Although it will be some time before President-elect Donald Trump names the members of his cabinet, the three individuals most often mentioned as contenders for the administration’s top foreign policy post all have strong pro-Israel records.
John Bolton
Bolton, 67, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2005-2006 in the George W. Bush administration. Bolton strongly criticized the Obama administration last month for changing a White House press release that had referred to Jerusalem as being in Israel. He said Obama’s stance on Jerusalem is “a more radical position than the official position of the United States” and rebuked the president for sticking “a thumb in the eye to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”
“Obama’s got three more months to insult Netanyahu and demean the state of Israel, this is just another example of it,” said Bolton, who has also been a vocal opponent of the Obama administration’s Iran nuclear deal.
Bolton is currently a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank and a commentator on Fox News. He is also a member of the advisory board of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), a pro-Israel think tank in Washington, D.C.
Newt Gingrich
Gingrich, 73, an 11-term Republican congressman from Georgia, served as speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995-1999. Gingrich has been known as a strong supporter of Israel and a critic of the Palestinian Authority (PA). In one 1997 speech from the floor of the House, he said the PA’s execution of Arabs suspected of selling land to Jews “is the kind of action we identify with Nazis…Mr. Yasser Arafat, you owe it to the world to stop this kind of killing, to protect people engaged in decent commerce.”
Gingrich said he admires Netanyahu both because “he’s a guy who really puts Israel’s security first” and because “he’s a very free market guy who helped create the entrepreneurial boom that has made Israel so successful.”
Bob Corker
The last candidate for secretary of state is Senator Bob Corker, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Corker, 64, charged that the Obama administration “got fleeced” on the Iran deal. He was the author of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, which was intended to give Congress a larger say in the Obama administration’s negotiations with Iran.
Corker criticized Obama for giving up on “anytime, anywhere” inspections of Iranian nuclear sites, and for effectively agreeing “to move from having Iran’s nuclear program dismantled to having its nuclear proliferation managed.” He also urged Obama to reach “a clear agreement with Israel over when and how to respond to Israel’s nuclear program,” since “while our capabilities give us more time, Israel has fewer capabilities and sees their window closing far more quickly.”
Originally posted at JNS. PHOTO’s: Gage Skidmore via Wikimedia Common and the United States Senate.
