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Mehrzad Boroujerdi

“The time has come to turn a page in the torturous relationship between Iran and the United States,” says , Professor and Chair of the Political Science Department and O’Hanley Faculty Scholar at Syracuse University’s .

“After 12 years of sanction and 23 months of negotiations Iran and six other world powers today reached a historic agreement about a nuclear deal. Before the ink on the agreement had even dried hardline critics on all sides started to denounce it. President Rouhani’s critics say that reducing the stockpile of enriched uranium by 98%, decommissioning two thirds of Iran’s spinning centrifuges and accepting restrictions on missiles for the next eight years is tantamount to a sell-out. President Obama’s critics charge that Iran’s nuclear infrastructure will not be destroyed and Iran will remain a nuclear threshold state for the foreseeable future. These critics need to be reminded that the perfect is the enemy of the good, and that neither side in these negotiations had all the aces in their hand. The deal reached in Vienna may be less filling than some expected but I think it should be strongly supported in light of less appealing alternatives. The time has come to turn a page in the torturous relationship between Iran and the United States that started in 1979. After all, perpetual enmity is senseless and unproductive.”

Dr. Boroujerdi is the immediate past President of the International Society for Iranian Studies and has written and been interviewed extensively about Iran. He can be reached at 315-885-4055 or email mborouje@syr.edu.