Posted on 03/17/2017 8:23:40 AM PDT by MarvinStinson
President Trump fancies himself the new Andrew Jackson. But did Jackson allow holdovers from John Quincy Adams administration to guide his foreign policy?
I raise the question because of reports that architects of some of President Obamas worst foreign policies are making policy at Trumps State Department.
Lets first consider the case of Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obamas National Security Council. According to Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review, Ms. Nowrouzzadeh has burrowed into the government under President Trump and is now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department.
Schachtel tells us that Nowrouzzadeh is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-profit that is accused of being a lobbying group for the Iranian regime. NIACs current president, the odious Trita Parsi, has long held close relationships with top officials in the Tehran dictatorship. In February, a group of over 100 prominent Iranian dissidents called for Congress to investigate NIACs ties to the Iranian regime.
According to Schachtel, Nowrouzzadeh had a big hand in the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump repeatedly has called a disaster. Indeed, says Schachtel, one of Nowrouzzadehs primary duties under President Obama was to promote initiatives that pushed the Iran deal.
She fulfilled this duty with aplomb. According to the head of a state-run Iranian newspaper, Nowrouzzadeh was an essential element to pushing through the Iran deal. Editor-in-Chief Emad Abshenass said that she opened up a direct line of communication with the Iranian presidents brother. She helped clear a number of contradictions and allowed the entire endeavor to succeed, Abshenass said of her efforts.
Asked by Schachtel why Secretary Tillerson was retaining Nowrouzzadeh, the State Department did not respond.
Next, consider the case of Brett McGurk. He held various high level positions in the Obama administration (as well as Bush administration), most recently the job of Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (known outside of the Obama bubble as ISIS).
McGurk was an odd choice to lead a global coalition against ISIS. Lee Smith writes:
One of the main reasons Obamas ISIS policy failed was because Sunni actors refused to engage in an intramural civil war whose spoils would go to the Iranians and their Shia allies. McGurk was the point man on this pro-Iran policy, famously arranging for Iran to get $400 million in cash delivered on wooden pallets to the IRGC in exchange for American hostages.
It gets worse:
Remember when the Trump administration promised to make public the secret agreements that Obama made with Iran? McGurk signed some of the secret documents, relieving sanctions on a key financial hub of Irans ballistic-missile program, and dropping charges against 21 Iranian operatives linked to terrorism. Notably, none of those documents has actually been made public.
Maybe thats because McGurks name is on them, or maybe its because former National Iranian American Council staffer Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, Obamas NSC director for Iran, is now on the policy-planning staff in Trumps State Department. The Iran Deal seems like even more of a done deal with every new ballistic-missile test.
Smith identifies more Obama administration stalwarts with key policy-making roles under Trump/Tillerson:
Syria is another area where the Trump White House is now appointing the same people to carry out the same policies that made America great under Obama. The Obama State Departments special envoy to Syria, Michael Ratney, threatened the Syrian rebels on behalf of Vladimir Putinif you do not adhere to the phony Cessation of Hostilities agreement that neither Bashar al-Assad, Tehran, nor Moscow will obey, you will legitimize Russian air strikes against you, with American diplomatic support.
Under Trump, Ratneys role has expanded; in addition to Syria, he is also handling Israel and Palestine issues.
Other notable figures the Trump team kept on include the State Departments Tom Shannon, whom Kerry dispatched to do damage control once it got out that the Obama administration was trying to give Iran access to the dollar.
Chris Backemeyer, the State Departments principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy, is still there, too. His job under Obama was to persuade companies around the world to invest in Iran, despite their wariness of the next administration reimposing sanctions or tearing up the deal.
President Trump may eventually get around to replacing some of these holdovers. As we have observed, however, he seems to be proceeding at a snails pace. Smith attributes the delay to conflicts within Trump-world among factions more devoted to destroying each other than to achieving anything concrete with the power of the office they swore to serve.
