On Thursday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “11th Hour,” New York Times Chief White House Correspondent Peter Baker and MSNBC Analyst Peter Baker stated that President Joe Biden is in “an awkward position” because he could go after Iran’s oil revenue in full, but “The President’s in the middle of a campaign, he doesn’t want gas prices to go up.”
Former Bush administration official Michael Allen stated, “I think it would be right for the Biden administration to begin to re-think their Iran policy. They wanted very badly to return to the Obama-era joint plan, which limited certain aspects of the Iranian nuclear program. But that’s obviously not in the offing, especially now. I think the only way for them to create leverage is honestly to go back to oil sanctions and to enforce the sanctions that are on the books. Now, so many people will say so quickly that the last thing the world economy and the United States’ inflationary numbers need is less oil on the market, and it might be tumultuous economically, but I think that’s truly the only way, over time, to build more leverage up so that the Iranians might begin to change their threat calculus and what they think they can get away with in the region.”
Host Stephanie Ruhle then asked, “Peter, how complicated is that when it comes to oil production? We just heard about, just yesterday, furthering halting oil production until June. This is a tumultuous situation, and it’s something that people are very sensitive to around the world, including here.”
Baker responded, “Well, that’s right, and Michael sort of alludes to that, the timing of it would be very precarious as well. The President’s in the middle of a campaign, he doesn’t want gas prices to go up. You heard Lael Brainard, the national economics adviser, tell a forum just today that they were going to possibly even, she at least left open the possibility that they would tap into the Strategic Petroleum Reserve just to keep gas prices from rising this summer, even aside from further restrictions on the supply of oil. So, you’re right that that’s a very precarious idea. But, as Michael says, it’s the one thing, perhaps, that gets attention. And so, it puts the President in an awkward position where he has to make a decision on something that may be against his own political interests at home in order to decide what may be the best strategic decision overseas. We’ll see how they proceed at this point, but that’s obviously a tough calculation.”
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