Transcript: Brett McGurk on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan,” 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.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay.

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.

MARGARET BRENNAN: No U.S. intelligence.

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –In that context.

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Or there is culpability?

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.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Kick them out?

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.”

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –I remember.

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–

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Why?

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.

BRETT MCGURK: Both.

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –It was a ratio.

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: In order to stay in power.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, definitely.

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: An Israeli drone–

BRETT MCGURK: –and which was so trag–

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: Really?

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, I do not–

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.”

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But he didn’t. He didn’t cut.

BRETT MCGURK: Well, I mean, we–

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –the Israeli government.

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–

BRETT MCGURK: Right.

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.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

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?

BRETT MCGURK: I–

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.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

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.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

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–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

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–

[CROSSTALK]

MARGARET BRENNAN: Egypt refused–

BRETT MCGURK: –this is why this is important–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –to take them. Mmhmm.

[END CROSSTALK]

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.”

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right.

BRETT MCGURK: It’s Mawasi, and–

MARGARET BRENNAN: You write about this.

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.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

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?

BRETT MCGURK: I think the Leahy Law applies to individual units, and broadly speaking, that’s why it’s not- no aid to any country is unconditional, including- including to Israel, and- but security assistance is a- is a complex, multi-institutional, multi-branch endeavor. And again, these- most of these appropriations were appropriated by massive bipartisan majorities in Congress at the time. But- and the State Department has a role, and the Pentagon has an important role.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Right. He was saying hit the brakes on deliveries. Or re-examine–

BRETT MCGURK: Again, we- we hit the brakes on some- on some deliveries selectively. But to have a broad-based stoppage of- of support–again, for Israel at a time- I don’t know what the time frame was for that statement, but I can–

MARGARET BRENNAN: That was in May–

BRETT MCGURK: So in May–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –2024.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah. So in May we just had the largest ballistic missile and drone attack ever in history. We- but let me lay this out. So May. That’s why the time frame and chronology is so important. Having lived through this, I remember it quite well. Largest ballistic missile attack in history. We help the Israelis defeat it. We say to Netanyahu- Biden’s quote in that meeting is “I just saved your ass.” We’re getting back to the hostage deal, okay? We spend the month of May putting together a detailed four-page, three-phase agreement, single spaced, every detail there. We go to the Israelis and to Netanyahu and say, “we need you to sign up.” And it went very far in the direction of Hamas. Frankly, it was a better deal for Hamas than what they have right now. And Netanyahu on May 27th signed on to that deal. On May 31st- because what were we doing in May? On May 31st, President Biden laid out that deal to the world in a speech, and he said, “Israel has accepted this deal. Hamas, say yes. Let’s end this war.” U.N. Security Council endorses that deal. It’s May 31st. What happens? In early June, after this is on the table–we can stop the war right now if Hamas says yes–Khamenei, Supreme Leader of Iran, gives a defiant speech praising October- October 7th, and basically Iran is telling Hamas to not- to not compromise in any of the terms. Hezbollah launches its largest attack of the war, 250 rockets into northern Israel. This is when we have a ceasefire deal on the table. We don’t get an answer from Hamas until July 2nd, almost five weeks later, and they put all sorts of things in it that set the talks back. So, I- I say this because we were working to end this crisis and end this war, and- in May, June, and we had the deal on the table to do it. My approach would have- is, this deal is on the table to stop the war. All pressure, everything, public, everything else has to come down on Hamas and their enablers to say yes to end this deal, or to end this war. But Hamas did not say yes, and they kept stringing us out, and they would put an issue on the table, then Israel would take a hard position. But that’s what was happening in May, and if you go to that, you know, Biden goes to the world, says this is the deal. He had a phone call with, I think, 18 heads of state because these hostages are from countries all around the world. They all said- they called on Hamas to take the deal, and Hamas did not take the deal. And we were working at that time to end the war through a deal, and I think, again, all vectors of pressure should have been on Sinwar to say yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you’re not saying–

BRETT MCGURK: And the war would have stopped.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You’re not saying that the Democratic Party pressure and calling out compliance with U.S. law was enabling Hamas. That’s not what you’re saying?

BRETT MCGURK: No, no, no. And I’m also not–

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you’re saying it’s almost, like, naive?

BRETT MCGURK: And I’m also not getting into internal party debates, I’ve never been a part of that. I’ll let- I’ll let political parties have their- have their debates. Not my role at all. I come back to the question: How do you end this crisis? And I think the record shows if you just stop American support for Israel. That is not going to end the crisis. It’s going to make it worse.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you think even just a statement that was more definitive on that would have been damaging?

