Negotiators appeared to be moving wearily on Thursday toward a preliminary accord on limiting Iran’s nuclear program, but they remained at odds about how specific that agreement would be. Mohammad Javad Zarif, Iran’s foreign minister, suggested the accord would take the form of a general statement that he would issue publicly with Federica Mogherini, the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

Deal or no deal in the Iranian nuclear talks, Tehran is already behaving like it's made a killing. Sure, U.S. and international sanctions inflicted staggering damage on Iran's economy, convincing the longtime American foe to join talks aimed at limiting its nuclear program.

While American negotiators maintained tight secrecy at the nuclear talks here, President Hassan Rouhani of Iran took to Twitter late Thursday to describe a letter he sent to President Obama and other world leaders justifying Iran’s positions.

At times President Obama sounds almost incoherent on Iran. On one hand he says, like the Israeli prime minister, that he does not see a peace deal in the near future. (“What we can’t do is pretend that there’s a possibility for something that’s not there. And we can’t continue to premise our public diplomacy based on something that everybody knows is not going to happen at least in the next several years.”) So they are on the same page? 

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.

The chemistry between Netanyahu and Obama has never been good. It’s not a matter of personalities. It’s a clash of realities—the two men see the world differently. Obama believes the best way to protect Israel—and broader American interests—is to get a deal that will curtail Iran’s uranium enrichment, cut its stockpile of fuel, convert its facilities, and require intrusive daily inspections.  

For years, Indians viewed their countrymen who emigrated abroad for better opportunities with suspicion – as if they’d somehow betrayed the motherland. (...)And the country’s new government is looking at the huge expatriate population – second only to China’s – as a valuable component of India’s foreign policy, in much the same way the Jewish diaspora in the US influences international opinion and policy on Israel.

President Obama will send Susan E. Rice, his national security adviser, and Samantha Power, his envoy to the United Nations, to speak to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee at its conference here next week, officials at the White House said Thursday.