2026-10-05T09:00:45.187Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/05/politics/mcgurk-book-witkoff-biden-gaza
CNN全球事务分析师布雷特·麦古克将于明日推出新书《边缘：解救10月7日人质的竞赛内幕》，该书第一手记述了加沙人质谈判以及10月7日事件后引发的更大范围中东危机。
以下节选披露了即将卸任的拜登政府与特朗普过渡团队达成加沙人质与停火协议的出人意料的合作开端，记录了政治对手如何试图在政权交接前将有限的外交契机转化为正式协议的幕后细节。
美国国会大厦的保密会议室相比白宫 Situation Room（国家安全委员会情况室）要宽敞得多，它们是为全体委员会或大型集会设计的，并不适合私密讨论。2024年11月20日，就在唐纳德·特朗普以压倒性优势击败卡玛拉·哈里斯两周后，杰克·沙利文和我来到其中一间会议室，向我们的继任者进行情况通报。
沙利文是拜登的国家安全顾问，他的指定继任者是佛罗里达州国会议员迈克·沃尔兹。我则是拜登的中东事务首席代表，也是协调解救被哈马斯扣押在加沙人质、换取与以色列停火协议的首席谈判代表。我的指定继任者是史蒂夫·威特科夫——一位房地产大亨，同时也是特朗普的挚友。
大选结束后不久，我致电特朗普的女婿、前中东事务顾问贾里德·库什纳。我传达的信息是，只要我们能让外界看到过渡团队与现任政府之间毫无分歧、携手合作，我们就有机会达成加沙协议。考虑到华盛顿的极化局面，这绝非易事，但这是我们唯一的机会——而且这是数月来局势首次朝着对我们有利的方向发展。
人质谈判曾于2024年8月破裂。当时，拜登与埃及、卡塔尔领导人刚刚提出一项获以色列支持的新方案，哈马斯恐怖分子就在加沙南部城市拉法的一处隧道内杀害了六名人质。其中一名人质是赫什·戈德堡-波林，他在2023年10月7日哈马斯袭击Nova音乐节时身受重伤，失去了一条手臂，随后被扣押。
谈判破裂后，以色列取得了一系列军事胜利。2024年9月17日，以色列发起行动，引爆了黎巴嫩真主党武装携带的数千个追踪器。我从以色列对外情报机构摩萨德的一名线人那里首次得知了这场后来被称为“ Grim Beeper（刺耳蜂鸣器）行动”的计划，对方告诉我：“我们刚把真主党的蛋蛋炸飞了。”
在很多情况下，这并非比喻。
真主党与哈马斯一样，是受伊朗支持的恐怖组织，他们做出了致命决定，参与了针对以色列的哈马斯袭击。2023年10月8日，真主党开始每日向以色列北部发射火箭弹，最终导致近8万人流离失所。以色列原本曾表示，如果能达成人质协议，就不会对真主党发动行动。但由于谈判毫无进展，以色列在发动追踪器行动后不久，就对黎巴嫩南部真主党的据点发起了地面进攻。
到9月底，真主党领导人哈桑·纳斯鲁拉与他的大部分高级副手一同在贝鲁特一处地下建筑群中被击毙。
10月1日，纳斯鲁拉被击毙后，伊朗做出了又一个愚蠢且致命的决定：向以色列发动新一轮大规模弹道导弹袭击，此前伊朗曾在数月前发起过一次失败的袭击。这一次，伊朗一次性发射了近两百枚导弹，超过了此前的齐射规模。
当天下午，在情况室里，当拦截导弹在大气层边缘摧毁来袭导弹时，我们收到报告称特拉维夫的一所大学宿舍遭到直接袭击。当时我就坐在哈里斯对面，距离选举日还不到五周。她口型说了一句：“我的天。”我们清楚，如果伊朗造成以色列重大人员伤亡，以色列准备对伊朗发动大规模反攻。
幸运的是，和很多首批报道一样，这条消息是错误的。只有一枚被摧毁的导弹残骸击中了建筑，几乎没有造成破坏。这次袭击大部分被成功拦截，这让伊朗方面十分沮丧——他们原本以为这次更大规模的导弹齐射会取得成功。
大约两周后的10月16日，以色列部队在拉法附近击毙了哈马斯领导人叶海亚·辛瓦尔，而赫什和另外五名人质正是在附近的一条隧道内被枪杀。辛瓦尔之死消除了达成协议的一大障碍——他本人，也让以色列能够在某些条款上更加灵活，毕竟10月7日袭击的主谋再也无法夺回权力。对以色列而言，这堪比美国军方在9·11事件后击毙奥萨马·本·拉登。
终于，在10月26日，以色列对伊朗发动了隐形空袭，瞄准并摧毁了伊朗的许多战略防空系统。我们与以色列就这次反击行动密切合作，劝说以色列放弃了更激进的报复方案。
拜登告诉内塔尼亚胡，我们将向以色列部署更多防空系统，并得到内塔尼亚胡的保证：以色列的反击将集中打击伊朗自身的防空电池。此举旨在改变力量平衡，同时避免引发更广泛的战争。我们事后向伊朗领导人传话：如果以色列（或美国）选择发动空袭，伊朗现在将完全暴露在空袭之下。由于俄罗斯深陷乌克兰战场，伊朗无法迅速更换被摧毁的防空系统——其中大部分是俄罗斯制造，且在以色列的打击面前被证明毫无效果。伊朗从未对以色列的反击作出回应。
随着伊朗局势逆转、辛瓦尔被击毙、真主党领导层被重创，我们预测真主党很快就会接受与以色列的停火协议。这将是我们重新回到加沙谈判的时刻——从8月谈判中断的地方继续推进。
