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Thirty Democrats, including House Foreign Affairs Chair Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY) and House Intel Chair Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), are sending a letter to Secretary of State Tony Blinken today, urging the administration to take a tougher position against Saudi Arabia following Riyadh’s stance against producing more oil and its recent talks with China and Russia.
“We stand at an inflection point: The United States can continue our status-quo of broad support for an autocratic partner, or we can stand for human rights and rebalance our relationship to reflect our values and interests,” the lawmakers write in the letter.
Five House Republicans sent a letter to Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin asking him to “expeditiously” transfer KC-46A refueling aircraft to Israel “in order to effectively deter Iran… from developing nuclear weapons.”
The signatories to the letter, dated April 11, are Reps. August Pfluger (R-TX), Don Bacon (R-NE), Scott Franklin (R-FL), Brian Mast (R-FL) and Mike Waltz (R-FL). It follows a similar letter from 11 GOP senators last week.
The tanker aircraft are believed to be necessary to give Israeli aircraft the range to strike Iran directly, but the U.S. told Israel last year that the aircraft are backordered and would not be able to be delivered before 2024. Israel has asked the administration to accelerate the delivery.
Waltz also argued in a Middle East Instituteevent yesterday that “many analysts that I spoke to… were confident that had we kept the maximum pressure campaign [against Iran] in place, the Iranian regime would have… been open to a much broader deal and more comprehensive deal.”
Waltz added, however, “I have issues with engaging and making any type of concession to a regime that’s holding a gun to the head of American citizens,” referring to the four Americans being held by Iran. Waltz co-organized a letter from a bipartisan group of 140 House members calling for a more comprehensive Iran deal.
Two menaccused of impersonating Department of Homeland Security officials, including one with ties to Iran, were granted bail by a district court judge in Washington. The men’s arrests raised concerns among former Secret Service officials, who questioned how the security personnel tasked with keeping the first family and other top officials safe could be duped by the duo.
“If you can compromise Secret Service personnel by cozying up to their agents and their uniformed officers, unwelcome sources can get to the president and the first family,” Jim Helminski, who led the security detail for then-Vice President Joe Biden, told the Washington Post.
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Eliot Cohen says U.S. should reopen embassy in Kyiv

Eliot Cohen, professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, speaks during a discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute.
Former Counselor to the State Department Eliot Cohen called on the Biden administration to reopen the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, during an appearance on Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast.” Cohen, dean of the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University, criticized the initial decision to evacuate the embassy, arguing the U.S. was failing “on the symbolic side of things.”
Staying power: “We should not have taken our embassy out of Kyiv… There would have been plenty of State Department volunteers to stick it out,” Cohen, who served under former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said. “We should certainly be there now. Our embassy should be there now. We should have senior officials visiting Kyiv. If [U.K. Prime Minister] Boris Johnson can go there, so can [Vice President] Kamala Harris.”
Self-deterrence: “I think [the Biden administration has] been way too unwilling to consider other steps,” Cohen said. “We allowed ourselves to be self-deterred, on things like supplying fixed-wing aircraft and tanks. And they were making silly distinctions between offensive and defensive weapons,” he explained of the Biden administration, cautioning, “I am not sure that they have the resolve to deal with what may be, unfortunately, the next big step: and that’s Russian use of chemical weapons.”
No-fly zone: According to Cohen, the confirmed use of chemical weapons — reports of which the U.S. and allies are investigating — would require a greater response from the U.S. “Although I was not initially in favor of a no-fly zone, that would be the thing that, for me, would trigger it,” he said. “We just tell the Russians, ‘You’re not allowed to fly over Ukraine. And if you do, we’ll shoot you down.’ […] We don’t want to be in a nuclear war with Russia. But they don’t want to be in a nuclear war with us,” Cohen continued. “A shooting war with us: They lose, because they’ve got a crummy military and we know it. And they know it. When I say ‘lose,’ I mean, they really lose.”
Keeping friends: Looking at the tepid response to the invasion by U.S. allies in the Gulf, Cohen criticized the U.S. for previously failing to keep up the alliances in the face of their own struggles. “The big mistake that we made… is the UAE, which had really been quite a reliable ally. The fundamental problem is we had allies — and Saudi Arabia is really problematic; UAE, much less so — which were directly attacked. They had missiles raining down on their territory and, basically, we did nothing. I think in the case of UAE, it took like 37 days for the CENTCOM commander to show up and say, ‘Can we help?’ They’re not going to forget that.”
Bonus: Favorite Yiddish word or phrase? “Megulgl zol er vern in a henglaykhter: bay tog zol er hengen un bay nakht zol er brenen.” (“You should die and be reincarnated as a chandelier to hang by day and burn by night.”) Favorite Passover Seder tradition? “We read a letter that my father wrote to my mother. My dad was in the occupation army. He was a psychiatrist who shipped over just as the war was ending. He was in love with my mother… He’s describing going to a Seder with displaced persons. And he’s astounded by the stories he’s hearing and he says, You know, I couldn’t help but think ‘there but for the grace of God…’ so we read that every Pesach.” Favorite Scottish song? “Killiecrankie.” On wearing bow ties? “Early on in my career, I was running the Air Force’s study of the first Gulf War and I was wearing a necktie. And I had to shred some classified waste. I was fitting it into the shredder, and I looked down and I realized that I was about a half an inch away from being turned into a pile of bloody mulch. And so after that, I decided on bow ties, and then afterwards, it just became kind of a gesture of defiance towards the Washington establishment.”
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