AREN'T YOU EXCITED? - AT 8:28 A.M. ET:  We're only one day away from President Obama's trip to Copenhagen to snare the Olympics for the incorruptible, peaceful city of Chicago.

Oh, wait, that's another story.  Roll it back.  We're only one day away from the Obama administration's first big meeting with Iran.  You'd think, by all the hype, that it's the first time since the overthrow of the Shah in the late 70s that we've met with the Iranians.  But the great Michael Ledeen points out what a farce that notion is:

The Obama administration's talks with Iran—set to take place tomorrow in Geneva—are accompanied by an almost universally accepted misconception: that previous American administrations refused to negotiate with Iranian leaders. The truth, as Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said last October at the National Defense University, is that "every administration since 1979 has reached out to the Iranians in one way or another and all have failed."

And yet, although we're now dealing with the toughest, most ideological gang in Iran since the Shah's departure, the Obamans think they can part the waters.  Today health care, tomorrow Iran.

Ledeen points out something journalists seem to have forgotten:

Most recently, the administration of George W. Bush—invariably and falsely described as being totally unwilling to talk to the mullahs—negotiated extensively with Tehran. There were scores of publicly reported meetings, and at least one very secret series of negotiations. These negotiations have rarely been described in the American press, even though they are the subject of a BBC documentary titled "Iran and the West."

At the urging of British Foreign Minister Jack Straw, the U.S. negotiated extensively with Ali Larijani, then-secretary of Iran's National Security Council. By September 2006, an agreement had seemingly been reached. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Nicholas Burns, her top Middle East aide, flew to New York to await the promised arrival of an Iranian delegation, for whom some 300 visas had been issued over the preceding weekend. Mr. Larijani was supposed to announce the suspension of Iranian nuclear enrichment. In exchange, we would lift sanctions. But Mr. Larijani and his delegation never arrived, as the BBC documentary reported.

And...

Negotiations have always been accompanied by sanctions. But neither has produced any change in Iranian behavior.

Ledeen, reflecting the knowledge and common sense that has always marked his position, prescribes the only tactic, short of war, that can work:

Thirty years of negotiations and sanctions have failed to end the Iranian nuclear program and its war against the West. Why should anyone think they will work now? A change in Iran requires a change in government. Common sense and moral vision suggest we should support the courageous opposition movement, whose leaders have promised to end support for terrorism and provide total transparency regarding the nuclear program.

And yet, when the democracy movement erupted recently in Tehran, the president of the United States took days to wander up to a microphone and announce, meekly, that, yeah, democracy was nice.  That was the extent of the support.

We're on a slow boat to nowhere.

September 30, 2009