BACK TO REALITY - AT 8:22 A.M. ET:  This is "deadline" month for Iran, or so we're told by an administration for which vagueness is a national ideal.  An American diplomat has outlined the stakes.  We hope he has his job tomorrow:

Sept. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Iran’s nuclear work is approaching a “dangerous and destabilizing” point at which the Persian Gulf country could build a bomb, the U.S. envoy to the United Nations International Atomic Energy Agency said.

“Iran is now either very near or in possession already of sufficient low-enriched uranium to produce one nuclear weapon, if the decision were made to further enrich it to weapons grade,” Ambassador Glyn Davies said today in a statement prepared for the IAEA’s 35-member board of governors, which is meeting for a third day in Vienna.

This “moves Iran closer to a dangerous and destabilizing possible breakout capacity,” Davies added, in some of the strongest comments yet used by a U.S. official about the threat posed by Iran’s nuclear program. He repeated President Barack Obama’s overtures to Iran for direct negotiations and said the administration in Washington is committed to a negotiated resolution to the international dispute over Iran’s work.

COMMENT:  He had to put in the boilerplate about negotiations, but the first part of his statement was telling.  What will Iran do?  What will Obama do?  Iran has handed Western nations a set of proposals.  We don't know what's in them, but, since the Iranian government has already rejected any serious negotiations over its nuclear program, the content of its proposals is probably irrelevant - unless the Obama crowd wants to use that content just to stall and do nothing.

September is the deadline.  September is a third gone.

September 10, 2009