Elliott Abrams

Elliott Abrams (born January 24, 1948) is an American politician and lawyer who has served in foreign policy positions for presidents Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, and Donald Trump. Abrams is considered to be a neoconservative. He is a senior fellow for Middle Eastern studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. He served as the U.S. Special Representative for Venezuela from 2019 to 2021 and as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran from 2020 to 2021. His involvement in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration led to his conviction in 1991 on two misdemeanor counts of unlawfully withholding information from Congress. He was later pardoned by president George H. W. Bush. During George W. Bush's first term, he served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director on the National Security Council for Near East and North African Affairs. At the start of Bush's second term, Abrams was promoted to be his Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy, in charge of promoting Bush's strategy of "advancing democracy abroad." In the Bush administration, Abrams was a supporter of the Iraq War. Abrams led the 1998 Project for the New American Century (PNAC) letter demanding the removal of Saddam Hussein as a primary policy goal. During Donald Trump's first term, on January 25, 2019, he was appointed by Mike Pompeo as Special Representative for Venezuela. On September 1, 2020, he was further appointed to concurrently serve as the U.S. Special Representative for Iran. On July 3, 2023, he was appointed by President Joe Biden to the non-partisan U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy.