In his weekly address on Saturday, US President Barack Obama began his campaign to assure Americans and sway skeptics that the framework for a nuclear pact with Iran was a "good deal." A day after Obama called top lawmakers to urge support for the agreement, he pressed his case that Iran would not be able to build nuclear bombs.

And so it came, after years of protracted negotiations, extended deadlines and a diplomatic dance of unprecedented proportions – a deal that could signal a new era for Iran’s relations with the world. (...) Beyond the technical details of the agreement lies a triumph of diplomacy and the potential, if not for a realignment of US interests in the Middle East, then certainly a significant adjustment which has concerned its traditional allies in the region.

China's new Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) is a very big deal for Asia's economic future, but the way its establishment has played out makes it an even bigger deal for Asia's changing political and strategic order. And Canberra's announcement last weekend that Australia will join the AIIB despite the objections of the United States may come to be seen as marking a  historic shift in Australian foreign policy.

Ben Affleck made his way back to Capitol Hill on Thursday to testify on behalf of Eastern Congo in front of the Senate Appropriations Committee. The Oscar winner, who was joined by wife Jennifer Garner and philanthropist and Microsoft founder Billl Gates, spoke about his Eastern Congo Initiative in front of the State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs subcommittee hearing on diplomacy, development and national security to ask them to allocate some of their budget to the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Last week, the entire world watched the United States Congress giving the Prime Minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, a fervent round of applause with 26 standing ovations. While almost all major world powers criticize Netanyahu’s position against nuclear negotiations with Iran, the U.S. Congress embraced it with open arms. What message does this send to the rest of the world?

Nowhere is the contrast between Benedict XVI and Francis more tangible than in the degree to which the papacy seems to have recovered its diplomatic and geopolitical swagger. The normalization of relations between the U.S. and Cuba in December 2014 came about in part thanks to Francis, who wrote private letters to President Obama and Cuban president Raúl Castro that reportedly helped break the ice between the two leaders.

Selling nuclear diplomacy with Iran was perhaps the toughest job at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual conference this year -- second only to shepherding teenage attendees to the AIPAC selfie wall. Still, one gutsy former adviser to President Barack Obama decided to give it a shot -- and soon realized he might have been better off handing out selfie sticks.

Now, more than a year after South Sudan’s leaders plunged their country into a nasty civil war, the nation has become something of a test of diplomacy between the United States and China, raising the question: Can Washington and Beijing turn their mutual interests in South Sudan into a shared strategy to stop the bloodshed?