Foreign policy experts have been insisting for 15 years that Iranian moderates will take over and reciprocate US confidence building measures, if only the bumbling Democrats and evil Republicans would reach out to Iran. They said it during the Clinton years so the Clinton administration apologized for past US abuses. That didn’t work. Undaunted, they said it during the Bush years so the Bush administration held 28 rounds of talks and offered a Grand Bargain.
That failed too. Iranian moderates – such as they are – gave way to Iranian hardliners gave way to Iranian millenialists. But instead of considering the possibility that “reaching out to batshit crazy ideologues” is a bad idea, these sophisticates unblinkingly insisted that the US wasn’t reaching out enough (they also blamed Israel, obviously, but that’s not what this post is about).
So Obama did his Al Araybia interview – Al Araybia being, according to our vaunted State Department betters, the “good” jihadist outlet – as one of his many rebuffed offers to meet Iran over nukes. It was, weirdly, rebuffed. Then it was rebuffed again. And again. Now the mullahs are insisting that they won’t meet unless they get assurances that they’ll get to keep their nukes. I haven’t done all the math on that but I suspect it might defeat the purpose.
The neat thing is that now they’ve found a way to rebuff Obama’s outreach in a totally new context. Change!
On a visit to Iraq on Wednesday, Iran’s foreign minister ruled out holding new security talks with the United States and Iraq, saying improved security made them unnecessary. He spoke on a day when a car bomb and a series of smaller explosions killed at least 18 people here in Baghdad and wounded dozens. The foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, arrived in Baghdad a day after Iran’s president raised the possibility of direct talks with the United States. Mr. Mottaki’s remarks, however, suggested that Iran was not yet prepared to cooperate with the Obama administrationon American operations in Iraq, which Iran bitterly opposes.
The last five years have seen quite literally thousands of articles advising Bush to meet with Iran specifically over Iraq. The only thing easier than publishing an anti-Bush diatribe about the “common interests” that the US and Iran shared in Iraq was publishing a condescending anti-Bush diatribe about the “common interests” that the US and Iran shared in Iraq. Here are the top three hits for “common interest iraq stability iran” because this is the blogosphere and I’m supposed to do that.
Not that it matters. It’s not like being spectacularly wrong costs foreign policy professionals anything. They know the name of Iran’s former deputy infrastructure minister and he assures them that moderates are really close to making a comeback. Do you know the name of Iran’s former deputy infrastructure minister? That’s what I thought.
References and previously after the jump…
References:
* Iran wants Obama Apology; Clinton Admin tried that [Rosen / Obama Mideast Monitor]
* McCain to Obama: What is it, precisely, that you want to talk to Iran about? [Hot Air]
* Watchers Council Nominations – Power Grabs Defended By Rank Populism Defended By Incoherent Nonsense [MR]
* Iran: Yes, We’ve Got a Working Nuclear Reactor. No, We Won’t Meet With Obama To Talk About It. [MR]
* Honest Obama and Iran [Jewish World]
* Security Talks About Iraq Not Needed, Iran Signals [NYT]
* Working with Iran to stabilize Iraq [Boston Globe]
* Why are we afraid to talk? [Wilson Center]
* Tehran ignores the bluff and bluster [Asia Times]
Previously:
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Undisturbed By Decades Of Disastrously Wrong Domestic And International Predictions
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran
* Leftist Sophistication Watch: Shiites And Sunnis Do Work Together, Iran Admits Funneling Money To Hamas
