Iran's nuclear negotiations have devolved into a numbers game
When Vienna was an imperial capital, the Habsburgs would occasionally call their realm the “Danubian Monarchy”. In the interests of appeasing the subject peoples, it sometimes made sense to pretend the empire wasn’t an empire after all.
If only the diplomats who are now gathered here in Vienna to settle the confrontation over Iran’s nuclear programme could also avoid calling a spade a spade.
Skilled negotiators often seek to bridge the most unbridgeable divides by the time-honoured methods of fudging and renaming. The IRA never disarmed: instead it “decommissioned” its weapons and put them “beyond use”. The reason why these talks are deadlocked is that America and Iran have both allowed themselves to be impaled on one issue that remains defiantly beyond fudge.… Seguir leyendo »