From his perennial short-stacked position, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has made fools of the War Party's new players, escaping the no-win setup again. Calling the Obama administration's bluff, Ahmadinejad has agreed to export low-enriched nuclear materials to France for enrichment into specialized fuel rods. The rods will power Iran's medical research reactor.

The offer to enrich nuclear fuel for Iran, nominally to eliminate Iran's need for a domestic enrichment program, was designed to force Ahmadinejad into a confrontation with Western governments. Under the agreement, Iran would export nuclear materials for enrichment with no guarantee of their return, other than the say-so of demonstrably antagonistic governments.

Much to their chagrin, Ahmadinejad has publicly agreed to the plan, putting the US government in the trap designed to ensnare him.

If the enrichment proceeds as agreed, the War Party will be supplying enriched nuclear fuel to the government they love to hate. However, if the nuclear materials are simply stolen and not returned to Iran, Ahmadinejad will have proven that the War Party negotiated in bad faith, just as he did with John Bolton and the George W. Bush administration.

To be fair, while Ahmadinejad has played the brinksmanship game well, the opposition hasn't displayed any noteworthy skill. The attempts by Germany, France, the United States, and the unnamed government to paint Iran's nuclear program as anything but peaceful have been so amateurish as to be comical.

Each piece in a long series of “smoking guns” has been shown to be a fraud. Iran has faithfully observed their duties under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). And, the IAEA has all but proven that there has been no diversion of nuclear materials or any other materials and equipment subject to the NPT.

The War Party, again and again, is reduced to relying on an ignorance of the public-at-large that there are vast differences between low-enriched and weapons-grade uranium to sell their pulp fiction horror stories of a nuclear-armed Iran.

One thing the War Party has done well is the continual push for "tough new sanctions" on Iran. Each new announcement, whether enacted or not, solidifies the power of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and diminishes the chances of a successful political revolution. Though Ahmadinejad repeatedly plays them for the fools, he and other hard-liners are the War Party's best friends.

It's OK for the War Party to look stupid as long as moderates do not take power in Iran.

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Cass Sunstien would not approve of you crippling your epistemology by reading the brilliant work of Gareth Porter, Philip Giraldi, and others on AntiWar.com regarding Iran's nuclear program.