Iran Negotiations: Can the West waste more time?

[GodSaveAmerica]

A nuclear armed Iran is unthinkable. Much better to take them out now while the balance of power is still in our favor, than when they have an arsenal of nukes they can threaten us with.

 

[JoeB131]

A nuclear armed Iran is unthinkable. Much better to take them out now while the balance of power is still in our favor, than when they have an arsenal of nukes they can threaten us with.

Or we could just leave them alone.

 

[waltky]

Uncle Ferd says "Yea, who's in charge?...

The ‘real’ world crisis lays in a global deficit of leadership
Wed, Jun 27, 2012 - Leaders today have to ask their people to share burdens, not just benefits. That requires extraordinary leadership that has to start with telling people the truth

Traveling in Europe last week, it seemed as if every other conversation ended with some form of this question: Why does it feel like so few leaders are capable of inspiring their people to meet the challenges of our day? There are many explanations for this global leadership deficit, but I would focus on two: one generational, one technological.

Let’s start with the technological. In 1965, Gordon Moore, the Intel co-founder, posited Moore’s Law, which stipulated that the processing power that could be placed on a single microchip would double every 18 months to 24 months. It has held up quite well since then. Watching European, Arab and US leaders grappling with their respective crises, I am wondering if there is not a political corollary to Moore’s Law: The quality of political leadership declines with every 100 million new users of Facebook and Twitter.

The wiring of the world through social media and Web-enabled cellphones is changing the nature of conversations between leaders and the led everywhere. We are going from largely one-way conversations — top-down — to overwhelmingly two-way conversations — bottom-up and top-down. This has many upsides: more participation, more innovation and more transparency. However, can there be such a thing as too much participation — leaders listening to so many voices all the time and tracking the trends that they become prisoners of them?

This sentence jumped out from a Politico piece on Wednesday last week: “The Obama and Romney campaigns spend all day strafing each other on Twitter, all while decrying the campaign’s lack of serious ideas for a serious time. Yet at most junctures when they’ve had the opportunity to go big, they’ve chosen to go small.” Indeed, I heard a new word in London last week: “Popularism.” It is the uber ideology of our day. Read the polls, track the blogs, tally the Twitter feeds and Facebook postings and go precisely where the people are, not where you think they need to go. If everyone is “following,” who is leading?

More The ?real? world crisis lays in a global deficit of leadership - Taipei Times

See also:

Iran accuses world powers of dragging feet in nuke talks
Wed, Jul 04, 2012 - Iran accused world powers yesterday of dragging their feet in negotiations over its nuclear activities, as both sides were about to hold a new, downgraded round of talks in Istanbul, Turkey.

Iranian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told a weekly briefing that, if the powers ignored Iran’s nuclear “rights” and failed to bargain on equal terms, the negotiations could lead to an “impasse.” “All that can reinforce the idea that there is a desire to drag out the negotiations or prevent their success,” he said. Iran and the P5+1 group comprising the five UN Security Council permanent members (Britain, China, France, Russia and the US) plus Germany were to hold an experts-level meeting in Istanbul to discuss efforts to curb Tehran’s atomic activities.

The talks were to take place between technical experts after three previous rounds earlier this year, at a more senior political level, failed to bridge the vast gap dividing the two sides. Iran is insisting it has a “right” to uranium enrichment under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and that that be recognized by the P5+1. It also wants Western sanctions punishing its economy to be eased.

The P5+1 instead is pushing for an immediate end to Iran enriching uranium to 20 percent purity — just a technical step short of the 90 percent needed to make nuclear bombs — and to ship out its existing 20 percent stock and close a fortified underground enrichment facility in Fordo.

Mehmanparast said the P5+1’s negotiating position and the Western sanctions suggested that maybe the world powers did not want to see the talks bear fruit. “Many people are starting to conclude that maybe there are specific goals in dragging out the talks and preventing their success. One option is that perhaps there is a link with the US [presidential] election” in November, he said. He said the “illegal and illegitimate” sanctions contradicted the West’s affirmation that it wants to resolve the standoff diplomatically.

Iran accuses world powers of dragging feet in nuke talks - Taipei Times