The White House seems to think a nuke deal with Iran will change everything. Let’s hope they’re trying to fool us, and not themselves.

 

 

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Genieve Abdo of the Stimson Center (and Brookings) agrees. “They want the sanctions lifted, and they want a nuclear deal,” she says. “And that’s it.” She told me that she has been present at conferences around the world where President Hassan Rouhani’s representatives, and/or staffers from Iran’s foreign ministry, have sat there singing to American and other Western officials a tune about what great changes a deal would bring to Iran. But, she contends: “Rouhani was allowed to win the election because he was tasked with getting the sanctions lifted and getting a nuclear deal. But he has no power beyond that.” Iran’s regional meddling, she notes, is run by the Revolutionary Guards Council, and Rouhani has nothing to do with it.