US in MENA Newsletter #42: US Continues Push for 60-Day Ceasefire in Gaza, but Progress Remains Elusive Amid Ongoing Tensions
(07/01/2025-07/08/2025)

Edited by Issa Adeli (isadeli.bsky.social)
Another eventful week has passed, with President Trump eager to secure a peace deal bearing his name—potentially bolstering his bid for a Nobel Peace Prize. In a high-profile meeting at the White House, Trump hosted Prime Minister Netanyahu to discuss a proposed 60-day Gaza ceasefire, linked to phased hostage exchanges, an Israeli troop withdrawal, and expanded humanitarian access. As the situation continues to evolve rapidly, staying updated on developments in the coming weeks will be crucial to understanding how this fragile peace effort unfolds. Below is a roundup of the key headlines covering U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East from the past week.
08 July, 2025
US to revoke 'terrorist' designation for Syria's HTS
"In line with President Donald Trump's May 13 promise to deliver sanctions relief to Syria, I am announcing my intent to revoke the Foreign Terrorist Organisation (FTO) designation of al-Nusrah Front, also known as Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS)," said US Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement. Read more at:
08 July, 2025
Netanyahu nominates Trump for Nobel Peace Prize
Netanyahu said during their dinner at the White House, he was presenting Trump with a copy of the "well-deserved" nomination letter that he sent to the Nobel Prize committee because the president has "forged the Abraham Accords. He's forging peace as we speak in one country and one region after the other." Read more at:
07 July, 2025
Israeli officials think Trump could give them green light to attack Iran again
The path forward on the Iranian nuclear crisis will be a primary topic when Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sit down for dinner on Monday evening at the White House. Israel is preparing for the possibility of further military action if Iran tries to revive its nuclear program, and Israeli officials think President Trump could green light renewed Israeli attacks. Read more at:
07 July, 2025
US envoy 'unbelievably satisfied' with Lebanese response to proposal on Hezbollah disarmament
Mr Barrack said he received seven pages of Lebanese remarks on the original US paper - but he said he had not yet reviewed them. He was also scheduled to meet Prime Minister Nawaf Salam, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri and Foreign Minister Joe Rajji. “This is a very important time for Lebanon and the region, and there is an opportunity that must be seized," he said, adding that US President Donald Trump wanted to help Lebanon prosper. "It’s time to change the region. “We do not dictate to Lebanon what it should do, but we support it in its decisions. Lebanon must deal with Hezbollah, not us. Hezbollah must realise that it has a chance for peace. Read more at:
07 July, 2025
Trump says Gaza ceasefire deal could be reached this week
"I think there's a good chance we have a deal with Hamas during the week pertaining to quite a few of the hostages…We've gotten a lot of the hostages out, but pertaining to the remaining hostages, quite a few of them will be coming out. We think we'll have that done this week," Trump said. Read more at:
07 July, 2025
Trump says Gaza ceasefire deal could be reached this week
Tucker Carlson is set to release an interview with the president of Iran in which the former Fox News host asks, “Do you seek war with the United States?” Carlson, who has been a staunch critic of the US’s involvement in Israel’s conflict with Iran, said he expects to be “criticized for doing this interview.” Read more at:
07 July, 2025
Tucker Carlson set to release interview with Iranian president
Tucker Carlson is set to release an interview with the president of Iran in which the former Fox News host asks, “Do you seek war with the United States?” Carlson, who has been a staunch critic of the US’s involvement in Israel’s conflict with Iran, said he expects to be “criticized for doing this interview.” Read more at:
07 July, 2025
Netanyahu says he believes Trump can help seal a ceasefire deal
Public pressure is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire and end the war in Gaza. Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said he believed his discussions with US President Donald Trump on Monday would help advance talks on a Gaza hostage release and ceasefire deal that Israeli negotiators resumed in Qatar on Sunday. Read more at:
07 July, 2025
Hamas government office rejects US accusation of involvement in Gaza aid site attack
