Secretary of State Rex Tillerson’s Failures and Nikki Haley’s Successes

The ouster of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was long overdue. He was not a team player in the Trump administration. To the contrary, during his tenure, Mr. Tillerson moved further and further apart from President Trump’s thinking on critical foreign policy issues. He would have done well to follow the example of U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, rather than try unsuccessfully at times to undercut her. Mr. Tillerson, for example, favored recertification of Iran’s compliance with the disastrous Obama-era nuclear deal with Iran, which President Trump vehemently opposed. Mr. Tillerson’s continued rear-guard efforts to save the Iran nuclear deal may have been the last straw. Indeed, President Trump specifically referred to this disagreement in explaining his decision to remove Mr. Tillerson. "When you look at the Iran deal, I think it's terrible, I guess he thought it was OK,” the president said. “So we were not really thinking the same.”

Ambassador Haley has repeatedly expressed her disdain for the Iranian regime

Ambassador Haley has repeatedly expressed her disdain for the Iranian regime and used her platform at the UN repeatedly to hold the regime to account for its ballistic missile tests, aid to Yemen in violation of a UN Security Council arms embargo resolution, state sponsorship of terrorism, and its attempts to establish a permanent military presence inside Syria. Mr. Tillerson was willing to give the Iranian regime the benefit of the doubt in terms of its reported compliance with the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) and soft pedal its broader pattern of bad behavior. Not so Ambassador Haley. "The undeniable fact is that the Iranian behavior is growing worse" since the nuclear accord was signed, Ambassador Haley said last December, as she displayed parts of a ballistic missile that she claimed Iran had delivered to Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. "The weapons might as well have 'Made in Iran' stickers on them," Ambassador Haley said. "Its ballistic missiles and advanced weapons are turning up in war zones across the region." On September 5, 2017, Ambassador Haley delivered a speech to the American Enterprise Institute outlining her view of how to decertify the Iranian regime’s purported compliance with the JCPOA without walking away from it. She acknowledged the dilemma that “the deal was constructed in a way that makes leaving it less attractive. It gave Iran what it wanted up-front, in exchange for temporary promises to deliver what we want.” At the same time, she pointed out that the question of Iranian compliance is “not just about the technical terms of the nuclear agreement. It requires a much more thorough look.” First, Ambassador Haley described the Iranian regime’s pattern of outlaw behavior in violation of international law since its founding in 1979, including its past trail of broken promises to abide by international inspections and limits regarding its nuclear program. Then, she explained the JCPOA’s critical flaws, including the absence of “anytime, anywhere” inspections of suspected sites in Iran. Iran’s leaders have stated publicly that they will refuse to allow International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspections of their military sites, rendering the JCPOA’s inspection regime an utter farce. She cited examples of violations by the Iranian regime related to its exceeding its allowable limit of heavy water that went unpunished. Moreover, even if the regime were to comply with respect to the current limits placed on uranium enrichment, advanced centrifuges and certain other nuclear-related activities, they only need to wait ten years to crank up their nuclear program to full production. Finally, the Iranian regime has repeatedly violated provisions in the UN Security Council resolution endorsing the JCPOA relating to the development and testing of ballistic missiles capable of deploying nuclear warheads.

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Mr. Tillerson (along with Defense Secretary James Mattis) opposed President Trump’s bold decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Instead of reinforcing Ambassador Haley’s messages calling out the Iranian regime in a manner consistent with President Trump’s own viewpoint, Mr. Tillerson reportedly bristled at her involvement in what he considered to be his portfolio. He was convinced that, with a bit of time, he could bring the Europeans around to agreeing to fix the deficiencies in the JCPOA. He failed to do so, much less convince the Iranians that it was in their interest to negotiate changes to the JCPOA. Nikki Haley had it right when she said, in response to a question following her American Enterprise Institute speech, that trying to fix the nuclear deal was “like putting lipstick on a pig.” After that speech, Ambassador Haley decided to attend a meeting with the Iranian regime and the foreign ministers of other participant countries in the JCPOA, including Secretary of State Tillerson, held at UN headquarters. Nikki Haley is not only the U.S. ambassador to the UN. She is a member of President Trump's cabinet and National Security Council. She had every right to be at this meeting and sit alongside Secretary Tillerson. However, displaying his own insecurity in what he evidently viewed as part of an ongoing turf battle, Secretary Tillerson “kept his deputy beside him, leaving Haley relegated to the seat behind him,” according to a CBS report. On another issue, climate change, Mr. Tillerson showed how out of sync he was with the president’s America First agenda. Last June, he told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that he still supported the Paris agreement on climate change, despite President Trump’s decision to pull the United States out of the agreement. Ambassador Haley, on the other hand, told senators that President Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris agreement on climate change “was in the best interest of business and the best interest of our country.” Mr. Tillerson (along with Defense Secretary James Mattis) opposed President Trump’s bold decision to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Vice President Pence, Nikki Haley, and the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser on the Middle East, Jared Kushner, who has been taking the lead in putting together a proposed peace plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, all supported the president’s decision. Ambassador Haley strongly defended President Trump’s decision before both the UN Security Council and the General Assembly. She declared in her remarks to the General Assembly that “the President’s decision reflects the will of the American people and our right as a nation to choose the location of our embassy. The United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for the very act of exercising our right as a sovereign nation.”

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Perhaps the most serious misalignment between Mr. Tillerson and President Trump on policy matters had to do with North Korea. The president criticized Mr. Tillerson several months ago for “wasting his time trying to negotiate with Little Rocket Man,” President Trump’s nickname for North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong-un. “Save your energy, Rex, we’ll do what has to be done,” the president chided. President Trump was responding to statements Mr. Tillerson had made indicating the willingness of the U.S. to enter into direct talks with North Korea. Then just days ago, in a dramatic turnabout, President Trump announced his plans to meet face-to-face with Kim Jong-un. Hours before the White House’s official announcement of the president’s decision, Mr. Tillerson had remarked that the U.S. was “a long ways from negotiations” with North Korea. Then, after trying to parse the difference between the words “talks” and “negotiations,” Mr. Tillerson said, “In terms of the decision to engage between President Trump and Kim Jong Un, that’s a decision the president took himself.” What helped to make this turnabout possible were the unprecedented economic sanctions against North Korea passed unanimously by the UN Security Council under Ambassador Haley’s leadership. On the most critical national security issue faced by the Trump administration, Ambassador Haley played a critical role in cementing an international consensus to apply maximum economic and diplomatic pressure on the North Korean regime. Secretary Tillerson strut around aimlessly. With Ambassador Haley continuing to represent the United States at the United Nations and Mike Pompeo serving as the new Secretary of State, America’s national security interests should be very well protected.