Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif (L) waits to make a statement next to U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry (R), following nuclear talks at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne) April 2, 2015. Reuters/Brendan Smialowski/Pool
Reuters: U.S. and Iran: the unbearable awkwardness of defending your enemy
It's always awkward to defend your enemies. But that's the position U.S. President Barack Obama's administration has found itself in with Iran as it pushes for an historic accord that would end a 12-year nuclear standoff.
Tehran and Washington, which have called each other the "Great Satan" and a member of the "Axis of Evil" during 36 years of hostility, are more used to exchanging insults than defending each other. The two foes cut diplomatic ties after Iranian revolutionaries seized 52 hostages in Tehran's U.S. embassy during the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Yet for a month now the U.S. State Department has been defending Iran from suggestions that it was on the verge of violating a requirement to reduce its low-enriched uranium stockpile under a 2013 interim nuclear with major powers.
WNU Editor: This is one of those situations where I will admit that I do not understand U.S. foreign policy. Why defend someone who has made no secret of the fact that they hate you and wish you bad things. And as for defending Iran on claims that they are violating nuclear understandings as well as sanctions .... "incomprehensible" is too kind of a word.
