PBS News Hour - Full Show - Inside the U.S. negotiations to free the Oct. 7 hostages

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Before the Oct. 7 attacks, the U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia were on the brink of a historic agreement. Compass Points moderator Nick Schifrin discusses how close they were to normalization, the rush to release hostages and the U.S. response to the war in Gaza with Brett McGurk. He served across four administrations and is the author of "Brink.": Inside the Race to Free the October 7 Hostages." PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy

Three years of war and what could have been. Just before Hamas's October 7 terrorist attacks, the U.S., Israel, and Saudi Arabia were on the brink of a historic agreement. Tonight, new details about how close that effort was, the rush to release the Israeli hostages and where the region goes from here. Coming up on Compass Points. Hello and welcome to Compass Points. It is an axiom of U.S. foreign policy that you may try to ignore the Middle East, but the Middle East will not ignore you. And so it has been over the last decade, from the war against ISIS, the fall of Bashar al-Assad, the October 7th terrorist attacks, and now the war in Iran and the conflict in Yemen.

And one man who's had a front-row seat, whether he liked it or not, to all of it, is Brett McGurk, former advisor in Baghdad during the U.S. invasion of Iraq, special envoy to counter ISIS under President Obama and Trump, and then President Biden's National Security Staff Coordinator for the Middle East. And he is the author of the new book, Brink, Inside of the United States. the race to free the October 7th hostages. Brett, thanks very much for being here. It's great to be here, Nick. Let me start with what could have been.

On October the 6th, 2023, the day before the October 7 terrorist attacks, you met with the Saudis about a NATO-like security deal and a civil nuclear deal between the United States and Saudi Arabia, a Palestinian path to statehood and Saudi normalization with Israel, with a deadline for the end of the year. Looking back, how close were you? Well, let me back a little. The book starts with President Biden dispatches me right on his first day as president. And I go to see Mohammed bin Salman, the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia on day three of the Biden presidency.

And I'm sitting with the Crown Prince in a tent in Al-Ula, Saudi Arabia. And I present to him that the new President Biden's going to make some changes in Saudi policy. We're going to stop certain weapons sales, some offensive weapons. The Crown Prince asked me, what's the difference between offensive, defensive weapons? I said, we're going to lift the terrorist designation on the Houthis, which was part of the conflict in Yemen,

as you know. And we're going to release the report on Jomal Khashoggi's death and all sorts of other things. The journalists who's death, the Crown Prince was implicated. Right, so I had to lay this down with my instructions from the President. And the President told me, you know, try to thread the needle, we have to make these changes,

but we can't rupture our relationship with important country. And it was in that meeting, and described it in the book, I just kind of got a little testy. I said, well, where do you want to be? I said to the Crown Prince, where do you want to be in two to three years? And he kind of laid out this where he wanted to, he said, I'd like to try. He was kind of in full peacemaking mode. I like to open a back channel with the Iranians through Baghdad. We both knew the prime minister there. I think I can find a way to wind down the Yemen conflict. But he said, for those things to happen, the US and Saudi

have to be seen as working together. And then he put on the table, this was after the Abraham Accords, recognizing Israel, diplomatic relations with Israel. And we talked about that and what it would take. And obviously, it's a package deal, defense treaty, and all sorts of other things. But I said, look, we got to get through this period first. And we didn't really get back to that agenda until 2022.

And by the time, October, but you lost time, but you gained it back. October the 7th, October 6th is here, in retrospect. How close were you? You had it that month. By October 6th, it's after a year of negotiations. And we've done some big, you know, when the president went to Saudi Arabia and Israel in the summer of 2022, we... Mm-hmm. With the fist bump, which is a whole other story.

And that's in the book as well. But before that, a lot of diplomacy was done. There was an issue on these Red Sea Islands where U.S. forces had been for a number of years. We negotiated a deal with Saudi, Israel, and Egypt to remove those forces. Saudi Arabia announced opening its airspace for all civilian Israeli planes. And then we really got into the negotiation. So by October 6, to bring it up to your question, we had negotiated the security agreements. We negotiated the civil defense agreements.

We put together a package for a Palestinian part of the deal. People forget this, but a month before October 7th, Saudi almost had no relations with the Palestinian Authority since 1967. Saudi delegation going to Ramallah for a decade. Yeah, they sent a senior. So this was all moving. And on October 6th, I shook hands with Princess Rima on... Saudi ambassador.

