Brett McGurk, who served as the Biden White House's top Middle East coordinator and led years of hostage negotiations, bluntly dismissed the idea that Hamas was ever close to freeing all its October 7 captives in one swoop, calling the notion complete bullshit on Dan Senor's Call Me Back podcast. According to McGurk, US intelligence assessments concluded Hamas intended to hold a portion of the hostages for years as long-term bargaining chips, not release them quickly under any comprehensive deal. He said Hamas repeatedly rejected serious proposals, even ones that included difficult Israeli concessions like freeing prisoners convicted of major crimes, and that the first ceasefire ultimately collapsed because Hamas refused to hand over the young women it was still holding while trying to shift the conversation to releasing older men instead.

McGurk's account pushes back directly against narratives from Qatar and other voices in the talks who have suggested a swift, full release was realistically on the table if only Israel or the US had moved differently. Instead, he described Hamas negotiators dragging out 15 months of talks while clinging to maximalist demands, chiefly a permanent end to the war and a guarantee that Hamas would remain in power in Gaza once the fighting stopped. McGurk argued that genuine breakthroughs came only when military pressure built, not when either side relaxed, framing the group's drawn-out strategy as calculated rather than circumstantial. His comments add a pointed, insider rebuttal to the public debate over who bears responsibility for the long delays in getting hostages home.