The following is the full transcript of the interview with Brett McGurk, who served as a top Middle East adviser to former Preident Joe Biden, a portion of which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 4, 2026.
The following is the full transcript of the interview with Brett McGurk, who served as a top Middle East adviser to former Preident Joe Biden, a portion of which aired on "Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan" on Oct. 4, 2026.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So, October 6th, 2023, Saudi Princess Reema Bandar shakes hands with you on a deal meant to normalize relations, or start normalizing relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, create a pathway for the Palestinians, give Saudi the civilian nuclear deal, and within hours this incredible attack happens in Israel. Why, in the book, do you argue that those two things are connected?
BRETT MCGURK: Well, first, Margaret, it's great to be here. And I try to just tell this history. It's chronological, but I really try to bring the reader into the room. And the book starts about three days into the Biden administration, President Biden asked me to go see the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia about some significant changes we were going to make in Saudi policy, including cutting off various weapons systems and a number of steps. And the Crown Prince in that meeting kind of put on the table the possibility of recognizing Israel, a kind of big, you know, breakthrough possible deal. And we didn't really pick that up until about a year and a half into the administration, and I describe, I think, that was lost time and unfortunate. But once we did pick it up, we made some real progress on it, and we had a package of agreements, including the Palestinian Authority was working with us on this deal. And on October 6, you're right, I had a Saudi delegation in my office with Princess Reema. Tony Blinken was about to go to the Middle East. And we had mapped out- I still can't say if not for what happened a few hours later, we definitely would have gotten the deal. But it was definitely- it was moving in that direction, and we were quite confident. And Reema and I shook hands on by the end of the year, really, to have this in place, and then talk about the- the rollout of it in the first quarter of 2024. What happened just a few hours later obviously knocked that issue off- off the agenda and everything else. I think it's- it's tragic because I think that deal, when you step back, if you look at what was happening just a few weeks before the events of October 7th, we're now the third anniversary, you had things happening that had not happened in 55 years. You had a senior Saudi official visiting Ramallah in the West Bank to see the Palestinian Authority, first time since 1967. You had Israeli officials in Israel- or Israeli officials in Saudi Arabia, and- and I think a package that would have set the foundation for what is now in a UN Security Council resolution, Margaret, a credible pathway to Palestinian state determination and statehood. That's what we were talking about. Hamas, of course, does not recognize Israel, wants to destroy Israel, and I would not be surprised if one of the motivations on October 7th was to knock this agenda off the table.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Do you believe that Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar knew that there were these plans for a Palestinian pathway and normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, and that factored into his thinking?
BRETT MCGURK: We never saw anything to tie a direct connection.
BRETT MCGURK: I never saw anything to tie a direct connection, but certainly it was known that this deal was moving in that direction. Mohammed bin Salman said it in September. It's like a- one of the biggest deals that- could be one of the biggest deals since the Cold War--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --Transform the Middle East if it had happened.
BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, so it was very much in the- But I think October 7th had been planned, from what we later learned, for a period of years, and this was not something that just suddenly put together. But I learned about the attack that night around midnight from Mike Herzog, the Israeli ambassador. I got a call from the Situation Room, also. It was rocket attacks and then cross-border attacks, and, you know, events kind of unfold- I describe it in the book of, as a crisis unfolds, you- you learn and you- you see jagged pieces. And it still wasn't clear even by daybreak, when I was at the White House, and eventually saw President Biden later that morning, just the scope of the scale of- of what was underway.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, you wrote that the U.S. "had no clear warnings; nor did the Israelis, from what they told us." But you leave open the idea that there were missed signals. Was this a total intelligence failure?
BRETT MCGURK: I think, Margaret- So we have really looked, we did not have any- anything in our system that would have been a warning and indicator.
