Let's talk about Iran.

The Iran nuclear deal of 2015 (JCPOA) was arguably Obama's and the West's most important foreign policy achievement. It largely eliminated the possibility of war with Iran over their imagined nuclear program and began détente to reel Iran back into the world community.

Tragically, Trump's worst foreign policy initiative was withdrawing from JCPOA in 2018. It triggered renewed sanctions, assassination of a top Iranian general and 9 others, and nearly set off a large new war in the Middle East.

Iran refused to negotiate a new, tougher treaty at the point of a gun, sending Trump's vaunted negotiating skills to the scrapheap. Iran began enriching uranium to higher levels than allowed under the broken agreement, but far less than required to get anywhere close to bomb level enrichment.

Biden criticized the withdrawal, campaigning to negotiate a return to JCPOA. But so far he has refused to offer one iota of sanctions relief, prompting Iran to refuse to negotiate with the new president. Iran correctly points out U.S. hypocrisy and duplicity. We break a deal, impose crippling sanctions, then demand that Iran come graveling for a return to the agreement unilaterally and senselessly upended by Uncle Sam.

We must hope that Biden and his team are simply posturing and will truly rescind Trump's foolish, sanctions which keep the prospect for all out war simmering. Biden must quickly do this but is confronted from within by hard liners throughout the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and hard liners from without: Saudi Arabia, the Gulf States and Israel. All want the Iranian regime destroyed and Iran neutered as a Middle East hegemon.

That should be their problem, not ours. We must return to a peace saving agreement, the withdrawal of which has recklessly put America on the road to war. We must promote peace instead of war in the Middle East. Hundreds of thousands dead, millions damaged and trillions squandered by America's foolish wars should have taught us a lesson.

So far with Iran...they haven't.