Eli Lake, Columnist

Show Iran a Little Disrespect

Its top diplomat has been playing the U.S. long enough. Where are the consequences?

April 26, 2016 at 9:37 PM UTC

Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.

You should've seen it. The fish was this big!
Photographer: Lennart Preiss/Getty Images

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Many Western journalists, diplomats and others seem desperate to believe that Iran's foreign minister, Javad Zarif, is a moderate in a sea of hardliners, a rare Iranian with whom the West can and has done business.

Take Secretary of State John Kerry. It seems that every other day he is in contact with Zarif, implementing the spirit of the nuclear deal the two men have been negotiating since 2013. Zarif himself told the New Yorker in an interview published Monday that they are usually talking at least two to three times a week, sometimes two to three times a day.