Iran tries to run out the clock...

Hitchens on the latest ploy by the Iranians...

Meanwhile, it is certainly the case that at least three of the six countries approached are being asked to negotiate under some kind of duress. In an unpardonable violation of diplomatic immunity (a phrase that may remind you of something), employees of the French and British Embassies in Tehran have been placed under arrest and subjected to show trials since the convulsions that attended the coup mounted by the Revolutionary Guards in June. And the Iranian correspondent of Newsweek magazine—who is also a Canadian citizen—has been held incommunicado for almost the same length of time. Without overstressing any "preconditions," it doesn't seem too much to require of the Iranian regime that it not send out invitations to countries whose citizens or locally engaged diplomatic staff it is holding as hostages.

On the larger question of the breach by Iran of all its undertakings about nuclear weapons, and the amazing absence from its diplomatic note of any mention of its own program, one wasn't too reassured by the lazy phrasing of Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. The Obama administration, she said, would not impose "artificial deadlines" on Ahmadinejad. Why is this not reassuring? Because it's impossible to tell what is meant by an "artificial deadline." Would one prefer a "genuine" deadline, whereby, for example, the United Nations required Iran to demonstrate compliance with the relevant Security Council resolutions on nuclear proliferation—we have a bushel of these—or face further U.N.-mandated sanctions? Certainly one would, but this isn't what Ambassador Rice appears to have meant.