我对库什纳的理由很直接。如果以色列和哈马斯知道特朗普将落实摆在桌面上的协议，我们就有机会在他就职前达成协议。但如果不能，我们就会错过开战以来最好的机会。现在是抓住机遇的时候了，而唯一的办法就是携手合作。
库什纳完全同意。
他告诉我，他不会加入新政府，但表示我在中东事务方面的继任者是一位与特朗普关系密切的务实问题解决者，他会在合适的范围内与我合作。他没有提到威特科夫，后者的名字在几天后被曝出是特朗普指定的中东事务特使。
2024年11月13日，拜登邀请特朗普前往椭圆形办公室，主要是进行一对一会面。当摄影师短暂进入时，拜登承诺过渡进程将顺利进行。“政治很残酷，”特朗普说，“而且在很多情况下，这个世界并不美好，但今天不一样，我非常感谢这次过渡如此顺利，几乎完美。”
我之后见到了拜登。与当时许多民主党人将大选失败视为生存危机不同，拜登——至少在我面前——专注于尽可能与过渡团队开展合作。在人质危机问题上尤其如此。
据拜登透露，两位总统同意进行协调，这为七天后我与沙利文、沃尔兹和威特科夫的会面铺平了道路。
在国会大厦的保密会议室里，沙利文打开一个文件袋，将 briefing 材料（情况简报资料）摊开在面前，包括该地区地图和伊朗核计划背景资料。我们独自坐在一张大桌子旁，等待特朗普团队的成员到来。
沃尔兹先走进来，随后是威特科夫。前者是一名退役军官，发型整齐，身姿挺拔。后者则是一位高调的房地产开发商，以在纽约街头巷尾把枪藏在袜子里而闻名，他在这里建立了价值数十亿美元的商业帝国。两人都表现得轻松随性，而我则因为加沙危机早已失去了这种状态——这场危机已导致数万人死亡，仍有超过100名人质被困在地下隧道中，整个地区濒临全面战争的边缘。
会议一开始有些尴尬，我们四个人站在大房间的大桌子角落，按职务互相介绍。沃尔兹坐下后，我们也纷纷就座。
“特朗普让我们解决所有问题，这就是我们的任务，”威特科夫笑着说。
“解决它！”沃尔兹补充道。
当选副总统的参议员JD·万斯意外到访。我们站起身。他问我们在讨论什么，当我们说是中东事务时，他说那他就该走了。（我心想：赶紧跑吧。）万斯、沃尔兹和威特科夫聊起他们各自最近与特朗普通的电话，比较各自听到的内容——显然说法各不相同。电话在深夜打来，沃尔兹问两人特朗普睡不睡觉。威特科夫回答：“我认识他四十年了，答案是——不，睡得很少。”
“天生劳碌命，”沃尔兹说道。
威特科夫解释说，他之前是特朗普的房地产律师，后来才自立门户。“我取得过一些成功，但只有一个特朗普，”他告诉我们。万斯绕到桌旁和我、沙利文握手，说他希望在过渡期间与我们合作，这番话看起来很真诚，随后他离开了房间。
沙利文指着桌上的地图，梳理了自8月人质谈判破裂以来中东地区发生的变化。即便对我们这些每天都在关注这些问题的人来说，局势变化也令人头晕目眩。我向威特科夫讲述了我在人质谈判中的艰难经历，并解释了为什么我们现在终于可能有机会达成协议。
当然，要实现这一点，我们必须让哈马斯和以色列都看到我们双方在合作——因为双方都会要求了解特朗普的立场。
“我来这里唯一的目的就是拯救生命，”威特科夫说，“这是任何人一生中能做的最高尚的事，拯救他人的生命。所以，我全力以赴，相信我。”
他问我们需要他和特朗普做什么。我拿出了文本文件。这份经过数月往返多哈、耶路撒冷和开罗谈判敲定的方案，涵盖了停火协议的每一个细节——从停火期间以色列军队的撤退范围，到人质与囚犯交换的时间和顺序，再到停火期间人道主义援助交付的每一分钟细节。
悬而未决的问题是，哈马斯是否同意在停火第一阶段释放人质，这类人质包括妇女、老人以及伤病员，而该组织此前从未认真考虑过这一点。我解释说，如果不能就待释放人质名单达成一致，就不会有人质协议。
威特科夫称，他从房地产生意中认识了中东地区的大多数领导人，并询问我们是否介意他前往该地区重新接触相关各方，同时预览他的新角色。沙利文表示没问题，只要他不参与谈判，并在前后与我保持密切联系。威特科夫记下了他的电话号码，我们约定从那一刻起定期通话。
在简报的剩余时间里，我们讨论了伊朗问题。随着特朗普即将就职，伊朗现在容易受到直接攻击，以色列方面认为德黑兰可能会加快将铀浓缩至武器级——这是制造核弹的前提。自10月7日危机以来，伊朗一直在将铀浓缩至60%的纯度，距离制造核弹所需的90%纯度仅一步之遥。它是世界上唯一一个尚未拥有武器计划却达到这一浓缩水平的国家。
上周，沙利文召集了原则委员会，推演伊朗将铀浓缩至武器级的场景。与会者一致认为，如果我们看到相关迹象，将建议美国总统对伊朗的核设施发动军事打击，包括其位于福特ow的深埋地下的设施。过去一年中，我们已经对该行动进行了演练，以备总统——或未来的总统——需要时使用。我们向伊朗领导人发出信息，警告他们不要考虑升级其核计划。
威特科夫举起双手：“特朗普说伊朗的事交给我，但也许我不想揽这个活。你们他妈是在开玩笑吧，搞这么多事？”
