Not much has gone right in the Middle East during President Obama’s second term. The White House has been hoping that a nuclear deal with Iran would yield the foreign policy success Washington badly needs after a string of reverses across the region.
But after a weekend of last-ditch diplomacy in Vienna, the deadline for striking such a deal expired yesterday. The anticlimactic result was an agreement to keep talking.
Even that is too much for hardline skeptics, here and abroad, who believe Iran is stringing the world along and has no intention of giving up its nuclear program. In their view, extending the talks another seven months grants Tehran unearned relief from economic sanctions as well as immunity from military strikes to destroy its nuclear facilities.
Continue reading at the Hill.