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Haaretz: Dennis Ross to be Reassigned

An intriguing story from Barak David at Haaretz:

Dennis Ross, who most recently served as a special State Department envoy to Iran, will abruptly be relieved of his duties, sources in Washington told Haaretz. An official announcement is expected in the coming days. […] A diplomatic source in Jerusalem speculated that perhaps Ross preferred to work for the National Security Agency, which answers directly to President Barack Obama, and would thus be considered a more enhanced role.

The second part of that doesn’t make much sense to me; it’s hard to imagine what job a life-long diplomat like Ross would take at the NSA. Nor is it clear why “a diplomatic source in Jerusalem” would be in the know on something like that. But leaving the Iran post for some kind of other job seems plausible. As Spencer Ackerman writes, the whole Ross situation has been fraught from the get-go and the nature of his policy brief as a State Department special advisor has been unclear.

Update:

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I’ve heard it speculated that this may be a copy error and the report is supposed to say National Security Council, which would make sense of the “answers directly to President Barack Obama” thing.