united states
President Barack Obama has decided to test whether Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s “charm offensive” is a legitimate effort to reach an agreement on a more constricted and transparent Iranian nuclear program. With this decision, he embarks on the most transformative and important diplomatic initiative of his presidency.
When Iran's President Hassan Rohani came home from his charm offensive in New York last month, he arrived bearing a "special gift" from the United States. But any resulting goodwill may be short-lived, with art experts now saying the 2,700-year-old Persian artifact that was returned to the Iranian people is a fake.
Upset that the fiscal stalemate in Washington is threatening the global economy, China called for the U.S. dollar to be replaced as the international reserve currency as well as for broader steps to create a "de-Americanized world."
The leader of Tehran's Jewish community has urged U.S. President Barack Obama to take advantage of the "unrepeatable" opportunity to repair relations with Iran, AFP reported on Monday. "If the U.S. and the international community do not make the best of this golden and perhaps unrepeatable opportunity, then it will be in the benefit of those who are against the normalization of ties between Iran and the U.S.," wrote Homayoun Sameyah, according to AFP, in an open letter addressed to Obama.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Afghan President Hamid Karzai have reached preliminary agreement on a bilateral security pact that now depends on the approval of Afghanistan's tribal leaders. The pact, announced jointly by Kerry and Karzai late on Saturday after two days of talks in the capital, Kabul, would keep some U.S. forces in Afghanistan after the withdrawal of most foreign troops by the end of next year.
How does what we know about information and communication technology (ICTs) and persuasion help practitioners makes sense of how to integrate technology into the mission of public diplomacy? We know that ICTs can be:
A) Persuasive by its ability to facilitate or enable other attempts at persuasion.
B) Persuasive as a transmission vehicle (the medium endows some form of credibility or legitimacy).
C) Persuasive as a kind of context for communication - an intermediary - that enables the influence potential of social ties.
California recently made foreign-policy history by becoming the first sub-national government to sign an agreement with China’s powerful National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), which oversees the country’s economic growth. Just as significant is the objective: fighting climate change by circumventing deadlocked decision-making in Washington and Beijing.
According to most media observers, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani's recent trip to the United States, and his phone conversation with President Barack Obama, went as well as could be expected. The New York Times called Rouhani "blunt and charming," and the BBC heralded a "new tone" to his remarks.