BRETT MCGURK: No, we made- I mean, I- we made a lot of statements. We did U.N. Security Council resolutions, we did a number of things, which I think there’s a- there’s a real–

MARGARET BRENNAN: But this- this whole political argument at that time with the National Security Memorandum that was made public. It was, like, five out of eight State Department groups said, you know, basically they were not compliant with U.S. law. But you read it, and it’s sort of, it looks like American diplomats are going out of their way not to say it directly, in order to avoid taking action that would result in the cutting off of aid.

BRETT MCGURK: I don’t know. I- I–

MARGARET BRENNAN: It looks like the politics were influencing the policy, and I guess that’s what I’m asking you to reply to.

BRETT MCGURK: I can’t- the- the State- that State Department memo that was- that was done, again, at the request of Senator Van Hollen, and the Senate has its own dynamics for asking us to do certain things to keep votes off the floor that Senator Van Hollen might have wanted to take. But no, I thought that was, from what I understand, that was a very rigorous exercise. But had that memo said something differently, would that have ended the war? Would that have eased the humanitarian suffering in Gaza? Would it have gotten hostages home? No. I mean, that is where- like, that memo is so divorced, in my view, from the gritty, awful reality of how do you actually return hostages and end a war? I mean, and I- this is not a book about meetings in Washington. I’ve read a lot of books like that. I said this in this meeting. No- some of that. This is a book about being in the middle of it, overseas, where you’re in the room with just the two or three people that can actually get something done, and- and trying to achieve the objective that everybody in Washington wants, and trying to actually accomplish that objective is exceedingly hard. And whatever that memo might have said, or whatever something might have been said in Congress, is that going to achieve the objective we’re trying to achieve? I think the answer is no. So I- I come back to just what it takes to actually stop something like this.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And- and we had some of those hostage families and advocates on Face the Nation throughout the crisis who were appealing to the American president to stay focused on the hostages because they were frustrated that the Israeli government was not, and that Hamas was not interested. So I hear you on that. Let me just put a fine point on the issue here because I want you to be able to respond to this. There’s another new book out about the Biden administration’s handling of Israel’s war in Gaza. It’s written by Akbar Shahid Ahmed. He makes some very specific claims about things that you said and did. One administration official told him you seemed to be acting as Israel’s lawyer when you were discussing IDF actions in October 2024. That you saw pictures of famine in early 2024, and you said people in Gaza did not look skinny. There are other claims in here, that your name was turned into a verb. Humanitarian officials were used to what one USAID staffer referred to as “getting McGurk’d,” which meant overruling aid experts on Gaza. That sounds like a lot of internal disagreement. Were you aware of this?

BRETT MCGURK: I haven’t read that book. That’s categorically false. I’ve never- I’ve never said something like that. And in fact, and I think those who were actually- whether it was David Satterfield or others in charge of the humanitarian response, always knew if you need something done, you know, give me a call. I talked to David multiple times a day when he was the humanitarian coordinator. That is categorically false and just complete fiction.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because this issue lives on now in our politics, particularly among progressive Democrats. I mean, Gaza, cutting off U.S. aid to Israel or reducing it, and on the right, we’re hearing more about that as well. Has it surprised you that, like, the politics of this moment continue to be so infused with what happened then?

BRETT MCGURK: Well, I think on- you know, again, on the- on the aid question, there’s one thing getting aid into- into Gaza, which we’re very focused on, and pushing the Israelis on, and then actually distributing it throughout Gaza, which is- which is role for the U.N., and there was like almost been a breakdown there. It was incredibly frustrating, but no, I- my- my job was to try to bring this war to a close. And the way to bring it to a close was to get an agreement that included the release of the hostages. It’s all- it’s intertwined. You’re not going to reduce human suffering, and you’re not going to have aid flowing throughout Gaza like you need without a ceasefire, and you’re not going to have a ceasefire without the hostages. This was just the- the awful, gritty reality of the- of the situation.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You wrote about- you nod fairly diplomatically to any disagreements within the administration at the time, but you write during this period of time- you’re referring to January 2024 or so. You write: “During this period, I felt out of sorts with some of my colleagues, who seemed to take a two-dimensional view of the crisis, focused solely on Gaza and not the regional threat that Iran had unleashed, and which every day risked American lives.” Who were you thinking of there? Why- why did you write that?

BRETT MCGURK: That was January, and the time frame is important. That was January 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mm-hmm.

