U.S. State Department

Today Secretary of State Pompeo announced the appointment of Steve Biegun to be Special Representative for North Korea. This follows the announcements of Brian Hook as Special Representative for Iran and Jim Jeffrey as Representative for Syria Engagement. These announcements deserve a few comments. The first is to congratulate Pompeo for attracting Jeffrey and Biegun to State and selecting them for top-level responsibilities, and for giving Hook this new task. I know both Biegun and Jeffrey as former colleagues in the Bush administration, and their records of public service are exemplary. Their many talents are impressive and we are all lucky they agreed to leave the private sector and serve yet again. They will join Hook, another former colleague, who has been Director of the Policy Planning Staff and a key figure in foreign policy since the administration took office. The selection of a top adviser to handle Iran shows how important Iran is for Secretary Pompeo and the administration. Jeffrey’s appointment is important for another reason: he signed one of the anti-Trump letters in 2016 and is I believe the first person to have done so who got an administration post. If this means that the blacklist is fraying, the president and the secretary of state will benefit greatly. They will have dozens more names to choose from in seeking top-notch advisers. It’s noteworthy, though, that Jeffrey is getting a non-confirmation post. Perhaps this represents a sort of compromise between Pompeo and the White House: he can select people who signed those letters, but a confirmation hearing could be embarrassing for the president. So hire them, but for “special” positions. As a former assistant secretary of state (in the Reagan administration), I notice something else here. Traditionally the heart of the Department is the regional bureaus. Typically, new secretaries of state arrive and immediately notice that too many people in special spots outside the bureaus are reporting to them. They then try to eliminate all the “special” roles and return to “regular order:” one deputy secretary, a few undersecretaries, and the assistant secretaries heading all the regional and functional bureaus. That way they reduce the number of people reporting directly to them and put responsibilities back in the bureaus created to handle them. Pompeo is not doing this but on the contrary is adding several new “special” envoys reporting directly to him. According to rumor a fourth will be announced in a week or two, for Afghanistan. Why? Presumably because he needs to staff up with first-rate people and cannot otherwise get them fast enough. Confirmation takes many months, with squabbles with Congress and congressional holds on nominees. Pompeo does not want to wait. He is correcting the error his predecessor made by failing to fill important posts fast. By going the “special” route he avoids those delays, gets the people he wants now, and has even been able to get someone who had been blacklisted. There is a price to pay, and it is the weakening of the regional bureaus. The Near East Bureau, for example, has in essence lost control of Syria to Jeffrey and of Iran to Hook—and had already lost the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and relations with Israel to Jared Kushner and Jason Greenblatt in the White House.  This runs the risk that coordination will suffer because all Near East matters do not go through the bureau. A similar problem will exist in Asia. The announcement of Steve Biegun says "As Special Representative, he will direct all U.S. policy on North Korea, lead negotiations, and spearhead our diplomatic efforts with our allies and partners." Missing entirely is a role for the East Asia bureau.  Clearly this problem can be solved if all hands—for the Near East, that means Hook, Jeffrey, the assistant secretary when one is confirmed, and the under secretary-designate for political affairs (David Hale, a former ambassador to Lebanon and Pakistan)—meet often and keep each other fully informed about things that affect all of their bailiwicks. This won’t happen by itself and will require constant efforts, and the same is true of East Asia. Biegun has North Korea, but the bureau has Japan, Australia, and so on.   Morale in the regional bureaus must also be a concern. If many of the most important activities in a region—East Asia, the Middle East, or any other—are happening outside the relevant regional bureau there is a risk that bureau personnel think they are in a backwater, are missing all the action, and do not have the secretary of state’s confidence. Again, this can be addressed if the “specials” use bureau personnel and link up closely to the relevant bureau offices. But this too won’t happen unless there is constant effort to ensure coordination and good morale. Secretary Pompeo is right to take this path forward, given the various constraints--and given the calendar. His department and the administration will be stronger if these critical issues are handled by highly capable officials—and given that the administration is already more than a year and half old, it’s about time. In the next couple of months he will be filling many more department and ambassadorial posts. The pace of nominations has risen and it remains for the Senate to act on those that are pending. If due to the elections in November, and perhaps to the results, the White House is increasingly entangled in political activities, more of the weight of foreign and national security affairs will fall on the State Department. So Pompeo’s efforts to get all the key personnel in place very soon are encouraging. The Senate should confirm his nominees quickly. And the White House personnel office should let him appoint the best people he can find for these special posts—and should also stop fighting him with purity tests never before imposed in a Republican administration on personnel below (and sometimes well below) the assistant secretary level.        

