President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and envoy Steve Witkoff are also on the list, as is World Bank President Ajay Banga.
The US president has also invited Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Egypt's leader Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, the Turkish presidency and Egypt's foreign ministry said on Saturday. Another invitee is Argentina's President Javier Milei. He wrote in a post on X. According to sources in several international media outlets, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has also been asked and has agreed to participate.
The chairman of the council is Trump himself.
Blair is seen by many observers as a controversial choice. He was appointed in 2007 as the international Middle East envoy on behalf of a quartet: the US, Russia, the EU and the UN. When he resigned from the post eight years later, few steps had been taken towards lasting peace and a two-state solution.
He has also been involved in the so-called Abraham Accords, in which the Trump administration got several Arab countries to normalize their relations with Israel, something that sparked popular discontent in the region as the Palestinians were considered to have been sidelined.
72-year-old Blair's legacy is largely marked by his decision to participate in the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, under the false premise that the country had acquired weapons of mass destruction.
Marco Rubio, US Secretary of State
Steve Witkoff, US Middle East envoy
Jared Kushner, Donald Trump's son-in-law and advisor
Tony Blair, former British Prime Minister
Marc Rowan, CEO of the venture capital firm Apollo Global
Ajay Banga, President of the World Bank Group
Robert Gabriel Jr., US Deputy National Security Advisor
