Jeff Herf, Richard Just, and I were just talking to each other (no, what we were really doing is e-mailing each other, a less civilized form of communication) about the victory that everybody is claiming for Obama diplomacy because the Iranian dictatorship has, sort-of, promised to turn over some of its uranium to the Russians. Look, any uranium it does transfer temporarily is a little less that we have to worry about now. Still, we don't know exactly how much uranium Tehran actually has left. So we are taking its numbers on trust, not only trust in the Iranians but also in ElBaradei's International Atomic Energy Agency which I don't trust at all.
As it happens, when our triple "conversation" began I was reading a Washington Post column by Robert Kagan who also writes frequently for us. No, I don't think that he really means for us to "Forget the Nukes," as his headline suggests. He wants us to wage a political struggle with the regime through its own persecuted population. They are clearly not captivated by the ayatollahs. And the despots have shown how much they fear the people by constructing those mass juridical farces where defendant after defendant rises to plead guilty for God only knows what.
Anyway, please read Kagan's argument about just how vulnerable the state of the mullahs is, and how we should behave in its weakness.