Iran Rejects Talks With Obama, Foreign Policy Sophisticates Confused
Headline: "Facing Obama, Iran Suddenly Hedges on Talks." Yeah. Suddenly. Total bolt out of the blue. Like no one could have predicted that Iran would reject talks after Khamenei set insane preconditions for dialogue and then explicitly stated that he wasn't open to talks under any conditions. Especially now that the European Court is banning one of the last bits of leverage that the West had.
What world do these tools live in? It must be just a blur of glitter and colors where they wander around in a state of perpetual amazement. For fuck's sake:
Since 2006, Iran's leaders have called for direct, unconditional talks with the United States to resolve international concerns over their nuclear program. But as an American administration open to such negotiations prepares to take power, Iran's political and military leaders are sounding suddenly wary of President-elect Barack Obama. "People who put on a mask of friendship, but with the objective of betrayal, and who enter from the angle of negotiations without preconditions, are more dangerous," Hossein Taeb, deputy commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, said Wednesday, according to the semiofficial Mehr News Agency.
It almost seems like they were using the promise of talks to buy time from a credulous international community. Also: to provide thin pretexts so oversophisticated morons in the liberal American foreign policy community could undermine the Bush administration.
The mullahs are also claiming that they've successfully tested solid-fuel rockets capable of hitting Israel. Just in case you were wondering what they intend to do with that nuclear weapons program that American foreign policy experts assured us they didn't have but that they now believe could produce a bomb by 2009:
Anthony H. Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington said in a report this month that Iran now has a technology base to make nuclear weapons, limited only by its current level of uranium enrichment. "The worst case for a nuclear device is 2009, but it could well be 2011-2015 before Iran gets there," Cordesman said in an interview Tuesday. He added: "The critical issue is when Iran could have an effective nuclear-armed missile force. That could easily take two to three years longer." ... In a recent report by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a task force headed by former Sens. Dan Coats, R-Ind., and Charles Robb, D-Va., concluded that once Iran produces 700 kilograms (1,543 pounds) of low-enriched uranium it could be capable of producing 20 kilograms (44 pounds) of highly enriched uranium, the minimum necessary for a nuclear device, in as little as 16 days. International inspectors found an Iranian stockpile of 75 kilograms (165 pounds) at the end of 2007.
One can only imagine what the next excuse not to worry about Iran will be.
References:
* Dennis Ross: "I'm Endorsing Obama Because He'll Make Iran And Iran's Financial Backers Like Us" [MR]
* Iran Has Secret Fuel Reprocessing Program, Missiles That Will Reach Europe (Plus: Khamenei: Of Course We're Not Going To Respond To Diplomacy) [MR]
* New EU Court Rulings Mean That Obama's "Strong Carrots, Strong Sticks" Iran Strategy Now Only Carrots [MR]
* Vast Financial War On Terrorism Going Kind Of OK, Actually [MR]
* Facing Obama, Iran Suddenly Hedges on Talks [WaPo]
* Smug Liberal Sophistication Untroubled By Undeniable Evidence That Hardliners Are Winning In Iran [MR]
* Iran says it test fired new surface-to-surface missile capable of hitting Israel [Ha'aretz]
* Obligatory Post About The NIE Report - Anti-War Partisans Switch From Sophisticatedly Undermining War Effort To Being The Bestest And Most Objective Analysts Ever. Except Not. [MR]
* Analysis: For Obama, what to do about Iran nukes? [WaPo]
Previously:
* Clowish Leading Diplomats Visiting Iran To Discuss Religion, Ignore Genocidal Anti-Semitism
* Speaker Of Iranian Parliament: Of Course We Want Obama To Win
* Arab Foreign Policy Experts: Obama's "Islamic Family Roots" Will Make The Muslim World Like Us (Plus: Obama State Dept Going Pretty Much How You'd Expect)
