Reality Check

The Economist sums up the tasks Obama must now complete so as to fulfill the promise of his Cairo speech:

In a nutshell, and if you leave aside Afghanistan-Pakistan on the region’s
rim, [but how can you leave it aside?] he has four main tasks.
First, he must help persuade Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace in two
states, side by side. Second, he must quit Iraq as he has promised, but leave
behind a reasonably stable and decent regime. Third, he must reach an
accommodation with Iran that acknowledges its place as a regional power while
dissuading it from getting a destabilising nuclear weapon. Fourth, he must tilt
American policy back towards a more realistic balance between naive idealism and
cynical pragmatism, without either alienating autocratic allies such as Egypt
and Saudi Arabia or ditching America’s support for democracy and human
rights.

Quite.