Dennis Ross, "Iran Is Ready to Talk": Indeed, Iran Has Always Been Ready to "Talk"

Dennis Ross, long considered a friend of Israel, is, as described in his New York Times contributor op-ed entitled "Iran Is Ready to Talk" (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/15/opinion/give-diplomacy-with-iran-a-chance.html?ref=opinion), "a former State Department and National Security Council official," who served as "a special assistant to President Obama for the Middle East, Afghanistan and South Asia from 2009 to 2011." In his contributor op-ed, Ross lists a litany of factors why Iran, "reeling from sanctions," should now be willing to enter into meaningful diplomatic negotiations regarding its nuclear weapons development program, thus precluding the need for military action:

• The Assad regime, Iran's only ally in the Arab world and its conduit for arming Hezbollah in Lebanon, is falling.
• Saudi Arabia is willing to boost oil production to ameliorate any damage resulting from Europe's forthcoming boycott of Iranian oil.
• Iran can't do business with any reputable bank.
• Iran's oil industry needs $100 billion in investments owing to aging infrastructure.
• The Iranian rial has lost much of its value against the dollar.
• India in the future will pay for Iranian oil with rupees.

Ross acknowledges that Iran may just be playing for time, but claims:

"Iran is now signaling that it is interested in diplomacy. Its foreign minister, Ali Akbar Salehi, has declared that Iran will resume talks with the five permanent members of the Security Council and the Germans. He recently said that Iran would discuss Russia’s step-by-step proposal to defuse the nuclear standoff, which Iran refused to entertain when a variation of it was first broached last year."

Ross acknowledges that Iran might use the talks to continue pursuing its nuclear weapons program, but then it would face heightened economic pressure when the European oil boycott goes into effect in July. Observing Obama’s "stated determination to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons," Ross concludes that Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei "will have to decide what poses a greater threat to his rule: ending his quest for nuclear weapons or stubbornly pursuing them as crippling economic pressures mount."

What's wrong with Ross's analysis? If Iran was a Western European nation, his arguments would make sense. But it's not. According to Israeli intelligence assessments, Iran is willing to sacrifice half of its population as part of a war to eradicate the "Zionist cancer." Sorry, Dennis, but this has been the shortcoming of Obama policy toward Iran for the past three years: Iran does not "think" according to Western logic, and although Iranian diplomats are talented chess players and know how to bluff the West, its nuclear weapons program is the sine qua non of the Khamenei regime. Abandonment of nuclear weapons development by Khamenei would be an act of shame, and Iran will continue to suffer economic sanctions until its first atomic bomb is ready, which the mullahs believe will prove a game changer.

Talk? Sure Iran has always been prepared to talk until the cows come home. However, Iran is also adamant about building its bomb and knows no fear of Obama, who has drawn too many lines in the sand over the past three years.