Losing an Enemy ─ Obama, Iran, and the Triumph of Diplomacy

This timely book focuses on President Obama's deeply considered strategy toward Iran's nuclear program and reveals how the historic agreement of 2015 broke the persistent stalemate in negotiations that had blocked earlier efforts.

The deal accomplished two major feats in one stroke: it averted the threat of war with Iran and prevented the possibility of an Iranian nuclear bomb. Tria Parsi, a Middle East foreign policy expert who advised the Obama White House throughout the talks and had access to decision-makers and diplomats on the U.S. and Iranian sides alike, examines every facet of a triumph that could become as important and consequential as Nixon's rapprochement with China. Drawing from more than seventy-five in-depth interviews with key decision-makers, including Iran's Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, this is the first authoritative account of President Obama's signature foreign policy achievement.

Trita Parsi is president of the National Iranian American Council. He teaches at Johns Hopkins University and at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is the author of Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States, winner of the 2010 Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order, and A Single Roll of the Dice: Obama’s Diplomacy with Iran, which was named Best Book on the Middle East in 2012 by Foreign Affairs.