The Iranians are played their cards very close to the vest as it concerns their nuclear program. Top nuclear negotiator Ali Larijani said today that Iran is ready to enter "serious negotiations" with the UN about their uranium enrichment program. The UN wants them to stop all enrichment by August 31st, but the government of Iran is saying that it plans to continue. So here we have the governments of the UK, France, Germany, the US, China and Russia all scrambling to give Iran whatever it wants to get them to stop their nuclear program where it is. And the closer it gets to the deadline they already cemented themselves to, the more desperate they're going to get. The Iranians appear to be playing the good diplomat on one hand while keeping the threat open with the other hand. I wouldn't be surprised if they finally did settle something with the other nations, but we're going to give up a lot more than we originally thought.

So what's the right move here? It seems like Iran is basically going to be able to blackmail the rest of the world into giving them whatever trade deals they want. In they end, the world's going to be pumping a lot of money into Iran just to keep them away from a nuclear program. And for how long? And how can we know that we trust Iran to end it's nuclear program. The rest of the world community is busy worrying about Israel, Lebanon, North Korea, Iraq, Pakistan and everywhere else, and we expect we'll be able to keep a close eye on Iran during all that? As I see it, Iran's just using the threat of a nuclear program to get whatever deals they want. And they'll keep working on their program as well. The UN and the world community at large are being had, here.