The biggest test facing the Obama administration now—apart from actually getting the deal, in all its complicated detail, done by the end of June—is in confronting the challenge a resurgent Iran is posing across the Middle East. Two things about President Obama are true: He and his team approached these negotiations assuming that Iran would lie, cheat, and steal, but he also holds out hope that a deal—and the economic benefits that flow from such a deal—will strengthen the hands of Iranian moderates. I tend to doubt this last part. I don’t believe that a bullying, terror-supporting, Assad-backing would-be regional hegemon whose ideology is built on anti-Americanism becomes more reasonable once it becomes richer and more empowered.

Which means that Obama will now have to do the thing he has been reluctant to do so far: confront Iran in Syria and Yemen and Lebanon in a sustained and creative way. He’s been reaching out to Israel and to America’s Arab friends in order to formulate such a strategy—a strategy U.S. allies in the Middle East have been begging him to devise—and I believe he realizes that he has a freer hand to confront Iran’s regional ambitions now that he’s secured a preliminary nuclear agreement. I hope he uses his power to check these ambitions, and I hope he spends the next three months making sure that the final deal is as stringent as possible. There is no way for an American president to guarantee that, years after he leaves office, Iran will not gain control of nuclear weapons. But there are still things this American president can do to check Iran’s power in long-lasting ways.

Peace must really offend some.

The one that maybe someone will sign in a couple months?

Nice try.

Did I just read that? Omg. So, let me get this straight, calling for air strikes against Iran and fearmongering about them being "on the cusp of getting a nuclear weapon" for twenty years is seeking cordial relations? Really? Are we living in backwardsville? Yeah right.

in this, he laid it on the blade:

I think that the Israeli government recognizes that, as president of the United States, I don't bluff. I also don't, as a matter of sound policy, go around advertising exactly what our intentions are. But I think both the Iranian and the Israeli governments recognize that when the United States says it is unacceptable for Iran to have a nuclear weapon, we mean what we say

President Obama might take a while, but he is indeed shrewd and thoughtful. Many have tried to paint him as a weak leader because he researches and follows laws, while waiting for his opponents to trip themselves. When they are caught in the morass looking like clumsy idiots, he states what he stated before, states it again, and makes certain to follow through with it.

I am not one of the "eleven dimensional" chess devotees of our President. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't underestimate him at chess.

I'd be far more afraid of him at the poker table.

doing all of this wailing and gnashing of the teeth over the fact that the US chose the path of peace rather than the knee jerk reaction of war that Israel prefers, I'd be careful.

If "something" happens in your neighborhood and you scream for the US to make war on your behalf against Iran, you are liable to find yourselves in a very difficult position.

The US has grown up quite a bit in a few decades. Another USS Liberty will have a very different result.

So any talk of "targeted for annihilation" is so much absurdist hyperbole. Israel does not seek cordial relations with Iran. Israel seeks to remain the de facto regional hegemon by eliminating the possibility that Iran can acquire nuclear weapons, which would alter the balance of power. Netanyahu and his coterie of right-wing American supporters have probably been doing more to make Iran seek nuclear weapons by beating the drum of war than anyone.