BRETT MCGURK: We come under attack after- between October 7 and end of the year, attacks against us increase almost sevenfold. Almost every day we have attacks against us. It’s very clear the attacks are intended to kill Americans. On Christmas Day, we have three wounded Americans in northern Iraq, one with Iranian shrapnel through his brain. Attack- Houthi attacks start against American ships, including against U.S. naval ships. These are anti-ship ballistic missiles going Mach 4, first time they’ve ever been used in combat. What I’m hearing from our military people is, “What are we doing about this?” Every single day. And what’s keeping me up in this time is I’m going to wake up, and we’re going to have two dozen dead American sailors in the Red Sea, or we’re going to have two dozen dead American soldiers in Iraq and Syria. And the attacks kept coming, and we had a call with President Biden on New Year’s Day, talking about how to respond. And we had the Iranian commander, I call him Mohsen in the book, we knew who he was, we kind of- we were close to his location, and I thought we should target him, to stop and deter these attacks.

MARGARET BRENNAN: A drone strike?

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah. President Biden in that meeting asked me, “Can you go see the Iranians? Knock this off.” And I did, I went- and I had met with the Iranians many times over the years. I went to Oman on January 10th. I had a meeting with the Iranians. I describe it in detail in the book with the Omanis [intermediating]. And I describe what’s happening in the region. We are under attack in Iraq. We’re under attack in Syria,. We’re under attack in the Red Sea. It’s only by the skill of our military personnel, our defenses, that we have not had dozens of American dead and wounded, and this has to stop, or we’re heading for direct confrontation.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you can’t get the president to act–

BRETT MCGURK: Well, he wanted–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –You were frustrated.

BRETT MCGURK: –to try to take this diplomatic path, and the Iranians in that meeting were complete- were- I describe it in detail, completely rejected having anything to do with this, which was total- a total lie.

MARGARET BRENNAN: They wouldn’t sit across from you even. You’re passing notes.

BRETT MCGURK: You’re doing intermedia-, similar to now, what is still happening. So that- those talks failed. We started strikes against the Houthis, actually, the next day after that meeting failed. But then in January, the time frame, we come und- every single day, and I document this. And on January 28th, we have the three Americans and dozens of wounded from an Iranian drone. Yeah, my focus in that month was deterring these attacks and- and deterring what Iran had unleashed, including against us. That was my over- because I- what was keeping me up was, “We’re going to have dead Americans,” and then we did have dead Americans, and President Biden ordered a strike on Mohsen and other militia leaders that night, and the attacks stopped.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But the president was so concerned about avoiding a regional war.

BRETT MCGURK: The president, in his use of military power, Margaret, was very deliberate. We’re- we’re in this regional crisis. And he used to say–and this relates to the current moment–he used to say the American people understand the use of force to protect our people, and kind of a real core, vital American interest. They will not- they will not understand if we’re being sucked into a broader Middle East war or reacting on behalf of Israel. It was a line he drew in his pulse of the American people and his role as Commander in Chief. It was an important line to draw. And he ordered, I mean, a decisive use of force in that incident in February, but he was- and, and defending Israel twice against direct ballistic missile attacks. But he was very deliberate, and he said it in a number of these meetings, which I talk about in the book, about- about drawing that line very carefully.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you talk about “feeling out of sorts with some of my colleagues.”

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Are you going to tell us what was happening when you were having those disagreements? Who was arguing against defending these Americans?

BRETT MCGURK: There was an argument that if we target an Iranian officer–which is a big step, I recognize it–that could unleash a broader escalation. I just didn’t agree with that. I thought we were- we were under attack constantly. We had to actually act to deter it. And one of the themes in the book is, Margaret, is that diplomacy, if not backed by power, is completely feckless.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But your–

BRETT MCGURK: And this was- this was- this was playing in, also, to the hostage talks. I mean, Hamas was just not even willing to engage because they thought everything was kind of going their way. You got Hezbollah barrages coming every day in the north. You have the Houthis attacking commercial and U.S. and U.K. naval vessels in the Red Sea. You have Americans under attack almost every day in Iraq. And until we contained that and stopped it, it was very hard to see a way forward on the- on the Gaza talks. It was all- all interrelated. So my consuming focus–I fully admit it in the book–in this period, was stopping those attacks, and I thought to stop those attacks we had to use military force.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But around that same time, in January 2024, Israel bombs Syria, killing an Iranian military advisor. In April, strikes Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria. In July, strikes Tehran and kills the top Hamas leader. Then that stunning operation to take out Hezbollah leaders with the exploding pagers. And killing Hezbollah’s leader Hassan Nasrallah. On that particular strike, the U.S. didn’t get a heads up.

BRETT MCGURK: Let’s talk about some of those.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah, but that seems to be a building- the Israeli government doing the thing President Biden was saying don’t do, which is risk a regional war.

