Biden “The Yemeni Civil War should end”… close-up relationship with Saudi Arabia

First State Department visit “Sudden support to attack Yemen in Saudi Arabia”
Suspension of arms sales to Saudi Arabia…
Macron “Welcome to the US and Iran dialogue, I will be an honest broker”

[아시아경제 이현우 기자] U.S. President Joe Biden announced that the war between Saudi Arabia-led Arab League forces and Yemen’s Huti rebels is a war that must be ended, and will stop supporting US attacks on Saudi Arabia. Earlier, the U.S. government made clear its intention to liquidate the close relations with Saudi Arabia by reviewing the arms export contract signed by former President Donald Trump with Saudi Arabia and announcing the suspension of arms supply. This can be interpreted as a measure for a major transformation of the Middle East strategy, such as the US reorganizing relations with Saudi Arabia and returning to the Iranian nuclear agreement system, which former President Trump withdrew.

According to foreign media such as CNBC, President Biden visited the US State Department for the first time after taking office, saying, “The civil war in Yemen must be over.” “Including the sale of weapons to Saudi Arabia, the attack operation in Yemeni All support from the United States will be ended,” he announced. Prior to the presidential election, President Biden had argued that many civilians are being slaughtered by Saudi Arabia’s attack on Yemen, and that the US should stop intervening in the war. The US State Department has also announced that it will review the existing arms export deal with Saudi Arabia signed by former President Trump since last month and temporarily suspend arms exports.

Reestablishment of relations with Saudi Arabia at the center of the Middle East Civil War

Saudi Arabia and the Arab League also began to normalize relations with Qatar, which had been blockaded with Yemen from the 4th of last month in response to this change in US stance. Earlier, Saudi Arabia has been pressing Yemen’s Huti rebels and Qatar for their ties with Iran, a Shi’ite endemic. In particular, the civil war in Yemen was one of the major civil wars in the Middle East, which continued for six years since the beginning of the war in 2015, and Saudi Arabia-led Arab allied forces fought a fierce battle with the Yemeni government forces against the Huti rebels. As the war between the two sides prolonged, major port facilities in Yemen were paralyzed, and as Corona 19 spread, Yemeni residents suffered enormous damage from food shortages and lack of drugs.

As the voices of criticism for such civilian damage rose, the Democratic Party of the United States also proposed a resolution to stop the U.S. intervention in the Yemeni civil war, saying that the civil war in Yemen in 2019 is causing unnecessary mass civilian killings. have. At that time, former President Trump showed off his special relationship with the Saudi royal family and signed various high-tech weapons export contracts, making it his goal and continued military support to Saudi Arabia.

One of the things that former President Trump pursued on the 19th of last month, the last day of his tenure, was to sign a contract to export advanced weapons such as F-35 fighters to Saudi Arabia. President Biden declared that he would completely block this and end Saudi attack support for Yemen, and declared the end of the honeymoon relationship between Saudi Arabia and the United States. Politico, the US political media, interpreted the reason that President Biden’s Middle East policy shifted away from the existing Saudi-centered stance as a paving stone for the return of the Iranian Nuclear Agreement (JCPOA), which was one of President Biden’s pledges during the presidential election.

French President Macron welcomes the new will of the United States

The changes in US policy in the Middle East and the willingness to return to the Iranian nuclear agreement are welcomed by the international community. French President Emmanuel Macron said in a videoconference with the American foreign policy think tank’Atlantic Council’, “welcoming the new US commitment to return to the Iranian nuclear agreement, and as an honest intermediary between the United States and Iran. “I will do my part,” he stressed, “Saudi and Israel must come into this agreement in some form.”

Iran’s nuclear agreement is an agreement signed by Iran in July 2015 with the so-called P5+1 countries, including the United States, Britain, France, China, Russia and Germany, and the European Union (EU), which are permanent members of the UN Security Council. The main point was that the US and the European Union (EU) lifted economic sanctions against Iran in exchange for Iran’s abandoning its nuclear program. However, as the Trump administration unilaterally withdrew it in 2018 and resumed sanctions that had been suspended, not only Iran, but also the international community strongly opposed.

The Trump administration appealed to the United Nations last year to support the restoration of Iran’s sanctions, but it was ignored by most countries. Since the Iranian sanctions themselves were a provision contained in the details of the Iranian nuclear agreement, international public opinion that it was improbable that the US, which had already withdrawn from the agreement, resumed it was dominated. During the presidential election, President Biden previously declared the case as a catastrophe of US diplomacy and made a return to Iran’s nuclear agreement as one of his major pledges.

Reporter Lee Hyun-woo [email protected]