U.S. President Donald Trump fired Secretary of State Rex Tillerson on Tuesday after a series of public rifts over policy on North Korea, Russia and Iran.
Trump named CIA Director Mike Pompeo as Tillerson's replacement and CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel as Pompeo's replacement.
The biggest shake-up of Trump's cabinet since he took office in January 2017 was announced by the president on Twitter.
"Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA, will become our new secretary of state. He will do a fantastic job! Thank you to Rex Tillerson for his service! Gina Haspel will become the new director of the CIA, and the first woman so chosen. Congratulations to all!" Trump wrote.
The abrupt firing of the United States' top diplomat ended Tillerson's turbulent tenure and deepened the disarray in the Trump administration.
The firing capped months of friction between the Republican president and the 65-year-old former Exxon Mobil Corp chief executive, who reportedly called the president a "moron."
Critics expressed dismay at the decision to swap out top diplomats so soon before the unprecedented meeting announced last week between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.
Some have also expressed concern that the hawkish Pompeo will encourage Trump to scrap the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.
While Trump publicly undercut Tillerson's diplomatic initiatives numerous times, critics said the shake-up in the State Department will sow more instability in the volatile Trump administration and marks the departure of another moderate who sought to emphasize the U.S.'s strong ties to its allies amid Trump's criticism.
"We got along actually quite well but we disagreed on things," Trump told reporters later on Tuesday.
"When you look at the Iran deal, I think it's terrible, I guess he thinks it was okay. I wanted to break it or do something, and he felt a little bit differently."
At the State Department, a visibly emotional Tillerson said Trump called him around noon from Air Force One, hours after he was summarily dismissed via Twitter. Tillerson also spoke with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.
He said his tenure officially ends on March 31 but he would delegate his responsibilities to John Sullivan, deputy secretary of state, at the end of Tuesday.
"What is most important is to ensure an orderly and smooth transition during a time that the country continues to face significant policy and national security challenges," Tillerson told reporters.
He pointedly declined to thank Trump personally or praise him, as he has done on previous occasions, but emphasized his strong relationship with Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. The two were seen as a moderating influence on some of Trump's policies.
Tillerson presided over a State Department with a vastly diminished role, with several high-profile posts unoccupied and many allies questioning the efficacy of dealing with a diplomat they suspected never had Trump's ear.
In contrast, Trump said he and Pompeo have "a similar thought process."
Pompeo, a former army officer who represented a Kansas district in the House of Representatives before becoming CIA director, is seen as a Trump loyalist who has enjoyed a less hostile relationship with career spies than Tillerson had with career diplomats.
Senior White House officials said Trump wants his new team in place before any summit with Kim, who has invited the U.S. president to meet by May, after months of escalating tensions over North Korea's nuclear and missile programs.
Tillerson's imminent departure had been rumored for several months, and Trump said he and Tillerson had discussed the move. State Department officials said Tillerson did not know why he was being pushed out and had intended to stay.
Foreign policy experts from previous Republican and Democratic administrations also questioned Trump's timing and choice, especially given Pompeo's hawkish views.
Evans Revere, a former senior diplomat who dealt with North Korea under President George W. Bush, said Trump's move sends "a bad signal about the role of diplomacy."
He said replacing Tillerson with Pompeo, "who is known as a political partisan and an opponent of the Iran agreement, raises the prospect of the collapse of that deal, and increases the possibility that the administration might soon face not one but two nuclear crises."
Senior White House officials said Kelly had asked Tillerson on Friday to step down but did not want to make the news public while Tillerson was away on a trip to Africa. Trump's Twitter announcement came only a few hours after Tillerson cut his trip to Africa short and landed in Washington.
Meanwhile, CIA Deputy Director Gina Haspel, who is replacing Pompeo, is a veteran intelligence officer.
Haspel is generally held in high regard in the U.S. intelligence community but is regarded warily by some in Congress for her involvement in the agency's "black site" detention facilities – so-called because their existence is unacknowledged by the U.S. government – where detainees were tortured.
If confirmed by the Senate, which Trump's fellow Republicans control 51-49, Haspel will become the first woman to head the Central Intelligence Agency.
But her nomination is uncertain. She could be opposed by all the Democrats, and by some Republicans, including Sen. Rand Paul, who has called a news conference on Wednesday to discuss the nomination.
"The torture of detainees in U.S. custody during the last decade was one of the darkest chapters in American history," said Republican Sen. John McCain, who was himself tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
"Ms. Haspel needs to explain the nature and extent of her involvement in the CIA's interrogation program during the confirmation process."
Democrats voiced opposition to Haspel's nomination. Sen. Mark Warner, who serves on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said senators had "a lot of questions" about Haspel and "deserved to have those questions answered in an open-hearing setting."
If confirmed, Haspel will face three immediate tests, intelligence officials said. They said one will be whether she and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis can prepare Trump adequately for his planned meeting with Kim Jong Un.
Another will be if she can help persuade Trump that Russian President Vladimir Putin is an increasingly aggressive adversary and that failing to confront him will weaken U.S. relations with its closest allies and with the CIA's most valuable partners.
Iran is the third test, the officials said. The U.S. intelligence assessment is that the 2015 deal to curb Iran's nuclear weapons program is on balance a good one, and that Trump's criticism of it threatens efforts to constrain Iran's nuclear ambitions and ties with the other nations that negotiated the pact, France, Germany, the U.K., China and Russia.
"She may face the same tough choice that Tillerson and others have faced: Stick to your convictions or knuckle under to keep your job," one official said.
