Regime change is now "a change in regime behaviour”?!

One constant to the relations between the mullahs and the West over the last quarter of the century has been this: the mullahs lash out and the west blinks. In an interview with the Financial Times, Dr. Rice, the US Secretary of State, "is urging Iran to join her at a high-level conference on the future of Iraq next week" (FT, April 22, 2007). Dr. Rice considers it a “missed opportunity” if the the mullahs foreign minister does not show up to talk shop on the future of Iraq and beyond.

How absurd and how desperate. We repeated before that when the turbaned regime feels pinched at home, it lashes out- in this case, puts the fear of god into the hearts of some chicken littles from Britain- gets what it wants and needs and the West is ready to capitulate. In the 1980s, the mullahs took hostages in the middle east, and the US and UK rewarded them for bad behavior- sent them guns and missiles, branded the mullahs' archenemies as terrorists for manufactured reasons, and continued to massacre the people of Iran.

The pattern appears to repeat itself. The mullahs have made a mockery of the UNSC resolutions- both of them- continued to speed up their centrifuges and separate isotopes, and are rewarded for their menacing behavior. Is this the "behavior" Dr. Rice wishes to "change"? Just what bargaining chip does Dr. Rice have to play? The last time, it was the Iranian resistance and by way of connection, the Iranian people.