Iran standoff highlights new security adviser
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. edged to the brink of war with Iran and back again.
The contrasts with O’Brien’s predecessor along the way — 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. And while Bolton’s trademark mustache was a target of Trump’s mockery, the president is drawn to O’Brien’s low-key California vibe and style.
“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 Iran’s top general, Qassem Soleimani. The decision drew retaliatory missile strikes from Tehran.
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.”
The Iran drama was set in motion when Trump summoned O’Brien from Los Angeles to the president’s lush 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’Brien at his side.