Is Obama stepping into Carter's shoes? Persian rug for sale

They've sold us this rug before -Michael Rubin

During the Democratic primaries, Barack Obama promised to meet the leaders of Iran "without preconditions." He appears a man of his word.

Within days of his election, the State Department began drafting a letter to Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad intended to pave the way for face-to-face talks. Then, Obama told al-Arabiya's satellite network, "If countries like Iran are willing to unclench their fist, they will find an extended hand from us." The president dispatched former Defense Secretary William Perry to engage a high-level Iranian delegation.

The pundits and journalists may applaud, but their adulation for Obama's new approach is based more on myth than reality. Washington and Tehran have never stopped talking; indeed, many of Obama's supposedly bold initiatives have been tried before, often with disastrous results…

Allowing Ahmadinejad to slap [P]resident [Obama's] outstretched hand is an Iranian populists' dream come true. Alas, this too was a lesson Obama might have learned from Carter. Three decades ago, desperate to engage, Carter grasped at any straw, believing, according to his secretary of state, that even a tenuous partner beat no partner at all. Each partner added demands to bolster his own revolutionary credentials, pushing diplomacy backward rather than forward.

Thirty years later, the same pattern is back. Ahmadinejad's aides respond to every feeler Obama and his proxies send with new and more intrusive demands.

[A]fter 30 years, Iran remains as intractable a problem as ever. Every new U.S. president has sought a new beginning with Iran, but whenever a president assumes the fault for our poor relationship lies with his predecessor more than with authorities in Tehran, the United States gets burned.
[Weekly Standard]
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