They also complain that Mr. Biden maintains the sanctions that Trump imposed on Tehran when he left the nuclear deal, even though Iran complied at the time. Mr. Kushner approves of it as a ‘strong hand’ that Mr. Biden inherited it.
“Biden’s government has bought the Trump analysis that these sanctions give America leverage, even though the sanctions did not give Trump any leverage over Iran,” said Joseph Cirincione, a longtime gun control expert who has now consulted with Obama administration officials. said about nuclear power. agreement.
The prospects for core discussions further complicate matters with Mr. Biden’s air strike on February 25 on Iranian – backed military fighters in Syria, a retaliation for military rocket attacks on US troops in neighboring Iraq. Although the strike was limited, it derailed emerging nuclear diplomacy and threatened escalation, said Mr. Cirincione said.
The strike also angered liberals determined to put an end to what they called America’s ‘endless’ or ‘forever’ wars – its military and counter-terrorism campaigns in the Middle East and parts of Africa that began after the attacks on September 11, 2001. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said the strike “puts our country on the road to continuing the Forever War instead of ending it”, and he questions its legal defense. . (The White House says it supports congressional action to repeal and replace Bush-era laws that give presidents broad authority to use force.)
To put it mildly, there is a feeling among liberals that the national security team of Mr. Biden is filled with centralists who have supported U.S. military intervention in the past, including Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Critics of Biden’s early Middle East policy have drawn attention to Brett McGurk, the National Security Council’s coordinator for the region. Mr. McGurk entered the government as an assistant in the White House of President George W. Bush, but continued through the presidency of Obama and Trump. He has strong ties with leaders in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – oil-rich states that are perceived by human rights activists as oppressive and which liberals regard as an unwelcome influence on US policy.
Mr. McGurk assisted in the decision of Mr. Biden to form, condemned on the left and did not directly punish Prince Mohammed, even after the White House declassified an intelligence report in which it was found that he, the de facto Saudi leader, had approved the operation that led to the assassination of Mr. . Khashoggi in 2018. Many liberals have said that the moral necessity to ban Prince Mohammed from future visits to the United States should outweigh the well-known realpolitik of maintaining relations with the Saudi kingdom.