BRETT MCGURK: No U.S. intelligence of a warning or indicator. I can't speak to whether the Israelis- the Israelis still have to this day not had a commission of inquiry. We had a 9/11 commission that I think made a number of reforms that have helped keep our country safe since 9/11. The Israelis still have not done that. I think they have to, they should do that. But from what I, in dealing with all these guys in Israel, security echelon, political echelon, I think they had an assumption that was deeply ingrained that Hamas was deterred, assuaged, and was not about to do something massive on any- any scale like this. I think that was a false assumption in their system, a failure of imagination, and it was tragic. I can't speak to whether or not there was a specific warning. We did not, we did not know of any.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The U.S. didn't know, and the U.S. didn't warn. But there has been recent reporting in the New York Times, in the Israeli paper Ha'aretz, in the Atlantic, about multiple sort of heads up from other regional leaders. Emirati leader Sheikh Mohammed apparently reported to Israel's Prime Minister Hamas was planning a major attack. The Atlantic said Egypt's intel chief also came to Israel in late September and warned Hamas was mobilizing for an attack. He didn't have a date, he didn't have the specifics, but he had a warning. Why wasn't that taken more seriously?
BRETT MCGURK: So again, I- I know Sheikh Mohammed quite well. When something on- is on his mind, he'll call. He called me at the White House once. Great respect for him. But we- we did not- we were not aware of- of a phone call. And Abbas Kamal, the Egyptian intel chief, is a main character in the book, we're with him all the time. Again, I also I just never- I had not- I did not hear–and I've checked with a number of my- my colleagues on this–of a pre-warning of October 7 from those two individuals. So I can't- Again, this is why I think Israel should have a clear investigation of what was known, what was missed at the very top, and also, you know, what intelligence analysts might have been seeing things that others weren't, why that information wasn't passed up. That's what has to happen in a situation like this. Again, we went through it, and I think Israel should do the same.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But just days after the attack, on Capitol Hill, you know, the head of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mike McCaul, said Egypt did give a heads up. Diplomatic sources said that there were messages conveyed in late summer and September, including a warning from Yahya Sinwar that he was going to do something. But you say it's just a failure of imagination, that as to what that something was.
BRETT MCGURK: I think, I suspect when you look back, you will find similar to the types of warnings that were in our intelligence system before 9/11. Nothing of a, kind of, an actionable nature. And remember, Hamas and Israel before October 7th, they were in a negotiation, this kind of ties into the theme of the book, Margaret, a hostage negotiation, because Hamas had been holding two Israeli hostages: [Avera] Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed. Two- one Arab Israeli, one Ethiopian Israeli, who were mentally ill, found their way in Gaza, and Hamas have been holding them for 10 years, and the remains of some Israeli soldiers from- from an earlier war. That negotiation had been going on. Again, this just gets to Hamas. They hold hostages for- to exceed maximum leverage and concessions. And I think in the course of putting a new demand on the table, Hamas saying it's either this or else, given the assumptions that were in the Israeli system, it probably would have been a warning would have been read in that--
BRETT MCGURK: --this is Hamas trying to play for that negotiation. But again, I have to say, I don't- I don't know what was in the Israeli system and what was known in the Israeli side. I think that's why they have to, you know, they're going to have an election soon, and everything before an election, particularly in Israel, can get a little crazy. But once there's a new government, I think having a serious commission of inquiry for what happened and making any reforms to ensure nothing like this can ever happen again is very important.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because you believe there should be accountability from the top down?
BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, I believe that- what was--
BRETT MCGURK: --what was missed. Clearly, what- what was missed. I think it's very important for any country to go through something like that after a horrific incident like this.
MARGARET BRENNAN: In talking about Hamas, you write extensively about the country of Qatar and their centrality to the deal-making with Hamas because you weren't talking directly to the terror group, you were speaking through this country as an intermediary in order to get the hostages out. And you reveal that the Emir of Qatar told you Hamas was a burden to them, one he'd shed if only the U.S. asked. Do you mean to say Hamas is still only in Qatar because America wants them there? That we want that way to get in touch with the terror group?
BRETT MCGURK: Well, Qatar- and I go through this in- in the book. When you're- we're in this awful, horrific, awful crisis in every dimension and how do you- you can't just say stop the war release the hostages, you have to actually make that happen using diplomacy, leverage. And Qatar is the key mediator with Hamas leadership, and that is something that we inherited in our administration. It's been that way, they've been in Doha since the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War when they moved from Damascus to Doha, again, with the basically tacit agreement of Israel and also the agreement of, then, the Obama administration. So what the Qataris will say is, look, they're- they're here, they have their offices here partially for your benefit. So do you want us to get rid of them? Sometimes they would say that to us, and sometimes I said in peak of frustration, yes.
BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, the question is then: where are they going to be, and how do you actually get something done? I mean, this is what was so tragic, Margaret. I mean, here- here we have the worst day in Israel since the Holocaust. We have about 1,200 people dead. We have the largest mass hostage attack in- or hostage crisis in modern history, and Hamas knew that by taking hostages on this scale, they will be treated as, basically, statesmen in a negotiation. I mean, that's kind of how it- how it plays out, and the asymmetry there is incredibly frustrating, obviously, to the Israelis, it's frustrating to me throughout the process, but Qatar plays a critical role. And Sheikh Mohammed, who's a character in the book, the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Qatar also, was a key intermediary. I don't think we could have gotten this done without him.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, it's a point in the context of the Israeli elections that's interesting because you know some of the candidates who are running to replace Netanyahu are saying Qatar's an enemy state. They're funding terrorism, and they need to go after them.
BRETT MCGURK: I have a chapter in the book where I lay out the the kind of enigma in dealing with Qatar, and, you know, the Gulf states are very often very divided because- you mentioned Sheikh Mohammed and UAE, and this gets into relations with- the relation between the state and political Islam with the Muslim Brotherhood, and countries like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, UAE completely banned, for example, the Muslim Brotherhood. Whereas Qatar has a very different philosophy. Their philosophy is we have to deal with everybody. Of course, we have one of our largest military bases in Qatar. Qatar also has Al Jazeera. I was in the Bush administration, I remember President Bush railing on the Qataris about what was being played on Al Jazeera. So it is a chronic issue and something I think we raise with Qatar very strongly. But when it comes to these deals, Qatar plays a central role. It's just- it's just a fact of it, and I talk about this in the book. When you're in the middle of the crisis, we're trying to get hostages home, we're trying to manage what could be a broader regional war. We're constantly- one reason it's titled "Brink," we are constantly on the brink of a broader regional war, and without Qatar, we would not have had some very critical channels to try to keep things under- under control.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Let me ask you about the Israeli Prime Minister. You dealt with him quite directly. Throughout the book you document that. And in February 2024, you talk about a meeting you had with him. You were very focused on these hostages and trying to get them out. You said "for more than thirty minutes he never mentioned the hostages…Netanyahu was animated in discussing the military campaign and far less so when discussing the hostages–when he chose to discuss them at all."
MARGARET BRENNAN: Why? Why do you think that is?
BRETT MCGURK: Well, first of all, I describe Netanyahu, I spent a lot of time with him, he's kind of– As a negotiator, there's a term of art in the book called a ZOPA, Zone of Possible Agreement. And if you- if you just kind of line this up, where was the- you have Hamas saying, their core demand is they have to stay in power, go back to October 6th status quo, they stay in power, they will reconstitute, they'll be on Israel's border, they want all Palestinian prisoners released, and then we can release the hostages. Israel's core demand after October 7th is that Hamas can no longer be in power in Gaza, ever. Completely irreconcilable. And the hostages are such a central piece of this because you're never going to actually stop the war without- without the hostages. And there's a continuum in a hostage negotiation, and I've done them before, even outside this context, with Iran in particular, in which the hostage negotiator sets a price. And Maimonides, who was a 12th-century Jewish legal theorist, and he has a, kind of a commandment, and I have it in the book. There's no higher commandment for a state, for a government, than the redemption, he says, of hostages, of captives. But he also says there's a- the price cannot be so high to basically put the rest of society in jeopardy. And this is the- this is the tension, the- the demand to- to bring the hostages home, and ensuring that the price is one that doesn't encourage further hostage taking or set the conditions for the next war. Okay. So, and this- this is a debate, Margaret, that goes through Israeli society and went through the highest echelons of the Israeli government. It plays throughout this book. It went into this- Keith and Aviva Siegel, who were taken hostage on October 7th, in their home, they have a sticker–and they're very cooperative for this book–it says, "Gilad is alive." That was Gilad Shalit, an Amer- an Israeli soldier, held by Hamas for five years, released after five years for 1,000 Palestinian prisoners, hardcore Hamas operatives, including Yahya Sinwar, and like many Israelis, they supported that deal. And on October 7th, on Yahya Sinwar's orders, the elite units of Hamas are approaching Kfar Aza, their kibbutz, and eventually entering their home, taking them hostage. So where do you draw this line? And Netanyahu was- was focused far more on the military campaign and ensuring Hamas can never retain power in Gaza, believing the military campaign and the pressure on Hamas would lead to a deal that released all the hostages, whereas we were trying to focus on a phased deal. At least let's get some of the hostages out first. And Netanyahu always believed that more military pressure will actually deliver a better deal, whereas Sinwar believed more time would put more pressure on the U.S. and others to deliver him a better deal. So it makes this almost an impossible situation to deal with.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But it also reveals your frustration in that, that you felt the U.S. was putting more value on those lives than the Israeli government did?
