Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
Contact The Editor
Articles By This Author
TEL AVIV— Less than a week after Donald Trump's election victory in November, Ron Dermer sat down with him at Mar-a-Lago, mapping out plans for a new Middle East. That hours-long session, meant to reinvigorate U.S.-Israeli relations, had been requested by Dermer, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's most senior and trusted adviser, and also drew Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, who would soon play a central role as the new Middle East envoy, according to three current and former Israeli officials briefed on the meeting.
Dermer "was such a well-known and respected figure among all the people there, so it was easy for him to initiate," said Yaki Dayan, an Israeli diplomat who had been briefed.
In the halls of the Knesset, Israel's parliament, euphoric whispers spoke of an impending mega deal, including generous deliveries of American weapons to Israel, security agreements between it and its neighbors, and the top prize - normal diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, the wealthiest and most influential Arab country.
Such an agreement would be a crowning achievement for Dermer, who has devoted much of his career as a diplomat and political operator to securing ties with Saudi Arabia and thus opening the door to normalization with much of the Arab world after eight decades of hostility. He has been quietly pursuing a Saudi deal since collaborating with Kushner during the first Trump term to clinch the Abraham Accords that normalized relations between Israel and four Arab countries, most notably Saudi Arabia's influential neighbor, the United Arab Emirates.
But realizing those dreams now seems farther away than in many years. Israel's war in Gaza has alarmed much of the Arab world and undercut momentum toward a deal between Israel and Saudi Arabia. While the Saudis privately applauded Israel's thrashing of the [terrorist] groups Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon - which are both backed by Saudi Arabia's rival, Iran - they are horrified by plans by Dermer's colleagues to empty Gaza of its Palestinian residents and choke off Palestinian hopes for their own state.
Even if Dermer is seen as a uniquely deft diplomat, he is also limited by Netanyahu, "who risks making Israel a pariah forever," said Aziz Alghashian, a Saudi researcher of Saudi-Israeli relations.
The Trump administration's decision this month to pursue talks with Iran over a possible nuclear deal could further complicate efforts if this leads to the United States weakening its stance against Iran, warned an Israeli official familiar with regional diplomacy. For Saudi Arabia to normalize relations with Israel, the kingdom needs to be assured of American protection against Iran, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak with the press.
Efforts at normalizing relations with the kingdom could be "undermined if the U.S. takes an accommodationist posture toward Iran," the official said.
Within the Israeli government, which has argued that a military strike is essential for stemming Iran's nuclear program, Dermer is a notable hawk. During a recent meeting in Washington, Dermer urged senior U.S. officials that Iran's underground nuclear facilities could be destroyed if the U.S. Air Force used its 30,000-pound "bunker buster" bombs, according to former Israeli and U.S. intelligence officials with knowledge of the meeting.
In January, the Gaza ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas raised hopes that the guns would go silent, Israel's hostages held there would be freed and efforts at securing a Saudi deal could resume apace. But talks over substantive issues, including Israeli withdrawal from Gaza and the disarming of Hamas, sputtered in February. Netanyahu tapped Dermer to take control of the negotiations for Israel, overhauling a team that had been run by the chief of its Mossad spy agency and the head of the Shin Bet internal security agency.
While many Israelis opposed the resumption of war, accusing the government of abandoning the hostages, Dermer's supporters insist that everything is going according to his long-term plan. They say that Saudi demands for Palestinian statehood are only political theater and ultimately the deep trust Dermer enjoys with Trump and leaders in the Gulf will yield a breakthrough with the kingdom, said the Israeli official, who added that Dermer "is confident it will happen soon."
• A constituency of one
Dermer, 54, is technically Israel's minister of strategic affairs, but he is widely viewed as Israel's unofficial foreign minister, and his rise has helped shape the country's relationship with Washington, the Palestinians and the wider Arab world. A spokesman for Dermer declined to comment for this article.
Dermer was raised in a Jewish family in Miami, where his father and brother both served as Democratic mayors of the city. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School and Oxford University.
Dermer immigrated to Israel in his mid-20s, too old for the mandatory military service that serves as defining experience for many Israelis, and he went to work as a pollster for Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident turned right-wing Israeli politician, who in turn introduced him to Netanyahu. In 2005, Netanyahu, then finance minister, hired Dermer as economic attaché in Washington, then brought him back to Jerusalem as an adviser.
After Netanyahu returned to his post as prime minister in 2009, Dermer found a place among Netanyahu's "Anglo" cohort, as it's called in Hebrew, formulating high-level strategy exclusively in English.
