Zionist Hawk Brian Hook Steps Down:

U.S. Names Another Extremist to Iran Job

Date: 08 August 2020 - 23:54

News ID: ۸۱۵۲۶

WASHINGTON (Dispatches) — The Trump administration’s top envoy for Iran is stepping down just as the United States tries to move ahead with a desperate bid to extend a UN arms embargo against Tehran in the face of widespread international opposition.
Brian Hook announced his departure on Thursday, a day after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the U.S. would call for a UN Security Council vote next week on a resolution to indefinitely extend the embargo, which is due to expire in October.
Hook did not give a reason for leaving. He had just returned to the U.S. from an extended trip to the Middle East and Europe during which he tried to drum up support for the Iran arms embargo extension.
Hook will be replaced after an as-yet undetermined transition period by Elliott Abrams, a noted hawk on numerous policy issues who is the U.S. special envoy for Venezuela. Abrams also will continue in his job as Venezuela envoy, Pompeo said.
Abrams has led the administration’s push to try to force Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from power by backing American puppet Juan Guaido.
Abrams is perhaps best known for his role in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. Abrams, then a National Security Council aide, was convicted of withholding information from Congress about the matter, but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.
A senior Iranian official said on Friday there was no difference between the outgoing and incoming U.S. special envoys for Iran because American officials "bite off more than they can chew”.
"There’s no difference between John Bolton, Brian Hook or Elliott Abrams,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said in a tweet under the hashtag #BankruptUSIranPolicy.
"When U.S. policy concerns Iran, American officials have been biting off more than they can chew. This applies to Mike Pompeo, Donald Trump and their successors,” Mousavi added.
President Donald Trump last year fired his national security adviser, John Bolton, a veteran hardliner on Iran who advocated military action against the Islamic Republic.
Hook, 52, was named to the top Iran role at the State Department in late 2018 and has been instrumental in a U.S. "maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran, including sanctions on its oil exports, since Trump pulled Washington out of the world powers’ 2015 nuclear deal with the Islamic Republic.
Opponents criticized Hook and the administration for overly harsh and indiscriminate sanctions, which they said were hurting ordinary Iranians and failing to change the Islamic Republic’s fundamental policies.
What seems to have further complicated the situation at the White House is the unilateral withdrawal of Washington from the nuclear accord.
"The administration is sunk in a deep rut of its own devising, with no pathway to negotiations,” said Barbara Leaf, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Arab Emirates during the administrations of Trump and his predecessor, former President Barack Obama.
Hook’s departure "does not concern us and is not something we consider as a game-changer,” Alireza Miryousefi, spokesman for Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York, told Reuters.
"The so-called ‘maximum pressure’ campaign waged by the U.S. government has failed,” he said. "Iran is not on its knees, and will not do so regardless of who is in charge of implementing this bankrupt policy.”
Several former U.S. officials, cited by Foreign Policy magazine, said Abrams is likely to use the remaining months before the presidential election to tighten the screws on Iran, whether through an increase in the acts of sabotage inside the country or by further deepening U.S. relations with Israel.
"They don’t have time to get things done, but they do have time to make trouble,” one unnamed official said.
Trump on Friday said he would make a deal with Iran if he won the election as he claimed that Tehran favored his rival Joe Biden. "But if and when we win, we will make deals with Iran very quickly,” he added.
Tehran has rejected talks with the U.S., saying what Washington has got for now is to return to the nuclear agreement and abide by its obligations.