BRETT MCGURK: I feel- I think the- the U.S. role in this, in all dimensions, we're trying to stop a war and- and get the hostages home, and the two were- the two are completely linked, and to reduce human suffering as much as possible in Gaza. You know Netanyahu, I describe him as obviously very confident in his assumptions–and he has a brother who was killed in the Entebbe raid–very confident in terms of his belief in how to deal with these groups, and yet I believe a lot of times there were miscalculations. This is also very very difficult. Yeah, but I describe my meetings with him- again, I bring readers inside the room. You're sitting there with Bibi Netanyahu. You're with intelligence chief of Egypt when Hamas is on another floor. You're- you kind of get a sense of what this is like in the day- in the day-to-day.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, it's an interesting dynamic because now, since the end of the Biden administration, there continues to be, sort of, debate about this strategy. And National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has publicly suggested that the U.S. focus was so much on the hostages that it was almost a "trap," as he put it, "in thinking that we can get to a ceasefire and a hostage deal," and other things were sublimated to that objective. I mean, in hindsight, do you share that feeling?
BRETT MCGURK: I do not, and no- no one's been able to point to me to a moment in which we could have ended this war without the hostages. The war would not have stopped without the hostages. I don't- I don't believe that. And I think it's important to kind of really go through the history, as the book does. And if I could just pause on- on when we did have a hostage deal. About a month into the war, we had- we had a deal with Hamas–not easy, I described what it was like to get it–for all women and children. It's very clear, all women and children hostages are going to come out, and- in exchange for a number of Palestinian prisoners. And we had a ceasefire for eight days, and about 100 hostages came out. I'm talking about this with you here, Margaret, because three of those women that did not come out, because on the eighth day, Hamas said, "we're not going to release the younger women, actually. We'll release the young toddlers like Abigail, the young American girl. We'll release the 80-year-old grandmothers. We're going to hold on to the younger women." They said "We can't find them," which was completely untrue.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Wasn't part of the excuse that they were of military age too?
BRETT MCGURK: No, they said some- they claimed that, but they said let's- let's keep the ceasefire and talk about the older men. And in the book, I go through this night, midnight here in Washington, December 1st, and it's a moral quandary, and this is what a hostage-taker does. Hamas is good at this- Iran is- this is- they're masters at this. They put the moral onus on the other side. Do you skip the younger women, start talking about older men, keep the ceasefire, or say no, you broke the deal. Three of those women, Romi, Doron, and Emily, Margaret, came out on January 19th. I was actually on your program and I broke the news--
BRETT MCGURK: --I learned that- I learned about it–because I'd been up all night, they came out–in the green room here. One was taken from Nova Festival. Two were taken from their home in Kafr Aza. Late 20's, one is 31 years old. They should have come out in that November deal. Carmel and- and Eden, two other women, were later killed in a tunnel under Rafah together with six hostages, including the American, Hersh Goldberg, which I still- So, and I'm very clear in the book–when that deal broke down in November, because Hamas would not release those younger women, I thought we would be able to get to another deal sooner. One reason we didn't is that we came under massive attack, and I go through that in the book. In the next two months, we're consumed with that, and I go see the Iranians in Oman. But no, I do not think that there was a way to stop this war without the hostages. It had to be a hostage deal, and it took a lot to get there. I go through it in the- in the book.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Just on that point of those women. Some of them, after they were released, talked about the sexual assaults--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --that they experienced in captivity. Is that why the women, those young women, were held for so long?
