1. Ronald Dermer is an Israeli politician and diplomat serving as the Israeli Minister of Strategic Affairs since 2022 and as head of the negotiations for hostages release since February 2025.
24 Facts About Ron Dermer
1. 2.
Ron Dermer served as the Israeli Ambassador to the United States from 2013 to 2021.
3.
Ron Dermer visited Israel during his childhood to see his grandmother Rivka who returned to live there after Joseph's death.
4.
Ron Dermer's father died of a heart attack in 1984, two weeks before Dermer's Bar Mitzvah.
5.
At a 2014 Wharton School alumni dinner, Dermer said in a speech that he chose to attend the school after reading Donald J Trump's book The Art of the Deal.
6.
In 1993, Ron Dermer left Washington to earn an additional degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University.
7.
In 1995, while still at Oxford, Ron Dermer conducted the polling and formulated the strategy for Natan Sharansky's Yisrael BaAliyah party in its successful 1996 Knesset election campaign.
8.
Ron Dermer worked for Sharansky again in the Knesset elections of 1999, and in 2000 Sharansky recommended that former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, then planning a political comeback, meet with Ron Dermer.
9.
Ron Dermer has been advising Netanyahu ever since and is one of his closest confidantes.
10.
From 2001 to 2004, Ron Dermer wrote a column called The Numbers Game for The Jerusalem Post.
11.
From 2005 to 2008, Ron Dermer served as the economic attache at the Israeli Embassy in Washington.
12.
Ron Dermer explained his decision to do so in an article entitled "Proud to Have Been an American," initially published in the New York Sun and republished in The Jerusalem Post under the title "Why I Left the America I Love".
13.
Ron Dermer worked to convince individual states to divest state pension funds from Iran.
14.
In 2008, after his return to Israel, Ron Dermer worked on Netanyahu's successful election campaign for Prime Minister, and in 2009 Ron Dermer was named Senior Advisor to the Prime Minister.
15.
On December 28,2012, Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon reported that Ron Dermer's name was being floated as a potential replacement for Michael Oren, Israel's Ambassador to the United States.
16.
In March 2013, Ron Dermer left the Prime Minister's Office, and on July 9,2013, the Prime Minister's office announced that Ron Dermer would replace Oren as Israel's Ambassador to the United States.
17.
In 2020, Ron Dermer played a key role in bringing about the Abraham Accords which normalized Israel's relations with the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain.
18.
In light of his contribution to the Abraham Accords and the subsequent normalization agreements, Ron Dermer was nominated by Alan Dershowitz, a loyal backer of former US president Donald Trump, along with Jared Kushner, his deputy Avi Berkowitz and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, for the Nobel Peace Prize.
19.
Ron Dermer's term was ultimately extended through January 20,2021, after serving more than seven years in the post.
20.
Netanyahu's and Ron Dermer's fight to defeat the nuclear deal with Iran would bear fruit with a change of administration in Washington.
21.
Ron Dermer led the firm's strategic investments in the Persian Gulf states.
22.
In December, 2022, following the 2022 Israeli legislative election, Ron Dermer was chosen to head the Ministry of Strategic Affairs in the Thirty-seventh government of Israel.
23.
In December 2016 Ron Dermer was criticized for accepting an award from the Center for Security Policy, a conservative think tank led by Frank Gaffney, which was designated as a hate group by the Southern Policy Law Center.
24.
In December, 2000, Dermer was introduced by Chief Justice Aharon Barak to Rhoda Pagano, a Yale University educated lawyer who was clerking at the time at the Israeli Supreme Court.