最后是沙特阿拉伯。我们回顾了10月7日危机前达成的以色列与沙特阿拉伯关系正常化协议的一揽子方案。我解释说，只要加沙问题得到解决，该协议在特朗普任期内仍有可能达成。内塔尼亚胡的极右翼联合政府让一切变得更加困难，但该政府可能撑不到以色列2026年的下一次选举。（这些选举现在定于本月晚些时候举行。）
威特科夫绕到我这边的桌旁，伸出手：“我来这里是为了拯救生命。我一点都不在乎政治。如果我们能拯救一条生命，就等于拯救了整个世界。”
我向他保证，达成目标的条件已经成熟。
‘I’m here to save lives’: Inside the unlikely Biden-Trump partnership to secure a Gaza ceasefire
2026-10-05T09:00:45.187Z / https://www.cnn.com/2026/10/05/politics/mcgurk-book-witkoff-biden-gaza
CNN’s global affairs analyst Brett McGurk is out with a book tomorrow, Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages, a firsthand account of the Gaza hostage negotiations and the wider Middle East crisis that followed October 7.
The following excerpt details the beginnings of the unlikely cooperation between the outgoing Biden administration and Trump’s incoming team to secure a Gaza hostage-and-ceasefire deal. It offers an inside-the-room account of how political rivals tried to turn a narrow diplomatic opening into an agreement before the transfer of power.
Secure rooms in the US Capitol are cavernous compared to the White House Situation Room. They are designed for full committees or larger gatherings, not intimate discussions. On Nov. 20, 2024, Jake Sullivan and I had gone to one of those rooms to brief our successors two weeks after Donald Trump resoundingly defeated Kamala Harris.
Sullivan was Biden’s national security advisor. His named successor was Mike Waltz, a congressman from Florida. I was Biden’s lead on the Middle East and a chief negotiator on talks to free hostages held by Hamas in Gaza in exchange for a ceasefire with Israel. My named successor was Steve Witkoff — a real-estate tycoon and Trump’s best friend.
Shortly after the election, I had called Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and former Middle East hand. My message was that we had a chance to secure a Gaza deal so long as we could be seen as working together without any daylight between the incoming and outgoing teams. That was a tall order given the polarization in Washington, but it was the only chance we had — and for the first time in months, circumstances trended in our favor.
