The Council on Foreign Relations and the Brookings Institution have issued a report directed at the new president warning of the potential for an Iranian nuclear weapon "in the first year" of his administration: Iran poses the greatest foreign policy challenge to Barack Obama, the President-elect, with Tehran on course to produce a nuclear bomb in the first year of an Obama administration, a coalition of top think-tanks gave warning yesterday. Mr Obama must keep his promises of direct talks with Tehran and engage the Middle East region as a whole if he is to halt a looming crisis that could be revisited on the US, the experts said. “Diplomacy is not guaranteed to work,” Richard Haass, one of the authors said. “But the other options – military action or living with an Iranian weapon are sufficiently unattractive for it to warrant serious commitment.” The warnings came in a report entitled Restoring the Balance. The Middle East strategy...(Read Full Post)