This Friday, the Trump administration placed an “indefinite implementation hold” on military aid to Lebanon. WGBH News Analyst and GroundTruth Project CEO Charlie Sennott joined Boston Public Radio on Monday to discuss the decision and its potential ramifications in the Middle East.
"I have no idea what this is about,” Sennott said. "Why would you suspend aid to a country where we’ve worked for decades to help them professionalize and beef up their military so they can play a stronger role in the region, countering Hezbollah?”
The suspension of aid includes a $105 million package to support the Lebanese Armed Forces, and comes at a time of heightened tensions for the nation. Street protests, occurring at levels not seen since the nation’s 1943 independence, lead to the resignation of Prime Minister Saad Hariri last week.
"I think this goes into that basket — that’s getting quite full — of initiatives by President Trump that are puzzling, baffling, and often end up favoring Russia,” Sennott said. “You undercut the regional stability. You undercut decades of work to try and keep things pretty stable, and you do nothing to achieve our own goals.”
Sennott concluded by saying that Trump deploys “a back and forth foreign policy without a consistency to it, or a logic — and that often ends up undercutting our own interests."
