| | | | |  | | By Matt Berg and Eric Bazail-Eimil | |  Though the messaging from Israel and Hamas is all over the place, one thing is clear: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is in a bind. | Pool photo by Abir Sultan | With help from Alex Ward, Mona Zhang and Daniel Lippman Subscribe here | Email Matt | Email Eric The Biden administration isn’t buying Hamas’ claim that the militant group hasn’t yet seen the latest cease-fire proposal outlined by President JOE BIDEN. It’s the latest development in days of back and forth over whether the proposal Biden announced Friday is coming together, as Hamas has not approved it yet and Israeli leaders offer qualified support for the deal. The White House pushed back hard on Hamas’ claim today: “I can’t speculate on whether Hamas would say this as part of negotiating posture or to try to take the pressure off themselves for refusing to agree to a cease-fire, but it’s wrong,” a senior administration official, granted anonymity to discuss private matters, told NatSec Daily. “We have the text that was given to the Hamas team in Doha. It matches,” the official added. Israeli responses since Biden’s speech haven't been clear, either. The White House continues marketing the deal as an “Israeli proposal,” and an aide to Israeli Prime Minister BENJAMIN NETANYAHU said over the weekend that they agreed to the proposal outlined by Biden. But today, Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers that “claims that we have agreed to a cease-fire without our conditions being met are incorrect." Israel hasn’t changed its conditions to reach a permanent cease-fire, a senior Israeli official also told NBC News today, explaining that Israel would only agree to such a proposal after it destroys Hamas’ military and governing capabilities. Hamas has repeatedly said it would only agree to a cease-fire deal if it guarantees an end to the war. It’s hard to trust what either side is saying right now, since both Israel and Hamas are angling for outcomes that fit their own interests, experts say. “Both sides are trying to be open to the deal while saying they’re not actually open to the deal, so there’s no real coherence there,” MAIRAV ZONSZEIN, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, told NatSec Daily. Though the messaging from Israel and Hamas is all over the place, one thing is clear: Netanyahu is in a bind. After Biden’s speech, the White House and partners in the region pressured Israel to accept the terms. Soon after, far-right Israeli politicians said they’d break up the government if the deal is made. Netanyahu has to balance appeasing the U.S. and proving that he values bringing hostages home, or risking his government collapsing. “We’ve got a very awkward situation here, where the Israelis did propose this deal, Biden ran with it, with a massively public push for it rhetorically, but only rhetorically,” H.A. HELLYER, a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace’s Middle East program, told NatSec Daily. The general feeling inside the Biden administration is that Netanyahu is posturing for political survival, a U.S. official granted anonymity to discuss internal matters told NatSec Daily. Without Biden using leverage to pressure Israel to accept the deal, it’s unclear why Netanyahu — whose political future hinges on this war — would agree to the deal’s compromises, NATASHA HALL, a senior fellow in the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told NatSec Daily. “The deal seems dead,” Hall said.
