The New York Times is reporting that for the first time the United States has agreed to direct talks with Iran about its nuclear program. Obama administration officials speaking off the record confirmed the announcement but at the moment the White House is publicly denying it. The one-on-one negotiations will, the newspaper says, not commence until after the presidential elections. While the Times says the delay is at the request of the Iranians, that time frame also works well for the administration. It allows the president to boast that he is doing everything to try and persuade the Iranians to abandon their ambitions during the election campaign while leaving him room should he be re-elected to exhibit the “flexibility” to strike a compromise with Tehran after November that could leave the Islamist regime’s nuclear capability intact.
While it can be argued that any opportunity to talk sense to the Iranians should be explored, the problem here is twofold. On the one hand, for the past decade the Iranians have shamelessly exploited every Western diplomatic initiative to buy time for their program to get closer to weapons capability. On the other, given the refusal of the Obama administration to contemplate setting down “red lines” that would set clear limits to how close the Iranians could get to a nuke, there is a very real possibility that any deal they strike will allow the ayatollahs to retain their nuclear program. Such a deal would be represented as a victory for diplomacy that would avert the danger of an Iranian weapon. But the odds are it would only serve as an excuse to lessen the pressure on Tehran and allow it to eventually circumvent any agreement in much the same manner the North Koreans made fools of the Clinton and the Bush administrations’ efforts to spike their nuclear program. Assuming that the Iranians even choose to talk or agree to even the most generous deal before inevitably breaking their word, the direct talks set the stage for a second Obama term sellout of Israel.
