More than three dozen grassroots advocacy and policy organizations across the country are calling on the Biden administration to alleviate sanctions on Iran for the purchase of vaccines and other humanitarian supplies as a gesture of goodwill, and to potentially jumpstart stalled negotiations for both parties to return to compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
In a letter to Biden, the groups — led by the National Iranian American Council and includes J Street, Ploughshares, Truman Center for National Policy, and the Quincy Institute — say that the Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal has empowered hardliners in Iran, caused the country’s nuclear program to advance beyond the deal’s limits, and led to a stalled diplomatic process that has some hinting at the possibility of moving on to military action.
“There are still diplomatic options available to the United States to change this course and overcome the challenges that Trump's abandonment of the JCPOA have wrought before it is too late,” they write, adding, “your administration can discredit those within Iran who argue there are no differences between your administration and the Trump administration and are eager to match U.S. economic pressure with Iranian nuclear leverage.”
The groups suggest that the Biden administration identify Iranian financial institutions that can facilitate purchases of COVID-19 vaccines and other needed medical supplies and humanitarian goods as well as supporting efforts to assist the flood of Afghan refugees in Iran.
The effort comes just after a recent joint statement from President Biden, French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on “the importance of a negotiated solution that provides for the return of Iran and the U.S. to full compliance with the JCPOA and provides the basis for continued diplomatic engagement to resolve remaining points of contention.”
In an apparent response to a recent Responsible Statecraft report, the joint statement highlighted “President Biden’s clearly demonstrated commitment to return the U.S. to full compliance with the JCPOA and to stay in full compliance, so long as Iran does the same.”
In their letter to Biden on Tuesday, the groups say that alleviating some sanctions on humanitarian grounds “will advance U.S. national security by creating momentum for negotiations while also bolstering global vaccination efforts and the campaign to defeat COVID-19” and “demonstrate U.S. seriousness and sincerity in reversing ‘maximum pressure.’”
Thanks to our readers and supporters, Responsible Statecraft has had a tremendous year. A complete website overhaul made possible in part by generous contributions to RS, along with amazing writing by staff and outside contributors, has helped to increase our monthly page views by 133%! In continuing to provide independent and sharp analysis on the major conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East, as well as the tumult of Washington politics, RS has become a go-to for readers looking for alternatives and change in the foreign policy conversation.
Ben Armbruster is the Managing Editor of Responsible Statecraft. He has more than a decade of experience working at the intersection of politics, foreign policy, and media. Ben previously held senior editorial and management positions at Media Matters, ThinkProgress, ReThink Media, and Win Without War.
An Iranian woman wearing a protective face mask receives a dose of the Iranian Coviran Barkat new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine at a drive through vaccination site in the Azadi (Freedom) sports complex during general COVID-19 vaccination in the west of Tehran while the COVID-19 delta variant outbreak in Iran, August 16, 2021. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto)NO USE FRANCE
On Wednesday, a Ukrainian delegation led by Defense Minister Rustem Umerov met with South Korean officials, including President Yoon Suk Yeol. The AP reported that the two countries met to discuss ways to “cope with the security threat posed by the North Korean-Russian military cooperation including the North’s troop dispatch.”
During a previous meeting in October, Ukrainian President Volodomir Zelenskyy said he planned to present a “detailed request to Seoul for arms support including artillery and air defense systems.”
So far, South Korea has participated in sanctions against Moscow, has sent Kyiv financial aid, and supplied vehicles and de-mining equipment. However, Seoul has declined to provide weapons to Ukraine, even as North Korean forces are confirmed to be supporting Russian troops on the frontlines of the war.
South Koreans have been resistant to sending weapons to Ukraine. According to a Gallup poll, 82% of the public opposed such measures. While the government has not ruled out sending weapons to Ukraine, experts question whether Seoul is likely to provide weapons at this stage, as President Yoon’s approval ratings are very low, and South Korea has little to gain from such an escalatory action, even when considering North Korean involvement in the conflict.
