The new "talks with conditions" propaganda ploy

Ed Herman is skeptical about the recent US overtures to Iran that allegedly are intended to diffuse the "nuclear crisis." Here's why:

The Bush administration has openly acknowledged that its aim is Iranian "regime change," and it has engaged in a series of aggressive and provocative moves designed to achieve that outcome, including subsidizing internal dissidents within Iran, encouraging cross-border attacks from Iraq by Iranian expatriate terrorists, collecting data on Iranian targets by spy drones and on-the-ground incursions, and threatening to attack its latest target. It sabotaged the EU effort to negotiate a deal with Iran by refusing to agree to security guarantees to Iran as a part of the settlement. Why would it do that if its worry was only about Iran's possible development of a nuclear weapons capability?

...Given the objective of regime change, and the fact that the United States has been subject to criticism for its long unwillingness to negotiate with Iran, an obvious hypothesis is that...the new U.S. offer is intended to be rejected while giving the cooperative media and "international community" a public relations bone to chew on. If the latter are sufficiently gullible they will congratulate the Bush administration for its new openness and allow the onus to be put on Iran if it rejects an offer intended to be rejected.

The Bush administration is only prepared to "negotiate" after Iran terminates its nuclear activities, the termination to be established by intensive inspections. Why should any conditions for negotiations be imposed on Iran? Why not just negotiate? Wouldn't the condition demanded by the Bush administration open the door to further U.S. insistence on endlessly intrusive inspections that never satisfied the Bushies in Iraq and could well stall "negotiations" with Iran indefinitely? Why should Iran have to make serious concessions in advance as a condition of negotiations and the United States make none? Ms. Rice has insisted on Iran's suspension of nuclear activities on the ground that the administration doesn't want a gun pointed at its head, but as Selig Harrison points out, "then she points a gun at their head by saying that 'all options are on the table.'"

...But a good propaganda system will not ask such questions and will not find the new "offer" a cynical PR move intended to be rejected. On the contrary, it will credit Rice and Bush with "smart diplomacy" and a "rare victory" on the road to achieving the "only successful resolution worth talking about-a verifiable commitment by Iran not to develop the capacity to build nuclear weapons" ("What Counts on Iran," NYT ed., June 3, 2006). If Iran rejects the propaganda ploy, "spurns that conciliatory approach, Washington is sure to put sanctions back on the international agenda." This is same collection of editors who supported the Bush manipulation of facts and the inspection system on WMD to clear the ground for a military attack on Iraq; and here the editors follow closely in the footsteps of their predecessors during the Vietnam War who found the PR moves of that time genuine and helpfully putting the onus on the target for refusing to surrender. They are at it again.

It appears so. And, indeed, Bolton's starting to turn the screws already.