Tom Nides: Ben-Gvir Is a Thug

The old map is gone. Two and a half years ago, the Middle East seemed to have one clear picture: Iran on one side, Israel and the United States on the other, and everyone else caught in between. October 7 changed that. So did the wars that followed, and the American and Israeli strikes on Iran earlier this year.

What replaces it is still being decided – in Washington, Jerusalem, Riyadh and Beirut.

Tom Nides, who served as U.S. ambassador to Israel under President Joe Biden from 2021 to 2023 and is now vice chairman at Blackstone, one of the world’s largest investment firms, sat down with The Diplomat to discuss what the new map might look like, and who is drawing it.

Netanyahu, Ben-Gvir, and the Pull to the Right

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been in power for a combined total of more than 17 years, making him the longest-serving leader in Israel’s history. His current government depends on two far-right coalition partners: Itamar Ben-Gvir, the national security minister, and Bezalel Smotrich, the finance minister. Both have called for expanding Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank. Their votes keep Netanyahu in power.

Nides was unsparing. “Ben-Gvir is a thug,” he said. “Smotrich’s role in pushing for settlement expansion is, to me, terrible. Terrible for Israel, certainly terrible for the Palestinian people, certainly terrible for the idea of ever having a two-state solution.” He declined to meet with either man during his tenure as ambassador and expects both to fall short of the electoral threshold in Israel’s October elections. The damage, he said, has already been done.

The concept of Greater Israel – the idea that the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea belongs entirely to the Jewish people with no room for a Palestinian state – gained renewed attention after U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee discussed it approvingly with Tucker Carlson earlier this year. Nides said no one raised it with him in Jerusalem. He described settlement expansion as “nefarious,” a deliberate strategy to make a two-state solution impossible before anyone formally abandons it.

Lebanon: Sovereignty or Rhetoric?

For the first time in more than 30 years, Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors sat across a table in Washington this week. The meeting was made possible by Hezbollah’s losses following Israeli military operations and the broader regional conflict involving Iran. Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, who took office in January after a two-year political vacuum, declared that Lebanon is no longer an arena for anyone else’s wars.

Nides was asked whether this time is different. “Out of your mouth to God’s ears,” he said. Hezbollah, the Iran-backed armed group that has functioned as a state within a state in Lebanon for decades, will not disarm quickly. “Do I think it’s going to happen tomorrow? No. These are gradual processes. It takes time.” He pointed to Gaza, where Hamas still controls roughly half the territory despite nearly two years of Israeli military operations, as a measure of how slowly entrenched armed groups lose their grip. What gives him hope is not the politicians. “The Lebanese people who are living in the southern part of Lebanon, even those living in Beirut, they’re tired of this.”

The Nuclear Question

Iran has pursued a nuclear program for decades, insisting it is for civilian purposes. The 2015 nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA and negotiated under President Obama, placed strict limits on Iran’s enrichment capacity in exchange for sanctions relief. President Trump withdrew from that agreement in 2018, and Iran steadily expanded its enrichment in the years that followed.

The American and Israeli strikes earlier this year hit Iran’s nuclear infrastructure for the second time. But Nides was careful about what that means. The capacity has been degraded, not eliminated. Monitoring agreements that once gave international inspectors visibility into the program no longer apply. “From the period when Trump ripped up the agreement to today, the Iranians have only gotten closer and closer to a nuclear weapon,” he said. He credited the Trump administration for doing “a good job of diminishing, not eliminating” Iran’s capabilities. But he was clear about where this ends. “I think ultimately there will be another deal, and it will look very similar to the deal Barack Obama did. It won’t be called that. It will be called some other Trump agreement, the best agreement ever. But that’s how it ends, because at the end of the day, you’re going to have to have an agreement.”

Saudi Arabia and Normalization

The Abraham Accords, brokered by the Trump administration in 2020, normalized relations between Israel and the UAE, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco. Saudi Arabia was the next and most significant target. Riyadh wanted a formal U.S. security treaty in exchange for normalization with Israel. Senior American officials were flying to Riyadh regularly. Then October 7 happened, killing approximately 1,200 Israelis and taking around 250 hostage. Everything stopped.

Asked whether Saudi Arabia has since outmaneuvered Washington by securing F-35s, nuclear cooperation, and a security understanding without conceding anything on Israel, Nides pushed back. What Riyadh got, he said, was a handshake, not a treaty. “What the leadership in Saudi Arabia was trying to achieve is a long-term treaty, which would mean going and getting a vote in the United States Senate.” The Saudis know administrations change.

Asked what he would change if he could, he gave three answers: more aggressive opposition to settlement expansion, new Palestinian Authority leadership, and everything possible to prevent October 7. “It was a complete security failure on the Israeli side. It was a horrendous act by Hamas. And it should never have happened.”

The wars will end. What replaces them is being negotiated now. Whether the people living inside the new map will recognize it as an improvement remains unanswered.