Former US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has said he would back withholding weapons from Israel, despite opposing such calls during his time in office under the administration of former US president Joe Biden.
“The thing that we were grappling with throughout all of 2024, which is not the case today, is that Israel was under attack from multiple fronts. It was under attack from Hezbollah, from the Houthis, from Syria, from Iraq, obviously from Hamas and from Iran itself,” Sullivan said during an interview on The Bulwark podcast, in an episode that aired Wednesday.
“So the idea of saying ‘Israel, we’re not going to give you a whole set of military tools,’ in that context, was challenging.”
Now, however, he said that “the case for withholding weapons from Israel today is much stronger than it was one year ago.
“One, they don’t face the same regional threats. Two, there was a ceasefire-hostage deal in place and the ability to have negotiations, and it was Israel who just walked away from it without negotiating seriously,” he said, apparently referring to the January-March truce.
“Three, there is a full-blown famine in Gaza,” he said, referring to the UN’s declaration last week, which Israel has rejected. “And four, there are no more serious military objectives to achieve. It’s just bombing the rubble into rubble.”
US President Joe Biden confers with his National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan during a roundtable with Jewish community leaders at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, October 11, 2023 in Washington. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images/AFP)
Sullivan told The Bulwark that he had counseled Democratic lawmakers who were weighing how to vote on resolutions last month on withholding weapons to Israel that doing so was a “totally credible position that I would support.”
His stance on withholding weapons is a marked departure from the tone taken by the White House under Biden, who provided Israel with tens of billions of dollars in military aid between October 7, 2023, and the end of his term in January 2025.
Toward the end of Biden’s term, in November 2024, the administration lobbied Democratic senators to vote against legislation that would have blocked more than $20 billion in weapon shipments to Israel. The shipments included guided missiles, tank rounds, mortars, tactical vehicles, and F-15 fighter jets.
At the time, a US official told The Times of Israel that Biden’s aides — presumably including Sullivan — believed the weapons in question were essential for Israel’s defense, and in any case, wouldn’t be delivered for another year or two.
Withholding the shipments, the US official said then, “only encourages Israel’s adversaries to be more obstinate.”
The administration, including Sullivan, was accused by progressive Democrats of allowing US-supplied weapons to be used against civilians in Gaza.
In October 2024, it appeared as though the Biden administration could take steps to impose a partial arms embargo on Israel, as it warned that it would do so if Israel didn’t start allowing more humanitarian aid into Gaza within 30 days. Ultimately, however, the US said at the end of the 30 days that Israel had made enough progress to remain in compliance with US law, thereby allowing weapons shipments to continue.
Trucks carrying a shipment of 2,000-lb bombs are seen driving at Ashdod Port, early February 16, 2025. (Defense Ministry)
In the end, only one shipment of weapons was ever kept from Israel by the Biden administration: In May 2024, the White House said it would withhold a shipment of some 1,800 2,000-lb bombs and 1,700 500-lb bombs, with Biden threatening to freeze additional offensive weaponry if Israel launched a major military offensive in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, where over one million Palestinians were sheltering at the time.
In July, the 500-lb bombs were eventually released by the Biden administration after the IDF entered Rafah. The Palestinian civilian population in the Strip’s southernmost city had largely evacuated by then.
The shipment of 1,800 heavy bombs was later released by US President Donald Trump when he took office.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
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