US agrees to chat with Iran over not much of importance

NY Times:

The Obama administration said Friday that the United States would accept Iran’s offer to meet, fulfilling President Obama’s pledge to hold unconditional talks despite the Iranian government’s insistence that it would not negotiate over the future of its nuclear program.

The decision to engage directly with Iran would put a senior representative of the Obama administration at the bargaining table, along with emissaries from five other nations, for the first time since Mr. Obama took office.

The decision is bound to raise protests from conservatives who contend that unconditional talks are naïve, and from human rights groups that say the United States should not legitimize an Iranian government that appears to have manipulated its presidential election in June and crushed protests after the vote.

In advance of Friday’s announcement, senior administration officials said that their offer to negotiate directly with the Iranians, for what could turn into the first substantive talks since the Iranian Revolution in 1979, was, as a senior official had earlier put it, a “bona-fide offer.”

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It is hard to imagine what is substantive about talks that leave out the most contentious issue that Iran poses to the world. I am a conservative who believes the talks are worse than naive. The offer legitimacy to an illegitimate regime that is abusing its own people. The Obama administration has been undercutting the Iranian people ever since the bogus election. And, they are doing it for nothing. They want get talks about the nukes and the regime will stiff them on any human rights issue that might be raised.

This seems to be happening to feed Obama's hubris and fetish that he can talk religious bigots out of their bigotry and hatred of others. It will not be a good thing for the US to have the world watch him fail in this objective.