Doesn't sound like there is any real progress in Almaty. From the State Department daily briefing:
QUESTION: Could you share with us any progress with the ongoing meeting between the 5+1+Iran?
MR. VENTRELL: Yeah. So we understand that the P-5+1 and Iran met for almost three hours today, during which the P-5+1 presented a serious, revised proposal. Further discussions also took place during the evening, and the entire group will reconvene again tomorrow at 11 a.m. local time. And you heard the Secretary obviously speak earlier today where he said we encourage Iran to make concrete steps in order to begin addressing the international community’s concerns.
QUESTION: Would these concrete steps take, like, the specific suggestion by Iran that they will accept 5 percent enrichment, for instance?
MR. VENTRELL: You know, Said, I’m not going to get into the details of this ongoing diplomacy. Let’s let the negotiators do their work.
QUESTION: How would you characterize the atmosphere in the talks?
MR. VENTRELL: I don’t think I’m going to characterize it beyond that other than to say, as I just mentioned, it went on for three hours and further discussions will take place tomorrow.
QUESTION: Well, what do you hope to achieve at these talks? I mean, clearly a deal is not going to be reached at this. So do you hope to come out of it with a commitment for another round, or what are you hoping to achieve?
MR. VENTRELL: Look, I don’t want to preview anything as we go into the second day.
QUESTION: You can’t even say what you hope to achieve at these talks? I mean --
MR. VENTRELL: Well, what we hope to achieve, and what we said all along is our goal --
QUESTION: I don’t --
MR. VENTRELL: -- is that we want Iran to change its behavior. Yeah.
QUESTION: I don’t think that’s going to happen by the end of tomorrow. So I’m just wondering, like, what would you see as an indicator of progress? Another round, maybe?
MR. VENTRELL: Again, I’m not going to preview that today. Let’s talk again tomorrow.
QUESTION: Any bilateral --
MR. VENTRELL: Samir.
QUESTION: -- meetings take place?
MR. VENTRELL: I don’t have anything for you on that.
QUESTION: And then how do you square the fact that no matter what comes out of these talks, tomorrow or the day after the Supreme Leader can just say something that totally negates all the progress that you had in the talks? We’ve seen it many times that you think you see some positive movement from Iran, from the Foreign Minister or the negotiator or something, and then the next day the Supreme Leader kind of pours water on the whole thing.
MR. VENTRELL: Look, we’ve been very clear that we want the full Iranian regime to change its behavior on this. And so we’ll continue to meet with his appointed negotiator, the Supreme Leader’s appointed negotiator, through the P-5+1 process. But beyond that, I don’t have anything for you.
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I'm always willing to look at alternatives, but this sort of peace group stuff is for the birds.
Why? Because it makes a moral equivalency between a democratic state under the rule of law -- Israel -- and Iran, a tyranny. It elevates the immoralities of supporting the Shah or Saddam in his war against Iran somehow above the horrors of the theocratic state of Iran today, which is responsible for massacres, arrests, torture, and assassinations abroad -- and not to mention the sponsorship of terrorists in many places.
It's like this huge, broad, blind spot on the left.
It's why the leftist narrative about the Oscars was all against Argo and in favour of Lincoln -- Slate led the charge on whining about this.
