Of course:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday the Obama administration remains open to negotiating with Iran over its nuclear program, despite intransigence from Tehran... Clinton said it is clear that administration efforts to engage Iran in talks to restrain its nuclear program in 2009 fell short... Obama had said that if Iran did not respond positively to his overtures by the start of 2010 he would move toward tougher sanctions. Clinton said the administration is consulting with other nations about new sanctions, but she stressed that this does not mean the administration is abandoning its effort to start a dialogue with Iran. There is no hard-and-fast deadline for Iran to respond, she said.

I'm a little sad they're giving up on deadlines. Iranian laughter in the face of Obama's blustering - plus the inevitable US crumbling - made for some easy content. Though the WH probably didn't have a choice now that China, after years of evading existing sanctions, just said no to new UN sanctions. So Obama's oh-so-sophisticated charade - that there were ever any "genuine sticks" behind all of the "genuine carrots" - wasn't going to last much longer.

Of course the Iranians still sneeringly chortled in victory about how they agree with Clinton that sanctions are meaningless. They've been so emboldened by this WH's appeasement that they're now setting their own deadlines on negotiations, a nice little demonstration of just how brazen they've gotten:

Iran's foreign minister warned the West on Saturday that it had one month to accept Iran's counterproposal to a deal brokered by the United Nations aimed at slowing the Iranian nuclear program, or else Iran would begin further enriching its nuclear fuel stockpile on its own. The comments by the foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, were broadcast on state television and presented as an "ultimatum" to the West just two days after Iran missed a deadline set by the United States and its allies to accept a deal that was brokered in October in Geneva.

They're also holding large-scale military exercises next month, right about the time that their "ultimatum" will be expiring. No worries though. This isn't anything that the WH's vaunted "targeted sanctions" - specifically designed to be watered down - can't fix right up. Smart power and all the rest.

References and related after the jump...