ASPEN, Colorado — A senior Trump administration official argued Thursday that a deal to release the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas is “closer than it’s ever been.”
Speaking at the Aspen Security Forum, special envoy for hostage release Adam Boehler said Israel’s military successes against Iran create a political window that could pave the way for a deal to free the dozens of hostages still being held by the Palestinian militant group. And he stressed his confidence that it will happen.
Yet Boehler also called Hamas “very hardheaded” and identified some challenges of negotiating directly with the militant group.
“They continue to hold out. Israel continues to kick their ass, and yet they still think they have leverage,” Boehler said. The special envoy also said that were a deal to fall through, it would be because of that hard headedness.
Boehler also voiced optimism about the prospect of expanding the Abraham Accords — a series of agreements which saw several Arab countries formally recognize Israel for the first time. Even with Israel’s wars across the Middle East in recent years, he said the agreements are holding up, adding that the administration is focused on expanding the agreements.
“The accords that we drove in President Trump’s administration the first time, they held strong,” Boehler said. “It was a totally different Middle East than if we had been in the war years before.”
Boehler is the only member of the Trump administration speaking at the annual national security conference this year. Boehler’s colleague, Ambassador to Turkey and Syria special envoy Tom Barrack, pulled out of his Friday speaking engagement at the conference at the last minute on Wednesday in light of Israeli strikes against the Syrian capital.
More dramatically, the Pentagon on Monday pulled a series of senior military commanders and other Pentagon officials, arguing the conference does not align with the Defense Department’s values. A Pentagon spokesperson, Kingsley Wilson, called the officially nonpartisan conference an “evil den of globalism.”
Boehler was not asked about the administration’s near-boycott of the event, and he did not bring up the Pentagon’s decision to pull its speakers.
Asked by a reporter in the audience if the Biden administration should have begun directly negotiating with Hamas earlier in the conflict, he declined to comment. In his response, Boehler also pushed back on the suggestion that the U.S. made “unilateral” deals with Hamas, saying: “We always were working with the Israeli side.”
Boehler was criticized by supporters of the Israeli government earlier this year for circumventing the Israeli government and negotiating directly with the militant group to secure the release of Edan Alexander, a dual Israeli-American citizen who was taken hostage during the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks.