If Barack Obama stills believe his outreach to Iran will yield a nuclear deal, he might as well replace Air Force One with a unicorn piloted by the tooth fairy.

The final nail in the coffin for US-Iran talks

by Michael Rubin

President Hassan Rouhani might have made the right noises in English to encourage the White House and Secretary of State John Kerry, but in Farsi, he and his colleagues have beenconsistent all along; they were playing the United States for fools.

After Obama had his September 27, 2013 phone call with Iran’s new president, for example, the White House celebrated, never mind that Rouhani immediately returned to Tehran andassured Iranians that talks would under no circumstances roll back Iran’s nuclear program. 

And while the White House interpreted Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei’s talk of “heroic flexibility” and an endorsement of nuclear deal-making, in Farsi, Khamenei explained that the phrase signaled a change in Iranian tactics, but not in the substance of Iran’s nuclear policy.

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