English By Michael Lipin Share on Facebook WASHINGTON - The incoming Biden administration is inheriting from President Donald Trump an Iran-focused social media campaign that dramatically boosted U.S. engagement with Iranians by sharply criticizing their Islamist rulers, a strategy that President-elect Joe Biden appears set to change.
Trump and his State Department used a variety of social media channels, messaging techniques and languages to exert what they called “maximum pressure” on Iran’s ruling clerics to stop perceived malign behaviors.
One dividend of that strategy was a huge increase in audience for the State Department’s Farsi-language Instagram account, according to Gabriel Noronha, who ran its Farsi social media channels from late 2019 to late 2020. In a recent interview with VOA Persian, Noronha said the department’s USAdarFarsi (USA in Farsi) Instagram account grew its followers from 147,000 in Januar
The Biden administration on Wednesday changed the U.S. ambassador to Israel's Twitter account name to read, "the official Twitter account of the U.S. Ambassador to Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza," walking back the Trump administration's pro-Israel policies.
Jan 19, 2021
A lot of the characters are the same for President-elect Joe Biden but the scene is far starker as he reassembles a team of veteran negotiators to get back into the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.
President Donald Trump worked to blow up the multinational deal to contain Iran’s nuclear program during his four years in office, gutting the diplomatic achievement of predecessor Barack Obama in favor of what Trump called a maximum pressure campaign against Iran.
Down to Trump’s last days in office, accusations, threats and still more sanctions by Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Iran’s decision to spur uranium enrichment and seize a South Korean tanker, are helping to keep alive worries that regional conflict will erupt. Iran on Friday staged drills, hurling volleys of ballistic missiles and smashing drones into targets, further raising pressure on the incoming American president over a nuclear accord.
Even before the Capitol riot this month, upheaval at home threatened to weaken the U.S. hand internationally, including in the Middle East’s nuclear standoff