C.I.A. officer Michael D\u2019Andrea, nicknamed as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike, is now running the C.I.A.\u2019s Iran operation, according to the New York Times. He is the officer who oversaw the hunt for Osama bin Laden and American drone strike campaign. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s appointment is seen as a major sign of Trump administration taking a hard line against Iran. A former C.I.A. lawyer Robert Eatinger said about D\u2019Andrea that he can run a \u201cvery aggressive program, but smartly\u201d.
\nIran has been one of the toughest targets for the C.I.A. due to the agency lack of access to the country. And now D\u2019Andrea\u2014with an outsize reputation and a track record to back it up\u2014 must carry out President Trump\u2019s views about Iran, according to the New York Times. During his campaign, Mr. Trump called Iran \u201cthe number one terror state,\u201d pledging to dismantle and revise the nuclear deal between Iran and P5+1\u2014a threat which the president has not gone through with yet.
\nSecretary of State Rex Tillerson has called the nuclear deal with Iran a failure and President Trump has appointed Hawks to National Security Council\u2014people who are eager to contain Iran and push for regime change, a task whose preliminary work must be laid through C.I.A. covert action.
\nDirector of C.I.A. Mike Pompeo, who was previously one of fiercest critics of the Iran deal in the Congress, promised during his Senate confirmation hearing in January 2017 that if the nuclear deal remains in place, he will keep a fierce watch to make sure Tehran is keeping its obligations.
\nD\u2019Andrea took over C.I.A.\u2019s Counterterrorism Center in early 2006 and spent 9 years directing the hunt for militants around the world. Operatives under his direction played a significant role in 2008 in the killing of Imad Mugniyah\u2014the international operation chief of Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed Shiite militant group based in Lebanon.
\nD\u2019Andrea converted to Islam to marry his wife, who is Muslim, and his appointment in this position is signaling a tougher stance toward the Iranian regime.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
C.I.A. officer Michael D\u2019Andrea, nicknamed as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike, is now running the C.I.A.\u2019s Iran operation, according to the New York Times. He is the officer who oversaw the hunt for Osama bin Laden and American drone strike campaign. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s appointment is seen as a major sign of Trump administration taking a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":3086,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[52,42,1296,1849,1734,1848,503,1851,12,1850,1852,1853,28,237],"class_list":["post-3085","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-52","tag-agcis","tag-arabian-gulf-center-for-iranian-studies","tag-c-i-a","tag-counterterrorism","tag-dark-prince","tag-hezbollah","tag-imad-mugniyah","tag-iran","tag-michael-dandrea","tag-national-security-council","tag-robert-eatinger","tag-tehran","tag-us"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3085"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3087,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3085\/revisions\/3087"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3086"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3085"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3085"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rasanah-iiis.org\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3085"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}