If your "partner in peace" won't accept your surrender no matter how many concessions you give up, you know what the Capitulator-In-Chief will do: try harder:

The proposal would have depleted Iran’s stockpile of nuclear fuel below the threshold necessary for making a single nuclear bomb, possibly creating diplomatic breathing room for a broader agreement between Tehran and those worried about its atomic research program.

But according to the diplomat, Iran wants to send its uranium abroad in smaller batches over an undetermined stretch of time rather than the lump transfer by year’s end outlined under the proposal offered by International Atomic Energy Agency chief Mohamed ElBaradei.

Such a change would allow Iran to quickly replenish its stock.

Further disappointing the West, Iran did not submit a formal written response as expected, the diplomat said. Instead, Iran’s envoy to the atomic energy agency, Ali Ashgar Soltanieh, described the offer to ElBaradei.

The mullahs actually telegraphed this latest renegal earlier in the week as a kind of perverse hat tip to Barack Obama telegraphing his pre-emptive approval of Tehran's inevitable perfidy.

Meanwhile, continuing a burgeoning pattern of role-reversal within the Western alliance, it fell to the EUnuchs to eschew diplomatic euphemisms and candidly assess what this latest diplomatic fiasco portends:

A senior European official characterized the Iranian response as “basically a refusal.” The Iranians, he said, want to keep all their lightly enriched uranium in the country until the I.A.E.A. provides the fuel assemblies of fuel for the reactor in Tehran, produced and fabricated from foreign uranium.

Only then do the Iranians say that they would be willing to export their own lightly enriched uranium. “So it’s all virtual,” the official said.

“The key issue is that Iran does not agree to export its lightly enriched uranium,” he said. “That’s not a minor detail. That’s the whole point of the deal.”…

American officials are concerned that the Iranians are planning to run out the clock and continue processing uranium so that they can either build a weapon or attain “breakout capacity,” the ability to build one within a few months. Some diplomats involved in the negotiations are also concerned that Iran may have more nuclear fuel in its stockpile than it has acknowledged, and may indeed already possess breakout capacity.

Meaning, as Eeyore muses, that even if the Iranians had agreed to ElBaradei's deal, it wouldn't have made one jot or tittle of strategic difference.  Indeed, it may have bought them even more time than this in-our-face refusal did.

Not that they need any more time, apart from the question of how many nuclear warheads they want to amass before they dispense with this diplohumiliation and get the nuclear blackmail party started.  If Bush were still president, they probably would have agreed to the deal and then simply ignored it, but having taken the measure of The One already, the mullahs do not believe even that little subterfuge is necessary.

So what will Red Barry do now?  Is Robert Kagan right that "the 'plan' is, in fact, eternal negotiation while they perfect their bombmaking technique"?

Well, duh:

Frustrated by Iran’s continued defiance of demands to come clean on its nuclear program, the Obama administration is leaning toward imposing new sanctions, even if it must act alone.

Administration officials acknowledged growing concern that there may not be international consensus to expand the existing U.N. sanctions, despite Tehran’s apparent rejection of a confidence-building measure proposed by the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog in hopes of making progress on the nuclear issue.

To that end, the administration is quietly supporting legislation in Congress that would give President Barack Obama a broad new array of authority to target Iran’s energy sector by penalizing foreign firms that sell and ship refined petroleum products to Iran. The regime is heavily dependent on gasoline, kerosene and propane imports.

IOW, just like his non-handling of Afghanistan: kick the can down the road as far as possible by outsourcing this timebomb to his Donk myrmidons on the Hill, where it will be buried to subterranean levels on the priority list beneath his domestic communization agenda.  Ensures he doesn't have to make any [GASP] Bush-like decisions and that he has somebody else to point the finger at when things go to hell.  And, in the mean time, he'll have plenty of time to put together a brand new package of concessions to gift to Brother Adolph, in the hopes of getting "the peace process" back on track.

And in the end, he will, you know.  Just not quite the same kind of peace that he intended....

I fear that may be the far more pertinent question in a few years as opposed to who lost France.  You can't blame Nicholas Sarkozy for making alternative arrangements to the close alliance he once enjoyed with President Bush.  With Barack Obama chasing after Vladimir Putin and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while pissing in the faces of Britain, France, Poland, the Czech Republic, et al, I don't think anybody could have imagined back in 2002 and 2003 that in just a few years it'd be Obamerika that was the cheese(burger)-eating surrender monkeys and the Fighting French rattling sabres in the face of the Iranian nuclear nightmare.  It's not like Sarkozy has much of a choice.

