Obama on Iran: Have you been reading your intelligence briefings?

Here's what President Obama said about Iran:

"Their elections will be completed in June, and we are hopeful that, at that point, there is going to be a serious process of engagement, first through the P5-plus-one process that's already in place, potentially through additional direct talks between the United States and Iran."

Well, the Spiritual Guide has instructed people not to vote for candidates who aren't anti-Western. He has his own guy named Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who doesn't strike me as the shrinking violet type.

The top Iranian leadership has made Ahmadinejad their candidate not because they are preparing for serious compromise or meaningful talks but precisely because they aren't.

So the question is whether engagement is going to be:

A. For show followed eventually by a tougher U.S. policy.

B. Because Obama seriously thinks it might work but after he gets nothing will understand things better.

C. Obama wants to pretend that his engagement policy is a big success and so will assert that great progress has been made even when it hasn't.

There are U.S. officials who hold each of these views.

I'm tempted to say that after June the Iranian regime is going to P5 all over the West and especially the Obama administration.


But I won't.