Aftandilian in The Arab Weekly on Macron’s Iran Proposal
Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, published a recent Op-Ed on why it will be difficult for Iran and the United States to accept French President Macron’s compromise proposal to defuse tensions.
Aftandilian’s Op-Ed, entitled “Macron’s Proposals a Bridge Too Far For US, Iran,” was published in The Arab Weekly on September 28, 2019.
From the text of the article:
If there was any hope for an easing of tensions between the United States and Iran, the duelling speeches at the UN General Assembly by US President Donald Trump and Iranian President Hassan Rohani negated the chances for that possibility.
Not only did the two leaders not meet, as was rumoured might happen just a couple of weeks ago, but their messages to the world body were in direct contradiction to one another.
Trump labelled Iran as one of the “greatest security threats facing peace-loving nations.” He accused Tehran of fuelling the wars in Syria and Yemen and charged that it was pursuing a “fanatical quest for nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them.”
Rohani underscored that the “imaginary Iranian threat” has been used by some leaders to “justify a long catalogue of crimes and catastrophic practices over the past three decades” citing, in particular, the arming of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan.
Aftandilian spent over 21 years in government service, most recently on Capitol Hill where he was foreign policy adviser to Congressman Chris Van Hollen (2007-2008), professional staff member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and foreign policy adviser to Senator Paul Sarbanes (2000-2004), and foreign policy fellow to the late Senator Edward Kennedy (1999).