Who is Brian Hook, whom Trump fired?
American media reported a few hours ago that the new US President Donald Trump announced in a message on social media that he had “fired” Brian Hook, the former US Special Representative for Iran in his first administration; however, it is not known from what position exactly Hook was fired and what is clear is that Hook has no place in Trump’s future administration.
Who is Brian Hook?
Born on June 4, 1968, Brian Hook is a lawyer and government politician who received his bachelor’s degree in marketing from the University of St. Thomas in 1990, his master’s degree in philosophy from Boston College, and his law degree from the University of Iowa College of Law. From 1999 to 2003, he was a law partner at the firm of Hogan & Hartson in Washington.
Hook served as Assistant Secretary of State for International Affairs, Senior Advisor to the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Special Assistant to the President for Policy in the Office of the White House Chief of Staff, and as an advisor to the Office of Legal Policy at the Department of Justice during the George W. Bush administration. He also served as an advisor to John Bolton when he was U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Opposition to the Trump Presidency
Brian Hook was a staunch Trump opponent before Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election; Hook was a member of a group of foreign policy advisers to Republican nominee Mitt Romney in the 2012 election who wrote a letter of protest signed by 121 Republicans opposing the Trump presidency in the 2016 election.
Despite this protest, Brian Hook, with the coming to power of the first Trump administration and during the time of the then US Secretary of State “Rex Tillerson” in 2017, worked as the director of the Office of Policy Planning of the State Department. During the time of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Hook’s name was heard more in matters related to Iran when he took over the leadership of the working group that was tasked with negotiating with European governments to amend the JCPOA by Donald Trump’s wishes.
After Tillerson was fired from the US State Department by order of Trump and the appointment of the hardline US Secretary of State “Mike Pompeo”, Brian Hook was one of the few diplomats who was spared from the subsequent purges of the Tillerson team and was considered one of Pompeo’s close associates.
Hook was appointed as the “Director of the Iran Desk” at the US State Department or the US Representative for Iran in 2018 and, alongside hardliners in the Trump administration such as Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Nikki Haley, and others, actively participated in hostile actions against the Islamic Republic and in advancing the maximum pressure campaign against Iran.
According to US media reports, Brian Hook was also among those who had close ties to the terrorist organization Mujahedin-e-Khalq (the hypocrites,) and in 2019, a few days after the assassination of martyred Lieutenant General Soleimani and martyred Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, he secretly met with a representative of this terrorist organization. Hook resigned from his position as the Director of the Iran Desk at the US State Department in 2020 and was replaced by “Elliott Abrams”.