McMaster Fires the Iran Hawks

There’s been an ongoing purge in the National Security Council, led by National Security Adviser Gen. H.R. McMaster. Getting booted from the administration have been some of the most ardent Iran hawks. Daniel Larison writes of the purge:

Trump’s National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, has recently been cleaning house:

Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the 31-year-old hired by retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn to serve as the senior director for intelligence programs at the National Security Council, was fired on Wednesday afternoon, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

The proximate cause for this firing and a couple of others seems to have been a ridiculous memo that conjured up a fantasy of a “globalist and Islamist” plot against the U.S. Foreign Policy reported:

“It’s everyone who touched that concept paper,” the source told FP.

…

Iran hawks are predictably attributing McMaster’s decisions to supposed “hostility to Israel,” but that seems very unlikely and the accusation doesn’t mean much coming from people that define being “pro-Israel” as narrowly as possible. If all of the people McMaster fired happened to be “pro-Israel” Iran hawks opposed to the nuclear deal, that just reminds us that virtually everyone in the Trump administration fits that description.