“This kind of alleged collaboration between Russia and the DPRK only poses a concern for Seoul insofar as it is being used by Western leaders to rope South Korea into taking a more active role in aiding Ukraine,” says the Quincy Institute’s Mark Episkopos. “The ROK must balance any such pressure from the White House with the looming transition to a Trump administration that approaches the Ukraine war in a fundamentally different way.” He adds, “under the circumstances, Seoul has little to gain from radically upending its cautious, passive Ukraine policy in the waning days of the Biden administration.”
For its part, Moscow has responded harshly to the possibility of South Korea supplying Kyiv with arms. “Seoul must realize that the possible use of South Korean weapons to kill Russian citizens will fully destroy relations between our countries,” said Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko.
Neither Seoul nor Kyiv have commented on whether any agreements were made concerning weapons sharing but agreed to continue sharing security information related to North Korea and Russian cooperation.
Other Ukraine News This Week:
Reuters reports that Ukraine launched American-supplied ATACMS twice in the last week. Both strikes targeted Russian operations in Kursk. The Russian Defense Ministry said that “retaliatory measures are being prepared.”
A record-breaking 188 drones were launched by Russia on Tuesday. The AP reports that most of the drones were intercepted, but that damage was done to civilian infrastructure, with no reported casualties. The drones were launched all at once, targeting 17 of Ukraine’s regions.
An analysis of Russia’s Oreshnik missile indicates that it was potentially not loaded with any explosives, or possibly a very small amount. According to the New York Times, the missile launched last week caused less damage than would have been expected had it been heavily armed. Jeffery Lewis, a nuclear nonproliferation expert at the Middlebury Institute for International Studies, said that “the damage to the facility is quite specific — no large explosions, just big holes punched in the roofs.”
Even though the missile was seemingly minimally armed, the Times reported that “Nick Brown, an analyst at Janes, the British-based defense intelligence firm, said it was the longest-range weapon to ever have been used in conflict in Europe.”
Russian state media claims that the Kremlin complied with a 1988 ballistic missile agreement by warning the United States of the launch 30 minutes in advance.
According to Reuters, North Korea has begun to expand a plant that makes Russian-used missiles. The plant makes short-range missiles that are assumed to be used in Russia, but Moscow and Pyongyang have both denied the transfer of North Korean weapons into Russia.
The Financial Times reported that Russia has recruited potentially hundreds of Yemeni nationals to assist in its war against Ukraine. The Houthi-connected recruits were apparently promised well-paying jobs and even Russian citizenship, before being coerced into military service.
The Houthi government and Moscow have been working to deepen relations and secure contracts, according to U.S. special envoy for Yemen Tim Lenderking. Additionally, a member of the Houthi movement told Russian media that the Houthi government was in “constant contact” with Moscow.
According to FT, many of the recruits had no military training and were tricked into service by signing contracts that they could not read.
Spokesperson Matthew Miller said reports about Yemeni nationals being recruited to fight alongside Russian forces in Ukraine were concerning and reflected the desperation that Moscow was experiencing at this point in the war.
Miller also said that any deterioration of relations between North and South Korea and Russia would be the fault of the Kremlin, not the West or Ukraine. Additionally, he could not confirm whether Russia had begun to supply North Korea with missile defense systems or not.
Miller did not have any comment on the reports that some European officials were discussing the possibility of deploying forces to Ukraine.
keep readingShow less
Top image credit: U.S. President Joe Biden meets with Angola's President Joao Manuel Goncalves Lourenco in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, U.S., November 30, 2023. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
In keeping with a promise he made in 2022 to visit Africa while in office, President Joe Biden is scheduled to travel to Luanda, Angola in the first week of December for a visit with Angolan president João Lourenço. Originally planned for October, the trip was postponed to allow the president to tend to domestic matters in the wake of Hurricane Milton.
This will be Biden’s first (and almost certainly his only) trip to Africa as president, and the first trip to Africa for any sitting American president since Barack Obama traveled to Kenya and Ethiopia in 2015.
