March 24: Does Witkoff Speak for Trump?

The Trump admin group chat from hell; Columbia caves; Ronen Bar spied on Israeli police

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The Big Story

Like everyone else, we’ve been attempting to figure out President Donald Trump’s strategy in the Middle East. It’s not easy to do. On the one hand are the things Trump says—clear out Gaza, for example—and does (bombing the Houthis, stepping up sanctions on Iran). On the other hand is a never-ending stream of statements from administration officials, appointees, media surrogates, and friends of Don Jr. that either have nothing to do with what Trump says or are actively opposed to it. One source recently estimated to us that there are at least seven power centers on Middle East policy within the administration, which sometimes coordinate with each other and sometimes do not:

1. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the State Department;

2. National Security Advisor Michael Waltz;

3. Neo-isolationists at the Pentagon (Dan Caldwell, Michael DiMino), plus their circle of allies around Don Jr. and Tucker Carlson;

4. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff and his team;

5. Deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagus and her team;

6. The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem under Ambassador Mike Huckabee; and

7. Alina Habba, the Iraqi -Chaldean “counselor to the president”**

**Trump announced on Truth Social this morning that Habba would be leaving the White House to serve as interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey.

On Friday, we were treated to a new round of messaging chaos, when Witkoff (4) sat for an interview with none other than Carlson (3). You can watch the full interview here and read an extended write-up here, but we’ve collected a few of the highlights that have been ricocheting through pro-Israel circles over the weekend:

• On Trump’s outreach to Iran, Witkoff said Trump had communicated that he was a “president of peace” and wanted to “talk” to “clear up misconceptions.” Those talks, Witkoff said, are already proceeding through “back channels” and “multiple countries and multiple conduits” and are aimed at creating a “verification program so that nobody has to worry about weaponization of [Iran’s] nuclear material.” (In an apparent effort to clean up Witkoff’s remarks, Waltz (2) told CBS on Sunday that the United States was seeking the “full dismantlement of Iran’s nuclear program,” not merely verification, and denied that any Trump deal would be a replay of Obama’s Iran deal.)

• Witkoff took a considerable amount of heat for saying that Hamas is not as “ideologically intractable” as it has been made out to be, though what he appeared to mean was merely that the terror group’s leadership wants to survive. Fair enough. Far more troubling was his comment that it was “acceptable” to the United States for Hamas to “demilitarize” yet remain in Gaza. If they do, Witkoff said, “then maybe they could stay there a little bit … [and] be involved politically” in Gaza—i.e., the old Biden-Blinken plan, which we’ve long derided as the Hezbollah solution in Gaza.

• Witkoff also offered an extensive defense of Qatar to Carlson, who was fresh off his own softball interview with the leader of the emirate. “They’re good, decent people,” Witkoff said of the Qataris. “They want to be acknowledged as a peacemaker. … In the past, they’ve had some views that are a little bit more radical from an Islamist standpoint than they are today, but [Qatar] has moderated quite a bit. There’s no doubt that they’re an ally of the United States.” Responding to accusations that he was a Qatari “sympathizer,” Witkoff, who sold a hotel to the Qataris for $623 million in 2023, said the Qataris are “mediators” who are “no different than the Swiss and the Norwegians.”

• Witkoff said that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was “well-motivated,” and praised his blows against “the Iranian crescent.” “But the rap he gets is that he’s more concerned about the fight than he is about the hostages,” Witkoff went on to say. While Witkoff said he doesn’t “necessarily agree” with that assessment, he also said that in renewing the war, Bibi “goes up against public opinion, because public opinion there wants those hostages home.”

In other words, Witkoff offered a more or less down-the-line embrace of the Qatari position—despite other senior members of the administration, including Rubio (1) and Waltz (2), having in the past demanded action against what they have described as Qatar’s support for terrorism. Those “other senior members” include Trump, who had this to say in a 2017 speech in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in what was widely interpreted at the time as a not-so-thinly veiled attack on the Qataris:

A better future is only possible if your nations drive out the terrorists and extremists. Drive. Them. Out. DRIVE THEM OUT of your places of worship. DRIVE THEM OUT of your communities. DRIVE THEM OUT of your holy land, and DRIVE THEM OUT OF THIS EARTH.