BRETT MCGURK: Let’s talk about some- some of those. Mohammad Reza Zahedi, he was the Quds Force officer, Margaret, that was killed in that strike in Damascus, April 1, 2024, same day as the World Central Kitchen attack. Who is Mohammad Reza Zahedi? He is the head of the Quds Force unit that enables and supplies Hezbollah. Hezbollah is firing into Israel every single day–

MARGARET BRENNAN: From Lebanon.

BRETT MCGURK: –From Lebanon. A strike against Mohammad Reza Zahedi, in our view, was a very legitimate self-defense strike. The Iranians said he was in a compound of the- of their embassy in Damascus. That’s actually never been demonstrated. But in any event, the Iranians attacked our embassy. I was at our embassy in Baghdad multiple times, where they launched- their militias launched rockets at our embassy. We did not respond by firing 200 ballistic missiles into- into Iran. That’s how Iran responded to that- to that attack. The Lebanon operation that the Israelis conducted beginning in September came after the complete breakdown of the- of the hostage talks. And because dates matter, we- we had a- we had an offer on the table, Margaret, on August 16th, endorsed by, you mentioned the Emir of Qatar, Tamim, fully endorsed 100% by Sisi. It went even further in the direction of Hamas. On April 16th, we never got an answer, and on- at the end of the month, we had six dead hostages in- in a tunnel underneath Rafah. And that’s when that whole process just completely collapsed, and Israel went north into Lebanon. And when I look at this history now, and you kind of piece- it was after Yahya Sinwar was killed on October 16. It was after we defeated a second Iranian missile attack in October. It was after Hezbollah cut a ceasefire deal that there was an opening for the ceasefire to end the war in Gaza. It was the regional balance of power changing that opened the path to finally getting this- getting this deal.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But I bring up those series of events because the lack of heads up to the United States signals some growing distrust between the United States and Israel at that point in time.

BRETT MCGURK: Sure.

MARGARET BRENNAN: I mean Israel gave a heads up as the operation to kill Hassan Nasrallah was underway. Were you upset that there wasn’t more advance notice?

BRETT MCGURK: Well, the Zahedi strike, I describe in the- in the book, did get an advance- I got a notice from- from the Israelis just before walking into a situation room meeting. I describe that in some detail. I think you’re right, the Nasrallah strike the Israelis took, they didn’t give us a heads up on that. That doesn’t particularly surprise me, honestly. The Haniyeh intelligence operation in Tehran, which I also talk about in the book, we did not have a heads up on, but it was an intelligence operation in Tehran. This is not something that, like, Bibi Netanyahu can just say, “Hey, let’s go after Haniyeh in Tehran.” This is something that takes months of preparation, and- and it’s a kind of a you- the stars align, and you- you take the action or you don’t. But in many ways, those steps actually helped us open the path to ending the war in Gaza.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But the- well, it changed the dynamic in the Middle East, put Iran on the back foot in many ways, but I- I bring it up too because there is this perception- you know, at one point, I think it was the New Yorker**, quoted General Austin, then-Secretary of Defense, as saying that the Netanyahu government felt that it was playing with house money, that they knew America would be there no matter what, so they could up the level of risk even if President Biden wasn’t happy with it. Did you feel like you were stuck in the middle of that dynamic where it was- the assumption was America was going to support it no matter what, and that they weren’t necessarily going to listen to U.S. counsel?

BRETT MCGURK: Well, Netanyahu thought and believed, and has said publicly, he thought we cut off their weapons. So–

[CROSSTALK]

MARGARET BRENNAN: Back when we were talking about the–

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah. And he since has said that Biden had a–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –the Santa Clause reference that you write about.

BRETT MCGURK: –that Biden put an arms embargo on us. And he still believes that–

MARGARET BRENNAN: Which was not true.

[END CROSSTALK]

BRETT MCGURK: No, it’s not true. But in terms of these particular operations in this broader war, that I mean, why, why was there this Hezbollah confrontation after October 7th? Because Hezbollah, on October 8th, started a war into northern Israel. Iran turned this whole thing up. It was a tragic mistake they made after the October 7th attacks. And I describe this in detail. We did not have information that Iran knew about the Hamas attack, but after that attack, they sensed a vulnerability against Israel, and they turned on all their proxies, and it continued to kind of escalate up the ladder, and then Israel is responding to- to that.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And I think what I’m hearing you say is you think President Biden’s not given credit for stopping these things exploding into a regional war at once. He’s not getting credit for the thing he prevented.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, it’s not about credit–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –Is that right?