BRETT MCGURK: Well, this got- that- that moment, and if you read the book, you're there. And I let readers make judgments. What would you do in this moment? We have a ceasefire. Eight days, the guns are silent. You have humanitarian aid flowing throughout Gaza. We have a deal for all women and children. Hamas says we're going to hold on to the younger women, and let's talk about the older men. Some of the older men were in their 80's. Do you say, okay, okay, let's- let's skip over the younger women and move to the men? Israel was unanimous that they cannot do that because it'll- it'll be the death sentence for the women, and given how some of the younger women were believed to have been treated, as you just referred to. Why did they want to hold on to the younger women? I think Hamas thought they were their- they were their, as Hamas would put it sometimes in the negotiation, their most precious cards, and--
BRETT MCGURK: I don't want to think about how they were being treated. I mean, there are many many testimonials now. Hamas wanted to hold on to them, and they thought they could get the highest price for some of them. I mean, ultimately, for women soldiers, it was 50- the keys, the nomenclature is: this is the keys, an exchange ratio for women soldiers [was] 50 life sentence Hamas, life sentence Palestinian prisoners, often who have killed many Israelis. They got the most- they got the most keys for the women.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Just to clarify that, there were literally, like, mathematical equations there of what one Israeli was worth in terms of Palestinians who could be released from detention, not necessarily from prisons, but from detention.
MARGARET BRENNAN: That's the key. From both places.
BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, this negotiation was- I mean, I- I don't think it has been--
BRETT MCGURK: --so tedious and negotiated down to the individual names, and a ratio for how many prisoners for an older man, how many prisoners for a female soldier, and Hamas played with this all the time, all the way down to the very end of the negotiation, where they threw in a wrench at the end for even civilian, sick and wounded hostages. They put a new demand on the table for 300 life sentence prisoners, which had never been- those are all- life sentence prisoners were- was the key for soldiers, and Hamas changed that at the end. But I bring this- I bring it back to this because I think some of these facts have been lost in the horrific nature of this crisis, which is so polarizing and so difficult. But Romi, Emily, and Doron should have come out in November. The deal was unequivocal. And they didn't. Carmel and Eden should have come out, and they were later killed by Hamas in a tunnel under Rafah. And I go back to that November deal a lot, and- and could we have done something differently to keep that on track? And it's very tragic. But to your question, I- no, I do not think there was a way to end this crisis without- without the hostages. And- and I've told some of the hostages that have come out, Keith and others, I think Hamas intended to hold on to hostages for- for many years.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Which ultimately they still are, just Yahya Sinwar and his family are not. But let's- let's talk about- you mentioned how polarizing this issue is. You have worked for both Republicans and Democrats. You are a national security official here, but all of what you were trying to do was happening at the same time as the American political cycle here–a presidential election. And there appeared to be unquestioning U.S. support for Israel and providing military support to Israel, and this became a political issue, particularly among Democrats. Then, the Republican candidates, including now-President Donald Trump, were criticizing that you weren't strong enough in support of Israel. How aware were you of the politics of the moment as you're making decisions like this?
BRETT MCGURK: Well, as you said, Margaret, I- I'm very independent. I've worked with Republican presidents, Democratic presidents. I was a law clerk for two judges appointed by Republicans, one by a Democrat. And- but let me bring you into the Oval Office in kind of, in a scene in which I think encapsulates this very issue. April 4th, 2024. President Biden, it's his reelect- he's- he's on the campaign trail, obviously frustrated about the situation, unable to articulate because the hostage talks have now collapsed. They had recently collapsed for a number of reasons I go through in the book. He's frustrated by being unable to point to how are we actually going to try to bring this to a close. We had a horrific airstrike from the Israelis that killed nine aid workers with World Central Kitchen, Jose Andres--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --hit the clearly-marked convoy.