Saudi ambassador. We're going to try to close this deal by the end of the year, all the pieces, and roll it out early 2024. And the Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, was traveling to Israel and Saudi Arabia that weekend. So that was October 6. I can't say, if not for what happened just a few hours later, we definitely would have got there, but I think we would have gotten there. Much of the book is about what happens after October 7, specifically the effort to release

some 250 hostages or so that Hamas took into Gaza. You acknowledge at times there were chances to release a smaller number of hostages than Israel wandered at different times. You always had a calculus, and you call this a moral dilemma that was at times paralyzing. Why?

Well, the perverse nature of a hostage deal, Nick, and I've done hostage deals with Iran, never handled anything like this. But the hostage taker is holding human lives and there's always a price they put on the table. It's often an extortionist price. It's one that cannot be met with reason, but there's a price on the table. And as time goes by, the kind of moral onus shifts to the negotiator because, well, you know, just meet their price and get the hostages out. And in this case, Hamas's price, after October 6th,000,

7th, killing 1,200 Israelis, taking 251 hostages, was we stay in power. Yaha Sinwar, the head of Hamas, I stay in power. We're going to reconstitute our forces right on Israel's border. And we go back to October 6th status quo and release all Palestinian prisoners, including all the hardcore Hamas operas. That was basically their demand, and that was impossible for, I think, any Israeli government to meet. Unacceptable forever.

And so you had, and on the Israeli side, their core demand was at the end of this, Hamas will never be empowering Gaza again. So how do you bridge that and try to get the hostages out? You can't just say get the hostages home and the war. Like, how do you actually do it? And that's what this book is about. And so, you know, a few weeks into the war, a very difficult negotiation, we had a deal for all women and children. This included toddlers.

There's a story Abigail. The American Girl is in the book. Her parents were killed in front of her on October 7th. She was taken hostage, you know, 80-year-old grandmothers. And women and children, very clear, in exchange for about 10 Palestinian prisoners for each hostage. We negotiate this. It's hard fought. We eventually get it down.

And the war stops for eight days, and people forget this, Nick. You know, the war style. This is November now. This is November. Early on, this is fire. A few weeks after the war. Hostages start coming out.

Hamas releases the older women, the young kids. They release a lot of the mostly Thai workers, foreign workers that were taken. And on day eight, and it's worth pausing on this, it gets to your question, the kind of moral quandary. Hamas says, you know, the younger women, these are women in their 20s, some early 30s,

most taken from the Nova Festival or from their homes, including some young Israeli soldiers. They say, you know, we can't find the younger women. And let's skip to the older men. Keep the ceasefire, that's all good, but we'll get to the women later. So what do you do? And I describe this moment in the book, because I had come home, it's midnight here in Washington,

December 1st, and the older men are in rough shape too. So what do you do? And this is what the hostage taker does. And I go back to that moment a lot in my head, and I really reflect on it. in the book, the Israelis were saying, look, just at least one woman, one girl will keep the ceasefire, Hamas refused, and the war started again that night. And it was the Israeli view, and there was a consensus in their system, as far as we could tell, we're talking to everybody,

that if we allow Hamas to hold on to the younger women, they'll never come out. And Sinwar, again, Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, who was released in a hostage deal, in 2011 for one Israeli soldier, a thousand Palestinian prisoners, including Sinwar, it became clear to me he wanted to hold hostage. At the end of this crisis, he intended to have hostages in his hands.

Because he held Galad Shalit, that Israeli soldier, but for five years, two mentally ill Israelis had been there for 10 years when October 7 started. So, So, any, the war started again that night, and I did not think at the time it would take 14 months to get back to a deal.

I do want to ask one question about the end of the war, or at least the end of that phase of the war. Extraordinary collaboration between you and Steve Whitkoff, President Trump's envoy for the Middle East. And after many months of painstaking negotiations, yet this moment, that's you and Whitkoff there, you admit that you wouldn't have gotten over the line without his pressure. Whitkoff at one point told a Moss official, I'm not letting you or Hamas eff this up. Whitkoff flew to Israel on a Saturday during the Sabbath to tell Netanyahu stop the bull S, and if you want to walk away,

you call Trump. And at one point screamed at the head of Mossad, there's one thing you don't do to me or Trump back out of an effing deal. Bottom line, would that deal have been made with the war have ended without his pressure? teamed with all of the work that had gone on that you had done? Well, I think you have to, and I think that partnership between Steve and between the Trump team and the Biden team, which I tell in the book, I think, is extraordinary.

It's unlikely in the polarized Washington. But when Trump won the election, this is the key point. The whole regional equation had changed. So Yaha Sinwar, who we've been talking about, well, he was killed on October 16th. October 2017, 2024. 2024. So just before the election of President Trump, a few weeks before. Hezbollah, you know.

In Lebanon had been severely. Israel goes north. Hasbola is about to cut its own deal, which cuts the legs out from under Hamas. Fundamental change in the entire crisis. Iran is in rough shape because we've just defeated a second missile attack, and Israel takes out their air defense systems, or strategic air defense systems. And so after the election, I called Jared Kushner and said, hey, we might have a chance here to get a ceasefire in Gaza, get the hostages out, start coming out before the inauguration, but only if we're working together.

And he readily agreed. When Biden and Trump met in the Oval Office, they agreed to work on this together. I met Steve Wickhoff together with Mike Waltz, who was Jake Sullivan's incoming successor's National Security Advisor. And, you know, we start talking every single day. Now, the deal itself is a detailed 17-page agreement, which had been put together in a painstaking way. And when we go to Israel, I went to Israel in early December of 2024, and we see Netanyahu. This is with me and Jake Sullivan. And Netanyahu says, I'm going forward with the deal. is the list of hostages from Hamas.

There's so many details. I want to accelerate you, but the pressure was extraordinary and it was unique from Trump and Wickcoff. When Whitkoff came to Doha, we had two issues left. We were in a Zopa, Zone of Possible agreement, and we had to bridge them. And there's a scene in the book

where Steve goes to Jerusalem to see Beebe, and I dial in from Doha and with Israel and dial into the same meeting. And yeah, without that, without Steve at that moment, given that Trump was about to come in, and I say this very clearly. I think credit goes to both teams. But yeah, Steve played a critical role there in the end. But I just, there were so many issues we had to nail down before we got to that final issue.

I want to ask about pressure. There's been a lot of conversation since the Biden team left, the administration, about dialing up or down the pressure on Israel. In retrospect, do you think that you could have done differently with Netanyahu to prevent some of the destruction in Gaza? You've got 90% of the buildings in Gaza destroyed. You've got 74,000-plus people killed. And you've got recent comments from Vice President Harris, who said, we should have done more,

we had more levers. Even Jake Sullivan, National Security Advisor, says the case for with holding weapons from Israel today, this is him talking last August, is much stronger than it was one year ago, citing, quote, full-bone famine. In retrospect, do you think there could have been a different approach or a different pressure on Netanyahu? Looking at particular points in 2024 from the prison of 2026, I think is a little bit misleading. And I've really tried to write this book from the immediacy of the moment. how to use private pressure, which is very much in the book, about how these conversations went down. Biden's telling Netanyahu on the phone, look, you know, there's no Santa Claus, that kind of thing.

Versus public statements and pressure, which you have to keep in mind, there's multiple audiences here. Homeney in Iran, Sinwar, who holds the hostages, and you have to kind of get that calculation right. I do not think, and I go through it in the book, that there was some key moment in which, and I say it in the book, If there was a shortcut to ending this crisis and getting the hostages out, stopping the war, Biden would have taken it. I have no doubt. I mean, there wasn't.

And to the horror of Gaza, which nobody can deny. You know, Nick, I've known you for a while. I mean, I did the ISIS campaign. And in the Battle of Mosul, We got a million people out of Mosul before the battle. But the battle was still, went on for almost nine months. And I went there a number of times. I was in East Mosul after the battle.

And East Mosul was kind of buzzing. I had a cup of tea there with a number of residents and police officers. Then I went to West Mosul, where ISIS made its last stand. And it was completely, as far as the eye could see, destroyed. thousands of civilians died there. ISIS was defeated. I'll never forget standing there. And in Mosul, you did not have this underground...

Hamas built, Nick, you got it. Hamas built for 20 years in underground military infrastructure, 20 years, under the eyes of the UN, everybody. And it was for them. And it was for the hostages. Civilians could not go under there. And so I do not discount in any way the horror of Gaza. I, the question is to uproot that infrastructure. And I say it in the book openly.

It cannot be done without massive destruction. And we try, the question, how do you get civilians out of the war zone? Well, you tried with the... Big issue that we, and yeah, we went to the Egyptians and others. And unlike every our country, of the war in the century, there was like, nobody could answer this question. How do you get civilians out? We've got to get civilians out of the war zone.

