Hate to jump above Will, but the WaPo and Times jump on the amen corner (see below). Of note is that the big demand from the U.S. & Co. is for permanent uranium enrichment in Iran to cease. In return are offered the aforementioned aviation parts and WTO carrot. Not much new here, although the United States got its way on the request for a permanent cessation in enrichment, something the Europeans didn't want to ask for because, "Iran cannot be prohibited from enrichment while other signers of the treaty are permitted to produce nuclear fuel." This is, it goes without saying, silly, and it is unsurprising that Rice was able to win this concession.

The legitimate European point would be that there are benefits to setting up an agreement that won't obviously immediately be violated, but this reveals the difference between the foreign policy objective of the American efforts (towards actual non-proliferation) and the European ones (bringing Iran back into the community of nations).For pro-democracy Liberals, the first, while appealing, seems unrealistic, even espoused in purely realist terms, because becoming a nuclear power is such an Iranian national ambition. The second risks legitimizing the statecraft of the hardliners in Teheran without achieving movement towards internal reform.

This is a long-term project anyway you cut it, but I'd almost like these negotiations to be developed around the premise that since Iran almost certainly will develop nuclear weapons, we should try and steer that development. If it does so within a framework of liberalization and diplomatic normalization, then the West should support economic normalization. The framework as it is currently developed just doesn't seem to gibe with the reality of Iranian national ambition or even liberal Iranian conceptions of national sovereignty, and seems doomed to non-compliance. At any rate, this is but one step sideways on the long march.

Sometime today I will leave for foreign shores for a week, and my blogging and emailing contributions will be very light.

Luckily, not only will the usual Crescat suspects continue to kick up trouble, but we will also be hosting Ben Glatstein, a previous Crescat guest-blogger, for the spring.

Dawn had broken when Marco Polo said: "Sire, now I have told you about all the cities I know."

"There is still one of which you never speak."

Marco Polo bowed his head.

"Venice," the Khan said.

Marco smiled. "What else do you believe I have been talking to you about?"

The emperor did not turn a hair. "And yet I have never heard you mention that name."

And Polo said: "Every time I describe a city I am saying something about Venice."

"When I ask you about other cities, I want to hear about them. And about Venice, when I ask you about Venice."

"To distinguish the other cities' qualities, I must speak of a first city that remains implicit. For me it is Venice."

"You should then begin each tale of your travels from the departure, describing Venice as it is, all of it, not omitting anything you remember of it."

The lake's surface was barely wrinkled; the copper reflection of the ancient palace of the Sung was shattered into sparkling glints like floating leaves.

"Memory's images, once they are fixed in words, are erased," Polo said.

"Perhaps I am afraid of losing Venice all at once, if I speak of it. Or perhaps, speaking of other cities, I have already lost it, little by little."

Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities