Richard Haass: Happy Talk on Iran Is Not Real; We Have To Get Serious About Negotiations

EXCERPT:

HAASS: "No, after two weeks. you can’t avoid that bottom line. Yes, we’ve diminished, destroyed a large part of Iran’s conventional military forces, their ballistic missiles, their navy, what have you. They can still shoot off drones. They can still put mines out there. They can continue to fight this war. What you’re really getting from the administration and from Israel, by the way, is happy talk. We’re getting happy talk about how well it’s going, and from the Israelis that regime change is at hand. We can’t count on that. And basically, we’ve got a real problem here. Continued military operations will not get us what we want. We can’t open up the straits. We can’t, through continued military operations, protect our partners in this part of the world and all their oil refineries and water desalination plants and the rest. We’ve got a real problem there. Regime change is not at hand. It’s bad for the Iranian people. We’re not going to get a government that’s suddenly going to want to work with us.”