Brink

Autorentext

Brett McGurk served at the highest levels of American national security across four presidential administrations, most recently as deputy assistant for National Security Affairs to President Joe Biden, where he coordinated policy for the Middle East and North Africa. He earlier served as special presidential envoy to presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump, where he led the global coalition against ISIS. Under President Obama he also led secret talks with Iran to free several American hostages held in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison, later receiving the James Foley Freedom Award for hostage diplomacy. He is currently a global affairs analyst for CNN and a distinguished fellow at Harvard’s Belfer Center and the Atlantic Council. He earned a bachelor’s degree with honors from the University of Connecticut and a JD from Columbia Law School, after which he clerked for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the U.S. Supreme Court.

Klappentext

An upcoming book to be published by Penguin Random House.

Zusammenfassung
The first major insider account of the high-stakes negotiations to free the hostages taken by Hamas on October 7—written in gripping detail by the American mediator who was in the room through it all

Having served four American presidents on matters of war and peace, Brett McGurk was no stranger to high-stakes diplomacy, but this was different. With American citizens missing, the hostages’ release critical to ending the war in Gaza, and the desperate situation for civilians, McGurk and his team faced impossible tradeoffs at every turn. Caught between Hamas’s maximalist demands and Israel’s determination that Hamas could not maintain power in Gaza, McGurk and his colleagues worked relentlessly over fifteen months to get a deal that most increasingly thought impossible.

Taking readers inside McGurk’s discussions and negotiations with President Joe Biden, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and presidents, generals, spies, and diplomats in Qatar, Egypt, Oman, and more, Brink paints a portrait of a region one wrong choice away from tipping into total war, as Iran and its proxy militias seized upon the chaos to open fire on Israeli and American targets. With the 2024 election reshaping the political landscape and time running out on the hostages, McGurk found himself working hand in hand with an unlikely partner—Trump’s emissary from the New York real estate world, Steve Witkoff. They forged a bipartisan front when it mattered most—to secure a ceasefire and save lives.

A gripping account of diplomacy under fire, Brink takes readers from the Oval Office to the seats of power in the Middle East and offers a remarkable look inside a crisis that reshaped the world, the consequences of which are still unfolding today.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1

Promise

No man ever steps into the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he is not the same man. —Heraclitus

Friday evening, October 6, 2023, began as a quiet night at home. My daughter, Leia, who was five, stayed up later than usual. Halloween was fast approaching, and she was eager to try on her costume, a unicorn. By 10 p.m., she and my wife were both asleep. I sat down to work, reviewing papers and emails that had piled up over the week.

Shortly before midnight, my phone rang. It was the Situation Room. There were reports of rockets fired from Gaza into Israel, but no further information.

At 12:23 a.m., I received a message from the Israeli ambassador in Washington, Michael Herzog. A decorated Israeli military commander and brother of Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, he said rockets were being launched from Gaza toward Israel—but he had few details beyond these first reports.

Gaza was ruled by Hamas, a terrorist group backed by Iran that has long committed itself to Israel’s destruction. In the early months of Biden’s presidency, Hamas had fired thousands of rockets into Israel—and Israel had responded with airstrikes—before a ceasefire was secured eleven days later. So, rockets from Gaza were not all that unusual.

Five minutes later, Herzog wrote again: “This is war!”

Rockets were now reported in massive volleys. Moments later, the Situation Room relayed that militants had broken through barriers separating Gaza from Israel. Videos on social media showed heavily armed Hamas fighters in black uniforms moving into Israeli towns in white pickup trucks. This was now an unprecedented attack.

Over the next few hours, I called all my contacts in Israel’s intelligence service (Mossad), internal security service (Shin Bet), and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF). I also contacted the minister of defense, Yoav Gallant, and officials close to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including his right hand, Ron Dermer.

Nobody knew what was happening.

Videos soon appeared online of Israeli families, including elderly women, mothers, and young children, being captured and taken back inside the Gaza Strip.

We now know that more than three thousand Hamas militants conducted a coordinated assault across a dozen border points, advancing miles into Israel. They recorded their murder spree on body cameras and smartphones. In a recording documented by The New York Times, a Hamas commander in Israel directs his units: “Slaughter them. End the children of Israel.”

Over the coming hours, more than 1,000 Israelis would be killed, and nearly 250 taken hostage, brought into Gaza, and dispersed in tunnels underground and safe houses above.

This was now the largest mass hostage event in modern history, and it included several Americans, among them a three-year-old girl named Abigail.

By shocking and traumatizing Israelis, Hamas aimed to spark a regional war against a weakened and reeling Israeli state. Iran’s other militant groups surrounding Israel would soon join the carnage, beginning with Hezbollah, launching rockets from Lebanon.

Inside the Biden administration, this caught us completely by surprise. Just days and weeks before October 7, we were on the brink of a historic breakthrough in the region.

Friday, January 22, 2021
Washington, D.C., Oval Office

Behind his industrial-strength N95 mask, Biden’s voice was muffled. My own mask gripped my face like a vacuum cleaner. “What?” I asked, twice.

Biden inched his mask to one side. “When’s your trip?” he said loudly.

It was Biden’s second full day as president. He was seated in a wingback chair in front of a burning wood fire in the Oval Office, with Vice President Kamala Harris to his right. I gave up and pulled my mask off. “Sunday,” I answered.

My new position was deputy assistant to the president and coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa. That’s a long-winded title meaning the White House lead on all aspects of foreign policy in those parts of the world, stretching from Morocco to Iran.

It’s a job I did not want. When Biden won the election and his team approached me to serve in the new administration, my first response was anything but the Middle East.

I had first arrived in Washington in the summer of 2001, as a law clerk for Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist on the United States Supreme Court. On the morning of 9/11, he told me about an airplane that had struck the World Trade Center. Soon, a security guard ordered me out, telling me to run toward Union Station, with planes still in the air and smoke rising from across the Potomac. America was now at war, and I wanted to join our national response.

On January 24, 2004, ten months into the Iraq War, I landed in Baghdad as a legal advisor, …