When Middle East peace envoy George Mitchell sat down for an interview before a crowd of nearly 1,000 last year, his interlocutor, New York Times columnist David Brooks, wondered why the political heavyweight had agreed to discuss openly a matter as sensitive as his diplomatic efforts.
“Dan Shapiro told me to come,” Mitchell told Brooks and the crowd at the Sixth & I Historic Synagogue. “When he gave me the order, I saluted.”
Such is the stature of Shapiro, 41, the National Security Council’s senior director for the Middle East and North Africa. He has long been regarded as one of President Barack Obama’s most trusted Middle East confidants.
In the coming weeks, though, Shapiro will emerge from behind the foreign policy curtain as the administration’s new public face in Israel. Shapiro has been selected to succeed James Cunningham as the U.S. ambassador to Israel. The nomination requires Senate confirmation.
Shapiro is expected to shine as a diplomat, say numerous foreign policy experts and Jewish communal officials across the partisan spectrum.
“You won’t meet anyone who’s a harsh critic of Dan,” said Steven Rosen, director of the Middle East Forum’s Washington project. He’s “one of the [administration’s] insiders and people like him.”
Shapiro has earned plaudits from White House officials, leaders of the American Jewish communal world and others. Experts say his nuanced take on the Middle East will make him a vital asset not only to the White House, but also the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office.
“The key Israelis already know him and he’s going to have a very easy time walking into the prime minister’s office and being taken seriously,” said Rosen, a former top official at AIPAC.
With a nonfunctional peace process amplifying tensions between the U.S. and Israel, Shapiro is viewed as a reassuring pick, said Kenneth Weinstein, chief executive officer of the Hudson Institute, a nonpartisan think tank.
“This is someone who has played a key role in the relationship and, frankly, improving the relationship [between Washington and Israel] over the past year,” Weinstein said.
Shapiro was “the best person for the job,” offered former Rep. Robert Wexler (D-Fla.), who himself was rumored to be in the running for the ambassadorship. “He has been a centerpiece in every initiative and decision the administration has made since day one.”
Some of those decisions have cost the White House pro-Israel clout. However, Shapiro is seen as being separate from the administration’s most controversial policies toward Israel, despite having been a central part of Team Obama from the early days and a chief architect of its Middle East outlook.
He has escaped unscathed, observers say, because even the administration’s sharpest pro-Israel critics see him as someone who genuinely cares about the Jewish state.
“An asset he brings is his clear commitment to Israel’s security and survival,” added former Rep. Mel Levine (D–Los Angeles).
“The root of it,” said David Harris, president of the National Jewish Democratic Council and a longtime close friend of Shapiro’s, “is that Dan is profoundly a mensch.”
In 2008, when then–Sen. Obama began forming his campaign squad, Shapiro, a native of Champaign, Ill., was brought aboard as an adviser on the Middle East and Jewish community issues.
To that point he had gained a solid reputation on Capitol Hill, where from 1995 to 1999 he served as a senior foreign policy adviser to Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Shapiro then served on the NSC under President Bill Clinton before becoming foreign policy adviser to Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.).
When Shapiro relocates with his wife and three children to Tel Aviv, where the U.S. foreign mission is based, he is expected to bring newfound attention to what in recent years has been a relatively low-impact diplomatic post.