In the last few days there have been anti-government protests all over Iran. The BBC reports this as of Friday night, in a story entitled “Iranian cities hit by anti-government protests.” Anti-government demonstrations that began in Iran on Thursday have now spread to several major cities. Large numbers reportedly turned out in Rasht, in the north, and Kermanshah, in the west, with smaller protests in Isfahan, Hamadan and elsewhere. The protests began against rising prices but have spiralled into a general outcry against clerical rule and government policies…. What began as a protest against economic conditions and corruption has turned political…. Slogans have been chanted against not just Mr Rouhani but Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and clerical rule in general. Demonstrators were reportedly heard yelling slogans like "The people are begging, the clerics act like God". Protests have even been held in Qom, a holy city home to powerful clerics. There is also anger at Iran's interventions abroad. In Mashhad, some chanted "not Gaza, not Lebanon, my life for Iran", a reference to what protesters say is the administration's focus on foreign rather than domestic issues. Other demonstrators chanted "leave Syria, think about us" in videos posted online. Videos posted on social media appear to show clashes between security forces and some demonstrators in Kermanshah. Now compare today’s New York Times coverage. It is entitled “Scattered Protests Erupt in Iran Over Economic Woes.” More remarkably, consider the very first line: Protests over the Iranian government’s handling of the economy spread to several cities on Friday, including Tehran, in what appeared to be a sign of unrest. Ya think? “Appeared” to be a sign of unrest? What else was it, a sign of support for the ayatollahs? And note the Times title again, telling you these protests are all about the economy—a conclusion contradicted by the words being shouted by the protesters, as the BBC tells us. In fact, buried down in the Times story we do find that in Kermanshah “protesters shouted antigovernment slogans like ‘Death or freedom,’ ‘Care for us and leave Palestine’ and ‘Political prisoners must be freed’….” Does that sound like a "protest over economic woes?" The Times story is written by its bureau chief in Tehran, Thomas Erdbrink, one of the very few Western reporters (he is Dutch) accredited to report for U.S. media. Must he pull punches for fear of being expelled from Iran? After all, this is a regime that has invaded embassies (most recently, for example, the British Embassy in 2011) and in 2009 the entire BBC bureau there was shut down and the BBC’s correspondent expelled. In 2014, Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian was arrested and then imprisoned for 18 months. He and his wife are now suing the government of Iran for their maltreatment and torture while in captivity. So perhaps it is wise for reporters in Tehran to watch what they say. But the Times’s report and headline that these are merely economic protests are misleading. Both should be corrected. Meanwhile the U.S. Department of State issued a very strong statement on these protests—which rightly regards them as political: We are following reports of multiple peaceful protests by Iranian citizens in cities across the country. Iran’s leaders have turned a wealthy country with a rich history and culture into an economically depleted rogue state whose chief exports are violence, bloodshed, and chaos. As President Trump has said, the longest-suffering victims of Iran's leaders are Iran’s own people. The United States strongly condemns the arrest of peaceful protesters. We urge all nations to publicly support the Iranian people and their demands for basic rights and an end to corruption. On June 14, 2017, Secretary Tillerson testified to Congress that he supports “those elements inside of Iran that would lead to a peaceful transition of government. Those elements are there, certainly as we know.” The Secretary today repeats his deep support for the Iranian people. The Iranian people rose up against their oppressors in June 2009. Now we are again seeing that this regime rules by brute force, is widely despised, and would be dismissed by the people if ever they got a chance to vote freely.    

Former President Obama and former Vice President Biden have been among the many Democrats who have long complimented former President George W. Bush for his demeanor and conduct after leaving office. That is, he did not attack his successors. He governed himself by a simple creed: I had my time, and now it is their time to govern. What’s more, Bush understood that people who have just left office are in many ways in the worst position to evaluate the work of their successors—because they are not neutral and they are almost certain not to be fair. They are emotionally involved; they have reputations to defend. If they do criticize, they should do so with a great measure of emotional and psychological restraint. This is not important because the former officials will look partisan, nasty, and egotistical; in a sense, who cares if people now out of power forever look foolish or petty. It is important because our political system works better when those who have held the highest offices in the land do not lower themselves into petty partisan or worse yet personal attacks. That is why former Secretary of State John Kerry’s attack on President Trump and his Iran decision yesterday is worthy of note— and condemnation. In a logorrheic six-paragraph attack, Kerry used the following terms: “Dangerous, international crisis, endangers America’s national security interests, reckless, ego, ideology, game of chicken, destabilizing, closer to military conflict, adults in the room, polluted the negotiating waters, lacks common sense, lacks maturity.” And then he said “I can’t think of a more important moment than this one where cooler, wiser voices have had a bigger responsibility.” Indeed—which is why his own attack reflects very poorly on him. His statement reflects neither cool nor wisdom, but rather emotion and ego. The very tone of his remarks undermined his argument, and fortified the criticism that he and President Obama were so determined to get an agreement that they were willing to accept uneven terms—better for Iran than for the United States. During the long negotiations, European diplomats on several occasions told me they shuddered when Iranian foreign minister Zarif went off alone with Kerry, for this often meant further American concessions. No European diplomat ever, in private, told me Kerry was a tough negotiator who outsmarted Zarif. The emotions visible in Kerry’s screed substantiate these criticisms. The President’s decisions on the Iran nuclear deal may be wrong, though that is not my view. We do need a sensible, careful debate on what the JCPOA does, and fails to do, and what the Trump policy may achieve and may sacrifice. We do not need a series of nasty, emotional attacks on the President and his policy—especially from those individuals, to restate the point yet again, least likely to be able to make disinterested judgments.