BRETT MCGURK: --so horrific. And, so we have a call between Biden and Netanyahu, and Biden is just, like, completely fed up. And at the same time, however, Iran is planning to launch- we have intelligence that Iran is about to launch a massive ballistic missile drone attack directly against Israel, which is totally unprecedented, and- which if those missiles get through, you're talking about thousands of casualties. So this is how, kind of, everything converges. And I think at that moment, if not for that impending missile attack, which we then had to deploy military forces, we built an unprecedented coalition with Arab partners, European partners, and of course the U.S. military and General Kurilla, who was kind of putting this together. If not for that, I think on that- that moment, I think we would have taken some pretty draconian measures against Israel.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Draconian how? What do you mean?
BRETT MCGURK: Well, I think we would have-- you just mentioned cutting off weapons and other things. That was very much on the table. But also at that time in April, Congress, bipart- a massive bipartisan majority approved a $26 billion aid package for- for Israel, right in April, right in that moment. So to put this- I try to bring readers here into the immediacy of the actual moment and what was happening. But the the focus very quickly shifts to how do we defend Israel from this- from this missile attack, It ended up being 120 ballistic missiles, 170 drones, 30 cruise missiles, all- all launched to land at the same time. I described that in the Situation Room, that moment, and just what that was like.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And ultimately, the United States and all of these regional partners and allies protect Israel from that incoming attack, and it was a pretty extraordinary effort. But on the World Central Kitchen event, cause that- people remember that. There was outrage around that. You wrote that President Biden told Bibi Netanyahu, the Prime Minister, that he could, in theory, "cut Israel from military aid at a finger snap," leaving Israel on its own. "You think I'm Santa Claus? No Santa in Israel, pal."
MARGARET BRENNAN: But he didn't. He didn't cut.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Did he actually mean that as a threat?
BRETT MCGURK: We selectively- we talked about it in that- in the Oval Office around that time. We selectively, after that call, the president stopped all sales and deliveries of heavy payload munitions, 2000-pound bombs. We- we stopped--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, he delayed them, ultimately.
BRETT MCGURK: Well, we- we didn't- we didn't deliver them and we didn't approve any other sales. President Trump reversed that immediately after coming into office. We selectively paused weapon systems that could have been used in the West Bank by Itamar Ben-Gvir--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Some extremist members of--
BRETT MCGURK: --given issues in the West Bank--
BRETT MCGURK: So it was a selective- it was a selective use. But I think- and I- I know this is- this is obviously a debate now, and I think the question you have to ask, and what I always asked, and- and the theme runs out throughout the book. Would a certain step, whatever it is, help reduce human suffering in Gaza and help facilitate an end of the war? And that is the key question, the key test. And when we did a UN Security Council resolution calling for a ceasefire without the hostages, it actually set the process of- set the talks back. Hamas leaders went to Tehran right after that and basically hardened down. When we increased public pressure on Israel, you could see Sinwar kind of backing off. So this is the difference between private pressure, which the president was doing there on that call, and- and much more public measures. Because the public statements are read by all the other actors in this crisis, Margaret. And the actors are not just Biden and Netanyahu, it is Khamenei and Nasrallah and Sinwar and everybody else.
MARGARET BRENNAN: The Iranian leaders, the Hezbollah leaders--
MARGARET BRENNAN: --all the players are parsing every word.
BRETT MCGURK: Right, and remember, Israel also has one of the largest arms industries in the world, so the- the idea that had Biden gone further on a step on that course, it would have stopped the war- I just think the record does not support that.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, and of course, Republicans criticized even the idea of the delay--
BRETT MCGURK: Well, the House- the House voted with- the House voted to reverse it.
BRETT MCGURK: Actually, yeah. So I think put- put all this together- I say in the book, if there was an easier path for the president to take to end this crisis, he would have taken it.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But- but I bring this up because it continues to be a live issue now, particularly on the left, and it was an- an issue that became so politically heated in 2024, and it drew in members of the national security team. I mean, it was February 2024, the administration sent out to the very key state of Michigan, where there's a very large Arab-American and Jewish population, the Deputy National Security Advisor Jon Finer, who told members of the Arab community he was aware of missteps, including "a very damaging impression based on what has been a wholly inadequate public accounting for how much the president, the administration, and the country values the lives of Palestinians." He said that began "pretty early in the conflict." Do- do you agree that that was a mistake?
MARGARET BRENNAN: That Biden didn't show empathy, is what he's saying, for civilians, particularly Palestinians who were caught in the midst of this horrific war between Hamas and Israel.
