Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken rushed to a bunker on Monday as air raid sirens wailed in Tel Aviv, in the most dramatic moment of a tumultuous – and unusually chaotic – Middle East trip for America’s top diplomats.
After his second visit to Israel in four days, Mr. Blinken was due to land in Amman, Jordan, on Monday evening, but his next destination was uncertain. The trip, originally planned for two days, has now been extended to the sixth, with nine stops and counting.
For an official whose travel schedule is carefully planned and rarely changed, Mr. Blinken’s hectic trip has highlighted the scale and complexity of the diplomatic crisis he faces.
Mr. Blinken immediately sought to show U.S. support for Israel after it was attacked by Hamas on October 7; Limit Arab criticism of Israel’s military response. win the release of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza; and to prevent an escalation of the conflict that could potentially involve Hezbollah and Iran and involve the United States.
It was a dark journey for Mr. Blinken, who appeared pained at times as he described the slaughter of Israeli citizens and a growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
Speaking to reporters in Cairo on Sunday, two days after his first visit to Israel, Mr. Blinken acknowledged that everything was a blur even for him. “I think I’ve lost track” of how many countries he has visited, Mr. Blinken said, before correctly putting the number at seven since his departure from Washington on Wednesday afternoon: Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates plus two stops each in Israel, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
For State Department veterans, Mr. Blinken’s trip was reminiscent of that of a recent predecessor. John Kerry, who served as secretary of state during the Obama administration, often extended and improvised his trips – even changing destinations mid-flight, in what was described as “diplomacy out of nowhere.” Not so Mr. Blinken, who typically travels Monday through Friday and returns in time to spend the weekend at home with his two young children.
The ad hoc nature of the trip began just days after the Hamas massacres. Mr. Blinken immediately set about a visit to the region, which he had planned for the following week. The State Department announced that he would depart for Israel and Jordan on October 11 and return on Friday, October 13.
That plan was soon scuttled when State Department officials, in consultation with the White House, expanded Mr. Blinken’s itinerary to include several other major capitals.
“Henry Kissinger’s 33-day journey to reach an Israeli-Syrian withdrawal agreement after the October 1973 war holds the Middle East shuttle record,” said Aaron David Miller, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former long-time State Department official. negotiator. “Blinken’s latest wild ride through the region doesn’t quite compare. But it reflects the uncertainty and chaos of a crisis the government did not anticipate and the complexity of the challenges ahead.”
“From now on,” he added, “the secretary might want to pack a few extra shirts.” If the government wants to make a difference in this region, there will likely be more than a few wild rides in the future.”
It won’t be easy to make a difference. Mr. Blinken has so far failed to achieve one of his goals: ensuring the free passage of American citizens in Gaza through a border crossing into Egypt. Hundreds were still stuck at the sealed border on Monday.
It’s not for not trying. After arriving in the region on Thursday, Mr. Blinken and his staff laid out their schedule for the next day: four countries in one day, from Jordan to Qatar to Bahrain to Saudi Arabia.
Sometimes they improvised with transportation: to get from Tel Aviv, their first stop, to Amman, they took a US military C-17 aircraft that looped over Cyprus, having previously used the Air Force’s usual Boeing 757 aircraft had sent ahead so that the crew could rest while American diplomats met with Israeli officials.
In Jordan, Mr. Blinken met with King Abdullah II at his palace and then with Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the Palestinian Authority, at a villa. In Qatar, Mr. Blinken held a joint news conference with the prime minister at a lavish government building. In Bahrain, he spoke with the prime minister, Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, in a VIP lounge at the airport while royal guards in dress uniforms flanked a red carpet on the tarmac.
To accommodate meetings, Mr. Blinken took a short day trip from Riyadh to the United Arab Emirates on Saturday and then back to the Saudi capital. On Saturday evening, he was preparing to meet with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the country’s de facto leader, who has regained a measure of diplomatic legitimacy less than three years after the Biden administration released intelligence briefings, calling him in for the Jamal Khashoggi is responsible for the murder and dismemberment of the Saudi dissident in 2018.
This meeting brought with it a new element of uncertainty. Reporters traveling with Mr. Blinken were told to be ready at any time to leave their hotel in the secretary’s motorcade to seek an audience with the crown prince, the region’s most powerful Sunni Muslim ruler.
The hours dragged on, from midnight to 2 a.m. and then 4 a.m. Finally, the prince agreed to meet Mr. Blinken at his private farm after 7:30 a.m. on Sunday. (The journalists, who stayed awake most of the night, were ultimately denied entry.)
Officials said it was typical of the prince to keep even important visitors waiting. Still, it was a rare and likely frustrating experience for a sleep-deprived Mr. Blinken, who is used to having foreign officials accommodate his schedule.
At midday on Sunday we went to Egypt – supposedly Mr Blinken’s last stop before returning home. “I know this is the last of your major trip to the region,” Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi told Mr. Blinken at the start of their meeting in Cairo.
Not so fast. A return trip to Israel was added to the schedule and Mr. Blinken spent the night in Jordan before flying back to Tel Aviv on Monday morning and continuing to Jerusalem to meet Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again.
That’s when State Department officials began whispering that President Biden might visit Israel this week. Plans to return to Washington on Monday were scrapped. The new plan was to fly back to Jordan and everyone there to wait for further instructions.
In Jerusalem on Monday, Mr. Blinken made an unscheduled stop at the American ambassador’s residence between meetings with Israeli leaders to borrow a secure line for a call to Washington. Shortly before, the White House had announced that Mr Biden would cancel a trip to Colorado that day for a national security meeting – perhaps the same one Mr Blinken had called.
Mr. Blinken’s trip has also been accused of an unusual peril. Security officers, who normally wear suits, wore body armor and helmets while guarding his plane during its stops in Israel.
On Monday, just after Mr. Blinken’s convoy left Jerusalem, air sirens sounded there, signaling incoming rockets or rockets. Everyone in the city ran for shelter. Sirens also wailed in Tel Aviv. Officials and journalists in the convoy between the two cities were ordered to get out of their cars when sirens sounded and lie on the ground on the side of the road.
After Mr. Blinken met with Mr. Netanyahu and his war cabinet at the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv around 7 p.m., sirens sounded again. The traveling journalists and Israeli soldiers who were standing outside ran into a stairwell inside.
Mr. Blinken and Mr. Netanyahu were meeting in the prime minister’s office at the Shimon Peres House on the base when the sirens sounded. Mr. Blinken and the Israeli officials hid in a bunker for five minutes. They then went to a command center to continue their meeting, which continued into the early Tuesday morning with no end in sight – much longer than originally planned.