Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s top Iran adviser is leaving the administration, the State Department announced Thursday.
“Special Representative Hook has been my point person on Iran for over two years, and he has achieved historic results countering the Iranian regime,” Pompeo said in an adulatory send-off. “He has been a trusted advisor to me and a good friend. I thank him for his service.”
Hook will be replaced by special representative Elliot Abrams, the State Department’s leading official for the Venezuela crisis. His exit comes in the midst of an effort to extend a soon-to-expire arms embargo on Iran — an initiative that could culminate in the final destruction of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal if the United Nations Security Council can’t come to an agreement by an October deadline.
“There is never a good time to leave,” Hook told the New York Times.
U.S. officials plan to offer a Security Council resolution to extend the embargo next week, but Russia and China oppose an extension and have the power to veto such measures. The arms embargo is scheduled to expire on Oct. 18, pursuant to the terms of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal. Pompeo has threatened to invoke the provisions of that pact that allow the United States to “snap back” all of the international sanctions waived under the deal (a shredding of the pact that would thus restore the arms embargo) if they can’t come to an agreement.
“The Security Council’s mission is to maintain ‘international peace and security.’ The council would make an absolute mockery of that mission if it allowed the number-one state sponsor of terrorism to buy and sell weapons freely,” Pompeo told reporters Wednesday. “One way or another, we will do the right thing. We will ensure that the arms embargo is extended.”
Hook’s portfolio has placed him at the center of one of the thorniest diplomatic issues on the Trump administration’s agenda. The U.S. decision to withdraw from the pact angered European allies who believe that the deal defused a nuclear crisis, and Iran responded by threatening international shipping and intensifying attacks on U.S. allies and American bases in Iraq — an exercise in saber-rattling that culminated in President Trump’s decision to kill Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Yet, Hook regards the U.S. pressure campaign as a success, despite Iran’s persistent truculence, given that the renewed sanctions have deprived the regime of money to finance an aggressive foreign policy.
“By almost every metric, the regime and its terrorist proxies are weaker than three-and-a-half years ago,” he said Thursday. “Deal or no deal, we have been very successful.”
