"Obama must talk to Iran"

The January 26th issue of the New Statesman an interesting article on the state of US-Iran relations entitled "Why Iran must be brought in from the cold" by Dominic Sandbrook which is bound to send shivers up the spines of the Israelis since it concludes: 

It is now more than three decades since an American president was in Tehran. And while the image of the American head of state shaking hands with the ayatollahs may seem unlikely, few people would have imagined that they would see Richard Nixon on the Great Wall of China and shaking hands with Chairman Mao, or Ronald Reagan in Red Square, exchanging jokes with Mikhail Gorbachev. Nothing would do more to coax the Iranian regime towards liberalisation, and nothing would do more to change America’s image in the Middle East, than for Barack Obama to follow their example, and to bury the bitter legacy of three decades ago, once and for all.

Well, when Nixon went to China, he had to disassociate the US from China's foe and competitor for US attention: Taiwan. Nixon had to push aside the (one powerful) pro-Taiwanese lobby. Naturally, Israel doesn't want to be put in the position of Taiwan. Can Obama overcome the influence of the far more influential pro-Israeli lobby? I seriously doubt it.

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[shitbrain]

For what it's worth, in his recent talks concerning the situation in Gaza, Chomsky has been downplaying the power of the Israeli lobby (he's always done, actually, but he seems to be making an especial point of it these days). Basically, his argument is that if it's an issue of importance, the U.S. just tells the lobby to shut up, and it promptly obeys.