Arsonist posing as ...
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The “snapback” debate is more than a legal quarrel. It is the core of the Western approach to international commitments: agreements are binding when they constrain others, optional when they restrain the West. Mechanisms are “rules-based” when they serve Atlantic power, “technicalities” when they do not. The Security Council, long used as a stage for selective indignation, is increasingly forced to confront the contradiction between Western slogans and Western conduct.
And here is where our domestic illusionists must finally grow up: the United States is not offering Iran “talks.” It is offering Iran a ritual of submission designed to validate coercion as diplomacy. “No enrichment inside of Iran” is not a negotiating position; it is a declaration that Iran has no rights worth recognizing. It is the language of dominion. It says, in effect: you may exist, but only under our terms; you may develop, but only at the permission of those who have sanctioned, threatened, and attacked your region for decades.
When Washington demands “direct talks,” it is not because it respects Iran. It is because it wants the optics of a bilateral confrontation: a superpower “reasonably” insisting, and a targeted state “unreasonably” resisting. The next act is always the same: pressure, escalation, and then a manufactured headline about Iran’s “refusal,” as though refusing humiliation were a moral failing.
Those still peddling the fantasy of an American “guarantee” should answer one simple question: which America will sign? The America that promises today and breaks tomorrow? The America whose administrations reverse one another like clockwork? The America that treats its own signature as a disposable napkin? When a state turns agreements into campaign props, what is the value of its word?
Iran has already run the experiment. It has already paid the tuition for this lesson, in economic pain and strategic risk. To demand that the nation repeat the same mistake is not pragmatism; it is amnesia marketed as sophistication.
Diplomacy is not begging for a handshake from the very hand that tightens the noose. Diplomacy is reciprocity, enforceable commitments, and respect for sovereignty. If Washington and the E3 want a deal, the route is obvious: return to obligations, lift the coercive measures that violate the spirit and letter of what was promised, and stop treating Iranian rights as bargaining chips.
Until then, Iran should treat “talks” conditioned on surrender as what they are: a threat delivered with a smile.
The arsonist has no credibility as a firefighter. And those who still insist on inviting him back into the house—despite the ashes underfoot—should be honest about what they are proposing: not diplomacy, but submission wrapped in nostalgia.