In foreign policy reset, Biden ends US support for Saudi-led offensive in Yemen

The World
The dark silhouetted of several people are shown with their hands in the air holding up the red, white and black-stripped Yemen flag.

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In his first major foreign policy speech as US president, Joe Biden announced on Thursday plans to end US support for the Saudi-led military offensive in Yemen. The reshaping of US relations marked by the Yemen reversal is one of a series of steps Biden laid out. It also included a tougher posture on Russia, stating that the US would no longer be “rolling over in the face of Russia’s aggressive actions.”

US support for the war in Yemen dates back to the Obama administration, when Biden was then vice president, and was doubled down in the last four years by Donald Trump. The Saudi military offensive has led to suffering in the Arabian Peninsula’s poorest country and to widespread civilian deaths — resulting in the world’s greatest humanitarian crisis and a famine.

“This war has to end," Biden told diplomats in his first visit to the State Department as president, saying the conflict had created a “humanitarian and strategic catastrophe.”

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