The recent decision by Iran and the U.S. to extend the deadline for an agreement on nuclear weapons is based on a fundamental fallacy that the current American government believes wholeheartedly: that this is a problem that can be solved through further negotiations. In truth, no agreement can be reached because Iran is unwilling to give up its nuclear-weapons program. The same fallacy lies behind the blundering attempts to force an agreement between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Elliott Abrams writes:
[T]he beginning of wisdom in both these cases, Iranian and Israeli-Palestinian, is the realization that the fundamental differences cannot be papered over. The Obama administration has tried and tried, and it has failed—not due to a failure of its diplomats to master their briefs, but because the administration did not understand the nature of the problem. Once you recognize that the Ayatollah Khamenei insists on a nuclear-weapons program, and that President Abbas will not and cannot agree to give up the “right of return” and make compromises on Jerusalem, you recognize that more sessions with more diplomats won’t reach a different result. It’s a category error, where a thing belonging to a particular category is presented as belonging to a different category. Here, disputes that are fundamental (because interests are adverse) are presented by the Obama administration as being mere misunderstandings—problems that American good faith and State Department elbow grease can resolve.
More about: Ayatollah Khamenei, Iranian nuclear program, Peace Process, U.S. Foreign policy