JCPA: The George Mitchell Appointment: The Tactics of 'Symmetrical Negotiations' May Not Work in 'Asymmetrical Conflicts' - '...Hamas cannot be compared to the Irish Republican Army (IRA), which wanted to throw the British out of Northern Ireland but had no aspirations to capture London. Moreover, while the IRA had limited international contacts, it was not a part of a European-wide network and was not backed by a petrodollar-rich, oil-producing country like Iran, which was also on the verge of obtaining nuclear weapons, and thereby emboldening its regional surrogates. In short, Mitchell will be conducting diplomacy under completely different strategic circumstances than he did in the 1990s. Indeed, Hamas may prove to be a fatal flaw to Mitchell's axiom that "there is no such thing as a conflict that can't be ended."'