Israel Matzav

Who's in charge here?

One of the results of President Obama's choosing to 'lead from behind' on Iran is that the West has no one who is capable of standing up to Iran, which of course is backed by Russia and China. Iran is now threatening to cancel the Moscow round of talks the week after next because it believes that an insufficient amount of preparation has been done for them. Of course, if the President of the United States was a leader and not a follower, Iran would be a lot less likely to try this ploy.

The warning of a possible delay in the next round of talks, to be held in Moscow on June 18 and 19, was conveyed by Mr. Jalili in a letter to his counterpart, Catherine Ashton, the European Union’s foreign policy chief and chief negotiator for the big powers: Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the United States.

Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, which reported the letter, said that Mr. Jalili had expressed irritation over what he called “the E.U. failure to arrange experts’ meeting led by deputies of the negotiators to draft agenda of the talks.” The agency said this had “created an atmosphere of doubt and ambiguity for success of the Moscow talks.”

Other Iranian news agencies said that Mr. Jalili’s deputy, Ali Baqeri, had sent two letters to his counterpart in Ms. Ashton’s office, Helga Schmid, requesting such a meeting and had received no response. “The success of the Moscow meeting depends on making the necessary preparations and drawing up a comprehensive agenda,” the Mehr News Agency quoted Mr. Baqeri’s letter as saying.

Mr. Ahmadinejad, who was in Beijing for regional cooperation talks, also expressed irritation, saying Ms. Ashton’s office had failed to keep its promises. “We believe that the West is after concocting excuses and wasting time,” Mr. Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying by Iran’s Press TV Web site.

A spokeswoman for Ms. Ashton, Maja Kocijancic, said in an e-mailed response for comment that Ms. Ashton had replied to the letter from Mr. Jalili and that she saw no need for further preparatory meetings. “We are not against technical meetings in principle, but the time is not right,” Ms. Kocijancic said.

Western diplomats said they believed that the Iranian requests for such meetings were part of a deliberate effort to bog down the process. Ms. Ashton and fellow negotiators have said they have no patience for stalling tactics or “talks for the sake of talks.”

I'm glad Ms. Ashton has no patience for stalling tactics and talks for the sake of talks. Those would be good reasons for calling off the talks altogether. Unfortunately, what Ms. Ashton really wants is to go to Harrods.

If there were leadership being exercised by the United States, rather than having it contracted out to the P 5+1, the Iranians would be much less likely to be behaving this way. That's why a real change is needed in Washington come November. A change to someone who will at least make the effort to restore America's leadership position rather than playing 100 rounds of golf.

What could go wrong?

Read the whole thing.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, Campaign 2012, Catherine Ashton, Iran sanctions regime, Iranian nuclear threat, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, P 5+1

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 6:51 PM