At least now we know what unblinking pretexts Obama's getting from his Iran advisers. They need to explain why all their nuanced Tehranology - which always ends with some new inscrutable justification for pro-Iran gestures - has merely emboldened Khamenei into confidently coming out as a hardline thug. It can't be that liberal foreign policy experts have spent the last few decades disingenuously denying that the Iranian political echelon is controlled by apocalyptic hardliners.

It's not that they produced paper after paper in the 90's predicting - incorrectly - that "moderates" would be electorally empowered if Albright made apologies and Clinton offered back channel concessions. It's not that they spent the Bush years howling - untenably - that offering a Grand Bargain would enable "conservative pragmatists" to "get Khamenei's ear." And it's certainly not that they made up tales - suspiciously - of Iranian wiggle room on nukes while lunatics were being installed as negotiators.

Sure it all looks exactly that way. And sure a genuinely nuanced analysis of Iranian ideology explains why it looks that way, since Khamenei's commitment to pan-Islamism would stymie state-level negotiations even if he wasn't the ultra-hardliner that he is.

But what you don't understand is that there are all these factions. And they're fighting with one another. And - even though it might appear like one side keeps winning, indicating either that there's no internal struggle or that it doesn't matter - you need to ignore that in the same way you ignore decades of failed diplomatic outreach. Just a few more weeks of sophistication and all this carefully calibrated groveling will yield a modus vivendi. You'll see!

U.S. President Barack Obama said on Monday an unsettled political situation in Iran may be complicating efforts to seal a nuclear fuel deal between Tehran and major world powers... "But it is going to take time, and part of the challenge that we face is that neither North Korea nor Iran seem to be settled enough politically to make quick decisions on these issues," he told Reuters in an interview at the White House.

Which is weird, because it certainly looks like the regime came to a quick decision. Here's how the talks have been going post-Qom, pegged either to the dateline or - where the lede was explicit - to when specific statements were made: