ALBAWABA - US President Joe Biden has officially nominated Jacob Lew, former Treasury Secretary, to be Washington's newest ambassador to Israel, succeeding Tom Nides, who stepped down from the post in July after having served the role since December 2021.
"Today, President Joe Biden announced his intent to nominate Jacob J. Lew to serve as Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the State of Israel," the White House said in a statement.
During the Obama administration, Lew served as White House chief of staff and director of the Office of Management and Budget. He also served as OMB director during the Clinton administration and as deputy secretary of State for management and resources during the Obama administration.
He currently serves as co-president of the board of the National Library of Israel, USA, a New York-based group that supports the library in Israel and its programs.
Lew's nomination comes as the US works to establish formal diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel and sign a normalization deal with the Saudis.
The Biden administration is also pushing for Israel to be included in the Visa Waiver Program, which would allow Israelis to visit the US without a visa, despite concerns about Israel's treatment of Palestinian Americans.
Lew's appointment comes after the Trump administration helped negotiate the "Abraham Accords," which helped repair historically strained relations between Israel on one hand and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Morocco on the other.
In a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Israeli Foreign Affairs Minister Eli Cohen welcomed Lew's appointment saying: "Welcome Ambassador-designate Jacob Lew as you have been nominated USA Ambassador to Israel, a country you know so well. We look forward to working with you in the spirit of our close cooperation and alliance".
Lew's stance from the Iran's nuclear deal
In 2015, during a Jerusalem Post conference in New York, he defended the Iran nuclear deal, in which Tehran agreed to scale back its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
But Lew has insisted that the Iran deal was good for Israel and that US-Israel cooperation was at its “highest level” under former president Barak Obama.