BRETT MCGURK: I just know- what I think Jon would have been talking about there is that this is something that- I describe it like a tear in your soul working on this and trying to bring it to a resolution. But I think the time sequencing is important, and I hope whatever side of the issue you might be on, if you read this book, and I don't- I- the reader can make its own judgments of what was happening at the- at particular times. In February, that's the time frame you just mentioned, we just had three Americans killed in a- in an Iranian drone attack fire by Kata'ib Hezbollah, their- their marquee militia group in Iraq, directly targeting our living quarters. It wounded dozens of Americans and killed three soldiers on January 28, and that came after a series of escalating attacks against our people, trying to kill Americans. I went to see the Iranians in January, in Oman, all about this. The attacks continued to escalate, and President Biden, in early February, ordered the largest airstrikes, Margaret, since early in the Iraq War and also ordered airstrikes against an Iranian commander in Iraq. I was- so I document all this and explain it, and I say that just because the- the crisis in its multiple dimensions was so regional in scope, and what the president had on his mind constantly was trying to prevent an all-out regional war.
BRETT MCGURK: I mean there was, you know, headlines "We're on the verge of all-out regional war," and one reason the book is called Brink, as I mentioned, is because we were oftentimes on the brink of an all-out war, and I go through those moments. But anyway, I- I can't speak to exactly what Jon was talking about there. Yeah.
MARGARET BRENNAN: But that must have- I mean, he's the Deputy National Security Advisor. You must have had these debates.
BRETT MCGURK: Well, Jon's a- Jon's a close colleague of mine.
BRETT MCGURK: He ran the- he ran the Deputies Committee meeting. I mean, everybody in the U.S. government had their- had their views expressed in the Deputies Committee meeting. The question always was, how do we bring this to a close? Period. How do you- again, you can't just say end the war. You can't just say contain it and don't have a regional--
BRETT MCGURK: --conflict, bring the hostages home. How do you actually do it? And the- and the- Sinwar is holding the hostages. He will not release the hostages until, what? How do you get him to a yes on- on terms that can be accepted also by the Israelis.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Right, but the president made a very big point–and you were talking about the public versus private message. The president made this very big point of going and giving a bear hug to Prime Minister Netanyahu to say: the U.S. and Israel, there's no daylight here, we are with you, there is American support for you defending yourself. And it seems like there is an acknowledgement that there was not the public asterisk: but by the way, this civilian casualty count is far too high. At least it didn't come from the president himself. Do you agree with that?
BRETT MCGURK: I don't. I think the president- the horror of this war, the horror of October 7th, and the horror in Gaza, truly hell on earth, and nothing diminishes the lives lost. But you- you're talking there about the president's trip to- to Israel in particular, and let me give an anecdote because it's important. I describe this as, I've never seen a worse backdrop to a military- was going to be a military battle, ever. Hamas spent 20 years building military infrastructure under Gaza. You've known me a long time, Margaret. I was in the counter ISIS campaign. I was in Mosul. I saw it up close. Nothing like this. And we immediately said- the president said, "Where are the civilians going to go?" And--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Because this is 25 miles, Gaza's small.
BRETT MCGURK: Very small. It's extremely tiny. I think Americans who haven't been to Israel or been there, they don't understand how small everything is.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So you drop a 2,000-pound bomb, and that's going to have a blast radius that kills civilians.
BRETT MCGURK: We want to get civilians out of harm's way. In Mosul, we got a million civilians out. There were still many left there--
MARGARET BRENNAN: You're talking about in Iraq, with the ISIS fight--
BRETT MCGURK: --and- and in Syria, 6 million Syrians left the civil war. This is- in Gaza, there was nowhere for people to go. I- I called Abbas Kamel, the intel chief of Egypt, said, "Look, we got to find a way to allow Gazans at least to come temporarily into- into Sinai." Answer is absolutely not. The president on that trip--
BRETT MCGURK: --this is why this is important--
BRETT MCGURK: The President on that trip was going to Amman- to Amman first. About eight days into the war, president wants to go to Israel. I explain why he wanted to go to Israel at a critical moment. We're going to stop in Amman to see King Abdullah, to see Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, and President Sisi to have this discussion. And unfortunately, that trip was pulled down because the day we were leaving, there was an air- looked like an airstrike at a hospital, Al-Ahli Hospital, and there were headlines that an Israeli airstrike killed 500 Palestinians–turned out not to be true. But because of that, King Abdullah said, "please don't come." We understood why, and we only went to Israel, and we did not have that- that engagement. I think the- this is- the fact that in Gaza civilians had nowhere to really take shelter, the underground facilities were only for Hamas, they made that very clear. And even when the Israelis said, let's- once they gave us a map, you know, "let's- we will declare this area a safe zone."