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Lockheed Martin’s mission is to protect the ones who serve in their service to the nation. It’s why we lead the way in developing new defense tech and pushing the capabilities of what’s possible to bring security to an unsecure world. Learn more. | | | | | FOUR MORE DEAD: As pressure on Netanyahu to make a deal mounts, Israel’s military today said four more hostages held by Hamas are dead. They were NADAV POPPLEWELL, YORAM METZGER, AMIRAM COOPER and HAIM PERRY. UKRAINE’S FUTURE STRIKES: Ukraine can use the two dozen F-16 fighter jets that the Netherlands intends to donate to strike targets inside Russia, Dutch Defense Minister KAJSA OLLONGREN told our own STUART LAU. “We only ask them to comply to international law and the right to self-defense as stated in the U.N. Charter, which means they use it to target the military goals they need to target in their self-defense,” Ollongren said. That’s another win for Ukraine after the Biden administration partially lifted restrictions on how Kyiv can use U.S. weapons, as our colleagues scooped last week. Ukraine plans to continue pushing its foreign backers to allow Kyiv to strike deeper into Russian territory using Western-provided weapons, according to an internal Ukrainian government document from today setting out talking points for Ukrainian officials, obtained by NatSec Daily. “Currently, the U.S., Germany and some other partners maintain partial restrictions on the use of Western weapons on the Russian Federation territory (for example, ATACMS). We will work within these frameworks and at the same time give arguments about the need to expand,” the document reads. The Kremlin isn’t staying quiet about the developments: “I would like to warn American leaders against miscalculations that could have fatal consequences. For unknown reasons, they underestimate the seriousness of the rebuff they may receive,” state media quoted Russian Deputy Foreign Minister SERGEI RYABKOV as saying today. KAMALA PEACING OUT: Vice President KAMALA HARRIS will travel to the peace summit coming up in Switzerland this month to discuss how to end the war in Ukraine, her office announced today. Ukraine had expressed dismay that Biden doesn’t plan to attend the summit. Ukrainian President VOLODYMYR ZELENSKYY has been urging Biden to attend, saying that his absence “would only be applauded” by Russian President VLADIMIR PUTIN. One analyst in Ukraine was glad to hear that the U.S. will be participating in the talks, but was still lukewarm that Harris is the one going. “Kyiv expects the leaders of the major countries to be leading the discussion,” MAKSYM SKRYPCHENKO, president of the Transatlantic Dialogue Center think tank in Ukraine, told NatSec Daily. “In the end, this American approach says, ‘We don’t think this is the right way to finish this war,’ which is a very bad signal for Kyiv.” A WEEKEND OF ELECTIONS: It was a busy weekend for POLITICO’s election watchers, as voters headed to the polls this weekend in Mexico and India and results from last week’s South African parliamentary elections came in. CLAUDIA SHEINBAUM, the former mayor of Mexico City and protégé of the country’s populist president, ANDRÉS MANUEL LÓPEZ OBRADOR, was elected Mexico’s new president yesterday. Sheinbaum, who will be Mexico’s first woman president and first Jewish president, is expected to continue many of López Obrador’s leftist policies while adopting a more technocratic approach to governance. Her government will have to tackle a worsening security situation in Mexico, address migration and trade disputes with Washington and navigate the potential return of former President DONALD TRUMP to the White House. In India, Prime Minister NARENDRA MODI’s Hindu nationalist party is projected to win a third electoral landslide. Modi is expected to continue positioning India on the global stage and countering rising Chinese influence in South and East Asia as he deepens cooperation with Washington and other allies. Meanwhile, in South Africa, the African National Congress has lost its majority in the country’s parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid. The party of NELSON MANDELA will be forced to enter a coalition with either the centrist Democratic Alliance party or two left-wing splinter parties — negotiations might direct Pretoria’s focus away from its ongoing push to hold Israel accountable for its conduct of the war in the Gaza Strip. IT’S MONDAY: Thanks for tuning in to NatSec Daily! This space is reserved for the top U.S. and foreign officials, the lawmakers, the lobbyists, the experts and the people like you who care about how the natsec sausage gets made. Aim your tips and comments at mberg@politico.com and ebazail@politico.com, and follow us on X at @mattberg33 and @ebazaileimil. While you’re at it, follow the rest of POLITICO’s national security team: @alexbward, @nahaltoosi, @PhelimKine, @laraseligman, @connorobrienNH, @paulmcleary, @leehudson, @magmill95, @johnnysaks130, @ErinBanco, @reporterjoe, and @JGedeon1.
| | | | POLITICO is gearing up to deliver experiences that help you navigate the NATO Summit. What issues should our reporting and events spotlight? Click here to let us know. | | | | | | | | | TREMBLING ABOUT TRUMP: Many European leaders think the return of Trump to the White House is all but inevitable, The Atlantic’s McKAY COPPINS reports. “In capitals across the continent—from Brussels to Berlin, Warsaw to Tallinn—leaders and diplomats expressed a sense of alarm bordering on panic at the prospect of Donald Trump’s reelection,” Coppins writes. Almost every official Coppins spoke with believes that Trump will beat Biden in November. And former American officials worry that a return of Trump would irreversibly damage perceptions of the U.S. around the world. “Foreign counterparts would say it to me straight up,” former undersecretary of State VICTORIA NULAND told The Atlantic. “‘The first Trump election — maybe people didn’t understand who he was, or it was an accident. A second election of Trump? We’ll never trust you again.’”
