 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. Today we're going to be discussing about the US foreign policy in the last few months, hopefully at least of the Trump administration. So there have been a lot of developments over the past few weeks. On Thursday, we saw that Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, of course, he termed the BDS movement anti-Semitic. He went to an illegal Israeli settlement, the first by a US Secretary of State, and proclaimed that the settlements could be done in a lawful way, which is really taking the US policy much further. We also have other news of US moves on Iran. There have been sanctions imposed recently and in Yemen. So to talk more about this, we have with us Prabir Pulkai. Prabir, thank you so much for joining us. So first question, like I mentioned, Pompeo really has got the extra mile in favor of Israel yesterday. And this actually leaves a lot of questions for the Biden administration. So what do you think was the aim here? Well, the US regards, at least if we entered the United States 10, 15 years back, you would see the board. This is where US citizens have to go. This is where aliens have to go. So obviously they have regarded always the rest of the world as a bunch of aliens. So this is something we have to take into account. How does the US look at its foreign policy? How does it look at the rest of the world? And it's also interesting, therefore, that what you're seeing increasingly is that the US is saying that whatever we decide is the international law. So it doesn't matter if the international law says that you cannot appropriate 10 degrees, which you have won by force of arms. But this is not recognized in international law. Pompeo says it doesn't really matter. As long as we are the law, that's all that really matters. But moving away from the issue of Israel and Palestine, I'll come back to this. I think the other issue really is that this administration has decided that let's put the lines on the ground in such a way that Biden administration will hamstrung for doing anything else. And they also are likely to have, and the Republicans are likely to have a majority in the Senate. So that can also be used to back up whatever Trump's foreign policy has been. So this, the moves that you talked about Iran on the Houthis, as well as what they have done on Palestine, and also in Jalan Heights. That's also something that Pompeo has endorsed. So all of this means that you will have to decisions by the United States. According to the United States is international law. Whoever does not agree to it, falls foul of India international law as enunciated by Pompeo, Trump and company or the United States. So therefore, if you object to Israel taking over Palestinian lands by force of arms occupation, which is what it has both in Jalan Heights as well as in the West Bank, then you will be considered anti-Semitic, which is in terms of US law, then supposed to be a serious issue. Now of course, for most of the world, we have never practiced oppression of the Jewish population. This has been specifically a European issue. And now of course, exported to the Americas via Western Europe. So that concept of what would be considered Semitic, anti-Semitic oppression of the Jews, all of that is now supposed to be imposed on the rest of the world, who have no history of any of this. So this is of course, the other peculiar part of us or people who object to Israel's occupation of Palestinian lands because anti-Semitic, which is what this proposal is. So I think that is a important issue that this is going to really hamstrung Biden administration doing much. Not that Biden administration has very different positions on Palestine. Their positions are almost identical, except that they don't want to say, let's bury the two state solution, let's have only one state, and that is a Jewish state. That's not something which Biden administration would say, but they would also endorse a lot of the things that have happened. They've never really opposed Israel's expansionism or annexation policies in different ways. They have backed up the Israeli state, the Zionist state fully. So all of those things are there. For the Palestinians, it's a moment of reckoning that if the thought Biden administration coming in means a difference for the Palestine-Israel question, what is going to happen is that Libya has been much more the curb, and effectively that position probably has been weakened much more than even otherwise weak Biden administration would have taken. So the issue squarely comes back to the Palestinian people. What do they do in front of, this is the situation they are facing. And in this, I think one of the positions that they have to think over is that they have been for the last 10, 12 years and attempt to get the Hamas and the Pata to come together and try to build a united front. They have been a number of meetings, number of resolutions, a number of decisions taken, but they've really not gone the whole mile. Even now we have two administrations in Gaza, for instance, one which actually administers the territory. The other is what Pata or the Palestinian Authority recognizes in that administration. So I think time has come for them to realize that unless they're able to rally the Palestinian