With or without a nuclear accord, change has come
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Whatever the endgame produces, it’s useful to focus on the process of negotiation itself, which is nearly as important as whether there’s a sustainable deal.
First, there is the fact of U.S.-Iranian engagement. For more than 18 months, Iran has been in direct talks with a power it once demonized as the “Great Satan.” Iranian hard-liners certainly remain, but the nation that chanted in unison “Death to America” is probably gone forever.
This process of engagement is a significant achievement of the Obama administration, even if the nuclear accord unravels. Iran is now a diplomatic and political factor in regional and world politics, for better or worse. The right U.S. strategy was to prevent this rising Iran from getting nuclear weapons, not to pretend that it didn’t exist.
President Barack Obama’s personal investment in this process is easy to forget, since so much of the heavy lifting has been done since 2013 by his tireless secretary of state, John Kerry. But it was Obama who conceptualized the outreach and pledged in his inaugural address in January 2009, in clearly decipherable code: “To the Muslim world, we seek a new way forward, based on mutual interest and mutual respect.”
http://www.dailystar.com.lb/Opinion/Columnist/2015/Apr-02/293024-with-or-without-a-nuclear-accord-change-has-come.ashx
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*This process of engagement is a significant achievement of the Obama administration..
K&R
