Former U.S. envoy to Iran Brian Hook, who reportedly will lead President-elect Donald Trump's transition at the State Department, said that much of the work that was done to build a peace plan in the Middle East in 2020 "is still relevant today."
In an interview with CNN, Hook suggested that reaching a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine could be back in play in the second Trump administration while acknowledging Israelis are "focused on other things" in the wake of the massacre carried out by Hamas terrorists in October 2023.
CNN reported Wednesday that Hook, who was one of the architects of the Abraham Accords with Jared Kushner four years ago, will lead Trump's transition at the State Department.
"If you look at the real important work that Jared Kushner did, when he was essentially leading so much of the diplomacy in the Middle East, he put forward a political and economic vision for peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians that many Arab governments officially said was a credible, good-faith effort, and they called for both sides to come to the table," Hook told CNN.
"That plan, which Israel endorsed, had a plan to a two-state solution," Hook said, adding that the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel resulted in no one being in "much of a mood to be talking about this subject."
However, Hook went on, those efforts "had all of the elements" that Arab countries, namely Saudi Arabia, would be looking for in a peace plan in the Middle East.
"We put forward many hundreds of pages of economic and political vision for peace between [Israel and Palestinians] and I think so much of that work is still relevant today," he said.