‘Absence of useful dialogue with Iran, major black mark on U.S. diplomacy’

TEHRAN,May 4(MNA) – The United States should put holding dialogue with Iran high on its foreign policy agenda as Iran is a major player in an important part of the world, according to Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador. “A major black mark on American diplomacy that prevailed through President Barack Obama’s first term and already into the first months of his second is the absence of useful dialogue with Iran,” Simpson wrote in an article published in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette on Wednesday. “Like it or not, Iran is a major player in an important part of the world, spanning the Middle East and South Asia. It has borders with Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Iraq, Pakistan, Turkey, and Turkmenistan and a population of 80 million. It is an important oil producer. It demonstrated in its eight-year war with Iraq that it can fight and is prepared to sustain monstrous casualties on the battlefield,” read part of the article. Simpson also wrote, “Now, as Secretary of State John F. Kerry travels around the Middle East chasing his tail as he ostensibly tries to get the so-called peace process between the Israelis and Palestinians started again, U.S. non-relations with Iran remain an important part of the picture.”