BREAKING NEWS: Iranian nuclear deal reached (well, sort of).
An agreement has been reached in Lausanne, Switzerland between Iranian and American officials on Iran's nuclear program.
The officials spoke outside weeklong talks that have been twice extended past the March 31 deadline in an effort to formulate both a general statement of what has been accomplished and documents describing what needs to be done to meet a June 30 deadline for a final accord. A news conference was set for later in the day, when the results of the talks were expected to be announced.
President Obama's talks with Iran are something unique in presidency, in that for most of the time, world events foisted the agenda upon him. According to a great piece in the Washington Post, Iran is a different matter for the President. He chose it from the very first days of his presidency and made it a priority. He has consistently stated U.S. leadership can "bend the arc of human history." Nuclear proliferation has been a foreign policy concern, in fact, President Obama's first foreign speech as President was on that topic.
Obama and senior aides have bemoaned what they see as a tendency in Washington to look first to the military to solve America’s most vexing foreign policy problems. “The debates around the Middle East don’t seem to recognize that the Iraq war took place,” said Ben Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser to the president. There continues to be “an instinctive reach for military solutions as the only sign of America’s seriousness,” he said.