Tuesday on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” NBC News chief foreign affairs correspondent Andrea Mitchell discussed President Barack Obama’s upcoming Camp David summit of Persian Gulf states that the leaders from four of the six invited nations are skipping, including Saudi King Salman and said “this snub is so in your face” that it is “embarrassing to Kerry and the White House.’
Mitchell said, “With the decision not to go against Assad in Syria over chemical weapons once that red line that the president himself had imposed on Labor Day a couple of years ago. And to let that war go unanswered really by any kind of American initiative since then. So I think that was the first step. And then Iran. here you have Iran a very aggressively in Yemen against the Saudis. Saudis engaged in a shooting war there. And they believe — that with the lifting of the sanctions, Iran will have so much more disposable income for their foreign policy misadventures.”
She added, “What I think is so extraordinary here, is that they confirmed to John Kerry that he was coming. And then the foreign minister whom we all know from his years and years here as ambassador and before that as national security adviser to former King Abdullah, he was with John Kerry in in Paris on Friday, saying that the king was coming. So this snub is so in your face to not only not come, to say you’re coming and then not come, but to have reconfirmed at the highest levels. It’s embarrassing to Kerry and the White House. And I don’t see any way that they can spin it.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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