VENEZUELA
Venezuelans are suffering. The economy is in ruins. And, now interim President Juan Guaido’s chief of staff has been taken into custody on questionable charges that he had guns in his home. In an interview Secretary of State Michael Pompeo commented on the unstable situation in Venezuela. He reiterated that the American people stand with the people of Venezuela, who are going through horrific times. Pompeo pointed out that the Trump Administration is behaving in the opposite way of Obama’s during the green effort in Iran. He added that: “Instead of shunning the people, we have supported them. Instead of denying the rights of the people of Iran, we’re supporting the rights of the people of Venezuela. We’re committed to this; we’re going to stay the course.”
Washington is approaching Venezuela on several fronts. Pompeo said “There’s the political element, there’s the economic element. We are desperately trying to get humanitarian assistance to the people of Venezuela. We are committed to helping Venezuela, the region, deny Maduro the opportunity to engage in this thuggish behavior that has been so harmful to ordinary Venezuelans. We’re determined to achieve this outcome, and we’re optimistic that we can get there.”
The political turmoil in Venezuela is expanding as the country is experiencing hyperinflation with the majority of its citizens suffering from malnutrition and many starving, including children. The former Maduro regime has dug in and refuses to give up power. Maduro, who is supported by the military has refused to allow humanitarian aid to cross the border into the country and had led to armed skirmishes with aid convoys.
LEBANON/IRAN
Secretary Pompeo announced that he is in talks with Lebanese government officials about how Beirut can extricate itself from the grips of local Hizballah groups, which are supported by the regime in Iran. He added that there are serious risks to Lebanon and Israel if they permit Hizballah’s missiles in southern Lebanon. There also are “… risks of having Hizballah intertwined in the government” and other “…risks that it presents to the Lebanese people.” The US Government is pushing back against Iran on a number of fronts. Washington recently added a number of names from Iran to its list of terrorist-designated groups and individuals. There also will be another round of sanctions coming up in May 2019.
According to the Secretary, the government has designated “senior leaders inside the IRGC. “You’ve seen us designate financial institutions, financial agents engaged in moving illicit money in support of the Houthis, in support of Hamas, in support of Hizballah. This administration has taken serious efforts across a broad range of threats, a broad range of efforts to Iran to extend its reach. We’ll continue to do that in evaluating whether or not to sanction a particular Iranian entity,” he noted. Estimates suggest that Hizballah may have over 100,000 rockets and may be building tunnels into the Northern Galilee, as well as setting up a military infrastructure on the Golan Heights.
In remarks to the traveling press, during the Secretary’s recent Middle East trip, Pompeo commented that “The simple goal is to get Iran to behave like a normal nation: stop blowing up things around the world; stop fomenting terrorism; stop their assassination campaign in Europe; stop underwriting the Houthis, Hamas, Hizballah. Simple things – the same things we ask every nation in the world to do we’re asking of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”
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Secretary Pompeo recently stated that the trade war with China was started long before President Trump assumed office. He added that we’ve“…had decades of Chinese abuse where we couldn’t sell our wheat, couldn’t sell our cattle, we couldn’t sell our beans or our cotton into China without a massive tariff, and when we did, they would steal our intellectual property. Those were unacceptable outcomes. The trade war was started an awfully long time ago by China. President Trump’s trying to flip that. He’s trying to make it better. I’ve seen the discussions; I know we’re making progress. I’m hopeful there’ll be a deal with China before too long….”
NORTH KOREA
On Friday, March 22, President Trump unexpectedly announced via Twitter that he is cancelling the recently announced additional trade sanctions aimed at North Korea. His statement caught the Treasury Department off guard as the Treasury Department had only a day earlier announced the additions restrictions. This appears to be the President’s latest attempt to salvage the nuclear negotiations.
DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Saturday, she presents key updates on U.S. foreign policy from the State Department.
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