What a Kamala Harris Middle East policy team could look like

Kamala Harris has been tight-lipped about how she would approach US foreign policy challenges in the Middle East. Her interview on CNN last week, intended to be a media debut, touched on the only crisis in the region that can’t be ignored.

“I’m unequivocal and unwavering in my commitment to Israel’s defence and its ability to defend itself,” Harris said when asked about Israel’s war in Gaza, before adding that “far too many innocent Palestinians have been killed”.

While Harris isn’t talking much about the Middle East, campaign insiders and Biden administration officials are already circling in the wings, whispering names that could fill out positions handling Middle East files in a Harris administration.

Ironically, despite Harris’s guarded position on the Middle East, one thread that unites many insiders who could make her potential administration is their previous work on the failed 2013-2014 Israeli-Palestine peace talks.

“For the Middle East, think John Kerry 2.0 and people who made their bones during the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations,” a former senior member of the Obama administration told Middle East Eye, referring to the US secretary of state from 2013-2017.

'Think John Kerry 2.0 and people who made their bones during the Israel-Palestine peace negotiations'

- Former senior US official, Israel-Palestine peace talks

The views of Harris’s likely national security adviser, Phil Gordon, have already been well documented in profiles that reveal a sceptic of the US’s ability to change regimes in the Middle East.

After his stint as President Barack Obama’s top Middle East policymaker, Gordon published Losing the Long Game in 2020, taking aim at what he said were the Trump administration’s defacto efforts at regime change in Iran.

Gordon argued that the US’s ability to achieve its goals by altering governments in the Middle East is limited, whether it is allies who are unpopular with human rights groups like Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, or foes like Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Almost across the board, the names circulating point to a Harris administration resembling the Obama White House more than that of Harris’s boss, President Joe Biden.

The Gaza Strip critic

The official advising Harris on her statements about Gaza is a prime example. He could find himself in line to become the next White House coordinator for the Middle East and North Africa, a position currently held by Brett McGurk.

Ilan Goldenberg worked on the 2013 peace process before he became Middle East advisor in Harris’s Vice Presidential office. In August, he was named the Harris campaign’s director of Jewish outreach.

“Ilan has Kamala’s ear—he knows the Israel-Palestine file like the back of his hand,” a former senior official in the Obama administration who speaks regularly with Goldenberg told MEE.

Like the half-dozen other current and former Democratic administration officials contacted for this article, he spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Normally a position like that would go to someone more in touch with domestic US politics, Ilan is a foreign policy guy through and through,” the former official said. “Harris isn’t playing politics. She has Ilan there to tell the Jewish community, from the view of the Middle East, why a ceasefire is necessary.”

Born in Jerusalem but raised in a conservative Jewish family in New Jersey, the 47-year-old entered the White House as a junior advisor on Iran at the Department of Defence during the Obama administration.

In 2018, Goldenberg published an article in Haaretz that said Israel would face a “reckoning” unless it agreed to a long-term ceasefire with Hamas and ended its blockade of Gaza.

He argued for a reconciliation deal between Hamas and Fatah to bring the Palestinian Authority back into Gaza, without which he warned “There will come a moment when basic order collapses altogether, or Israel is forced to invade and retake Gaza”.

Failed Israel-Palestine talks

Goldenberg shared the Kerry State Department’s disdain for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his top interlocutor, Ron Dermer.

“Biden’s guys don’t like Bibi, but the Gordon guys really hate him,” one current State Department diplomat told MEE, speaking on condition of anonymity. Gordon was an advocate of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Harris, who has tried to carve out a niche for herself in the Biden administration with a focus on the day-after plan for Gaza, could lean on other officials who have previously focused on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

Samantha Sutton, a Goldenberg colleague from the Obama era peace talks who is the National Security Council’s director for Israel and Palestinian affairs, could be tapped for a bigger role in a future Harris administration.

A career State Department official, Sutton worked in the Trump administration when the US moved its embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and unveiled the Abraham Accords, which normalised Israel’s ties with the UAE, Morocco and Bahrain. She is also on good terms with Phil Gordon.

Another Obama-era figure with ties to Gordon is Prem Kumar, a former senior director for the Middle East and North Africa on the National Security Council from 2013 to 2015 who heads Albright Stonebridge Group’s Middle East practice.

“Prem was Phil’s guy there. He is high up on the list,” a former senior Obama-era official told MEE.

Gordon has bounced between Democratic administrations since the Clinton era. Outside of government, he stuck mainly to the think tank world, holding top positions at the Brookings Institution and Council on Foreign Relations. His short stint in the private sector was at Albright Stonebridge Group, an advisory agency closely associated with the Democratic Party.

Gordon’s old Obama-era colleagues are being closely watched because Harris herself has little foreign policy experience.

“She’s not one of these people who has been around forever and has her own team. I think she will lean on Phil,” a friend and former Obama colleague of Gordon told MEE.

One potential advisor who Harris could lean on from her Senate days is Halie Soifer, her former national security advisor. Soifer now heads the Jewish Democratic Council of America, a progressive, pro-Israel organisation campaigning for Harris.

Soifer consults with Harris’s husband, Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, but congressional insiders say she was not particularly close with Harris. Harris's current deputy national security advisor, Rebecca Friedman Lissner, has worked on the Ukraine war file. 

US Ambassador to Jordan 

One figure who insiders say would be a natural fit for the Harris administration and is a friend of Gordon is Robert Malley, but the former Iran nuclear negotiator was placed on leave and had his security clearance suspended in April 2023 on allegations of mishandling classified information.

While Harris has taken a small lead over Donald Trump in recent polls, most analysts say the 2024 presidential race is too close to call.

If Democrats expand their slim control of the Senate it could make confirmations easier for other positions like the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs and deputy assistant secretary of defence for the Middle East, the state and defence department’s top Middle East positions.

One rising star within the State Department who could be tapped is the US ambassador to Jordan, Yael Lempert.

A 20-year career diplomat and Arabic speaker, she handled negotiations between the US and Israel over military aid during the Obama administration. “Yael is a gunner. If Harris wins, it will be her time,” a current State Department colleague told MEE.

Another official who has flown under the radar amid the focus on Gaza is the 59-year-old US ambassador to Morocco, Puneet Talwar. He served as Biden's Senate Middle East advisor and was assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs during the Obama administration.