Dermer's fealty to Netanyahu was extraordinary from the start, say those who worked with him. "Ron always used to say, 'I have a constituency of one'" - Netanyahu - said a former Israeli official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal government dynamics. "Ron really believes in his ,kishkes that he wants to serve the Jewish people. He genuinely believes [Netanyahu's] whole shtick about being in another league, that only he will be able to take Israel further."
Netanyahu viewed Dermer's outsider status, replete with contacts in the Washington political establishment, as an asset. In 2013, Netanyahu appointed him Israeli ambassador to Washington, where Dermer worked to widen Israel's base of support by wooing American neoconservatives and Christian evangelicals. He clashed with the Obama administration, skewering its diplomatic outreach to Iran. Officials in the Obama White House were discouraged from appearing on television alongside Dermer "because he would rip them up on the Iran issue," said the former official, who worked with him in the embassy.
That all changed with Trump's initial election in 2016. "When Dermer was ambassador, he had an open door with the Trump administration," Dayan said.
Ideologically, Dermer is to the right of Netanyahu, say former senior Israeli officials who worked with him. He fears that Israel may be doomed to eternal war with its neighbors and sees no place for a Palestinian state. According to Jibril Rajoub, a senior Palestinian politician, Dermer has never approached the leadership of the Palestinian Authority based in Ramallah for discussions.
But Dermer, at times, has also been an effective pragmatist within Netanyahu's inner circle.
"When we were pushing the Israeli governm
ent to do things that they didn't want to do, like letting humanitarian assistance into Gaza, Ron was one of the people that could overcome roadblocks inside the Israeli government," said Matt Miller, State Department spokesman under President Joe Biden.
• A harder sell for the Saudis
While the Saudis have pinned their hopes on Dermer - seeing him as Netanyahu's "right hand man, who is extremely influential and effective," according to Bernard Haykel, a professor of Near Eastern Studies at Princeton University - normalization is a harder sell than it's been before, he said.
The war in Gaza has made it more difficult for Saudi Arabia to pursue negotiations with Israel, as Saudi youth have increasingly taken up the Palestinian cause. And Netanyahu's resistance to Palestinian statehood and the push by some members of his far-right government to resettle Gaza and expel its residents are a challenge to the kingdom's ambitions to stabilize and modernize the region. "The Saudis see this right-wing eliminationist movement in the same way that they see the radical Islamist Iranians," Haykel said. "And that is something they want to move away from."
Nor has the Netanyahu government publicly detailed a plan for the future of Gaza once the war ends. While Saudi Arabia would be expected to help finance the reconstruction of the enclave, analysts say the kingdom would unlikely do so without a political solution that makes further conflict - and renewed destruction - unlikely.
"We still don't know what the end game is," said Lianne Pollak-David, a former Israeli negotiator with the Palestinians and member of Israel's National Security Council, who worked for years alongside Dermer.
At the same time, Middle East analysts say, the kingdom has less incentive to normalize relations. Saudi Arabia has envisioned Israel as a potent partner in defending against Iranian aggression, but Israel's blistering military campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah - along with the ouster in December of Iranian ally Bashar al-Assad in Syria - have left Iran much weakened because it cannot rely on these allies in case of conflict.
"Israel joining the war against Iran and its proxies is seen in Saudi Arabia as a free gift," said Abdulaziz Alkhamis, a Saudi journalist, as are the U.S. airstrikes against the Iran-backed Houthi militias in Yemen.
Before the Gaza war began, Israel and Saudi Arabia had been part of discussions over creating an economic corridor linking South Asia with Europe via those two Middle East countries. Saudi Arabia has already begun building railroad infrastructure in anticipation of the corridor and potential normalization with Israel. But those ambitions are now in jeopardy.
"It's confusing," Pollack-David said. "We know Dermer wants this, Netanyahu wants this, and, yet, they are going backward."
But Dan Diker, president of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs who has worked in the same circles as Dermer since the 1990s, remains optimistic. "The kingdom is leading the region into the 21st century, and Israeli technology is still seen as an anchor of the emerging Middle East," he said. Despite speculation among some Middle East experts that Saudi Arabia may pursue a bilateral deal with the Trump administration over free trade and nuclear cooperation, bypassing Israel, Diker said he doubts Israel would be left behind.
"The Saudis won't ignore Israel, because the Americans won't ignore Israel," Diker said. "Dermer made sure of that."
(COMMENT, BELOW)