{"id":78631,"date":"2020-01-13T14:32:41","date_gmt":"2020-01-13T19:32:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/persian-heritage.com\/wordpress\/?p=78631"},"modified":"2020-01-13T14:35:14","modified_gmt":"2020-01-13T19:35:14","slug":"iran-standoff-shines-spotlight-on-new-trump-security-adviser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/2020\/01\/13\/iran-standoff-shines-spotlight-on-new-trump-security-adviser\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran Standoff Shines Spotlight on New Trump Security Adviser"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"VOA – WASHINGTON – In a defining week for President Donald Trump on the world stage, national security adviser Robert O\u2019Brien was a constant presence at the president\u2019s side as the U.S. edged to the brink of war with Iran and back again. The contrasts with O\u2019Brien\u2019s predecessor along the way \u2014 in secret consultations at Trump\u2019s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, in the Oval Office and in basement deliberations in the White House Situation Room \u2014 could not have been more stark.<\/p>\n

While former national security adviser John Bolton spent decades as a conservative iconoclast in the public arena, O\u2019Brien is far from a household name. While Bolton had strong opinions he shared loudly in the Oval Office, O\u2019Brien has worked to establish an amiable relationship with Trump.<\/p>\n

And while Bolton\u2019s trademark mustache was a target of Trump\u2019s mockery, the president is drawn to O\u2019Brien\u2019s low-key California vibe and style.<\/p>\n

\u201cRight out of central casting,\u201d Trump says of O\u2019Brien.<\/p>\n

Rapport with Trump<\/strong><\/p>\n

For all the differences between the two men, though, O\u2019Brien ended up signing off on the same course of action that Bolton had long endorsed: a strike to take out Iran\u2019s top general, Qassem Soleimani. The decision drew retaliatory missile strikes from Tehran.<\/p>\n

The way that O\u2019Brien steered the Trump White House through the process endeared himself to the president and widened his rapidly growing influence in the West Wing.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s a deal guy and the president\u2019s a deal guy,\u201d said Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser. \u201cA lot of people inside the foreign policy establishment are good at explaining why things are wrong but are petrified to put things in play and take calculated risks.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Iran drama was set in motion when Trump summoned O\u2019Brien from Los Angeles to the president\u2019s Palm Beach spread, where Trump was spending a two-week winter holiday. While other top aides, including Secretary of State Michael Pompeo and acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, consulted with the president from afar, Trump wanted O\u2019Brien at his side.<\/p>\n

\u201cRobert was calm, cool and collected, constantly keeping the president updated,\u201d Kushner said.<\/p>\n

More than a half-dozen current and former administration officials and Republicans close to the White House contributed to this account. Many spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.<\/p>\n

Rise of a new voice<\/strong><\/p>\n

Trump has long been known for tuning out old voices in favor of new ones, but O\u2019Brien\u2019s rise in the president\u2019s inner circle has been rapid. The 53-year-old O\u2019Brien, who has handled scores of complex international litigation, has a corner office on the first floor of the White House, a few steps from the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

A sharp-dressing Republican lawyer who worked in the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, O\u2019Brien was appointed by Trump in May 2018 to be the nation\u2019s top hostage negotiator. He successfully worked for the release of several Americans, including pastor Andrew Brunson, who spent two years in a Turkish prison. O\u2019Brien also traveled to Sweden to lobby for the release of rapper A$AP Rocky, imprisoned on an assault charge.<\/p>\n

Bolton, Trump\u2019s third national security adviser, fell out of favor with the president after a series of sharp disagreements, including over North Korea and Iran policies. He was forced out in September. Trump\u2019s previous national security adviser, H.R. McMaster, never developed a personal rapport with the president, who tuned out on McMaster\u2019s long-winded briefing style.<\/p>\n

Bolton had frequently tussled with Pompeo and Defense Department officials and, at times, frustrated the president with his sharp clashes and bureaucratic knife-fighting.<\/p>\n

Honest, collaborative<\/strong><\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien, in contrast, makes it a point to collaborate with the State Department and the Pentagon. People familiar with his work style describe an honest broker who is diplomatic but direct. He is known to present the views of Pompeo and top defense and intelligence officials to the president as he would brief a legal client.<\/p>\n

Colleagues say he doesn\u2019t try to push his own foreign policy ideas on the president and is more deferential to the views from other agencies than was Bolton. He has a plaque on his desk that says, \u201cThere is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn\u2019t mind who gets the credit.\u201d It\u2019s a replica of the one President Ronald Reagan kept on his desk in the Oval Office.<\/p>\n

Administration officials, at least for now, point to a new camaraderie in the latest incarnation of Trump\u2019s national security team: Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper were West Point classmates; Army Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has grown close to Trump; and O\u2019Brien, unlike Bolton, has not tried to pull an end run around others in the decision-making process.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think he\u2019s very comfortable with the idea of the job as a staff job, which I think is the model,\u201d said former Sen. Jim Talent, a Missouri Republican who met O\u2019Brien more than a decade ago when they were advising Mitt Romney\u2019s 2008 presidential campaign. \u201cObviously when the president asks for his advice, he gives his personal opinion.\u201d<\/p>\n

Critics see \u2018yes\u2019 men without gravitas<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where Republicans see as collegial team, some Democratic critics worry that Trump is surrounding himself with advisers too eager to accede to his views.<\/p>\n

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said the administration\u2019s national security team seems to lack \u201cdiscerning voices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., lamented this past week that Trump\u2019s current team lacked the gravitas of earlier advisers, including former Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and McMaster, both retired generals.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople like Mattis and McMaster, who disagree with the president because he\u2019s so erratic, leave \u2014 leaving a bunch of \u2018yes\u2019 people, who seem to want to do whatever the president wants,\u201d Schumer said recently on the Senate floor.<\/p>\n

After the drone strike on Soleimani, there was a deliberate effort to give the Iranians some space to react without committing the U.S. to a military response. Even as Trump delivered fire and brimstone warnings, the rest of his national security team gave indications that not every Iranian response would send American missiles flying. When Tehran\u2019s rockets left no casualties in attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq, the crisis abated, at least for the moment.<\/p>\n

While former advisers such as Mattis and McMaster, attempted to check some of the president\u2019s impulses, O\u2019Brien has been regarded as enabling some of Trump\u2019s high-risk inclinations.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien\u2019s style has been to offer pros and cons before ultimately agreeing with Trump\u2019s decisions, including the moves to abruptly withdraw U.S. troops from Kurdish-held territory in Syria and the military raid that killed Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.<\/p>\n

O\u2019Brien has established good relationships at the White House and on Capitol Hill, said Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time I talk to the president about him \u2014 and his name comes up a fair amount when the president and I are talking \u2014 the president just always speaks glowingly about him,\u201d said the Utah senator. He added that O\u2019Brien \u201chas a client. He doesn\u2019t have his own agenda that he\u2019s pursuing.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

VOA – WASHINGTON – In a defining week for President Donald Trump on the world stage, national security adviser Robert O\u2019Brien was a constant presence at the president\u2019s side as the U.S. edged to the brink of war with Iran and back again. The contrasts with O\u2019Brien\u2019s predecessor along the way \u2014 in secret consultations […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78631","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"translation":{"provider":"WPGlobus","version":"3.0.2","language":"en","enabled_languages":["fa","en"],"languages":{"fa":{"title":true,"content":true,"excerpt":false},"en":{"title":false,"content":false,"excerpt":false}}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/PERSIAN-HERITAGE.COM\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}