As the aircraft carrier Dwight D. Eisenhower sailed toward Norfolk Harbor, a small cargo plane landed on the flight deck amid swirling wind and rain.
After the plane jerked to a halt, Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and top Navy officials disembarked. A few minutes later, they made their way down to the hangar deck, where thousands of sailors, all eager to be home, waited.
It was an extraordinarily pumped “all hands” call. While the sailors cheered, the chief of naval operations recounted the strike group’s achievements. But there was also a sense of relief that a long job was on the cusp of completion. The Eisenhower set sail from Norfolk a week after the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, and its six-month deployment had been extended three times. Now the crew was at last coming home, but only after being involved in one of the most intense naval firefights since World War II.
Speaking to the sailors gathered on the hangar deck, Mr. Sullivan recounted how he would walk into the Oval Office and tell President Biden about the exploits of the Eisenhower and its strike group, shooting down all manner of Iranian-made drones and rescuing sailors attacked by the Houthis.
“Man, what stories I got to tell: You guys played defense, you played offense,” Mr. Sullivan told the crowd on Saturday. “And when somebody comes at us, we come back harder at them.”
Mr. Sullivan and other White House officials used the occasion of the Eisenhower’s return to highlight their strategy, arguing that at least for now a combination of secret diplomacy, deterrence and a willingness to use military force had held off a wider war.
Iranian-backed Shiite militias in Iraq have halted their attacks since February. After Israel attacked an Iranian diplomatic post in Syria, Iran’s missile barrage in response was intercepted. And, at least so far, Hezbollah has been persuaded not to allow its cross-border fight with Israel to reach full boil. American intelligence agencies assess that, for the first time since the war in Gaza began more than nine months ago, Iran is no longer urging Hamas to fight on.
It is obviously an imperfect result. Israel’s campaign in Gaza continues, costing the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians. The dozens of Israeli hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7 remain captive in Gaza. In support of Hamas, the Houthis are still interrupting shipping in the Red Sea. The fighting between Hezbollah and Israel could spiral.
Israel and Hamas are unlikely to reach any formal agreement until after the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, goes to Washington at the end of the month, officials said. But U.S. officials say there is a real chance for a cease-fire after Mr. Netanyahu’s visit.
“I am not going to use the word hopeful or optimistic, but I am going to say we see a path,” Mr. Sullivan said. “There is a better chance of getting a cease-fire deal in Gaza than there has been in a long time. But it is by no means a sure thing. Complicated politics in Israel. Complicated psychology in Gaza.”
All around the aircraft carrier, the signs of the intense fight during its deployment were apparent. Combat action patches for the sailors. A unit commendation ribbon for the crew. And on the flight deck, F/A-18 Super Hornets with stencils of the Houthi drones they shot down. One showed three drones destroyed and 16 bombs dropped.
The Eisenhower was at the center of a strategy to use military strikes, deterrence and diplomacy to manage the conflict in the Middle East, a part of the response put in place in the immediate aftermath of the attacks in Israel.
Brett McGurk, a National Security Council official who works on Middle East issues, recalled gathering in Mr. Sullivan’s office as Hezbollah started firing missiles into Israel in the days after the attacks.
“We set an objective to contain this crisis to Gaza,” Mr. McGurk recalled. “Hezbollah started shooting on Oct. 8, and we recognized immediately the risk of a broader regional conflict was high.”
In the meeting, Mr. McGurk said, Mr. Sullivan and his colleagues began outlining a plan. Mr. Sullivan said he was focused on acting quickly.
“In the early days after Oct. 7, my view was that speed was really of the essence,” he said in an interview. “So, within a couple of days, we were thinking about the military muscle movements that could show decisiveness on the part of the United States.”
First Mr. Sullivan and Lloyd J. Austin III, the secretary of defense, spoke about moving the aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford to the Eastern Mediterranean, near Israel. But then the discussion turned to the Eisenhower, nicknamed “the Ike,” like the president. The Ike was originally not supposed to move into the Middle East immediately. But Mr. Sullivan and Mr. Austin spoke about changing the plan.
“In the early phase it was over-deliver on speed, and scope and scale of American power protection to reassure the Israelis, and to deter adversaries,” Mr. Sullivan said.
The Eisenhower found itself in the midst of a kinetic fight. The Houthis began using a range of airborne and maritime drones. As the group developed new techniques, the Navy revised its own, including using advanced electronic weapons to take down swarming Houthi drones. There was, sailors said, constant communication between the carrier strike group and experts in the United States. The Navy began using some of its weapons systems in ways it had not previously envisioned.
Carlos Del Toro, the secretary of the Navy, who accompanied Mr. Sullivan on the trip to the Eisenhower, said critics were saying that modern technologies, like ship-killing missiles, had predicted the end of the usefulness of carriers. The fight with the Houthis, he said, showed that the ships could still battle effectively at close ranges. “I think it is a valuable lesson,” Mr. Del Toro said.
Mr. Sullivan has had a fairly public role for a national security adviser. He has briefed reporters at the White House repeatedly over the past two years. That may have been in part because Mr. Biden often leaves it to staff members, Mr. Sullivan first among them, to communicate the day-to-day details of foreign policy to the public.
For his part, Mr. Sullivan paints a picture of a president who takes a hands-on approach to negotiating the finer points of Middle East diplomacy, getting on the phone with Mr. Netanyahu to urge restraint against Iran or with the Egyptian president to open the border with Gaza for aid.
Other White House officials say Mr. Sullivan is among Mr. Biden’s closest advisers, valued because he has a symbiotic connection to the president and an understanding of when Mr. Biden wants to use force and when he does not.
Mr. McGurk credits Mr. Sullivan with building out a strategy for the Middle East that carefully fused military force and diplomacy. The diplomacy included nonstop messages to Israel but also a secret back channel to Iran, officials said.
Mr. McGurk said that was illustrated by how Mr. Sullivan helped coordinate the U.S. response as Israel and Iran moved closer to an open war this spring.
Mr. Sullivan knows better than most that the success so far could fall apart at any moment.
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