people together in a unified resistance, what is going to happen is increasing the disenfranchisement of the Palestinian population, take over of their lands and increasingly the attempt to do further ethnic cleansing whichever way the Israelis would go. So make conditions for the Palestinian people so intolerable that they would then think of exile rather than continuing in such scenario. And that has been the Israeli Zionist position from the beginning. Squeeze them out, regard them not as Palestinians, say there are no Palestinians and if there are Arabs there after all, so many Arabs elsewhere in West Asia, why can't they go somewhere else? So that is the position that the Zionist state would take and that is something which if they have to contest, unity of the Palestinian people is going to be of paramount importance because rest of the world, honestly speaking, rest of the world seems to have forgotten about the Palestinian issue. That's where it is right now. And unless the West Asian part of the world has a realignment of some kind, I think this position is likely to continue with the Arab states, particularly the monarchy's behaving in a particular way. Right, absolutely. And probably in this context, of course a related issue will be that of the Houthis as well. And they have been reports over the past few days that the US is planning, the Trump administration is planning to designate the Houthis as a terrorist organization. Now, this really in some ways, it kind of reverses the process of the past couple of months. We've talked about this before where there seem to have been some back channel negotiations, especially after the attacks on the Saudi Arab co-facilities in Saudi Arabia and attempt to sort of build some kind of a consensus, some kind of a peace deal over time. Whereas this would basically probably undo all that work and lead to both strife. Well, again, it's an attempt to put cast in stone, the Trump policies. I think the reapproach mark that we were talking of was more Saudi Arabia recognizing it's a war they can't win. And the fact that the Houthis could strike Saudi Aramco, could strike Aramco facilities and could also damage the pipelines meant that Saudi Arabia was at risk. So therefore, the question of trying to get a reapproach mark with the Houthis, trying to get a settlement in Yemen. But after three to six months, I think there's almost three to six months this has been going on in different ways. It's very clear that the US is not behind this. This was more something which Saudis were trying to work out and also the Emiratis were trying to work out. Emiratis are big players in this area. Emiratis were interested, but it doesn't seem to have much of support from the United States. That's what appears on the Trump administration. So what they're doing is, again, creating a condition in which Biden administration would find it difficult to undo what they have already done, which is put Houthis behind the pale by calling them a terrorist organization. You know, even in the United States there has been an enormous pressure on the US administration to try and see whether peace can be brought to Yemen because this has been a humanitarian disaster of an enormous magnitude. This is, we have never seen a scenario when the world seems to have forgotten almost 25 to 30 million Yemenis. Their schools are not working, hospitals are not working, electricity is not there, basic health amenities, water is not there, and it is true for large parts of Yemen. Under such conditions where 25 to 30 million people are at risk, huge number of children have already faced enormous health issues. We have had cholera breakout in Yemen. All of this is on record and the world has been mostly silent because they have decided and they by they I mean, in this case, really the Western powers, the NATO powers and the United States has decided that keeping relations with Saudi Arabia, selling arms to them is much more important than the fate of 25 to 30 million Yemenis. So with this condition, what we now have, if Houthis are declared a terrorist organization, then one thing that's going to happen is United Nations will have to withdraw from Yemen. They have already started the process precisely because if the Houthis are declared as terrorists, they cannot have any relationship with them and continue to work as they have been doing, particularly providing health facilities to those areas which are under Houthi control. So you're going to see much worsening conditions in Yemen as a consequence of this. And again, doing it is easy. Diversing it is not because it means that then the Houthis will lose trust in the United States. You see, rest of the world does not look upon the Biden administration versus the Trump administration, the difference of policies and so on. They take it as United States and if they do so, this is something which is a breach of trust, breach of faith after having talked to various people need for peace, suddenly to have this. And therefore, what would again happen is that getting them back to a peace negotiations, backdoor or front door is going to be that much more difficult. So what it would mean is continued war in Yemen and enormous miseries that are already being faced by the Yemeni population that continue, continuing