Dore Gold isn't French, but the ex-Israeli UN ambassador offers another aspect of the conflagration we have allowed to descend upon us (via Newsmax Insider):

Former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold warns that a nuclear-armed Iran would shift "the entire balance in the war on terror" by providing terrorists with a nuclear umbrella.

Speaking at a briefing at the British House of Commons on October 12, Dore — also a former adviser to Israeli prime ministers — said Iran's nuclear program endangers "the security not just of Israel but of the entire Middle East, and I would say the world."

Gold said that as of this past August, Iran had enough nuclear fuel to produce two atomic bombs, and a missile with the capability of striking Israel and Saudi Arabia.

"So if you take the fact that Iran is one of the largest supporters of international terrorism today, and you team that up with the nuclear capabilities that I’ve been describing, you have a security situation which the West has not yet seen," Gold said.

"The whole point of George W. Bush’s decision to remove the Taliban after 9/11 was to send a very clear message: 'You attack the American homeland and we will take down your regime.'

"But fast forward to 2012. Iran has operational nuclear weapons that can strike deep into Europe, and eventually towards the eastern seaboard of the U.S. Will the U.S., U.K., and NATO as a whole have the same freedom of maneuver to say to states that support terrorism, 'We will take you down if you attack us?'

"Will the U.S. Congress authorize sending forces abroad against a state armed with nuclear weapons? In other words, the entire balance in the war on terror shifts, because the state that is the largest global sponsor of terrorism today now has nuclear capabilities . . .

"This nuclear umbrella of Iran will unfurl and will be able to provide protection, not just to Shiite Hezbollah, but to Sunni organizations such as al-Qaida and Hamas."

Picture a series of suicide bombings across the country.  Or another 9/11-style mass casualty attack against multiple targets.  al Qaeda immediately claims credit for the attacks.  But...Iran has nuclear weapons.  Even if the mullahgarchy doesn't utter a peep about bin Laden's actions, do we go back into Afghanistan and turn it into a parking lot this time?  Could Pakistan be bullied into doing so the way Pervez Musharraf was last time with Tehran wielding nukes and already undermining them?

Or turn it around and ask this question: Wouldn't an Iranian nuclear umbrella enable the Taliban/al Qaeda axis to systematically take over Pakistan and ITS atomic arsenal with impunity?  Red Barry is retreating into lunatic fantasizing about "good" Taliban and "bad" Taliban and conceding vast stretches of the country to the enemy because he can't stomach sending forty thousand extra troops to Afghanistan to fuel another victory-clinching "Surge" counter-insurgency offensive.  Does anybody believe he'd risk a regional (at least) nuclear war with Islamist Armageddonists for ANY reason?

And once the two back-to-back radical Islamic nuclear powers are in place, irremovable, triumphant, with the Russians and ChiComms behind them, and holding all the cards against the self-neutered, moribund U.S. and its betrayed, abandoned allies, would we then not be looking at checkmate?

That's the context for the scenario depicted by Doug Ross, and depicted all too awfully by the History Channel's Day After Disaster:

This is precisely the scenario that made a pre-emptive, regime-changing invasion of Iran an absolute necessity before they could develop nuclear weapons of their own.  Take out the regime that would set off a Hiroshima-magnitude atomic device in Washington, D.C. and....guess what?  They'll never get the chance to do so.  Leave that regime in place, pursue endless, futile, suicidal "diplomacy" instead and that regime gains the time it needs to get nuclear weapons, distribute them to their terror networks (yes, including al Qaeda), smuggle them into our country, and, well, you can see the result above.

With Ambassador Gold confirming (if still a bit underestimated) what I projected two years ago, this die is cast.  Iran has joined the "nuclear club".  Except that unlike ourselves, Britain, Israel, and France, who would never use nuclear weapons under any circumstances (certainly not under current "management"), and unlike Russia and Red China, who are sufficiently rationalist that they can be deterred, there is no way to deter an apocalyptical theocratic regime that welcomes a nuclear holocaust believing that that will bring back their "Twelfth Imam" messiah.

And if the mullahs are less eager to collect their seventy-two virgins than their Geico Cavemanesque frontman advertises, well, they don't have to shoot ICBMs at us.  Just send in their teams to assemble the bomb materials, load them in a van, and park it in front of the Capitol, or mid-town Manhatten, or the port of Los Angeles, and pull the trigger.  If they are shrewd and clam up, maybe we can figure out who did it, maybe we can't.  Maybe it takes a while, with every passing day turning the shock and initial anger into burgeoning mass fear, helplessness, and national impotence.

