Beecroft, Robert Stephen, 1957-

<p> On May 8, 2014, President Barack Obama nominated Robert Stephen Beecroft to be the U.S. ambassador to Egypt. He was confirmed by the Senate on June 26. This is Beecroft’s third ambassadorial posting, having previously served in Jordan and Iraq.</p>

<p>Beecroft, 56, is from San Diego, where his father was an attorney and land developer. He earned a B.A. in English and Spanish in 1982 from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. Beecroft served the customary mission with his church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons), in Venezuela.</p>

<p>He told LDS Church News, “I distinctly remember my father taking me aside and teaching me to look for the person in need. He used to send my brothers and me out at Christmas time with money in envelopes to anonymously deposit in the mailboxes of people in our community who were in need.”</p>

<p>He then earned a law degree from UC Berkeley in 1988. After law school, Beecroft practiced for a few years with the firm of Graham & Jones in San Francisco.</p>

<p>In 1994, Beecroft joined the Foreign Service. His first posting was in the Middle East, as a consular officer in Damascus, Syria, and most of his career has been focused on that region. He moved to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia in 1996 as consular and political officer, remaining there two years.</p>

<p>Beecroft returned to Washington in 1998, working first as a staff officer and operations officer in the Secretariat, then as deputy assistant secretary of state for political/military affairs. Much of his work during this period involved the campaign to remove landmines from former conflict areas. He spearheaded training programs in landmine clearning for those in affected countries.</p>

<p>In 2003, Beecroft was named special assistant to Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, and the following year was special assistant to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Beecroft remained in the job when Condoleezza Rice took over the State Department.</p>

<p>Beecroft served as ambassador to Jordan from July 17, 2008 to June 4, 2011. In one cable from October 2009, released by WikiLeaks, Beecroft bemoaned the lack of real reforms despite promises by King Abdullah II. “Jordan's politicians are looking intently to the King for direction, eagerly (and in some cases nervously) anticipating a royal ruling on the future of reform. They have received almost nothing. The King has been largely absent from the political scene as of late and sphinxlike in his increasingly rare public appearances.”</p>

<p>Beecroft was transferred to Baghdad, Iraq, on July 14, 2011, serving as deputy chief of mission. He took over the sprawling embassy there when Ambassador James Jeffrey left on June 1, 2012, and was named ambassador himself when Obama’s original choice for the job, Brett McGurk, was forced to withdraw.</p>

<p>Beecroft’s wife, Anne Tisdel Beecroft, is also a BYU graduate, with a B.A. and J.D.. The Beecrofts have four children, Blythe, Warren, Sterling and Grace.</p>

<p>Robert Stephen "Steve" Beecroft (born 1957) is an American diplomat and attorney. He served as United States Ambassador to Egypt from December 2014 to July 2017. He previously served as United States Ambassador to Iraq and United States Ambassador to Jordan.</p>

<p>Beecroft earned a B.A. from Brigham Young University and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. A member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, he was a Mormon missionary in Venezuela.</p>

<p>After graduating from law school, Beecroft practiced law in the San Francisco office of an international law firm.</p>

<p>He joined the United States Foreign Service in 1994. He carried out an assignment in Washington, D.C. as Executive Assistant to two Secretaries of State Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, and Special Assistant to the Deputy Secretary of State. He also held assignments in the Department of State's Executive Secretariat and its Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. Overseas he has served at the U.S. embassies in Amman, Riyadh, and Damascus. He served as Ambassador to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan from August 2008 until June 2011.</p>

<p>He joined the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, as Deputy Chief of Mission on July 14, 2011. He became Charge d'Affaires upon the departure of Ambassador James Franklin Jeffrey on June 1, 2012. On September 11, 2012, the White House Press Office announced that President Barack Obama had nominated Beecroft to the U.S. Senate to succeed Jeffrey as the United States Ambassador to Iraq in the wake of the withdrawal of the nomination of Brett McGurk. He was confirmed by the Senate on September 22 and sworn in on October 9, 2012.</p>

<p>Beecroft's nomination came shortly after the 2013 Egyptian coup d'état. At the time, U.S. officials had repeatedly criticized the army-backed interim Egyptian government in dealing violently with opponents, especially those associated with the Muslim Brotherhood - banned after the military coup - and for allowing the courts to issue death sentences on hundreds of opponents. It was expected that the Obama administration would nominate Robert Ford, who was a senior U.S. diplomat in the Syrian crisis to the post of ambassador in Cairo, but U.S. officials said that the Egyptian government had indicated that they saw Ford as close to Islamic parties in the Middle East.</p>

<p>In late-April 2014, the United States decided to lift the partial ban imposed on the military aid to Egypt - after the military coup - and the Pentagon delivered ten Apache helicopters to Egypt, and that followed the Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy visit to Washington.</p>

<p>On the same day Beecroft was nominated (May 9, 2014), the former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak called on the United States to support the presidential candidate Abdel Fattah al-Sisi in Egypt, the Field Marshal leader of the coup d'état, during the elections and not to criticize him openly, and to postpone any differences with him until after he took office. Barak said in the 2014 speech to the Washington Institute for Near East Policy that "The United States must sometimes waive defending the values of freedom and democracy to protect its interests." He added that he felt happy after the intervention of the army and the arrest of deposed President Mohamed Morsi and setting the ousted President Hosni Mubarak freed from prison.</p>

<p>The U.S. Senate confirmed Beecroft to the post on June 26, 2014.</p>