This has been the most dramatic week in US/Iranian relations since 1979.
Last weekend ten US Navy personnel were caught in Iranian waters, as the Pentagon
kept changing its story on how they got there. It could have been a disaster
for President Obama’s big gamble on diplomacy over conflict with Iran.
But after several rounds of telephone diplomacy between Secretary of State John
Kerry and his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif, the Iranian leadership —
which we are told by the neocons is too irrational to even talk to — did
a most rational thing: weighing the costs and benefits they decided it made
more sense not to belabor the question of what an armed US Naval vessel was
doing just miles from an Iranian military base. Instead of escalating, the Iranian
government fed the sailors and sent them back to their base in Bahrain.
Then on Saturday, the Iranians released four Iranian-Americans from prison,
including Washington Post reporter Jason Rezaian. On the US side, seven Iranians
held in US prisons, including six who were dual citizens, were granted clemency.
The seven were in prison for seeking to trade with Iran in violation of the
decades-old US economic sanctions.
This mutual release came just hours before the United Nations certified that
Iran had met its obligations under the nuclear treaty signed last summer and
that, accordingly, US and international sanctions would be lifted against the
country.