Over the weekend, Iranian envoys met with their U.S. counterparts at the Omani Embassy in Rome. At the table was Michael Anton, a senior State Department official with a penchant for charcoal-brown suits, Italian neckwear, and fine wine. Earlier this month, Anton was in Istanbul. He was sent by the Trump administration to keep tabs on the first face-to-face talks between Ukrainian and Russian representatives after three years of war. It seems that wherever Trump’s highest stakes diplomacy is taking place, one will find Anton.
His name is not known to most people outside of Washington, but inside the Trump administration Anton has emerged as one of the most important intellectuals behind the president’s foreign policy revolution. In an administration beset with, at times, bitter ideological divides and an often chaotic style that has shocked both allies and foes, Anton has risen to the top by playing his cards close to his chest and deftly navigating the right’s warring foreign policy camps.
Anton has accompanied Secretary of State Marco Rubio on all but one of his overseas trips. He has been a key negotiator on U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff’s team to forge a Ukraine-Russia ceasefire. And last month, he was tapped to lead the technical talks with Iran over a possible new nuclear deal—a key role for any potential agreement that relies so much on devilish details.
Anton’s importance to the Trump administration was signaled early by the president himself. When he was appointed to be the director of the Policy Planning Staff at the State Department, Trump took the unprecedented step of announcing the news personally, a job normally left for the incoming secretary of state. “Michael served me loyally and effectively at the National Security Council in my First Term,” Trump posted on Truth Social on December 8. “He spent the last eight years explaining what an America First foreign policy truly means.”
In an administration that often resembles the court of a European monarch, where even cabinet secretaries don’t know where they stand, Trump’s post sent a powerful signal.