John Kerry's "top priority" when he meets his Iranian counterpart

Now we know what is Secretary of State John Kerry's "top priority" when he meets his Iranian counterpart, Mohammed Javad Zarif:

"Climate change is one of the most urgent and profoundly complex challenges we face;" “That’s why, everywhere I travel as Secretary of State – in every meeting, here at home and across the more than 280,000 miles I’ve traveled since I raised my hand and took the oath to serve in this office – I have made this issue a top priority.”

Garry Kasparov: Putin is winning because of Obama's lack of leadership and weakness

Garry Kasparov, former world chess champion turned political activist, has written a must read article in The Spectator on why Russian dictator Vladimir Putin is winning the poker game of international politics:

 Although — as I will explain — his winning streak may not last, at least for the time being he has outplayed all his opponents, largely because President Obama and other western leaders have left the game wide open for him. Putin is now so confident that he is busy drawing up plans for a new ‘post-Assad’ Syria. He is sure he can retain his influence, whoever is in charge.
The West’s inadequate and vacillating response to the Syria crisis has made some people draw parallels with Munich in 1938 — and for once the comparison actually rings true. Even while Cameron and Hollande have been desperately trying not to look like Chamberlain and Daladier, they looked exactly like them. Meanwhile President Obama showed he could not keep his own promises. The consequences of his failure to enforce his own ‘red line’ on the use of chemical weapons will come back to haunt him long after this current impasse is over.

But it wasn’t just that Putin played his hand well. Both Obama and Cameron played a genuinely inept game. The Conservative party was disorganised and Obama’s argument about legal technicalities proved unconvincing. If you want people to authorise and approve of military action, you have to sound both convincing and capable. Persuading the American public to intervene in Europe in the 1940s was a tough sell for FDR. But he succeeded in selling it, winning the election and winning the vote in the House. That was leadership.
But the disaster of President Obama’s presidency is not just his lack of leadership but the fact that he shows such weakness. It is not only Putin who is watching and taking note of this. There are other players in this new Great Game waiting in the wings — the Iranians in particular, who will arrange their nuclear progress in accordance with the weakness they see.

President Obama's foreign policy weakness gives EU's Baroness Ashton a rare moment of glory

The foreign policy incompetence and weakness of the present US president has had some surprising repercussions; The likewise weak and incompetent EU "foreign minister", baroness Catherine Ashton has suddenly got her moment of glory.

 

A couple of days ago the Daily Telegraph's chief political commentator Peter Oborne heaped his praise on the Baroness:  "We were all wrong about Baroness Ashton. She may save the Iran nuclear talks".

 

Now the Baroness's PR campaign has reached German Der Spiegel:  

         

But now the 57-year-old baroness is suddenly at the center of world diplomacy. And whenever she is mentioned, she earns praise for her hard-nosed negotiating skills, her stamina and her diplomatic talents. It is said that US Secretary of State John Kerry has much faith in her. "She is discrete and perceptive, but also tenacious. That makes her an ideal negotiator," says Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, the head of Germany's business-friendly Free Democratic Party (FDP) in the European Parliament and a member of its Committee on Foreign Affairs.

What's the cause for all this enthusiasm? After negotiations about the Iran nuclear issue appeared on the brink of collapse, the main parties are finally returning to the table. The next round of talks is scheduled for Oct. 15 in Geneva. The West's aim at the meetings in Switzerland is to test whether the Iranians are actually "serious about their willingness to abide by international norms and international law and international requirements and resolutions," as US President Barack Obama said Monday evening after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
The word in diplomatic circles is that this diplomatic renaissance can primarily be attributed to Ashton. In recent months, she has spoken on the phone four times with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif, who studied in the United States and gives the impression of being effectively pro-West. --

After praising the Baroness, the Spiegel writers at least have added some words of realism in the end of their article:

...the new Iranian government has yet to make any substantial concessions. But time is running short for the West, and a report published in August by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), stating that Iran is continuing to pursue its uranium-enrichment activities unabated, has only increased the pressure. At the White House on Monday, Netanyahu repeated his warning that the West should not let itself be hoodwinked by Tehran's charm offensive, stressing that: "Iran is committed to Israel's destruction." President Obama also struck a tough note, saying: "It is absolutely clear that words are not sufficient."

The problem with the likes of Obama and Ashton is that contrary to what they say, they actually seem to think that words are sufficient.

The Washingtons Post's columnist Jennifer Rubin rightly has some words of warning:

President Obama and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani spoke by phone on Friday, an event greeted with unbounded — and inadvisable — enthusiasm by the chattering class.

The substance of the call and the president’s remarks afterward were deeply worrisome. Whenever the president parrots the idea that the problem is “mistrust” between the parties — one an open democracy and the other a theocratic dictatorship — you know it’s trouble. In doing so, the president merely reinforces Iranian propaganda that we bear equal responsibility for this “mistrust.”

Even worse was Obama’s echoing the Iranian deception that it can’t possibly be pursuing nuclear weapons because “Iran’s supreme leader has issued a fatwa against the development of nuclear weapons.” It is frightful to imagine Obama takes seriously Iran’s deceitful line.

The problem is not that Iran “mistrusts” us or that there is some religious prohibition on nuclear weapons; it is that the mullahs’ regime sponsors terror, helps kill Americans, threatens its neighbors, represses its people, holds Americans against their will and violates sanctions prohibiting development of nuclear weapons.