[lit-ideas] The Iran Charade  The Iran Charade, Part II  By
Charles Krauthammer  Wednesday, January 18, 2006; Page A17  "It
was what made this E.U. Three approach so successful. They
[Britain, France and Germany] stood together and they had one
uniform position."  -- German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Jan. 13
Makes you want to weep. One day earlier, Britain, France and
Germany admitted that their two years of talks to stop Iran's
nuclear weapons program had collapsed. The Iranians had broken
the seals on their nuclear facilities and were resuming activity
in defiance of their pledges to the "E.U. Three." This
negotiating exercise, designed as an alternative to the U.S.
approach of imposing sanctions on Iran for its violations of the
Non-Proliferation Treaty, had proved entirely futile. If
anything, the two-year hiatus gave Iran time to harden its
nuclear facilities against bombardment, acquire new antiaircraft
capacities and clandestinely advance its program.  With all
this, the chancellor of Germany declared