Hope, Change, and Respect

I dearly hope that I am wrong that our president is hopelessly naive in believing he can persuade Ahmadinejad to give up nuclear weapons. President Obama has banked on his ability to persuade the Iranian regime that nukes are pointless, to the point of stiff-arming anti-regime protesters following the farce of a June election in Iran.

I'm not hopeful given Ahmadinejad's view of the talks:

"This meeting is an exceptional opportunity for the U.S. government and the two European countries to change their position in the world and reform their way of interacting with other governments and return to law, justice and respect," he said.

Iran just wants us to accept Iran's nuclear ambitions.

And I can't say with certainty that Iran won't get that from our president.

I fear we are willing to believe Iran's lies that they've abandoned any nuclear weapons programs (without admitting they ever had them).

Fortunately, I don't know if Iran has any interest in telling us those lies. The Iranians may not think they need to do that, and can simply publicly rub our noses in our failure to stop them.