The Europeans are pretending to believe that the Iranians are willing to negotiate an end to their nuclear weapons plans so that they won't be called to do something about the Iranians until it is too late and the Euros can say, "Iran has nukes so it is too late to do something."
And America, of course, is now pretending to believe that the Euros can succeed in negotiating with the mullahs to keep Iran from going nuclear:
The U.S. decision marks a major policy shift by Washington, which had previously refused to offer such incentives to Iran.
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice cast the U.S. move as a way to support the European diplomacy and ruled out further U.S. gestures to Iran for now.
"This is giving to the Europeans more cards to play in their negotiations with the Iranians," Rice told Reuters. "This is about unifying the international community so that it's the Iranians who are isolated, not the United States."
So let's see if the Iranians truly want to deal. And let's see if the Euros truly want to stop Iran from going nuclear.
I only hope that the price for our playing pretend with the Euros is a promise by the Euros to do something forceful when the Iranians walk away from incentives. And not, I'm not talking about a commitment by the Euros to refer the matter to the UN Security Council where that lofty body will no doubt inform the mullahs that the UNSC is "seized" of the matter and "deeply concerned." Heck, based on Iraq, the Iranians will assume they have another dozen resolutions of deep concern coming before the US finally gets sick of the process and just does something about Iran. Shoot, the mullahs figure, they'll have a dozen nuclear-tipped missiles by then! Who cares?
But the Iranians (and Euros too who deeply desire to stay on their comfy couch and not be bothered by the madmen out on the street threatening death to the infidels : surely that can't mean us, right Pierre?) will soon learn that they should not play poker against a Texan who is on a winning streak. And if we are dealing the Euros more cards, I have to believe we have a winning hand to play.
This delay to let the Euros fail may not matter since the fall of 2005 may be the soonest we will go after Iran more forcefully.
Deal with Iran. The mullahs shouldn't have pencils let alone nukes.
NOTE: If you saw a different version of this, here's the explanation. I wrote the first one. Blogger exploded on me. I viewed my site and it wasn't there. I came back later and redid it in this version. Then noticed that the old version actually did post. So I deleted it. Oops.
