"Interviews with scientists is completely out of the question and so is inspection of military sites," Abbas Araqchi, Iran's senior negotiator on its nuclear program, announced on state television on Saturday, just as Secretary of State John Kerry was conferring with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif in a final push to meet the June 30 deadline for an Iran nuclear agreement.
"We who defeated the Israelis will also defeat the terrorists," a Hezbollah fighter in Syria told the New York Times the other day, referring to Israel's withdrawal from Lebanon in the early 1980s. "And we will take Jerusalem."
The growing concerns of Arab nations over an emerging Iran nuclear deal and their reported desire for U.S. weapons to protect themselves are the unfortunate outgrowths of President Barack Obama's foreign policy realism.
As global talks over Iran's nuclear program resume in Vienna this week, one can't help wonder whether, in a larger sense, the die of an Iranian regional, military and economic victory has already been cast. From Washington to Berlin, Moscow to Beijing, and many places in between, Iran's isolation is disappearing as governments and businesses prepare to exploit its return to global respectability.
Of the new framework accord with Iran over its nuclear program, President Barack Obama said he hopes "that we can conclude this diplomatic arrangement - and that it ushers a new era in U.S.-Iranian relations - and, just as importantly, over time, a new era in Iranian relations with its neighbors."