Yesterday, Jennifer Rubin noted that “The president has rescinded his invitation for hot dogs with Iranian diplomats after days of criticism from the blogosphere, members of Congress, and conservatives. Once again the Left has been marched up the hill to defend the inexcusable (How rude to disinvite someone with whom we may have to “engage”! How petty!) only to abandon the position when commonsense or political necessity intervene.”
I have the feeling it is even worse than that. Consider the following: A few hours before news reports announced the decision to rescind the invitation, it was being reported that State was conceding that no Iranian diplomat had confirmed attendance. As AFP reports, “U.S. State Department spokesman Ian Kelly said Wednesday he does not believe that one single Iranian diplomat has accepted invitations to July 4 events at US embassies worldwide.”
The Reuters alert linked to above refers to this detail as well. It’s a bit like Italian Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, who, rather than uninviting his Iranian counterpart at the G8 summit in L’Aquila, set a deadline for Tuesday and then took note of a lack of reply by the Iranians to conclude they are not coming. Ditto for the U.S. — the invitation was rescinded — but only after the Iranians had said they weren’t coming anyway.
