The administrations naive hopes of persuading Iran to abandon Syria

Washington Examiner:

Iran is enduring economic sanctions designed to slow the country's nuclear weapons program, but President Obama's team thought the regime might abandon dictator Bashar Assad over his use of chemical weapons in Syria's civil war.

Samantha Power, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, hoped that a team of UN investigators — many of whom, presumably, have a longstanding relationship with Iranian leaders -- could write a report that would convince Iran to abandon its ally at the behest of the United States.

"We worked with the UN to create a group of inspectors and then worked for more than six months to get them access to the country on the logic that perhaps the presence of an investigative team in the country might deter future attacks," Power said at the Center for American Progress as she made the case for intervening in Syria.
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Iran and Russia care more about the survival of their ally than the fate of the Syrian people.  Iran is fundamentally a country run by religious bigots and that rather than logic forms the basis for their decision making.  Russia wants its warm water port and is not going to let humanitarian considerations get in the way of keeping it.

It is really hard to imagine that this administration could be so lacking in intellectual talent that it would even consider such a bad idea.