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| Daily News Brief September 25, 2013 |
Top of the Agenda: Obama Seeks Peaceful Resolution With Iran
They
didn't shake hands, but President Barack Obama and Iranian president
Hassan Rouhani gave speeches, hours apart, aimed at seeking a peaceful
resolution to Tehran's alleged nuclear weapons program (AP).
Rouhani said Iran must retain the right to enrich uranium, while
denying plans to build a nuclear weapon. In a separate interview during
his New York visit, Rouhani also distanced himself from his predecessor
by calling the Holocaust a crime against Jews, adding that historians could only comment on the scale (Reuters). Obama also used his speech to pressure Russia to move ahead with a strong UN Security Council resolution to dismantle Syria's chemical weapons arsenal (Bloomberg).
Analysis
"This
fight against testing Iran's intentions is dumb and dangerous. It's
dumb because no one can possibly know just how much the new Tehran
government is willing to compromise if we don't test them. Second, it's
dangerous because without trying serious give-and-take diplomacy, the United States and Israel will be back on the track to war with Iran, and soon," CFR President Emeritus Leslie H. Gelb writes in the Daily Beast.
"Khamenei
seems to be calculating that the U.S. is so weak now (see recent events
in Syria) that it will drop sanctions and accept Iran's ambitions to
dominate the Middle East in return for a cosmetic slowdown in its nuclear development. It is critical that President Obama stick to a high standard for any possible deal," CFR Senior Fellow Max Boot writes for Commentary.
"To
be sure, the president's ultimate vision for world order remains
liberal and internationalist … But by his fifth year on the job, Obama is no starry-eyed idealist.
Indeed, his comments betrayed the weariness of a statesman acutely
aware that although forces and events may be nudged incrementally in a
positive direction, there is no making the world anew," writes CFR
Senior Fellow Stewart M. Patrick.
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