Obama: Don’t blame Iran for every problem

US President Barack Obama this past week called on America’s Arab allies to begin a “practical conversation” with Iran to reduce sectarian divisions and address shared threats from terrorism.

Although Obama stressed that the purpose of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) signed between the P5+1 countries and Iran on July 14 was to prevent Iran from a nuclear weapons breakout over the next 10 years, not to change Iran’s behavior, he also made clear that the region needs a new approach and attitude toward regional security.

Obama told Thomas Friedman of The New York Times on July 15, “What I think is undeniable is that the sectarian forces that have been unleashed are adding to the viciousness and destructiveness of what’s happening in a place like Syria, what’s happening in a place like Yemen, what’s happening certainly in Iraq. And that our best chance at least reducing the scope of those conflicts is for the Saudis and other Sunni states or Arab states to be at least in a practical conversation with Iran that says, `The conflict we are fanning right now could engulf us all in flames.’”