US special envoy to Iran Brian Hook steps down

WASHINGTON: United States special representative to Iran Brian Hook is leaving his post and Venezuela envoy Elliott Abrams will take an additional role, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said.

Hook’s departure comes as the United Nations Security Council prepares to vote next week on a US bid to extend an international arms embargo on Iran. It remains unclear when Hook’s tenure would formally end and whether he would see through the vote.

Hook’s surprise departure comes at a critical time when Washington has been intensely lobbying at the United Nations to extend an arms embargo on Iran and as the UN Security Council prepares to hold a vote on a US resolution next week.

“We’re going to continue to make the case for this,” Hook told reporters on Thursday morning, hours before his departure was announced. “We hope that the council can find a way.”

Pompeo did not give a reason for Hook’s decision to leave but wrote in a tweet that Hook was moving on to the private sector. He described him as a “trusted adviser and a good friend” who has achieved historic results in countering Tehran and secured the release of US citizens detained by Iran.

Hook was appointed to the top Iran role at the State Department in late 2018 and has been instrumental in Washington’s intensifying pressure campaign on Tehran after President Donald Trump pulled out of the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and the world powers.

Abrams, a Republican foreign policy veteran, was named US special representative for Venezuela in January of last year and has led a hardline approach aimed at ousting Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.

US officials have said privately that President Donald Trump has been frustrated by the failure to remove Maduro, who retains the support of the Venezuelan military, as well from Russia, China, Cuba and Iran.