While the Trump administration withdrew from both agreements and ratcheted up "maximum pressure" sanctions on Iran, Blinken may work to revive U.S. relations with Iran and participation in international climate agreements.
Also on Monday, Biden named Linda Thomas-Greenfield as his pick for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
Greenfield served in the Obama administration as U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, and before that as Ambassador to Liberia. Among other issues, she fought laws that she said discriminated against the LGBT community, including criminalization of same-sex relations in countries like Uganda and Nigeria.
The Obama administration promoted LGBT concerns in Africa, but backlash in African countries reportedly led to some stricter laws against persons with same-sex attraction and violence against them.
At an April, 2014 congressional hearing, Greenfield spoke out against proposed "anti-LGBT legislation" in Africa that was leading to "renewed violence against the LGBT community." Uganda had just enacted a law criminalizing homosexuality.
"We're in the process of reviewing that relationship and our funding to see where changes can be made and in particular changes that will take funding away from those organizations and entities that discriminate against the LGBT community," Greenfield said.
In 2015, around a visit of the Nigerian president to the U.S., she reportedly said that "As a policy, we will continue to press the government of Nigeria as well as other governments who have provided legislation that discriminate against the LGBT community."
After President Obama promoted "the rights of gays and lesbians" during a 2015 trip to Kenya, Nigerian Cardinal John Onaiyekan of Abuja responded that "our Church has always said homosexuality is unnatural and marriage is between a man and a woman."
During the Trump administration, the U.S. also spoke out against abortion as an international human right at the United Nations General Assembly. As Biden has pledged to support legal abortion and overturn a ban on funding of foreign abortion promoters and providers, his administration might also promote legal abortion as part of diplomacy.
When senior advisor to the president Ivanka Trump tweeted that she was "unapologetically pro-life" on Oct. 30, Greenfield replied "Good! Pro life means supporting the lives of children taken from their parents at the border, poor children and people with Covid...".
Biden has also tapped former Secretary of State John Kerry to serve in his cabinet, as Special Presidential Envoy for Climate.
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Kerry in 2015 praised Pope Francis' ecology encyclical Laudato Si' as "powerful," telling TIME magazine that the pope "thoughtfully applied" the value of environmental stewardship "to the very real threat our planet is facing today."
Matt Hadro was the political editor at Catholic News Agency through October 2021. He previously worked as CNA senior D.C. correspondent and as a press secretary for U.S. Congressman Chris Smith.