CIA Pressure Israel Hamas ‘Multi-Stage Ceasefire’ Sullivan China ‘Managed Competition’

CIA Pressure Israel Hamas ‘Multi-Stage Ceasefire’ Sullivan China ‘Managed Competition’

Israel-Hamas hostage negotiations show typical CIA ‘multi-stage pressure’, six-week temporary ceasefire, then instability as Prime Minister Netanyahu hands over ‘Trump regime to new leadership’ Prime Minister Netanyahu said in a speech on the 18th that “the ceasefire is temporary at the moment,” and that “if the second phase negotiations do not work, Israel reserves the right to return to war, and President-elect Trump will support Israel’s decision.”
He continued in a televised speech that “we reserve the right to return to war with American support if necessary.”
The Religious Zionist Party, led by hardliner Bezalel Smotrich in Israel, has threatened to dismantle Netanyahu’s coalition if he does not resume fighting after a 42-day ceasefire.

The New York Times reported on the 19th that “if Smotrich’s party leaves, Netanyahu’s government will have less than half of the seats in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, which could lead to the collapse of the government and new elections.”
In another article, the New York Times reported that “President Biden is again asking CIA Director Burns to combine his intelligence role and his experience as a Middle East negotiator to help find a way to reach a ceasefire and free hostages held in the Gaza Strip.”

“He asked me to swim into the backwaters once,” he said. “Soon after, he was on the phone with David Barnea, the head of Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, and Qatari Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman al-Thani, looking for opportunities to bring about a ceasefire and a new Middle East,” he said.

The six-week temporary ceasefire agreement means that Hamas will still hold about two-thirds of the 98 hostages it has left, including dozens believed dead, after the 42-day ceasefire ends, and Israel will still occupy part of the Gaza Strip.
Israel’s detention tactics remain in place as the release of key prisoners, including the new Hamas leader, Palestinian politician Marwan Barghouti, remains unaccounted for.
The CIA-brokered talks have led the Israeli government to begin bringing home the hostages it is holding, rather than destroying Hamas, which addresses one of the Netanyahu regime’s war goals. The choice of whether to continue is up to Netanyahu.

The key to the negotiations was the return of the hostages and the threat to Prime Minister Netanyahu's grip on power in Israel, depending on the choice, and the final transfer of authority was passed on to the new Trump regime.
In the final days of his term, President Biden appointed CIA Director Burns as the head of the hostage negotiations after Prime Minister Netanyahu appointed Israeli Mossad Director Barnea as the final Israeli hostage negotiation chief, and during the negotiations, Hamas and Israel blocked the agreement several times.

The New York Times reported that the negotiations ended up being a "multi-stage plan developed by Burns' CIA team to 'release some hostages in exchange for prisoners and aid,'" and the final plan was "some Israeli troops would withdraw from Gaza and future issues regarding the governance of Gaza would be postponed to 'future negotiations.'"

CIA Director Burns and Mossad chief pushed this formula for months, and the strategy was that “in the meantime, Hamas’s leadership felt ‘beleaguered’ and its forces were weakened,” while “on the other hand, Israel’s attacks on Iran and Hezbollah created the political space for a deal,” the New York Times reported.
“The question now facing Israel, Burns said, is how to turn its tactical victory over Iran and Hezbollah into a strategic victory,” the New York Times reported. “Burns and his colleagues insist that a ceasefire and the release of hostages are important parts of that change.”

One of Burns’ first acts as director was to establish the China Mission Center (CMC), an expansion of the Korea Mission Center (KMC) under Trump, which brought together a team to analyze China’s economic future, technological capabilities, Chinese intentions toward Taiwan, and the CIA’s operations.

The New York Times reported that, “Director Burns has poured more money and people — and Mandarin speakers — into the issue, and today China-related work accounts for about 20 percent of the CIA’s secret budget,” and that “Director Burns has been attending weekly meetings with senior officials from the China Center.”

A CIA official who has worked on China issues for 30 years told the Times that the meeting was “a very concrete expression of his (Burns’) personal commitment when everything else was going on.”

John Ratcliffe, who was nominated to be the director of the CIA under Trump, announced a “CIA that takes more risks and takes more aggressive covert action,” and he praised Director Burns’ focus on China and promised to further strengthen his efforts, signaling a strengthening of the China strategy, the New York Times reported.

The New York Times went on to say that Director Burns’ CIA is a significant return to the CIA after 15 years of arrests and executions of many CIA agents stationed in China. “China is the greatest long-term geopolitical challenge our country has ever faced,” Burns told the Times. “This is the greatest intelligence priority, and it’s a concerted effort by the agencies to collect intelligence, and it’s starting to pay dividends.”

The Times said, “He said the secret to his success over the past four years has been to focus on priorities like China while also giving the ‘overflowing inbox’ of the crisis they’re facing the attention they need,” he said. “That’s often the hardest thing in government, but I think we’ve managed the balance pretty well.”

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan recently sat down with a NYT reporter in a West Wing conference room to discuss the Biden administration’s China policy of ‘managed competition’ for four years, and the results were reported on the 19th under the title, “Jake Sullivan, White House National Security Adviser, Reflects on China Policy.”

Sullivan, a “managed competition” strategist, said the Biden administration has tried to shift away from a “purely bilateral alliance strategy of hub-and-spoke” to “building this grid structure or network of relationships across the region.” On China’s strategy of “managed competition,”

Sullivan said, “If you want to compete with us, we’re not going to cooperate with you, and there’s not going to be any lines of communication at all. You can’t have it both ways, you have to choose, and we’ve stuck to our theory of ‘managed competition.’”

On strategy, he said, “We will compete, we will compete fiercely, but that does not mean that we should not find areas where we can work together in areas that are mutually beneficial while competing,” and “We must communicate at all levels, including military-to-military communication, to compete responsibly.”

Sullivan said that in negotiations with China, “As we left, the PRC adopted ‘managed competition,’ which is not the way they talk, but the way they conduct the relationship, at least for the time being,” and “We found areas where we can work together on counter-narcotics, artificial intelligence, nuclear risk, and climate, and the U.S. and China have continued communication, including military-to-military communication, and while they compete fiercely, the relationship still has some elements of stability, so it is not on the precipice of a downward spiral at the moment.”
On the achievements of Biden’s four-year ‘managed competition’ strategy toward China, he told the New York Times, “This is a significant step forward in how the U.S. and China have managed their relationship over the past four years,” and “It is consistent with the theory of our relationship management that China is currently reflecting.”