By AAMER MADHANI
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration kept President-elect Donald Trump’s incoming administration closely apprised of its efforts to broker the ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah that is slated to go into effect early Wednesday, according to the outgoing Democratic administration.
Trump’s team, meanwhile, was quick to spike the football and claim credit for the rare spot of good news for a Democratic administration that’s been dragged down by the grinding Mideast conflict.
“Everyone is coming to the table because of President Trump,” Florida Rep. Mike Waltz, Trump’s choice for his national security adviser, said in a post on X on Tuesday, shortly before the Israel Cabinet signed off on the agreement. “His resounding victory sent a clear message to the rest of the world that chaos won’t be tolerated. I’m glad to see concrete steps towards deescalation in the Middle East.”
The Biden administration’s reported coordination with Trump’s team on its efforts to forge the ceasefire in Lebanon is perhaps the highest-profile example of cooperation in what’s been a sometimes choppy transition period.
Trump’s transition team just on Tuesday reached a required agreement with President Joe Biden’s White House that will allow transition staff to coordinate with the existing federal workforce before Trump takes office on Jan. 20. There has been some coordination on high levels between the outgoing Biden and incoming Trump teams, including talks between Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Waltz.
Biden in Rose Garden remarks on Tuesday cheered the ceasefire agreement as a critical step that he hoped could be the catalyst for a broader peace in the Mideast, which has been shaken by nearly 14 months of war following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
“This is designed to be a permanent cessation of hostilities,” Biden said. “What is left of Hezbollah and other terrorist organizations will not be allowed — I emphasize, will not be allowed — to threaten the security of Israel again.”
White House officials are now hopeful that a calm in Lebanon will reinvigorate a multi-country effort at finding an endgame to the devastating war in Gaza, where Hamas is still holding dozens of hostages and the conflict is more intractable.
Biden said the U.S., as well as Israel, will engage in talks in the coming days with officials from Egypt, Qatar and Turkey to try to get Gaza talks back on track.
But during Biden’s moment of success in a conflict that has roiled his reputation at home and abroad, the specter of the incoming Trump administration loomed large.
Trump’s senior national security team was briefed by the Biden administration as negotiations unfolded and finally came to a conclusion on Tuesday, according to a senior Biden administration official. The official, who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity on a call organized by the White House, added that the incoming Trump administration officials were not directly involved in the talks, but that it was important that they knew “what we were negotiating and what the commitments were.”
Trump’s team and allies, meanwhile, said there was no doubt that the prospect of the Republican president returning to power pushed both sides to get the agreement done.
Waltz, in addition to giving Trump credit for the ceasefire deal coming together, added a warning to Iran, Hezbollah’s chief financial backer.
“But let’s be clear: The Iran Regime is the root cause of the chaos & terror that has been unleashed across the region. We will not tolerate the status quo of their support for terrorism,” Waltz said in his post.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Trump ally, also gave a shoutout to the incoming administration, while giving a nod to Biden’s team.
“I appreciate the hard work of the Biden Administration, supported by President Trump, to make this ceasefire a reality,” Graham said in a statement.
Richard Goldberg, a senior adviser at the Washington group Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, said the moment magnifies that Iran — which he said would have needed to approve of Hezbollah agreeing to the ceasefire — is carefully weighing what lays ahead with Trump.
“There’s zero doubt that Iran is pulling back to regroup ahead of Trump coming into office,” said Goldberg, a National Security Council official in Trump’s first administration. “It’s a combination of Israeli military success and Trump’s election — the ayatollah has no clothes and he knows we know.”
The Biden White House is also holding on to a sliver of hope that the Lebanon ceasefire deal could help reinvigorate a long sought after Israel-Saudi normalization deal.
The official said a “lot of work has been done” to get such an agreement on track “but clearly where we are in Gaza is holding us back.”
Biden has said his administration was tantalizingly close to reaching a deal between the Middle East’s two most important powers shortly before the Hamas attack sent tremors throughout the region. He has speculated that the emerging normalization deal was part of Hamas’ motivation in carrying out its attack on Israel when it did.
Just weeks before the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sat beside Biden on the sidelines of the annual U.N. General Assembly and marveled that a “historic peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia” seemed within reach — a diplomatic advance that the Israeli leader predicted could lead to lasting peace between the Israelis and Palestinians.
The so-called normalization push, which began during Trump’s first administration and was branded the Abraham Accords, is an ambitious effort to reshape the region and boost Israel’s standing.
The Biden White House plans to keep the incoming Trump administration looped in on its efforts and “anything that we will do on this … we won’t do this unless they know what we’re doing,” the Biden administration official said.
Associated Press writers Fatima Hussein in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Zeke Miller and Chris Megerian contributed reporting.