If they are even shrewder, perhaps they send Ahmadinejad - maybe jointly with bin Laden and Mullah Omar - before the cameras to "take credit" for the "glorious, holy instrument of Allah's judgment against the Great Satan and its infidel hordes" etc., and deliver an ultimatum: "There are an undisclosed number of additional nuclear devices deployed in several other major American cities.  You must immediately force Israel's unconditional surrender, withdraw all American military forces from around the world back within the national borders of the United States, and institute sharia law over your country, or we will kill millions more of your people."

A bluff?  Maybe.  But would it be inconceivable for an administration as softheaded and roaringly incompetent as this one to let one or more additional atomic suicide teams slip through the HLS counter-terror dragnet?  More to the point, does anybody seriously believe that Barack Obama would have the courage to call such a bluff even if they hadn't?  Let alone retaliate by dusting Tehran?

I wish to God these were still hypothetical questions.  All we can do now is pray to God that they don't become a hideous reality, because we have forfeited our window of opportunity to prevent them ourselves.

The established Obama-Iranian mullagharchy dynamic: Barry begs for direct talks with Ahmadinejad without conditions and accepting any and all conditions demanded by Tehran, including excluding their nuclear weapons program and human rights atrocities from the agenda; the mullahs show just enough leg to keep The One panting after them, eventually granting us an audience - or not - at their general whim and specific time needs of the moment.

That makes this development more than a little gulp-inducing:

A suicide bomber killed thirty-one people today, including five or six senior members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard. Among the remaining dead were other Guard members, or local tribal leaders, and several dozen others were wounded. The story can be found here and here.

Even though a local Sunni group called Jundollah (God’s soldiers), claimed responsibility, the Islamic regime wasted no time in exploiting a potentially golden opportunity:

“We consider the recent terrorist attack to be the result of US action. This is the sign of America’s animosity against our country,” [Parliamentary speaker Ali] Larijani said.

“Mr. Obama has said he will extend his hand towards Iran, but with this terrorist action he has burned his hand,” he said referring to US President Barack Obama’s repeated diplomatic overtures to Tehran.

The Guards said foreign powers were behind the attack.

“The world arrogance, by provoking its lackeys and mercenaries in the region, carried out a terrorist attack on a popular meeting between the Guards and tribesmen,” the Guards said in a statement carried by local media.

Iranian officials and several government bodies term Western powers, including the United States, as “world arrogance.”

Serendipitously, guess what was scheduled to kick off in Geneva today?  Direct U.S.-Iranian talks.  Now guess what may happen to those talks:

The threats, broadcast on Iranian television and in statements from the country’s atomic energy organization, may have simply been negotiating tactics ahead of negotiations that started in Vienna, the city that saw so many Cold War nuclear talks between the United States and the Soviet Union…

“By the end of these next two days,” one senior administration official in Washington said, “we’ll know if the Iranians are serious and whether we have time” to pursue further diplomacy with Iran without fearing that it could race ahead to produce a weapon.

Or....they may just walk out.  They're already reneging on letting the Russians enrich their uranium stockpile, which would be largely irrelevant anyway since all outsourcing it will accomplish is to save the mullahs the time, trouble, and cost of doing it themselves.  That, in turn, is a companion to Moscow's own backstabbing on allowing tougher U.N. sanctions, which themselves are also irrelevant and pointless.  All of this mind-numbingly futile diplodiddling while the doomsday clock tick-tick-ticked toward midnight has been for the purpose, from Tehran's point of view, of gaining the time they needed to build their nuclear arsenal.

Well, what if this incendiary accusation over the Jundollah attack - whether they were responsible or the mullahs engaged in a bit of their own version of the Gleiwitz incident (and please, spare me the foolish speculation about "Could the mullahs be right?") - isn't about pre-negotiation maneuvering?  Suppose that the Iranian regime has completed its nuclear production line already, built and deployed several warheads via its overseas terror networks, and decided to "not let a crisis go to waste"?  That would certainly be escalating their thirty-year war against "the Great Satan" on their terms and timetable.  And the unprecedented surrender of the Obama administration of any negotiating advantage and deterrent has given the mullahs every reason in the world to believe they can attack and cripple us with impunity and free of the remotest fear of reprisal.

For five years we had to listen to the Left's shrill faux moral dudgeon about Bush "overestimating" Saddam Hussein's WMD threat.  In reality, of course, the six months Dubya wasted going back for one more Security Council resolution provided Saddam all the time he needed to stash his chemical weapons stockpile in Syria.  But even if he hadn't had any WMDs, it was still better to have erred on the side of caution than to have gambled that he was farther away from gaining them than he really was.  Here and now the American Left is making that diametically opposite, and immensely more dangerous, mistake.

