Israel can't afford happy talk on Iran

There are two schools of thought regarding the the Iran talks. One takes the "happy talk" coming from the negotiations at face value. The other considers the entire exercise a dangerous charade. The "happy talk" promoters are personified by the Council on Foreign Relations' Ray Takeyh, who has declared: "I think there is perhaps a new atmosphere. By that, I mean that all of the parties involved, and particularly the United States and Iran, and to some extent, probably even Israel [which is not a party to the talks], would like to take a step back and relieve some of the tensions that have surrounded this Iranian nuclear issue in the past couple of months. Everyone wants to calm this situation down a little bit, and the best way of doing that is to have a process that you can point to and express some degree of optimism about the prospects for that process. So this actually reduces tensions in some ways."

Is the purpose of these talks to "reduce tension" or to persuade the Iranians to give up their nuclear weapons program? When the diplomats characterize the "atmosphere" as improved and talks to be "constructive," rest assured nothing concrete is happening.

Related Topics: Iran, Israel, Nuclear weapons, P5+1, US in the Middle East receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free middle east clarity mailing list