Opportunities for diplomacy with Iran still remain, if Washington exerts the political will to pursue them.
Note on the 47 Republicans who decided to "hawk" their limited wares to already wary Iranians as well as a continually duped American public:
To begin: the purpose of politics is to limit the barbarisms of war, an alternative to inevitable conflict.
It is further notable that the countries of Iran and the U.S. have visited the same present political divide with the same players--congress, Israel, certain Arab allies on the "we can't trust Iran; let's crush them" side and also internal Iranian political elites on the "death to America" side. These have aligned against those who opt for peace and diplomacy since 2009-10.
There is a lesson we ought to heed. It has to do with the hope instilled in us that people can operate on "higher ground." The lesson I have heard is a prescient one as it was formulated with a forward view to where we find ourselves today. Even as I write, Sunday morning, 11:00 am, pundits get paid to babble on shows like Meet the Press when all that needs to be said has already been said.
Trita Parsi, writing about these things as they unfolded in 2009-10 notes:
Washington's desire for diplomacy with Iran, to reach out to Tehran in 2009, was genuine. And yet, after all efforts were exhausted, they still ended in failure. Consequently, Obama had to opt for sanctions and potential war.
Our failure with Iran raises questions about the benefits of diplomacy as a whole. And this is the important lesson at the center of it all. The stalemate of 2009-10 [and 2015] indicts our current political divide and the subsequent domestic political limitations that derive from this arrangement. Diplomacy itself remains invaluable for its role in the survival of the world.
Acceptance of the current D.C. narrative on Iran limits our options to various forms of confrontation--that is, either continued sanctions and containment or war. This premise is erroneous. Opportunities for diplomacy still remain if the political will to pursue it exists."
Our president is a loyal American exhibiting American values on a global scale. Now if we could only break him away from his ties to Wall Street, he'd be even more impressive in my eyes. That's it