if not worsening. So this is the stark choice. And unless they're able to defeat Saudi Arabia in Yemen, this is not good to reverse. Absolutely, right. And probably finding the last link in the chain, so to speak, is regarding the Iran policy itself. So we've got news of fresh sanctions being imposed on Iran. The Biden administration seems to have hinted that it will consider going back to the Iran nuclear deal but with some amendments. And this already means that the Trump mission of scuttling the deal has more or less been completed even after they go out of power, assuming Trump steps down properly it is. But nonetheless, it means that the lines again have once again shifted even in this theater. And so Iran's options that we remain limited. So what do you see is happening in that region? You see, Iran has taken the position for quite some time now that United States is not treaty capable. So they have not been particularly focused on the United States and what it is going to do. Their question has been to European Union and to other countries, countries like India as well, that if you do not agree with the United States, that the Iran deal has not been fulfilled by Iran, but it has not been fulfilled by the United States. It is the one which is withdrawn from the treaty. Iran kept to the treaty and to every letter of the treaty till the United States withdrew, even after they have withdrawn, they have only done stepwise. They have withdrawn from their obligations which the treaty permits them to do. The treaty actually says if other side does not fulfill its requirements under the treaty, then Iran has the option then to give notice of what are the things that it is going to do. So they have fulfilled their end of the treaty. It's other countries who have not. So the ball has really been on the court of the European Union and other countries in the world. But how do they actually help in continuing trade with Iran under the US sanctions? And there the basic issue is the US sanctions, in fact, would sanction even any bank, any entity in European Union which wants to do business with Iran. So in essence, the US sanctions become the definitive international sanctions and not the UN sanctions. So this is where the problem really lies. Can the Biden administration and the European Union do something by which Iran gets the breathing space and then still continues with the treaty? They have not officially withdrawn from the treaty. They have started limited purification or enrichment of uranium. And that limited uranium enrichment is still way below what they had given up when they signed the treaty. At the time, they had handed over 97% of their enriched uranium to Russia as a fulfilling their part of the contract. They dismantled a huge number of centrifuges, the bulk of the centrifuges, all of that they had done in order to fulfill the conditions of the treaty. But having now seen what the United States has done, the question is not the United States, not the Biden administration question is the rest of the world. Can the Biden administration work with other countries to provide relief to Iran is really the question. And that unfortunately doesn't seem to be that Biden is going to take a risk on Iran. Given the fact that Trump would still hold the United States policies as hostage because the Republicans control the Senate and at the moment Trump controls the Republicans. That's very clear. Most of the Republican leadership would not win today easily without Trump's drumming up the ultra, what has been called nationalist but really racist rhetoric of different kinds. And of course, make America great again is a part of that rhetoric only. So I think this is where the problem really lies. It's not so much what Iran has to do, but it is really what the European Union has to do. And the United States in this case, Biden administration's hands are I think tied and they have limited role at this point. It's important to recognize that. We are only talking of what is US doing. We are not talking about what the rest of the world is doing, whether it is Yemen, whether it is Palestine or it is Iran. And I think the rest of the world is at the moment missing at the table. Absolutely. And for that matter, China, which will definitely have a lot to do, especially with Iran as well, considering it's oil. China and Russia have supported Iran. Let's put it this way. Because of them, that you also have oil trade taking place. They're selling to China. China is not accepting the US sanctions. And that is why Iran as a country can still function. But at the same time, it's not easy for China also because alternate mechanisms for trade are the ones which is a problem. So you can do barter trade, but getting money in and out of Iran in different currency still is a huge issue. And unless we as an international, we solve the problem of financial transactions not being rooted only through the swift mechanism and for the US banks, basically, which means dollar denominated accounts. Unless we change that, we are going to find an issue that irrespective what the world thinks, the United States still holds them by the throat because they control the global finance. Thank you so much, Prabhu, for talking to us. That's all we have time for today. Keep watching.