The team around U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear that they want the Biden-Harris administration to hit the ground running. In Iran, a tough stance is required.
Nov.16 (UPI) — The team around U.S. President-elect Joe Biden has made it clear that they want the Biden-Harris administration to hit the ground running on “day one.” There is growing speculation about who may hold the key roles in Biden’s Cabinet. Tipped to be given one of the most important positions will be Susan Rice, former national security adviser to Barack Obama. Rice,55, served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2009 to 2013. She is a front-runner to become secretary of state. Rice is a foreign policy expert. She advised Bill Clinton during his second term, and Michael Dukakis and John Kerry during their 1988 and 2004 White House campaigns. She is a Stanford University graduate, former Oxford University Rhodes Scholar, ex-McKinsey & Co. management consultant and Brookings Institution fellow. But she has courted controversy in the past, accused of misleading the American public over the deadly 2012 attacks on the U.S. diplomatic mission and CIA annex in Benghazi, Libya. In a series of TV interviews at the time, she claimed the attacks had spontaneously erupted from a protest over an anti-Muslim short film, Innocence of Muslims, although it later became clear that it was actually a premeditated assault by the terrorist group Ansar al-Sharia. It is thought that Biden dropped her as his preferred choice as vice president because of fears that Donald Trump would exploit the Benghazi controversy. Now it looks like she may take the top job in his Cabinet. Rice previously called on Trump to offer the Iranians a time-limited “suspension” of the United States’ withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal and to allow relief from the tough sanctions imposed by his administration. In a newspaper article, Rice stated: “Eliminating the Iranian nuclear threat must be any president’s priority. The Trump administration’s demand that Iran simultaneously halt all its nefarious activities failed utterly, as it sacrificed the nuclear deal and obtained nothing else. Should a renewed nuclear dialogue bear fruit, on a separate track the administration could aim to negotiate restraints on other aspects of Iran’s malign behavior. President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal and impose crippling sanctions, when Iran was in full compliance, was foolish and, predictably, has backfired.
