Trump allies meet with Prime Minister Netanyahu and other Israeli officials

Former national security adviser Robert O’Brien said Monday that he and two otherTrump administration foreign policy officials have met with top Israeli government officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival, Benny Gantz, during a three-day visit to Israel.

O’Brien confirmed the visit, first reported by Reuters, in an interview with NBC News.

O'Brien said that he was accompanied by John Rakolta, who was that U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, and Ed McMullen, a former U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, and that they also met with Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. Additional discussions with Israeli officials are scheduled for Tuesday, he said.

All three remain close to former President Donald Trump, who is likely to be briefed on their trip. O’Brien declined to say whether he’d discussed the trip with Trump in advance but noted that he speaks with him regularly.

“My goal on this trip was really to show support for Israel,” O’Brien said in the interview. “But at the same time, people know that I’m a former Trump official, I’m in regular contact with the president and strongly support him in November.”

He said one reason for the trip was to check in on the status of the Abraham Accords — a series of historic agreements signed in 2020 normalizing ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.

O’Brien said he notified the Biden administration of the trip several weeks ago, as is routine.

The U.S. is trying to get a deal that would normalize relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia and address the governance of a post-war Gaza. It’s a deal O’Brien said shouldn’t be finalized until Hamas is defeated, similar to how the Trump administration declared it had defeated ISIS.

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