Staff writer, Al Arabiya, 11 November 2016 – As soon as Americans elected Donald Trump as its 45th president, the media started speculating on who would replace current Secretary of State John Kerry.
A leaked document published by Buzzfeed on Thursday purportedly shows a who’s who short-list of Trump’s closest Republican surrogates and insiders who would be considered top candidates President-Elect Trump’s cabinet.
The list of 41 names, obtained by BuzzFeed News, covers State Departments, the Attorney General, Office of Management and Budget, White House Chief of Staff, and White House Counsel.
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, American lawyer and diplomat John Bolton and Senator from Tennessee Bob Corker and were listed as possible candidates to replace Kerry as the US top diplomat.
Newt Gingrich.
Republican Gingrich is the former speaker of the House and ran as presidential bid in 2012.
“The surrender to Iran on sanctions and nuclear weapons will be one more stage in the American defeat by a determined, dishonest and surprisingly effective theocratic dictatorship in Tehran,” Gingrich wrote in an article published by The Washington Times last year.
John Bolton
Bolton served as the US ambassador to the United Nations from August 2005 until December 2006 and is an American lawyer and diplomat who has served in several Republican administrations.
He was a foreign policy adviser to 2012 presidential candidate Mitt Romney.
When asked during an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt, then Republican Nominee Trump named Bolton as a possible choice for Secretary of State.
Bolton is another strong critic of the Iran nuclear deal and who has campaigned, along with his organization The Foundation for American Security Freedom, against the deal in national ads.
He said, in an interview with IJReview, “If Iran didn’t have a nuclear weapons program, it would still be central banker of international terrorism.”
Bob Corker
Corker is an American politician and the United States Senator from Tennessee, serving since 2007. He is currently the chairman of the United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations in the 114th Congress.
He is also among the strongest critics of the Iran nuclear deal, having written an opinion piece published by the Washington Post that “rather than end Iran’s nuclear enrichment program, over time this deal industrializes the program of the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism”.
