Several of Mr. Biden’s prime advisers, together with Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the nationwide safety adviser, Jake Sullivan, labored for Mr. Obama and have vivid recollections of Israel’s lobbying marketing campaign towards the Iran deal.
Mr. Dermer brushed apart the battles of the previous as “totally irrelevant” to his relationships with the administration right now. “I don’t see it as a cloud hanging over anything,” he mentioned in a phone interview on Monday.
Iran, he famous, has receded as a bone of competition between the United States and Israel. Mr. Biden’s makes an attempt to revive the nuclear talks have light, and Hamas, which led the lethal Oct. 7 assault on Israeli civilians and troopers, is backed by the Iranians. The president despatched plane carriers to the japanese Mediterranean to deter Iran and its Lebanese proxy group, Hezbollah, from getting into the warfare towards Israel.
“I don’t think the coordination and cooperation has ever been better, certainly not in a time of war,” Mr. Dermer mentioned. “They understand where we are; we understand where they are.”
That was not the case throughout the Obama years. In 2014, throughout a earlier Israeli navy operation in Gaza, the State Department mentioned it was “appalled” by what it known as a “disgraceful” strike on a U.N. college. Israeli officers seethed on the language, which they felt was wholly unjustified.
White House aides additionally fumed that Mr. Dermer tilted persistently towards the Republicans, who’re extra favorable to Mr. Netanyahu and his positions. Mr. Dermer had a lot hotter relations with President Donald J. Trump, who withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, didn’t object to the Israeli settlements, proposed Israeli annexation of huge elements of the West Bank and moved the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, as Israel had lengthy requested.
Mr. Dermer, analysts mentioned, has a subtle grasp of how the warfare is complicating home politics for Mr. Biden, with progressive Democrats and Muslim and Arab American voters balking at his embrace of Israel. Given Mr. Dermer’s shut ties to Mr. Trump, who’s working once more for president, some query whether or not he would counsel Mr. Netanyahu to take Mr. Biden’s sensitivities under consideration.
“The administration has to look at Dermer as a double-edged sword,” Mr. Miller mentioned. “On the one hand, they have a very high-level conduit to the prime minister. On the other hand, he has a demonstrated capacity of behaving in a way that doesn’t acknowledge reciprocity between the United States and Israel.”
At one degree, Mr. Dermer’s membership within the warfare cupboard is shocking. Born and raised in Miami Beach, he moved to Israel after graduate college and didn’t serve within the Israeli navy. Three of the cupboard members are retired generals, whereas Mr. Netanyahu served in a particular forces unit as a younger soldier.
But on one other degree, it’s predictable, given Mr. Dermer’s longstanding ties to Mr. Netanyahu, who’s broadly often called Bibi. He has suggested the prime minister since 2000, whether or not from Washington or Jerusalem, and is considered as his alter in the past — or, because the Jewish on-line journal Tablet as soon as memorably put it, “Bibi’s Brain.”
“He made sure Dermer was a part of” the warfare cupboard, mentioned Anshel Pfeffer, who wrote a biography, “Bibi: The Turbulent Life and Times of Benjamin Netanyahu.” He added, “It’s telling that the only person he trusts on it is Ron Dermer, who has little or no military experience.”
As ambassador from 2013 to 2021, Mr. Dermer was an influential participant in Washington, not solely in diplomatic circles but in addition in political ones. He cultivated lawmakers on Capitol Hill, particularly Republicans, working with them to prepare a speech to a joint session of Congress by Mr. Netanyahu in 2015, throughout which he branded Mr. Obama’s proposed nuclear settlement a “very bad deal.”
Mr. Dermer later labored carefully with Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, on the Abraham Accords, which normalized Israeli relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. That deal prioritized Israel’s relations with its Arab neighbors over a two-state settlement with the Palestinians.
“He’s the ultimate plenipotentiary guy,” mentioned Michael B. Oren, who preceded Mr. Dermer as Israel’s ambassador, utilizing the diplomatic time period for an envoy invested with full authority to act on his authorities’s behalf overseas.