Sooner or later, we're going to pay for it - dearly.  Is that piper coming to collect even sooner than we think?

There is, of course, nothing new about the Iranian mullahgarchy feeding military aid to al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan.  It's been going on for years.  What IS new is how Barack Obama is providing communications cover for his new (in his mind) allies in Tehran:

Let's repeat that one line again:

More worrying still: U.S. intelligence believes Iran is supplying surface to air missiles to the Taliban - the very same weapon the U.S. supplied to the Afghan resistance to bring down the Russians.

And the purported reason why Red Barry wants to keep this information quiet?  He wants to "keep enough political support in the US for direct talks with the mullahs."  Except for that inconvenient little detail about the American people believing that preventing the mullahs from going nuclear is more important than avoiding war with Iran by a thirty-seven point margin.

Does Lucifer even HAVE political support for sucking off Ahmadinejad as he has so moistly dreamed?  And here comes the sixty-four dollar question yet again: Whose side is he on?

The Iran Human Rights Watch Documentation Center keeps records of the actions of the Iranian government, which in the past four months include blatantly rigging a presidential "election" and brutally suppressing widespread protests and demonstrations against the ruling mullahgarchy.

Barack Obama has evidently "reasoned" that if the tree of Iranian tyranny falls in the forest, and the IHRWDC isn't around to hear it, it will make no sound, and be ever so much easier to totalitarianly pretend never existed:

“If there is one time that I expected to get funding, this was it,’’ said Rene Redman, the group’s executive director, who had asked for $2.7 million in funding for the next two years. “I was sur prised, because the world was watching human rights violations right there on television.’’

Many see the sudden, unexplained cutoff of funding as a shift by the Obama administration away from high-profile democracy promotion in Iran, which had become a signature issue for President Bush. But the timing has alarmed some on Capitol Hill.

“The Iran Human Rights Documentation Center is at the forefront of pioneering and vitally important work,’’ said Senator Joe Lieberman, a Connecticut independent, in a statement yesterday. “It is disturbing that the State Department would cut off funding at precisely the moment when these brave investigations are needed most.’’

Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington-based think tank, said, “It is a shock that they did not get funding.’’ A reason, he asserted, may be that “the Obama administration is so focused on engaging Iran that they don’t want this information to get in the way.’’

That pop you just heard was Michael Ledeen blowing his stack in frustration.

Once again, you have to ask yourself WHY Red Barry is so obsessed with "engaging" Iran.

As a practical matter of stopping or even slowing down the mullahs' nuclear weapons program, diplomacy was proven a miserable failure years ago.  It doesn't matter which Western nation, or combination of Western nations, lead the way in pumping the air full of useless words.  It doesn't matter what carrots are offered (which just get pocketed with nothing offered in return), or what sticks are wielded (which are never serious, and are never used anyway, as Tehran knows will forever be the case).  The Iranian reaction is always the same: bluster, contempt, and defiance.  Which always brings the West back to the table for more "talks".

Most obvious of all is that it doesn't matter who occupies the office of POTUS.  Bush pushed multilateral diplomacy with the Brits, French, and Germans, to no avail.  Obama is personally and unilaterally deep-thoating Ahmadinejad, with the same result.  Maybe, after several more years of this nonsense, even his patience (or capacity to endure public vilification) would be exhausted and he'd trundle out the sanctions fan dance again.  But he'd just run into the same Sino-Russian Security Council roadblocks the Bush repeatedly did.

So, once again, why is Red Barry so obsessed with "engaging" Iran?

To me, pulling the plug on the IHRWDC is completely apart from the effort to "persuade" the mullahs to give up their nukes.  As it was this summer, The One ignored the mass public uprisings against the Islamic regime for over a week before the White House's silence became so deafening that he was compelled to go before the mics and mouth so human rights-esque cliches that he clearly didn't mean.  That post-"election" chaos didn't come from the IHRWDC's work; it was on live television all over the news.  And don't forget that the Hussein administration essentially endorsed the June 12th "election"'s outcome and recognized its legitimacy.

All of which is to say that "see no evil, hear no evil" has joined "speak no evil" in the service, not just of appeasing the mullagharcy, but of actively seeking its alliance and friendship.  America is, in short, switching sides in the Middle East.  Perhaps secondarily in the belief that this treachery will minimize the chances of Iranian nukes being used against U.S. interests, assets, and territory, but primarily because Barack Obama, as an orthodox Marxist, sees radical Islam as a natural ally, and "zionism" as the focus of evil in the modern world.

