After Four Years Of Foreign Policy Failures, Kabul, Kyiv, & Israel, The Former Biden Team Now Claims Credit For Trump’s 2025 Gaza Ceasefire That Freed The Last Hostages

Tuesday, October 14, 2025, 4:30 P.M. ET. 7 Minutes Read, Opinion, By Jennifer Hodges: Englebrook Independent News,

WASHINGTON, DC.- In one of the most audacious pivots in modern political theater, former President Joe Biden, alongside his foreign policy lieutenants Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan, now quietly seeks to attach their names to a Gaza peace and hostage‐release deal that was conceived, negotiated, and executed under Donald Trump’s 2025 framework. Those familiar with their record are left dumbfounded.

     This is not just a case of opportunism; it’s a revision rewrite by those whose track record is defined by miscalculation, retreat, and diplomatic naïveté. From the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan to a half-measured approach on Ukraine, and from sidelining Israel’s defense to misreading critical intelligence, the Biden era foreign policy team presided over a fracture of U.S. authority abroad. And now they want applause for what they once derided. They’ve got to be kidding.

Sullivan’s “Quiet Middle East” Comment: Prophetic Delusion;

     One moment captures the arrogance and detachment of the Biden foreign policy team more than any other. On September 29, 2023, at The Atlantic Festival, Jake Sullivan asserted that the Middle East was “quieter than it has been in two decades.” That boast, made just two weeks before Hamas launched the catastrophic October 7 terror attack on Israel, now stands as a monument to delusion.

     In that single remark, Sullivan exposed how deeply the administration was willing to lie to itself and the American people, to believe a narrative of peace while the region was rearming, radicalizing, and bracing for violence. Intelligence warnings were ignored, proxies empowered, and Hamas rebuilt its networks undeterred. The Biden team’s insistence on calm was not a strategic posture; it was a false comfort.

     When Hamas struck, doing exactly what every analyst had warned was possible, that statement became emblematic: not a forecast, but a failure of imagination and leadership.

A Catalog of Foreign Policy Failures;

     The attempt now to claim credit for the Gaza outcome must be viewed through the prism of their entire record. Because if there’s a throughline in the Biden-Blinken-Sullivan era, it is a consistent pattern of self‐inflicted setbacks.

• Afghanistan, 2021: Branded as a withdrawal, the day was worse than a defeat. The speed of collapse, the Taliban’s march into Kabul, the desperation at the airport gates, and the abandonment of billions in U.S. equipment embarrassed America on the world stage. Thirteen U.S. service members perished. Allies felt betrayed. Washington’s deterrent credibility was shredded.
• Ukraine War: Instead of a decisive posture, the administration opted for calibrated indecision — sanctions with delays, promises with caveats, and aid subject to bureaucratic review. The result: prolongation of conflict, splintered alliances, and mounting human suffering. Support lagged, plans lacked clarity, and the strategic endgame remained ambiguous.
• Israel & Gaza Strategy: While Trump’s administration pushed the Abraham Accords and laid early infrastructure for regional cooperation, the Biden team reversed direction. Early in office, they softened pressure on Iran; they flagged weapons shipments to Israel as contingent on civilian casualty concerns; and under pressure, they reportedly discouraged Prime Minister Netanyahu from entering Rafah — precisely where Hamas had centralized its command. The message: Israel must fight, but only on Washington’s terms. In retribution, Hamas and its backers sensed hesitation.

     At every turn, the core of Biden’s foreign policy tried to manage outcomes rather than shape them. They traded boldness for hedging, consistency for ambiguity, and deterrence for lectures.

Trump’s 2025 Gaza Ceasefire Plan That Succeeded Where They Failed;

     Into that vacuum stepped President Donald Trump’s September 2025 Gaza peace initiative. Publicly unveiled on September 29, 2025, the plan rested on 20 detailed points laying out an immediate ceasefire, release of hostages, Palestinian prisoner exchange, Israeli withdrawal to pre-designated lines, and the creation of a multinational stabilization force to oversee Gaza’s security and reconstruction.

     Phase One of the agreement, formalized on October 9, 2025, mandated that all living Israeli hostages be returned within 72 hours in exchange for around 2,000 Palestinian detainees, including 250 life-sentence prisoners. It also stipulated that Israel would pull back to the agreed lines while humanitarian corridors would open under international oversight.

     By October 13, the last 20 living hostages were released and reunited with their families. Nearly two thousand Palestinian detainees were freed in parallel, and the region, momentarily, witnessed jubilation.

     Trump declared in his Knesset address that “the war is over” and passed the mantle of peace, not to disclaimers or committees, but to results.

     It is that concrete outcome, the hostage release, the ceasefire, the brokered agreement, that now anchors Trump’s legacy in Gaza. And this is precisely the deal Biden’s former team wants to claim partial authorship of.

The Audacity Of Credit Theft;

     It’s one thing to lobby for lingering influence. It’s another to seek retrospective credit for outcomes one once derided or undermined.

     Blinken, during his tenure, dismissed parts of Trump’s Israeli–Palestinian framework as unrealistic. Sullivan publicly scorned the Trump plan in Foreign Affairs. Biden’s State Department paused or pulled back from initiatives tied to Trump’s Abraham roadmap. And yet today, as the world applauds a breakthrough anchored in the very strategies Trump advanced, the Biden disciples quietly whisper, “We laid some groundwork.”

     That claim is not merely false; it’s insulting to those who built the coalition, made the deals, and put the pressure on an outcome. If Biden, Blinken, and Sullivan had truly been guiding lights on Gaza policy, all of the hostages would have been freed under their watch, not under someone else’s.

A Legacy Defined By Failure, Not Credit;

     At the end of the day, we judge by results, not by spin. The Biden foreign policy team entered office claiming moral clarity, empathy, and global repair. They leave behind a record of strategic drift, misfires, and misread empires.

• They abandoned allies in Kabul.
• They hedged against aggression in Ukraine.
• They second-guessed Israel’s defense.
• They celebrated illusions of peace while trouble brewed beneath their feet.

     Now they seek to ride the coattails of a success they did not engineer.

     History, however, is unkind to claimants without substance. Their reputations rest not on what they say today, but on what they failed to do yesterday. Let them cling to borrowed credit. The world knows whose plan delivered freedom for hostages, peace for Israeli families, and hope for a battered region.

They rewrote the narrative because they lost the war.

The Arrogance Of Failed Men;

     Joe Biden’s foreign policy legacy will be remembered not for peace but for projection, the belief that good intentions could substitute for strength. Antony Blinken, more academic than strategist, mistook moral lectures for diplomacy. And Jake Sullivan, the self-proclaimed architect of Biden’s “integrated deterrence,” failed to deter anything: not the Taliban, not Putin, not Hamas.

     Their record is one of unbroken failure, punctuated by delusion. From Kabul’s runway chaos to Kyiv’s battlefield stalemate to Gaza’s tragic bloodshed, this team’s fingerprints are on every disaster. Their latest bid to claim Trump’s success is less about truth than survival, an effort to salvage credibility from the wreckage they created.

History, however, keeps its own receipts.

Editor’s Note:

This article and op-ed are grounded in public records, verified statements, and contemporaneous journalism. Jake Sullivan’s “quieter than two decades” comment was delivered on September 29, 2023, at The Atlantic Festival. The Trump 2025 Gaza ceasefire plan and its Phase One implementation details are drawn from reporting by Reuters, AP, The Guardian, Time, Le Monde, and analysis from the Council on Foreign Relations. The author’s views are his own.