Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy who helped broker the Israel-Gaza ceasefire and hostage exchange alongside President Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, says he is now working on ending Russia's unprovoked war in Ukraine — and says Iran is also looking for a deal.
"Peace is infectious now," Witkoff told 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl during an interview last Thursday.
President Trump in June named Witkoff, a real estate developer, the Special Envoy for Peace Missions. Witkoff joined Ukraine's President Zelenskyy last month during a "coalition of the willing" summit and has already met one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin several times.
During Mr. Trump's address to Israel's parliament last week, the American president spoke about Witkoff's first meeting with Putin, which took place in St. Petersburg in April.
"Steve had no idea about Russia, had no idea about Putin too much, didn't know too much about politics, wasn't that interested," Mr. Trump said.
The president continued, explaining that the planned 20-minute conversation between Witkoff and Putin had spun into a five-hour affair. "I said, 'What the hell were you talking about for five hours?'" Mr. Trump recalled.
As Russia-Ukraine peace talks continue, Mr. Trump met with Zelenskyy on Friday at the White House and is planning a meeting with Putin in Hungary in the coming weeks.
When Stahl spoke with Witkoff on Thursday, he said he was optimistic that the Israel-Gaza deal had given the administration momentum — and said that several other countries are looking to the Trump administration to broker peace.
"Doing a peace deal is becoming infectious," Witkoff said. "People want to do them."
In addition to his work mediating between Ukraine and Russia, Witkoff told Stahl his team hopes to have a peace deal between Algeria and Morocco within the next two months. The U.S. envoy also said Iranian leaders are now calling him, too.
"We're there to, you know, hopefully have a long-term diplomatic solution with Iran," Witkoff said.
Witkoff's partner in Middle East diplomacy, Jared Kushner has worked in real estate investing. For a pair with backgrounds in real estate, matters of international peace brokering are viewed as dealmaking. It is an unconventional path to diplomacy, especially when complex histories and decades of grievances are in the mix.
Kushner said Mr. Trump's own foreign policy perspective appears to be outside the norm, a view Kushner calls "pragmatic realism."
"[It means a] focus on interests over values sometimes," Kushner said. "And figure out where do we have joint interests with other countries, and pursue those joint interests. And then where you have differences on interests or values, discuss those privately and try to find ways to get it to the best place possible."
Kushner and Witkoff agreed that, when it comes to international diplomacy, they view the issues as simple. It is the people, they say, who are complicated.
"I like to say that our titles should be secretary of miscommunication and correcting miscommunication because that's a lot of what we were doing out there," Witkoff said. "You know, we were trying to build trust between people who didn't trust each other because of decades of mis- and distrust. And that's not an easy thing to correct."
The video above was produced by Brit McCandless Farmer and edited by Scott Rosann.
Witkoff on Ukraine: "Peace is infectious now"
Witkoff on Ukraine: "Doing a peace deal is becoming infectious"
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