Sparks: Tuesday briefing: What it might take for lasting peace between the US and Iran

Things that are hateful: the formal reception where the negotiator's smile is perfectly shaped but his eyes are already composing the draft of the next accusation.

The self-evident truth, obscured by decades of mutual suspicion, is that no republic founded on commerce can long sustain a permanent state of hostility with another without corrupting its own first principles.

One man in Washington signs a paper about weapons, another in Tehran signs a paper about centrifuges, and between these two signatures march ten thousand ghosts of young men who never knew the papers' names.

The preliminary meeting to establish the agenda for the subcommittee on confidence-building measures has been postponed pending a review of the venue's security protocols by a separate committee.

When the word 'partner' is used for a rival and 'deterrence' for a threat, no treaty can hold, for the foundation of agreement is the rectification of names.

All I know is what I read in the papers, and it appears both sides have agreed to disagree so thoroughly they've scheduled next year's disagreement already.

They speak of peace, but their actions are driven by the same ancient compulsions: fear of the other's growing power, interest in regional dominance, and the honour wounded by the last insult.

Trace the line from the oil price to the parliamentary vote, from the parliamentary vote to the street protest, from the street protest to the hardened position at the table, and you have mapped the true terrain.

Show me the factory worker in Isfahan and the pensioner in Detroit, and I will show you two lives bent under the same unseen weight of sanctions and saber-rattling.

Between the powerful who speak of process and the people who suffer from the delay, there is a gulf filled with the same old argument that justice must wait for a more convenient season.

Before tearing down the fence of mutual suspicion, one must first understand why every generation, seeing its cost, has nevertheless chosen to rebuild it.

A modest proposal: since each nation's security is so perfectly ensured by threatening the other's annihilation, let us formally and permanently embrace this elegant balance and cease the tedious pretense of seeking its end.