The framework agreement reached last week between the United Nations' "5 plus 1" group and Iran has won general approval internationally, except in Israel and among Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Republican Party claque in Washington, where such was never expected. What this agreement also does is point the way toward an isolated and disempowered United States, depending on the choices it makes.

In my view, the importance of the Iran nuclear issue has always been vastly exaggerated. Even if Tehran possessed nuclear weapons, these would be of no strategic value other than that which Israel — possessor of land, sea and air nuclear deterrence — has attributed to them, in the hope that the U.S. would do to Iran what it did in 2003 to Iraq, invade and destroy it. That would leave Israel the only significant military power in the Middle East.

Washington did not take Israel's bait, even though the Israeli government and its American friends have tried hard enough to convince the U.S. to go to war against Iran. Indeed, the chorus of congressional advocates of bombing other nations into the Stone Age is still singing, with Iraq still in ruins and with more ruins being created by the U.S.-led coalition fighting the Islamic State group.