If You Blinked, You Missed Our “Diplomacy” With Iran

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We’ve written a ton about the need for diplomacy with Iran here at MoJoBlog. Here’s my position, from an earlier post:

…talks with Iran fundamentally make the United States safer. Right now we have no influence over Iran, and, if anything, continue to antagonize them. Entering a tense but workable diplomatic relationship humanizes both sides, allows them to talk through grievances, and begins the process of making concessions and finding middle ground.

I’ve always felt, “Hey, why not try it? It can’t make things worse.” Well, it’s happened. After a period in which the White House repeatedly changed course over whether they would establish contact with the Iranians, and if so, to what extent, the two sides finally met a long-awaited meeting of regional leaders in Iraq. But when I say they “met,” I mean they shook hands and exchanged pleasantries. From the Wall Street Journal:

…the two sides merely had a quick “meet and greet” and then exchanged remarks within the larger forum. U.S. and Iranian officials said there were no private conversations of any substance.

The optimist in me says, “It’s a start, but we can and must do better.” The cynic in me says that the White House simply used the announcement of talks with Iran as a way to generate positive headlines and never had any intention of performing true diplomacy.

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AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

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If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

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