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Diplomatic triumph or travesty, America's relationship with one of its most intractable foes took two giant leaps forward this weekend when Iran released four Americans in a prisoner swap after locking in last summer's nuclear deal and receiving some $100 billion in sanctions relief.

Speaking from the White House, Obama on Sunday hailed the "historic progress through diplomacy," long the centerpiece of his foreign policy vision, instead of another war in the Middle East.

The Islamic Republic released the prisoners in exchange for pardons or charges dropped against seven Iranians — six of whom hold dual U.S. citizenship — serving time for or accused of sanctions violations in the United States

The US has imposed fresh sanctions on Iranian companies and individuals over a recent ballistic missile test.

The move came after international nuclear sanctions on Iran were lifted as part of a deal hailed by President Barack Obama on Sunday as "smart".

They were triggered by Iran conducting a precision-guided ballistic missile test capable of delivering a nuclear warhead last October, violating a United Nations ban.

The speed with which Iran released two US Navy patrol boats and their crews, after they had unintentionally entered Iranian waters on January 12th, was a measure of how America’s relationship with Iran has changed

by renouncing the pathways to a bomb, Iran gets cash and trade.

Hardliners in the regime still loathe the deal. Iran remains committed to expanding its nuclear programme to “industrial scale”, which it will be able to do, even if the agreement holds, after 15 years

The most important question the Trump administration and Congress should be asking is: How can we make Putin stop

Stopping Putin is vital, not just as a matter of protecting American democracy from Russian interference but also because we must signal a stronger deterrence to other adversaries, such as China, Iran and North Korea. Potential aggressors must be shown they will pay a price if they attack

The U.S. answer to Russia, so far, has been ineffective because Washington has targeted only the entities and individuals actually involved in the Russian information operations.

“Pompeo is stuck,” said one senior administration official who was not authorized to speak. “He’s a prisoner of championing a policy that’s based on what the president would love to see happen, but not based on reality and the facts on the ground.”

The Trump administration has already announced limited sanctions against Chinese and Russian firms helping the Kim regime bust sanctions, but some officials want to see Trump pivot toward a tougher public stance to respond to Kim’s misbehavior. The Trump team cannot even agree on how grave the situation is.

That confusion leaves Pompeo with the difficult task of reversing the downward trend in the diplomacy without having anything new to offer. His last trip to Pyongyang ended in failure, when Kim refused to meet him and the North Koreans blasted him as soon as he left

SEOUL—North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told a visiting South Korean delegation that he was willing to hold talks with the U.S. about giving up nuclear weapons and normalizing relations with Washington, officials in Seoul said Tuesday.

North Korea’s government issued no statement of its own on Tuesday. On Monday, state media there said Mr. Kim had exchanged “in-depth views on the issues for easing the acute military tensions” on the Korean peninsula.

On Tuesday morning, U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted: “Possible progress being made in talks with North Korea. For the first time in many years, a serious effort is being made by all parties concerned.

Washington (CNN)President Donald Trump says Russians are "laughing their asses off in Moscow" for the way Washington has handled the Russia investigations, following the Department of Justice's charges against Russian nationals last week for allegedly interfering in the 2016 election."If it was the GOAL of Russia to create discord, disruption and chaos within the U.S. then, with all of the Committee Hearings, Investigations and Party hatred, they have succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. They are laughing their asses off in Moscow. Get smart America!" Trump tweeted Sunday morning.

On Sunday, Trump also praised Rep. Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, for placing some blame for Russian interference into the election onto the Obama administration.

"I've said all along that I thought the Obama administration should have done more ... They were very wary of appearing to be putting their hand on the scale of the election," Schiff said, referencing the Obama administration's initial failure to implement Russian sanctions. Schiff added that "none of that is an excuse for this President to sit on his hands" regarding recent Russian sanctions set in place by Congress.

One is an egomaniacally unhinged, nuclear-armed neophyte, who scares his allies and enemies alike. So is the other. The extraordinary prospect of direct talks between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un would be a delicious moment of karma among kooky world leaders. If it weren’t for their ability to destroy half the planet.

