UNITED STATES
Democrat members of the US House of Representatives are demanding answers over leaked documents suggesting that career diplomats at the Department of State are being demoted or pushed out because they are deemed “insufficiently loyal” to President, Donald Trump.
In a letter sent to White House Chief of Staff, John Kelly and Deputy Secretary of State, John Sullivan, Elijah Cummings and Eliot Engel, the ranking Democrats on the House Oversight and Foreign Affairs Committees, said the documents were “disturbing”.
The documents consist of a series of emails between State Department and White House officials, as well as outside parties, including former House Speaker, Newt Gingrich, conservative activist Barbara Ledeen and the neoconservative David Wurmser, a former adviser to former Vice-President Dick Cheney and form UN Ambassador, John Bolton.
The Congressmen expressed particular concern over the reassignment of Iran expert Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career PS employee who was the subject of an article in the Conservative Review that called her the “architect” of the Iran nuclear deal, claimed she misled the public about it, and insinuating she had ties to the regime in Tehran.
Ms Nowrouzzadeh, who joined the Public Service in 2005 and later served on former President Barack Obama’s National Security Council, was indeed a key figure in crafting the Iran deal — as were many others.
The Conservative Review article eventually made its way to the White House, where one official claimed that Ms Nowrouzzadeh had been born in Iran (in fact, she was born in the US State of Connecticut).
Ms Nowrouzzadeh had been working on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and has now been reassigned to her previous post at the Office of Iranian Affairs, even though she protested that her assignment had not been completed.
Washington media reports state Ms Nowrouzzadeh is the second “Obama holdover” to be reassigned after coming under attack in the right-wing press.
The reports say that Andrew Quinn, a member of the National Economic Council who had helped negotiate the Trans-Pacific Partnership, had been sent back to the Office of the US Trade Representative after being attacked for his “globalist” views by the ultra-right Breitbart News.
Washington, DC, 16 March 2018
