Introduction
Last week’s nuclear agreement between the United States and Iran is the most transformative development in relations between the two nations in decades. But the diplomatic road ahead for the two countries remains uncertain, fraught with difficulties and potential pitfalls. Even triumphant readings of the recent nuclear agreement between the P5+1 and Iran have ignored the elephant in the room. That elephant is the fact that, with or without the talks (and short of a catastrophic regional war or a highly unlikely diplomatic coming-together), Iran will eventually become a nuclear power—and that there is little the United States, Israel, or any other country on Earth can do about it. Instead of trying in vain to prevent a nuclear Iran, the United States and its allies must recognize that, in the case of Iran, national interest increasingly fails to justify further enmity—and that the costs of potential hostilities are simply too high. Sometimes the best way to deal with an enemy is to make a friend.
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