The Biden administration's first major move on Cuba is the strongest signal yet it has little appetite to reverse Trump-era policies toward the island nation.The State Department this past week listed Cuba as among those "not cooperating fully with United States antiterrorism efforts," renewing a determination first made in 2020.For those in favor of normalizing U.S. ties with Cuba, the move was seen as a purely political decision, but one.
sales like this usually go through a great deal of scrutiny, not just by congress but the military as well to make sure the right weapons get into the right hands, it s not as simple as buy them and send them over. foreign military sales is something both the state department and the military commands are involved with, and they basically measure the capabilities and the requirements of the country that we re selling these weapons to. certainly we wouldn t sell weapons to countries that are using them illegally or against the law of land warfare, we tend to give these foreign military sales to countries which are our allies and partners that contribute to the kinds of values that we like to see around the world as we conduct theater security operations with other countries but in this case, the president using the arms control export act or the arms export control act, excuse me, to call an emergency to give
cnn legal analyst and former federal prosecutor. good morning, shan. good morning. there is a legal loophole, to permits the president to bypass congress to sell the weapons. explain that to us. that s right. there s a loophole in the arms control export act. so, technically speaking, the president s actions are not illegal here. other presidents have used it. reagan used it and both bush presidents used it. but from, i think, a point of view for our viewers to think about is that none of those presidents had the same contempt and demissive view towards congress that this president does. not only that, if you look at his choice of what country, who he s sending the arms to, it also reflects his great attraction towards authoritarians. and here s, despite our intelligence gathering that the saudi prince was responsible for
he approved sending 1,500 troops to the middle east to deter iran. joining me now, cnn national security analyst samantha vinaigrette. thanks for being with us. good morning. the president is using a loophole for this arms sale and clearly wants to get this thing done. do we know what these weapons are going to be used for, what his reasoning is here? that s a great question because aside from the fact that the president is really creating an emergency to bypass having to uphold something called the arms control export act, these weapons are going to be used by saudi arabia and potentially the uae as part of a war that both republicans and democrats have expressed opposition to. that is the coalition led by saudi arabia s war in yemen. there are a few things that have bipartisan support in washington these days. but republicans and democrats have called for an end to u.s. support for the war in yemen. president trump unfortunately vetoed a resolution that would have halted our su