Whatever its cause, the presence of the Obama holdovers portends trouble. Says Smith:
While the Trump cabinet is at daggers drawn, while it cant hire the staff to implement the policies the president campaigned onto destroy ISIS, to reign in Iran and crash the nuclear deal, to protect American citizens and interests, and to realign with allies like Israel that Obama made vulnerablethere are much more decisive and deadly conflicts going on almost everywhere around the world. The people who are handling key elements of those conflicts now are the same people who handled those areas under Obama, despite the results of the last election.
Andrew Jackson wouldnt have tolerated this mess.
bmp
Give Trump and Tillerson some time.
It’s awful handy to have a few heads around to chop off when trying to make changes.
Read the whole thing.
Anti Trump propaganda.
Unless you support the “moderate” rebels in Syria.
Trash.
How many thousands of people does he have to replace?
And a handful is what this article is b.tching about?
Give me a break.
Also we are not privy to every going on at the WH. Maybe the writer is. /s
Too bad you couldn’t maintain the links in the original. Lots of backup info.
Defund,demote, reassign, dismantle, fire..did i miss anything?
deep hole in swamp needs draining quick.
That one point about the Syrian ‘rebels’ is confusing
but all this below sounds very bad:
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obamas National Security Council. According to Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review, Ms. Nowrouzzadeh has burrowed into the government under President Trump and is now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department.
Nowrouzzadeh is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-profit that is accused of being a lobbying group for the Iranian regime. .
Nowrouzzadeh had a big hand in the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump repeatedly has called a disaster.
According to the head of a state-run Iranian newspaper, Nowrouzzadeh was an essential element to pushing through the Iran deal. Editor-in-Chief Emad Abshenass said that she opened up a direct line of communication with the Iranian presidents brother. She helped clear a number of contradictions and allowed the entire endeavor to succeed, Abshenass said of her efforts.
Brett McGurk held various high level positions in the Obama administration (as well as Bush administration), most recently the job of Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (known outside of the Obama bubble as ISIS).
McGurk was the point man on this pro-Iran policy, famously arranging for Iran to get $400 million in cash delivered on wooden pallets to the IRGC in exchange for American hostages.
Chris Backemeyer, the State Departments principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy, is still there, too. His job under Obama was to persuade companies around the world to invest in Iran
That one point about the Syrian ‘rebels’ is confusing
but all this below sounds very bad:
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obamas National Security Council. According to Jordan Schachtel of Conservative Review, Ms. Nowrouzzadeh has burrowed into the government under President Trump and is now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department.
Nowrouzzadeh is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-profit that is accused of being a lobbying group for the Iranian regime. .
Nowrouzzadeh had a big hand in the Iran nuclear deal, which Trump repeatedly has called a disaster.
According to the head of a state-run Iranian newspaper, Nowrouzzadeh was an essential element to pushing through the Iran deal. Editor-in-Chief Emad Abshenass said that she opened up a direct line of communication with the Iranian presidents brother. She helped clear a number of contradictions and allowed the entire endeavor to succeed, Abshenass said of her efforts.
Brett McGurk held various high level positions in the Obama administration (as well as Bush administration), most recently the job of Special Presidential Envoy for the Global Coalition to Counter ISIL (known outside of the Obama bubble as ISIS).
McGurk was the point man on this pro-Iran policy, famously arranging for Iran to get $400 million in cash delivered on wooden pallets to the IRGC in exchange for American hostages.
Chris Backemeyer, the State Departments principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy, is still there, too. His job under Obama was to persuade companies around the world to invest in Iran
IRAN DEAL ARCHITECT IS NOW RUNNING TEHRAN POLICY AT THE STATE DEPARTMENT
By Jordan Schachtel | March 14, 2017
https://www.conservativereview.com/commentary/2017/03/iran-deal-architect-is-now-running-tehran-policy-at-the-state-department
A trusted Obama aide who once worked for an alleged Iranian regime lobbying group is one of the individuals in charge of Iran policy planning at the State Department under Secretary Rex Tillerson.
Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, the Iran director for former President Obamas National Security Council (NSC), has burrowed into the government under President Trump. Shes now in charge of Iran and the Persian Gulf region on the policy planning staff at the State Department.
To make matters worse, Nowrouzzadeh is a former employee of the National Iranian-American Council (NIAC), a non-profit that is accused of being a lobbying group for the Iranian regime. NIACs current president, Trita Parsi, has long held close relationships with top officials in the Tehran dictatorship. In February, a group of over 100 prominent Iranian dissidents called for Congress to investigate NIACs ties to the Iranian regime.
One of Nowrouzzadehs primary duties under President Obama was to promote initiatives that pushed the Iran deal. As President Obamas NSC director for Iran, Nowrouzzadeh sat in on high-level briefings along with President Obama, former VP Joe Biden, and former Secretary of State John Kerry, as top White House staff crafted false narratives on the Iran deal to sell to the American public.
According to the head of a state-run Iranian newspaper, Nowrouzzadeh was an essential element to pushing through the Iran deal. Editor-in-Chief Emad Abshenass said that she opened up a direct line of communication with the Iranian presidents brother. She helped clear a number of contradictions and allowed the entire endeavor to succeed,” Abshenass said of her efforts.
Why Secretary Tillerson has decided to keep on a chief Obama policy official remains unclear.
Nowrouzzadehs advocacy for President Obamas directives resulted in an agreement that has done enormous damage to the security interests of the United States and its allies. Iran, the worlds top sponsor of international terrorism, was gifted $150 billion dollars for agreeing to the deal. The deal will not restrict Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. In fact, the regime in Tehran may now have the operational capacity to deploy nuclear warheads within the next decade, according to expert estimates.
Towards the end of President Obamas tenure, Nowrouzzadeh was embedded into the State Department and for a brief time served as its Persian language spokesperson.
In addition to Nowrouzzadeh, several other prominent Obama officials currently serve under Sec Tillerson at the State Department. A former John Kerry apprentice, Michael Ratney, occupies the Israeli-Palestinian portfolio there. Another trusted Obama aide, Yael Lempert, also serves under Tillerson on the same platform.
Why Secretary Tillerson has decided to keep on a chief Obama policy official remains unclear. The State Department did not return multiple requests for comment seeking additional information on Nowrouzzadehs role at the government agency.
How many can he actually replace without the senate slow walking them?
I am so tired of these reports and don’t understand why the administration hasn’t named many, many, many more of its own people by now.
WILL OBAMAS FOREIGN POLICY WIZARDS SAVE TRUMP?
The new presidents approach to Iran, Syria, and Israel looks a lot like the old presidentsbecause the same people are implementing it
By Lee Smith March 15, 2017
http://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/227526/obamas-foreign-policy-wizards
After excoriating Barack Obamas foreign policy, including his realignment in the Middle East, Trump has yet to nominate any officials below the cabinet level at the State Department or the Pentagon, which means there is no one to formulate Trumps own foreign policy, never mind implement it. To fill the growing vacuum at the center of American power, the Trump White House is now handing over key foreign-policy positions to Obama administration re-treads who handled the very same portfolios under the previous president. Trumps tough-as-nails America first foreign policy is starting to look like Obama Litethe exact same policies, implemented by the exact same people. Increasingly, members of Congress are starting to noticeand theyre getting angry.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary James Mattis withdrew his pick for a top Pentagon spot, Anne Pattersons ambassadorship to Egypt. Pattersons dealings with the Muslim Brotherhood rankled top Republican lawmakers, and made her perhaps the least popular American in all of Egyptand Mattis was compelled to take her name off the board.
