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Iranian voters in the city of Qom, south of Tehran, last month in the country\u2019s first presidential election since its nuclear deal with world powers. CreditMajid Saeedi\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n
The New York Times- June 02.2017 – WASHINGTON \u2014 He is known as the Dark Prince or Ayatollah Mike, nicknames he earned as the\u00a0Central Intelligence Agency<\/a>\u00a0officer who oversaw the hunt for Osama bin Laden and the American drone strike campaign that killed thousands of Islamist militants and hundreds of civilians.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Now the official, Michael D\u2019Andrea, has a new job. He is running the C.I.A.\u2019s\u00a0Iran<\/a>\u00a0operations, according to current and former intelligence officials, an appointment that is the first major sign that the Trump administration is invoking the hard line the president took against Iran during his campaign.<\/p>\n Mr. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s new role is one of a number of moves inside the spy agency that signal a more muscular approach to covert operations under the leadership of Mike Pompeo, the conservative Republican and former congressman, the officials said. The agency also recently named a new chief of counterterrorism, who has begun pushing for greater latitude to strike militants.<\/p>\n Iran has been one of the hardest targets for the C.I.A. The agency has extremely limited access to the country \u2014 no American embassy is open to provide diplomatic cover \u2014 and Iran\u2019s intelligence services have spent nearly four decades trying to counter American espionage and covert operations.<\/p>\n The challenge to start carrying out President Trump\u2019s views falls to Mr. D\u2019Andrea,\u00a0a chain-smoking convert to Islam<\/a>, who comes with an outsize reputation and the track record to back it up: Perhaps no single C.I.A. official is more responsible for weakening Al Qaeda.<\/p>\n \u201cHe can run a very aggressive program, but very smartly,\u201d said Robert Eatinger, a former C.I.A. lawyer who was deeply involved in the agency\u2019s drone program.<\/p>\n The C.I.A. declined to comment on Mr. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s role, saying it does not discuss the identities or work of clandestine officials. The officials spoke only on the condition of anonymity because Mr. D\u2019Andrea remains undercover, as do many senior officials based at the agency\u2019s headquarters in Langley, Va. Mr. Eatinger did not use his name. The New York Times is naming Mr. D\u2019Andrea because his identity was\u00a0previously published<\/a>\u00a0in news reports, and he is leading an important new administration initiative against Iran.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump called Iran \u201cthe number one terror state\u201d and pledged throughout the campaign to dismantle or revise the landmark deal between Iran and six world powers in which Tehran agreed to limit its\u00a0nuclear program<\/a>\u00a0in exchange for sanctions relief.<\/p>\n The president has not gone through with that threat, and his administration has quietly recertified Iran\u2019s compliance with the deal. But he has invoked his hard line on Iran in other ways. Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson has\u00a0described the deal as a failure<\/a>, and Mr. Trump has appointed to the National Security Council hawks eager to contain Iran and push regime change, the groundwork for which would most likely be laid through C.I.A. covert action.<\/p>\n Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, the national security adviser, was an infantry commander during the early years of the war in Iraq, and he believes that Iranian agents who were aiding Iraqi insurgents were responsible for the deaths of a number of his soldiers. Derek Harvey, the senior director for the Middle East at the council, is also considered an Iran hawk.<\/p>\n And Ezra Cohen-Watnick, the council\u2019s senior director for intelligence \u2014 the main White House liaison to intelligence agencies \u2014 has told other administration officials that he wants to use American spies to help oust the Iranian government, according to multiple defense and intelligence officials.<\/p>\n Mr. Pompeo, who represented south-central Kansas in the House, was among the fiercest congressional critics of the Iran deal. Two months before the election, he published an essay in Foreign Policy magazine titled, \u201cFriends Don\u2019t Let Friends Do Business With Iran<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n He pledged during his Senate confirmation hearing in January that should the deal remain in place, he would keep a fierce watch to ensure Tehran was sticking to the terms.<\/p>\n \u201cThe Iranians are professionals at cheating,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n In Mr. D\u2019Andrea, the director has found a workaholic to be his Iran sentinel. Mr. D\u2019Andrea grew up in Northern Virginia in a family whose ties to the C.I.A. span two generations. He met his wife, who is Muslim, on a C.I.A. posting overseas, and converted to Islam to marry her, though he is not known to be particularly observant.<\/p>\n At the C.I.A., Mr. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s reputation for operational acumen is matched by his abrasive demeanor. \u201cSurly\u201d seems to be the most popular description, say those who have worked alongside him, and some people at the agency have refused to work for him.<\/p>\n A former agency official said that he had once asked Mr. D\u2019Andrea, who has been known to keep a hideaway bed in his office, what he did for fun.<\/p>\n Mr. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s reply: \u201cWork.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked whether Mr. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s appointment was a sign that the C.I.A. planned to take up a more aggressive line toward Iran, Mr. Eatinger said, \u201cI don\u2019t think it\u2019s the wrong read.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. D\u2019Andrea\u2019s personal views on Iran are not publicly known. It is also not his job to make policy but to execute it, and he has demonstrated that he is an aggressive operations officer.<\/p>\n In the years after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. D\u2019Andrea was deeply involved in the detention and interrogation program, which resulted in the torture of a number of prisoners and was\u00a0condemned in a sweeping Senate report in 2014<\/a>\u00a0as inhumane and ineffective. Only the executive summary of the 6,700-page report has been made public; the Trump administration\u00a0has begun returning copies of the full document to Congress<\/a>, which is not subject to Freedom of Information Act requests, raising the prospect that it will never be released.<\/p>\n Mr. D\u2019Andrea took over the agency\u2019s Counterterrorism Center in early 2006 and spent the next nine years directing the hunt for militants around the world.<\/p>\n