NEW YORK CITY — The United States finally has representation at the United Nations after former national security adviser Mike Waltz presented his ambassadorial credentials to U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres on Sunday before the start of this week’s 80th U.N. General Assembly High-Level Week in New York City.

Waltz was nominated to become President Donald Trump‘s ambassador to the U.N. in May after he mistakenly added Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg in March to a Signal messaging group chat discussing U.S. strikes against Houthis in Yemen in his capacity as the U.S.’s top national security aide.

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Waltz, a former Green Beret and Florida Republican congressman, was confirmed by the Senate last Friday after months of delays, excluding Trump withdrawing his original U.N. ambassador nominee, Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), in order to protect Republicans’ majority in the House.

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The Senate, however, did not vote on a separate measure that would have named Waltz the U.S. representative to the U.N. General Assembly, so he will only be the country’s top envoy to the Security Council this week.

American Enterprise Institute senior fellow Brett Schaefer downplayed the difference, underscoring that it is clear Waltz is leading the U.S.’s Mission to the U.N.

“Especially before the general debate, other missions and high-level officials at the U.N. need to have confidence that the U.S. rep represents the wishes of the president and has a direct line of communication with him,” Schaefer told the Washington Examiner. “Unless you have a permanent representative in place, that confidence is not evident and it undermines the ability of the United States to press and engage diplomatically to secure its priorities.”

Spokespeople for the White House and Waltz did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for comment regarding the ambassador’s credentials presentation.

The Israel–Hamas and Russia–Ukraine wars are expected to be top agenda items during this week’s U.N. General Assembly’s general debate.

Hours before Waltz presented his credentials to Guterres, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia, among other countries, recognized Palestinian statehood before Monday’s scheduled debate on a two-state solution to that conflict, convened by France and Saudi Arabia, against the backdrop of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned the diplomatic move, adamant that “there will be no Palestinian state” amid concerns shared by the U.S. that the endeavor rewards Hamas for its Oct. 7 terrorist attack against Israel and complicates the return of remaining hostages in Gaza. Netanyahu is anticipated to be at the White House later this week after Trump promised to end the Israel-Hamas war on Day One of his administration.

“A Palestinian state will not be established west of the Jordan River,” Netanyahu said on Sunday. “Indeed, we doubled Jewish settlement in Judea and Samaria, and we will continue on this path.”

Schaefer similarly downplayed momentum behind Palestinian statehood recognition, describing it as a “symbolic gesture” considering only the U.N. Security Council can recommend that the General Assembly vote on admitting a new member into the multilateral organization and the U.S. would stop that with its veto power on the panel.

“There’s no change in Palestine’s status at the United Nations,” he said. “There is no granting of membership. The U.S. is in a position to veto that. U.S. support of Israel remains strong, robust, unquestioned, and therefore this is more of a public relations move than it is a substantive move that changes the situation on the ground.”

The U.S. earlier demonstrated that support for Israel despite Trump’s increasing frustration with Netanyahu over his war with Hamas by last month denying visas for Palestinian officials to attend this year’s U.N. General Assembly High-Level Week in their “elevated status” capacity and by last week voting against the sixth Security Council draft resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Hamas.

“Unless there’s a specific referral for membership from the U.N. Security Council, there is no window of opportunity for the Palestinians to have membership,” Schaefer said. “They have currently an elevated status in the U.N. General Assembly that allows them to have many of the privileges of membership, but they don’t have full membership. And when this elevated status was granted, there was a specific effort on the part of [former President Joe Biden‘s] administration to warn the United Nations that if certain additional privileges were granted, it would preclude U.S. funding for the United Nations under U.S. law.”

The U.S. voted against the resolution because it did not “condemn Hamas or recognize Israel’s right to defend itself, and it wrongly legitimizes the false narratives benefitting Hamas, which have sadly found currency in this council,” according to U.S. deputy Middle East envoy Morgan Ortagu before the vote.

Center for Strategic and International Studies’s Zbigniew Brzezinski Chair in Global Security and Geostrategy Jon Alterman questioned the U.S.’s visa decision, contending it did not advance U.S. interests and instead has become “a rallying cry for most countries in the world.”

“The U.S. is at center stage at the UN, despite, and perhaps because of, the White House’s distrust for it,” Alterman told the Washington Examiner. “The U.S. is the most consequential actor on the world stage right now, although few countries are very comfortable with where the U.S. is headed.”

The former State Department official added, “I don’t think President Trump is worried about being isolated on Palestine or any other issue, but I do think he underestimates the longer-term costs of acting more unilaterally. There is a basic fact at play; Russia and China have no allies and don’t believe in allies. That gives leverage to every American president.”

But Schaefer defended the decision, dismissing Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas as “an autocrat” who has supported terrorism and fermented “extremism domestically.” The Palestinian Authority, often criticized for its corruption, has endorsed a two-state solution to the conflict with Israel, but Hamas has not.

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The U.S., however, was unable to prevent the U.N. General Assembly last Friday from voting to permit Abbas to address the annual summit of world leaders via video this week after he was denied a visa.

“U.S. opposition to this resolution should come as no surprise,” U.S. diplomat Jonathan Shrier said, also before the vote. “The Trump administration has been clear: we must hold the [Palestine Liberation Organization] and Palestinian Authority accountable for not complying with their commitments under the Oslo Accords, some of them very basic, and for undermining the prospects for peace.”