Trump picked Tillerson for tough new Iran policy – our way or the highway

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report December 14, 2016,

Rex Tillerson, Chairman an CEO of Exxon Mobil, was named this week as the next administration’s Secretary of State to execute the tough foreign policies charted by president-elect Donald Trump, including his decision to stiffen the nuclear accord signed with Iran as soon as he moves into the White House on Jan. 20.

DEBKAfile reports this exclusively from New York and its intelligence sources.

While campaigning for the presidency, Trump called the accord “the worst deal” ever.

According to our sources, a special team is already working on revisions of the accord which the US and five other global powers concluded with Iran in 2015 in the hope of retarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program by a decade.

As new president, Trump will issue Tehran with a unilateral demand to accept those revisions as pre-condition for the continuation of relations between the US and Iran. He does not intend consulting America’s co-signers, Russia, China, Germany, Britain and France, or asking them for their endorsement of the revamped accord.

The teams preparing the Trump administration’s Iran policy were put in place last week by Tillerson and designated national security adviser Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

No members of the incumbent NSC, State Department, Pentagon or Treasury, who managed the Obama administration’s Iran policy, was invited to take part. The teams were instead chosen from among scientists, military leaders and intelligence officials who opposed the nuclear accord with Iran.
Also attached were former administration officials hired by Exxon for their extensive knowledge of Iran’s oil trade and their close ties with oil circles in the Gulf Emirates, which like Israel, fought hard to pre-empt the nuclear deal with Iran.

Our sources have also learned that if Iran rejects the revised accord, the president elect has a list of new economic sanctions drawn up which are a lot tougher than the sanctions regime imposed by the Bush and Obama administrations.

The incoming president will have a fight on his hands to get the Tillerson appointment through the Senate in the face of objections raised by Republican lawmakers over his ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin. However, Trump hopes to turn those ties to his advantage. He trusts that Tillerson is just the man to sell the new administration’s Iran policies to the Russian president.

December 15, 2016 | 7 Comments »

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  1. Valid points, Yamit82. The watershed distinguishing Trump from many of his presidential forebears is that he leads from in front. At the core, I don’t think he is naive regarding Russia’s FP or ambitions and as, as such, appearances to the contrary being what they may. Neither is he unaware of the State of the Union left to him by the passive/agressive borderline treason of Obama. One of his strategies may be tying up the middle for an end run, or quarterback sneak As he’s repeatedly said he’s all about “Jobs, jobs, jobs” – which translates into the very same kind of industrial might that, when cranked up, surprised America’s allies and enemies in WWII, as Birdalone points out.

  3. Next SecEnergy, which oversees all USA nuclear will be Defender of Jerusalem award recipient Rick Perry.

    Current SecEnergy Moniz is the long haired physicist who was always with Kerry on the Iran ‘deal’.

    fwiw, ‘unilateral pre-conditions’ is not DJT’s usual style.
    and DEBKA is hyperbolic about the Senate and Tillerson’s ties to Putin. McCain and Graham need to vent, but a lunch with Kissinger and Bob Gates and Condi Rice will salve their fears.

  4. Trump’s follies will implode when faced with the real Putin and Russian interests and ambitions….. Why would Russia want to help Trump with Iran??? Putin is on a roll filling the vacuum left by Both Bush and Obama. He has accomplished this fete on the cheap. I want to see what sticks or sanctions Trump can come up with?? Would he dare block the Iran Boeing deal costing Boeing $17 billion and adding some 100K jobs??? I don’t think he would and Iran now has money and with rising oil and gas prices they will be even more resistant to sanctions as will Russia.

  5. In other words… Donald Trump is not “pushing BACK” against his detractors and enemies, rather he’s pushing forward.

  6. I do b’lieve President Elect, Mr. Trump, may have a valid, productive way to lead the “international community” out of its follies of the twentieth century and their leakage into this millennium and towards light at the end of the tunnel. A ‘tectonic’ reset, a changing of the “diskette”, as they say.