And the Israelis tried time and again. But no, it's horrible, but this is the war Sinwar designed. And I wish it was far less destructive, and I wish it ended sooner. There's a lot to talk about there, but I want to get to Iran, because I want to ask about today and what the president has described as his reasoning for launching this war. The U.S. has long called Iran, the largest state-sponsored terror in the world, proxy network across the region for decades, including those killing Americans during the last couple of the United Administration. And this is how President Trump

argued about the war recently. This should have been done a long time ago by other presidents, because with time, it just got worse. Got worse. Does the president have a point when he says This is why he launched the war that no previous president was willing to launch? So, Nick, there's a chapter in the book called Under Attack. And if you want to kind of really understand what it's like dealing with the Iranians, that chapter is very key. And I acknowledge President Trump is the first one to go with the Iranians directly. And I was in the situation room with President Bush, where, you know, our troops are being attacked by these very sophisticated roadside bombs

that Iran was pumping into Iraq. And what do you do? President Trump in his first term took out Qasem Soleimani. Head of the Coosz-Forest, head of the... And I explained in the book, attacks did not stop.

In fact, a month before Biden came into office, we had the largest attack at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad in 10 years. That's what we walked into. So it is true, he's the first president to take it on directly, and I think there is some merit to that, to finally doing that.

But it doesn't solve the problem. And the book, if you read the book, as you know, in Brink, you're with President Biden, as we're debating how to use U.S. military force in this maelstrom. As we're under attack, we're taking casualties, took a casualty on Christmas Day, 2023. Attacks against us, which had stopped before October 7th. Iran turned it on, and they were under attack every single. day. They're attacking our living quarters. The president dispatches me to Iran to see the Iranians. It's all in the book. And finally, unfortunately, we have three Americans killed in Jordan from an Iranian drone, and President Biden ordered very devastating airstrikes, including strikes against an Iranian commander in Iraq, which is all in the book. But President

Trump is now grappling with something every president, since Jimmy Carter has grappled with, how to deal with this revolutionary ideological system. And I have negotiated deals with Iran. I've been involved in kind of military conflicts with Iran. It's a vexing, vexing problem. But the strategic implication of this war, I mean, Yogi Berra says it's difficult to predict, especially about the future, but let's predict

a little bit of the future. Because it seems to me that when I talk to regional officials and you do the same, they are making a chief conclusion that the U.S. and Israel have failed to knock out the Islamic Republic. Now these regional countries need to come up with some kind of non-aggression pact or economic integration with Iran. And at the same time, this map, this constellation of bases, you see it right there, is going to get smaller.

There's just no doubt that the U.S. was vulnerable when it came to Iranian attack. So how fundamental do you think is this shift that this war has created in the Middle East? I think the Middle East right now, I mean, I would describe it as kind of a shift. kind of a post-World War II like moment. It is kind of a tabliaraza. I mean, first principle questions in each capital, and they're being looked at differently. And they're asking fundamental questions,

not assuming anything about decades of US. Yes, about the future and about alliances, and you have shifting alliances. That is all happening in a very dynamic fluid way. and nobody knows exactly how this is going to play out. I mean, Iran is also under enormous economic pressure, and they have never faced a blockade. They have a central command, our military,

naval presence, has a blockade on all Iranian. It's unprecedented. And some of the president's advisor just want to focus on that for the next six months. Yes, and you can talk. I've met experts who believe that this pressure is going to cause Iran to really crack. But again, back to those Gulf Allies,

do you see a flip? Do you see hedging? Do you see a different future for our allies who have been there by our side for decades who see us not accomplish what we aim to accomplish? I think it's still very fluid. There's always some hedging. It's fluid. But this, what President Trump in his second term here has used force against run twice.

So last year, there was the strikes against the nuclear sites, which was a, I think when you use force, you'd have to have a clear objective. and that was, I thought, kind of textbook. The war that started in February that we're still in suffered from a lot of the lessons we should have learned in the past. You had a kind of unclear objective, almost a regime change objective. On the first night, you take out all the Iranian leadership, which I have.

And just in the last 15 seconds we have, the strategic end, we don't know, but it's very ambiguous. And it's difficult for our office. It is a very fluid dynamic moment, and nobody knows how it's going to play out. And yes, that leads to hedging, no question. Yeah, fundamental shift, perhaps.

Brett McGurk, thank you so much. The book is called Brink, Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages. Thank you so much for being here. And that's all the time we have for now. Thank you at home for joining us. I'm Nick Schiffran. We'll see you here again next week on Compass Points.