Brian Hook’s abrupt departure as the Trump administration’s top Iran envoy leaves an uncertain future for the White House’s biggest Middle East policy, two years after President Donald Trump abandoned the Iran nuclear pact and proclaimed he could secure a “new and lasting deal.”
Hook’s replacement, Elliott Abrams, will simultaneously continue as the administration’s envoy for Venezuela, making him responsible for two defining Trump foreign-policy initiatives—neither of which has yielded the kind of high-profile victory the White House once hoped for.
