The agreement between Iran, Turkey and Brazil for a swap deal on the stockpile of Tehran's nuclear fuel sets the stage for a diplomatic pirouette of high significance for regional security. The paradigm shift affects Indian interests.

When it unveiled an accord among the big powers of the United Nations Security Council for new sanctions on Iran, the US said it was a rebuff of a deal reached this week by Turkey and Brazil for an Iran nuclear fuel swap. But now, the Obama administration says, both sanctions and the fuel swap should be able to proceed: Both address aspects of Iran’s nuclear ambitions, although they take separate paths in doing that.

"Diplomacy emerged victorious," Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva declared on May 17, after his country and Turkey signed its sketchy nuclear deal with Iran. That was something of a reach. But, if not victorious, diplomacy was taking a rare turn on center stage...

The deal, which is similar to one scuttled in October 2009, was in all likelihood designed to forestall a new round of sanctions. In this regard, it doesn't appear to have worked.

The Obama administration announced Tuesday morning that it has struck a deal with other major powers, including Russia and China, to impose new sanctions on Iran, a sharp repudiation of the deal Tehran offered just a day before to ship its nuclear fuel out of the country.

A French court ordered the release on Tuesday of an Iranian who was serving a life sentence for the 1991 murder of Iran's last prime minister under the Shah, the convicted man's lawyer said.

China welcomed a nuclear fuel swap deal Iran announced after talks with Brazil and Turkey and urged negotiations over the dispute, but Western powers rejected the deal as too little to halt momentum for sanctions.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu convened top advisers Tuesday to assess an Iranian nuclear deal with Turkey and Brazil that may stall the new U.N. sanctions Israel seeks against Tehran, officials said. The unscheduled inner cabinet meeting, accompanied by an announcement from Netanyahu's office that ministers were under orders to withhold public comment, reflected Israel's worries about the efficacy of foreign efforts to negotiate with Iran.