“Inscrutable: impossible to understand or interpret.
synonyms: enigmatic, mysterious, unreadable, inexplicable, unexplainable, incomprehensible, impenetrable, unfathomable, unknowable; opaque, abstruse, arcane, obscure, cryptic……” Google
“”We have only one objective in the negotiations and that is reaching a solid, long-standing and durable agreement (over Tehran’s nuclear energy program),” French Foreign Ministry’s Director General for North Africa and the Middle-East Jean-François Girault said in a meeting with Ali Akbar Velayati, the President of Expediency Council’s Center for Strategic Research, in Tehran on Saturday. He further added that his visit to Iran is aimed at exchanging views with officials in Tehran on developments in the Middle East, particularly the situation in Iraq, Lebanon and Syria. An informed Iranian source said on Saturday that the next round of negotiations between Iran and the Group 5+1 (the five permanent UN Security Council members plus Germany) may be held in mid-June……..”
The Iran nuclear talks are at a critical stage. It looks like the card dealing stage is over, all the needed cards have been dealt, and the betting is on. The bluffing stage, what I call the Poker Stage, is going on in earnest now. This is the seeing and the raising and the folding stage. Once a nuclear deal is reached between the world powers (actually the Western powers) and Iran, if a deal is reached, several things may change:
- Mr. Netanyahu will stop threatening to attack Iran and will change his periodic bi-weekly forecasts of a date for an Iranian nuclear bomb, pushing it back from his usual favorite of six months since 1995.
- Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal Al Saud will have no need to traverse the world anymore, speechifying, threatening that his family will go nuclear if nothing is done about the Iranians. In recent years the Prince has been like a Wandering Semite (but not as pretty as a Tradescantia pallid or a Tradescantia Fluminensis). His highness has been wandering around, publicly threatening a Saudi nuclear option that apparently requires no centrifuges or physicists or chemists or yellow cake from Niger (or from the Boko Haram next door).
- The foreign minister of Bahrain will stop telling sympathetic cooperative American journalists, mainly Washington Post columnists like David Ignatius, that “his country” (meaning his little family) will not accept a nuclear Iran.
- The Republican nominee for president in 2016 Mr. Generic Romney will conveniently forget about Obamacare (a.k.a. ACA, a.k.a. Fait Accompli). He will promise that on his first day in office he will unilaterally cancel the nuclear agreement with Iran. He will also promise that he will never meet or talk with Hassan Rouhani until the Iranian leader shows respect by wearing a proper suit and tie “like good Christians have been doing for two thousand years“.
- The Iranians, well, the Iranians have mastered the art of being what Westerners call inscrutable(it is not as bad nor as good as it sounds at first). That can be good or it can be bad. There was a time when only East Asians, specifically the Chinese and Japanese, were supposed to be inscrutable in Western eyes. Not anymore. And who can blame them: look where the inscrutability got the Chinese and the Japanese………
- ACME Industries, a subsidiary of Looney Tunes, will go out of business, after losing his best two customers: the Iranian nuclear bomb program and Bibi Netanyahu. Besides, Wile E Coyote has slowed down and is on the verge of retirement.
Cheers
mhg
