Iran, China… Joe Biden is playing firm

To some, it promises “extreme competition”. To the others, the guarantee of maintaining the sanctions as long as the agreements are not respected. CBS is broadcasting his entire interview with Joe Biden this Sunday. Clearly, the American president seems to want to demonstrate that the United States will be firm on the international scene, clearly playing the game of economic competition against other world powers, and using its power of sanctions when it deems it necessary.

Thus, China is clearly identified as a strategic adversary. President Xi Jinping, with whom Joe Biden has still not spoken since taking office, takes it for his rank. “He’s very tough. He does not have, and I am not saying this as a criticism, it is just the reality, he does not have an ounce of democracy in him, ”says the 46th President of the United States.

“I’m not going to handle this like Trump”

In his first foreign policy speech on Thursday, he promised to be “at the rendezvous in the face of the advance of authoritarianism, in particular the growing ambitions of China”, again promising to “counter economic abuse of China ”, its“ aggressive acts ”, and to defend human rights, while working with Beijing“ when it is in the interest of America ”.

Pressed on CBS to say a little more about his intentions, Joe Biden says he intends to “focus on international rules”. “I’m not going to handle this like Trump,” he insists. “We must not have a conflict. But there will be extreme competition, “he announces, stressing that he knows Xi” well enough “to have had, as Barack Obama’s vice-president between 2009 and 2017,” 24-25 hours of interviews. private with him ”.

The confrontation between the two countries took on the appearance of a new Cold War under the presidency of Donald Trump, despite the latter’s ambivalence, who initially focused his attacks on the trade front while displaying his “friendship” for Xi Jinping, before later lining up behind the hard line of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. The Chinese president warned him at the end of January against a “new Cold War” which, according to him, would lead to a “dead end”.

Maintaining sanctions against Iran

Firmness, again, with the Iranian regime. The message is clear: there is no question of lifting the sanctions to get Tehran back to the negotiating table over Iran’s nuclear issue. To the journalist who asks him if the Iranians must “first stop enriching uranium”, the American president answers with a nod of the head.

The United States concluded in 2015, after long and difficult negotiations, an agreement with Iran supposed to prevent it from acquiring the atomic bomb. The other great powers (China, Russia, Germany, France and the United Kingdom) have also signed this text, then ratified by the UN.

But Donald Trump withdrew Washington from this agreement three years later, judging that it was insufficient on the nuclear level and also to counter the other “destabilizing activities” of the Islamic Republic. The ex-president reinstated and then tightened all the sanctions against Iran that had been lifted in exchange for its nuclear commitments, and Tehran in turn began to free itself from those restrictions.

Joe Biden has promised to return to the nuclear deal, on condition that Iran first renews its commitments. However, Iranian leaders reiterated on Sunday that the United States had to “fully lift” the sanctions before they again respect the restrictions imposed on their nuclear program.