Alireza Miryousefi, head of media office of Iran’s Mission to the UN, has said that top United States’ envoy for Iran Brian Hook’s departure from his post is not considered as game-changer by Iran.

Hook’s departure “does not concern us and is not something we consider as a game-changer,” he told Reuters in an interview published on Thursday.

Hook will be replaced by Elliott Abrams, who will combine the Iran special representative job with his current role as special envoy for Venezuela.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed Hook’s departure, but did not give any reasons for his departure.

Hook was a central figure in implementing the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” policy on Iran. He has claimed the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran had been “very successful”.

Miryousefi told Reuters, “The so-called ‘maximum pressure’ campaign waged by the U.S. government has failed.”

“Iran is not on its knees, and will not do so regardless of who is in charge of implementing this bankrupt policy,” he said.

Trump quit the nuclear deal in May 2018 and introduced the harshest ever sanctions in history on Iran as part of his administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

Many analysts and think tanks believe that the maximum pressure policy has failed.

Presidential chief of staff Mahmoud Vaezi has said that the Iranian people’s determination has defeated the United States’ policy of “maximum pressure”.

“Tightening sanctions cannot impede Iran’s scientific and defense progress. These advances will continue by the scientists and youths’ endeavor. The policy of maximum pressure has failed against the Iranian people’s determination and its continuation along with other wrong policies of Trump will lead to his defeat in presidential elections,” he wrote in a tweet in Persian on August 2.

In a tweet in June, Vaezi said that the Donald Trump administration has no way but revising wrong policies and making up for past mistakes, especially economic and medical terrorism against Iran.

Vaezi, a former deputy foreign minister, predicted that Trump will lose the November election if he insists on his wrong policies.

“Continuation of practicing discriminatory policy and pushing knee on neck and tightening unilateral sanctions and health and economic terrorism against the Iranian people will not end in Trump’s victory in elections, and will just make this administration more isolated. The United States has no way but revising wrong policies and making up for the past,” Vaezi tweeted.

U.S. Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff said in May that Trump’s policy of maximum pressure against Iran is a “failed policy”.

“No amount of spin can save this disastrously failed policy,” he said in a tweet.

In an article titled “The Total Destruction of U.S. Foreign Policy Under Trump,” Wendy Sherman, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs who led the U.S. negotiating team that concluded the Iran nuclear agreement, has described Trump’s “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran as an instance of his “painful” and “costly” foreign policy failures.

“Trump’s approach to Iran is another painful and costly example. Over three years after the Trump administration withdrew from the nuclear deal, Iran has more highly enriched uranium …, more operating nuclear facilities, more sophisticated technology,” she wrote in her article published by The Foreign Policy magazine on July 31.

“U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran envoy Brian Hook advertise this as a campaign of ‘maximum pressure,’ but their ultimate objective—which they insist is not regime change—remains a mystery,” she added.

NA/PA