I wonder if all those American Jews who hung the chad for this Islamist sympathizer (NOT Muslim...) last November had any inkling that that was the "change" they were voting for.  Well, they could have.  Now all that's left is to await the "change" they DON'T believe in.

I think they'll have a lot of company.

The public approves of direct negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, although most Americans are not hopeful the talks will succeed. And a strong majority – 61% – says that it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons, even if it means taking military action. Far fewer (24%) say it is more important to avoid a military conflict with Iran, if it means that the country may develop nuclear weapons.

There is broad willingness across the political spectrum to use military force to prevent Iran from going nuclear. Seven-in-ten Republicans (71%) and two-thirds of independents (66%) say it is more important to prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons even if it means taking military action. Fewer Democrats (51%) express this view; still, only about three-in-ten Democrats (31%) say it is more important to avoid a military conflict with Iran, if it means Tehran may develop nuclear weapons.

Ironically, this is the one issue to which Godbama's belligerent domestic boilerplate actually applies: the time for "talk" is, indeed, over.  It has been for years.  Doubly ironic, but not the least bit surprising, is that the years and years of worthless diplomacy have reduced our options down to where the only viable course of action left to us if we truly want to avert millenial fanatics who think that a nuclear Armageddon will bring about a worldwide messianic Caliphate armed with nuclear weapons is to invade Iran and destroy the Islamic regime once and for all.

Yes, it will be costly.  Yes, it will be messy.  Yes, it will have unforeseen consequences.  But as John McCain repeatedly argued during last year's campaign, the only thing worse than military action against Iran is allowing the mullahs to get their hands on nukes.  That has consequences that are eminently foreseeable.

But here, in Barack Obama's world, the time for "talk" is infinite.  And his maxim is, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em."

Until they kill us all.

What?  You mean the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate was horsecrap all along???

Two years ago, American intelligence agencies published a detailed report [i.e. the 2007 NIE] concluding that Tehran halted its efforts to design a nuclear weapon in 2003. But in recent months, Britain has joined France, Germany and Israel in disputing that conclusion, saying the work has been resumed.

A senior American official said last week that the United States was now re-evaluating its 2007 conclusions.

The atomic agency’s report also presents evidence that beyond improving upon bomb-making information gathered from rogue nuclear experts around the world, Iran has done extensive research and testing on how to fashion the components of a weapon. It does not say how far that work has progressed…

American officials say that in the direct negotiations with Iran that began last week, it will be vital to get the country to open all of its suspected sites to international inspectors. That is a long list, topped by the underground nuclear enrichment center under construction near Qum that was revealed ten days ago…

Most dramatically, the report says the agency “assesses that Iran has sufficient information to be able to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device” based on highly enriched uranium.

Actually, it makes perfect sense.  Dems don't want to deal with the Iranian nuclear threat, so when Bush was president their intel friends simply made up this nonsense about Tehran swearing off nukes four years earlier so that Dubya wouldn't have any grounds upon which to make a case for taking "concrete steps" to "disarm" the mullahgarchy.  But now that Iranian nuclear intentions and development is about as clandestine as Paris Hilton's tan lines, AND there is an opportunity to make Barack Obama look like the stallion mule of diplomacy by "talking" the mullahs into giving up their Qom nuclear fuel plant and calling it their whole nuke program (pardon me for jumping ahead a few weeks or so), they abruptly "rethink their 2007 conclusions."  Awfully convenient, that.

But then, as AP wearily asks, "[W]ho cares? This fiasco has reached a point of such absurdity that while Obama’s busy lobbying Medvedev to support sanctions against Iran, Netanyahu’s meeting secretly with Putin to kindly request that Russian scientists stop helping Iran to build their bomb."

There won't be anything absurd about where this clusterbleep is ultimately headed, though.

~  ~  ~

More good news: Adolph The Younger has even more in common with Adolph The Elder than we thought he did just a couple of days ago.

Perhaps that'll be a situation comedy once we're under the Global Caliphate.  Either that or an Islamicized Justice League, although with Jews and Christians completely exterminated they might have a difficult time coming up with fresh villains.

Remember the grievous mistake that George W. Bush made in going back to the UN for an eighteenth anti-Saddam Hussein Security Council resolution and yet another round of Hans Blix l'il white golf-carted weapons inspections around Iraq to every place in the country that DIDN'T have WMD stockpiles?  And remember how Blix and the boys didn't find any because Saddam had used the six months before the ultimate U.S.-led invastion to ship all his chemical weapons and nuclear program materials to Syria?

