By Stephen Kinzer
Boston Globe - July 14, 2015
Pieces on the global chessboard are not nailed permanently into place. With Iran, as recently with Cuba, President Obama has proven that world leaders can move the pieces when it is in their interest. This will be his greatest foreign policy legacy.
The newly announced accord between Iran and six outside powers deals only with the nation’s nuclear program. Its true meaning, though, is far greater. It is a step toward reimagining the Middle East and America’s role there.
Hostility between the United States and Iran is a 36-year-old institution in global politics. Poisoned relationships like these fall into patterns that are amazingly difficult to break. Anger takes on a momentum of its own. Each party looks for new reasons to detest the other. This is the spiral Obama now seeks to break.
The central achievement of this new accord, at least from the US perspective, it that it all but guarantees Iran will not develop nuclear weapons. This is a strategic breakthrough for which Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry deserve great credit. Unless the accord falls apart, they have removed a profoundly destabilizing factor from Middle East politics.
READ MORE....
No comments:
Post a Comment