"....Ross was roped into the State Department after Clinton resisted seeing such a powerful figure outside her purview, and then found himself in bureaucratic limbo as responsibility for significant slices of the region were doled out to fellow diplomatic heavyweights ....... believing, as he wrote in The New Republic, that "penalties, more than inducements, are the key to altering the Iranian position.......That's where the Obama administration faces a tough choice. U.S. military officials are wary of pressuring or threatening Iran in ways that might cause problems for U.S. forces trying to stabilize Afghanistan and Iraq.......Ross's desire to pressure Iran could step on diplomatic toes, as well. Holbrooke has said that Iranian cooperation could be critical to stemming the booming opium trade that is a major destabilizing force in Afghanistan, the country Holbrooke has been tasked with fixing....."We've received mixed signals [from Tehran]," says one White House official. Unfortunately, the Iranians may feel the same way."
Michael Crowley in TNR, here
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