| | CHINA’S CYBERATTACK PREP: The new head of the National Security Agency and U.S. Cyber Command is warning that China is “prepositioning” itself for future attacks on civilian infrastructure in Guam, according to the Wall Street Journal’s NIHARIKA MANDHANA and GORDON FAIRCLOUGH. Gen. TIMOTHY HAUGH told the Journal that Chinese hackers with the Volt Typhoon group are still lurking in U.S. critical infrastructure and have entered water systems in the U.S. territory of Guam, waiting for the right moment to wreak havoc. U.S. officials worry that during a conflict with Taiwan, Chinese hackers could cripple U.S. infrastructure. “We see attempts to be latent in a network that is critical infrastructure, that has no intelligence value, which is why it is so concerning,” he said. Haugh added that “there are not tools being put down and there’s not data being extracted.” MOSCOW’S MONEY MOVES: Russia is funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars to far-right politicians and groups in Europe as a way to spread pro-Kremlin propaganda on the continent, according to the Washington Post’s CATHERINE BELTON and SOUAD MEKHENNET. European officials told the Post that a Czech police investigation into Voice of Europe, a pro-Russian website, rapidly ballooned into a major probe of pro-Russian groups operating in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland and France. Moscow’s efforts came ahead of next week’s European Parliament elections. DISINFO IN THE EU: European Commission Vice President VĚRA JOUROVÁ has been on the road talking about disinformation and foreign interference ahead of the European Union elections later this week. And that “Democracy Tour” took Jourová to California last week for meetings with tech CEOs about their role in the fight. On today’s POLITICO Tech, Jourová explains what she learned during her Silicon Valley visit and whether she’s feeling confident as voters head to the polls.
| | | | POLITICO is gearing up to deliver experiences that help you navigate the NATO Summit. What issues should our reporting and events spotlight? Click here to let us know. | | | | | | | | PIER PROBLEMS: The Pentagon expects to be able to re-anchor the temporary pier constructed by the U.S. military to Gaza by the middle of this week after a piece of the structure broke off last week due to bad weather, our own LARA SELIGMAN reports (for Pros!). NATO ANNOUNCEMENTS COMING: The NATO Summit in Washington next month will feature some big announcements on building defense production capacity for the alliance, U.S. ambassador to NATO JULIANNE SMITH said today. As our own PAUL McLEARY reports (for Pros!), Smith told reporters that a main focus of the summit will be on defense industrial production and procurement, as well as “co-production with our friends in Ukraine.” It’s “not an accident” that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is holding a defense industry summit with alliance members on the first day of the NATO meeting, Smith added. Allies need to “make sure that our stocks across the alliance are rapidly replenished, but that we also have options to give more support to Ukraine and that they can also buy more stuff either from Europe or from the United States,” she said.
| | BICKER WITH WICKER: Democrats are looking at how to maneuver around Sen. ROGER WICKER’s (R-Miss.) push to expand U.S. defense spending and prevent Republicans from using it as a cudgel against Biden during the election, our colleagues at Morning Defense (for Pros!) report. It would take just one Democrat or independent on the Senate Armed Services committee to flip in order for Wicker’s bid to bust legislative caps on Pentagon spending and increase the Defense Department budget to succeed. The test for Senate Democrats will come when the committee has a markup for the NDAA starting June 11. Multiple Republicans have already voiced support for Wicker’s proposal. SASC Chair Sen. JACK REED (D-R.I.) isn’t rejecting Wicker’s push out of hand, but cautioned that the push could create headaches for the process of passing a defense spending bill this year. “It raises a number of issues,” Reed told our own JOE GOULD. “One, the House did not go that route. Two, we have to find offsets for that [proposed increase], and if not, it’s impossible to come up with the money.”
