Trump aims to box in Biden abroad, but it may not work

On its way out the door, the Trump administration is enacting new rules, regulations and orders that it hopes will box in President-elect Joe Biden's administration on numerous foreign policy matters and cement President Donald Trump’s “America First” legacy in international affairs.

Yet, the push may not work, as many of these decisions can be withdrawn or significantly amended by the incoming president when he takes office on Jan. 20.

In recent weeks, the White House, State Department and other agencies have been working overtime to produce new policy pronouncements on Iran, Israel, China and elsewhere that aim to lock in Trump's vision for the world. Some have attracted significant attention while others have flown largely under the radar.

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2020, file photo people watch a TV screen showing the live-broadcast of President-elect Joe Biden speaking, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. (AP PhotoAhn Young-joon, File)

And, while Biden could reverse many of them with a stroke of the pen, some will demand the time and attention of his administration when it comes into power with a host of other priorities that perhaps need more urgent attention.

The most recent of these moves took place this past week as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made what may be his last visit to Israel as secretary of state and delivered two announcements in support of Israel's claims to territory claimed by the Palestinians.

Biden's team has remained silent about these announcements, but Biden has made clear he supports few, if any, of them and will reverse many as he intends to return to a more traditional policy toward Israel and the Palestinians.

FILE - In this Oct. 23, 2020, file photo South Korean army soldiers pass by a TV screen showing a live broadcast of U.S. President Donald Trump, left, and Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden during the final presidential debate, at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea. The Korean letters read "U.S. presidential election TV debate." (AP PhotoAhn Young-joon, File)

The Trump administration’s determined efforts to thwart potential Biden policy reversals actually began months earlier, half a world away from the Jewish state, with China, even before the former vice president was formally declared the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee.

As opinion polls started to show Biden as a clear favorite to beat Trump in November, the administration began to move even as the president maintained a public face of defiance and absolute confidence in his reelection.

Some officials point to a July 13 declaration from Pompeo that the United States would now reject virtually all of China's territorial claims in the South Chine Sea, a 180-degree shift from previous administrations' positions that all such claims should be handled by arbitration.

FILE - In this Nov. 8, 2020, file photo a screen shows a live broadcast of President-elect Joe Biden speaking at the Shinjuku shopping district in Tokyo. (AP PhotoKiichiro Sato, File)

While many of Trump’s foreign policy decisions from early on have been designed to blow up the previous administration's foreign policy achievements — withdrawing from the Iran nuclear deal, the Paris Climate Accord and the Trans Pacific Partnership on trade — the South China Sea decision was the first to be linked by administration officials to the possibility that Biden might be the next president.

One administration official said at the time that decisions made after that would all be taken with an eye toward Biden becoming president. Thus, the fear that Trump might be a one-term president began to take hold in July and has been followed by an acceleration of pronouncements aimed mainly at thwarting any reversal by Biden.

A look at some of those moves:

ISRAEL

On Thursday, before making an unprecedented trip to an Israeli settlement in the West Bank, Pompeo announced that the U.S, would henceforth consider “antisemitic” the groups that advocate for Palestinian rights by supporting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel.

He also announced a change in import labeling rules that will require products made in settlements to be identified as “Made in Israel.” The product labeling will take some time to take effect and, as yet, no groups have been hit with the antisemitic designation. But, even if they are implemented, Biden could reverse them on Day One.

Those moves followed numerous other Israel-friendly steps the administration has taken since it came to office. They include recognizing Jerusalem as the capital, moving the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv, and cutting off aid to the Palestinian Authority and the U.N. refugee agency that works with Palestinians. While Biden is unlikely to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv, the other measures can be reversed quickly.

IRAN

Pompeo and other officials have spoken of a new push for sanctions against Iran, but the fact is that the administration has been ramping up such penalties since Trump withdrew from the 2015 nuclear deal two years ago. New sanctions could potentially target supporters of Iranian-backed militia in Iraq and Afghanistan along with the Shiite Houthi movement in Yemen, which has been involved in a disastrous war with the country's internationally recognized government.

