sphere wrote:
Yep. Like it or not, the President should have a Secretary of State that he can work with, who speaks with the same voice (no small task when you're speaking for a guy like Trump) and largely shares the same foreign policy vision. Tillerson wasn't that guy in any respect, and I'm not the least bit impressed with his job performance even under those difficult circumstances. Wrong guy for the job in this administration. And with the looming Boy King Summit, now rather than later is the right time to get the foreign policy house in order.
More info on Rexxon's back-channel maneuvering on the Iran deal, which was what apparently got him fired (disclaimer: the cited source is funded by one of those conservative rightwing billionaire types ;-).
Donny Two Scoops' position on the Iran Deal is apparently as follows:
If the European states which used to join us in economic sanctions before Barack Obama's deal with Iran let them out of it agree to force Iran to agree to actual inspections,
performed by people called "Not the Iranian Government itself," (hahahaha!) of suspected nuclear sites, and agreed to limitations on ballistic missile technology, etc., then that guy in the White House would go along with the Iran Deal for a while. But not forever, which was something he'd made clear before, sources say.
It was Rexxon's job to go out to the European states and sell them on this.
I
nstead, of course, he walked back from what Two Scoops was demanding and instead made softer offers he was never authorized to make -- to appease Iran. "The abrupt firing Tuesday of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson follows months of infighting between the State Department and White House over efforts by Tillerson to save the Iran nuclear deal and ignore President Donald Trump's demands that the agreement be fixed or completely scrapped by the United States, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the situation who spoke to the Washington Free Beacon.
In the weeks leading up to Tillerson's departure, he had been spearheading efforts to convince European allies to agree to a range of fixes to the nuclear deal that would address Iran's ongoing ballistic missile program and continued nuclear research.
While Trump had prescribed a range of fixes that he viewed as tightening the deal's flaws,
Tillerson recently caved to European pressure to walk back these demands and appease Tehran while preserving the deal, according to these sources. The Free Beacon first disclosed this tension last week in a wide-ranging report.
White House allies warned Tillerson's senior staff for weeks that efforts to save the nuclear deal and balk on Trump's key demands regarding the deal could cost Tillerson his job, a warning that became reality Tuesday when Trump fired Tillerson by tweet."
"Politics is just show business for ugly people."