Obama Catches a Break From Nuclear Deal With Iran

Since things on the domestic front aren’t exactly rosy for President Obama, the weekend’s breakthrough in international diplomacy, in the form of the early-morning deal struck by the U.S., Iran and five other key nations to reconfigure Iran’s nuclear program comes as a much-needed boost to Obama’s second-term profile.

Although not everyone in the president’s party believes the deal with Iran is aggressive enough, The New York Times pointed out Sunday that the agreement represents a major opportunity — and gives Obama the chance to make good on one of his campaign promises from 2007:

But the mere fact that after 34 years of estrangement, the United States and Iran have signed a diplomatic accord — even if it is a tactical, transitory one — opens the door to a range of geopolitical possibilities available to no American leader since Jimmy Carter.

“No matter what you think of it, this is a historic deal,” said Vali R. Nasr, the dean of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. “It is a major seismic shift in the region. It rearranges the entire chess board.”

Mr. Obama has wanted to bring in Iran from the cold since he was a presidential candidate, declaring in 2007 that he would pursue “aggressive personal diplomacy” with Iranian leaders, and ruling out the concept of leadership change, which was popular at the time.

–Posted by Kasia Anderson