Here we have it, ladies and gentlemen. Another chapter in the eternal comedy of Western diplomacy. US envoys gather in Doha, the glittering Gulf playground, to discuss Iran's nuclear programme.
And who is conspicuously absent? Iran, of course. It is as if Shakespeare had written a sequel to 'Much Ado About Nothing' set in a five-star hotel, with diplomats playing the fools.
Meanwhile, the United Kingdom pipes up with calls for 'transparency' from Tehran. One can almost hear the Victorian era echoes of gunboat diplomacy, except the gunboats are now drones and the transparency is a euphemism for submission. The irony is thicker than the Doha humidity.
The West demands openness from a nation it has systematically isolated and sanctioned into a corner. Iran, for its part, knows this dance all too well: the same steps that led to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the same American retreats and European hand-wringing. We are watching the slow rot of a system that imagines it can negotiate with history.
The Fall of Rome was preceded by such diplomatic circuses, where envoys debated borders while the barbarians sharpened their swords. Today, the barbarians are not at the gates but within the walls of our own intellectual decadence. We refuse to acknowledge that the nuclear issue is a symptom, not the disease.
The disease is the collapse of a rules-based order that was never really rules-based but rather a projection of power. So the US and UK wring their hands, demand transparency, and pretend that talking without the other party is anything other than a public relations exercise. It is time to admit that we are not negotiating for peace.
We are negotiating for the right to continue our decline in a dignified manner. Iran will not be transparent because transparency is not a virtue in international relations. It is a weapon.
And we have handed them the ammunition.
