Is Antony Blinken Too Nice to be Secretary of State?

You’ve probably never seen Antony Blinken get mad. When it happens, there’s no mistaking it.

He doesn’t yell or scream. But his voice changes in a way those close to him struggle to describe beyond the word “intense.” He becomes very blunt about what he wants. If there’s a table in front of him, he’ll tap it for emphasis.

The secretary of State has shown this quiet fury in private these last few months as he’s tackled the Israel-Hamas war, the trickiest challenge so far in his tenure.

But maybe it’s time America’s chief diplomat expressed some of that anger in public. Because at the moment, he looks weak.

Israeli leaders have met Blinken’s requests with minor concessions if not outright defiance — and President Joe Biden has given him near-zero leverage to use with them. The most promising war-related talks are being led by others in the Biden administration.

Many State Department staffers, meanwhile, are furious with his handling of the crisis.

Blinken is famously polite, even in informal settings, a reputation he had even as a child. He is also careful to stick to his talking points, so you’re never certain what he truly believes. As I’ve watched him handle this crisis, I’ve started to wonder if he is too nice to be secretary of State.

If Blinken openly signaled his anger, maybe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu wouldn’t so easily oppose his call for a future Palestinian state. Maybe a Blinken more obviously furious about the conflict would mean pro-Palestinian activists —like the ones protesting outside his house — could find more sympathy for a U.S. position they see as unflinchingly pro-Israel.

I posed such questions to nearly a dozen people — some in the administration who work directly with Blinken, other State Department employees, former U.S. officials, analysts and others — ahead of the secretary’s ongoing visit to the Middle East. It’s his fifth trip to the region since the Oct. 7 Hamas militant attack on Israel that launched the war.

The department declined to make Blinken available for comment. But State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said in a statement that regional leaders constantly tell Blinken that American leadership is “indispensable in addressing this crisis.”

“Sometimes results come quickly, sometimes it takes more time, but he will continue to tackle these hard problems because the work he is doing is important for the United States and important for the world,” Miller said.

Most others who spoke to me were granted anonymity because of the sensitivity of the topic. Their responses ranged from disdain for my questions to disdain for Blinken’s performance. The only thing most agreed upon is that Blinken faces an exceptionally hard challenge while operating within the limits Biden sets, including a refusal to condition military aid to Israel.

I also was told things might look different soon.

The Biden administration is working on plans that tie together Palestinians’ desire for a state with Israel’s desire for formal relations with Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia. It is trying to pull together a proposal — a roadmap, a framework, whatever — that includes incentives for all sides to wind down and look past the war. It will include rebuilding the Gaza Strip and reforming the Palestinian Authority, the body that governs parts of the West Bank.

“There are many interlocking pieces, and it is complicated,” a senior State Department official said.

Based on the public signaling about the strategy and the whispers I’m hearing throughout Washington, the approach could involve ramping up pressure on Iran, the Hamas-backing country many Arab leaders and Israelis blame for the current mess. A major peace conference could be one step.

The proposal, which the administration hopes to present to countries in the region, may give Blinken a stronger hand in the weeks ahead as he wrangles with counterparts. So now may not be the best time for Blinken to explode in public.

Besides, people told me, in moments of crisis, anger often doesn’t help — a calm, steady presence is more likely to get the job done.

“There are times and places where a secretary, both in private and at certain points in public, should express a level of anger and frustration, but if you overuse it, it isn’t a very useful tool, and it becomes devalued,” said Dennis Ross, a former U.S. official who spent years engaged in Middle East peace efforts.

Blinken’s biggest headaches have come in dealing with the Israelis, though early on, Arab leaders gave him fantastical lectures and were wary of the optics of being seen as anything other than angry with the United States.

Just days after the Oct. 7 attack, Blinken visited Israel and, in talks with leaders there, insisted that they allow some aid to enter the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip, where Palestinians were fleeing Israeli bombing. He flashed his temper then.

“We were then arguing over single-digit number of trucks of humanitarian assistance getting into Gaza, and there was resistance on the Israeli side over that,” an adviser to Blinken said. “Tony made very clear his views. You could not mistake where he was coming from.”

As part of this, Blinken told the Israelis that a Biden trip to their country was on the line. A Blinken aide recalled that the secretary told the Israelis, in effect: “The president is not getting on his plane until you give me your commitment right now that humanitarian assistance will open.”

U.S. pressure has had impact: There is some aid going into Gaza; dozens of Israeli hostages have been freed; pauses in the fighting have allowed some Palestinians to escape bombardment. But Blinken himself admits the results are paltry given the scale of the suffering in Gaza, where the majority of the 2.2 million inhabitants have been displaced and more than 25,000 killed. The U.N. says the amount of aid entering Gaza is still far below what’s needed.

Blinken also has repeatedly said that eventually a Palestinian state must exist alongside Israel, and that a reformed Palestinian Authority must take the reins in Gaza after Hamas is uprooted. But Netanyahu has on multiple occasions rejected these ideas — clear snubs to Blinken as well as Biden.

What is a secretary of State to do when stymied this way?

Keep trying, his colleagues say. That includes more trips to the region, more phone calls, more speeches. It is, the adviser told me, “a process.” A long one.

Some Blinken colleagues point to the Israel-related exploits of past secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and James Baker, who, too, endured long processes.

