{"id":4584,"date":"2021-03-02T16:44:05","date_gmt":"2021-03-02T16:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=4584"},"modified":"2021-03-02T16:44:05","modified_gmt":"2021-03-02T16:44:05","slug":"how-bidens-best-laid-plans-for-iran-and-saudi-arabia-failed-in-his-first-month","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=4584","title":{"rendered":"How Biden\u2019s best-laid plans for Iran and Saudi Arabia failed in his first month"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“As the Democratic candidate, Biden promised a swift return to the Iran nuclear deal<\/a>. He then aimed to leverage that negotiation to curb other aspects of Tehran\u2019s aggressive behavior \u2014 like its growing ballistic missile program \u2014 in follow-on chats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But in the Oval Office, the president has found the Islamic Republic resistant to diplomacy<\/a> \u2014 but willing to have proxies launch rockets at Americans in the Middle East. That led Biden to authorize a retaliatory strike in Syria against those militants<\/a>, hoping that would deter future attacks while keeping the door open for talks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And on the campaign trail, Biden called Saudi Arabia a \u201cpariah<\/a>\u201d state, vowing to make it \u201cpay the price<\/a>\u201d for human rights violations, including the grisly 2018 murder of dissident, US resident, and columnist Jamal Khashoggi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though he released an unclassified intelligence report<\/a> on Friday directly blaming Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing, Biden declined to punish the nation\u2019s de facto ruler outright. Instead of authorizing sanctions, a travel ban, or an asset freeze, the president created the \u201cKhashoggi ban<\/a>,\u201d which imposes visa restrictions on people who try to silence dissidents abroad. It\u2019s unclear if that includes heads of state, however.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That action \u2014 combined with the end of US support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen and a freeze on weapons sales \u2014 was meant to \u201crecalibrate,\u201d not \u201crupture\u201d<\/a> US-Saudi relations, Biden administration officials say. A major consideration was that MBS, as the crown prince is known, may soon officially run the country, so targeting him personally could doom future relations between Washington and Riyadh.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/22307196\/joe-biden-saudi-arabia-mbs-iran-deal<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“As the Democratic candidate, Biden promised a swift return to the Iran nuclear deal. He then aimed to leverage that negotiation to curb other aspects of Tehran\u2019s aggressive behavior \u2014 like its growing ballistic missile program \u2014 in follow-on chats.<\/p>\n

But in the Oval Office, the president has found the Islamic Republic resistant to diplomacy \u2014 but willing to have proxies launch rockets at Americans in the Middle East. That led Biden to authorize a retaliatory strike in Syria against those militants, hoping that would deter future attacks while keeping the door open for talks.<\/p>\n

And on the campaign trail, Biden called Saudi Arabia a \u201cpariah\u201d state, vowing to make it \u201cpay the price\u201d for human rights violations, including the grisly 2018 murder of dissident, US resident, and columnist Jamal Khashoggi.<\/p>\n

Though he released an unclassified intelligence report on Friday directly blaming Saudi Arabia\u2019s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the killing, Biden declined to punish the nation\u2019s de facto ruler outright. Instead of authorizing sanctions, a travel ban, or an asset freeze, the president created the \u201cKhashoggi ban,\u201d which imposes visa restrictions on people who try to silence dissidents abroad. It\u2019s unclear if that includes heads of state, however.<\/p>\n

That action \u2014 combined with the end of US support for Saudi offensive operations in Yemen and a freeze on weapons sales \u2014 was meant to \u201crecalibrate,\u201d not \u201crupture\u201d US-Saudi relations, Biden administration officials say. A major consideration was that MBS, as the crown prince is known, may soon officially run the country, so targeting him personally could doom future relations between Washington and Riyadh.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[272,355,314,156,780,180,444,276,994,575,619],"class_list":["post-4584","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-foreign-affairs","tag-foreign-policy","tag-international-relations","tag-iran","tag-joe-biden","tag-nuclear","tag-nuclear-energy","tag-nuclear-proliferation","tag-nuclear-weapons","tag-saudi-arabia","tag-united-states"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4584","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4584"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4584\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4585,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4584\/revisions\/4585"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4584"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4584"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4584"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}