Nuclear Issues

"...[K]eeping Iran at arm's length (or worse) reduces U.S. diplomatic leverage and flexibility. As long as U.S. Middle East policy remains fixated on its 'special relationships' with Israel, Saudi Arabia, and to some extent Egypt, these states will continue to take U.S. support for granted and ignore U.S. preferences more often than we'd like. But if the United States had decent working relations with every state in the region — including Iran — it could work constructively with any or all of them."

"Perhaps so much death and destruction take place around the Arab world, at the hands of Arabs, Israelis, Americans and others, because no serious process exists that holds individuals or governments accountable for the atrocities they commit. The International Criminal Court’s indictment of Sudanese President Omar Hassan Bashir for war crimes a few years ago has never been followed up by a serious effort to bring him to court for a fair trial..."

"The Camp David summit last week among the United States and the six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states ended with a fluffy communiqué whose mutual courtesies revealed no significant changes in either side’s positions. The troubling and ironic aspect of this event is that both sides were fixated on new security and military measures to address insecurities in the region — many of which exacerbated and some created by their own military policies and distorted threat perceptions. "

"The agreed parameters of a Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) on Iran’s nuclear program that were reached Thursday between Iran and the P5+1 powers represent a monumental achievement that affirms the power of reason and diplomacy over the ravages of fear and warfare."

"When historians look back on the Middle East decades from now, they might find that trends in this region after 2015 were determined by the outcome of four seminal issues and battles that are in play this month."

"...[A]nyone who questions the special relationship or the role the lobby plays in preserving it is still likely to be accused of anti-Semitism (if a gentile) or self-hatred (if Jewish). The special relationship has rested to some degree on intimidation, and as noted most people don't like being bullied. The question, therefore, is whether this flap will turn out to be an isolated incident or whether more people will begin to say what they really think."

"The controversy over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech before the U.S. Congress next week has generated intense reactions from Israelis and Americans of all political shades. Its long-term impact is unknown, but its significance to date is that it has provided us with a rare opportunity to see what happens when American congressmen and women are caught uncomfortably between two very powerful forces in their lives: standing with the American president, or standing with the leader of Israel regardless of what that leader does, including directly challenging the American president."

"The sudden positive expectations surrounding the resumption of direct high-level contacts between the United States and Iran will soon lead to meaningful negotiations. This reflects concrete and politically substantive developments, not wishful thinking, by both sides: The election of Hassan Rouhani as Iran’s president, and the explicit backing he has received from the highest levels of the Iranian government for negotiations based on verifiably limiting the degree and amount of Iran’s enriched uranium; and, the two important American government concessions of a willingness to accept Iranian uranium enrichment with safeguards that prevent the development of a nuclear weapon, and a clear position that the United States is not working to overthrow the Iranian regime (as it recently admitted it did in 1953)."

"The visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu this week to the United States and the United Nations General Assembly signals a critical moment in diplomatic developments in the Middle East, including potentially a decisive reckoning in Israeli-American relations. This is because on the important issue of how the United States and the West deal with Iran’s nuclear industry, the trends of both public opinion and leadership sentiments in Israel and the United States are moving in opposite directions."

Professor Burns discusses the shift in policy and tone coming from Iran, courtesy of its new president, Hassan Rouhani, and what that means for future relations between the U.S. and Iran.