Ross "is hard at work here at State" ...

"Reacting to a report in Israeli daily Haaretz that said State Department Iran policy architect Dennis Ross might be being "ousted" and sent to work at the White House, State Department spokesman Ian Kelly told The Cable Monday that Ross "is hard at work here at State." He did not respond to a further query of whether Ross would be moving to the NSC in the near-future.

Another official said he'd had an email from Ross just last night, which would seem to indicate that Ross's work helping craft U.S. government Iran policy continues apace. "I think he's going to stay right where he is and with the same responsibilities."

But there were no signs Ross was being taken off the Iran portfolio; on the contrary, Ross would seem to have been strengthened inside the interagency process by the recent tumult in Iran, which some veteran Iran analysts describe as an attempted coup by hard-liners to preemptively declare incumbent president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner of Friday's contested presidential elections.

Any move from the State Department to the White House would likely be a promotion, not a demotion.

Ross, along with the NSC senior director for Iran and the Persian Gulf Puneet Talwar, is a chief architect coordinating the crafting of U.S. Iran policy within the interagency process.

What would be plausible is if Ross is getting his title and chain of command shifted so that he is officially reporting not just to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton but to the president as well, as two other special envoys, George Mitchell and Richard Holbrooke, do."