles to hit their targets.
Earlier that day, Tehran had sent a message warning that if the U.S. helped defend Israel, it could no longer restrain militias in Iraq and Syria, which had not fired a shot against U.S. personnel since our air strikes in February. Meanwhile, Herzog and Zilberman had visited my office to review Israel’s potential response to an Iranian attack. If Iran’s missiles killed Israelis, Zilberman said, then Iran had no idea what was coming. His large fist pounded my desk.
Seated in the Situation Room with Biden were Austin, Blinken, Sullivan, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General C. Q. Brown, and other senior advisers. Harris was on a video feed from Los Angeles. General Erik Kurilla, overseeing U.S. operations, was on video from his headquarters in Tampa, Florida.
Biden asked about our preparations. Over the previous 96 hours, the U.S. had strengthened defenses in and around Israel, deployed military assets and fighter squadrons, and coordinated with a makeshift coalition of Arab and European states. “Good as we could do,” Austin said.
“Where’s Bibi?” Biden asked. Netanyahu was in an underground command center in Israel, where he planned to ride out the attack and then determine how to respond. Burns sketched out possible scenarios. If Iran’s attacks killed Israelis, Israel would launch a large air attack on Iran. This would bring a state-on-state conflict to the Middle East for the first time in decades, with the risk of drawing in the U.S.
Biden said he would not allow that to happen. We may not have a choice, I thought.
Kurilla reported that American air squadrons were taking down dozens of slow-flying Iranian drones over Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. He called it a turkey shoot. One of those pilots was Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Murphy. Days earlier, he had been at home in North Carolina, he later recalled in Air & Space Forces Magazine. He arrived in the Middle East less than 24 hours before it became the largest aerial combat zone since the Korean War. Murphy and his weapons officer, Major George Welton, along with the rest of their squadron, shot down two dozen drones. Defeating these first salvos was critical for saving the main air defenses for the ballistic-missile attack.
“Ballistic missiles could be the challenge,” Austin said. Iran’s ballistic missiles could descend at speeds of 5,000 miles per hour, striking targets with precision while carrying a 1,000-pound warhead. U.S. and Israeli air-defense systems are the best in the world, but if Iran launched enough missiles, it was a near certainty that some would get through and reach their targets.
In the eastern Mediterranean, American destroyers readied in coordination with Israeli land-based defenses. Patriot anti-missile batteries operated by the U.S. Army stood by across the Middle East, from Iraq to Jordan, scanning the skies for targets.
“What’s your worst case?” Biden asked. Nobody knew for sure how many missiles the Iranians might shoot at once. The worst-case scenario was thought to be 50 or more.
“So we just wait?” Biden asked. Heads nodded.
The screen on the wall in front of me suddenly showed yellow streaks rising from Iran. Kurilla opened his mic: “Mr. President, Mr. Secretary, we have confirmed ballistic-missile launches. Thirty launches total from tracks.”
“We can handle 30,” Austin said.
The streaks rose from across Iran and built up speed as they approached the edge of the atmosphere. Kurilla, moments later: “Thirty new launches, Mr. President.”
“Thirty new launches?” Biden asked. Kurilla confirmed that there were now 60 missiles in the air. More yellow streaks rose from Iran as the first wave curved horizontally across Iraq, heading for targets in Israel.
“That’s a challenge,” Austin said.
“Six minutes before defenses engage,” Kurilla said. I had never felt so helpless in this room, the command center of the most powerful country on Earth. I knew what interceptors we would fire first, the backups if they failed—everything that was about to transpire. Yet, for the first time ever while seated at that table, I bowed my head and prayed.
More yellow lines rose from the digital map of Iran.
Kurilla confirmed a third salvo. Ninety missiles were now in the air, coming in three waves. “I’m dropping to coordinate defense,” he said.
“Ninety?” Biden said. Moments later, more streaks. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Kurilla confirmed a fourth salvo. There were now more than 100 ballistic missiles flying toward Israel. Nobody said a word. Many, like me, were seemingly in quiet prayer.
[Andrew Exum: Netanyahu doesn’t care about his friendship with Biden]
Four minutes before the missiles reached the range of our defenses, the room was so quiet that you could hear a digital red clock humming on the wall. Then streaks appeared from the other side of the screen: interceptors launching from Israel and our destroyers at sea, and Patriots from elsewhere. Israel’s Arrows built speed to Mach 9, more than one mile per second. American destroyers fired SM-3 interceptors that traveled even faster, reaching incoming missiles above the atmosphere in tens of seconds.
Screens across three walls tracked hundreds of converging missiles and interceptors, like a multiplayer video game. It did not seem real. Suddenly, bright-white flashes burst onto the screens: Satellite imaging was picking up the interceptors as they exploded 60 miles above the Earth.
