WASHINGTON – Biden administration officials walked through with surprised words of praise from an unexpected source earlier this week: Jared Kushner.
In an opinion piece for The Wall Street Journal, Kushner, the son-in-law and adviser to former President Donald Trump on issues in the Middle East, said that President Joe Biden “did the right thing” and called “Iran’s bluff” by refusing to make new concessions to lure Iran into talks over restoring a nuclear deal left by the Trump administration.
Kushner may have meant well, but his stamp of approval exacerbated a problem for Biden by inflating liberal allies who were already disappointed that his nuclear diplomacy with Iran had not progressed faster.
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“I would see it in the Biden White House as a giant, flashing red light that maybe what I’m doing is not right, because Jared Kushner is finding ways to praise it,” said Benjamin Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to former president, said. Barack Obama, who worked closely with the 2015 nuclear deal, spoke on Wednesday about the podcast “Pod Save the World.”
Iran is just one of several foreign policy issues that have frustrated Biden’s base for two months in his presidency. Although Biden welcomed several swift actions – among which they rejoined the Paris climate agreement and withdrew support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen – he caused frustration by ordering an air strike in Syria and refusing to to punish Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin. Salman, on the brutal murder of a dissident journalist and American resident, Jamal Khashoggi.
On Wednesday, Biden fueled dissatisfaction when he admitted in an interview with ABC News that it would be ‘difficult’ to meet a May 1 deadline, under the Trump administration, to withdraw troops from Afghanistan, a high priority for liberals who are impatient to end. what they call “endless” American wars.
And there could be more conflict on military spending, and Biden is expected to suggest little if a Pentagon budget is cut that has swelled under Trump. Fifty House Democrats sent a letter to Biden this week asking for a “significant” reduction.
After seeing Biden generate a $ 1.9 billion transformation bill, progressive people are asking why his foreign policy feels so conventional. They worry that Biden and his largely centric team of national security officials will disappoint the liberal wing’s desires for a new US foreign policy that relies much less on military power, weaken tensions with rivals such as Iran and China and put greater pressure – under threat. of cooler relations – against allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel.
Biden administration officials dispute the criticism as unfair and premature.
One senior government official said the Trump era was creating an unrealistic appetite for fingerprint action on complex issues and that the longer arc of Biden’s policies would satisfy many frustrated liberals. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss unofficial political considerations.
The official also pointed to several early actions by Biden, which were welcomed by the left, including the return to the climate agreement, the World Health Organization and the United Nations Human Rights Council. Biden also reversed visa restrictions, popularly known as Trump’s ‘Muslim ban’, announcing an end to US support for the Saudi-led military campaign in Yemen and placing temporary new limits on drones outside combat zones.
Some prominent liberals mention that these actions are welcome, but also fruit that hangs low, saying that Biden is too vigilant on issues that require more difficult compromises and political courage. They worry a 78-year-old president may think too sharply of the days when Republicans regularly enjoyed a political advantage over national security issues and Democrats turned to more conservative, militaristic policies to defend their right flank.
“I think there is a lack of faith that the politics around some of these issues have actually shifted,” said Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of the Israel-oriented liberal advocacy group J Street. “There is a lot more political space for this government to pursue progressive policies than they think.”
The Middle East, which Biden officials hope to emphasize as it draws America’s attention to China, is the source of many complaints. At the top of the list is Biden’s decision not to unilaterally rejoin the nuclear deal in Iran by reversing tough sanctions imposed by Iran after abandoning the 2018 deal.
Iran says it will not speak out, much less scale its progressive nuclear program and meet the limits of the agreement, until Biden acts.
Supporters of the original agreement, including officials from the Obama administration who helped design it, say the passage of time only allows political opposition to build up at home and events in the dangerous region to escalate.
They also complain that Biden maintains the sanctions that Trump imposed on Iran when he left the nuclear deal, even though Iran complied at the time. Kushner aptly referred to it as a ‘strong hand’ that Biden inherited.
“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 nuclear talks further complicate matters with Biden’s February 25 airstrike on Iran – backed by 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 escalated escalation, Cirincione said.
The strike also angered liberals determined to put an end to what they call 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 11 September. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Said the strike “puts our country on the road to continuing the Forever War instead of ending it”, and he questions its legal justification. (The White House says it supports congressional action to repeal and replace Bush-era laws that give presidents broad authority to use force.)
Comparing the frustration, there is a feeling among liberals that Biden’s national security team is filled with centralists who have supported US military intervention in the past, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and the president’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
Critics of Biden’s early Middle Eastern policies have drawn attention to Brett McGurk, the region’s National Security Council coordinator. McGurk entered the government as an aide in former President George W. Bush’s White House, but remained through the presidencies 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.
McGurk helped shape Biden’s decision, condemning the left, not to punish Crown Prince Mohammed directly, even after the White House declassified an intelligence report finding that he, the de facto Saudi leader, had approved the operation. which led to the assassination of Khashoggi in 2018 Many liberals have said that the moral necessity to ban Crown Prince Mohammed from future visits to the United States should weigh at least more heavily than the well-known realpolitik to maintain relations with the Saudi kingdom .
Some were encouraged by the prospect of Sanders’ foreign policy adviser Matthew Duss, another Middle East specialist, joining the government. But after job discussions with the State Department, Duss recently decided to stay on Sanders’ staff and the publication Jewish Currents said it was “the best place to keep working to support a progressive agenda.”
Even before the announcement, many liberals complained that “the Biden foreign policy team does not include anyone who was a clear and consistent opponent of our disastrous interventions around the world,” wrote Katrina vanden Heuvel, former editor of the left-wing Nation magazine. has in a Washington Post opinion column.
And while Blinken and Sullivan met with senior Chinese diplomats Thursday and Friday, some liberals also scolded the Biden team’s hawkish stance on Beijing, warning again that they have Trump-weathered confrontational tones and note that Chinese cooperation is essential to fight climate change . Among other things, Biden did not reverse the tight tariffs that Trump placed on Chinese imports.
“I was incredibly disappointed, but also not shocked, that Biden’s government leaned in the confrontational stance that favored the introduction of foreign policy,” said Kate Kizer, policy director of an anti-intervention group, Win Without War. “More militarization and demonization is not the answer. Deep investments in diplomacy and in building resilience are at home here. ”
Some Democrats insist on doing a major diplomatic infusion. A group of Democratic Senate and House members on Tuesday called for a $ 12 billion increase in the US budget for international affairs to fund diplomacy. And at the same time, even more congressional Democrats are calling for deep cuts to a Pentagon budget that has grown by 20% under Trump to $ 740 billion.
“We have so many household needs here at home,” Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif., Said.
Lee is also among those who are tired of the extended deadlines for withdrawals from Afghanistan, such as those indicated by Biden on Wednesday.
“We need to bring our troops home,” she said, “and we need to do it quickly.”
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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