BRETT MCGURK: --and the UN refused to work with them on that, as did we, because we said, "No, no, you can't, you- you can't kind of force people into a certain area." But then it was like, where are people going to go? So the whole backdrop to this is so horrific, and- and it took a massive toll on civilian life, and it took a massive toll on- on Israeli soldiers as well, as I talk about. It was a real war.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I mean, you nod to some regret in that incident. You said [about] that declaration of a safe zone, you regret that the U.S. wasn't "more creative," as you put it, "in working with Israel on an imperfect solution" to humanitarian corridors.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I mean, are you saying it was a delusion to think there was a perfect solution, or do you think there really was more that could have been done?
BRETT MCGURK: I- I think, very imperfect mechanisms to get civilians out of harm's way, that the UN and others could have supported. Often, everybody is kind of on the- on the sidelines, saying the war should stop somehow. But without like- let's think, how can we actually get civilians out of harm's way? Now the Israelis did tell people to move, and they did it kind of on their own. But they did- they got no help from that, from the UN, or others. They would just not even be a part of encouraging people to move or to setting up safe areas--
MARGARET BRENNAN: Claiming it would appear to be forced displacement.
BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, and- and working with the Israelis and all the history here, which I go in in the books. I- but the- it comes back to the core question of, given Hamas has this underground military infrastructure, how- the- the campaign is going to be so destructive. That's what concerned me from the start. I saw not Mosul and Raqqa, which you did not have this underground infrastructure or, you know, decade or so to prepare. It's absolutely awful.
MARGARET BRENNAN: It was Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen who kind of forced the hand of the administration in publicly reporting some of the U.S. assessments of how Israel was using the U.S.-provided weapons, because under U.S. law, they have to be compliant with American standards. And Secretary Blinken came on Face the Nation shortly after the report was released, and we had Senator Van Hollen on after him. Van Hollen said the administration ducked the hard questions. They didn't provide an "unvarnished account of facts and the law," and has set, as a standard, a "very, very low bar, a very low standard for what is acceptable." He said it will come back to haunt the United States. In hindsight, do you think he has a point there? That not being more fact-driven and making this information public, or concern about how U.S. munitions were used, that it could hurt, in the longer term, U.S. credibility?
BRETT MCGURK: I think I- I- that effort from Senator Van Hollen and the State Department report that came out- I describe it- I mean, I'm mostly, at that time, I'm overseas trying to get this- this hostage deal going on. But I start the book with a meeting in the- in the Situation Room, about two weeks left in the Biden administration, about this question, about to take more measures against Israel or not. And again, my- came down to, in my view, and I have to say, the, you know, the lawyers who set the- set the table would describe the legal parameters, and it was always a policy call. And in that particular scene, again, we're close to a deal. If you want to stop the war, you have to get a deal. And is the measure on the table going to move you closer to getting a deal or not? I mean, that was a very- to me, the only way to stop this war was a deal. So I don't- I- I can't take- I haven't seen that exact quote of what Senator Van Hollen was talking about in that time frame. I remember that debate, but I come back to, how do you actually end this war? And it was ultimately a ceasefire deal.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, it was such a public debate at the time about America's role in the world, the standards America is held to, and whether America is complicit in how our weapons are used. And under the Leahy Law, as you know, you know, countries that receive U.S. weapons have to avoid committing human rights violations or risk losing the weapons supply. Blinken said "it was reasonable to assess, in certain instances, Israel has not acted in a manner that's consistent with international humanitarian law," and that Israeli civilian harm mitigation efforts were "inconsistent, ineffective, and inadequate." Do you agree with that State Department memo?