“Defenses engaged,” Kurilla said, stating the obvious. The entire Middle East, from Israel to Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan, was covered in apocalyptic white airbursts.
Through his cockpit window 6,000 miles from the White House, Murphy saw interceptors launch to engage missiles far above him. There were massive explosions in all directions, then wreckage descending around his aircraft. “You fly through it,” he recalled. “You think skinny, you pray, and you continue on the heading that you’re on.”
“Impacts?” Biden asked. Reports incoming, Kurilla said.
“We won’t know straightaway,” Brown added.
The door opened. A watch officer delivered a note from Nate Swanson, my lead adviser on Iran. It was a message from the Iranians, saying that what was in the air now was the end of the attack, but that they would launch a larger salvo if Israel responded. I read the note to Biden. He nodded, too much information coming in at once.
The screens gradually cleared. All of the missiles had either reached their targets or been intercepted. There was nothing to indicate what had happened at ground level.
“Erik, report,” Austin said. Kurilla answered that we had no confirmed impacts in Israel. The defenses appeared to have been successful.
Many in the Situation Room leaned back in their chairs with sighs of relief. “Thank God,” someone said.
I remained on edge. “We won’t know for certain yet,” Austin warned.
Kurilla again: “Israelis confirm no significant impacts.”
“Pretty good,” Austin said quietly. “Unless Iran fires more.”
“They claim they won’t,” I said.
Biden nodded to Sullivan. “Get Bibi on the line.”
“What do you want to say to him?” I asked.
“I just saved his ass, that’s what. Cut this off here.”
“Take the win,” Sullivan added. Outside the room, I connected with the Israelis in their bunker. Netanyahu asked for 30 minutes before taking the call, which further riled up Biden.
“Does he know we just saved his ass?” Biden asked. This was the first time the U.S. military—let alone the U.S. military together with a coalition of European and Arab countries—had fought to defend Israel. The moment was not lost on Biden. Now the question was how to leverage it.
Sullivan recommended that we use the time to craft what Biden would say to Netanyahu.
“Go,” the president said. “Hurry up.”
Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer and I went with Sullivan to his office and huddled behind his desk as he typed out talking points. For the key takeaway, we chose to use Sullivan’s formulation (“Take the win”) instead of Biden’s (“I just saved your ass”). We recommended that the president ask Israel to respond in a way that inflicted few casualties and aimed to end the direct exchange of fire. Then we would get back to the hostage deal.
Netanyahu was ready for the call. Back in the Situation Room, we handed Biden a draft. He read it aloud, made a few adjustments, and said, “Put him on.”
Netanyahu’s voice came through the speakers: “Hi, Joe, quite a night here.”
“Looks like you’ve come out okay, Bibi.” By this time, only one casualty had been confirmed, a young girl wounded by falling shrapnel in southern Israel.
“I’m still getting reports, but yes, the good news is the defenses worked.”
“Our defenses, Bibi—”
“Joe, we worked together, our militaries and our teams. It’s historic. Unbelievable, a coalition of militaries; I know it. But, Joe, the lesson is that these maniacs are willing to fire hundreds of missiles at Israel–this has never been done before, nowhere.”
The lesson was that Israel needed the United States, Biden pressed.
“Against these maniacs from Iran; they’re your enemies too,” Netanyahu said.
“Take the win,” Biden said abruptly. He explained that Israel had every right to respond, but the response should be developed with us and designed to deter, not escalate. Take your time and get it right, he urged.
Netanyahu was noncommittal. He had to see what the light of day brought to Israel. “We need to teach these maniacs a lesson,” he said.
Biden again pressed Bibi to take the win and work with us on a response. He said our military team would coordinate with Netanyahu’s.
“Let’s have our teams discuss it,” Netanyahu said. They agreed to talk again soon. The call dropped. Biden turned back to us with his palms up, asking for our views.
“He heard you,” Sullivan said. Austin said he’d work with the Israelis on response options. It was approaching 10 p.m., with a long night ahead.
We soon received another message from Iran, warning us again not to support Israel. Then a public message from Iran’s UN mission in New York: “US MUST STAY AWAY!!” For the first time since October 7, I thought, Tehran seemed anxious.
The following morning, Biden spoke with the pilots and air commanders responsible for the defense, including Murphy and Welton’s squadron. He expressed gratitude as commander in chief for what they had just done. “It’s what we train for, sir,” said one of the pilots.
“I don’t think you ever trained for last night,” Biden said. “There’s never been anything like it. The only reason we’re not in a major war right now is because of what you did. I mean it, guys. Thank you, thank you, thank you. You saved the world; I mean it. God bless you.”
This article is adapted from Brett McGurk’s new book, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages.
The post How Biden Averted a War With Iran appeared first on The Atlantic.
