Fars News Agency is reporting that Dear Leader has “recognized” Iran’s “nuclear rights.”  What precisely that’s supposed to mean is not terribly clear from the article.  The article cites only a “parliamentary” source for the statement, but then again coming from a place like Iran I’d have to imagine that parliamentarians don’t just go talking out of school.

What is also interesting is the route by which this recognition was conveyed.  Apparently we handed the message to the Swiss (who attend to such affairs in Iran as the U.S. has left), who then passed it on.

There was also the quickly-denied and quietly-air-brushed report that Dear Leader is making good on his campaign pledge to pursue direct talks with Iran, without pre-conditions.

What gives?  It’s impossible for anyone with even a nodding familiarity with the history of Europe in the 1930s not to see the parallels between this developing situation and 1938.  Once Chamberlain and the French had conceded legitimacy to Germany’s demand for the Sudeten Germans, the game was effectively over.  Ceding the Sudetenland to Germany not only gave away Czechoslovakia’s principal line of defense; in fact it made the balance of the country indefensible.  The Sudeten Germans had never, ever, lived under a “German” ruler, or in a “German” state.  They’d always belonged to the Bohemian crown.  Their claim that they wanted to go “heim ins Reich” was as transparent a fraud as has ever been made.

But the fraud was enough for Chamberlain, who was desperate to do something, anything, rather than face down Hitler.  The French were likewise eager to suffer any indignity rather than man up and defend a country which was their formal ally (France had an actual treaty with Czechoslovakia which obliged it to come the latter’s defense; at least Britain wasn’t selling out an actual ally).  Grasping back to Wilson’s alleged principle of “self-determination,” they cynically sold out the one country bordering Hitler’s Germany that could have put a whipping on him.

The key point was reached when they conceded any legitimacy at all to the German claim.  Once you admit that the other guy is right, you really don’t have much to stand on publicly, other than expedience, and if you’ve conditioned  your public to perceive surrender as expedient, you’ve come to the end of the game.

Let’s be honest where Dear Leader has put us.  We have conceded the moral right to Iran to pursue nuclear weapons.  I’m sure that paragon of candor, Susan Rice, will assure us that the “rights” extend only to “peaceful uses,” such as nuclear power, but there is absolutely zero indication that any of Iran’s nuclear program has ever been oriented towards peaceful purposes.  Having made that concession, how do we appear before the Security Council and demand even the continuance, let alone the increase, in any sanction against Iran?  How?

Iran has announced, repeatedly, its intention to obliterate the state of Israel from the map.  We have now admitted its right to do so.  When you validate a man’s possession of a tool, how do you deny him the use of it, especially the use he has announced as his principal intended use?

Tonight we will have another “debate” between Dear Leader and Mitt Romney.  I do trust that whoever it is that puts words in Dear Leader’s mouth for him will not think “Peace in our Time” is a good campaign slogan to take into the final days of the race.