You can see what's coming, cantcha?:

Allowing access within two weeks of the announcement would in effect give Tehran almost a month after its September 21st acknowledgment of the plant’s existence to obscure evidence, they said.

David Albright, a former international weapons inspector and president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security, said it would probably take Iran some time to conceal activities. But, “if you have a month, you have the time,” he said.

A European official who declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue said the six world powers “did well” to win Iran’s agreement to permit access. But the official acknowledged that swifter access would have been better…

But Albright said faster is better. “It’s not good that the inspection has taken so long,” he said.

“There is no reason it could not have happened yesterday,” he said. “It should have.”

If the Iranians had found out earlier that we knew about the Qom plant, they probably would have because it would already have been cleaned out.  But what difference does it make when the Obamunists will never hold them to any "deadline" because that would run the risk of not being "nice" and having to get "confrontational" and Ahmadinejad breaking his and Barry's eventual Tehran summit date for the grand surrender signing ceremony where we'll let the Revolutionary Guard pound our spears into pruning hooks while B.O. bows down on his own brand new prayer rug (a gift from the Geico Caveman) at Ali Khamanei's feet?

Trust me, folks, there will be no "containing" a nuclear mullahgarchy for the self-same reasons why the West allowed Iran to go nuclear in the first place: it will not have the will, especially while Obama is still POTUS, and the fact that containment only works when all the players are rational.  A gang of mystical theocratic lunatics religiously committed to provoking nuclear Armageddon as the means of bringing back the Shiite Muslim messiah does not fit that definition.

~  ~  ~

But on the bright side, ol' Adolph may have one more thing in common with his hero and namesake:

A photograph of the Iranian president holding up his identity card during elections in March 2008 clearly shows his family has Jewish roots.

A close-up of the document reveals he was previously known as Sabourjian – a Jewish name meaning cloth weaver.

The short note scrawled on the card suggests his family changed its name to Ahmadinejad when they converted to embrace Islam after his birth.

The Sabourjians traditionally hail from Aradan, Mr. Ahmadinejad’s birthplace, and the name derives from “weaver of the Sabour”, the name for the Jewish Tallit shawl in Persia. The name is even on the list of reserved names for Iranian Jews compiled by Iran’s Ministry of the Interior…

Experts last night suggested Mr. Ahmadinejad’s track record for hate-filled attacks on Jews could be an overcompensation to hide his past…

The Iranian leader has not denied his name was changed when his family moved to Tehran in the 1950s. But he has never revealed what it was change from or directly addressed the reason for the switch.

In short, a possibly Jewish background kept murky for probably that reason, though not as murky as the secrets of Hitler's family lineage, which may have been anything from a Jewish ancestor to a family history of mental illness, or both, or something else entirely.

How is this good news?  It isn't, really.  Not even meritorious of more than a chuckle or two.  But as bad as this threat has gotten, and as worse as it's going to get (AP's punchline: "The reckoning will come next year."), we've got to forage for scraps of sunlight, however dimmed, wherever we can scrounge them.

Funny how on domestic policy, where Barack Obama can cancerously expand his own personal political power, the time for talk is always "over," but when it comes to foreign policy, where he is determined to shed American power, his capacity for pumping the air full of useless words is limitless:

President Obama appeared in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House Thursday afternoon to demand that leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran take concrete actions to defuse international tensions regarding its nuclear program, beginning with allowing the International Atomic Energy Agency “full access” to Iran’s nuclear facility at Qom within the next two weeks.

IAEA Director General Mohamed ElBaradei, with whom the president has been in close contact, will be arriving in Tehran in the next few days, the president said.

“Our patience is not unlimited,” the president said, alluding to tougher economic sanctions if Iran does not take the necessary steps. “The United States will not continue to negotiate indefinitely, and we are prepared to move towards increased pressure.”

Fascinating; that's not what "senior administration officials" said yesterday.  Nor was it what they said today:

A State Department spokesperson on Friday signaled the president’s mandate that Iran has two weeks to permit inspections of its recently unveiled uranium refinement plant was not “written in stone.”

“I don’t think that there’s a hard-and-fast deadline,” State Department Spokesperson Ian C. Kelley said during Friday’s press briefing, after a reporter asked what the consequences of Iran’s inaction might be.

“I think that we’ve made it quite clear this was a matter of some urgency; that we expected [Iran] to take urgent and concrete steps to open up this facility, and not only just open it up but also make sure that we were able to — or that the IAEA would be able to — talk to some of the engineers there and see documents and plans,” Kelly added.