The rest of the world isnt waiting for the Trump White House to get its act together, though. Russia is reportedly sending troops to Egypt, where they will be in position to shape the chaos afoot in neighboring Libya to Russias advantage. North Korea has embarked on a spree of violence, with the assassination of Kim Jong-Uns half-brother and ballistic missile tests. Iran is also testing ballistic missiles and continuing to harass U.S. Navy ships in the Persian Gulf, despite Trumps campaign promise to shoot out of the water any Iranian vessels that tested him. Sure, its still early in the life of the administration, but American allies, as one ambassador from a dangerous region told me recently, have no idea whats going on.
Whats really bizarre is that the Trump team keeps blaming damaging leaks to the press on Obama holdoverswhen the Trump team is hiring Obama holdovers. They may have caught Anne Patterson before she got past the velvet rope, but Obama people staff key positions elsewhere, on Israel, Iran, ISIS, and Syria issues. Which makes sense, since the policies they are tasked with carrying out are so far exactly the same as they were under Obama.
***
Yael Lempert, a National Security Council staffer from the Obama administration that the Trump team decided to keep on, is in Jerusalem this week with the White Houses special representative for international negotiations, longtime Trump lawyer Jason Greenblatt. Lempert, one former Clinton official told me, is considered one of the harshest critics of Israel on the foreign policy far left. From her position on the Obama NSC, she helped manufacture crisis after crisis in a relentless effort to portray Israel negatively and diminish the breadth and depth of our alliance. Most Democrats in town know better than to let her manage Middle East affairs. It looks like the Trump administration has no idea who she is or how hostile she is to the U.S.-Israel relationship.
This is the same Trump administration that said it was going to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem? Making big promises to Jewish voters during campaign season and then dumping them in the trash along with yesterdays campaign lawn signs is old hat in Washington, though. And after eight years of Obamas very public ministrations to his favorite donors, Jewish votes are especially cheapyou can name Louis Farrakhans former spokesman as vice chairman of your party and the faithful will sigh with relief. So why should Trump bother?
But Trump is showing the same disregard for his big promises when it comes to people who arent Jewishlike the adherents of the Islamic State, which he firmly swore to demolish. To make good on that promise, the Trump team has selected Brett McGurkthe same Brett McGurk who served as the Obama administrations special envoy to lead the campaign against ISIS. One of the main reasons Obamas ISIS policy failed was because Sunni actors refused to engage in an intramural civil war whose spoils would go to the Iranians and their Shia allies. McGurk was the point man on this pro-Iran policy, famously arranging for Iran to get $400 million in cash delivered on wooden pallets to the IRGC in exchange for American hostages.
Remember when the Trump administration promised to make public the secret agreements that Obama made with Iran? McGurk signed some of the secret documents, relieving sanctions on a key financial hub of Irans ballistic-missile program, and dropping charges against 21 Iranian operatives linked to terrorism. Notably, none of those documents has actually been made public. Maybe thats because McGurks name is on them, or maybe its because former National Iranian American Council staffer Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, Obamas NSC director for Iran, is now on the policy-planning staff in Trumps State Department. The Iran Deal seems like even more of a done deal with every new ballistic-missile test.
Syria is another area where the Trump White House is now appointing the same people to carry out the same policies that made America great under Obama. The Obama State Departments special envoy to Syria, Michael Ratney, threatened the Syrian rebels on behalf of Vladimir Putinif you do not adhere to the phony Cessation of Hostilities agreement that neither Bashar al-Assad, Tehran, nor Moscow will obey, you will legitimize Russian air strikes against you, with American diplomatic support. Under Trump, Ratneys role has expanded; in addition to Syria, he is also handling Israel and Palestine issues.
Other notable figures the Trump team kept on include the State Departments Tom Shannon, whom Kerry dispatched to do damage control once it got out that the Obama administration was trying to give Iran access to the dollar.
Chris Backemeyer, the State Departments principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy, is still there, too. His job under Obama was to persuade companies around the world to invest in Iran, despite their wariness of the next administration reimposing sanctions or tearing up the deal.