As historians spend the coming decades dissecting Biden’s foreign policy legacy, his Africa policy will be little more than a footnote. Most of the analysis will center around major decisions that defined intense conflicts in precarious parts of the world, such as Biden’s decision to pull U.S. troops out of Afghanistan, his continued support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia, and the administration’s military and diplomatic support for Israel in its war against the Palestinians following Hamas’ attack on October 7, 2023.
Africa, however, is poised to play an increasingly central role in global affairs in the coming years. Geopolitical competition between Russia, China, and the United States is ramping up across the continent and climate change is increasing the urgency for states around the world to access Africa’s abundance of critical minerals and other natural resources.
All the while, the continent’s population is projected to double by mid-century, increasing the need for major infrastructure investments to support the burgeoning population.
Given this, the Biden team hopes the president’s broader legacy will include a mention of the fact that, in their view, he helped shift American policy in Africa from a peripheral aid- and security-based policy to one focused on long-term infrastructure development and cooperative economic engagement with lasting effects for Africans.
Angola is thereby the most strategic destination for Biden’s sole visit to the continent, as it’s the location for one of America’s most substantial infrastructure projects in the world.
The U.S. and other Western states feel a need to engage with developing countries that have formed close economic and diplomatic ties with China in recent years. Whereas the Chinese have stepped in to fill the needs of many Global South states, the U.S. and its Western partners have largely been absent.
The Lobito Corridor is among the first PGI projects looking to provide critical infrastructure in response to these needs.
The corridor is in fact a collection of numerous smaller construction projects (mostly of roads and railways, but also the construction of solar panels and digital infrastructure), each of which is financed and built independently. This is done ostensibly to localize the building of the corridor and to take into greater consideration the needs of local communities over the course of its development.
Lobito is being planned in three phases. The first is the renovation of the Benguela Rail Line (also known as Lobito Atlantic Railway) as well as connecting roads. This rail line connects the west coast Angolan shipping port in the city of Lobito with important cities across the eastern portion of the country and across the border into the Democratic Republic of Congo, which sits to Angola’s northeast.
The second phase of the corridor looks to connect this railway southeastward to Zambia’s key mining cities, allowing landlocked Zambia to send raw minerals and other products on newly constructed rail and roads connecting to the Benguela line. This will help Zambian goods reach the Atlantic, thereby allowing access to American and European markets. The State Department and its partners are currently studying the feasibility of this second phase.
The third phase would extend the rail line eastward to Tanzania’s port city and economic capital of Dar es Salaam, along the Indian Ocean. An old railway on this stretch of the corridor, known as the Tazara railway, is in fact currently being refurbished by the Chinese. It remains unclear if the U.S. would work jointly with China to refurbish the Tazara railway, or if it would eschew cooperation with Beijing and try to build a new rail line independently from the existing one.
Of course, the incoming Trump administration could drastically change the U.S. government’s current plans for the corridor.
However, the U.S. is not constructing or funding this corridor alone, thereby ensuring that much of its construction will continue regardless of future U.S. policy. Being a PGI project, Lobito is managed through the cooperation of G7 countries, and much of the corridor is being funded locally by the African Development Bank, which is headquartered in Abidjan, Ivory Coast.
A key differentiating factor between this project and the standard aid-based efforts the U.S. has historically focused on across the Global South is the way in which it’s being financed. As aforementioned, the U.S. is engaging local parties in the management and financing of the corridor. The U.S. itself has committed to spend around $250 million, with much of the money coming from the U.S. International Development Financial Corporation (DFC) and the U.S. Export-Import Bank.
While still contributing some financing, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) — the traditional American grantmaking agency for development projects — is taking more of a backseat.
As is typical with DFC-funded initiatives, this infrastructure project looks to eventually fully transition from being publicly funded and managed to being controlled and operated by the private sector. The hope is that the infrastructure gains can be maintained over decades by profit-seeking companies looking for investment opportunities.
