It’s the season of the unconventional foreign policy adviser: Donald Trump takes advice from his son-in-law and real estate attorney, and Bernie Sanders cites folks who didn’t even know they were advising him.
In this field, Hillary Clinton’s inner circle of foreign policy advisers stands out for not standing out. The names are a who’s who of the last 20 years of national security policy, from Madeleine Albright, the second-term secretary of state for President Bill Clinton, to Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia, the rising Democratic star who is the top party member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
Other major insiders include Tom Donilon, the first-term national security adviser of President Obama known for his closeness to Israel; Leon Panetta, a former Obama defense secretary who has said the president missed opportunities to stem the bloodshed in Syria; and Michèle Flournoy, a former defense undersecretary who in 2014 turned down the opportunity to be the first female defense secretary because she was unhappy with White House micromanagement.
Their deep experience is one common theme. Another tie that binds Clinton’s advisers to her: Many of them, like Clinton, tack to Obama’s right on national security. On Israel-specific issues, that means tending to be more skeptical of the Iran nuclear deal and more reluctant to criticize Israel openly.
In addition to the marquee names, others advising the presumptive Democratic nominee are not immediately recognizable but possess the credentials that — at least until this unprecedented election season — were prerequisites for an entrée into a senior advisory role for a presidential campaign: top schools, experience in government and proven loyalty to the candidate.
Here’s a look at five of Clinton’s top Middle East advisers. Jake Sullivan and Laura Rosenberger are paid staffers, and the others belong to campaign advisory groups and have helped shape policy papers.
Jake Sullivan
A Yale law school alum who advised Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign and went on to advise Obama, Sullivan was Clinton’s deputy chief of staff when she was Obama’s secretary of state. He moved to Vice President Joe Biden’s office after she left at the end of Obama’s first term.
Sullivan, 39, is now the campaign’s foreign policy chief and is touted to become the youngest-ever national security adviser should Clinton win the presidency.
Sullivan was Clinton’s point man in helping to shape the talks that led to the Iran nuclear deal. According to Politico, as Biden’s national security adviser, he brokered the historic 2013 phone call between President Obama and his Iranian counterpart, Hassan Rouhani.
Clinton involved Sullivan in the Iranian gambit from day one. He shared her skepticism of the Iranian regime and has been credited by deal opponents as being one of the tougher Obama administration negotiators.
Laura Rosenberger
A graduate of American University, a factory for State Department wonks, Laura Rosenberger made good on her degree in conflict resolution working with NGOs in the Balkans soon after she graduated in 2002.
She nabbed a career position in the State Department in 2004 and moved up through the ranks, ending her career there as chief of staff to the deputy secretary of state before joining Clinton’s campaign a year ago.
Rosenberger, 35, told the Jewish Journal in January that she comes from a family deeply involved in Jewish life in the Pittsburgh area, and described her core mission in Jewish terms: “Passover is my favorite holiday, because I find very much a driving mission for myself in this, the obligation of the Jewish people who have been free from oppression ourselves to root out oppression wherever we see it,” she said.
Her focus is the Middle East and she has homed in on the anti-Muslim rhetoric that has flared around Trump’s campaign.
Andrew Shapiro
Hang out at pro-Israel organizations during Obama’s first term and you were likely sooner or later to run into Andrew Shapiro, then an assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs.
Shapiro was Clinton’s pro-Israel explainer: When tensions were ratcheting up between the Obama and Netanyahu governments, Shapiro offered facts and figures on the level of military assistance the Obama administration was delivering to Israel.
“I am proud to say that this administration has taken steps to strengthen the U.S.-Israel relationship and preserve it in a new century and era of dramatic change,” he told the Washington Institute for Near East Policy in November 2011. “I believe that no American administration has done as much as ours for Israel’s security.”
Shapiro, 48, who studied international relations at the University of Pennsylvania and then Columbia University, is an old Clinton hand, working for her when she was senator from New York as a senior foreign policy adviser. In her autobiography “Hard Choices,” she credits him with helping to secure Israel’s access to F-35 joint strike fighter jets.
James Steinberg
Eight years after concluding a term as a deputy national security adviser in Bill Clinton’s administration, James Steinberg, 62, became a deputy to his first boss’ wife, as a deputy secretary of state.
Steinberg worked on the Obama campaign, and according to the Wall Street Journal he helped craft the candidate’s 2008 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which — with its emotional recalling of the 1960s black-Jewish civil rights alliance — did much to tamp down for a period skepticism about Obama among pro-Israel centrists.
Tamara Cofman Wittes
Tamara Cofman Wittes directs the Brookings Institution’s Center for Middle East Policy, a gig that is a link to one of the best-known Clinton Israel whisperers, Haim Saban, the Israeli-American entertainment mogul and major Democratic Party funder.
The center was until recently known as the Saban Center, and it organizes the annual Saban Forum, which brings together movers and shakers from Israel and the United States, including, reliably, Clinton.
Wittes was a top Middle East policy official under Clinton when she was secretary of state, and her Brookings biography says she “was central to organizing the U.S. government’s response to the Arab awakening.”
A Hebrew speaker, Wittes has a deep Israel involvement. She’s a board member of the Israel Institute, which advances Israel studies in the United States. She also is an advocate for greater representation of women in the Middle East policy world, routinely using her social media platform to ding all-male panels on the topic.