One thing is already clear about this half-baked idea: Trump is more likely to spill his guts about classified intelligence than he is to get the upper hand with any kind of meaningful deal.

We have some recent history to underscore that point. It was only on Saturday that our dear leader spilled his guts about this North Korean deal at the Gridiron dinner.

s anyone who reads the news knows, Donald Trump will decide by May 12 whether to “withdraw from” or “pull out of” or “abandon” or “scrap” or “jettison” (the synonyms keep coming) the nuclear deal with Iran. Why May 12? Because last October, Trump declared that Iran isn’t complying with the agreement. Under a law passed by Congress, that “decertification” means Trump can reimpose the sanctions related to Iran’s nuclear activities that were waived as part of the deal. Trump hasn’t reimposed those sanctions yet. But he’s demanded that Iran make vast new concessions. And he’s threatened that if Iran does not do so by May 12, “American nuclear sanctions would automatically resume.”

The Trump administration has likely been violating these clauses. The Washington Post reported that at a NATO summit last May, “Trump tried to persuade European partners to stop making trade and business deals with Iran.” Then, in July, Trump’s director of legislative affairs boasted that at a G20 summit in Germany, Trump had “underscored the need for nations … to stop doing business with nations that sponsor terrorism, especially Iran.” Both of these lobbying efforts appear to violate America’s pledge to “refrain from any policy specifically intended to directly and adversely affect the normalisation of trade and economic relations with Iran.”

The Trump administration still issues licenses for routine personal divestment transactions: for instance, people who want to sell off their property or close their bank accounts in Iran. But as far as Ferrari can tell, the Trump administration has issued few, if any, licenses for commercial transactions. That’s hard to verify: There is no public database of OFAC licenses, and the Treasury Department didn’t respond to my request for comment. But in recent months, two close observers of the Iran deal have echoed Ferrari’s observation. As the pro–nuclear deal National Iranian American Council’s Reza Marashi reported earlier this year, “To hear senior Western diplomats tell it, the Trump administration has not approved a single Iran-related OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) license since taking office.” If true, this too likely violates the Iran deal.

Beset by tough sanctions and worldwide political isolation, a casual observer might be surprised to learn that Russia's economy isn't doing all that badly – even if it still has a litany of problems.

The overall trend is that the old economies of the West (G7) are year by year falling further behind in growth as the more vigorous countries of the emerging world are surging ahead. Since 2000, the Chinese economy has grown more than 5 times (525%), while the U.S. economy could not even double in that time (88%). In 2000, China’s economy ($3.7 trillion) was about equal in size with Japan’s ($3.4 trillion), but in 17 years Japan grew only 0.6 times (60%), being now more than 4 times smaller than China.

“The first months of this crisis suggest that the world order that emerges on the other end is likely to be permanently altered,” wrote Ben Rhodes, a former adviser to President Barack Obama. “America’s response to 9/11 committed the familiar mistake of hastening a superpower’s decline through overreach; the Trump presidency, and our failure to respond effectively to COVID-19, show us the dangers of a world in which America makes no effort at leadership at all.”

The pandemic casts the signature theme of Trump’s foreign policy in shadow. His “maximum pressure” campaigns — the sanctions squeezing the Iranian regime, the efforts to oust Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, the stalled push to compel North Korea to denuclearize, the bullying tactics used in trade spats with Europe, China and other countries — hinged on Trump’s penchant for seemingly tough unilateral action

a global public health crisis is exposing the limits of “America First,” as even the world’s most powerful country has found itself seeking foreign assistance in the battle against the virus.

The latest attempt to punish Syrian regime leaders failed after the two permanent members voted against a resolution to impose sanctions for Damascus' use of chemical weapons, the first vetoes by Russia and China before US Ambassador Nikki Haley.

"Russia and China made an outrageous and indefensible choice today," Haley said, speaking in the Security Council chamber after the vote. "It is a sad day on the Security Council when members start making excuses for other member states killing their own people."

