US President Donald Trump has announced that his administration's special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, Robert O'Brien, will be the country's national security advisor, a week after John Bolton was fired from the post.
Trump made the announcement in a tweet on Tuesday, saying, "I am pleased to announce that I will name Robert C. O’Brien, currently serving as the very successful Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs at the State Department, as our new National Security Advisor. I have worked long & hard with Robert. He will do a great job!"
O’Brien will become the fourth national security advisor of the Trump administration, following the resignations of John Bolton, H. R. McMaster and Michael Flynn over disagreements over foreign policy.
He was involved in the negotiations with Sweden over the detention of American Rapper ‘ASAP Rocky’ in Sweden over charges of sexual assault. US pressure led to the release of Rocky (real name Rakim Athelaston Mayers) in August.
O'Brien has been involved in Republican foreign policy since the George W Bush administration when he served as the US Alternate Representative to the United Nations General Assembly. A former major in the US Army Reserve, O’Brien was part of the United Nations Security Council commission that decided claims against Iraq for its role in the first Gulf War.
O’Brien authored the 2016 book, While America Slept: Restoring American Leadership to a World in Crisis, in which he was critical of Barack Obama’s foreign policy (in particular, of the US-Iran nuclear deal).
O’Brien will take office as the US mulls its response to the drone attacks on Saudi Arabia’s largest oil processing facility, at a time when US-Iran relations are dangerously strained.
On the same day that Trump named O’Brien as his national security advisor, the president also announced that he had instructed the US Treasury to “substantially increase Sanctions on the country of Iran”.
