After approval from the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in a 15-3 vote on Monday, the Senate voted 78-22 to confirm Anthony Blinken as U.S. Secretary of State, the fourth member of President Joe Biden’s cabinet to be confirmed.
Biden and Blinken have a decades-long relationship. Blinken, who served as the deputy Secretary of State under Barack Obama, worked closely with the then-Vice President Biden.
In his hearing last week, Blinken explained several key policy decisions including efforts to rejoin the Iran Nuclear Deal. “The [then] President-elect believes that if Iran comes back into compliance, we would too,” Blinken said at his hearing on January 19. “But, we would use that as a platform with our allies and partners who would once again be on the same side with us, to seek a longer and stronger agreement. And also, as you and the chairman have rightly pointed out, to capture these other issues, particularly with regard to missiles and Iran’s destabilizing activities. That would be the objective.”
Blinken has vowed to reinvigorate the State Department, which widely seen have been gutted under the Trump Administration, that he is “committed to advancing our security and prosperity by building a diplomatic corps that fully represents America in all its talent and diversity.”
