Trump's new team is a gang of incompetents: journalist
Thomas W. Lippman, a journalist and author, specializing in the Middle East and Saudi Arabia–United States relations, has said that the United States does what other countries do --it uses them and abides by its decisions when they are useful and deemed compatible with national interests, otherwise not.
"On international organizations, the United States does what other countries do --it uses them and abides by its decisions when they are useful and deemed compatible with national interests, otherwise not. Current example: the ICC indictment of Netanyahu. Several European countries that are members of the ICC have said they will not enforce the arrest warrant, partly because they are allies of Israel, partly because they see that the ICC has not charged other national leaders who are clearly responsible for more atrocities than Israel, such as Myanmar, Syria and Eritrea. The United States isn't even a member of the ICC," said in an exclusive interview with ILNA.
"On Israel and the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, the United States has understood and accepted Israel's non-membership for decades and this is certainly not going to change now, especially because many senior leaders of the United States believe Iran will soon have nuclear weapons (in violation of the NPT) and will threaten Israel with them," he added.
He added that "On Trump's policy toward Iran, it's too soon to tell. Trump basically doesn't care about anything or anyone other than himself, and his new team (other than Rubio) is a gang of incompetents. Rubio,of course, is a hard-liner on Iran."
"Informed people in the US are well aware that Saudi Arabia is on much better terms with Iran than it was a few years ago. Americans also understand that what Israel is doing in Gaza is putting immense pressure on Egypt, Jordan and the UAE to break their ties to Israel. The Trump team is a long way from developing a coherent policy to deal with these issues," the journalist elaborated.
"The US and other countries do what they perceive to be in their own interests. Every year, the US State Department issues a detailed report on the human rights situation in every country. Some of them are extremely critical -- see the sections on China's policy in Tibet, for example, or on Saudi Arabia. These reports stir people up and they sometimes provoke outrage in Congress, but they rarely affect US foreign policy decisions. That was true even when Jimmy Carter was president and promised to make human rights the cornerstone of US foreign policy. I was in Riyadh when Carter arrived and I watched him embrace the Saudis regardless of their atrocious human rights record. Why? Because he wanted something from the Saudis -- support for Sadat's peace initiative and the Camp David accords," teh author concluded.