Lose Some...Win Some

It wasn't so surprising that the International Olympic Committee didn't award the 2016 Summer Games to Chicago, even after the visit of President Obama and the First Lady. What was surprising was that it was the first of the four finalists to be eliminated, in the first round of voting.

In my post yesterday, I missed one important fact: Rio de Janeiro had been one of the finalists for the 2012 games (finally awarded to London), and had been preparing their bid for four years since. The challenges to put the games on in 2016 will still be massive, but I congratulate the plucky Brazilians for their accomplishment.

Chicago will have to decide if it wants to go through the gauntlet again for the future. The Windy City has not hosted the games, though they were just a couple hundred miles away in St. Louis in 1904. Rio's unlikely bid derived legitimacy from the fact that there has never been an Olympics hosted in South America, while Obama's visit justput it on the same level with the visit of King Juan Carlos of Spain (for Madrid), President Lula of Brazil, and the new prime minister of Japan for Tokyo. No shame in losing, just in not trying one's best.

Score One for Engagement

A potential victory of much more profound significance came out of talks in Geneva yesterday. Representatives of the "five permanent members of the Security Council", plus Germany and led by the European Union's Javier Solana, met directly with Iran's designated negotiators on the nuclear issue this week and came out of it announcing that Iran had agreed to allow IAEA inspectors to visit--within two weeks--the secret facility near Qom which Iran acknowledged recently.

Further, and more remarkably (because a voluntary move by Iran, not compelled by any treaty obligations), Iran agreed to transfer the majority of its enriched uranium to Russia, from which it would be prepared for safe use in a medical facility in Tehran.

This agreement--if fulfilled, and that's a big 'if'--would set the clock back significantly from the "18 months and counting" until it's been estimated that Iran could detonate a nuclear device, or until the US or Israel (with US backing) would move militarily to stop such a move. It could lead to more, again if the Iranians follow through on their promises. Today's news reportssuggest that some of the Iranians didn't get the memo, or perhaps got a new one saying to feign ignorance of what was agreed. So, progress is not assured; however, the Obama strategy of engagement (as well as his gambit with Russia by resetting some parts of our relationship on a more favorable basis) is beginning to bring some benefit.

We're stil waiting to hear the Israelis' reaction, but former US Ambassador to the UN, the Bushite John Bolton, wasted no time in establishing his mala fides. Bolton, a person for whom the term "diplomat" is accurate from a career perspective but totally inaccurate in practice, criticized Obama for getting "ensnared in negotiations with Iran". It would be so much better, one concludes that Bolton thinks, to just bomb them and "connect the dots"--Iran being the nation between Iraq and Afghanistan where we don't yet have a military front.

If the point is that Iran's regime has not exactly demonstrated its legitimacy with this year's presidential elections, I take the point, and we should a) take every opportunity to point that out to the Iranians, thus weakening their moral position (very important to them, from what I can see) and b) avoid any meeting between putatively re-elected President Ahmadinejad and Obama (Khamenei would be the guy, and only once there is some firmer progress on the negotiations).

The Iranians are chess players; there are generally several layers to their moves. They needed help with their medical facility, they probably wanted to buy some time themselves, what with their domestic issues, and there may be other facilities which are still hidden (and thus possibly more enriched uranium than we know about). The existence of the secret Qom facility was known to the US, which had not told the IAEA about it, but Iran revealed its existence--somewhat casually, as a "peaceful research facility" though it is buried in a mountain within a Revolutionary Guard base--when they knew that we knew. I think they are beginning to see that our side has some folks who think a few moves ahead, too.