Biden has spoken of wanting to rejoin the nuclear accord, and Iranian officials have said they would be willing to come back into compliance with the accord if he does. Biden could eliminate many of the Trump administration's reimposed sanctions by executive order, but it remains unclear how high a priority it will be for him.

BROADER MIDDLE EAST

While the withdrawal of significant numbers of U.S. forces from Afghanistan and Iraq — bringing troop levels down to 2,500 in each country — is a clear indication of Trump's intentions, Biden's approach remains less certain. The withdrawals could be delayed or slow-rolled by the Pentagon, and it remains unclear how the State Department will handle staffing at its embassies in Baghdad and Kabul, both of which are dependent on U.S. military support.

Pompeo has threatened to close the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad unless rocket attacks by Iranian-backed militias against the area in which it's located are halted. However, despite the troop withdrawal determination last week, there has been no announcement about the embassy's status.

CHINA

Although the administration's most strident actions against China began more than a year ago, they have gained momentum since March, when Trump determined that he would at once blame China for the spread of the novel coronavirus and accuse Biden of being soft on Beijing.

Since then, the administration has steadily ramped up sanctions against China over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, Hong Kong and the South China Sea. It has also moved against the Chinese telecoms giant Huawei and sought restrictions on Chinese social media applications like TikTok and WeChat.

Last week, the State Department's policy planning office released a 70-page China policy strategy document. While it contains little in the way of immediate policy recommendations, it advocates for increased support and cooperation with Taiwan. Indeed, as the document was released, U.S. officials were meeting with Taiwanese counterparts in Washington to discuss economic cooperation.

RUSSIA

Sunday marked the formal withdrawal of the U.S. from the “Open Skies Treaty” with Russia, which allowed each country overflight rights to inspect military facilities. The withdrawal, six months after the U.S. notified the Russians of its intent, leaves only one arms-control pact still in force between the former Cold War foes — the New START treaty, which limits the number of nuclear warheads each may have. That treaty will expire in February.

The Trump administration had said it wasn't interested in extending the New START treaty unless China also joined, something Beijing has rejected. In recent weeks, however, the administration has eased its stance and said it's willing to consider an extension. As the transition to the Biden administration approaches, those negotiations remain a work in progress.

BERLIN (AP) — Standing on an open truck making its way through Berlin, Anahita Safarnejad turned to the crowd of Iranian protesters marching behind her and took the microphone.

“No more dictatorship in Iran, the mullahs must go!” she shouted. Hundreds of voices echoed her slogan with the same sense of urgency and desperation.

Across Europe, thousands of exiled Iranians have taken to the streets to shout out their rage at the government of the Islamic Republic which has cracked down on protests in their homeland, reportedly killing thousands of people.

Women have taken a prominent role in organizing the protests abroad, raising their voices against the theocratic government that discriminates against them.

But beyond the anger, there’s also a sense of fear and paralysis. Iran's government has been shutting down the internet and limiting phone calls for days, making it nearly impossible for Iranians in the diaspora to find out if their families back home are safe.

Safarnejad, 34, fled Iran seven years ago. She came to Berlin to study theater but now works in a bar when she's not attending one of the almost-daily protests in the German capital.

Since the demonstrations broke out in Iran in late December, Safarnejad said she's been living in two different realities that are almost impossible to combine. The easygoing hipster life of her new hometown is a jarring contrast to the bloody protests in Iran that she's been following every minute she doesn't have to work, glued to her phone for the latest updates.

While she was initially almost euphoric that the current uprising would finally bring freedom to Iran and she'd be able to go back home, her sense of hope has turned into horror.

Safarnejad hasn't spoken to her brother, also a protester, since communications with Iran were cut off. She's been scouring video on social media showing piles of dead bodies to see if he's among the corpses.

