Persian Pickles

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A pickle isn’t just something to eat. A pickle is also something to try to get out of. A problem, in other words. A dilemma.

And of course you know Iran is ancient Persia.

So here you go, straight from the folks at Stratfor:

Misreading the Iranian Situation

After the last round of meetings between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Barack Obama, the Israelis announced that the United States had agreed that in the event of a failure in negotiations, the United States would demand — and get — crippling sanctions against Iran, code for a gasoline cutoff. In return, the Israelis indicated that any plans for a unilateral Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be put off. The Israelis specifically said that the Americans had agreed on the September U.N. talks as the hard deadline for a decision on — and implementation of — sanctions.

[…]

Obama’s assurances notwithstanding, there accordingly is no evidence of any force or process that would cause the Iranians to change their minds about their nuclear program. With that, the advantage to Israel of delaying a military strike evaporates.

Here are a few more isolated statements from the above article:

  • Moreover, the Israelis have Obama in a box.
  • If that’s true, then the current crisis is more dangerous than it appears.
  • Given that, the United States might as well do the attacking.
  • It isn’t clear that Obama can do that, however.
  • That consensus causes foreign leaders to take risks; it also causes Obama to have an interest in demonstrating that they have misread him.
  • We get the sense that everyone is misreading everyone else.

Then, at the end (where you would expect to find it), the closing paragraph:

The current situation is not as dangerous as the Cuban Missile Crisis was, but it has this in common: Everyone thinks we are on a known roadmap, when in reality, one of the players — Israel — has the ability and interest to redraw the roadmap. Netanyahu has been signaling in many ways that he intends to do just this. Everyone seems to believe he won’t. We aren’t so sure.

I wonder what Joel C. Rosenberg has to say about this whole mess. OK, I just peeked. There’s this and this and this.

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