The president’s trip to Angola therefore serves as a public pronouncement of hisinfrastructure policy in Africa, which he hopes serves as a central component to his legacy on the continent.
The Lobito Corridor, though, still faces serious questions. For one, the thrust behind the project seems eerily similar to past projects focused on extracting raw materials mined in Africa and then shipping them away and downstreaming them in the West. For Lobito to be successful for Africans, supply chains must be deepened across the continent, with long-term jobs created in downstreamed supply chains in Africa.
Another concern has to do with whether the corridor will be financially lucrative enough to encourage private companies to take management control and invest in sufficient quantities to keep it operational well into the future.
Yet, for a president guaranteed to leave office on January 20 and now squarely focused on firming up his legacy, he sees this trip as an opportunity to illuminate the positive aspects of the project.
Biden hopes to lay claim to the current and future successes of Lobito, and to permanently attach his image to a project his team believes is indicative of good development policy in the Global South, and, they hope, will serve as the gold standard on which future projects will be mirrored.
keep readingShow less
Top photo credit: US special envoy Amos Hochstein talks to reporters following his meeting with Lebanese Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri in Beirut, Lebanon, on November 20, 2024. Hochstein arrives in the Lebanese capital on November 19 for talks with officials on a truce plan, which Lebanon largely endorses, to halt the ongoing war between Israel and the Lebanese Hezbollah group. (Photo by Fadel Itani/NurPhoto)
A ceasefire that ends Israel's indiscriminate bombing of Lebanon is welcomed and long overdue. However, it remains unclear whether this deal actually will work, given that the agreement gives Israel 60 days to withdraw. As long as Israeli forces remain on Lebanese soil, the risk of the conflict reigniting — deliberately or inadvertently — will remain significant.
Had the Biden administration exercised its leverage and prioritized U.S. interests, this conflict would never have reached this level to begin with. And ironically, though the deal was struck by Biden's team, the parties in the conflict appear to have agreed to it mainly with an eye to Donald Trump's expressed desire to see the fighting end before he takes office in January.
Contrary to Biden’s spin at the press conference today, the agreement text appears more balanced. Both Israel and Hezbollah agree not to take any offensive actions against each other, while recognizing both Israel and Lebanon’s right to continue to use force in self-defense.
It puts the Lebanese government — which includes Hezbollah — in charge of supervising and controlling any sale, supply and production of weapons or weapons-related materials.
The agreement also established a committee “acceptable to Israel and Lebanon” to monitor and assist in ensuring the implementation of the deal.
Netanyahu, who is wanted by the ICC for war crimes, has declared victory. There is some truth to Netanyahu's narrative: Through this agreement, Hezbollah appears to have given up a key position, that is, the refusal to disconnect Gaza from Lebanon.
But on the other hand, Netanyahu promised to destroy Hezbollah, which clearly he has not achieved. Though the organization is weakened, its ability to shoot at Israel — including penetrating Israel's air defenses, continues to be intact. Just Sunday, they shot more than 250 rockets and other projectiles at Israel.
Indeed, Hezbollah's capacity to inflict pain on Israel may have been a key reason why Netanyahu agreed to the deal. Had his campaign against Hezbollah been more successful, he'd likely be less inclined to stop the fighting.
Tehran has reportedly pressed Hezbollah to agree to the terms of the ceasefire, even though it betrays Hezbollah's earlier position. Tehran has several reasons for doing this: It has opposed the expansion of the conflict from the outset, given its own challenges at home. While it is in a conflict with Israel, the timing of this war suits Israel far more than Iran.
But Tehran may have also seen this as a gift to Trump, demonstrating Tehran's ability to help deescalate the situation while signaling Iran's own desire to strike a deal with Trump rather than to return to a state of heightened U.S.-Iran tensions.
Subscribe now to our weekly round-up and don't miss a beat with your favorite RS contributors and reporters, as well as staff analysis, opinion, and news promoting a positive, non-partisan vision of U.S. foreign policy.