Michael Anton, Director of Strategic Planning at the U.S. Department of State, was appointed on April 24, 2025, as the head of the U.S. technical team in negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program. (Credit: United States Department of State)
Michael Anton, a conservative intellectual of Lebanese origin, was appointed last Thursday as the head of the U.S. technical team in charge of negotiations with Iran on its nuclear program, on the eve of the third round of talks on the Iranian nuclear issue mediated by Oman and scheduled for Saturday. The information was reported by the American media outlet Politico, citing two anonymous American officials.
The individual chosen as director of strategic planning at the State Department on Jan. 20, 2025, the day Donald Trump took office as President of the United States, thus took over this week a team of a dozen officials responsible for technical discussions with Iran, aimed at imposing restrictions on Tehran's nuclear program in exchange for relief from American sanctions, according to Politico.
However, although he also has Italian and Greek origins, he does not have a background in nuclear sciences. What do we know about him?
A conservative and anti-immigration figure
Anton, 55, was an early supporter of Donald Trump. In September 2016, he wrote under the pseudonym of Publius Decius Mus, for a conservative American journal, an essay that gained significant traction among conservative circles, titled "The Flight 93 Election," where he viewed Donald Trump's election as necessary to avoid the end of conservatism and "American values."
The individual who served four years at the National Security Council under the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2005 is a staunch opponent of immigration.
In another essay published in 2016, titled "Toward a Sensible, Coherent Trumpism," also under the same pseudonym, he wrote that "'diversity' is not 'our strength,' [but rather] a source of weakness, tension and division," arguing that "America is not a 'nation of immigrants' [but] originally a nation of settlers, which later chose to admit immigrants." Economically, immigration "would lower American wages, cost Americans jobs, and reduce their standard of living." He also expressed his resolutely isolationist views on foreign policy in this essay.
The identity of the pseudonym "Publius Decius Mus" was revealed by The Weekly Standard in February 2017, as noted by the American site Common Dreams. He himself confirmed this information in an interview with Politico in April 2017.
Vehement critic of Islam
In the same essay "Toward a Sensible, Coherent Trumpism," Anton articulated vehement criticisms of "Islam," viewed as a coherent whole and perceived as fundamentally dangerous: "Islam is not a 'religion of peace'; it is a militant faith that exalts conversion by the sword and inspires thousands of terrorist acts — and millions more to support or sympathize with them."
In March 2016, he called it "insane" to allow Muslim immigration after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, writing that "Yes, of course, not all Muslims are terrorists, blah blah, etc. Even so, what good has Muslim immigration brought to the United States and the American people? If we truly needed more labor — which is patently false — why would it have been necessary to import it from the Muslim world?" according to Common Dreams. "Trump alone, among major political figures, dared to say that all this is absurd," he said at the time.
During the first Trump administration (2017-2021), Anton worked at the National Security Council as deputy assistant for communications. He had previously worked for twelve years in the private sector, holding various positions in the media and finance sectors, including for the investment firm BlackRock.
This article was originally published in French in L'Orient-Le Jour.