“I'm desperate and don't know how to keep going anymore,” she cried, tears rolling down her cheeks, as she spoke to The Associated Press during Wednesday's Berlin protest.

“I can’t really switch off. I can’t really stop reading the news either," she added, her voice breaking. “Because I’m waiting all the time for the internet to be available so I can get some answers from my family.”

The young woman's horror is felt by many of the more than 300,000 Iranians living in Germany — one of the biggest exile communities in Europe and similar in numbers to France and Britain. Many of them still have family ties to their homeland, even if they left decades ago.

Mehregan Maroufi's Persian cafe and bookstore in Berlin has become a place of solace for Iranians to share their grief without many words — because they know they are all living through the same nightmare.

Maroufi, the daughter of the late Iranian author Abbas Maroufi, welcomes Iranians and everyone else at the Hedayat Cafe, where she serves Persian tea with sweets such as chocolate cake topped with barberries. She lends an ear to anyone who has to get worries off their chest.

“For some, the emotions are still too high and too strong, so to speak, and it’s impossible to talk," the 44-year-old says, adding that she, too, had to force herself to open the cafe on some mornings because the violent images coming out of Iran sucked away all her energy.

“But at least you can find compatriots here. You can talk to a little, and that helps,” she said.

She says she's been listening to and learning from the convictions her fellow Iranians express when they talk about their dreams of an Iran after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that — due to the uprising — now seems closer that ever before.

While most in the diaspora agree that the theocracy has to be toppled, ideas of what a new Iran should look like differ widely.

Adeleh Tavakoli, 62, joined a demonstration outside Britain’s Parliament in London earlier this week. She hasn't been back to Iran in 17 years but has spent decades protesting from afar against the Islamic Republic.

But with the latest wave of protests, she hopes that the Iran’s exiled Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, the son of the shah ousted by the Islamic Revolution in 1979, will return to power. If he does, she said, she has her bag packed and is ready to get on the first flight.

“For 47 years, our country has been captured by a terrorist regime,” she said. “We’ve been the voice of Iran. All we want is our freedom and to get rid of this horrible dictatorship.”

For Maral Salmassi, who came to Germany as a child in the 1980s, history explains the calls by exiled Iranians for Pahlavi to lead the country.

“As an Iranian, as someone who comes from this culture and knows its culture and history, I can only say that we have had kings and queens for thousands of years. It is our culture," said Salmassi. She is the chairwoman and founder of the Zera Institute think tank in Berlin, which researches democracy, radicalization and extremism.

She added that Iranians make up a multi-ethnic country and "to bring them all together again, we need a constitutional monarchy that symbolically and traditionally represents our identity and reunites everyone ... and then a democratic, federal parliament where everyone is represented equally.”

However, not everyone is convinced by Pahlavi. Maryam Nejatipur, 32, who also joined the protest in Berlin, thinks her country should avoid a cult of personality.

“We don’t need something like Khamenei again. We don’t need one person,” to lead us, she said, as she burnt a portrait of the Ayatollah and used the flames to light a cigarette — an act that's become a symbol of Iranian resistance.

Safarnejad, who led the recent Berlin protest, agrees.

“I don’t belong to the left, I’m not a liberal, I’m not a monarchist,” she stressed. “I’ve been there for women’s rights, I’m for human rights, I’m for freedom.”

Fanny Brodersen and Ebrahim Noroozi, in Berlin, and Brian Melley in London contributed reporting.

Protester Adeleh Tavakoli, left, demonstrates outside the House of Parliament, in London, Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)

People take part in a rally in support of anti-government protests in Iran, Berlin Germany, Wednesday, June 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian Mehregan Maroufi poses for a photo before an interview with the Associated Press in her cafe in Berlin, Germany, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian Maryam Nejatipur 32, poses for a photo after a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)

Iranian Anahita Safarnejad, 34, poses for a photo after a demonstration in support of the nationwide mass protests in Iran against the government, in Berlin, Germany, Wednesday, Jan. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)