Dear John,
As we continue efforts to stand up to the extremely dangerous executive orders [[link removed]] unveiled this week, we are also pushing for the new administration to fulfill the promise to pursue diplomacy with Iran, not war and crippling sanctions on ordinary Iranians. It is looking increasingly possible that those efforts will bear fruit.
This week, Trump announced the firing of Brian Hook - his previous Iran Envoy who implemented the "maximum pressure campaign" in his first term (and who bragged about how much ordinary Iranians were suffering thanks to his sanctions efforts) 1 . While Hook had recently been assigned to oversee the Trump State Department transition, he used that post to do media interviews where he rejected the notion of potential diplomacy with Iran. Now, instead of overseeing the denial of food and medicine for ordinary people and trying to get the U.S. to support Israel and bomb Iran, Hook will be on the outside of policymaking.
But there is even bigger breaking news — it was just publicly revealed that Trump's point man on Iran will be Steve Witkoff – the envoy who brokered the ceasefire with Gaza by actually standing up to Netanyahu 2 , unlike Biden. This is a huge development. The appointment of someone with direct access and a longtime relationship with the president, who is open to engaging all parties and who won’t be bullied by Netanyahu, indicates diplomacy with Iran may be a major priority.
The Iran war lobby is panicking and slandering any appointments that don't align with their vision for war with Iran. They’ve attacked the new head of Middle East policy at the Pentagon, former CIA analyst Mike DiMino, for stating the very reasonable idea that the U.S. shouldn’t fight a war with Iran on behalf of Israel. They’ve also targeted another recent Pentagon appointee — Undersecretary of Defense Elbridge Colby — for suggesting that a war with Iran would violate U.S. interests.
These attacks are further signals that the war lobby is losing.
They know that their plans for war are downright crazy and the polar opposite of putting American interests first. During Trump’s first term, their solution was to surround him with hawks who viewed it as their job to steer the President toward war 3 . But that failsafe could be starting to crack.
John, I know there is a lot to process right now. Our community is facing very real threats and we will not relent in protecting our community’s rights and our children’s futures. And on foreign policy, there are still plenty of hawks already in place in the Trump administration who are unlikely to be team players if the President pursues diplomacy with Iran. But we need to be clear-eyed about opportunities as well: that a shake-up of Washington's foreign policy status quo can address one of the biggest threats we face – a war with Iran.
And so, as we’ve said since Trump was elected, we will fight back where necessary to defend our rights – including on the travel ban [[link removed]] – while we also engage where there is opportunity – most notably, to prevent war. There is a possibility for a real shift after Biden failed to seize his opportunity to strike a deal and return to constructive diplomacy that can ease pressure on ordinary Iranians. We hope that this can be a seismic moment for peace and dialogue and will be working to ensure that happens.
Thanks for your support,
Jamal Abdi
President, NIAC
[[link removed]]
1 Yasmine El-Sabawi. "Is Trump Adopting a Restrained Approach with Tehran?" Middle East Eye, 23 Jan. 2025, www.middleeasteye.net/news/trump-adopting-restrained-approach-tehran [[link removed]] . 2 Caspit, Ben. “Netanyahu Goes All in on Trump: Accepts Gaza Deal, Shifts to Saudi Arabia and Iran.” AL-Monitor, 2025, www.al-monitor.com/originals/2025/01/netanyahu-goes-all-trump-accepts-gaza-deal-shifts-saudi-arabia-and-iran [[link removed]] . 3 Abdi, Jamal. “Can Trump Seal a Deal with Iran?” Responsible Statecraft, 19 Nov. 2024, responsiblestatecraft.org/trump-iran/ [[link removed]] .
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