“French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy has said Iran must suspend uranium enrichment if it wants to return to negotiations, but Moscow and Beijing have steadily braked U.S-backed efforts to punish Tehran quickly, both as nations in the six-power alliance offering rewards to Iran if it suspends enrichment and permanent members of the Security Council.

The Iranians’ offer, which they portrayed as a major advance, appeared to be aimed at least in part at dividing the Security Council members with vetoes — the U.S., Britain and France on one side and Russia and China on the other.

Still, one of the diplomats told the AP that the lack of Iranian flexibility on enrichment would likely leave even Russia and China no choice but to ultimately endorse U.N. sanctions against Iran.”

I suspect that Iran is resigned to eventually facing sanctions over their nuclear program. Their goal is probably to delay the imposition of those sanctions as long as possible without signfigantly retarding their nuclear process and to diplomatically prevent a military attack.

It seems to me that they are achieving remarkable success with both goals. They have no need for the UN to ‘accept’ their proposal, that doesn’t matter and almost certainly isn’t a goal. All they need to do is present enough of an illusion of being willing to talk that Russia or China won’t go along with sanctions (or at least signifigant sanctions). Given that both countries have vested economic interests in avoiding sanctions, and probably view a nuclear Iran as a threat to others rather than them, it seems that they may be able to pull off this goal.

Iran is outplaying us at every level.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060824/ap_on_re_mi_ea/iran_nuclear_64

It’s probably not going to get accepted until, at the very least, Iran allows the UN to closely monitor its uranium enrichment to ensure they are only doing it for energy purposes. Although I think it’s more likely the UN will say “no nuclear enrichment, period, until you recognize Israel’s right to exist and stop supporting terrorists who want Israel gone.”

But those mystery concessions will forever remain out of reach.

This proof of existence, appearing in an upcoming issue of The Astrophysical Journal Letters, does nothing to reveal what dark matter really is, however. “Over the years, we’ve pretty much ruled out all sorts of baryonic dark matter possibilities like brown dwarfs or black holes. We’re pretty much left with some new subatomic particles,” notes team member Dennis Zaritsky of the University of Arizona. “It’s a little embarrassing to claim we know anything about the universe when we don’t know what 90 percent of the matter out there is.”

God stuff?

Oh, btw the little video Sciam have is worth a watch.