BRETT MCGURK: –What I try to do here, I don’t say in the book- credit or not. You’re there in the Situation Room with President Biden after we defeat one of the largest missile attacks at that point in history. You can hear everything he says. You are there, actually, in the Oval Office, I was overseas and dialed in shortly after the president learned about that intelligence operation in Tehran against Haniyeh, and he calls up Bibi Netanyahu. So a reader will hear exactly what happened in- in those moments. And no, I don’t think it was simply, you know, Netanyahu took- took things for granted. It was a very difficult regional military equation, intelligence equation, diplomatic equation, humanitarian equation, all of which is playing out in real time.

MARGARET BRENNAN: You know, it’s an incredibly complex set of challenges all at once. I want to get to Saudi Arabia in a moment, but just to button up on Iran. On the nuclear program. Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan explained to Netanyahu when he pitched going and bombing the nuclear sites. He said it was, you know, of questionable legality and risky. But the administration was unanimous that if Iran was about to make a bomb, that the Biden administration would have gone and bombed. At that point, were you thinking that, essentially, the war we’re in now was inevitable?

BRETT MCGURK: So, it’s in the book. I go to Israel in December, this is after the election, with Jake. We see Bibi Netanyahu. And we got him to sign on to a key term for the hostage deal, which is the focus here. And he said, “I think we should take out Fordow and the- and the nuclear sites.” And we were concerned after the election, just given some things we were seeing, that Iran might- they were already enriching to 60 percent, and- and 90 percent is weapons-grade enrichment, and it’s not- that’s very easy to do. That they might make a dash, and once you do a dash, they have a canister of weapons-grade uranium, and you’re really in a much worse situation. We actually had a principals committee meeting, that’s everybody around the table, what would we do if we see that?

MARGARET BRENNAN: Yeah.

BRETT MCGURK: And as I recall, unanimity on we would do the strike in Fordow. We didn’t see that. We sent a message to Iran, don’t even think about it. But yet Netanyahu was clearly contemplating that, and–

MARGARET BRENNAN: In the middle of the hostage crisis.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, in December of 2024.

MARGARET BRENNAN: He was thinking about bombing Iran.

BRETT MCGURK: And we said there would be no- unless we see the Iranians moving in that direction, and there are questions of legality and everything else, that’s always been around this issue. This- this strike against Fordow has been a, again, war game multiple times. But yeah, you will- that conversation is- is in the book in December of 2024 with- with Netanyahu.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Because you diplomatically point out that he was more focused on bombing Iran than the hostages. He pitched you, “why wait” until they race for a bomb? Why not act now? You made the point that he spoke with far greater intensity about Iran than he spoke about the hostages. You sound–

BRETT MCGURK: True.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –pretty annoyed by that.

BRETT MCGURK: It’s true, and yet in that same meeting, in that same meeting where all that’s going on, we get Netanyahu to agree- this is early December 2024. If I have the list of hostages, if Hamas produces the list–there are 33 names that Israel had. If Hamas agrees to the list of 33 hostages, meaning we have to know the hostages who are coming out in the deal, I accept the deal. We got that from Netanyahu in that meeting. And then all we needed- this gets back to this theme we’ve talked about here, Margaret, in the last hour or so. All we needed at that moment to stop the war was an agreement on the list of hostages. And I describe in the book Hamas would not agree on the list of hostages, and then they said, of the 33, only 12 will be alive. And so again, everybody wants this war to end. You’ve mentioned people with very strong views on the issue. So you’re there, mid-December 2024. You have a full hostage deal. Hamas says, “But we’ll only release 12 hostages alive.” And I’m sitting there with Sheikh Mohammed. I have the list of hostages, Keith Siegel’s on the list–

MARGARET BRENNAN: The American.

BRETT MCGURK: –We can get out these 12 hostages, and the war will stop. But what about all the other hostages that Hamas is not putting on the list, including Sagui Dekel-Chen, an American wounded twice on October 7th, Hamas is saying we don’t consider him wounded. What do you do in that moment? Do you take the 12 in hand, or do you put down a harder line and say no, no, we need the full list, which was ultimately 25 living hostages? Eventually, it was after New Year’s, heading into 2025, Hamas produced the full list, but then they put more issues on the table. I bring this up to say, this is how close you are to ending the war. It’s there. And in that meeting on, on Fordow, where yeah, Netanyahu was very adamant on the nuclear threat, he signed on to this deal, so long as we have the list of the hostages. And then once again, it’s on Hamas to- you want to end the war? All we need is the hostage list from Hamas.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Ultimately, you talk about January 19, 2025, on Face the Nation when you finally were able to announce that those three women, in particular, were going to be released by Hamas. But you write in the book a lot about Steve Witkoff and what he is like as a negotiator. You teamed up, actually, in those final days. And he said to you at some point he was actually surprised you weren’t talking directly to Hamas. He said, if I sell- “If a guy’s selling me a building…I look in his eyes, face-to-face…only way to do a deal.”

