Author Says Biden's Inner Circle, Not Trump's, Built the Gaza Blockade Policy

Journalist Akbar Shahid Ahmed says he wrote a book about the Biden administration's Gaza policy because the architecture of that war did not start with Donald Trump.

"The policies that we've seen entrenched and, frankly, worsened and become more dangerous and deadly under Donald Trump were really established by Biden's team," Ahmed said in an interview on Democracy Now!.

Ahmed's book, Crossing the Red Line: Biden, His Advisers, and Israel's War in Gaza, is drawn from interviews with more than 150 officials and others involved in shaping U.S. Middle East policy during the Biden years. Ahmed covers U.S. foreign policy for The Washington Sun.

According to Ahmed, many of those officials would not speak on the record.

"A lot of the people I talked to were anonymous for fear of reprisal, for fear of pro-Israel hard-liners preventing them from getting future jobs."

He contrasted that with the public standing of the policy's architects. Ahmed named Brett McGurk, Biden's Middle East adviser, whom he said was "celebrated this week at the U.N.," and Jake Sullivan, Biden's national security adviser, whom Ahmed described as positioning himself for a role in a future Democratic administration. Ahmed said neither man has faced professional consequences for decisions he says "very often" enabled what he called atrocities.

Ahmed told Democracy Now! that Gaza policy in the final period of Biden's presidency was effectively concentrated among a small group around the president, including Sullivan, McGurk, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Deputy National Security Adviser Jon Finer, with Biden himself described by Ahmed as in "mental decline" during that stretch. He said this narrowed circle sidelined broader cabinet and intelligence input on decisions tied to what he called a "full, unprecedented blockade on Gaza."

These characterizations come from Ahmed's reporting and the accounts of unnamed sources collected over more than 150 interviews. No specific memo, cable or on-the-record statement from McGurk, Sullivan, Blinken or Finer was cited in the interview to substantiate the claims about internal decision-making or officials' private legal concerns. Ahmed said officials "very often know" their policy choices violate American and international law, a characterization he attributes to conversations with insiders rather than to any document or admission made public.

Ahmed argues the throughline matters now because current proposals for a different U.S. approach to Israel-Palestine, including from newer policymakers, have to reckon with a policy infrastructure that predates Trump's return to office. "There is bipartisan continuity on Israel-Palestine between the two presidents," Ahmed said, framing Gaza policy as an institutional legacy rather than a partisan rupture.