Trump’s newest security aide wants to stir up discontent in Iran
BY TIM JOHNSON
WASHINGTON- MC CLATCHY DC- 26 NOV. 2016- Signaling a U-turn toward Iran, President-elect Donald Trump Friday brought a scholar onto his team who wants to stir up discontent in Iran, and who says she is joining a team of “grownups” on national security issues.
The Trump transition team said Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland would become his deputy national security adviser working with Gen. Michael Flynn, who Trump tapped as his chief national security adviser last week.
“Nobody has called foreign policy right more than President-elect Trump, and he gets no credit for it,” McFarland was quoted as saying in the transition team statement.
McFarland held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and has worked closely with Republican security mavens Henry Kissinger and Caspar Weinberger. She ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2006.
McFarland, a paid security analyst for Fox News, has offered full-throated support for Trump, disdaining foreign policy decisions that do not focus almost exclusively on U.S. interests.
“Grownups back in charge of national security,” McFarland tweeted earlier this week before the announcement of her appointment.
Like Trump, McFarland is highly critical of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in which the United States and five other countries agreed to remove sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear weapons program.
“We gave them everything up front – the money, the sanctions, the path to nuclear weapons – and we demanded nothing in return,” McFarland said on Fox News Nov. 14.
She noted that 75 percent of Iran’s population is under the age of 35 and suggested that younger Iranians have unmet aspirations and a hunger for information that is thwarted by internet censorship.
“We can tear down that cyber wall any time we want, and then you can deal with your own population,” McFarland said of Iran’s rulers. “They have promised their people an awful lot, and if they can’t deliver, they’ll have domestic security problems.”
The Trump transition team said Kathleen Troia “K.T.” McFarland would become his deputy national security adviser working with Gen. Michael Flynn, who Trump tapped as his chief national security adviser last week.
“Nobody has called foreign policy right more than President-elect Trump, and he gets no credit for it,” McFarland was quoted as saying in the transition team statement.
McFarland held national security posts in the Nixon, Ford and Reagan administrations, and has worked closely with Republican security mavens Henry Kissinger and Caspar Weinberger. She ran unsuccessfully for a U.S. Senate seat from New York in 2006.
McFarland, a paid security analyst for Fox News, has offered full-throated support for Trump, disdaining foreign policy decisions that do not focus almost exclusively on U.S. interests.
“Grownups back in charge of national security,” McFarland tweeted earlier this week before the announcement of her appointment.
Like Trump, McFarland is highly critical of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in which the United States and five other countries agreed to remove sanctions against Iran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear weapons program.
“We gave them everything up front – the money, the sanctions, the path to nuclear weapons – and we demanded nothing in return,” McFarland said on Fox News Nov. 14.
She noted that 75 percent of Iran’s population is under the age of 35 and suggested that younger Iranians have unmet aspirations and a hunger for information that is thwarted by internet censorship.
“We can tear down that cyber wall any time we want, and then you can deal with your own population,” McFarland said of Iran’s rulers. “They have promised their people an awful lot, and if they can’t deliver, they’ll have domestic security problems.”
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