Trump also named the Qataris as sponsors of “Radical Ideology” on Twitter and backed the Saudis and Emiratis in their diplomatic dispute with Qatar over its funding of terrorism:

At some point, however, you have to be skeptical that Witkoff is doing what he’s doing without Trump’s backing, regardless of what the president has said in the past. In a Friday report in CNN, on how Witkoff has replaced Rubio as the United States’ de facto diplomat in chief, one source described Witkoff as having “one thing that no one else has—Trump’s 100% confidence,” while another said simply, “Trump loves him.”

Vice President J.D. Vance, meanwhile, had another suggestion for why some of us might be unimpressed with Witkoff’s efforts so far: We’re just failed jealous idiots:

So that’s something to take into consideration.

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The Rest

→The Trump administration added Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg to a private Signal group chat of senior government officials, then texted him detailed nonpublic information about the forthcoming airstrikes on the Houthis. The group chat—it is not clear who added Goldberg—included Waltz, Rubio, Witkoff, Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles, and “S M,” likely White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller. Waltz informed them that he was establishing a group to discuss military options on the Houthis and asked each of the participants to name a staff point of contact for the discussions; most were unremarkable, but it did stick out to us that Hegseth nominated Dan Caldwell and Gabbard nominated Joe Kent. A policy discussion followed, and to make a long story short, on Saturday morning, March 15, Hegseth sent a message to the chat outlining “operational details of forthcoming strikes on Yemen, including information about targets, weapons the U.S. would be deploying, and attack sequencing”—which Goldberg read. The strikes took place a few hours later.

→While the sloppiness with classified information is one story, more interesting to us was what we learned about the policy positions of the various national security principals. On the Friday before the strikes, Vance messaged the group to say, “I think we are making a mistake,” and went on to argue that by striking the Houthis, the president would effectively be bailing out Europe. He went on:

I am not sure the president is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe right now. There’s a further risk that we see a moderate to severe spike in oil prices. I am willing to support the consensus of the team and keep these concerns to myself. But there is a strong argument for delaying this a month, doing the messaging work on why this matters, seeing where the economy is, etc.

Kent chimed in to say he agreed with Vance, and there was nothing “time sensitive” requiring an operation now. Hegseth then weighed in to support the strikes:

Waiting a few weeks or a month does not fundamentally change the calculus. 2 immediate risks on waiting: 1) this leaks, and we look indecisive; 2) Israel takes an action first – or Gaza cease fire falls apart – and we don’t get to start this on our own terms. We can manage both. We are prepared to execute, and if I had final go or no go vote, I believe we should. This [is] not about the Houthis. I see it as two things: 1) Restoring Freedom of Navigation, a core national interest; and 2) Reestablish deterrence, which Biden cratered.

At that point, Vance relented but said, “I just hate bailing out Europe again.” The Miller account then replied with the following:

As I heard it, the president was clear: green light, but we soon make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return. We also need to figure out how to enforce such a requirement. EG, if Europe doesn’t remunerate, then what? If the US successfully restores freedom of navigation at great cost there needs to be some further economic gain extracted in return.

Hegseth wrote “Agreed,” and that ended the discussion.

Read the full article here: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/

→On Friday, Columbia University caved to a series of demands from the Trump administration in order to restore $400 million in federal grant funding, which the government had threatened to withhold over charges that the university had failed to address campus antisemitism. In a Friday letter described in The New York Times as an “opening bid” in the university’s negotiations with Trump, Columbia President Katrina Armstrong agreed to step up enforcement of Columbia’s protest policies, overhaul campus security measures, increase viewpoint diversity among faculty, appoint an administrator to oversee the university’s various Middle East-related academic departments, and adopt a new definition of antisemitism—but not the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition recommended by the administration. Even if they are only partial, Columbia’s concessions are likely to set a precedent in how other elite universities deal with the administration. Last week, the Trump administration threatened to withhold $175 million in federal grant funding from the University of Pennsylvania—in this case, over Penn’s policy of allowing Lia Thomas, a biological male, to compete on the women’s swimming team.