Are the Obamunists "getting hustled" by the mullahgarchy and its Russian sponsors?  I don't think I'd put it that way because in order to get hustled, you have to merely be well-intentioned but dumber than a box of hair.  I think The One is actively committed to becoming covert partners with Czar Putin in aiding the Iranian nuclear weapons program, but the need to keep it secret for domestic PR reasons, plus Barry's seemingly insatiable bumbling, is serving to drag out the process to the point where no foreign head of state, government official, mid-level diplomat, low-level staffer, or jeghpu'wI' will be able to even lay eyes on him without bursting out laughing at the "Hero of Copenhagen."

If the Li'l President wants to actually accomplish his true goal in these farcical negotiations and try to rehabilitate his image from its present subterranean level of bigger boob than the Parton genome could generate, he should call a presser and publicly announce that he has "persuaded" the mullahs into giving up their nuclear weapons program by gifting to the Islamic Republic of Iran half the remaining American nuclear arsenal, and invite the Russians to do the same.  Make permanent friends of the mullahs with this gesture of respect and friendship, knock off the next START treaty, and relieve his administration of the cost of having to dispose of all those warheads and missiles all in one, efficient, fell swoop.

And then he can wave the piece of paper in the air and announce that he, Barack Hussein Obama, has finally brought "peace in our time."

Oh, sure, within a year nukes would begin raining down on Israeli and European cities and blowing up in American cities, but if it enabled the Dems to hold Congress in the 2010 mid-terms, he could worry about the, um, fallout later.

You think I'm kidding, don't you?

Funny how Barack Obama is willing to completely forego any preconditions for any and all "talks" with the Iranian mullahgarchy, but is perfectly happy to capitulate to all of theirs.  We already know that the mullahs will not discuss their nuclear weapons program with us.  Now they refuse to "talk" about even the possibility or mention of sanctions as well:

The United States will not push for sanctions against Iran in Thursday’s multilateral talks on its nuclear program in Geneva and is prepared to talk one-on-one with Iranian negotiators if such engagement appears “useful,” senior administration officials said Wednesday.

The officials also said that while gaining access to inspect Iran’s uranium enrichment facility near Qom is “critically important,” the U.S. won’t walk away from negotiations if Iran refuses.

Um....if they won't discuss their nuclear weapons program OR sanctions with us, what, exactly, is there left to talk about?  Our mutual taste in prayer rugs?  Anti-Semitic jokes?  Mutual George W. Bush assassination fantasies?  How Ahmadinejad can save Red Barry a bundle on his auto insurance by switching to Geico?

~  ~  ~

Continuing an emerging theme, the (almost) complete role-reversal of the former "warmongering cowboys" versus the "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" continues apace:

Under President Nicolas Sarkozy, France has adopted an increasingly hard-edged approach to Iran, often out ahead of the Obama administration with uncompromising language criticizing Iranian leaders and warning that their nuclear program threatens world peace.

The French attitude reflects Sarkozy’s assessment that acquiescing to unsupervised nuclear development by Tehran would be perilous, risking an Israeli attack on Iranian installations and increasing instability in the Middle East. In addition, French analysts said, Sarkozy feels that Europe got nowhere with Iran in several years of what was called “constructive dialogue” and that it is time to move on to stronger measures in tandem with Washington.

As a result, French diplomats at a crucial meeting Thursday in Geneva are likely to push for swift, punitive sanctions unless Iran pledges unequivocally to open its entire nuclear program to international inspection to ensure Tehran is not developing atomic weapons. Jean-Pierre Maulny, a specialist in European defense at the Paris-based Institute for International and Strategic Relations, said Germany and Britain are likely to agree because they also feel the constructive dialogue bore no fruit and, to some extent, have been aligned with Paris.

The tough new French approach marks a clear change from the days of Presidents Jacques Chirac and George W. Bush, when France was often a reluctant U.S. ally compared with Britain and Germany. In contrast, Sarkozy in recent weeks has used a sharper tone than have British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and German Chancellor Angela Merkel — and President Obama — in denouncing Iran’s nuclear program and advocating sanctions to force Tehran to allow inspectors in. …

Sarkozy’s fundamental position — seek dialogue but impose stronger sanctions unless Iran opens its nuclear program to international inspection — dovetails neatly with the stances of Obama and other major U.S. allies, Heisbourg and French officials said. But his recent public comments have suggested impatience with Obama’s extended-hand policy and a conviction that the time has come to deal firmly with Tehran’s nuclear program.

