Eric Umansky sends up a trial ballon today. Why didn’t we do with Iran in private what we just did in public – quietly tell the mullahs we would negotiate with them directly (and give them lots of goodies) if they would just abandon nuclear enrichment? It’s about “face,” you see – those fragile Persian egos.
Well, maybe it is (and a lot of ther things too). But I would ask Eric a simple question – How the Hell does he know we didn’t already do that a dozen times? Answer (I can give it for him): he doesn’t … and neither do I, although I imagine the Euros were authorized to say many things on our behalf . Obviously much has been going on behind the scenes we don’t know about. We only see the surface and comments like Eric’s are largely irrelevant blather. Call it the Discreet Charm of the Punditocracy, Senor Bunuel… I apologize to Eric for picking on him here. We all need to fill space. [So do you. That's why you're bringing this up.-ed. You're right. And it has the luxury of being brief. I have to get to the office.]
Roger:
Multi-lateral, bi-lateral, bi-multi-two track good cop bad cop, get tough talks, act sweet talks, all of this is pointless. Iran has NO intention of stopping their march to the bomb. All this talk about how we should talk to Iran is pointless. They don’t care how we ask them. The only question is do we stop them or do we let them go ahead. Iran is not giving any real indication that they will stop because they have no intention of stopping. Iran is getting the bomb. Israel can’t do it on their own, we could physically but the rest of the world has told us they will leave us hanging in the wind and won’t support us. So we won’t stop them. The U.N. -E.U. talks are all window dressing to hide the coming lack of action. They will spend a year or two haggling, come up with a sanction package of travel restrictions and feckless finger wagging. Iran will laugh and continue their work. The only question is how soon, not will they or won’t they.