Trumps promise to tear up the Iran Deal now looks like ridiculous bluster. As long as the people who had a professional and emotional stake in striking the deal are making policyand thanks to the Trump team, they still arethe deal is safe. Meanwhile, the Iranian nuclear program creeps toward the finish line. If Trumps election to the presidency was literally beyond the imagination of the entire American political class, the result of his election is equally unimaginablenot only to the elites who never believed he would become president but to many of the people who elected him.
Both Trump and his critics have misread the current situation quite badly. The White House honestly appears to believe that it is being bedeviled by something like a deep state, including the prestige media, sections of the intelligence community, and Obama sleeper cells, which is determined to sabotage a Trump presidency through underhanded means. In fact, its just a few political operatives doing what political operatives, on the left or the right, have always done in Washingtonwage political warfare against the other side with whatever it has. Of course, the Democrats are going to use anything they can to even the oddsstreet marches, the press, social media. But there is no secret plotits all out in the clear.
Sure, the other side has a stake in puffing its tail to make it look bigger than it really is. But the Democratic resistance isnt a bunch of secretly powerful agents on the verge of toppling Trump; thats ad copy pitched at donors to get them to invest in a social-media campaign. The Democrats are openly weak. Republicans hold the White House, both houses of Congress, the preponderance of governors mansions and state legislatures, and soon the Supreme Court.
Whats worrying is that the Trump White House has to date proved so bad at the basics of policy-making, communications, and governing that it has made a bunch of dopes tweeting about secret Kremlin conspiracies to control the American government through a Manchurian Candidate presidency look like wizards. If Trump is a Hitlerian threat to democratic institutions, critics will need to explain why a strongman of such vast ambitions has proved incapable of staffing his own government or even beginning to implement any of the policies on which he campaigned.
The reality is that the worlds most famous executive has so far failed in the most fundamental job of any executivemanaging conflict. The White House cant staff itself because it seems that the factions inside Trump-world are more devoted to destroying each other than to achieving anything concrete with the power of the office they swore to serve.
The exact choreography of the knife-fighting that makes the Trump White House such an exciting place to work may be unclear, but the outlines arent hard to discern; whoever put the kibosh on Anne Patterson at the Pentagon was probably also responsible for stopping Elliott Abramss nomination for the No. 2 post at the State Department. One theory holds that Trump special adviser Steve Bannon is pulling those strings. Bannons power base is premised largely on his personal relationship with the president, while a businessman like Rex Tillerson and a Marine general like James Mattis both represent large bureaucracies. If you dont have a large institution serving as political ballast, then youd want to see how your rivals fare toppling vertiginously through space. Or maybe Mattis really is a Democrat in GOP camouflage working behind enemy lines. Or maybe Tillerson would rather be back handling oil deals than glad-handing diplomats. Maybe Bannon really is a world-historical agent of chaos worthy of his own Balzac novel.
The main point is this: While the Trump cabinet is at daggers drawn, while it cant hire the staff to implement the policies the president campaigned onto destroy ISIS, to rein in Iran and crash the nuclear deal, to protect American citizens and interests, and to realign with allies like Israel that Obama made vulnerablethere are much more decisive and deadly conflicts going on almost everywhere around the world. The people who are handling key elements of those conflicts now are the same people who handled those areas under Obama, despite the results of the last election. No wonder the results look equally awful.
“Snail’s pace” - It hasn’t even been two months. It will get done.
Why?
Makes no sense to me.
Don’t be surprised if Trump will never be able to drain the swamp.
After all, it had a couple of centuries time to grow to the present size.
It may no longer be drainable.
OBAMA HOLDOVERS RETAIN KEY STATE DEPARTMENT JOBS
Thanks, MarvinStinson.
Trump’s greatest, and most likely FATAL error.
T-Rex is supporting the embeds because he wants to seek their counsel- and then do the opposite.
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