The hostage talks had collapsed in August, when shortly after Biden, together with the leaders of Egypt and Qatar, presented a new proposal endorsed by Israel, Hamas terrorists murdered six hostages in a tunnel under Rafah, a city in southern Gaza. One of those hostages was Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American who had been grievously wounded and lost an arm in Hamas’s attacks at the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, before being taken captive.
Following the collapse of the negotiations, Israel had won a string of military victories. It started on Sept. 17, 2024, with an operation that exploded thousands of beepers carried by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon. I first heard about what became known as Operation Grim Beeper from a contact in Mossad, Israel’s external intelligence service, who told me, “We just blew the dicks off Hezbollah.”
In many cases, that was not metaphorical.
Hezbollah, like Hamas, a terrorist group backed by Iran, had made the fateful decision to join in the Hamas attack on Israel. On Oct. 8, 2023, it began firing daily rocket barrages into northern Israel, eventually displacing nearly 80,000 people. Israel had been prepared to forgo an operation against Hezbollah if there was a hostage deal. But with no deal in sight, Israel soon followed the beeper operation with a ground assault into the Hezbollah strongholds of southern Lebanon.
By the end of September, Hezbollah’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, was dead, together with most of his senior lieutenants, buried in an underground Beirut compound.
On Oct. 1, following Nasrallah’s death, Iran made its own foolish — and fateful — decision to launch another massive ballistic missile attack against Israel, following on a failed attack it had launched months earlier. This time, Iran launched nearly two hundred missiles at once, exceeding its earlier salvo.
In the Situation Room that afternoon, as interceptors destroyed incoming missiles at the edge of outer space, we received reports of a direct hit on a college dormitory in Tel Aviv. I was seated just across from Harris, less than five weeks from Election Day. She mouthed, “Oh, shit.” We knew that if Iran inflicted significant Israeli casualties, the Israelis were prepared to launch a massive counterattack into Iran.
Fortunately, that report, like many first reports, was wrong. Only remnants of a destroyed missile struck the building, causing little damage. The attack was mostly defeated, dismaying the Iranians, who had believed their larger salvo of missiles would be successful.
About two weeks later, on Oct. 16, Israeli forces killed Hamas’s leader, Yahya Sinwar. He was found in Rafah, not far from where Hersh and five other hostages had been shot to death in a tunnel. Sinwar’s death removed a major obstacle to a deal — him — and allowed the Israelis to be more flexible on some terms now that the mastermind of the Oct. 7 attacks could no longer reclaim power. For Israel, it was akin to the United States military killing Osama bin Laden after 9/11.
Finally, on Oct. 26, Israel conducted stealth air attacks against Iran, targeting and destroying many of its strategic air defense systems. We worked closely with the Israelis on this counterattack, walking the Israelis back from a more aggressive response.
Biden told Netanyahu that we would deploy more air defenses to Israel and received assurance from Netanyahu in return that Israel’s response would focus on Iran’s own air defense batteries. The aim was to change the balance of power without triggering a wider war. We messaged Iran’s leaders afterward that their country was now wide open to air attacks should Israel (or the United States) choose to launch them. With Russia bogged down in Ukraine, Iran could not soon replace the destroyed air defense batteries, most of which were Russian and had proved ineffective against Israel’s capabilities. Iran never responded to Israel’s counterattack.
With the tables turned on Iran, Sinwar dead, and Hezbollah’s leadership decimated, we predicted that Hezbollah would soon accept a ceasefire deal with Israel. That would be the moment to return to the Gaza deal — picking up where we had left off in August.
My case to Kushner was straightforward. If Israel and Hamas knew that Trump would implement the deal on the table, we had a chance to close it before he took office. But if not, we would lose the best chance we had had since the war began. It was time to seize the moment, and the only way to do that was by working together.
Kushner fully agreed.
He told me that he would not be joining the new administration but said my successor on the Middle East was someone close to Trump, a pragmatic problem-solver who would want to work with me to the extent appropriate. He did not mention Witkoff, whose name emerged days later as Trump’s likely Middle East envoy.
Biden invited Trump to the Oval on Nov. 13, 2024, mostly for a one-on-one. When the cameras came in briefly, Biden promised a smooth transition. “Politics is tough,” Trump said. “And it is in many cases not a very nice world, but it is a nice world today, and I appreciate very much a transition that is so smooth, it’ll be as smooth as it can get.”
I saw Biden afterward. Unlike many Democrats at the time who saw the election as an existential disaster, Biden — at least with me — was focused on working with the incoming team wherever we could. That was especially so on the hostage crisis.
According to Biden, the two presidents agreed to coordinate, setting the stage for my meeting with Sullivan, Waltz, and Witkoff seven days later.
