Isreal and France need to take a hike: U.S. Tries to Rekindle Iran Deal After Miscues

From The Wall Street Journal:

A series of miscalculations by the Obama administration and world powers were behind a failure to complete a first-stage agreement to curb Iran's nuclear program this weekend despite days of rising expectations of a deal, said diplomats involved in the process.

Washington sought to take the developments in stride, quickly moving to salvage a deal by dispatching senior American diplomats to Israel and the Persian Gulf to try to win over skeptical allies and show the delay could lead to a better agreement with Tehran.

 

The talks in Geneva stumbled at an ambitious moment because of developments that were unforeseen by top officials from the U.S., U.K., France, Germany, Russia, China and Iran, the diplomats said.

 

One was the intractability of Israel's opposition. While Washington and other powers were well aware of Israel's deep antipathy to a deal, they didn't expect Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to campaign to scuttle it by lobbying leaders around the world as diplomats met in Geneva, diplomats said.

 

Similarly, despite France's difficult history with Iran, diplomats said they didn't expect the French foreign minister to go public with a warning of a "fool's game" just as negotiations reached a critical point on Saturday.