Iran for the day

Fareed Zakaria has a Time article about the situation in Iran:

Watching the diplomatic dance between Iran and the US leading up to the unprecedented phone call from President Obama to President Hassan Rouhani, one had to ask: are we seeing a replay of 1972? That was the year when, after decades of estrangement, China and the US began a reconciliation that changed the world. Are Washington and Tehran, locked in their own decades-old state of antagonism, on the verge of a similar change of heart?
In a word, no. The US and China were pushed toward each other by the most powerful force in international relations: a common enemy. By the late 1960s, China had begun to view the Soviet Union as its principal national-security problem, and the US saw an opportunity to make common cause with Beijing. There is no such common enemy driving Washington and Tehran together.
There is, however, one similarity. China in the early 1970s was at its lowest point economically. Iran's economy has been devastated by tough US-backed sanctions, as well as the burden of providing arms and treasure to the unpopular, embattled regime in Syria. In addition, the mullahs in Tehran are aware that the deep discontent that bubbled to the surface in the shape of the pro-reform Green movement only four years ago still lurks within their society.
We now know that the change in US-China relations in 1972 led inexorably to China's becoming the economic power it is today: rich, market-based, and open to the world. But that path was not at all visible forty years ago, least of all to the Chinese. Even after 1972, the regime under Mao Zedong was thoroughly communist and largely hostile to the West. After Mao's death came years of internal struggle and chaos and then, unpredictably, the rise to power of China's real modernizer, Deng Xiaoping, who set his country on its great transformation. To make the parallel, Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatullah Ali Khamenei, is Mao, not Deng. And, whatever Rouhani's views, he cannot change the nature of the regime.
In fact, the better analogy to consider for US-Iran relations is that of another 1972 meeting, between Richard Nixon and Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev in Moscow. It was the first time an American President had paid a state visit to the USSR, and it resulted in the beginning of detente, a series of steps that de-escalated the Cold War and allowed for better contact. For now, that might be the most one can expect for relations between the US and Iran.
And yet detente with Iran is possible, and worth pursuing. Its outlines would look like this: Iran would agree to cap its enrichments of uranium at five percent; at that level, it would be difficult and time-consuming for it to move its nuclear program from a civilian to a military stage. Iran has already enriched some quantities of uranium up to twenty percent, making them easily and quickly convertible into weapons-grade fuel. This stockpile would have to be shipped out of the country. Iran has recently rejected this suggestion, but, in 2010, it accepted a similar deal. It might do so again, if it is allowed to keep the uranium it wants for medical purposes.

Rico says he still needs to get Armageddon written before they work this out...