Thomas Nides was just three months removed from his role as U.S. ambassador to Israel when he accepted an invitation from Jewish philanthropist Dr. Miriam Adelson, who was soon to purchase the Dallas Mavericks, to attend a preseason National Basketball Association game between the Minnesota Timberwolves and the Mavs in Abu Dhabi.
Nides, who grew up in Duluth, Minn., was sitting in a restaurant with Adelson, some of the basketball players, U.S. envoy to the United Arab Emirates Yousef Al Otaiba and American Jewish Committee CEO Ted Deutch on Oct. 7, after the second of two games, in two days, that the teams played in Abu Dhabi.
“I remember this as yesterday,” Nides told JNS. “We were sitting there, and we were toasting the success of the Abraham Accords. I raised my glass both to Yousef, because he and the Trump guys were obviously critically important to this, and obviously to Miriam, though she and I have different political focuses.”
Then the news about Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist invasion started trickling through. Just hours after that toast, the group was discussing leaving the Emirates to get to the United States and Israel.
“I just remember it was a moment of unbelievable hope, that we were on this journey to expand the Abraham Accords, and literally just hours later, we’re talking about the security of the state of Israel,” the Jewish former envoy told JNS.
The United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco have remained partners with Israel and the United States under the Abraham Accords. “I wouldn’t take that for granted,” Nides said.
He added that “Israel probably will never totally heal” from the terrorist attacks of Oct. 7.
“What Hamas did was beyond anyone’s imagination,” Nides said. “We’re so scarred from that. We need to get our hostages home. We need to begin rebuilding Gaza.”
Nides told JNS that he gives “a lot of support to Donald Trump” for backing Israel. “I have no problem with that.”
But the former envoy thinks that former President Joe Biden is unfairly attacked for not being sufficiently pro-Israel. Nides noted that Biden visited Israel two weeks after Oct. 7 and built a coalition to defend Israel from two large-scale Iranian ballistic missile attacks in 2024.
“The idea that Joe Biden didn’t fully and completely support the state of Israel” is a “false narrative that’s just not fundamentally true,” Nides said. “The facts don’t provide it.”
“Plenty” of members of the Biden administration “were trying to push the president to basically, I wouldn’t say ‘abandon’ Israel but certainly soften his position,” Nides told JNS. “He refused to do it” at his own “political peril.”
Nides thinks Biden and Trump are approaching the war and its potential resolution in similar ways.
“I fundamentally believe we’ve won the war,” he said. “If our definition of success is every last Hamas fighter is gone from Gaza, I think we’re all going to be here two years from now.”
“This is not how we define success with Hezbollah or the Houthis or even Iran,” he said.
Success should be defined as Oct. 7 never reoccuring, according to Nides.
‘American Zionism strong and aggressive’
The former envoy’s world changed after that toast in Abu Dhabi and the Oct. 7 attacks.
Nides left a short-lived vice chairmanship at Wells Fargo to return his focus to the Middle East. He worked with the UJA-Federation in New York and with Middle East-based organizations. He was appointed a trustee of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in December 2023.
He also serves as vice chairman of strategy and client relations at Blackstone, a full-time role, and as co-chair of the Middle East-America Dialogue.
JNS asked Nides whether the Democratic Party, in which polls suggest a drop in support for Israel as the Jewish state fights a multi-front war for its survival, can recoup that support for Israel.
“You’re asking the wrong question,” Nides told JNS.
Instead, the former envoy said, the question is about American Zionism.
“Forget Democrats-Republicans. Let’s talk support for Israel among Americans,” he told JNS. “I don’t want to divide this country. It breaks my heart.”
“We have to make sure that American Zionism is strong and aggressive,” he said. “We need to support that.”
