The recently installed president of Iran tweeted new year's greetings to Jews celebrating their New Year last week. A softening stance from that of his predecessor? Who's to know..but it is certainly worth taking a step back, a breath and seeing whether it is possible to engage with the so-called rogue country.
"Is Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president, a game-changer? Initial indications leave open that possibility. Ignoring it would be foolish.
Gone, or tamed, is the inflammatory language, the anti-Western invective, the delusional accusations, the Holocaust denial and the Israel baiting that turned his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, into the villain from central casting."
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"The Islamic Republic is here to stay. It has largely acquired the nuclear know-how it sought without taking the high-risk bomb-making decision. The election of Rouhani reflects the desire of a society at an impasse to change course. All of which says: Negotiate now before another “red-line” drags the United States into confrontation.
This requires a new approach from the Obama administration. As William Luers, Thomas Pickering and Jim Walsh argue persuasively in The New York Review of Books, the United States “should take the initiative and communicate directly with the new leadership.” Coercive diplomacy, recommended by Obama’s former Iran hand Dennis Ross, is, they note, “an oxymoron” because “invariably the coercive side dominates the diplomatic side.” The goal, they say, should be a broad dialogue under which, in a phased process, Iran would agree to confine itself to limited enrichment for a peaceful nuclear program under strict international monitoring as sanctions were progressively lifted.
Rouhani and Obama will both be at the United Nations this month. They should meet. Beneath a stale enmity lurk many potential fields of cooperation. As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has pointed out, “The collapse of the Assad regime would produce a common interest for Washington and Tehran in making sure that radical Sunni Islamists, who hate Shiite Iran even more than America, do not rule Damascus.”
Far-fetched? Yes. But the swirling Middle East has nudged Tehran and Washington just a little closer."
"Is Hassan Rouhani, the new Iranian president, a game-changer? Initial indications leave open that possibility. Ignoring it would be foolish.
Gone, or tamed, is the inflammatory language, the anti-Western invective, the delusional accusations, the Holocaust denial and the Israel baiting that turned his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, into the villain from central casting."
***
"The Islamic Republic is here to stay. It has largely acquired the nuclear know-how it sought without taking the high-risk bomb-making decision. The election of Rouhani reflects the desire of a society at an impasse to change course. All of which says: Negotiate now before another “red-line” drags the United States into confrontation.
This requires a new approach from the Obama administration. As William Luers, Thomas Pickering and Jim Walsh argue persuasively in The New York Review of Books, the United States “should take the initiative and communicate directly with the new leadership.” Coercive diplomacy, recommended by Obama’s former Iran hand Dennis Ross, is, they note, “an oxymoron” because “invariably the coercive side dominates the diplomatic side.” The goal, they say, should be a broad dialogue under which, in a phased process, Iran would agree to confine itself to limited enrichment for a peaceful nuclear program under strict international monitoring as sanctions were progressively lifted.
Rouhani and Obama will both be at the United Nations this month. They should meet. Beneath a stale enmity lurk many potential fields of cooperation. As Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has pointed out, “The collapse of the Assad regime would produce a common interest for Washington and Tehran in making sure that radical Sunni Islamists, who hate Shiite Iran even more than America, do not rule Damascus.”
Far-fetched? Yes. But the swirling Middle East has nudged Tehran and Washington just a little closer."
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