Baker practically lived in the Middle East in 1991 as he gathered support for a major peace conference that fall in Madrid. But Baker was also the guy who, in frustration with Israeli leaders in 1990, publicly reminded them of the White House switchboard’s phone number and said: “When you’re serious about peace, call us.”

Blinken is a less colorful figure than many others who’ve ruled Foggy Bottom. His immediate predecessor, Mike Pompeo, was far more easily piqued and spoke of bringing swagger to the State Department. Blinken tries to project a more quiet confidence.

But that has fueled a Washington criticism that he’s more like a staffer than a principal — channeling Biden instead of offering concrete initiatives and views of his own.

Journalists struggle to find spicy anecdotes about Blinken. One major news organization canceled a profile of the secretary because its journalists couldn’t dig up enough interesting material, a person familiar with the situation told me.

Aaron David Miller, a former U.S. official who spent many years negotiating Israeli-Palestinian issues, said one downside for Blinken is that he may have the least-defined piece of all the Biden aides working on the Middle East puzzle.

William Burns, the CIA director, is tackling the talks to free Israeli hostages. U.S. special envoy Amos Hochstein is tasked with trying to calm the tensions between Israel and Lebanon, the main base of the Hezbollah militant group. U.S. special envoy David Satterfield is technically in charge of improving the humanitarian situation in Gaza. Senior National Security Council official Brett McGurk continues to steer efforts to establish diplomatic ties between Israel and the Saudis.

Blinken’s jurisdiction is, in a way, all of the above. But Miller argued that so far Blinken seems to lack a tangible goal of his own.

Blinken doesn’t mind sharing the portfolio, colleagues said. In some cases others have the better channels to accomplish what’s needed, such as freeing hostages. And Blinken deals directly with top regional decision-makers — who all can be confident that he speaks for a president he’s long served.

“He’s not a ball hog,” a second senior State Department official said.

Several observers blame Biden for not giving Blinken enough leeway to pressure Israel. The president won’t place conditions on military aid to Israel and wants to staunchly back Israel in forums such as the United Nations.

As a result, “we constantly raise a range of important issues asking the Israelis for action, but we never attach any consequences,” one frustrated State Department staffer said.

(Biden last week began imposing economic sanctions on violent Israeli settlers in the West Bank, following up on earlier visa bans. But it’s unclear how that will affect Israel’s efforts in Gaza.)

Leaders of humanitarian organizations marvel at how U.S. officials say they’re pressuring the Israelis, yet little changes. “There is this weird sort of almost powerlessness that you get talking to the most powerful government in the world,” Jeremy Konyndyk, the president of Refugees International, said in a recent briefing for reporters.

Blinken’s colleagues say the repeated U.S. visits, rhetorical pressure and actions related to the West Bank show Israel isn’t getting off scot free. And they warn that abandoning Israel is unlikely to lead it to change its actions considering Israelis’ popular anger over the October Hamas attack.

Two Blinken colleagues said he supports Biden’s decision not to withhold military aid from Israel. For one thing, if the U.S. appears to be walking away from Israel militarily, that could embolden Hamas, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, to keep fighting.

“Do you think Hamas should stay in power in Gaza?” the Blinken adviser shot back at me when I pushed the question of pressuring the Israelis.

Still, considering the level of suffering in Gaza, where aid organizations fear a famine is looming, critics say such a justification for keeping the weapons flowing to Israel just doesn’t cut it. It even makes some question whether the Biden team truly supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“They believe in a two-state solution like ‘Yeah, it’s a nice idea,’” one foreign policy analyst said of the Biden circle. “But how much do they actually believe in it? You’re going to tell me how much you actually believe in it by what you’re doing — like, are there consequences for people who oppose it?’” 

Blinken is serious about a future Palestinian state, his defenders insist. “He is not someone who speaks out of both sides of his mouth,” a U.S. official close to Blinken said.

Blinken looks more gaunt, pale and tired than usual these days. He knows his image is taking a beating. It’s clear he resents some critics’ suggestions that he doesn’t care about Palestinian lives. But he also knows how traumatized Israelis are after Hamas killed 1,200 people on Oct. 7 — an achingly high number for a country of just 10 million.

Blinken, whose stepfather was a Holocaust survivor, grows especially frustrated with people who shrug off the current crisis as just a part of a historical cycle of violence, insisting they shouldn’t forget that there’s human suffering on both sides, the second senior State Department official said.

“He’s the most human human,” the official said.

But inside the State Department, many are profoundly unhappy with Blinken’s handling of the Middle East crisis. Some employees have circulated dissent memos that demand, among other things, that the U.S. publicly criticize the Israelis.

During a recent State Department town hall I surreptitiously watched, one staffer pointed out that Palestinians who’d participated in State Department programs were among those pleading with U.S. diplomats for help. The staffer asked Blinken: What more can the U.S. do to end the conflict? The question received loud applause.

Blinken clung to his usual talking points, laying out the incremental progress made on aid and the need to use the moment to aim for the long-term goal of a two-state solution.

He spoke slowly and deliberately, and it was clear he knew how angry some in the crowd were with him.

Maybe that’s why Blinken said he was offering his answers “not by way of justification, but just by way of explanation.” He may find that explanations aren’t enough.