The "intransigence" of Iran in the face of Obama's "engagement"?

I always said that the Obama administration's "uranium swap" offer to Iran was intended to be refused, so as to paint Iran as the "intransigent" party and justify an escalation and sanctions which are ultimately intended to make war more sellable to the public -- in short, the Dennis Ross strategy.

And today this is what the NY Times' Helen Cooper has to say:

Instead, administration officials say, the biggest benefit of Mr. Obama’s engagement policy now is not dialogue or understanding with adversaries, but simply a defusing of a worldwide view that the United States is part of the problem, a demonstration that the problem is Tehran’s intransigence, not Washington’s pique.

“What the president has achieved is that he has outed Iran,” a senior administration official said Friday. He said Iran, by refusing to respond positively, had exposed itself as uninterested in a better relationship with the United States.

Note of course that Helen Cooper takes for granted that there was a genuine "engagement policy" in the first place.  The "numerous instances" that she cites Obama as having reached out to Iran were purely formalities, which were intended to only cover-up the continued US insistence that Iran has to give up enrichment - a continuation of the same policies as the Bush administration. She also ignores the numerous instances that Iranian proposals were ignored by the US, such as the 2003 faxed negotiation offer, which the hawks are now trying to erase from history because it goes against their strategy of painting Iran as the intransigent party.

I have said it before and will say it again: we are witnessing the unfolding of a long-term plan of deliberate yet incremental escalation with Iran that is ultimately intended to lead to war.  

Comments

[Lysander]

All this is well and good for persuading a gullible US public, but I don't think it helps much where they need it. Iran has been building ties with Brazil, Turkey, Armenia and the Central Asian republics. The Chinese have also not been convinced. Iran seems less isolated now than it has been in decades. The Ribbentrop-esque "make an offer certain to be refused" trick is hardly a new one and the US was not even particularly subtle about it.