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: What did you say when he asked you, “Why aren’t you talking to Hamas?”

BRETT MCGURK: First, the story with Steve I think is unique because when President Trump won the election, if left to its own devices here, Margaret, in Washington these days, it would be, the Biden people would say good luck Trump folks, and the Trump people would say we’re not going to do anything that the Biden people said. Right after the election, I called Jared Kushner, and I said, “look, you don’t want to come into office with this Gaza thing still going on, and we got a chance to get the hostages out,” because at that point Nasrallah is dead. We have- we’re moving towards a ceasefire in Lebanon, the whole regional picture is changing. Yahya Sinwar is out of the way, We just defeated another missile attack. And we agreed to work together. And when Biden and Trump met in the Oval Office of all the other issues, they agreed to work together on this. I then- Jake and I went to see Mike Waltz, his incoming successor, and I met Steve Witkoff, and we agreed we’re going to work in lockstep. Talk about no daylight, we’re going to have no daylight, and, and we did that. And by the time Steve came out to- to Doha, we kind of had two issues. Finally got the hostage list [as] I mentioned. Hamas had raised two entirely new issues. We had to bridge those, and it was only by working together that we were able- to able to do that. On the dynamics of the negotiation, the- the cards on the table are Palestinian prisoners being held by Israel, and a ceasefire and various redeployments of Israeli forces, and so- and other- some many other things. Israel had a direct channel with- with Hamas when they needed it, and we had the mediators, often, with Hamas right downstairs. We thought if we were to go face-to-face with Hamas, it could actually, Hamas could use that to play one side off another, and so we trusted the Egyptians and the Qataris and we had good information of everything going on. And that’s the way- the way- we, we handled it. I think- I don’t think a more direct channel would have produced a faster result.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you’ve got some colorful anecdotes in there about him, kind of closing with Netanyahu, saying, you gotta do this, you have to agree to this.

BRETT MCGURK: So again, we have- we have a full deal. Hamas accepts the list, and then Hamas comes in with a totally new demand: for the nine sick and wounded hostages, they need 300 life- Palestinian prisoners serving life sentences, mostly Hamas, very hardcore Hamas terrorists, many of them who’ve killed Israelis and killed Americans, they insist on coming out–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –huge political risk at home–

BRETT MCGURK: –for- for the civilians. There’s a totally unprecedented demand over a year of talks. We whittled that down to 110 life-sentence prisoners for those nine sick and wounded civilians, and the buffer zone that Israel would be in in this first phase of the deal. Israel wanted 1,200 meters. Hamas wanted 500. We cut it to 700. But you mentioned this kind of extraordinary moment. I mean, we’re all in Doha and kind of agree to divide labor because we had Hamas and Israel in the same building. And Steve went to see Netanyahu. It was a week before the inauguration, and I called into the meeting in the Israeli cabinet room. I went to see the Israelis in Doha, I’m with their team, called into the meeting with Netanyahu and their cabinet, and Steve Witkoff is there, saying, “this is the deal. It’s going to be 110 life-sentenced prisoners,” which was very difficult, and we- we kind of cut the- split the middle on the buffer zone, and- and the Israeli reaction was extremely negative, but ultimately we had the envoy of one president on the line, and we had the envoy of the incoming president say, this is what we got to do. It was the last final issue, and the Israelis accepted that deal, and that’s how we got- again, Romy, Doron and Emily came home on the 19th, I announced it on your- on your program, but they should have come out in that November deal.

MARGARET BRENNAN: As we wind down, I just want to make sure I ask you about Saudi Arabia because you mentioned it right at the top. This is now January of 2021. You’re at the beginning of the Biden administration. You fly to Saudi Arabia to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, MbS as he’s known, he’s persona non grata because of the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi. That’s the moment we are in. You go there to explain what President Biden is going to do, and MbS shocks you because he makes you an offer you never expected. He says ‘I want to normalize relations with Israel.’ Did you go back and tell President Biden that? Because he didn’t, as you write, act on it for a year or more.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, MbS in that meeting- I’ve known him for a long time, but I was very clear on, we are going to cut off offensive weapons for Saudi Arabia. We’re going to issue new sanctions across the board of many of your security services related to Khashoggi. We’re going to release the intelligence report on- on Khashoggi and a number of other things. But Biden was very clear before I went. He also wanted to make sure we’re not- we’re not totally breaching our relations with Saudi Arabia, a very important country. And we had a very pointed conversation that is in the book in AlUla, in a tent, this was during COVID, and I said to him, finally, I said, “look, where do you want to be in three years?” And he was kind of in, like, peacemaking mode. He said, look, I- we’re going to have a back channel with the Iranians through Baghdad. I do think we can bring the Yemen war to a close. But for that to happen, the U.S. and Saudi Arabia have to be seen as working together. And then he said, I’m- I’m prepared to work towards recognizing Israel, diplomatic relations with Israel, and that had to include a number of components, and we talked through it, including a pathway on the Palestinian piece. That was hard to envision. But yes, certainly, that was the key to my report back when I saw the president, that that might be something in the [unintel]–

