Biden dings Trump for his handling of North Korea and Iran
Former Vice President Joe Biden on Monday lambasted Donald Trump over recent foreign policy decisions, dismissing the president’s historic trip into North Korean territory over the weekend as a photo-op, while blaming Trump for the deterioration of relations with Iran.
Over the weekend, Trump met with Kim Jong Un, the North Korean leader, for the third time in his presidency and became the first sitting American president to step foot in the isolated country. The meeting, which took place in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, was capped off by Trump’s stepping onto the North Korean side of the line in a made-for-TV moment that Democrats immediately denounced as a photo-op, despite both sides agreeing to restart nuclear talks.
The New York Times reported afterward that the administration is considering agreeing to a “freeze” of North Korea’s nuclear weapons arsenal as opposed to a more comprehensive denuclearization pact, a notion rejected by national security adviser John Bolton, who was absent from Sunday’s summit.
On Monday, Biden, the 2020 presidential front-runner, said Trump had “rushed to legitimize a dictator” in his talks with, and kind words for, Kim, while paving the way for Iran to breach part of the 2015 multinational pact to curb its nuclear program.
Biden, who easily has the most foreign policy experience among 2020 hopefuls, has rebutted the president throughout his term as Trump has sought to unwind the Obama administration’s foreign policy legacy. But Biden’s criticism on Monday also came after a particularly bruising stretch for his campaign, as questions about his record on civil rights followed him into last week’s first primary debates and through the weekend.
“Diplomacy is important, but diplomacy requires a strategy, a process and competent leadership to develop,” Biden said in a statement released by his campaign.
Despite the summits, outreach and effusive praise from Trump, Biden noted that “we still don’t have a single commitment from North Korea.”
“Not one missile or nuclear weapon has been destroyed, not one inspector is on the ground,” he said. “If anything, the situation has gotten worse. North Korea has continued to churn out fissile material and is no longer an isolated pariah on the world stage.”
On Iran, Biden asserted that Trump’s “policy of maximum pressure has produced worse than minimum results,” and said that the multilateral Iran deal had been working to keep the country from developing nuclear weapons. Biden pointed to Iran’s rapidly escalating aggression in the region, capped off last month with the country shooting down an American drone and Trump’s approving, then calling off, a retaliatory attack.
A day after Trump’s encounter with Kim, Iran announced on Monday that it had made good on its threat to exceed the caps on enriched uranium set out by the 2015 deal, a little more than a year after Trump withdrew the U.S. from the pact and imposed punishing sanctions on Tehran.
Biden added that Trump’s hard line on Iran had also “alienated us from our allies,” who have remained in the nuclear deal and are grappling with Iran’s demands to mitigate the effects of Trump’s sanctions.
“Everything this president does is backwards,” he declared.
