If I were Iran, I’d want a nuclear bomb too. I hope it never gets one because I think moving toward denuking the world – and particularly the Middle East – seems a better avenue to stability than arming it to the teeth, as the U.S. seems intent doing. According to Mark Mazzetti and Helene Cooper in yesterday’s New York Times, American companies, such as Boeing and Lockheed Martin, can’t fill their order lists fast enough for planes, drones and heavy weapons for delivery to almost any Middle Eastern country except Syria and Iran.

We hear a lot about how we shouldn’t trust Iran, which seems a good idea, but is it any wonder that Iran doesn’t trust us? In the world’s most dangerous region, America’s free-enterprise arms dealerships are selling billions of dollars of weapons to the avowed enemies of Iran, which is, let’s not forget, an avowed enemy of ISIS.

The current U.S.-Iranian negotiations present an opportunity to break out of 35 years of mutual mistrust, and I believe Congressional oversight is an important part of the process – as long as it isn’t just one more partisan club with which to bludgeon any initiative suggested by President Obama.

Today is Patriot’s Day in Boston. Security is extremely tight, but the determination of people here to transcend the 2013 Marathon bombing is remarkable. It’s a spirit in which the whole diverse community has come together to affirm its optimism, its resilience and its unity. That was once called the American spirit.