on both. A new regime in Kiev could salve sores and enable the West to shelve sanctions.

Henry Precht

Henry Precht, a retired Foreign Service Officer, worked mainly in the Middle East. His assignments included the Arab-Israel Desk after the 1967 war, four years in Tehran as political-military officer, in charge of the State Department Iran Desk during the revolution and hostage crisis, and two tours in Egypt – Alexandria in the 1960s and deputy ambassador in Cairo 1981-85. Precht speaks and writes on the region, and has published a book of short stories, A Diplomat’s Progress.

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5 Comments

Thank you for this excellent analysis. President Obama should have learned from Congressional reaction to his efforts at rapprochement with Iran that “undoing sanctions is a lot harder than imposing them.” Insteadof a Cold War mentality of wishing to push NATO closer and closer to Russian borders, it would be more productive to find ways of integrating Russia into Europe and persuading her to cooperate with a whole host of issues including Iran, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and above all the growing risk of Jihadi terrorism that is spreading from Syria to Iraq, Lebanon, Turkey and in time to other countries in the Middle East and may be even to Europe and America. This may be one of the reasons why both Russia and Iran are supporting Bashar Assad’s secular government.

In the fight against Al Qaeda, the West should coopt Russia and Iran rather than constantly trying to antagonize them. The Cold War is over, the Islamic revolution in Iran