The U.S. State Department is “heartbroken” at the “heinous,” antisemitic murders of Yaron Lischinsky, 30, and Sarah Milgrim, 26, Israeli embassy staffers, in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Tammy Bruce, the department spokeswoman, said at a press briefing.
“Every day, we talk about in this room the aftermath of one of the most obscene attacks on Jews in history. The Oct. 7 massacre was a reminder to the world that Jew-hatred and murder is the hallmark of terrorists and monsters around the world,” Bruce told reporters on Thursday.
“The envy feeding this hate is thousands of years old,” she said. “It is now the 21st century, and it is time for the barbarity to end.”
The State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service is supporting law enforcement’s investigation of the murders, Bruce said.
“There is a reason why we stand with the Jewish people here in the United States and around the world, because America has a history of not allowing the monsters among us to destroy life, the future and everything that matters,” she said.
Bruce also told reporters that a U.S. team wouldn’t be readying for a fifth round of nuclear pact discussions with Iran in Rome on Friday “if we didn’t think that there was potential for it.”
Amid mixed messaging from the Trump administration, Bruce said that the American position is that Iran can carry out “no enrichment” of uranium.
It’s “a significant structural change in what Iran thinks it’s going to be doing,” Bruce said of the U.S. effort to negotiate an end to enrichment. Bruce made no mention of Iran’s ability to keep a civilian nuclear program intact.
Marco Rubio, the U.S. secretary of state, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee earlier in the week that the first four meetings focused only on enrichment, with no talk of Iran’s ballistic-missile program, its funding and support of regional terror proxies, and other issues of concern.
Bruce said there are “points that you have to get to before you discuss elements” outside of enrichment.
Iranian forces fled Syria upon the ascendance of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, with U.S. President Donald Trump announcing earlier this month that he will begin the process of lifting sanctions on Syria to help get the country’s economy going.
Asked about the pace at which those sanctions can be lifted, Bruce said that sanctions are administered by several different departments and agencies.
“It is a process that will take some time, but as we know with the Trump administration that they’ve sped up the train a bit and they understand the importance of getting things done quickly,” Bruce said. “That is their intention of getting things done quickly.”
In Gaza, the Trump administration is preparing to implement its Gaza Humanitarian Foundation initiative, which would use private U.S. security companies to secure humanitarian aid delivery routes and sites.
Hamas has been accused of siphoning off massive amounts of aid intended for Gazan citizenry, in part by looting aid trucks en route.
Bruce said that the new foundation “seems like they’ve structured something that can manage” securing the aid and keeping it out of Hamas’s control.
The controversy of using private armed security forces in Gaza, which would include Americans, should be outweighed by the expectation that needed aid will reach “the people who all of you have wondered about whether or not they’re going to get it,” Bruce said.
“That’s my story, and that’s the story of humanity and the people of the Gaza Strip,” she said.
Regarding disputed figures about the amount of aid that Israel has allowed into Gaza this week, after it lifted its blockade on Sunday, Bruce said that “if you’re getting a report from Israel about the nature of what has moved into the region, I would suggest that you should take that report seriously.”
The U.S. State Department spokeswoman was also asked about South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s visit to the White House this week, and how much the Trump administration’s frustrations with Pretoria lay in its pursuit of war-crimes charges against Israel.
Bruce said it is one of many components at the heart of bilateral tensions.
“That speaks to the intention of a regime, in addition to their behavior with other nations, their foreign policy, how they would view the victims of Oct. 7, the Jews, as those who should be referred to a criminal court versus Hamas, in addition to having a rather cozy relationship with Iran,” Bruce said.