Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, seems largely unimpressed by President Biden’s foreign policy. //

EastMed was the planned 1,180-mile natural gas pipeline across the Mediterranean Sea from Israel to southern Europe that the Biden administration killed in January. The pipeline, expected to cost $7 billion and to carry at least 10 billion cubic meters of gas a year, would ease Europe’s reliance on Russian oil. Sen. Menendez, who has long supported the project and co-sponsored the Eastern Mediterranean Security and Energy Partnership Act of 2019, wants the U.S. to rethink supporting the EastMed pipeline.

President Biden gave up on EastMed after approving the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would have increased Germany’s dependence on Russia. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Germany and other Europeans began to see the folly of relying on Russia.

One might have thought President Biden too would see that relying on one’s enemies is imprudent. One would have been wrong.

The Biden administration went hat in hand to Venezuela and is now trying to rush through a new bad deal with Iran, in order to increase supply and lower oil prices. Biden also reached out to the leaders of Saudi Arabia, a traditional ally whose leader Biden had previously spurned, and the United Arab Emirates, but neither would take his phone calls. Both are deeply worried about Iran and the administration’s eagerness for a rapprochement with it; or at least, about U.S. unwillingness to hold Iran to account.

Menendez favors relying on our friends rather than our enemies: “[W]ith the emergency of the moment, I’d rather not be looking at Venezuela, I’d rather not be looking at Iran, I’d rather not be looking at all these other countries when we have allies like Greece in the region, like Israel and others that can maybe be the source of that energy.”

Senate Foreign Relations Committee
@SFRCdems
The democratic aspirations of the Venezuelan people, like the resolve & courage of the people of Ukraine, are worth much more than a few barrels of oil. My statement on the Admin's reported talks with VZ breathing new life into Maduro's reign of torture:
foreign.senate.gov
Chairman Menendez Statement on Biden Administration Talks with the Maduro Regime | United States...
9:15 PM · Mar 7, 2022 //

And speaking of NATO and of EastMed, in killing the latter, Biden was reportedly motivated at least partly by a desire to please Turkey, which was trying to muscle its way into any pipeline project.

This is the same Turkey that bought a Russian S-400 air-defense system, although it’s part of NATO. The U.S. responded by barring Turkey from buying F-35 aircraft it wanted. (Per Reuters, the U.S. suggested Turkey solve the problem by shipping the S-400 system to Ukraine.)

It’s the same Turkey that illegally invaded and partitioned Cyprus in 1974, and now demands a cut of the pipeline planned from Israel to Cyprus, then Greece and beyond. As people said of France under De Gaulle, with friends like this, the U.S. sure doesn’t need enemies.