Iran? Is That the One We Invaded?

Forget the nuclear deal. My personal quest was to find a single American who could locate it on a map.

By ADAM WREN, Politico.com
July 16, 2015

“Your nation is grateful,” National Security Advisor Susan Rice tweeted this week as Secretary of State John Kerry and Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz announced the most historic international agreement of the Obama presidency, the Iran nuclear deal.

Huh? Grateful? Us?

On Tuesday night, long after the ink had dried on the 159-page document outlining the pact, it took me three hours and nearly 10 conversations with shoppers, diners, and passersby at a Midwestern megamall, inside a nearby Applebee’s Bar and Grill, and on an Uber ride to find an average, everyday American—the most bandied about voter group so far during the 2016 cycle—who cared, or even knew, about the Iran nuclear deal.

Things are actually far worse than that. As it turns out, 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can’t locate Iran on a map, according to a National Geographic-Roper Public Affairs Geographic Literacy Study in 2006, let alone be grateful for a complicated diplomatic deal crafted half a world away.

(More here.)