Yes, read that again. WTF? That's the US line? It's nonsensical. Obama is leaking this for a reason. This is how this snake conducts his foreign policy.
Iran wants nuclear weapons. They have oil. They are in North Korea buying a delivery system for a nuke as we speak -- the NORKS are launching a long range ballistic missile any minute now more as a sales presentation than anything else. Do you think North Korea fears Obambi and his strongly worded post-it notes?
Iran is going to drop a nuke and no one cares. This can't be happening.
“There’s a fundamental impasse between the western demand for no enrichment and the Iranian demand to continue enrichment,” says Mark Fitzpatrick, a former state depart- ment expert now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. “There’s no obvious compromise between those two positions.”
[...]
“There is a growing recognition in [Washington] that the zero [enrichment] solution, though still favoured, simply is unfeasible,” says Trita Parsi, president of the National Iranian American Council. “The US may still have zero as its opening position, while recognising it may not be where things stand at the end of a potential agreement.”
Mr Fitzpatrick adds: “Obviously, no country wants to flag its fallback positions in advance. As soon as you let your falback position be known, it becomes the new position.”
On Friday, Mr Obama summarised the US message to Iran as, “Don’t develop a nuclear weapon” – a form of words that would not rule out a deal accepting Iranian enrichment. Mr Bush was much more specific in calling Iran to halt enrichment.
A series of UN Security Council resolutions since 2006 has forbidden Iran from enriching uranium, with the European Union, Russia and China backing US calls for Tehran to halt the process.
But Iran has sped up its programme during that time and has installed more than 5,500 centrifuges to enrich uranium and has amassed a stockpile of more than 1,000kg of low-enriched uranium – enough, if it were enriched to higher levels, to produce fissile material for one bomb. “Across the political spectrum in Iran, enrichment as a right has become a non-negotiable position,” Mr Parsi said.
Asked last month whether the administration was considering allowing Iran to keep a limited enrichment capability, Robert Wood, a state department spokesman, said: “I don’t know . . . Let’s let the review be completed and then we can spell out our policies.”
Indicating possible space for negotiations, Dennis Blair, Mr Obama’s Director of National Intelligence, said last month that he believed Iran had not yet made the decision to produce enough highly enriched uranium for a wearhead for a bomb. He added: “Iran at a minimum, is keeping open the option to develop deliverable nuclear weapons.”
The US line that Iran is seeking the capability to develop nuclear weapons – but not necessarily such weapons themselves – contrasts with Mr Bush’s insistence while in office that it sought nuclear weapons.
