Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will warn President Barack Obama in White House talks on Monday that Iran's diplomatic “sweet talk” cannot be trusted and will urge him to keep up the pressure to prevent Tehran from being able to make a nuclear bomb.

As Twitter heads toward its high value IPO, the attention is on its revenue and growth numbers. However, a big part of the story is the pervasiveness and influence of the messaging service. Compared with Facebook, with over a billion users, Twitter is a midsize town, with about a quarter of the audience.

The responsibility to protect is a bad idea. But it could be worse. President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly on Tuesday hinted how. At the conclusion of remarks that focused heavily on the Middle East, the president offered a strong endorsement of the doctrine.

The flurry of speculation and polemic that has characterized U.S.-Chinese relations in the past decade or so reached a new intensity with the leadership turnover in China earlier this year. As Barack Obama started his second term in office and Xi Jinping assumed power in March, renewed debates emerged about the future of U.S.-Chinese relations, still perceived as the two greatest competitors for hegemonic status in international affairs. However, the reevaluation of this critical relationship has in fact known successive rounds.

Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, told world leaders Tuesday that his government is prepared to “engage immediately in result-oriented” talks with the United States, but also complained about American economic sanctions and military intervention in the Middle East. In a widely anticipated speech at the United Nations General Assembly, Rouhani said that Iran and the U.S. “can arrive at a framework to manage our differences,” adding that his government has no desire to increase tensions between the two longtime adversaries.

President Barack Obama, speaking at the United Nations General Assembly on Tuesday, appeared to open the door for diplomatic solutions in the Syrian conflict and with Iran. In his 50-minute speech to the General Assembly, Obama pressed the United Nations and its member states to take action to resolve the Syrian conflict, saying that the "crisis in Syria and the destablization of the region goes to the heart of the broader challenges the international community must now face."

It is only in working democracies that an election would mean a real fresh start for the citizens of a country. This seems to be true about Iran. Since the election of the moderate Hassan Rouhani in June 2013, the voters inside the country and statesmen across the world have expected a relatively new Iran.

Whatever else it accomplishes, Syria’s agreement to disclose its chemical-weapons stockpiles and, eventually, destroy them, made President Obama’s address at this year’s United Nations General Assembly much easier. Rather than having to explain why U.S. bombs had been dropping on targets in Damascus, he was afforded a friendly environment in which to talk up the diplomatic efforts that are under way to resolve the Syrian crisis, and to encourage a similar effort addressed to the Iranian nuclear question.