| | | |   | | | | | ERDAN BLASTS UN ON HIS WAY OUT: Israeli U.N. Ambassador GILAD ERDAN’s antipathy towards the U.N. is no secret. Now, as the diplomat prepares to return to Israel after announcing his resignation Friday, he's calling on democracies to defund the U.N, our own MONA ZHANG writes in. The U.N. is “is a political game,” Erdan told a small group of reporters on Friday. “There's a big gap between how [member states] vote here and what they truly think about Israel. Erdan stoked controversy during his time at the U.N., shredding the U.N. charter before the General Assembly earlier this month and wearing a yellow star badge during an emergency session of the U.N. Security Council last October. “If you analyze the political makeup of the U.N., you see that almost one-third of the countries are Muslim countries,” he said. “Many of these Muslim countries behind closed doors, they will tell me, 'finish the job' … they know that Hamas poses a threat against them.” Despite his criticisms, Erdan said that he "doesn’t “believe that if we leave the U.N., it will help in any way to improve our situation today,” because of the way other nations exploit U.N. bodies to delegitimize Israel. “It's more important to convince democracies to defund the U.N.” Erdan demurred when asked what was next for his career. “Every normal person wants to advance, get promoted,” he said, stopping short of stating his political ambitions. “It's up to the people to decide.” CRAPPY DEAL: South Korea today said it’ll nullify a peace deal with North Korea after Pyongyang sent its southern neighbor balloons carrying feces, The Associated Press’ HYUNG-JIN KIM reports. If it’s suspended, Seoul would be allowed to resume military drills near the border and blast anti-North Korea broadcasts, K-pop and news reports from loudspeakers near the border. TALK ABOUT GEORGIA: Georgia’s parliamentary speaker signed a controversial “foreign agents” bill into law, as the ruling party in Tbilisi vows to resist criticisms that the bill threatens the country’s democracy, according to Reuters. Lawmakers in Washington and officials in Brussels have threatened to hold Georgian leaders accountable for the passage of the bill.
| | — DANIEL E. WHITE is now the deputy assistant secretary for strategic integration and policy planning at the Department of Homeland Security, our DANIEL LIPPMAN writes in. He most recently was the deputy chief of staff to the secretary of the Army. — MICHELL FIGUEROA is now White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security. She was previously associate director for Cabinet affairs at the White House. — TONY JOHNSON will be president and CEO of The Truman National Security Project and Truman Center. He is a special assistant and intelligence adviser to Deputy Defense Secretary KATHLEEN HICKS. — BAILEY CHILDERS is now vice president of external relations at the German Marshall Fund. She was previously managing director of government relations. — DANIEL NASAW is launching Park View Group, a comms and content consultancy in the AI, cybersecurity and defense-tech spaces. He previously was national security news editor at the Wall Street Journal and is also a veteran of BBC and The Guardian.
| | — DENA IBRAHIM, The New York Times: First they came for Sudan’s future. Now they’re destroying its past. — LEE HOCKSTADER, The Washington Post: Macron is considering a risky plan in Ukraine. What if Putin calls his bluff? — GARRETT GRAFF, POLITICO: The forgotten hero of D-Day
| | — Hudson Institute, 10 a.m.: Supreme Allied Commanders on the past, present, and future of NATO — House Foreign Affairs Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee, 10:30 a.m.: Money is policy: assessing shortcomings in the State Department's foreign assistance grants process — Congressional-Executive Commission on China, 10:30 a.m.: Tiananmen at 35 - the ongoing struggle for human rights and democracy in China — House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, 10:45 a.m.: A bipartisan news conference on "Tiananmen at 35: The Ongoing Struggle for Human Rights and Democracy in China," to commemorate the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising — Atlantic Council, 1 p.m.: The economic front in Ukraine — Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1:30 p.m.: The Millennium Challenge Corporation at 20 years — House Homeland Security Transportation and Maritime Security Subcommittee, 2 p.m.: A hearing on "Combatting the Grey Zone: Examining Chinese Threats to the Maritime Domain" — Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2 p.m.: Supporting Georgia's sovereignty and democracy — Wilson Center Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies, 2 p.m.: A book discussion on "Collisions: The Origins of the War in Ukraine and the New Global Instability" — Middle East Institute, 4 p.m.: A book discussion on "The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century" Thanks to our editor, Heidi Vogt, who will soon see balloons carrying feces land in her front yard. Thanks to our producer, Gregory Svirnovskiy, who is helping us orchestrate the surprise for Heidi.
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