[CROSSTALK]

MARGARET BRENNAN: But you said–

BRETT MCGURK: –but at the time–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –President Biden didn’t want to have anything to do–

BRETT MCGURK: –at the time–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –with the Middle East.

[END CROSSTALK]

BRETT MCGURK: –and I’d be fair to myself. I mean, I- I didn’t seize on it either. I just- and I look back on that, I think we should have moved right away. And it wasn’t until- you know, this is the thing about the Middle East, Margaret. You can- you can back out of it. The world intervenes. Okay, the world intervenes. So that first year, we had almost no engagement with, particularly, the Gulf States. I mean, I was out there a lot as the Middle East White House envoy. We significantly withdrew our military presence, air, naval, air defense. Then we have Afghanistan evacuation, and–

MARGARET BRENNAN: That changed everything–

BRETT MCGURK: –that’s when a call came to me. Can you call all the leaders in the Gulf to open up their air bases and say we’re going to be landing thousands of Afghans, I don’t know how long they’ll be there. And every country said yes.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Which is an amazing thing–

BRETT MCGURK: Including Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar and Kuwait, Bahrain, everybody.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Without knowing who these people are–

BRETT MCGURK: Right.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –But trusting America that they’re sending people who aren’t a risk.

BRETT MCGURK: And without that phone call and without those platforms, we would have been in an even worse situation at that time. I was not working Afghanistan; I worked on that aspect of it. Then the war, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and then suddenly–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –America needs the Middle East–

BRETT MCGURK: –The old issues of energy supplies, and the only swing producer is really Saudi Arabia, and you need- we need Saudi Arabia, and to do that, the decision maker is the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. I describe this in the book, that’s- we eventually worked our way back towards decent relations with Saudi Arabia and started to work towards the normalization deal. But that was not- that deal, Margaret, was not, it’s not like we, you know, we were pushing it. The Saudis asked us to work with them on it, the Israelis asked us to work with them on it, and we put these stepping stones. You know, there’s this news just this weekend- or this week about this airplane over Saudi Arabia, we actually negotiated an agreement between Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel about getting American forces off an island in the Red Sea. They’ve been there since the Camp David Accords, and in exchange for that, Saudi Arabia opened its skies to all civilian planes, regardless of destination. President Biden announced that on the trip. That was kind of one, one public point of where this process was going, and yeah, I wish we had started sooner.

MARGARET BRENNAN: This was, 2022 Russian invades Ukraine–

BRETT MCGURK: –2022.

MARGARET BRENNAN: –as you say, there’s a global energy crisis, suddenly. But you also say, other than you, no senior official had met with the Crown Prince. That means the secretary of defense, the secretary of state, the national security adviser. None of them could be bothered to go to one of our closest partners in the Middle East? I understand there’s disagreement, but that’s a huge oversight.

BRETT MCGURK: In that first year, yeah, yeah–

MARGARET BRENNAN: And a huge missed opportunity–

BRETT MCGURK: I think Secretary Austin made a trip out, but I think Saudi was the last on the- on the agenda, and that trip, that stop eventually got pulled down for reasons. So yeah, it was a mistake.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And you–

BRETT MCGURK: –Because these- these countries in the Gulf- I have an epigraph in, in the- in the book, Margaret, by- by John F. Kennedy. It’s one of my favorite speeches of his. A speech he gave in Utah just two months before his death, and he says the purpose of foreign policy is not to provide an outlet for our own hope or indignation, it is to get real things done in the real world. And in the executive branch, if you’re in a White House to get real things done in the real world, you have to have relations with countries that might not share all of your values.

MARGARET BRENNAN: So all of what you just laid out leads to this moment in July 2022 when President Biden goes to Saudi Arabia, and we had the fist bump heard around the world, as you refer to it. You said it was “absurd.” It was a “self-made scandal.”

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah.

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s about as critical as you get when it comes to President Biden, you were very deferential to him. But you were ticked.

BRETT MCGURK: I–

MARGARET BRENNAN: He was refusing to go and shake the hand of the crown prince at the entrance to his own palace.