The veto was the seventh time Russia has blocked a Security Council resolution aimed at the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the past five years, protecting its Syrian ally from any diplomatic action

Speaking in South Korea earlier Wednesday, Mr. Trump made an impassioned call for China and other countries to pull together to confront the North, which he described as a sinister regime that starved and terrorized its people — a tragic failed experiment in the “laboratory of history.”

Since Mr. Trump first played host to Mr. Xi at his Florida estate last April, he has said he is counting on Mr. Xi to do the right thing with North Korea, alternately praising and prodding the Chinese leader about enforcing tougher United Nations sanctions.

To his frustration, however, Mr. Xi has stopped short of targeting Mr. Kim with unilateral sanctions that would threaten his regime, send refugees into China and raise the possibility of a Korean Peninsula under control of the South, a close American ally.

The Biden administration moved to reverse an action that had benefited Dan Gertler, who has been accused of corruption over mining deals in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The reversal came after a chorus of complaints from human rights advocates, members of Congress and activists in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the businessman, Dan Gertler, secured access to mining rights for decades through what the Treasury Department during the Trump administration called a series of corrupt deals that had shortchanged Congo of more than $1.3 billion in revenue from the sale of minerals.

The State Department said on Monday that Mr. Gertler had “engaged in extensive public corruption” and that the Treasury Department in consultation with the State Department was reversing its action

When the Biden administration announced a ban on dozens of Saudis from traveling to the US in response to intelligence that the kingdom's powerful crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, had approved the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, it was rolling out a plan that had been spiked by the Trump administration and brought back to life once President Joe Biden took office.

While it's not unusual for an administration, especially early on, to use an idea that had been considered by past White Houses, it is notable that the Biden team would implement a policy that had been discussed at such high levels under Trump

The plan had initially been drafted by the Trump administration, which shelved it over fears of alienating the key Middle Eastern ally.

Earlier this week, Biden administration officials passed around with bemusement some words of praise from an unexpected source: Jared Kushner.

In an opinion essay for The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Kushner, former President Donald J. Trump’s son-in-law and adviser on Middle East issues, said that President Biden “did the right thing” and had “called Iran’s bluff” by refusing to make new concessions to lure Tehran into talks about restoring a nuclear deal abandoned by the Trump administration.

“I would take this in the Biden White House as a giant, blinking red light that maybe what I’m doing is not right because Jared Kushner is finding ways to praise it,” said Benjamin J. Rhodes, a deputy national security adviser under President Barack Obama who worked closely on the 2015 nuclear agreement

President Donald Trump said Wednesday he will lift sanctions on Turkey after the NATO ally agreed to permanently stop fighting Kurdish forces in Syria and he defended his decision to withdraw American troops, saying the U.S. should not be the world’s policeman.

Trump warned that if Turkey does not honor its pledge for a permanent cease-fire, he will not hesitate to reimpose sanctions.

Trump halted negotiations on a $100 billion trade deal with Turkey, raised steel tariffs back up to 50% and imposed sanctions on three senior Turkish officials and Turkey’s defense and energy ministries.

This new decade's consequential first weeks began with the United States openly targeting and killing a foreign military leader for the first time since World War II. They ended with the tragic, unintended cost of conflict -- Iran admitting it mistakenly shot down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing all 176 people on board.

Ukraine is demanding a full investigation and compensation for the victims -- mostly Iranian, Canadian and Ukrainian -- who died when the airliner was shot out of the sky, hours after Iran launched a number of missiles at two bases housing US troops in Iraq.

In the meantime, the latest USA Today poll since these hostilities started, say Americans do not feel safer since Iran's top general was killed.The poll found that 55% of Americans say the killing of Soleimani makes the US less safe, while 57% oppose the threat of US airstrikes on Iran's cultural sites and 53% support Congress limiting Trump's ability to order military strikes. Elsewhere, anti-Americanism has soared around the world since Trump took office, according to new Pew research published Wednesday.