Pro-Israel Voices Out at National Security Council

The recent firing of pro-Israel staffers at the National Security Council, including Eric Trager and Merav Ceren, comes at a time when President Trump claims that negotiations with Iran are “going well,” even though Iran publicly insists it will never agree to end its program of uranium enrichment, and continues to make threats to “destroy Israel” should the Jewish state try to attack it.

More on the latest firings of pro-Israel staffers can be found here: “Top Middle East, Israel and Iran officials pushed out of NSC,” by Marc Rod and Emily Jacobs, Jewish Insider, May 25, 2025:

The top National Security Council officials overseeing the Middle East and Israel and Iran portfolios — seen as pro-Israel voices in the administration — were among the dozens of officials dismissed in a widespread purge of the NSC on Friday, two sources familiar with the situation told Jewish Insider.

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Eric Trager, who was the senior director for the Middle East and North Africa — the lead official on the Middle East — and Merav Ceren, the director for Israel and Iran, were both Trump administration political appointees but were pushed out in what one official called a purge of “the Deep State” inside the NSC.

Their firings come as voices skeptical of the U.S.’ role in the Middle East increasingly establish a foothold in the administration, and as President Donald Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is also the acting national security advisor, seek to restructure and slim down the key foreign policy-making body.

There are several signs that Trump is turning away from Israel. Without informing Jerusalem, he made a separate peace with the Houthis, promising to leave them alone as long as they did not hit American ships, and confined their attacks to Israel. He entered into direct negotiations with Hamas, using his special envoy Steve Witkoff, without alerting the Israelis. Trump has also expressed impatience with Israel for not “wrapping up” the war in Gaza. He has said he wants the war “to end as quickly as possible,” while the Israeli government says it will need “two more months” to take control of 75% of Gaza. After that is achieved, what then? Will the war stop? Surely that depends not on Israel, but on Hamas, which will have to decide if it has been battered enough by the IDF and needs to return all of the hostages, and further agrees to leave Gaza in order to end the war it is losing badly.

According to Axios, officials cut from the NSC will be moved to other positions in the government. Ceren previously came under fire from the far left and far right after false claims that she had previously worked as an Israeli Ministry of Defense official generated accusations of dual loyalty.

NSC spokesman Brian Hughes defended Ceren at the time and denied the accusations, describing her as “a patriotic American who has served in the United States government for years, including for President Trump, Senator Ted Cruz, and Congressman James Comer. We are thrilled to have her expertise in the NSC, where she carries out the President’s agenda on a range of Middle East issues.” He said she “was never employed by the Israeli Defense Ministry, let alone was she an Israeli official.”…

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The false charge made against Merav Ceren, a specialist on Israel and Iran, that she had formerly worked for the Israeli Defense Ministry, was made by those, on both right and left, who were opposed to her pro-Israel views, and were hoping thereby to engineer her firing. She stayed on, but now she has been fired, along with another NSC staffer, Eric Trager, also known for being well-disposed to Israel. These firings are worrisome, coming as they do when the Trump administration sounds as if it is inclined to accept a deal with Iran which would not require it to end all enrichment of uranium. Many Republican senators have expressed their alarm of how these negotiations are going, amid fears that Iran, despite being economically on its knees, will not agree to end its enrichment program. The president, however, has only said that that there has been “real progress” in the talks, and predicts there will soon be “good news” about a deal with Iran. Israel has not been kept informed about the details being discussed, but fears that Trump will accept Iran’s refusal to end its uranium enrichment program, which Tehran, of course, insists is for the “peaceful use of nuclear energy.”