BRETT MCGURK: We didn’t know what was going to happen in that moment, and I was of the view, got to shake his hand, and- and we had set up this trip–you think about where we were, we had– I mentioned that deal we had. We had the Israel process moving, we had in Israel, President Biden met with Prime Minister Lapid at the time and encouraged Lapid to announce his support for- for two states, which Lapid believed before, but he hadn’t said as Prime Minister–I have that scene in the book. A lot of things had kind of come together, and the Saudi stop was- was so important–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –You were trying to rebuild–

BRETT MCGURK: –Well, you mentioned how politics can intrude into a lot of things. I think the- I have a scene with Jake and I, Jake is one of my closest counterparts–

MARGARET BRENNAN: The national security adviser–

BRETT MCGURK: –the national security adviser, and he’s hearing from the White House about how things are playing out. And so, um–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –and President Biden said, you recount that, “I’m going to get killed for this.” And he’s talking about politically.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, we landed in Saudi Arabia, and I went to the pool notes from the media pool, and there was an 18-minute from when he landed until when he got out. So I say in the book, let me tell you what happened in those 18 minutes, and I tell you what happened. He was concerned about the optics and the and the imagery, and the whole thing I- I- that’s how I describe it. I think, and I encouraged the president to just shake his hand.

MARGARET BRENNAN: But it was all in service of trying to rebuild America’s alliances in this critical part of the world. That’s where your head was.

BRETT MCGURK: Yeah, we were asking some–

MARGARET BRENNAN: –and the president’s head was on the politics and the human rights issues.

BRETT MCGURK: Well, we were asking some very hard things to the Saudis that we needed for our core interests, and so I think the fist bump set us back. I will say we had a very good–overall–that was a very good and successful visit, and we- we built on it. But it’s how imagery- you know, I was- Margaret, I was with President Bush in Baghdad when he came to Baghdad, I was sitting just off to his side. Kind of an extraordinary moment, I mean, what it took to get the president of the United States to come into Iraq at that time. You remember what it was like. And I was sitting, I don’t know, six, seven feet away from him when the Iraqi reporter got up and threw two shoes at the president.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Mmhmm.

BRETT MCGURK: And I remember- whatever else happened on that visit–

MARGARET BRENNAN: That’s all anyone–

BRETT MCGURK: –nobody remembers, and the- the fist bump kind of overshadowed all the what was actually the- the substance of that, of that visit and what, what came of it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: And just lastly, you know, I talked about some of the criticism of you. One of the things that I think you reveal, in a personal way, is how much of a toll this took on you. The time you spent away from your very young daughter. You write about the thoughts you had about that little Abigail. A little four-year-old who was taken into Gaza, and how you were having nightmares about her. That’s something that maybe is a bit humanizing in a pretty tough situation. Why did you think that you needed to share that, that glimpse into your personal life?

BRETT MCGURK: I wrote this book– there was no other way to write it than to just pour it all down on the page, raw. I never thought to myself, “how is this going to be seen?” Or, I have no ambition for any future office or anything. It was just what happened and what was it like. And I- and to- and in the writing of it, it was impossible to- to write, in the flow of writing, without putting everything down. And I have those anecdotes because that’s how it felt. And cognizant the whole time that lives were being lost every single day, and trying to stop it. So that- it was all-consuming. But that was the only way to write this book. This is not a book, Margaret, about dry policy, this is a book about the grittiness of war and diplomacy and the awfulness, the awfulness of it in every dimension, and not just making a speech or saying something should happen, actually trying to bring it to a close, and trying to bring Abigail home and thinking Abigail might be dead. Then you’re living with that every day. And you get to know the families of the hostages, and you- you see the toll every single day in Gaza, and you’re always a hair’s breadth away from more American soldiers being killed or on the brink of a major war. It’s what it was like in the day-to-day. And, so whatever side you might be on on this, this polarizing issue, I just hope readers will read it and take away and think for themselves, “what would I have done in this moment? What might I have done?” That’s how I tried to write it. Just- I poured in a very raw, this is, you know, this is it. So yeah, I have those those anecdotes of Christmas Day being with my daughter, a quiet, you know, one quiet moment, realizing she’s growing up in a way that I’ve missed a year, and then I get a call from the Situation Room that we have three Americans grievously wounded in northern Iraq, and I’m back at the White House. You know, that’s just what this is like. And so I think it’s a different type of book, and I hope people read it.

MARGARET BRENNAN: Thank you for your time.

BRETT MCGURK: Thank you, Margaret.

** Clarification: The Washington Post, not The New Yorker, reported then-Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin privately described Israel’s actions as “playing with house money.”