Summary here.

The good news: we’re relying on Rice to stand up to being steamrolled by Rummy.

The bad news: we’re relying on Rice to stand up to being steamrolled by Rummy.

…Rice has once again voiced support for the ongoing EU-Iran talks, which are scheduled to continue, but this raises a curious question: Is the US favoring a process with one hand while the other hand undermines it?

No doubt such a schizophrenic approach is a direct result of immense infighting, reportedly pitting the State Department against the Defense Department. Within the White House too there are signs of a lack of a consensus, resulting in a contradictory approach that ultimately may win the day in favor of hawkish elements pushing for an eventual confrontation with Iran.

The US policy debate has its mirror image inside Iran, with the policymakers grappling with the contours of a sound approach that would simultaneously maintain Iran’s nuclear rights while showing signs of flexibility and accommodation so that Iran could take advantage of the rather generous net of incentives offered by the P5+1 and avert a UN showdown, let alone a military showdown with the US and or Israel in the future.

Both the US and Iranian policy debates have been raging outside the purview of public opinion, for the most part, except when one hears contradictory and/or contrasting points of views expressed by different officials. For now, both sides in the Berlin talks have reported “progress” and have agreed to follow-up talks, yet the chances are that the deliberate leak of behind-the-scene talks in the Washington Times has managed, albeit temporarily, to set the process back at a delicate and exceedingly critical moment in the negotiations.

[snip]

A recent report, in fact, shows that the vast majority of US citizens are opposed to the military option and favor a diplomatic solution. The latter strengthens the hands of Secretary Rice and other US officials pushing the edge of negotiations and is a positive development that acts as a timely antidote to the Machiavellian manipulations mentioned above.

On Iran’s part, on the other hand, there is the danger of it boxing itself into predetermined positions that tie the hands of the nuclear-negotiation team led by Larijani. Ahmadinejad’s speeches at mass rallies are clearly aimed at domestic consumption, but should they be the pillars of Iran’s nuclear diplomacy?

Again, the perils of nuclear populism are discernible here, whatever their advantages. And since Iran’s outspoken president has gone on record opposing the suspension of uranium-enrichment activities even for one day, this in turn raises the prospect for another option not seriously considered so far, that is, the standby option. Article

That insistent sound you hear approaching is the wheezing of the propaganda engine and the riling up of those old rheumatic dogs of war.

Remain suspicious. As Gilbert & Sullivan wrote, “Things are seldom what they seem.”

…From a strategic point of view, there’s no serious debate among U.S. experts over the decision to invade Iraq: It is pretty universally regarded […] as a f[*]ckup. That doesn’t mean there’s consensus about how the U.S. should proceed there (although there’s general agreement that it needs a strategy quite different from the one it’s currently pursuing). But whatever the White House would have you believe, Iraq is viewed by serious national security types now as a salvage operation rather than a theater of offense against global jihadism.

The more immediate danger, however, is that the U.S. public and policymakers get stampeded into a second monumental strategic blunder … attacking Iran. That’s precisely the outcome sought by those in Washington and in the media who are talking up a sense of imminent crisis in which the U.S. must in matter of months choose to go to war or live with a nuclear-armed Iran. The reasoning is spurious, almost absurd on the face of it. But it serves a clear purpose: Despite how the Iraq case may look to the wider world, the American people don’t sanction their government going to war unless they are led to perceive military action as prudent self-defense. And that can’t happen unless the media allows it to happen, as it did in the case of Iraq.

[snip]

The most important enablers of this catastrophe, then, were those that allowed public discourse to be distorted to the point that the Iraq being discussed in American public life bore little resemblance to reality – in other words, the media, which with a few honorable exceptions, largely refrained from aggressively challenging political leaders making absurdly alarmist claims. In classic Hollywood movies, when a person bursts on the scene babbling hysterically about some unspecified threat, eventually a more sober authority figure steps up and slaps the hysteric and says “Calm down, man!” The slap is harsh, but necessary, because hysteria doesn’t allow for rational decision making.…

[snip]

So, why dwell now on the media’s complicity in enabling the Iraq war? Because the same thing is being attempted in the case of Iran. Article