The Iran standoff shines the spotlight on the new Trump security adviser.

Was at president’s side during lead-up to strike

WASHINGTON — In a defining week for President Donald Trump on the world stage, national security adviser Robert O’Brien was a constant presence at the president’s side as the U.S. responded to events involving Iran.

The contrasts with O’Brien’s predecessor — in secret consultations at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, in the Oval Office and in basement deliberations in the White House Situation Room — could not have been more stark.

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

“Right out of central casting,” Trump says of O’Brien.

For all the differences between the two men, though, O’Brien ended up signing off on the same course of action that Bolton had long endorsed: a strike to take out Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, head of Iran’s terrorist Quds Force.

The way that O’Brien steered the Trump White House through the process endeared himself to the president and widened his rapidly growing influence in the West Wing.

“He’s a deal guy, and the president’s a deal guy,” said Jared Kushner, a senior White House adviser. “A 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.”

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.

A sharp-dressing Republican lawyer who worked in the administrations of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, O’Brien was appointed by Trump in May 2018 to be the nation’s top hostage negotiator. He successfully worked for the release of several Americans, including pastor Andrew Brunson, who spent two years in a Turkish prison.

Colleagues say O’Brien is more deferential to the views from other agencies than Bolton was. He has a plaque on his desk that says, “There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.” It’s a replica of the one President Ronald Reagan kept on his desk in the Oval Office.

Patrick Semansky The Associated Press file Senior adviser Jared Kushner, left, talks with national security adviser Robert O’Brien as President Donald Trump speaks at a news conference Nov. 13. Kushner said O’Brien, thrust into the spotlight by the Iran crisis, “is a deal guy” who’s unafraid to take action.