The Hamas-run media office described the US accusation as misleading, saying it was aimed at justifying “the continued killing and starvation of Palestinian civilians”. The US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation said on July 6 that the injured American aid workers were receiving medical treatment after a grenade attack caused non-life-threatening injuries. Read more at:
05 July, 2025
US consultancy firm involved in GHF aid scheme modelled plans to 'relocate' Palestinians
A consulting firm involved in the scandal-plagued Gaza Humanitarian Foundation entered into a multimillion-dollar contract to develop the initiative and modelled a plan to "relocate" Palestinians from Gaza as part of its work, a Financial Times investigation has revealed. The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) helped design and run the US and Israeli-backed scheme, which aimed to supplant United Nations-led aid coordination mechanisms in Gaza. Over a dozen BCG staff worked directly on the project, dubbed "Aurora", between October and late May. Read more at:
05 July, 2025
Syria Ready to Work With US to Return to 1974 Disengagement Deal With Israel
In a statement after a phone call with his US counterpart Marco Rubio, Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani expressed Damascus’s “aspiration to cooperate with the United States to return to the 1974 disengagement agreement.” Washington has been driving diplomatic efforts towards a normalization deal between Syria and Israel, with envoy Thomas Barrack saying last week that peace between the two was now needed. Read more at:
05 July, 2025
Trump says Iran has not agreed to inspections, give up enrichment
He told reporters aboard Air Force One that he believed Tehran's nuclear program had been set back permanently although Iran could restart it at a different location. Read more at:
04 July, 2025
Drone Shot Down Near Iraqi Airport Hosting US Troops
A drone was intercepted late on Thursday near Arbil airport, which houses US-led anti-jihadist coalition troops in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, Kurdish security forces said. “At 21:58 (1858 GMT) an explosive-packed drone was downed near Arbil International Airport, without causing casualties or damage,” said the counterterrorism services of the Kurdistan region. Read more at:
04 July, 2025
Secret Trump letter would let Israel resume war despite ceasefire
Israel pushes for backdoor deal with Trump to restart on Gaza war on its terms. The document would give Israel the green light to "renew the fire if our demands with regards to the disarmament of Hamas and the exile of its leaders are not met". Israel would be able to interpret, define and make a judgment call on these terms. Read more at:
04 July, 2025
US imposes fresh sanctions targeting Iran oil trade, Hezbollah
US sanctions target a network led by Salim Ahmed Said, smuggling Iranian oil disguised as Iraqi oil since 2020, worth billions of dollars. VS Tankers, formerly AISSOT, is sanctioned for blending Iranian oil with Iraqi oil and selling it using forged documents to Western buyers. Sanctions also target Hezbollah-controlled Al-Qard Al-Hassan officials for conducting millions of transactions benefiting Hezbollah. Read more at:
03 July, 2025
Trump meets with Saudi defense minister, discusses Iran situation
The talks took place ahead of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Monday meeting with Trump at the White House. The Trump administration wants to push for a historic peace deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel in the coming months. After his meeting with Trump, the Saudi foreign minister spoke on the phone with Chief of Iran's General Staff of the Armed Forces, Maj. Gen. Abdolrahim Mousavi. Read more at:
03 July, 2025
Hamas warns Palestinians against cooperating with US-backed GHF
“It is strictly forbidden to deal with, work for, or provide any form of assistance or cover to the American organisation or its local or foreign agents,” an interior ministry statement said. Read more at:
02 July, 2025
US bombing ‘seriously damaged’ Iran’s Fordow nuclear site, FM says
The US bombing of Iran’s key Fordow nuclear site has “seriously and heavily damaged” the facility, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said in an interview with CBS News. “No one exactly knows what has transpired in Fordow. That being said, what we know so far is that the facilities have been seriously and heavily damaged,” Araqchi said in the interview broadcast on Tuesday. Read more at:
02 July, 2025
Swiss authorities move to shut branch of US-backed Gaza aid group
On Wednesday, the GHF said it was planning to shut its branch in Geneva, after Swiss authorities launched proceedings to dissolve it. The authorities said the GHF had not fulfilled certain legal requirements to operate in Switzerland. Last week, in an apparent reference to the GHF, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres said any operation that funnels desperate civilians seeking aid into militarised zones in Gaza is “inherently unsafe”, and “is killing people”. Read more at:
