"This first step will create time and space over the next six months..."

"...  for more negotiations to fully address our comprehensive concerns about the Iranian program, and because of this agreement, Iran cannot use negotiations as cover to advance its program."

Said Barack Obama.

ADDED: John Bolton (U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06) in The Weekly Standard: "Abject Surrender by the United States/What does Israel do now?"

Even modest constraints, easily and rapidly reversible, do not change that fundamental political and operational reality....

Israel... must make the extremely difficult judgment whether it will stand by as Iran maneuvers effortlessly around a feckless and weak White House, bolstering its economic situation while still making progress on the nuclear front....

[I]n truth, an Israeli military strike is the only way to avoid Tehran’s otherwise inevitable march to nuclear weapons, and the proliferation that will surely follow....

Picturing the phone call between Obama and President Hassan Rouhani of Iran.

It was "the first direct contact between the leaders of Iran and the United States since 1979," and by President Obama's report, the 2 men found "a path to a meaningful agreement."

I'm just trying to imagine how this phone call sounded...

Hello? Uh, hello, Hassan... Listen, I can't hear too well, do you suppose you could turn the music down just a little?... Uh, that's much better. Fine. I can hear you now, Hassan, clear and plain and coming through fine...  I'm coming through fine too, eh? Good, then, as you say, we're both coming through fine. Good... Well, it's good that you're fine, and I'm fine. I agree with you. It's great to be fine. Now, then, Hassan...

Source material:

"They think they know where the targets are, they think they know how to hit it with enough force but not too much force, they think they know how the Russian and the Iranians will react."

"We cannot determine all this. On some level, we’re assuming the reaction from Russia and Iraq and Syria will be zero: We’ll carry out this attacks, and there’ll be no response. This is a bit of a sensitive subject, but the administration has been honest that they have no smoking gun that the attack was ordered by Assad. The evidence of his involvement is circumstantial. We’re two years into a civil war that he’s winning. The Russians and Iranians have told him not to use chemical weapons. Hezbollah has told him not to use chemical weapons because their fighters are at risk. So he’s winning, there’s scant and circumstantial evidence that he ordered the attack. Why are we gaming out his incentives when we don’t know he ordered it?"

Says Alan Grayson, a Democratic congressman from Florida, in an interview with Ezra Klein (who's been doing some excellent interviews lately).