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Al Jazeera America
There was less surprise in the announcement of the historic interim nuclear agreement between Iran and six world powers than there was in the revelation that Washington and Tehran have for months been holding regularly direct negotiations in secret. Those parallel talks, which are believed to have helped set the stage for the agreement concluded early Sunday in Geneva, suggest that a broader strategic shift may be on the cards to ease the bitter three-decade enmity between the U.S. and Iran – and that's a development that worries Washington's traditional allies in the Middle East.“We have pursued intensive diplomacy – bilaterally with the Iranians, and together with our P5+1 partners: the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Russia, and China, as well as the European Union,” President Barack Obama said at the White House Saturday. “Today, that diplomacy opened up a new path toward a world that is more secure – a future in which we can verify that Iran’s nuclear program is peaceful, and that it cannot build a nuclear weapon.”
Spiegel Online
Although German commentators applaud Iran's interim deal with the West to halt its nuclear program as a significant step forward, they also argue Tehran must now prove itself. The bulk of the sanctions must remain in place until a full agreement is reached, they say.Iran The interim pact between Iran and the US, France, Germany, Britain, China and Russia runs for six months and halts Iran's higher-grade enrichment of uranium and the construction of the Arak heavy-water reactor. It also increases the frequency of United Nations inspections.and the West reached a deal on Sunday to curb the Iranian nuclear program in exchange for a loosening of sanctions, launching a rapprochement that could end a long standoff and avert the threat of war.
The Guardian
Congressional opponents of the US-Iran nuclear deal scrambled on Monday to attack the historic accord as inadequate and destined to fail, raising questions about the Obama administration’s ability to deliver on its potential diplomatic breakthrough.Previewing a fight on Capitol Hill that will kick off in earnest when Congress returns next week, the administration faces a glut of critics, both Democrats and Republicans, who argue that President Obama is unravelling a hard-crafted regime of sanctions out of blind commitment for any deal, no matter how allegedly favorable to the Iranians.
Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican and leading Iran hawk, blasted the deal as “so far away from what the end game should look like”. He told CNN that the goal of any deal “should be to stop enrichment".
Robert Menendez, the New Jersey Democrat who chairs the Senate foreign relations committee, said in a statement: “This agreement did not proportionately reduce Iran’s nuclear program."
Pushing back against a congealing narrative, Tony Blinken, the deputy national security adviser, told NPR on Monday that the deal “is a good deal because for the first time in a decade, it halts Iran’s program, and indeed it rolls it back in certain key respects”.
McClatchy
GENEVA — Iran and six world powers announced early Sunday that they had reached an interim agreement that would for the first time roll back portions of Iran’s nuclear program. In return, some economic sanctions against Iran would be eased.President Barack Obama hailed the accord, calling it an important first step toward a comprehensive agreement to ensure that Iran’s nuclear program is for peaceful purposes only.
“For the first time in nearly a decade, we have halted the progress of the Iranian nuclear program, and key parts of the program will be rolled back,” Obama said in a hastily arranged six-minute speech that he delivered from the White House after 10:30 p.m.
NPR
The track record for Middle East diplomacy is pretty dismal, yet this is where President Obama is playing all his important diplomatic cards.With the interim deal on Iran's nuclear program, the president is now engaged in his fifth major diplomatic initiative in five contiguous countries stretching from Afghanistan in the east to Israel in the west.
Obama has spoken frequently about focusing more U.S. attention on Asia, but time and again, he is drawn back to the Middle East. Overall, these efforts are still playing out, and it's too early to judge success or failure. But after nearly five years in office, the president's legacy on foreign policy will likely to be determined by what ultimately happens in this volatile swath of territory.
The Iranian deal announced in Geneva early Sunday effectively freezes Iran's nuclear program. Now comes the bigger challenge of negotiating a permanent agreement over the next six months that locks into place safeguards against an Iranian nuclear weapon.
This is just one of several diplomatic developments over the past few days that included news on the future of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, the Syrian civil war and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Here's a running scorecard on the president's diplomatic moves:
New York Times
WASHINGTON — For President Obama, whose popularity and second-term agenda have been ravaged by the chaotic rollout of the health care law, the preliminary nuclear deal reached with Iran on Sunday is more than a welcome change of subject.It is also a seminal moment — one that thrusts foreign policy to the forefront in a White House preoccupied by domestic woes, and one that presents Mr. Obama with the chance to chart a new American course in the Middle East for the first time in more than three decades.
Much will depend, of course, on whether the United States and the other major powers ever reach a final agreement with Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions. Mr. Obama himself said Saturday night that it “won’t be easy, and huge challenges remain ahead.”
MSNBC
At a certain level, international diplomacy with Iran and a first-in-a-generation breakthrough constitute the worst possible scenario for U.S. neoconservatives. Their vision dictates that change can come to the Middle East, but only through military force – and the more diplomacy and the search for peaceful solutions makes force unlikely, the more it must be rejected.And with this in mind, it’s understandable that neocons are even more agitated than usual this morning. With P5+1 – the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, plus Germany – having reached a preliminary agreement with Iran, the entire neocon vision is facing a historic repudiation. Michael Tomasky noted this morning that among neocons, “there is contemplation of the hideous reality that Obama and the path of negotiation just might work. This is the thing the neocons can’t come to terms with at all. If Obama succeeds here, their entire worldview is discredited. Check that; even more discredited.”