Back in June, Iran’s presidential elections had a surprise winner: reformer Hassan Rouhani. Western-educated, Rouhani took to Twitter to express his more favorable views of the U.S. He even suggested he was open to a new approach on the nuclear issue. Rouhani’s attitude (and his openness about it on public forums like Twitter) eased US-Iran relations.

As Sweden’s foreign minister, Carl Bildt, noted in the wake of the interim deal on Iran’s nuclear program reached in Geneva on Saturday, the effort by Tehran’s negotiating team to explain and justify the country’s push for atomic energy behind closed doors was accompanied by a public diplomacy campaign conducted online.

When negotiations over the future of Iran’s nuclear program broke down last week, the question of why they did loomed in everyone’s mind. In response, Secretary of State Kerry offered some weak explanation that Iranian negotiators had to get approval from higher ups back at home. Kerry’s comments were a deflection from blaming the French for putting the kibosh on the agreement. Rather than deflecting from the French, Senator John McCain, in a rare move for a conservative Republican, complimented the French for their bravery in stopping the agreement, proclaiming, “Vive la France!”

Israeli-American relations are in free fall. Why? On the face of it the key issue is the terms of the draft deal with Iran that Secretary of State John Kerry was reportedly ready to sign in Geneva, week before last. Yesterday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeated yet again that it is “a bad deal.” And last week Israel’s intelligence minister, Yuval Steinitz, claimed the concessions to Tehran that the United States is contemplating will funnel between $20 and $40 billion to Iran’s coffers.

Here’s a statistic from an official Pentagon presentation, recently revealed at a security industry conference in Augusta, Georgia. The subject was American military interventions since the end of World War II. The figures: 44 interventions – one a year – between 1945 and 1989; and another 100 – three to four a year – since the end of the Cold War.

French President Francois Hollande on Sunday laid out four demands which must be in place for an agreement with Iran to successfully rein in its nuclear program, Agence France-Presse reported. “France is in favor of an interim agreement but on the basis of four points,” AFP quoted him as saying at a joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem.

Sepp Blatter has admitted he is open to the possibility of staging the 2022 World Cup in more than one Gulf nation after revealing several countries had offered to co-host the tournament with Qatar. With a formal decision still to be made over whether it will be staged in the winter, Blatter also indicated that his preference is to start it in November or December rather than January or February.

Jews across the world must ratchet up pressure on their governments to stand in the way of an impending "bad deal" on Iran's nuclear program, Diaspora Affairs Minister Naftali Bennett wrote Saturday night. In a letter sent to AIPAC, Jewish Federations of North America, Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Russian Jewish Congress, and other groups, and later posted on his Facebook page, Bennett said that "the Free World stands before a fork in the road."