→Trump is also winning concessions in the world of the law. Last week, the president announced that he had reached a deal with Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison —an elite Democratic corporate law firm—in exchange for lifting an executive order that canceled the government’s contracts with the firm and ordered government contractors to disclose their business with the firm. According to Trump’s account of the deal (negotiated with the aid of Witkoff), Paul Weiss agreed to drop its corporate DEI policies and pledge $40 million in pro bono services for Trump-friendly causes. Trump also said that Paul Weiss chairman Brad Karp had acknowledged that Mark Pomerantz, a former Paul Weiss partner who joined the Manhattan district attorney’s “hush money” case against Trump, had committed “wrongdoing,” though Karp and his allies have denied that he made any such comment. In a firm-wide email on Sunday, Karp explained that he had decided to cut a deal, rather than fight the executive order in court, because “it was very likely that our firm would not be able to survive a protracted dispute with the administration.” Trump has issued a similar executive order—currently blocked by a judge—targeting Perkins Coie, another Democratic powerhouse.

→In Friday’s Big Story, we covered the saga of Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempts to fire Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar, who is now backed by seemingly the entirety of Israel’s anti-Bibi establishment. On Sunday, we got news of a new plot twist: Shin Bet, under Bar’s leadership, had been secretly investigating the Israeli police force over possible “far-right infiltration.” Here’s Israeli journalist Amit Siegel from the “It’s Noon in Israel” newsletter:

How did it begin? Last September, Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar told Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara that [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir interfered with police operations on Temple Mount during Tisha B’Av. A further Shin Bet investigation, however, found that to be incorrect. Nevertheless, concern around Ben-Gvir’s actions prompted Bar to instruct the agency on September 26 to open an investigation into the matter.

The original report, on Israel’s Channel 12 news, presented what it claimed was a note from Bar initiating the investigation. In response, Shin Bet initially issued a statement defending its actions, claiming that it was part of its mandate to prevent the “infiltration” of extremist elements into “government institutions,” but later denied ever initiating the probe, as did Bar. Ben-Gvir, according to The Times of Israel, responded to the news—and the denials—by calling Bar a “liar” and a “criminal who belongs in jail.”

→Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul and leading opposition figure in Turkey, has been formally stripped of his mayorship and charged with “leading a criminal organization, bribery, misconduct, and corruption,” The Guardian reports. Mass demonstrations against Imamoglu’s arrest continued throughout the weekend, with Turkish authorities detaining more than 1,100 protesters and issuing more than 700 takedown requests for the X accounts of “news organizations, journalists, political figures, students, and others,” according to a Sunday message from the social media platform. On Sunday, the main opposition party in Turkey, the Republican People’s Party (CHP), elected Imamoglu as its next presidential candidate in a party primary. A spokesman for the party said that of the more than 15 million votes cast in the primary, more than 13 million were “solidarity votes” cast by non-CHP members in a gesture of support for Imamoglu.

→Here’s a nice throwback for longtime readers: The New York Times reported Friday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement had instructed a “Cornell Student Activist” to surrender himself to authorities. The activist in question is Momodou Taal, a graduate student in Africana studies, British Gambian dual citizen, and militant in the cause for a “Free Palestine.” Taal became something of a cause célèbre on the left last year, earning sympathetic press coverage and a shout-out from Bernie Sanders after he was suspended (and then reenrolled) for crashing a Cornell career fair and tussling with campus security after previously being warned over his disruptive anti-Israel activism. As we noted at the time, Mr. Taal is, like many students on modern Ivy League campuses, a child of the “developing world” elite—his great-grandfather, Dawda Jawara, ruled Gambia for 32 years—and the host of a podcast: in this case, “The Malcolm Effect,” which discusses geopolitics through the lens of “anti-imperialism” and “pan-Africanism.” Taal preemptively sued the administration last week to prevent his deportation.

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