If you had any doubts when Barack Obama hilariously claimed that he was ready to "walk out" of nuclear talks with the mullahs last week, it appears that the White House is really and truly serious about trying to put over this pathetic fraud as....what? A sudden new negotiating strategy? After twelve years of this endless circle-jerking? As a means of trying to arrest Obama's free-fall polling numbers? Either way, it's like closing the barn door after the horse is glue.
But they're autisticly plowing ahead with it anyway:
An Iranian nuclear agreement is possible this week if Iran makes the "hard choices" necessary, but if not, the United States stands ready to walk away from the negotiations, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday.
Speaking during a break from one of his four meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Sunday, Kerry said they had made "genuine progress" in talks over the last few days but "several of the most difficult issues" remain.
"If hard choices get made in the next couple of days, made quickly, we could get an agreement this week, but if they are not made we will not," he said in Vienna, where talks between Iran, the United States and five other powers are being held....
Barack Obama's administration, which has been accused of making too many concessions by Republican members of Congress and by Israel, remains ready to abandon the talks, Kerry said.
"If we don't have a deal and there is absolute intransigence and unwillingness to move on the things that are important for us, President Obama has always said we're prepared to walk away," he said.
Who do they think they're fooling with this ridiculous claim? Trick question: everybody, of course. But who are they actually fooling? Answer: nobody. And I mean nobody. Barack Obama is frantically desperate for a "deal". He hasn't given away the store, he's given away the entire chain, and every mall in which there's an outlet. He'd have sold his soul if he actually had one. The whole world - hell, the entire galaxy - knows how his blood burns in Plak Tow fashion to get that Neville Chamberlain moment, that grinning photo-op where he bows down to Supreme Leader Khamenei, that moment where maybe, in the depths of his dark, oily soul (if he had one), he finally feels like he's earned the Nobel Peace Prize he was awarded like the prize in a box of Cracker Jacks six years ago. He couldn't walk away from that negotiating table any more than Chris Christie could waddle away from the buffet line. It's indellibly etched common knowledge. So as a PR face-saving strategy, it's a hopeless farce,
As a negotiating strategy, it's years too late, and for the same essential reason: the mullahs are not going to take it seriously enough even to laugh at it. I doubt they even noticed it, as they're off and running to a new invented demand:
A day before the new deadline for a nuclear accord, Iran pushed on Monday for an end to the U.N. arms embargo on the country — a parallel deal that the United States opposes as it seeks to limit Tehran's Mideast power and influence....
After world powers and Iran reached a framework pact in April, the U.S. said "important restrictions on conventional arms and ballistic missiles" would be incorporated in any new U.N. guidelines for Iran. It also said "a new U.N. Security Council resolution ... will endorse" any deal....
While the discussions have been focused on uranium stockpiles and the timing for lifting economic sanctions, Iran's longstanding desire to have the arms embargo lifted at the signing of a deal is another wrinkle thrown into the mix.
Russia and China have expressed support for lifting the embargo, which was imposed in 2007 as part of a series of penalties over Iran's nuclear program.
Given that Vladimir Putin has sold the mullahs his top-of-the-line S-300 air defense system, it would appear that that so-called "arms embargo" isn't all that robust to begin with.
But the U.S. doesn't want the arms ban ended because it could allow Tehran to expand its military assistance for Syrian President Bashar Assad's embattled government, for the Houthi rebels in Yemen and for Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Given that Iran has all but annexed Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen by now anyway, isn't that professed position be pyrrhic at the very least?
It also would increase already strong opposition to the deal in Congress and in Israel.
Even though the former gave up their Article II, Section 2, Clause 2 authority to block it over two months ago, and the latter have been locked out of the "negotiating process" for longer than that.
Lifting the embargo is one of the important issues being discussed, the Iranian official said. "There should not be any place for the arms embargo."
And once Tehran makes lifting the conventional arms embargo the latest prerequisite for their claimed acquiescence to any nuclear deal, out the window the former "condition" will go as well, A dismal pattern that is long-since, and most entrenchedly established. And then they'll invent something else, and something else after that, and something else after that. At this point I have to think that even the mullahs are wondering if there's any point at which Barack Obama would finally draw the line. I would think the very daft notion of arming the country whose leaders lead "Death to America!" chants on a daily basis, including with state of the art nuclear weapons technology, would be insane enough to flip the mullahs' turbans, but they appear to be counting on O's concession-making being insatiable.
And they're absolutely right. That arms embargo probably won't survive the week,
But if by some miracle it does, the mullahs can always walk away, right?
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