Actually, Sarkozy's fundamental position is essentially indistinguishable from that of President Bush - a breathtaking and bitter irony given that Bush's Marxist successor has practically switched sides:

A senior U.S. diplomat and Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator met one on one Thursday in Geneva in what appeared to be the highest-level official contact between the countries since Iran’s 1979 Islamic revolution.

The meeting between Undersecretary of State William Burns and the Iranian, Saeed Jalili , took place during a break in negotiations at a villa outside Geneva among the United States , Iran and five other nations.

It was announced by State Department spokesman Robert Wood , who offered no other details.

And that's not the worst of it:

This follows the decision by the Obama administration to allow the Iranian foreign minister, Manoucher Mottaki, to visit Washington DC.  Even when traveling on UN business, the US has blocked Iranian diplomats from access to the capital for the past 30 years.  The unclenched fist has yet to meet with an outstretched hand from the Iranians, but Tehran is getting plenty of mileage from it nonetheless.

If Sarkozy has gotten impatient with the US and the West on Iran, these developments will increase his frustration.  It gives the mullahcracy more legitimacy and another opportunity to play Western allies against each other, which is one reason why George Bush stuck with France and the UK in earlier diplomatic efforts rather than open a direct dialogue.  It undermines Sarkozy’s efforts to get tougher on sanctions, at least in the short term, and allows Iran to continue its defiance on IAEA inspections and full transparency.  After all, they’re getting more and more access without having to offer any concessions — so why should they consider any?

I wasn't joshing up above, gentles.  If Barack Obama will talk with Ahmadinejad unconditionally, and will agree to exclude Iran's nukes and economic sanctions against Tehran from the agenda, what is there left to talk about?  And if B.O. is actively undermining our European allies on the mullahs' behalf, isn't the answer to that question some sort of U.S.-Iranian alliance against them and Israel?  What else could one call it - trying to elbow the Russians out of the way for a share of the Iranian nuclear weapons market?

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Is this a "breakthrough" or helping the mullahgarchy fool the rest of the West?:

President Obama’s statement about a confidence-building measure from Iran this afternoon left out the key detail: In a breakthrough agreement at talks in Geneva, Iran has agreed to send 1,200 kilograms of enriched uranium to Russia for further processing, two diplomats told the Daily Beast, noting this would mean Iran no longer has enough uranium to make a nuclear weapon…

Under the deal reached today, the two diplomats told the Daily Beast, Iran has now however agreed to send this uranium, which is enriched up to 3.5%, to be refined in Russia up to 19.75% enrichment and then returned to Iran. That enrichment level would enable it to be used at a research reactor in Tehran which could then burn the fuel to make medical isotopes. But it is not high enough for nuclear weapons.

The diplomats said this deal effectively amounts to a freeze of Iran’s nuclear work, and meets the condition for a second phase of talks at which nuclear issues will be discussed, as well as other proposals put forth by both sides.

AP supplies the day-glo glaring caveat:

If you believe that Iran only has 1,500 kg or so of low-enriched uranium on hand and if you believe there are no other secret Iranian enrichment/weaponization sites, then this is important. Remember, uranium isn’t bomb-capable unless it’s highly enriched, i.e. up to a 90% level; if Iran’s serious about wanting nuclear power but not a nuclear weapon, then its uranium only has to be enriched to a low level to be converted into fuel. Having Russia or some other third party take over enrichment duties is a way to make sure that the uranium is only processed to that lower threshold, not the higher one (unless, of course, you think Vladimir Putin would lie). If you don’t believe either of those things, though, then this logic goes out the window: Iran could simply feed Russia some low enriched uranium in order to soothe western fears about its nuke program while continuing to weaponize uranium in its secret facilities.

What better cover could Barack Obama provide Tehran for this operation than to push his "outstretched hand" "engagement" fantasy to the hilt and beyond?  Make it look like a "new era" of "peace" and "friendship" between Iran and Obamerika.  It'd be the ultimate quid pro quo: Obama's rancid Ameriphobic pacifism gets lionized as "diplomatic genius" while his "Iranian friends" get to build their nuclear arsenal without limit and even the risible "pressure" that the last six years of Western diplodiddling "imposed."  And when the mushroom clouds rise over Tel Aviv and Haifa and the Negev, well, I'm sure the White House would "send its condolances" and "express its regrets" for having had to pre-emptively wipe out the Israeli Air Force - in the interests of "peace," of course.

"Naivete" as the explanation for this insanity only stretches so far, my friends.  It's high time somebody start asking the Li'l President where and to whom his loyalties truly lie.  Because the answer to that question is already at vast odds with the majority of the American people.

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