In the secure room at the Capitol, Sullivan snapped open a document pouch and arrayed briefing materials in front of him, including maps of the region and background on Iran’s nuclear program. We sat alone at a large table, waiting for Trump’s team to arrive.
Waltz entered, followed by Witkoff. The former was a retired military officer with perfect hair and rod-straight posture. The latter was a brash real estate developer known for carrying a pistol in a sock through the alleys and streets of New York, where he built a multibillion-dollar empire. Both exhibited a lighthearted manner, something that I had lost handling the Gaza crisis, where tens of thousands had died, over one hundred hostages remained in tunnels underground and the region stood on the brink of an all-out war.
The meeting began awkwardly, the four of us standing at the corner of the large table in the oversize room, introducing ourselves by titles. Waltz took his seat, and we followed.
“Trump told us to solve everything, that’s our mission,” Witkoff said, laughing.
“Solve it!” Waltz added.
Senator JD Vance, the incoming vice president, popped in unexpectedly. We stood. He asked what we were talking about, and when we said the Middle East, he told us that was his cue to leave. (Run as fast as you can, I thought.) Vance, Waltz, and Witkoff discussed recent calls they’d each had with Trump, comparing notes on what they had heard — apparently different things. The calls had come at all hours, and Waltz asked both men whether Trump ever slept. Witkoff answered, “I’ve known him for forty years, the answer is — no, not very much.”
“Force of nature,” Waltz remarked.
Witkoff explained that he had been Trump’s real-estate attorney before branching out on his own. “I’ve had success, but there’s only one Trump,” he told us. Vance came around the table to shake my hand, and Sullivan’s. He said he wanted to work with us during the transition period, which seemed sincere, and then left the room.
With a map on the table, Sullivan walked through what had changed in the Middle East since the hostage talks collapsed in August. It was head-spinning even for those of us who had been living and breathing the issues every day since then. For Witkoff, I recounted my difficult experience on the hostage talks, and explained why we might now, finally, have a shot.
Of course, for that to happen we had to be seen — by both Hamas and Israel — as working together, as both parties would demand to know Trump’s views.
“The only reason I’m here is to save lives,” Witkoff said. “It’s the most noble thing anyone can do with their life, to save another life. So, I’m all in, count on it.”
He asked what we needed from him, and from Trump. I took out the text. Every detail of a carefully negotiated agreement — from the extent of Israel’s redeployment during a ceasefire, to the timing and sequence of hostages and prisoner exchanges, to the minute-by-minute details on delivery of humanitarian assistance with the guns silent — was reflected in a package of texts that had been hammered over months shuttling between Doha, Jerusalem, and Cairo.
The outstanding issue was agreement from Hamas on the hostages to come out during the first stage of the ceasefire, a category that included women, the elderly, and the sick or wounded, something the group still had never seriously engaged on. There would not be a hostage deal, I explained, without an agreed list of the hostages to be released.
Witkoff claimed that he knew most of the leaders in the Middle East from his real-estate business, and he asked whether we’d be comfortable with his traveling to the region to reengage and to preview his new role. Sullivan said that would be fine, so long as he was not negotiating, and kept in close contact with me before and afterward. Witkoff wrote down his number, and we agreed to speak regularly from that moment forward.
For the remainder of the briefing, we discussed Iran. With Trump entering office and Iran now vulnerable to direct attack, the Israelis believed Tehran might race to enrich uranium to weapons grade — the precursor for a nuclear bomb. Throughout the crisis, since Oct. 7, Iran had been enriching uranium to 60% grade, a step away from the 90% required for a bomb. It was the only country in the world without a weapons program to do so.
The previous week, Sullivan had convened the Principals Committee to war-game the scenario of Iran enriching to weapons grade. Participants were unanimous that if we saw such indications, we’d recommend a US military strike against Iran’s nuclear facilities, including its deeply buried facility at Fordow. The operation had been rehearsed over the past year should the president — or a future president — need it. We dispatched a message to Iran’s leaders warning them not to think about escalating their nuclear program.
Witkoff raised his hands. “Trump says I’ve got Iran, but maybe I don’t want it. Are you f**king kidding with all of this?”
Finally, Saudi Arabia. We reviewed a package of agreements that we had completed on a deal for normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia, before the Oct. 7 crisis. I explained that the deal might be possible over Trump’s term, so long as Gaza could be settled. Netanyahu’s hard-right coalition government made everything more difficult, but it might not outlast Israel’s next election in 2026. (These elections are now scheduled for later this month.)
Witkoff came around to my side of the table. He extended his hand: “I’m here to save lives. I don’t give one shit about politics. If we save one life, we save the world.”
The table was now set for that, I assured him.