02 July, 2025
Pro-Palestinian Georgetown student can remain free, US appeals court rules
A pro-Palestinian Georgetown University student from India, detained by President Donald Trump’s administration but then released on a judge’s order, can remain free while fighting deportation efforts, a US appeals court ruled on Tuesday. A three-judge panel of the Richmond, Virginia-based 4th US Circuit Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against the administration’s request that Badar Khan Suri be returned to immigration detention. The 4th Circuit said it found no grounds to overturn the decision by US District Judge Patricia Tolliver Giles to order Suri’s release. Read more at:
02 July, 2025
Trump says Israel has agreed terms for 60-day ceasefire, urges Hamas to accept deal
Trump says Qatari and Egyptian mediators will deliver the final ceasefire proposal to Hamas soon and says a deal is likely to go into effect as early as next week. “My representatives had a long and productive meeting with the Israelis today on Gaza. Israel has agreed to the necessary conditions to finalise the 60-day ceasefire, during which time we will work with all parties to end the war,” Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. Read more at:
01 July, 2025
More than 170 NGOs call for US and Israel-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation's Closure
“Today, Palestinians in Gaza face an impossible choice: starve or risk being shot while trying desperately to reach food to feed their families,” the NGOs said in a joint statement on Tuesday. The signatories include Oxfam, Save the Children, Amnesty, Doctors Without Borders and Action Aid. Read more at:
01 July, 2025
Lebanon drafts reply to US demand for Hezbollah to disarm
Barrack said full disarmament should be completed by November or by the end of the year at the latest. The proposal also refers to establishing a mechanism overseen by the United Nations to secure the release of Hezbollah-linked prisoners by Israel. Read more at:
01 July, 2025
Iran-linked hackers threaten to release emails stolen from Trump associates
An Iran-linked cyberattack group that hacked President Trump's 2024 campaign is threatening to release another trove of emails it has stolen from his associates, including White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles and Roger Stone. Read more at:
01 July, 2025
Trump signs an executive order ending US sanctions on Syria
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the move was designed to “promote and support the country’s path to stability and peace.” The executive order is meant to “end the country’s isolation from the international financial system, setting the stage for global commerce and galvanizing investments from its neighbors in the region, as well as from the United States,” Treasury’s acting undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, Brad Smith said. Read more at:
Good Articles
08 July, 2025
Timeline of Trump's remarks on Palestinian displacement, Gaza takeover
Five days after becoming president, Trump said Jordan and Egypt should take in Palestinians from Gaza while suggesting openness to this being a long-term plan. Trump reiterated this plan on January 27, 30 and 31, and added that he expected Egypt and Jordan to agree to it, even as they rejected the proposal. Read more at:
06 July, 2025
What’s in Trump’s ceasefire proposal and can it end Israel’s war on Gaza?
What is Hamas asking for? An end to the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) - Hamas wants the Israeli military to withdraw to the positions it held before it violated the ceasefire in March of this year - Hamas reportedly wants a US guarantee that Israeli air attacks and ground operations, which have killed thousands of Palestinians, will not resume even if the ceasefire ends without a permanent end to the war.
Netanyahu reportedly agreed to the original US proposal but has called Hamas’s amendments “unacceptable”. He has said he will not end the war until all captives are released and Hamas is “destroyed”. The latter goal has been called impossible by many analysts and is believed to be an open-ended political objective for Netanyahu to continue the war as long as he believes it will serve his personal interests. Read more at:
Edited by Issa Adeli (isadeli.bsky.social)
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Interesting. Thanks for this. For Trump, Iran was a convenient diversion, for Netanyahu, Trump was a convenient idiot. Here’s my take: https://shalyn8.substack.com/p/iran-and-the-bomb-separating-threat