Why the current Iran nuclear talks are doomed

UPDATE: Scott Peterson of the Christian Science Monitor writes:

On the P5+1 side, the "offer" put on the table earlier this year – which US and European diplomats say privately they would never accept for themselves, if they were in Iran's position – was widely deemed to have been a necessity of the White House before the Nov. 6, presidential election, so that Obama would not be open to accusations that he was "soft" on Iran by offering concessions...
Some of the unilateral American measures have been voted on unanimously, and many limit Obama's diplomatic latitude by allowing only Congress to lift them, not the president. The new measures under consideration now would be attached to a much larger defense bill.

There are reports of renewed talks between Iran and the P5+1 over Iran's nuclear program. I'm sort of getting bored by restating this over and over for the last few years: These talks will not go anywhere, for the very simple reason that Iran's nuclear program is not, and never was, the real issue. The "Iranian nuclear threat" is just a pretext, cooked up by the US as a pretext and justification for a policy of imposing regime-change in Iran, just as "WMDs in Iraq" was a pretext. And the LAST THING the US wants is for this issue to be resolved peacefully, with the regime left in power. So, every once in a while they put on a show of talks, but then impose demands that are intended to torpedo any chances of a resolution.

As Barbara Slavin reports, this is happening yet again:

The “refreshed” proposal includes spare parts for Iran’s aging Western jetliners — a perennial carrot — and assistance with Iran’s civilian nuclear infrastructure but no specific promise of sanctions relief, Al-Monitor has learned.

Perhaps as a result, Iranian officials appear to be in no hurry to agree to a date to meet again with the so-called P5 +1 – the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany.

Following US presidential elections, US officials began mulling a more generous proposal but have settled for a conservative position. Iran will be expected to agree to concessions before knowing exactly what it would get in return.

Look folks, even ElBaradei saw through this rather transparent ploy:

“They weren’t interested in a compromise with the government in Tehran, but regime change – by any means necessary,” reported ElBaradei.

Fundamentally, nothing has changed, so why even think that for some strange and mystical reason, these particular talks will succeed when a string of previous talks did not? I mean, even aside from the fact that the goal is to impose regime change in Iran rather than simply limit the so-called "threat" from Iran's nuclear program (a threat that even US intelligence agencies have discounted), the fact remains that the US side is simply not in a position to make any deal with Iran even if it wanted to. Why? Because any real deal will require lifting sanctions, but the sanctions are mostly imposed by Congres rather than the President -- so Obama can't make a deal. Slavin attributes this to the President simply conserving this "political capital" to be spent on other domestic issues but in reality it isn't a matter of "preference" - he has no choice. Congress is bought-and-paid for by Israel. Hell, the Israelis are even telling him who he can and can't appoint to his own cabinet! And Obama simply doesn't have the balls to go up against AIPAC.

People thought that once Obama enters his second term, and didn't have to worry about being re-elected, he would grow a pair and be more forceful in the face of the pro-Israel lobby, but that was naive thinking. Obama is merely a face. He is part of the Democrat party, which has no intention of ticking off Israel either. After all, President Obama didn't fall from the sky. He's very much part of the system, just as previous presidents were, a system that has been fundamentally penetrated and hopelessly corrupted.

I said this before and will say it again: The dysfunctional US policy on Iran which every sane and objective analyst says is not working and is in fact intended to lead to a military conflict, is itself very much a symptom and side-effect of a more fundamentally dysfunctional relationship between Israel and the US, and the former cannot be resolved until the latter is fixed. In the meantime, the tail will continue wagging the dog, and fixing that will require a grand realignment of US foreign policy that will probably never happen, or will happen when it is far too late to salvage US interests.

Comments

[PerfectFlawless Blog]

Hey! How do you personally think, have your writting skills gone any better so far?

[Iman]

Do you think that war against Iran is inevitable?