UNITED NATIONS — President Obama on Tuesday laid down a retooled blueprint for America's role in the strife-torn Middle East, declaring that the United States would use all of its levers of power, including military force, to defend its interests, even as it accepted limits on its ability to influence events in Syria, Iran and other countries.
Iran has said it could accept limits on its nuclear programme, freezing its current capacity for up to seven years on condition it would then be free to operate without any special restrictions.
But Obama is seeking this week to make a powerful case to Congress against adoption of new sanctions that could drive Iran from the negotiating table or unravel the international coalition that cut back trade with Iran in hopes of persuading it to accept limits on its nuclear program.
The six countries -- China, Russia, the United States, France, Germany and Britain -- are offering Iran a limited temporary easing of sanctions on its economy if it accepts temporary limits on its nuclear program.
The press itself has been torn: sometimes it has refused to accept limits on its freedom of expression (as when newspapers worldwide published cartoons of the prophet Muhammad that were offensive to Muslims); sometimes it has accepted them (as when those newspapers apologised).
Regardless of how long a culture prizes growth and chooses to leave it unchecked, surely it is not too late to accept limits to growth of the human economy, human consumption, and human numbers worldwide by altering human behavior accordingly.
To save it, all countries need to accept limits on their emissions of ozone-depleting gases.
The U.S. official said it was not yet clear whether Iran had made a "strategic decision" to accept limits on its nuclear program.
And we shouldn't expect China to voluntarily accept limits on its space strategy anytime soon.
The developing world is not going to accept limits to its growth in order to get us out of the mess.
